Step 6 and the Defect of Trying to Change Himself – Bob B.

My name is Bob Bazans, and I'm an alcoholic. For the grace of God, and because this program works in my life one day at a time, I have not found it necessary to take a drink of alcohol since the 10th of December 1967, and for that I am very grateful. I'm also very pleased and grateful to be here with you and your wonderful weekend. This is really something. I've been to Texas before, and I've had a taste of your hospitality and your brand of AA and I have heard about this wonderful conference a number of times from a number of people and it isn't very often that you hear it with such a kind of a I think reverence is the proper word I really do this conference is very obviously held in the highest esteem by a great many people and I think what's even more interesting is held in that high esteem by the people who year after year attended. And I think all of us feel after being here, we know why that is. You have something very special here and it just kind of, and it has an integrity and a completeness that kind of runs through the whole deal. And, uh, I thank you for the opportunity to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments, Robert. I, I used to be funny and then my sponsor pointed out I had a choice in the program of AA between sincerity and humor. And And I have opted for sincerity, but you do humor very well. He corresponded with me as a chairman or wanted to do, and someone had spoken to him about me, and the only two things he really knew about me was that I carried a purse and I wore sandals. And I sometimes wear socks except my nylons have a run in them. And a lot of people ask me about my purse and ask me how long I've carried it, and I've buried it ever since my wife found it in the car. So far there's really only one thing that has distressed me about this conference, And drunks have a very funny sense of timing, and I think Charles has done a heck of a job this weekend, too. But the only thing I don't understand is why he picked this particular weekend to bring a different woman to an AA conference. I don' t understand that. I think Blanche just looks tremendous. I almost didn' t recognize her when I came in. We' ve had a heckuva good start. I want to thank Tom. A lot of special things happen when you get an opportunity to get around in AA and meeting Tom and Betty on the way over here was one of them. And I guess I was really impressed. Tom, I think, embodies probably as much masculinity in any one spot as I've seen it in a hell of a long time. But it's impressive to me to see the type of sincerity and love that that guy has through the program of AA, and I really got a lot out of that. And Betty and Eloise today, really neat. that that was kind of special. I only wish that I could have had my bride here to have her share this with me and meet you people, but that wasn't meant to be in the cards. But I'll have another opportunity some point in time to get my wife down here and I hope she meets every one of you and sees what you've got going. I'm going to share with you a little bit tonight about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like today. And then we'll see where it goes from there. I took my first drink of alcohol when I was 13 years old and that turned out to be a very significant event for me and to relate just how significant it was I'd really have to tell you a little bit about the person I poured the first drink into and that kid was 4 foot 11 and he weighed 95 pounds and he was the second smallest kid in his high school class and as far back as I can remember I never liked who or what I was I always wanted to be something different. I wanted to become a better person. I wanted it to be bigger, better looking. I wanted him to be an athlete. I kept trying out for football except I had a back problem. I had yellow streaks down the back of it. It didn't work out very well. As far back as I can remember, I have had a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy. I can remember, and I had a feeling that I always had to earn everybody's approval. Early on, I would steal money from my dad and from the counter at home, and I'd buy my friends candy and pop. I developed a capacity or tried to the best of my ability to develop a capacity to be what other people wanted me to be. If they wanted a class clown, I was a class clone. If they want someone who would do something funny that no one else would do, I did it. I developed the sense of humor so people would laugh at me. Maybe the most important thing in my life, ongoing, was always to belong to the in-group of people. And I guess no matter where you are, whether it's grade school, high school, college, AA, any place, if you're on the outside, you always feel like there's some group of people who are on the inside. And I made it my goal, and I thought that if I could get to belong to that group of People just by association, I'd be okay. And I worked hard enough and long enough that I got to be part of that group of people. Except when I got there, I didn't feel like I belonged because I felt like I was there because I was paying my dues. And if I ever stopped being what they wanted me to be, they wouldn't want me anymore. And one night we were at a party and a friend of mine had a fifth and we went out and we split that fifth and I made a discovery. And the discovery was that when I put alcohol inside of me, I got a comfort of well-being and completeness, the likes of which I had never experienced right up until that very moment. It's like a friend of mine says it was as if when God put them together he left a few nuts and bolts loose and when he took his first drink of alcohol it was like someone snuck up behind him with a great big screwdriver and just kind of tightened it all up and that's what I felt like. I didn't feel like I was a member of that group I felt liked I owned it. I was able to move around and talk to people in a way and do things with those people better and more at ease, and just everything clicked. And I felt like when I put that drink inside of me, I felt that's the way I should feel all the time. And from that moment on, I became a social drinker. Every time anybody else said, I'll have a drink, I said, so shall I. I just never passed up an opportunity to do it after that. When you're underage and you do a lot of drinking, you get into a lot trouble, and I did both those things. And by the time I finished high school, my drinking problem was the largest subject of negative conversation in our home. I literally drank every opportunity I got after my first experience with alcohol. I look back on it now, and I simply altered my whole life around alcohol. I was conscious as to where my parents were going and when they were coming back and when они были идти на выходные и где они остались и как я мог уйти. I just started planning my whole live around that experience. I just chased it and chased it and chased it. And it got to be bad enough in our home that they were putting a lot of heat on me. Now, I thought the only problem I had with alcohol was the fact that I was for bad to drink. When you're underage, you're not supposed to drink, and so when I got caught, it didn't make any difference whether it was the police or my parents. They never asked me how much I had. They always just said, were you drinking? Didn't make any difference if you had one drink or you had ten, and I never wanted to run the risk of getting caught with one drinks, so I always got the tin inside of me before I got caught. And I had an idea that if I could get someplace where I just wasn't for bad to drink, that my drinking would become normal, just like everybody else's. So I had the opportunity to go away to school and I took that opportunity, and I guess if my drinking would have been normalized I wouldn't be here today. i never let go even after i found alcohol of being what other people wanted me to be it'd be difficult to relate to you just how much i gave up and how much effort i put into being that i developed aspects of my character i was a class drunk only i wouldn't have called it that then i was sophisticated i was the guy who was out there in the right bars in the right places. I was the guy who dressed very well. I charged a lot of clothes to my parents in those days. I thought I did what I did very well, I was a gambler. I made three to five thousand dollars every year I was in college finding people who couldn't do certain things as well as I did them. And it was like even in the midst of being all those things, I hated it. But it was not like I never had a choice. I had built up a monster and I didn't know how to unbuild it. I didn' t know how stop being what I had started to be to get your attention. From the time that I started to get some adulation and some respect for my drinking in high school because it was something that I did very well, I never forgot that feeling. And I kept going back to get that feeling that was something I did well and I just kept doing it and doing it, and I kept looking at you to tell me I was okay. And in that process, I gave away everything I had. And I never even made a decision the entire time I was involved in that process. To make a long story short, I drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame in the middle of my senior year. One day I just walked out. I didn't have to walk out. I hadn't failed a course. But I was about as miserable and in about as much pain as disturbed as a young guy could get. i came back home to a set of very disappointed parents and i finished school in saint paul it was about that time i guess the family and i reached the mutual conclusion that i didn't belong at home and i think that i was out in a four-day alcoholic research project and came home and found a suitcase on the back steps is about how that went now my family had tried everything they knew to make Bob okay. They had had me talk to priests and judges and ministers and attorneys, and I'd been going to a psychiatrist for two years, always trying to find out what was wrong with Bob and never being able to find that magic answer because there was no explanation for why I was having the troubles I was Having. I didn't understand it and they didn't. Everybody was looking for that combination that would turn it off and make it okay. I can't relate the confusion that was going on in my life during that period of time. But armed with my college degree and my newfound freedom, I struck out to make my mark on the world and I took a position as a carry-out boy in a liquor store. Which later on turned out to be a bad decision, but at the time it was a good decision. And I was to have lots of experience and be lots of things in my alcoholism that I didn't like and one of the things I became during that period was a thief. I used to empty out all the boxes. I was one of those guys, he kind of liked me, I don't know, we got along pretty well, the liquor store owner and he was always surprised that I liked to stock and I used to go down to the basement and I'd stock on the shelves and I take the empty boxes and I run them up the conveyor and every fifth box I stuck a bottle in and we threw them out in the alley and at midnight I'd go around to the alley and I pick up the boxes and I picked up the fist that I put out there and that's how I drank in those days. And I lost that job for going 80 miles an hour with a delivery truck and when I had that job I almost killed a little girl driving that car. I left that job and I took a job as a waiter at a private club in Minneapolis living on Skid Row and drinking a quart to a quart and a half of booze a day. Now at that time I weighed 210 pounds and I was an absolute mess. I had lost contact with everybody that I grew up with No one knew where I was or what I was doing, and my life was just a mass of chaos. I didn't have any money in those days. I needed everything I had to drink. I didn' t have a place to live. In those days, I got up around 10 o'clock in the morning, and I took two decks of drinks, drank a six-pack of beer, and I went to work, and I worked from 10 to about 2. And from 2 to 5, I drank as much beer as I could get in me, and at 5 o' clock, I went into a liquor store, and I bought a fifth of Southern Comfort. and I went to my locker and I put the fifth in there and I poured it in a half pint bottle and I drank that all night long and then I went and found a place to stay with whoever I could find a place to stay and towards the tail end of my waitering there was a guy at the club who was a dope addict and his wife was a prostitute and I used to live in the room she worked out of and whenever she had a customer I used have to go walk the streets and that's how I lived but that isn't where I identified my alcoholism that period of time in my life was actually like watching my life on television. It just didn't seem real to me. And I lost that job because I got beat up so badly I couldn't go back to work. And I did what I always did. When I really ended up in trouble, I went back to my parents and my family. And I said, can I come home? And they said, yes, you can come home. And I went home. And you know, alcoholism has meant lots of different things to me, but maybe one of the things that meant to me more than anything else is that I was a starter over. And I don't know if any of you started over a lot, but about every six months I started my life over. And I was a very good starter over it. I was the poor finisher. I finished very few things. And, you know, the funny part of it is when a drunk starts it over, he means it. Every time I started it over I meant it. As wild as some of the portions of my life was, I was a young guy who was out of step, and I knew I was out of step. And I didn't want to be out of step. I just didn't have any other way to do it. And I kept trying to go back and be what I wanted to be and what everybody else wanted me to be. I just couldn't do it but this time I made possibly the most complete effort at putting my life back together that I had ever made It had occurred to me that if I could really get back together with a woman, or find a woman that I loved and that she loved me, that that would really make a lot of difference in my life. Or that if I could get a job that was really kind of a career sort of thing, that that'd make a big difference. And if I could go out of the house and get away from that painful relationship that I had with my parents, which was interesting because I was just moving back in the house, and I started to put the things in my light that were going to make me okay. I got back together shortly after that with a girl that I'd gone with for a couple of years and broken up with for a while, and not too long after that became engaged to be married. And today she is my lovely wife. And I took a job as an executive trainee with a manufacturing concern in Minneapolis and I bought my first automobile. And i thought hey it's really going to happen. I'm finally going to become what I always wanted to become when I grew up. Only it didn't happen because one day out of every 10 I'd be driving to work and I think I just need five more minutes sleep. I just can't go in looking like this and feeling like this. And I'd pull the car off and some cop would wake me up around 10.30 in the morning wondering why I'm sleeping on the freeway. And that didn't work, so I'd go to work and I'd go to my desk and I take my mail and I go in the biffy and I fall asleep in the Biffy. And then someone had paged me and both my legs were asleep. You ever stumble down a hall with both your legs asleep trying to look like the really sharp young executive? So I took the sleeping off my hangovers in a dark room. We had a photographer who was a friend of mine and he used to put up boards up over the developing tanks and I'd crawl in there and sleep off my hangovers and he'd page me if anybody needed me. And you've got to know how I was feeling during that time. I was hurting as badly as I've ever hurt in my life. And with that tremendous sense of timing that alcoholics have, I reached the conclusion that I had the wrong job. And I left that job and I figured what I really needed was more freedom. I figured that I probably didn't belong in a large corporation behind a desk, but I probably belonged in sales, and I took a job selling business equipment. And I had that job about four weeks, and I went out on a four-day drunk. And the first day I called in, and the next three I didn't. And i woke up in a friend's apartment one afternoon about two o'clock, and i didn't know if i had a fiancee. I didn t know if I had a job. I did not know if my family would allow me to continue to live in the house while I was engaged, and that was an economic necessity with the financial problems I had, and I was scared. And for some reason, the suggestions that I had had as a lucky young man, both from my psychiatrist and my father about Alcoholics Anonymous came down on my head at that time. And I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a try. And i picked up the telephone and I asked the operator for the number of AA and she gave it to me and I called and I got the automobile club, which is kind of how everything went in those days. And she must have had a couple of calls that day because AAA gave me the number of AAA, and two fellows came out and talked to me. Now, you know, I talked about the confusion. You know, alcoholics, along with that fantastic denial that we have, were the products of more misinformation, I think, than any other group of people in the world. I considered myself a really sensitive young guy. I considered that I knew a lot about me. I would have granted you that I had a heck of a lot of problems, but I probably wouldn't have conceded that I didn't know me and what was going on inside of me. I used to get asked a lot of questions, and I'm going to try to explain the mental framework in which I entered the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to you in these explanations. But I used to go on out for an evening. First of all, I thought I was becoming insane. I was convinced that I Had a Mental Problem. My family used to ask me when I go on out for an evening, my dad used to say, you're going out and you're taking the car. Okay? The only thing I ask you is don't drink. Just don't drink when you're driving our cars. That's fair enough? And I say, yeah. And I take that car out and I go out, no intention of drinking, and I come back at 4 o'clock in the morning so drunk, I had to drive. I couldn't walk. And, I get the car home and he'd get me out of bed around 7 o'clock and we'd have a discussion. And the discussion would go something like this. He'd look at me and he'd say, why are you doing what you're doing to your mother and myself? And I'd say I am not doing what I'm doing to you and mom. And he'd say baloney, you left this house cold stone sober and you promised me you weren't going to take a drink. Now sometime during the evening you made a decision to say to hell with your family, and you got drunk. And that made sense to me, except that never happened. Honest to God, that never happens. And I couldn't explain it. I thought I was going absolutely nuts. And it wasn't until I got to you people that I found out sometime during the evening I made a decision that I could have one drink. You know, I was convinced that the whole party was talking about my 7-Up, and that if I just had one drink, I wouldn't stand out so much. and I'd smoke a cigarette, chew a piece of gum. Who would know? And I took that one drink. But you see, you taught me. I had lost the ability to predict my behavior once I took a drink of alcohol. And once I put that drink inside of me, that person didn't know anything about the conversation that I had with my father. But I didn't do it. I didn' t know that. And I thought I was going absolutely insane. My dad used to ask me why I drank the way I drank. I never had an answer for that either. But what went on in my mind was is that I drink because I have problems. I don't have problems because I drink. If you knew all about me, all the things that were going on in My life, if you knew just how many times I've been just a victim of circumstances, if I could just pick my batting average up about five points, you know, you wouldn't ask Me why I drink the way I drink, I don' t drink inappropriately for a person who has My problems. And at some point in time it's going to get better because it just has to get better. It just can't be like this all the time. In the meantime, if you'd just get off my back. I was lied between a sister who got her master's degree at the University of Paris and her brother who was five bit of cap in law school and those two show offs really made me look bad. I kind of was resentful of that. I come from a really neat family. I'm one of seven kids and I have just absolutely marvelous parents and great brothers and sisters and it's really a neat deal. It wasn't so neat for me in those days, but it sure is now. And I used to get questions like, wouldn't you like to be like, you know, I don't know if any of you got those, and I'd say, yeah, I'd like to be like. How do you do it? Where are the instructions? I don' t know how to be like anybody else other than me. And as bad as it is, it's all I got. I literally don't have any other way to do it. And as bad as it is, you're seeing the whole works. I thought what everybody had been telling me all my life is that if I just wouldn't drink, you know, Bob's a hell of a guy, if he just wouldn'T drink. Now, my drinking career was actually pretty average in a whole bunch of ways, but once or twice a year I used to really go on out and I'd do something you could put in a book. I just thought, you know, the rest of the year was kind of dull and I would go on out and really kind of put a ribbon on it. And just before I went back to my senior year at Notre Dame I was out on a research project and the research project ended by my getting beaten up robbed, rolled pistol whipped, shot at thrown out of the second story of some sleazy apartment and ended up in the state of shock in an alley. and I woke up and I crawled across the street and I got to a phone booth and I called up my dad and I said Dad, I'm really hurt bad you've got to come get me some guy had they had beat on me for about an hour you couldn't recognize me one whole side of my face just absolutely just swollen beyond compare the guy had the pistol with me and he said where are you? and I set him up geez You all saw that too, right? And I said, I'm in a phone booth. And he said, where's the phone booth? And I says, I don't know. He said, well, look. And I looked outside the door and I said, it's by a movie theater. And I passed out. And on the way down, I hung up a telephone. And he got my brother out of bed and they went looking for movie theaters and for telephone booths. And about an hour later, they found me. And they got me to the hospital. And I was in the hospital and I was waiting for my doctor to come patch me up. And he used to do that about once a year, twice a year. Only my medical doctor didn't come. My psychiatrist came. And they wanted to not let me go back to my senior year of college. and they were going to put me in something called observation. And if any of you enjoy my talk tonight, you should have heard the one I gave to get out of Miller Hospital ten years ago out of the psych ward. It was possibly the finest talk I've ever given. And they let me go back on a condition that I wouldn't drink and I went back and I didn't drink. And it was for some considerable period of time like three months or four months. but I didn't become what I thought everybody was telling me I'd become if I just wouldn't drink and it scared the hell out of me and in that process I thought I proved two things to myself is that I could quit anytime I wanted to and that by the fact that I quit and for a significant piece of time and I didn' t instantaneously become Mr. Christian, perfect son, excellent student. And I thought that I had conclusively proven that alcohol was not the basis of what was causing my problem. And the last thing that represented my attitude was someone would come to me and they'd say, Bob, I think you're an alcoholic. And I'd say I can see with the information you have why you think I'm an alcoholic, but there's pieces about me you don't know anything about. Problems I had and attitudes I'd had before, I never picked up a drink of alcohol. And I think if you knew all about me, you wouldn't think I was just an alcoholic. So thanks a lot for your concern, but get off my back because you don' t know what's going on inside of me. And anybody who wanted to sit me down and talk to me about my alcoholism, they had two choices. They also had to be willing to talk about the rottenest thing I knew about them, or they had to be willing to wade through as much anger as I could put out. And the idea was that you can come and get me, baby, but it ain't going to be for free. And you ought to know that before you come. And as a result, not too many people had heart-to-heart chats with me about my alcoholism. Now, I made the telephone call to Alcoholics Anonymous, and as soon as I hung up the telephone, I was sorry I didn't. You know, that's how well we get. It was just, it was only about a moment's time that I was willing to make that telephone call. And I made an agreement that I go to a restaurant and I meet two guys in a coffee shop. And I thought, what the heck, maybe I'll go take a look at them and see what they look like, you know. All minority groups look alike, right? All you got to do is go out and see how they look. Go out and go out there and see where a couple of them look like. And maybe I come back with a better idea as to why I wasn't one. and I went out and I sat down with them and thank God these two men knew how to make a 12-step call because it was going to be a long time before I would learn how to do that. How to make a 12 step call. Okay. I always thought it was in bad taste to talk to someone about their drinking on a 12 steps call. I don't know why that is. Honestly. I used to go out and I'd talk about the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I talked about the principles of the program but I just thought it was in poor taste I mean what the hell but thank God these two fellas knew what their message was and they gave me they sat me down and told me a little bit about what their life had been like what happened what is like today and they give me the opportunity to identify my alcoholism through their experience and they asked me if I'd come to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I said I would and I did and I tell a little story which kind of explains my state of mind when I came in my first meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous and it's about a lady who goes to a doctor and she says doctor I'm having a problem and the doctor said well what's wrong and she said well I'm passing gas and you can't smell it and you don't know and you just can't hear it but I have this horrible sensation and I wish you'd do something for it so the doctor says fine and he gives her a prescription and he says now take this and come back in a week and she takes it and she comes back in the week And the doctor says, well, how's your problem now? And she says, oh, it's worse. And the doc said, worse? She says, yes, now you can smell it. And the doctors said, well good, now that we have your nose cleared up we can work on your hearing. You see, what I thought the problem was wasn't the problem at all. I was sincere, but I was wrong. I literally didn't understand what was going on with Bob. I heard another story that I'll share with you that I think describes an alcoholic as well as any story I ever heard. And the guy said, if you take a room like this and you put two doors in it and you pull out one door and you push one normal person and one alcoholic in it, he says, you go out one doorway and out one driveway all the wonderful things in the world will happen to you forever and ever and ever. And he says, you go out the other door and there's a guy with a baseball bat and he hits you right between the eyes. Okay? And he said, the normal guy will go out the door and the guy will hit him between the eye with the baseball bat and he'll come in and he will close the door and he would go over to the other door and he'd open it up and he could go out and everything would be fine. He said, the alcoholic would go to the door and he can open the door and he should go out and he'll get hit between the eyes and he will come in and he wil close the door and then he will open the door and he wiil get hit between the eys and he will close the door and he ll come in and then i will go and open the doore and get hit between the eyes and then he wiill close the dore and come in and then i will go to the doar and he get hit between the eye and he comes in and he closes the door and then he will go to the door and he open it up and the guy is gone and he will go looking for him That's alcoholism. But I walked into my first meeting literally scared to death. I didn't want to be there. I didn' t know what an alcoholic was. I was scared to death you were going to give me a quiz. I just thought maybe you were gong to ask me why I was there. I didn''t know you knew why Iwas there. I thought it was the first mistake that they were goingto walk in your door. I didn ''t know whether to call the people by their first names or their last. That was really one of my concerns. I just can''t explain to you how many... You know, I just was as uncomfortable and as nervous about walking in that meeting, and I knew everybody was going to be a lot older than I was. And you know, I thought they'd be like 80. You know, I just was positive they were going to be that way. And I walked into that meeting and I made two discoveries at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't think I really realized that I made them, and it was kind of consolidated over a period of time because I didn't stop drinking immediately upon entering AA. But the two basic discoveries that I made early on in Alcoholics Anonymous was that, number one, that alcoholism was a disease. And you know, I didn't know that. I may have known it in my head, but I really didn't Know how to translate that as a piece of information that was usable by me. See, I thought alcoholism Was something that happened to people who were different, older and sloppier and had problems living their life because they were physically inebriated all the time, and that didn't seem to describe me. But I was told that alcoholism was a disease that affected me as a total person, mentally, physically, and spiritually. And that once I crossed the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, it affected me all the time when I was drinking and when I was not drinking. And God, I had to know that. I had to know there was a mental side to it. These men told me that there was physical aspect to alcoholism, but in their opinion they thought, and especially in my case, that it wasn't a very big factor. And they told me that what they were really talking about was a program of recovery and another way to live my life, to treat the mental and spiritual aspects of my disease, to find a new way of life sufficiently better so that I wouldn't have to go back to alcohol to do something for me that I was unwilling or unable to do for myself. And that made sense to me, because I knew I didn't know how to live. The other discovery I made at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is there was a group of people in that room who had drunk and drunk a heck of a lot of whiskey, and now they weren't doing it. And the only observable reason for them not doing it is that what they had found in sobriety was better than what they had in a bottle. And that intrigued me, because it had occurred to me that I might not be able to drink again, but it never even crossed my mind that I could enjoy it. I thought I was going to walk through the rest of my life a marked man, that I was gonna spend my life in a corner at a cocktail party having people talk about my Shirley Temple. okay i just i had alcohol tied up with my identity it had been so much it had been maybe what i considered to be the neatest thing that i did i mean it was tied up in my image and it was tied up on my masculinity and i felt like i was giving up my freedom and i just scared the heck out i didn't like anybody who didn't drink i didn' trust anybody who didn't drink they were kind of what i called an irish homosexual Do you know what an Irish homosexual is? It's an Irishman who likes women better than whiskey. It's a normal state for an Irish person. But I could genuinely see that the people that I saw, I could see it in their eyes, that they enjoyed their life. And I really did want to find out what they were talking about. And that was the start of a process for me that's absolutely been wonderful, and I want to tell you shortly about my last drink. I don't normally share this, but I thought I would today. I drank twice after I walked in the front door of Alcoholics Anonymous, and once was a week later on a business trip to the West Coast, and I almost don't count that. I don' t know if I was really an AlcoholicsAnonymous or not. But I was an Alcoholic Anonymous about two months after that when I came back, and I was married, okay? I was sober two months and I did what Tom did. You know, I went and ordered the Magnum of Champagne and I drank the Magnium of Champaign. We were married in Chicago. I married a Chicago girl. We flew to Mexico on our honeymoon and I drink the entire time of my honeymoon. Now this time my fiance had been an Al-Anon for about a couple of months and as she said, you know, we must have been so absolutely madly in love because when you took that drink and she asked me, what are you doing? And I said, honey, I just want to drink on my honeymoon. I said I just don't want you to go through our wedding night and have it marred by my being tense. And I I said I just I really had some line of crab that she swallowed and she was she really was in love with me. I don't know, it wasn't very good but she bought it and I told her when I got back I'd stop drinking and we went through this And to give you an idea, and this is kind of a classy story, or I don't know if it's a classy story, it's kind of an bizarre story, but this is how alcohol affected me. When I had had that one slip on the West Coast, I drank my plane ticket and I had to drive a repossessed car halfway back. Okay, now that reinforced what I knew about alcohol ruining my life. Now on my honeymoon, we were sitting in an audience at a restaurant where they were having a world's championship high diving contest at el mirador where they were diving off the cliff and i had had 10 planters punches and i looked over london i said that doesn't look so tough and i excused myself and i went down to the public landing and i dove off the public landings and i swam across the channel and i started to climb up the cliff and i got up to a height of around 95 feet and i couldn't get up and i wouldn't get down and my bathing suit was split and my feet were bleeding and my hands were bleeding and there isn't always enough water in that thing you know you got to wait for the waves to come in and go and my linda is absolutely going bananas she is tipping people to get me down off the cliff she's trying to get a helicopter to come get me and i'm everything's fine and I dove off that cliff from a height of 95 feet on my last run. We went back and I took a look sober at what I had done a number of years later and I literally couldn't believe it. I remember that thing as being very wide and kind of calm and no problem whatsoever. But I came back off my honeymoon and for the first couple of days I didn't go to a meeting but shortly after that I did and it was really a problem for me. I wasn't sure about how they'd receive me back. And I think everybody in the club but me knew I was going to drink on my honeymoon. But I came back in, and since that time, I have been an ever active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was gone into four and five meetings a week. I got a sponsor, which I didn't have my first two or three months in Alcoholics Anonymous, and for some reason that seemed to improve the quality of my sobriety. I don't think that was really it. He thinks that was it, but... I think it's a coincidence. But Linda and I were to start a life together with you people from the last day of our honeymoon that has been absolutely indescribable. I had absolutely no idea what I was to find when I came to you people or even what I needed or what I wasn't looking for. and I want to share what I consider to be maybe the most significant event in my recovery program and it happened over a period of time but I'm going to tell you as if it kind of happened on one day because the essence of it happened to me one day and it has to do well I go through a thing where I talk about we all know that we need 12 steps to recover from the illness of alcoholism, right? but what a lot of people don't know is that you need certain things to be an alcoholic. You need certain things to stay sick. Because we all know that it's not easy, that it takes a lot of psychic energy, that you throw a lot of your life into being a practicing alcoholic and it doesn't happen by accident. And I think the things that you needs to be a practicing alcoholic goes something like this. Number one, you have to be a good liar. You can't go to work on Wednesday having told the boss that you were sick Monday and Tuesday and then giggle. That doesn't work, right? You have to be able to look them right in the eye and tell them you were sick and never bat an eye. And you get to be good at that by practicing lying when you don't have to. And if you got it to the point that you're not sure if you're telling the truth or not, you've gotten it just to the part to the extent that a good practicing alcoholic needs that. Number two is you have to be able to manipulate the important people in your life to get them to do what you have to have them to do so that you can continue to drink. And it's helpful if you can impart a feeling of responsibility to them, you know, that if they weren't a certain way, you wouldn't be a certain way. If you're doing that, that's kind of sophisticated, but if you're doing that as a practicing alcoholic, you're surviving pretty well. And number three, you have to be able to rationalize all sorts of decisions that make absolutely no sense to endorse behavior that's absolutely ridiculous so that she can continue to drink in the face of all evidence around you. And number four, it's helpful if you're paranoid. I don't know if any of you walked around with answers to questions you hadn't been asked, but I thought that was normal. I thought, you know, just walked around with an answer. Someone might ask that question, you know. I used to rehearse those things. Oh, God, that's sick. I thought that was normal and lastly you need a wall you need a wall built up between you and the rest of the world so that they can't see what's going on inside and the thinking that goes on behind the wall goes something like this it says you like me but you only like what I let you see about me but if you could see everything about me all the dark rotten horrible dirty things that i'm carrying around you'd hate my guts because i hate my gut and who knows better what a horrible person i am than me you see i was walking around comparing my insides with your outsides The only way I had to look at myself was the difference between what I want, what I should have been and what I was. But at some point in time behind that wall you get sick enough and afraid enough and tired enough that you start to tear it down and you say, hey, come and get me. I don't care who you are or where you come from but God just come and give me and help me not be who I am anymore. I just don't want to be that one more minute. and you tear your wallet on and for the first time in your life you share with another human being the whole deck of cards. You let it all go. And you find out something when you let it off. See, I can't tell you how much I thought I was the only person in the world going through what I went through. Even when I heard other people having problems like me, I said that's different because I know better. I could do better. I felt just uniquely crummy. I felt like a moral leper, and when I tore it all down and I shared it with you people, you know, I discovered that I wasn't unique, that I was not the only person in the world who had walked that road, that maybe my personality was unique but not my illness and most certainly not the feelings involved in my illness. And something happened when I let it all go. you told me that you understood and then you told me that you loved me and I think in a very genuine sort of way in the first time in my life I felt love I've been surrounded by love all my life except I never felt love because I think I always thought that if you love me but if you understood me you wouldn't love me but you see I shared everything I had with you people and you told me that you understood and I could see that you did and then you told me that you loved me and I felt love and from that moment on I've been able to receive love even from people who don't understand me and it's absolutely changed my life that's why we can share like we share on a weekend like this in my opinion when a group of few persons have had the experience of being on the other side of that wall together it doesn't make any difference how young or old or what shape you are the significance of that event is just too strong to sit around and talk about the weather We've had something too vital in common. And that allows us to very quickly, even with people that we haven't spent much time with in this fellowship, share with a level of communication and love that literally embarrasses people who don't understand what's going on. They're uncomfortable around it. They sense that it's just too heavy. It's too profound. They don't know what's happening. They don' t understand it. But we understand it and we need it. But you know, funny things happen to an alcoholic. We get well so fast that all of a sudden we'll be walking around Alcoholics Anonymous over a couple of months or maybe a year and we'll say thank you very much for helping me with my drinking problem but stay out of my marriage and we will put a brick up. We'll say thanks you very muc for helping with my marriage problem but stay our of my job and we put another brick up We start to have problems that we don't think we should have at that stage in our sobriety or that wouldn't make us appear good in front of the other members of the group and we start not to share those things. And brick by brick, we build the wall back up. You know what happens when that wall gets built back up? Behind that wall, we're unique. No one understands us. no one knows what's going on inside because that's my barrier and you know the only thing an alcoholic can do while alone is get sick I'm active in a program of recovery from Alcoholics Anonymous for a living problem that I have today not for a drinking problem that I had eight and a half years ago I am active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the best of my ability to treat the mental and spiritual aspects of my disease. And in order to really effectively do that, I've got to be current with my program. I can't be working on something that's eight and a half years old. I've gotta share with you people what's going on in my life today. Or I'm not involved. I can have my body there. Okay? And I think that's, when I'm doing that, I just feel good. I feel plugged in. I feel part of. You know, and it's a funny thing. We have a way in Alcoholics Anonymous to show love to a new person the likes of which there is no other body and the people compare us to first century Christianity and I happen to think it's an apt description. A new person can walk in that door tonight and he can tell us he's having a love affair with a zebra And four people will stand up and say they too are having a love affair with a zebra and get them a cup of coffee. We have been given the gift of showing a new person in Alcoholics Anonymous an environment of non-judgmental love and acceptance that is just second to none. There isn't anything a person can walk in that door as a new alcoholic. There isn't any area of unmanageability in his life. Things that have separated him from every other human being in the world make him part of us. But let a person who's been sober five years walk through that door with that problem. And in some groups, they'd stone them. I don't know if that's true in your group, but I think in some ways we treat ourselves differently after we've been around the fellowship for a while I think in some way we don't know how to help us sometimes I made a promise to myself not too long ago and so far I've kept it I never wanted to say I knew he was gonna get drunk without saying it to the guy first. My need today for nonjudgmental love and acceptance is greater than it was when I walked in the front door of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have to have that environment to be able to continue to share what's going on in my life today because I've got enough problems in my Life Today that if I don't deal with them in my recovery program, I'm going to get sick and then I'm going to get drunk I wish sometimes we'd make a special point to be as loving to our present members and especially our older members to have an environment of love and understanding and a lack of judgment in that kind of love so that we can feel the support and the freedom to be able to share what's going on in our lives today because I think that's maybe one of the neatest things we could ever do. That would be one of the greatest tributes to the greatest gift any group of persons have ever been given is for us to use it well on ourselves and on the people who have done so much and had the doors open when we walked in Alcoholics Anonymous I have learned that if I continue to tear my wall down and share what's going on in my life today one day at a time that my needs get met and that's what I feel good about today not any knowledge or expertise that I have about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous which is what I thought I would have after I came in but I feel great about I feel real good about being reliant on a God and on my sponsor and on my group I feel good about being in a process that is supplying me with everything that I need even as my needs change Chamberlain said something in a talk one time that absolutely blew the top of my head off and it's a short three or four line story that I'm going to start the ending or the end of my talk with. And he talks about two fishes that are swimming in the ocean and the one fish looks over at the other fish and he says, isn't the ocean wonderful? And the otherfish looks over and he said, what's the ocean? the very things I needed to survive I never even knew they existed I never knew what they were or what they do to me and my ongoing experience in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is that when I walked in the front door, it was as if in a little while you took a piece of plastic and pulled it across and all of a sudden a whole new world opened up to me that was full of the things I would need to live my life with you. And it was for free. and how you express the sense of gratitude for that. But I want to share with you what specifically has gone on in my life in the last two years. About two years ago, I think I reached a crisis in my sobriety. I've always been a very active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've attended a lot of meetings. I've given a lotof talks. I've been on a loto committees. I've got a very active sponsor. And I think I started out early in my career to really be something in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think i wanted to be a young Bill Wilson or a young bleeding deacon or white father. I don't know what it was. Some of it was awfully good and some of it was pretty egotistical and not so good, but that's what it is. That's what I was. But I got through that phase and I think I really was working my program to the best of my ability in the middle stages of my sobriety around five years, six years. But I started to get in touch. I started to get a feeling of uneasiness. And I have been in a family business and I left that business and I started my own company. And I think the fear and the crisis that I went through in starting my own company heightened my sensitivity about myself and I started to realize some things that I hadn't realized before or was unwilling or unable to. And one night after I had given an AA talk, I was in a depression and feeling as bad about me as I could possibly feel. And I started to reflect that I had had a number of character defects in my life that I had ever since I walked in the front door of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I walked into the front drawer of Alcoholic Anonymous, my idea was, okay, you say I'm an alcoholic, I'll buy it. you got an answer for alcoholism, good because I got four or five things in my life that are absolutely tearing it apart and if I got the problem and you got the answer those four or 5 things ought to go away, right? and I'll give you a reasonable period of time I think 6 or 7 months would be a reasonable period of times and here I was sober 5 years and I had all of those five things still in my life causing me pain. And I took a look at that and I said, that can't be all there is. There's just got to be more than that. I can't tell you how dirty I felt. I haven't had a struggle with guilt. If there was one word that I felt all my life it was guilt. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic and that is one of the, for me, it was one of the most fertile grounds in the world to develop my guilt complex. And, you know, part of it was just a sense of timing. You know, they had confession on Saturday afternoon and you went out Saturday evening and as a result of that I spent about four hours a month in the state of grace. And part of that sounds funny but I want to tell you a part of this part of what was not funny at all that was important to me and I literally had no point in my life since I've been 13 years old because of my performance and behavior in areas of my life that I could be a participating full person in my religion. And that doesn't make for building very good images about yourself and it doesn't makes for feeling very good about a God. And that area of my live was so sensitive that I couldn't deal with it even after I came in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have been dealing with the God but it was a higher power thing. In the first couple of years it was you people. And then it got to be a God, but a lot of it was in my head. And I had never gone back to church because I just couldn't. But I got to a point where one day I was contemplating suicide. And I was just absolutely at rock bottom. And the next day I called my sponsor, and I got a new sponsor. I got an old sponsor and he's sober two years less than I am, but he is as tough as anybody you've ever met in your life. and I got him because he was tough. My older sponsor and I are like father and son. We've got a love that is second to none but we're not tough with one another anymore and I went over to his office and we went in the boardroom of his company and I said, I'm going to take two hours and I'm gonna tell you absolutely everything I know or am aware of that's going on in my life today and when I leave this room I'm gunna do whatever you tell me to do so be careful and I sat down and for two hours I let go of every feeling and every thought and every piece of information I had that applied to me at that point in my life. And at the end of that thing he suggested that I went and see a clinical psychologist along with a few other things and I can't tell you how much that offended me and I didn't want to go do that. But I left that office and I made an appointment and I went and saw the clinical psychologist and I started to get in touch with a couple of things awarenesses exact natures of wrongs there was just some information that I knew about the behavior but I really didn't know about some of the basis for the behavior and to make a long story short he helped me get some things in focus so I could put them in my program and start to work them and in really searching the conclusion that I came to in my problem in my own program was that my God was insufficient. I took a look at some of the models of people that I had, that I just knew had what I wanted to have. And I asked myself, what did they have that I didn't have? And in almost every instance they had a profound, close relationship with a personal God. And I didnít. and I started to go about getting that because I knew that I needed it and I knew I needed that to the exclusion of anything else and I worked at it I wasn't a very good meditator up to that point but I started getting up at 6.30 in the morning and I was reading spiritual books and I went back I started listening and asking questions and I wanted to take adult responsibility for a child concept of God. I had never sorted that out. I was walking around with a 13-year-old understanding of my God. And as a result of that very painful process, I have gotten through that and today I have found a personal God and have him fully in my life. and it has literally changed my entire program. It was like someone took a microscope that was on a 4 power and turned it around and now it's on a 16 power. I'm the same person with the same problems and it's the same program but it is night and day. I had problems that I was working with in this program and I had them day in and I have them day out. i had things that i promised myself i wouldn't do and i'd get up and i do it the very next day i had a problem with getting up on time okay and i set the alarm clock for six o'clock in the morning and i get up at the crack of nine and i'll get to work at ten and i started you know i i had that sort of thing day in and day out and i was like i was disabled and I just disliked myself in so many ways once I got this hypersensitivity about things that I just had to change in my life. But you know why I couldn't change them? It's because I didn't understand how I was to change in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Did you know that we don't change? A friend of mine explained it to me. He said, Bob, a doctor doesn't heal. A doctor creates an aseptic environment in which healing can take place and God heals. And he said, a farmer doesn't grow, he creates a fertile soil in which growth can take place and God grows. And he says, we don't change. We create an environment in which change can take place and God changes us. I have spent every fiber of my being trying to change. And I was unable. I didn't have the power to change. And you see, I got it halfway down the road. Okay? I read something else in the Bible that blew my mind. And it was about the idea of the two covenants. And the thing that described a feeling I've had all my life is that the old covenant, the old promise that were given to the Jews of the race was that here's the law, okay? Protect it. I'll make a covenant with you. I'll take care of you. Here's the Law. The message was if you want to be saved by the Law, practice it perfectly. And that's what I tried to do and I couldn't do it. But you see, somewhere along the line I was to learn from me and this is a very personal message. This is my opinion. I came to have an opportunity to find out that there was a new message. There was a New Way to be Saved and that was to have faith. Okay? Now, I have spent all my life with a set of rules that I had found in my church and in society and been surrounded with all my light that described a set-up behavior that I couldn't approach doing. and I felt helpless and I fell dirty and I didn't know that was the way I was supposed to feel but I never carried it far enough you see that sense of powerlessness was supposed to show me why I needed a God and I thought it showed me why I didnít deserve a God I literally thought because of my training and the way I perceived my training that I didn't have the right to go to God until I knew I could do something about my life so I kept trying to get ready to go back to God and I never got quite ready I didnít think I could take step 6 unless I knew I could get rid of my defects of character. And when you have the problems that I had day in and day out, you can't take step six if that's your thinking. But I stopped to a very large degree trying to change. And I started to spend my time getting ready to have God remove my defects of character and I have had three major behavior negative patterns in my life disappear since the moment I made that decision. Things that I fought day in and day out with no effort disappeared and it's like a whole new world. I've got a hope today. I've had a feeling that I haven't arrived but I feel like I'm on the path. I feel like I am where I should be and I feel like I have the potential and the love and the power through my relationship today to get me where I've got to go as I trudge that road. Night and day difference. And that eluded me until just recently. And I want to share that especially to the new people to let you know that I had a piece of me that felt bad that it took eight and a half years to get there. But, you know, I stayed sober long enough to have the opportunity and the privilege to do it eight years late because that was when I was able to do it. You can't hold the ocean of the world in the teacup of your mind. And I've spent eight years getting my teacup large enough to hold that piece of information that was to absolutely blow my program apart and have allowed me to have a burst of growth and a sense of peace in the last year and a half, the likes of which I have never had since I came to you people. And I want to thank you for that. we've been given a gift in this program. We've been entrusted with a secret. We've been entrested with the truth. The truths that we have in the program of AA aren't new. They've been around for an awful long time, but I think the miracle of the truths of the program of AA is that one you told them to me, they seemed like they were mine and they seemed like they applied. And in the way you told him to me I could understand them. No one else in the world can do what we can do. Our founders are dead. And we've been entrusted with the responsibility of the ongoing welfare of the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If we took everybody today in this room and put them in a spaceship and shot them to the nearest star, the nearest start is a star called Alpha Centauri Approxima and it's 8 million light years away. And if we went on that trip at 300,000 miles an hour it would take us 300 years to get there and 300 years to get back. Now when we got in that spaceship, we would know who we were where we were going and why but it isn't very hard to imagine that if we didn't very carefully pass that down from generation to generation on that trip that we could end out there 150 years from now with a group of people who didn't know who they were, where they had come from, where they were going, or why. We know that. we have a direct chain many of the people in this room have actually walked with Bill Wilson when they came to Alcoholics Anonymous there was a direct change from a higher power to Bill at the start of this fellowship and there was an undiluted message of the recovery program of AA and that message is in our book it's in the book AlcoholicsAnonymous that is the product of inspiration in my mind. Our responsibility today is to take that book and to process it through our minds and hearts and our experience and share it with one another and pass it on undiluted, untouched, unchanged to the new person coming in so that as time goes on in our fellowship and in some troubled waters we don't end up someday with a room full of people who don't know who they are where they had come from where they are going or why thank you Thank you for watching.