Step 2 and the Hopelessness of the Hopeless Variety – Bob

I'm Bob Darrell and I'm an alcoholic. Would you join me after a moment of silence in an opening prayer I like to use? Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others and everything I think I know about my own recovery for a new experience in you Lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in my fellows and a much needed new experience in my own recovery. Amen. What we're going to try to what I'm going to try to do, and I'm not an expert on the big book or the steps or anything like that. What I am is a guy who throughout the early 70s came in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous and relapsed over and over and again. And I tried to stay sober on the fellowship and I couldn't understand what was wrong. Why I kept going back to it until I eventually in 1978 came into Alcoholics Anonymous the last time and I had some people that were put in my path that showed me how to put the process in this book into my life. And like everything in AlcoholicsAnonymous, I am just basically going to share with you my experience with that. And I hope that it might be useful. On page 20 of the book, there's a little paragraph that I belong to a home group in Las Vegas. It's called The Specific Group. And a lot of people think the group is named after a group in California. And it's not. The group is named efter a passage that I'm going to read on page 20 that really is our purpose. And we read it at the beginning of every meeting, and it's what we're going to try to do this weekend. It says, you may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very ill from drinking. Doubtless, you are curious to discover how and why in the face of expert opinion to the contrary that we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. If you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may be already asking, what do I have to do? It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. And that's really what my experience has been with this process in the big book, is that I learned that I had the spiritual malady and physical allergy of alcoholism. The big book defines the problem. As a matter of fact, it spends probably two-thirds of the working text on defining the problem, and then it tells you what the solution is, and then very specifically, not off the wall like you see in the meetings, but specifically gives you blow-by-blow directions on how to implement that solution into your life. And what I want to try to share with you is my experience with that and how much it's changed my life. I'll tell you when I started and I said I'm an alcoholic, I know I'm a alcoholic because I fit the description of an alcoholic or you can almost say it's a definition, but it doesn't really call it that, that it talks about in We Agnostics on page 44. The book says if two things are present in you, you're the alcoholic that this book was written for. You're the guy that this was written for. And at the fourth line down on page 44, it says, if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. I'm both of those things. you know the thing about if when you find when you honestly want to like really sincerely this time i mean it unlike the other 30 times i thought i meant it this time I really really mean it and it says quit entirely what do they mean by entirely I mean they don't really mean entirely I mean I quit drinking for long periods of time you keep me properly medicated but what I can't do is I can'T stop doing everything i'm like dr bob uh if you read dr bob's story dr bob was able to stay away from alcohol for sustained periods of time with sedatives and medications matter of fact in his own story he said that he used those every day of his life for i think it was 17 years in order to function so he could still go to work. Because every time he was just like me, every time he started, he couldn't stop. And that's the second thing it says, or if when you honest, not only when you honestly want to, you cannot quit entirely. Or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take. And that was always true for me. There was something about me from the very first time I started drinking as 12 years old that I seemed to have an inability to shut it down when i should i always went too far and i uh and it said i had both of those things i'm not only powerless over alcohol once i start drinking but i am powerless to stay stopped once i've been stopped it's a double double deal there are some people there there are types of of drinkers that uh i think they're two different types of alcoholics there's acute alcoholism and chronic alcoholism this the book of alcohol exonymous in aa was designed for chronic alcoholics but there's an acute alcoholic and i grew up with guys like that and there are people who because of their alcohol consumption. They drink so much, so heavily for so long that they become debilitated as a result of their massive alcohol consumption and they are powerless over alcohol while they are drinking. Once they're in the process of drinking they always go too far, they're bad like that. But their powerlessness ends where the bottle ends. once they've been detoxed their alcoholism goes away and once they make up their mind that they'll never drink again they just do they just don't drink no more i grew up with guys like that but i'm the guy that when i honestly want to i can't quit entirely and i've said to myself anybody in here besides me ever said to yourself this time i'm never going to touch that stuff again, right? Okay. Then of all the people that have said that, how many of you have touched it again? Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. I'm that guy. I don't mean to be, but I'm that guy and we're going to get into a little bit about why this thing is like that. Dr. Silkworth, I think Alcoholics Anonymous owes Silky a tremendous debt. He really, I don' t think we would be here without him, without his input to Bill Wilson about the disease of alcoholism. In The Doctor's Opinion, on page XXVII, in the fourth edition, I think it's a different page in the third, I'm not sure. But it's at the top of the page where it says, We Believe. In the fourth addition, it's XXVIII. Anybody have a third edition? No? Is it just two I's in the third edition? No, is it three I's? Okay. Anyway. It says we believe and suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics. That's me. Chronic. I have chronic alcoholism. I don't have acute alcoholism。 My alcoholism is not induced by alcohol. And I think there's a subtle difference between me and people who are problem drinkers. I am not an alcoholic because I drank obsessively and abusively. I drank possessively and abusively because I'm alcoholic. Very subtle difference, very subtle difference. It's what came first, the chicken or the egg. I'm not an acute alcoholic or a person who has acute alcoholism. Their alcoholism comes from drinking. My drinking comes from alcoholism. I'm the guy that if you were to, when I was 15 years old, if you would have transplanted me to another planet where there was no alcohol, I'd have found some fungus or something. You know what I mean? Right? I've been grinding rocks up and stuff. I've be finding some kind of alcohol there. You know why I'm saying it? Right? That's because I got alcoholism I'd been found. I'd found it. these chronic alcoholics the action of alcohol on chronic alcoholcs is a manifestation of an allergy and and silkworth talks about something unlike other allergies like if you have an allergy to strawberries and eat strawberries you break out in hives we don't break out when i drink i break out and what silkworth calls a phenomenon of craving that is my allergic reaction to alcohol. I ingest alcohol into my system and I develop a craving, but most of the time I don't know that that's happening. I don'T get it because a craving you never realize you have a craving until you can't satisfy it. Everyone in this room right now is in the grip of a craving. You're not aware of, and that's the craving to breathe air. And you're not, you never think about it because you satisfy it. But if someone were to slip up behind you with a plastic bag and put it over your head, you'd realize instantly you have this craving debris there. And my drinking was like that because I very seldom ever allowed myself to be in a position where I had three or four drinks and then could not get any more for a sustained period of time. If you've ever been in that place, it makes you crazy. it's like a stone in your shoe until you eventually got to go find some more alcohol that's the phenomenon of craving and silkworth says that this phenomenon of craving is limited to this class to us to people with chronic alcoholism and never occurs in the average temperate drinker because of that these allergic types these guys like me who once I take a drink, there's something in my wiring where I react to alcohol differently than non-alcoholics. My sister doesn't have alcoholism and I watch her drink. And a funny thing of what to me as an alcoholic, what her reaction to alcohol seems like a phenomenon to me, just as my reaction to alchohol seems like phenomenon to her. But she'll take about two drinks maybe three maybe two and a half and you know she starts to get that buzz you know what i'm saying that little buzz that glow starts coming in in her wiring that buzz is interpreted as whoa hey okay back off from this thing getting a little out of control here now my wiring is i get that same feeling and it's like, whoo, you know, full speed ahead. And we're different. My sister, she would look at me and wonder, why do you got to drink yourself into stupidness every single time? And I'd look at her and say, why do You stop when it's getting good? You know what I mean, right? I don't understand her. But it's not a craving for her. a couple drinks of alcohol make her feel like she's losing control a couple drinks alcohol make me feel like i'm about to get control i drank with an urgency i drank with a feeling most of my drinking like i am about to arrive and i suspected it was on the next drink and that's why i always drink i was always one drink ahead of myself you know what i mean you're sitting in a bar and I'm drinking, and I've already figured out I better get the other one lined up. Because I always had a feeling like I'm not there yet, but I knew I was... I always said to myself, I always have a sense that I'm about to be there. And I don't think I ever really got there except maybe in the very early days. But I spent most of my drinking being almost crazy because I'd get so close to there I could almost touch it, but I couldn't quite get it. It was just, one more, one More, one One, one, one. And I'd come to somewhere don't know if I got there or not I'm that guy and it says that guys like me because of this phenomenon of craving these allergic types it says we can never safely use alcohol in any form at all now I imagine I'm not sure what Silkworth means by that earlier in this chapter he talks about his experience with people with alcohol and mind-altering drugs. There's a book out, written by Charlie Towns, who... I don't know what alcohol in any form means to you. It might mean beer, wine, whiskey, gin and rum, and tequila. But I think, from my experience, and this is the only thing I have to base it on, is I think that for some of us, I don't even know about us, but I know for me, there were other things that did the same thing for me. I think I was allergic not only to certain beverages, I'm allergic to certain pills. I can take vitamin C and aspirin all day long and never get weird. You give me a Valium and I'm going to end up watching a donkey act in Tijuana before the week's over. I'm going to be somewhere crazy because it sets something off in me. And so my life depended upon me finding out what is alcohol to me? What does that to me off of me and my emotions off of me when that anything that will do that for me, I've discovered that I have an allergic reaction to it and I never, ever really get a feeling of getting enough. I know I have this phenomenon of craving for a couple reasons. One is I look back through my whole drinking career and I'll tell you honestly, I can't tell you one moment when I was drinking where I ever really had a sense of drinking just enough. i have never had the experience of being in a bar drinking for an hour or two or in a party and have the bartender come by and say bob would you like another drink i've never known the experience of sitting there and thinking to myself this no this is just right i've never been there it's always more more more you see if that wasn't true if i could get to just right then i would have been able to shut it down without going too far but when you can never get just right you always go too far because there's never enough and that was my experience all every through my whole drinking the bottom of the page xxvii silkworth talks about the other aspect of the alcohol of alcoholism from alcoholics with chronic alcoholism if if all there was to alcoholism was the phenomenon of craving then Betty for or then Nancy Reagan when she said that deal just say no would have worked for people like me but what is it about me that after three or four treatment centers after getting arrested after getting it getting it that this is destroying me and making up my mind this time I mean it I'm never going to touch that stuff. What is it about me that draws me back to that in spite of overwhelming information that to drink again is a very bad idea for me? Socorro touches on it, this insanity, the sickness of heart that we have at the bottom of this page. And he says men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. And I think that's probably true for everybody. The difference between me and non-alcoholics is not only do I like the effect, there's something inside me that yearns for the effect. That needs the effect. Secretly needs the effect." This sensation is so elusive that while they admit It is injurious. They cannot, after a time, differentiate the true from the false. The last couple of years of my drinking were pathetic. I had crossed into a realm of alcoholism where I had wrung all the fun out of it. and it's no longer the kind of drinking where I am at a bar and I'm shooting pool and dancing and talking to the girls and I am getting laid and meeting people. It's no long the type of alcoholism where alcohol is a social lubricant. It's not longer the deal where it's a party. and yet i i can't uh differentiate the true from the false because every time after a period of several months of abstinence and i will start a run again i will start the run with a high level of anticipation that it's going to be like it was when i was 18 years old in in spite of the reality that it it hadn't been that way for two or three years, I will become convinced it's going to be like that again. Because I don't want to face the truth. I would rather believe the delusion. You know what delusion is? It's psychotic, wishful thinking. It's like evidence is it's not this way, but I want it to be that way so bad that I'm willing to alter my vision of reality in my mind to imagine that it can be that way again. Now, I've not only been that kind of delusional about alcohol, I've been that way in relationships, about all kinds of stuff. I mean, just wacko crazy stuff. I can't differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. Not only do I adjust to the damage I create in my life You know, it's really kind of sad when you... At the end of the last couple of years of my drinking, if you would have asked me how I was doing and I had enough money in my pocket to get drunk that day, I'd have probably told you I was going fine. If you would Have asked my mother how I Was doing, she would have broken into tears. But see, as I spiral down into oblivion and lower levels of degeneration and crossed all those barriers and those lines I'd never cross and do the things that I told myself I'd never do and living with the lies and the hurt and the disappointment and the broken relationships and the lost jobs. I just adjust to that journey to hell. Every step of the way I make it normal for me somehow. I alter my view of reality, this is okay. And it's Because the road to hell is not like a ski jump. It's an incremental thing. It's just gradual. They call it a progressive illness. It's a gradual thing. To me, it seems the only normal one. And the big secret and the thing that I don't want anybody to realize, I don'T even want to face myself. And it'S one of the reasons I return to drinking when it'S even though I know it'S killing me, is that the only time in my life I really ever felt normal, the only is when I, in the early days when I was half lit up. It's the only thing that I ever felt like I was normal. It's not the only one time I ever really felt like you looked. It was the only times that I was able to fit and integrate myself with you the way you always seem to do so easily if you ever remember that feeling of separation of loneliness of being sober at a party or a dance and standing back in the corner watching everybody else integrate in that sick lonely feeling almost as if there's an invisible yet impenetrable barrier between me and you that you guys can don't have and you connect with each other and then there's me and i'm distant and apart from and five shots of tequila and the barrier goes away and i am as a part i feel like you look i connect and can talk to you and come out and play and i am a part of the way you've always looked to me to be that i could never do on my own and see the real reality my big secret is that i oh i really that's normal to me that's normal to be now to the rest of the world when i'm drunk i don't look normal i look drunk but to my internal reality that's a better grade of normal than i am when i look normal to the rest of you and i'm sober but feel so apart from my alcoholic life seems the only normal one And then this is the part, this is Silkworth, this next line touches on the spiritual malady. He doesn't call it that at this party. Later he refers to it. He says to me, to us, to them, these chronic alcoholics, they are restless, irritable and discontented unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. drinks which they see others taking with impunity well what's that mean that means i get sober and my as i enter into abstinence i become restless irritable and discontent unless i can once again experience the the thing i got from alcohol that's why i go back to it so for all practical purposes my alcoholism starts where the bottle ends i enter into a state of abstinence and the further i get from the last drink the more restless irritable and discontent i become if you don't know what that means i think you do if you're a real alcoholic you every alcoholic i've ever known has had that subtle low level feeling of restlessness it's it's a it's like an inability to feel settled in your own life. You ever watch a dog circle a room looking for its spot to lay down? I'm a dog who can't find its spot, right? There's a restlessness about it. And irritable is that life and people especially rub me the wrong way. They irritate me. They threaten me. And I don't even connect the dots and understand that that's what's going on. But I find myself in one of two emotional stances towards life. One is that at times, I'm the guy, the irritated guy that's on the muscle with people, that flies off on the handle, you know, that's really kind of a pain in the ass to be around. or I'm the guy that's so threatened and rubbed the wrong way by you and life itself that I've withdrawn so deeply into me that some psychiatrist is diagnosing me as clinically depressed. And I'm not clinically depressed, I just run in here and I go too far and I stay too long and I can't get out. It's the depression of the overly self-involved. and I'm that guy. And then the last thing, it says discontent. I think I heard a guy say this 25 years ago. He said that alcoholism was a disease of chronic malcontent. There's something about me that I never wanted to admit really is that no matter what good things life will bring me, the shine of them wears off very quickly. And I live in a world where people have good stuff happen and five years later they're still grateful for it. You know? I'm the guy, you give me a brand new car, within three weeks it's the wrong color. You know what I mean? It's just something like that with me. And I didn't understand why am I that way? Why does, why does nothing ever seem to ring my bell and really keep ringing it? And I just go through life. I go from one thing to another. This is it. No, it's not. This isn't it. No, that ain't either. This ist it. Oh, she's it. No, she wasn't. This job is it? No, I wasn't it, and it's just, I just feel like that. It's just from one thing to another and it always appears like oh yeah yeah yeah no right it's my whole life's like that the disillusionment the high hopes and then the dude you know it's like awful and i'm this this chronic malcontent and i'll tell you what i think it is i think once you've tasted the connectedness that you get in the early days of drinking once you've tasted that thing that happens to you after about five or six drinks and you can come out and play and you're in the zone and you sing better than you can sing and you dance better than you can dance and you are funnier than you have ever been and you talk to members of the opposite sex and you are a part of and you know the glory of that then everything in life pales by comparison and what happens to me is I'm sober and I know I can't drink it's killing me but I don't feel very good and I see a job and this happened to me there were some guys I knew that had this job working in this steel mill and this was back in the mid 70's and they were making 20 some dollars an hour that's like 200 dollars an hour today and I remember thinking to myself my god if I had a job like that I'd be there I'd be there. You never get the feeling like if you were properly financed, you'd no longer feel the way you feel. You know what I mean? That kind of thing, right? And I got that job. I got dat job. And I'll tell you, it wasn't even a month before I realized that this was, that they really didn't appreciate what I was doing and they were taking advantage of me and, you know, and it was just people there were crap heads and it Was, and I eventually left. I remember, I grew up with a guy. We used to drink together. He did not have alcoholism, even though at times he looked like he did. He was a problem drinker. He had acute alcoholic. He was an acute alcoholic rather than chronic. And he met this girl. And they got together and they were getting married. And she gave him an ultimatum. She said, you know, I don't want you, I can't live with this partying like you're partying. And you've got to make a choice. And he was very much in love with her, and he said, no problem, sweetheart. And he put the plug in the jug and never looked back and never went back. Walked away from that way of life. Walked way from it. And I remember him seeing him doing that, and I remember thinking to myself, man, well, yeah. If I had somebody that loved me the way she loved him, I would probably be able to quit drinking. And you know what the problem with that is? I found people that loved me the way she loved him. And I'd find them, and it would be great for a while, and then after a little while, I'd start noticing. You know, I just started noticing. I got one of those noticers. You know what I mean? You get me restless, irritable, and discontent. I tell you, I could find a turd at a buffet. You know What I mean. I guess I'm that kind of consciousness when I get like that. My head gets like that And I think what was happening is I compared without realizing it, subconsciously never aware of it. I think on an emotional level, I eventually started to compare what it felt like to have that job and make all that money sober to what it fell like to have five shots of Jack Daniels. And all of a sudden the job didn't really do it. and then i started to compare what it felt like to have this gal love me to what it felt like seven shots of jose cuervo wasn't the same thing now i never sat down consciously and thought any of that but that's almost as if what was going on inside of me i was expecting i was accepting these things to be a treatment for the spiritual malady of alcoholism you see when i stop drinking i start to get sick of spirit and i don't it's not that's not really a religious thing if you've ever if you're ever entered into a state of forced abstinence whether it's your idea or somebody else's it doesn't matter and you're just not drinking you know if youre a real alcoholic what it feels like to suffer from alcoholism sober and i'll tell you why it's a spiritual deal because you could be put on an mri when you're feeling like that and it will show up nothing's wrong but i'll say if you've ever had that thing eat your soul in here it's as real as you are and it does not exist on any kind of material or physiological plane but it is real as i am and when i would have five shots of jack daniels this This spirit that seemed to get sick and depressed and removed and disconnected once I entered into abstinence. Five shots of whiskey vitalized that spirit when it worked. Now, it didn't do that at the end because the alcoholism moved into the advanced stages where it stopped doing that for me. But it did that at one time. And so I enter into abstINENCE and I'm restless, I'm irritable, I am discontent. until I can again experience a sense of ease and comfort. Ease and comfort which I will frantically look everywhere for and fail to find until I eventually return to alcohol. Tried meds, tried smoking stuff. I did marijuana maintenance. I was sober one time for about six months on marijuana maintenance, about as long as I could stand it. I was sober a couple of times, several months on for never a year, but a good part of a year one time on meds. But the thing is, I really hunger for a higher level of relief from my spirit than I was getting marijuana that I was getting in the medication. And so all it did for me was start a slow burn inside of me that eventually made me yearn for the next level up, right? I'm the kind of guy you give me a little bit of relief from the way I feel sober. I don't know about you guys. Is a little Bit of Relief ever been enough for you? I mean, you know what I mean? A little bit? Don't tease me. I mean you're just teasing me. You might pacify me for a period of 7, 8, 10 months but eventually now you've opened the door I know there's more relief there. You've reminded me and you've teased me and I'm going to eventually I just go for it. I just can't help it because I got chronic alcoholism. I get a disease that starts where the bottle ends and I start to become sick of spirit. Page 30, more about alcoholism book says most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. i didn't i tell you i spent i don't know why i didn'T WANT TO BE AN ALCOHOLIC BUT I WENT TO INCREDIBLE LENGTHS TO NOT BE AN AlCOHolic I THOUGHT I WAS WILLING TO BE A DRUG ADDICT I WAS WillING TO Be A MENTAL PATIENT I WAS WILLING TO HAVE GRAVE EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS I WAS willing to be a relationship addict I was willing to Be Anything About Except An alcoholic. I don't want to be an alcoholic because then the gig's up, then I got to quit drinking. I mean, that's not right. I know what I don'T want to do. I DON'T WANT TO BE AN ALCOHOLIC. I DONT WANT To Be An AlcohoIc. Because alcoholism is irreparable. I want to be something that I can kind of get over. You know, let's get over this. Let's get on with it. Let'S get over it here and go on. I WANT to go. And that'S one of the reasons that AA just, I hated AA. And I always gravitated to psychiatrists. I liked psychiatrits. And because I remember being at a treatment center and I used to end up, I kept ending up in AA over and over again. And then I kept thinking, I'm not an alcoholic, but God, why is it every time I drink, I end up where all the alcoholics are at? What's with this? And I'm telling this guy in his treatment center one day, I said, I don't want to go to that AA. They're so negative. They talk about this absolute abstinence and this powerlessness, and they can't manage their own life. If you say that crap enough, you'll start to believe it. I don't want to go there. It's negative, negative, negative, negative. I don' t want to do that. I don''t want to be a real alcoholic. I don'T want to bE. I like therapy because I want to get fixed. And I remember I had this illusion. I knew I was screwed up. But I couldn't figure out why. And I didn't come from an alcoholic home. That would have made it easier. If my parents would have abused me and been bad drunks, I could have said, well sure, look. They did this to me, see? But my parents loved me. My parents were never hurt. I went out of their way. They sacrificed for me. They loved me, that was the center of their life. And I thought to myself, I remember going to this therapist and telling him, You know, I know my parents, it seemed like they were good parents. But I suspect that they must have damaged me because I felt damaged. I suspected somebody must have done this to me. And we spent a long time in therapy, never figured it out. So I got him to send me to a hypnotherapist because I figured I must have blocked it out You know? They probably mis-potty trained me or something and I didn't. I blocked it off. It was so horrible. Blocked it out and it scarred me and warped me. the rest of my life and through hypnotherapy i'll uncover what that is deal with it and like a child's helium balloon that's released i will soar into mental health and i remember going to i got regressed back through my childhood and we spent like a long time in this hypnotherapy going back through stages and the years and touch and i never found out what it was because i don't have a environmentally induced illness. I don't have a psychological illness, even though it looks like it. The book makes a statement that's very, very amazing. It says that when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. Well, if that's true, and that's really what alcoholics, the people who you watch get better in Alcoholics Anonymous and healthier, They get healthier not through trying to make themselves healthier physically or mentally. They get healthier by applying spiritual principles to their life, and what happens is they straighten out mentally and physically. Well, if that's true through cause and effect, then maybe the reverse is true. Maybe I got crazy and looked like a nutcase because I was so sick of spirit that it was like a stone in my shoe that my head just spun on trying to figure out and control. Maybe my disconnection and my inability to integrate myself in life because of a spiritual state of separation just made me crazy and the loneliness wrapped up inside my own head. The book says when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically. I want to tell you something. my head does not do what it used to do to me and physically i as a result of that i haven't had to punish myself physically and i am physically probably in the best shape of my life and i'm mentally probably inthebest shape ofmylife if you don't leave me alone for too long that's why i'm an everyday member of aa got a sponsor and i sponsor guys uh because i could go i could kind of drift back to it's it it's not that i get sick you know what happens when i get sickness i'm not sick but you look sick to me you know and i mean when i'm getting spiritually sick it looks like to me your getting ill and i have this urgency to straighten out and that's a lonely business when you get like that it's a only lonely business no person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows i will always be that way i'll never overcome that therefore it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people the idea that somehow someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker the persistence of this illusion is astonishing many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death the book talks about three illusions or delusions in alcoholism this is not denial this is more hideous than denial denial is like i stole your wallet you asked me if i've seen your wallet and i got it in my pocket i know i got it and i lied to you i deny that i got your wallet this is not denial this is like i got your wallet and i don't even believe i got your wallet right i'm like and then what is it that i can control and enjoy my drinking what's that mean it means that I'm going to be able to get back to the good old days in spite of the fact that I haven't been able to do that and that I am going to be able to jump start the party and get back to those days when it was glorious get back to those days where you are walked into a bar and you can't talk to anybody and you are depressed and your head is spinning and you cannot get your own life off of you and you have five shots of Jose Cuervo and you come out and play. Seven shots and you look around the bar and realize, I love all these people. I love you, man! Do you ever get... I remember being at this bar they used to go to. This bar was like sacred ground for me because I could walk in there so sick and after a little period of time of drinking just feel so a part of and i remember feeling so connected in love with the people in there would almost bring tears to my eyes you know just like oh when you've been as lonely and as isolated as i had been to all of a sudden be a partof like that is a tremendous thing tremendous thing and then i have the illusion that i'm gonna i'm going to enjoy it like that one more time in spite of overwhelming evidence that the last couple years I drank it, it's not like that anymore. It's not that party. And it says to control it. I've never been so deluded to imagine when I went on a run after a period of several months of abstinence that I'm not going to pay a price. I always knew that. I always new that there was a price to be paid. My delusion is that I have enough control to keep the price down to something I can live with. That's the delusion. That's a delusion that my one friend had, that I heard of, my one friends who told me about a guy that he sponsored who went on his last run. He was sober about two years and he woke up in jail and this is a guy that was a bookkeeper. I mean, he was like a real milquetoast guy that never got in trouble and he came to in jail and in a blackout he had shot and killed his wife and kids and tried to kill himself and they took the gun away from him. And it was the great oops. Maybe I can't control it as much as I thought I could. See, when I would drink as the disease progressed in me What happened is two things that were hideous. Is one thing, as the disease progressed, my ability to have fun and reap ease and comfort and be connected and have a party and come out and play got less and less and less. And at the same time, the problems got more and more and more. And it was almost as if over the years, as I drank, some hideous force was changing things. In the very beginning when I would start drinking, it was like spinning a roulette wheel and I'd go on a run and on that roulette wheel there'd be drag racing, dancing, getting laid and jam sessions and singing acapella music with the guys. It'd be a little bit of throwing up occasionally, a little bit of getting in trouble once in a while but for the most part it would come up, that roulette wheel come up good stuff. And this hideous force that's part of the progression of the disease, it was like snuck in there and started changing crap on that wheel and putting up more wet pants, blackouts, going to jail, getting physically sick, crying jags, broken noses, fights. Until the very end, I'm spinning that wheel thinking frantically there's got to be a party in here somewhere. I know there's gotta be, right? If I could make it come up party 50% of the time and I could keep the damage down to something that's a price to pay but something I can live with, I'll tell you something, I'd still be drinking. I'd have never got sober. I did not get sober because I came to my senses one day and realized this is something I really should do. a guy with more mental health than me maybe could have done that not me i had to take it to three years past the point where it's fun anymore and i my life is the price i'm paying is hideous and i go on a run i don't know what's going to happen i go in a run and i just may get drunk drunk and feel sorry for myself and feel bad and be sick and hung over or i might come to in a jail cell as I did up in Maine, covered with blood and don't know why I'm there and find out that the only friend I had left on the face of the earth I took a hunting knife with a blade this long and opened his chest up. Or I just might get a DUI or I don't know what's going to happen. I never knew. A lot of times it would be kind of you'd sneak by. Do you ever have that feeling when you're hung over after a run and and you've checked everything out, and there's nothing coming at you. And you're not going to jail, and there are no dents in the car that are new, and it's just kind of like you snuck by that one. Now, I had that a lot. And the times at the end when there wasn't a price to pay started becoming rarer. Because I can't control it, and I can enjoy it. And I'll tell you, I think I could have. That's that's the illusion that kept me from getting a foothold in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I'll tell you something, as long as I secretly in the back of my mind thought that there was some ease and comfort left in getting high, even though I intellectually know I shouldn't do that, as long As I think there's still some party left in there and that I can reap that party and reap that ease and comfort and keep the damage down to something I can live with, I'll tell you something. I got a back door right out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'll tells you about a guy like me. You get me restless enough, irritable enough, discontent enough, disappointed enough, bored enough, lonely enough, disillusioned enough. If I got back door, why should you go to my sponsor and work those steps? I'm out of here. I'm out of here. And that's the kind of guy I am. And until that illusion was smashed, I could never get a foothold in here because I never was forced through a lack of alternatives to have to come into AA and buy this whole package and make this the center of my life. For seven years, I had that delusion that I could still have some fun or maybe if I change the combination, and change the things I'm smoking with the things I'm drinking, and get the combination just right. You know, if I get it just right, as long as I had that, I wasn't going to be one of you. I was part of the group it talks about in chapter 5, the part that wasn't desperate enough and out of alternatives enough to have to do what you do. I was a part of that group that doesn't recover. It says those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. I was part of that group, not because I'm stupid and not because I'm lazy and not porque I'm a bad guy, simply because I had a delusion that I had an alternative subconsciously that I never even thought about consciously. I had a back door. This was just, it became a temporary place I came for a while as long as it felt okay and when my emotions started putting the screws to me, I'm gone. Why am I gone? Because I think I can. In the back of my mind, I think I can and that's the kind of drunk I am. Some people may have the ability to overcome that mentally and realize intellectually through a treatment center or something that I really shouldn't drink anymore and that is enough for them. It never was enough for me. because when my emotions are putting the screws to me, all the intellectual knowledge in the world that relief is not a good idea still doesn't change the fact that the illusion of relief is still the illusion of relief. It's like having my hand in a vice and having the guy start to turn the vice. After when the bones start to crunch a little bit, all doing just about anything to get relief seems like a good idea and the problem with restless irritable and discontent the problem With The Way I Suffer From Alcoholism Once I Stop Drinking It's Not A Dramatic Suffering It's Hideous Because It's So Low Level It's Just Below The Level Of My Consciousness You Know What It'S Like Remember See That Remember Back In World War too. The Japanese used to use a thing called the water torture. You ever hear about that? It's the craziest thing. They take a guy and they strap him to a table or a chair or something, and they tell him that you're going to tell us everything you know because we're going to drop beads of water on your head. That guy goes, beads of what? Come on, man. It's beads of whatever. Come on. Let them happen. Go ahead. Hit me with your biggest bead of water right and they said yeah you're laughing at the pizza water i tell you a week later you'd do anything to get them to stop that anything and that's the way getting sick of spirit is it's something you can't you don't connect the dots that this is bothering you because if when you're sick of heart if somebody asks you what's wrong you don't know it's because I don't know really there's nothing I can hang it on it's just there's just this sense that that nothing's really right restless irritable and discontented unless I can again experience a sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks drinks that I live in a world and see others take on a regular basis with impunity which means impunity just means without punishment comes from the word punis meaning punishment they take it without punishment because they don't have alcoholism and i'll tell you it's i will um i had a guy a sponsor a few years ago he was uh he was uh had a roommate and his roommate started to drink again and he asked me said what should i ask him to leave what should I do and I said how are they drinking and he said it's the funniest thing they're having a good time and they're getting away from it they're not paying any price they're able to control it And I said, you'd be better off exposed to somebody that was falling down and breaking their nose. Because you'll look at him, and this guy was new in sobriety, you'll Look at him and you'll start to think, maybe I could do that. Maybe I could Do that. Dangerous stuff. Control and enjoy my drinking. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. I know in Chapter 5 and in every wall, in every meeting hall in the country, it has the 12 steps and it says in Step 1 and all that, it says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. But here it says it a little different. And this means more to me. It says we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. I'll tell you why that means more to me. You put me in a treatment center and you let me watch the doctors talk about alcoholism and the Father Martin movies and the lectures and all that, and intellectually I'll get it and I'll admit that I'm an alcoholic. No problem. I'll commit that I can do it. I'll submit that I am powerless over alcohol. oh yeah, I can see how the acetatine and all that stuff reacts in me. Sure, sure, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a big difference between admitting something and seeing it intellectually and getting it in your innermost self. Big difference. There was an old friend of mine who used to say the greatest journey is from the head to the heart in the innermOST self. And see, until I got it down in here, It was just all thinking stuff. It didn't have any impact on me. It didn' t force me to come here. You know how you can tell whether you got it in your head or you got it in you're innermost self? Watch your feet. Look at your feet I'll tell you what my experience is with people who really get step one in their innermOST self, they will act like hopeless desperate frantic people for looking for an answer they will go to 10 or 15 meetings a week they will get a sponsor they will call that sponsor they'll be trying to figure out or get help to work those steps they will do whatever it takes because they get it that they're dying people who get it up here but don't get it in here secretly believe in here that they can control and enjoy it that it's really not a hopeless condition of mind and body that they're really not all that powerless will act that way. And they'll come to meetings because, you know, they get it. They should probably go to these meetings. Sort of like a little social support here. AA to them is like the sober elks. You know what I mean? It's like it's not a life and death matter. But I tell you what happens to a guy like me who came here like that, and that's how I came to AA. After seven years of relapsing, After getting to a place where I can't stand it anymore, and I'm standing on a bridge with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose trying to get up enough courage to take my life and failing because I'm a coward and ending up in Alcoholics Anonymous one more time, I started acting in AA with a desperation that I only ever acted like that is when I really, really needed a drink and I was trying to figure out a way to get one. and I started approaching Alcoholics Anonymous the way I approached alcohol when I really, really needed to drink. And my life started to change. And I didn't know that I got out of the group that refused to completely give themselves to this simple program because I had a backdoor out of AA, and all of a sudden I was in the group that was. I was the frantic. I'd become, as the book says, we are alcoholics of the hopeless variety. down in my innermost self i got it i was dying i'm hopeless i have failed i tried everything and i started acting like someone who was hopeless desperately frantically seeking hope and then this next line is what i think takes a lot of people out of here after they're sober 10 years or 5 years or 3 years. I've become a student of relapse and I'll tell you why. I think in order to stay here, you have to know how to leave here so I watch people who leave here and I watch them real close and I try to figure out what they're doing because I believe that if I have the same disease that you have what could happen to you could happen to me so if you end up dying of alcoholism or blowing your brains out with 20 years of sobriety or doing any of that stuff or getting on pills and getting strung out or whatever it is i want to know what you're doing so i can go down a different road because i believe that if i have what you have and i go down the road you went down i will probably experience what you experienced and probably react to it the way you reacted to it. They tell me, oh, I'm above that. I know better. I learned my lesson. But that's all crap, really. Really. That's all the blusterings of a defense mechanism inside of me. The real truth is that it could happen to you, it could happened to me. And it says here, it talks about another delusion. The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be like other people has to be smashed. What's that mean? Other people, people who don't have alcoholism, people who do not have a spiritual malady coupled with a mental obsession and a physical allergy. People who do no have to treat the spiritual maladies it talks about on page 20 where it says our very lives as x problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others their needs and how we can work for them as it says throughout the whole big book it talks about in places where you must continually do this you must continue to do that or you're going to probably going to drink again the delusion that i no longer have alcoholism the delution that maybe i'm normal now there's a great i tell you there's a great drive in every alcoholic i've ever known to kind of get over your alcoholism you know what i mean like maybe after 10 years and you watch it i i do a meeting a minimum of twice a week uh and rehabs right now actually i'm doing three most of the time i do three but i never in 25 years have done less than two meetings a week and these skid row places in these places where you see the guys that had 15 and 20 and 25 and 30 years that drank again. You won't see them in your regular AA meetings because the disease has progressed within them while they were sober, and when they drink again, they never even get back into mainstream AA. They die on... These are guys that have million-dollar homes end up dying on the streets because of the progression of the disease. You very rarely will ever see a guy that had 50 or 20 years of sobriety that drinks again, coming back into mainstream AA and getting a foothold again. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's rare. Most of those guys die on Skid Row. And if you watch them, it's the same. I've been sober now long enough to watch guys come into AA and drink or commit suicide 20 years later. And I'll tell you what I observe in almost every case. They come into Alcoholics Anonymous. They have been beaten half to death by drugs and alcohol. And they get it that they're alcoholic, they get that they are hopeless, they feel hopeless, and they act hopeless. But in the back of their mind is still this delusion that maybe someday they will overcome this. And what happens is recovery lends itself to that delusion. One of the downsides of recovery from the 12 steps in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is you get better. And that's the downside of it because as I get better and I get financially successful and my relationships with people are better and i get self-esteem and I integrate myself into the community and my life is really good and I am not thinking about drinking and haven't thought about it in decades. It's easy with a half million dollars in the bank and a big house and community support and respect and family and all the good stuff in life, it's easy to get deluded into a false sense of okayness, almost as if you were to be honest with yourself, you'd kind of say, boy you know i don't feel alcoholic like i used to right i don'T even feel like there'S a problem here and you get you get seduced by the fruits of your own recovery into a false sense of of okayness and then what happens is that they do the walk the walk of death guys that come into AA, go to seven meetings a week, work with a sponsor, sponsor people, make amends, have commitments, do all that stuff. Everyday members, every day is the day that they participate in their own recovery. Five years later, with a thriving business, making six figures a year and a house and a wife and kids, now they're about half as active as they were in the beginning. And then another five years down the road, as success accumulates, and now They got a couple of $80,000 cars and a couple Harleys and maybe a second home in Hawaii. And their kids are getting older and they're just, they're doing more, they're coaching softball. And now maybe they've come into that area where they really don't have time to sponsor anybody or do any 12-step calls. And they really Don't have Time for Service and they try to get to a meeting once a week if they can. But you know something? If they can't, they have that false sense of, that's all right, I feel fine. And then one day, out of nowhere, and I've seen this happen so many times, the obsession to drink will just return and it returns so quickly, it just overwhelms them. And the funny thing is you ask these guys that have taken the walk of diminishing amounts of involvement And the walk, really, their feet speak louder than their words or their thoughts or their feelings. Their feet describe the actions of someone who must secretly believe as time goes on that I don't really have alcoholism like I used to, really. And if you'd ask these guys that relapse after 5 or 10 or 20 years, if you'd put them on a lie detector and you'd say, a week before you drank again, was there ever a thought that you'd ever drink again? And you know what they always say? I hear this so many times. They said, a week ago, a week after I picked up that drink, I'd have bet anything I was never going to drink again. And then they do. And then они дают. There's a line on page 24 i think explains it it explains two things we already talked there's a dynamic that happens in alcoholism that makes guys like me have no mental defense against the next drink page 24 in italics it says the fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice and drink our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We were without defense against the first drink. If I can't do it for a week, or a week a month to go, how am I going to do it? For 10 years? And I'll tell you what happens. and this is a phenomenon that's not i don't think it's reserved to alcoholism but the further i get away from the pain of my last run it's it it's the the vaguer and the hazier the memory becomes and it's not that i don'T remember that i was in jail and it'S NOT that i DON'T remember i WAS IN DETOX AND IT'S NOT THAT i DONT REMEMBER INTELLECTUALLY IT JUST DOESN'T HAVE ANY IT DOESNT HAVE SUFFICIENT FORCE BECAUSE THERE'S NO EMOTION INVOLVED IN IT What happens is that you remember it intellectually, but there's no impact in that. It's a very similar experience that women have with childbirth. If a woman could experientially and emotionally remember the pain of childbirth, she would never ever do that again. I'm telling you. But what happens, I've heard a hundred women say this, as you get away from it, And you kind of remember intellectually that it was bad, but I mean, how bad was it? And look how cute those babies are. You know what I mean? Until you're having their first big contraction and then you go, boy, was this a mistake. And I think the same thing is with alcoholism. And what happens? Silkworth says we stop drinking and become restless, irritable, and discontent. and the further i get away from the last drink the the more vaguer and hazier the memory of the pain is so i go into a detox center fresh in my mind the pain because i'm still living it if it was a balanced scale here's the memory at two weeks sober of my last run would still have a lot of depth and weight it's pretty fresh it hasn't the emotional impact hasn't start to evaporate as of yet if it was a balanced scale away that scale down over here light but not yet so pronounced there's some feelings of restless some feelingsof irritability maybe some feelings of discontent maybe a little depression maybe a little anxiety as your head spins a little bit but really nothing to put up with they're just starting to drop the water drops on your forehead it ain't too bad yet right it's nothing bring it at me and what happens the further i get away from the last drink the vaguer this memory becomes and the more this has weight because it wears on me and the balance scales start to tip and then one day when a guy's right about here you go up to this guy and you could say is there any chance you'll ever drink again he absolutely not alcohol almost killed me went to jail everything and then a week later it's gone like this and a guy who just a week before said he'd never drink again finds himself picking up a drink because the feelings are driving him and he can't grab on to the experience of the pain with any sufficient force to deter him and that exact dynamic happened to me over and over and ever again and there was nothing i could do to stop that process i was absolutely powerless as it says later in the book the alcoholic's problem lies mainly in his mind when the emptiness of the spiritual malady wears on me it will use my own mind against me to always set me up for that stuff and i can't stop that process. Let's take a five minute break, cigarette bathroom break, and then we'll come back and we'll move into step two.