AA Turned the Juice Back On After 7 Years of Relapse – Bob D.

Bob D. from Las Vegas, Nevada. Bob D. and I am alcoholic. Through the grace of a very loving God who seems to be crazy about me and has no taste, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, as they're outlined in this big book, good sponsorship, committed and dedicated home group, and bushels of new guys, I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering substances since Halloween 1978. And for that I only... I shouldn't be here. I got a bad taste of alcoholism. Guys like me suspect if you're like me, what I'm looking at is a lot of dead people sitting up. Because you probably shouldn't be here either. I want you to know what I'm going to try to share with you, I'm going to try to share as honestly as I can about my personal experience. That's one of the most powerful things we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. You can argue with my opinions, and you can argue with the things I believe, but it's hard to argue with a guy's experience. It may not be yours, but, and that's what I got to share with you, it's the only thing I have of any value, really. I suspect that I was born with the disease of alcoholism before I ever got high. I was like a freeze dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. And I believe that because I look back at my childhood, and the only thing I really remember with any clarity is me. Mom and dad, what they said, was, Dad, what they struggled with, unless it had to do with me. Or my sister, unless it had to do with me. I was the center of the universe. Everything revolved around me. It was my focus. It was the only thing I paid attention to was me and my feelings and my life. And what do you think of me? And me, me, me, me, me. And as a result, focused, self-obsessed guys who live up here have a hard time fitting out here because the truth is I'm up here. Disconnected from life itself. And because of that, before I ever picked up a drink, there was something wrong with my spirit. I didn't seem to be able to connect with other people the way they so easily connected with each other. I felt like I was always coming from behind and I had to act a little tougher, swear a little more, and do all that stuff. Not to be better than, but just trying to be equal to. I was a driven little kid. Disease of alcoholism was touched within me when I was 12, almost 13 years old by alcohol for the first time. An event that would change my life. And I'll just tell you, basically, I could tell you a lot of things about it, but the most important thing is that it made me feel so good that the way I would be without that effect from that moment on, would never be enough again for me. And I lived for it. And it seemed like from the first time I ever got lit up, getting lit up, moved into the most important spot of my life. It seemed like from that moment on, I just existed doing time between opportunities to party and get lit up. And it became the focus, it became the deal I lived for. When you're 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, you can't get drunk every day. But I'll tell you, I got drunk every chance I could get. Almost 16 years old, and I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time. And I'm standing before this judge, and my family is about at the end of their rope trying to keep me from being locked up as a juvenile. And I'm standing before this judge because there's something wrong with me, and I don't know what it is, but I get in trouble a lot. And what it is now is what I know exactly what it is. I had alcoholism, but didn't know it. And because I had alcoholism, every time I'd go out to party with my friends, I have an inability to shut her down when you should. And I always take it to the wall. I always get whacked. And guys I party with like to get messed up, they like to get loaded, but they always would kind of want to stop right before it got a little too bizarre. But when I start, and there ain't no stopping. I've been in this condition ever since I took the first drink. I didn't know that it was... It was a condition that only exists in people who have alcoholism. It's an allergic reaction to the effect from alcohol. From the very beginning, and not everybody has it, my sister is not an alcoholic. And I've watched my sister, the last little over 28 years that I've been sober, I've watched my sister drink on many occasions. I've watched my sister drink like a cat will watch a guy eat a tuna fish, I mean I've watched my sister drink. I've even looked in her eyes waiting, I want to see the effect, you know, I want to see her light up. And something happens to her when she drinks that to me is bizarre, but it's because she is normal. She is not alcoholic, and her wiring is not alcoholic wiring. So when my sister drinks after about a drink and a half, two drinks, and she starts to get that glow in her, and she starts to get that glow in her, in her wiring, it goes, whoa, shuts her right down. She gets a feeling like she's losing control. In my wiring, which is alcoholic wiring, the allergic reaction to alcohol that only alcoholics get is that as I start to feel the effect from that, it lights me up and I go, oh yeah, I get enough. I get a feeling like I'm getting control. I get a feeling like maybe on the next drink, I'm gonna be so goddamn wonderful, I'm gonna blow the mind of the planet. I get this feeling like I'm gonna be there. Consequently, when I start, I can't stop, but I don't know that that's going on because every drink, the next drink seems like my idea. And I didn't understand that the phenomenon of craving uses your own mind against you to bend around any rationalization or justification necessary to make it seem to the alcoholic like the next drink, like the next drink is my idea and seems absolutely appropriate. That's why I could never see the phenomenon of craving because I always seemed to satisfy it and it used, it drove my own mind to where I could never see it. And so, I'm the guy that once I start, I can't stop. I'm the guy that I can drink myself to a point where I can't get off the ground. But if you'd bring me a drink, you know, I'll be much obliged. Because I'm the guy that once I start, I ain't done as long as I'm conscious. And so I'm standing before this juvenile court judge. I'm not even 16 years old and I'm in a lot of trouble. My parents are at the end of their rope and I had to go someplace to live for a while. And I guess it was a lesser of two evils of another place that could have sent me. And I'm not in this new place. I'm not even there, I don't think, much more than a week. And I'm talking to this older kid. He's one of the hip kids there. You know when it's the real hip guys knows that, knows stuff and he's like older. And I'm telling him about the trouble I'm in. He's listening and he says to me, he says, so, you like to party, don't you? I said, yes I do. He said, but you drink that liquor. That'll make you stupid. I said, oh man, I don't know. I like that liquor. And at that time I was into 151 rum. Man, I liked the way it lit me up. And he said, that stuff makes you stupid. I said, I don't know, I like it. I like that stuff. He says, listen, what if I told you that I could give you something, make you feel about that good, maybe better, can't smell it on your breath, won't make you slur your words, you will not stagger, nobody will even know you're high, and you keep a whole week's supply in your shirt pocket. What would you say to that? Sign me up. And he introduced me to drugs. And I'll tell you something, I should not do drugs. We are pigs. It was a bad deal for me. And every drug I ever picked up, I took it to the wall, man. I did it alcoholically. I just whacked my life with everything I ever touched. In no time at all I've graduated out of marijuana, out of pills, I'm into shooting speed. But I don't just shoot speed. I shoot speed with such a fervor that the tweakers that have been doing it for 10 years are telling me to cool it. I've done it to such an extent that if you left me alone in your car to go in and get a pack of cigarettes, by the time you come out, I will have dismantled your radio looking for microphones from the FBI. I mean, I've turned myself into a paranoid schizophrenic or some shit. I can't even put two sentences together after about a year of that stuff. I'm just spinning in my head. A guy comes along and he says, man, you're messed up. And I said, yeah, but grandma ate the glasses on the corner. You know, I'm just nuts. I'm crazy. And he says, try some of this. And he hit me up with something, and I'll tell you. Everything just went, oh, it shouldn't do drugs because we're pigs. And I just took that to the wall and burnt my life down with that stuff. And then methadone clinics and then on and on and on, back full circle after I ripped everybody off, after I got no veins left, after several years of that stuff, that full circle back to alcohol. I believe that my several-year dance of death with drugs, I did it for the same reason that our co-founder Dr. Bob did drugs. Dr. Bob did high-powered sedatives every single day of his life for 17 years. You know what kind of a barbiturate habit that is? It's unbelievable. But Dr. Bob didn't do drugs because he was a drug addict. Dr. Bob did drugs because he was an alcoholic. And because every time he went to drink, the phenomenon of craving was so strong in him, he would whack himself. As a matter of fact, the day that the original guy, Bill Wilson, tried to 12-step Dr. Bob, he couldn't see him because he was taking a nap underneath the dining room table. You got to love a guy like that. You know what I mean? I understand it. Because I'm the guy. You don't give me some kind of stimulants. I'm in a bar drinking. Before the night's over, I'm taking a nap under a booth somewhere because that's the kind of guy I am. I just keep more, more, more, more, more. Because drugs... I couldn't control the alcohol because of the phenomenon of craving, but yet I had an itch I had to scratch because I got the spiritual malady of alcoholism. If you've got this thing right in the center of who you are, you're going to scratch this itch one way or another. The great psychiatrist Carl Jung in the early 1960s wrote a letter to our founder Bill Wilson and he said to Bill that something he had not told anyone else. He said after years of experience with alcoholics that he came to the conclusion that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol was a low-level thirst of his being for unity, for connectedness, or as expressed in medieval or religious terms, a union with God. I drank alcohol and did drugs because I had an inability to fit and be comfortable in this planet. And in the early days of my drinking, alcohol and combinations of alcohol and drugs was a tremendous, tremendous treatment for alcoholism. It was a magic treatment. You take a guy like me who doesn't fit very good, who's locked up in his head, who doesn't mix well with people, and you send me into a party or a bar and after four or five drinks I can come out and play. After seven drinks, I get that feeling with the guys I'm running around with like I love everybody. I love you, man. Remember that feeling? I just get so connected to the guys I was running with. And back in those days, in the magic days where the hook is set, I could not do for myself. And I'm not funny. In the secrets of the universe, I'd say shit blow my mind. It's like all of a sudden I could see the big picture. It's like I'd say, I remember thinking, oh, this is what Buddha saw. Yeah, yeah. You know, then the next day you're just back to being you again, the dumb guy, the bump on the log, the guy that doesn't fit no well, nowhere. It's hard to say I could drink, shoot pool better than I could shoot pool. I could drink and dance. Tell you something, for alcohol, I think, I suspect I would be celibate to this day because I could have never overcome my self-centered fear of rejection and walked through that and never connected with a woman. And I tell you what experience I had. I was in junior high school and I went to this dance and I went to this dance because there was a girl in my class I got a crush on. So one of the guys in school showed me a couple of dance steps, a little awkward for me, but I'm going to this dance because I want to dance with this girl and I have this fantasy of, you know, we're already picking out the colleges for our kids and stuff. You know how we are. I just, let's go there. And I go to this dance and I'm standing up against the wall of this gymnasium with that, and I'm sober with that sick feeling of anxious apartness, that feeling like it's all of them and there's me, trying to psych myself up and asking her to dance and she's out there dancing with her girlfriend and I'm, I'm just scared to death and I don't know that I'm afraid. I just am uncomfortable. And I tell myself, okay, I'm going to ask her. Ugh, next song I'll ask her. And the next song I'm coming and I say, ugh, next song better, next song. And I did that for about a half hour, finally screwed up enough courage to go over and ask her, walked over and asked her and she said no. And I got to walk back across that 12 mile gymnasium and it feels like everybody's looking at me. And did you ever imagine, sometimes I used to think I knew what people were thinking about me and as if they're looking at me and thinking, oh. Walked over to my wall, I stood there and spun in my head for about five or ten minutes until I couldn't take it anymore and bolted out of that dance and went home. I'll tell you something, I'd have never, ever done that again. Except later on that year, I was at a dance of 151 rum and Coca-Cola. And, and I must admit, I was smooth. Confidence and a suave fear about me and I could ask those girls to dance and most of them were saying yes. And if one said no, huh, man is she missing it. Now that's actually changed my experience on this planet. To change my whole world. So is it any wonder that a guy like me who goes back to being himself again when he gets sober and doesn't fit very good and is awkward and tries to have to be a pretend kind of cool guy when he knows in his heart that he ain't none of that. Any wonder that the one thing that took me there, I would become obsessed with it. And I became obsessed with it because of the magic effect. But I don't know that I'm alcoholic. I don't know that I have a progressive disease that is fatal. It'll kill me eventually, which is a tedious process. But in the progression of the disease what that really means that as the years go on my ability to reap the effect and the fun out of getting high gets more and more elusive and more and more difficult. I'm starting to have problems jump starting the party. I'm starting to have problems getting back to the days when I'm playing with the bands and I'm all lit up and I'm a part of. And as the effect is diminishing the problems are increasing. It seemed like when I first started getting high as a young teenager it seemed like there was a tremendous amount of fun and effect. Little, little bit of problems occasionally. Once in a while throwing up. Once in a while a little allocation with the police. But for the most part it's a lot of fun. And it was as if every time I went out to get lit up with my friends it was like spinning a roulette wheel. And on that roulette wheel was a lot of good stuff. In the beginning there was dancing. There was drag racing. There was roughhousing with the guys. There was sitting in with the bands. There was men laughing and carrying on. There was just great stuff. A little bit of throwing up and stuff. But most of the time you spin that wheel it comes up a party. And then as the disease progressed it seemed as if some hideous force snuck into my life and started changing stuff on that wheel. And now they're putting up jail. Wet pants. Wet pants is a bad deal. If you're three years old and you have diaper rash it's cute. You're twenty years old and you have diaper rash it's not cute no more. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. When you finally meet that girl that just lights you up and she invites you over to her apartment and she's punching you in the head in the middle of the night because you've wet her bed. There's no panache in that. I mean there's that's not a good first impression. I'm arrested more. I'm getting sick more. I'm developing a lot of remorse. A lot of shame. A lot of guilt because now I'm doing things that I can't I'm becoming at times the guy that I couldn't stand. I'm becoming that guy. I'm doing things that if I knew somebody else who was doing them I'd just think they were I'd hate them. And I'm doing those things. I'm doing them to the people who love me. My mother and father. I'm breaking the heart of my kid sister who thought I was her hero. Every woman that ever tried to love me seemed to get punished by it. Bosses that were really good people and gave me chances I didn't deserve and I made them regret it. And this isn't happening in a little bit. It's happening it's progressing in my life and it's getting worse and worse and worse. And I'm a blackout drinker. Are there blackout drinkers in here? Oh man. My people. It's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do. I'm telling you. That's not a good deal. And you know if you're like me it's never the next day somebody comes up to you and says oh Bob you were so helpful. last night at the party. It's never like that. It's always you peed in our kitchen. You hit on our wife you hit on my wife you broke my lamp you stole my stash. You side swiped my car you passed out on my front lawn. I had a guy one morning come up to me I was sick and I was shaking and I'm on my way to get a drink and he comes up to me and he says do you remember telling everyone last night at the party that you'd beat Bruce Lee in a karate match? You just hear that stuff and you just want to crawl under a rock somewhere. You know and so what happens is now my alcoholism is fueled. Now I'm drinking over my drinking. I'm drinking because I sober up and I can't stand what I've become and now I've got to drink over my drinking. And they say that there's no perpetual motion machine. I'm telling you this is close. And it's essential and it's a self-feeding proposition. And once you get to that point you're real close to getting the morning drink because you can't you can't wait no more. You're just the shame and the guilt and the want to jump out of your skin and start to eat your lunch. And now I can't go to 5 o'clock. I can't go to noon no more. Now I come to and I'm in the presence of the guy I can't stand the most. Alcoholism takes a turn into the last stages of alcoholism. Critical stages. The stages where most of us we don't even know how close we are to pulling the plug. It's the stage of alcoholism where it's all delusional now. The truth is the reality there's no fun left. I drink and I feel sorry for myself. I drink and if nobody's around I might go in a crying jag. I drink and punch walls and sometimes end up in the emergency room because I I drink and I feel sorry for myself. I drink and if nobody's around I might go in a crying jag. I drink and punch walls and sometimes end up in the emergency room because I've fallen or through a window or something I'm just pathetic. I drink and I don't bathe because I don't care no more. Pardon. This is blotting out your life until you die. This is just going on to the bitter end blotting out the miserable state I'm in and yet the delusion part is you you stick me in a treatment center and you get me sober for five or six months or four months or five or six weeks even because of the way I feel sober which is not really good. I can drink again like I drank when I was 18 years old. I start it's it's the self delusion is psychotic wishful thinking. It's all of reality is the party's over it's turned on me this is pathetic it's awful but I don't want it to be awful for God's sakes I want it to be like it was when I was 18 years old and I want that so desperately and I need that so desperately I start imagining that it's going to be like that again even though the last five or six times I tried it it wasn't and what that's and I think every once in a while some of us have a moment of clarity it's as if a curtain opens and you can see the truth and I had one of those moments I it was a horrible moment I'd been I'd been in a house a halfway house and I I'd been sober for about ten months and my life is awful and I'm sober really for that length of time because I'm living in Pennsylvania and it's winter time and I got nowhere else to go and if I pick up a drink I'm out on the streets and there's like two feet of snow and I know what it's like to walk the streets when it's five degrees out you can't even sit down because if you sit down you'll fall asleep and if you fall asleep you're a dead man so you'll walk all night long it doesn't matter how sick you are how rummy you are it doesn't matter how tired you are and you hope to get into a bathroom and a gas station until the manager comes and rousts you out of there so I'm in this place and I'm hanging on and I'm not drinking basically because it's winter time but I got alcoholism and if you're a real alcoholic you're designed your disease really starts with a bag and a bottle that's why most alcoholics in spite of an education how this is killing you as I did many times make up my mind and really mean it this time I'm never going to touch that again and I mean it but seven or eight months later I'm back at it again I didn't do that once or twice I did that for seven and a half years and I'm in this halfway house and I'm sober several months and I'm just getting it up to here with being sober and I don't know what's wrong and the counselor one day said I guess I looked like I was a little depressed drinking and he says Bob what's wrong and I guess I said something like oh nothing I'm fine and I remember sitting in the day room thinking to myself what the hell is wrong with me and I don't know because there's nothing specifically that's wrong it's just that nothing's right I feel like a fish out of water I'm the guy that Dr. Silkworth talks about when I quit drinking I'm restless which means I can't get settled anywhere it's like it's a vague sense that wherever I am it ain't where I should be now I don't know where I should be it's just not here have you ever watched a dog circle a room looking for its spot to lay down I'm a dog who can't find its spot restless I'm irritable I get sober and you stop medicating me I just become acutely aware of what's wrong with everybody and I just become people just irritate me and I just and if you're restless and you know what's wrong with him you gotta tell him which makes abstinence a lonely business and the last thing is I'm discontented I think alcoholism is a disease of chronic malcontent there's a hole inside of me that I cannot fill and I don't even know where it is it just seems to be in the center of who I am is this vacancy this abyss I'm not drinking and I don't drink day in and day out and I don't there's something wrong with me and my mind works over me works over time trying to figure out what will make it better I'll see a girl and I'll say oh man oh man will fly out my ears man she's the one right there and I get with her not even a month I start realizing what's wrong with her and what happens is subconsciously I think I start to compare what it feels like to be with her to what it felt like to have five shots of tequila now it's like heh what a I had this friend who got this job in a steel mill making big money big money back in those days he got himself a Harley and I remember he seemed happy I remember watching him thinking to myself man if I was making that kind of money I'd have a boat and a house and a Harley and a sports car and I'd have two or three pretty girlfriends I'd be there and I got that job in that steel mill and I wasn't even there three weeks until I realized how they were taking advantage of me and how they were I was working harder than everybody else I started to build that little case because I'm irritable people rub me the wrong way I'm so judgmental I'm restless until I'm the guy that's leaving absolute inability to make my life good enough on the outside to consequently make it good on the inside some of us blow our brains out in three million dollar homes because we're victims of this delusion that we can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world if we only manage well but a painful truth that every alcoholic faces eventually is that no matter how good you get it out here if it ain't no good here it ain't no good that's why guys in big homes blow their brains out because they've got everything they want on the outside and nothing of any substance or value on the inside and I understand that and I understand that and I'm the guy I'm restless I'm irritable I'm discontent and what happens to me is no matter how tremendous my resolve is I'm never going to pick that stuff up again desolation and this vacancy inside of me will gradually wear away that resolve until one day in the face of overwhelming experience and knowledge that the worst possible thing I could ever do in my life is to just pick up a drink or any kind of chemical a key turns in my head and all of a sudden it seems to make perfect sense again I didn't do that once or twice I did that over and over and over again and I'm in this halfway house in Pennsylvania playing in my second to last drunk and I don't know it's my second to last drunk and I pull up this guy that I've been in detox with because I thought he was back in the past come on down here I found this rock and roll bar with incredible bands and just awesome women he says I got some tie stick he says man come on down I said yeah you bet I'm over ready I'm sober about ten months or so at this time I'm over ready to party because I've had about as much restless irritable and discontent as I can take I've had about as much as I can stand and I don't want to hurt nobody I don't want to burn my life to the ground man I just I just want to have a good time for a day or two I mean I've been a pretty good sport up to now and so I plan this run and I get this weekend pass out of this joint and I'm going to go down there I'm going to party all Friday night all day Saturday late Saturday night shut her down so I can get back to the halfway house so I don't lose a man to me see cause I'm still the victim of a delusion and the delusion is under the right set of circumstances I can control and enjoy my drinking and what that means is I think I'm going to jump start the party and get back to the way it was when I was 18 years old and that I'm going to be able to control it enough to keep the damage down to something I can live with I remember I went to that bar with that guy and I'll tell you the best part of that run was the hour or so on the way to getting high the anticipation was amazing and then I get to the bar and I'm ordering double shots 100 proof with a beer back cause if you only got a weekend you got to get downtown now right and I'm trying to jump start the party cause man I want to go down there's guys down here that are shooting pool and laughing and having a good time and I'm throwing down these double shots trying to jump start the party but it don't jump start all that's jump started inside me is a phenomenon of craving now I'm just frantically throwing another one down hoping against hope that I'm going to be able to come out and play and have some fun but it ain't I'm starting to feel sorry for myself I'm starting to sink into a deep depression I'm sitting there and I'm really feeling horrible as I watch everybody in the bar having a good time and wondering what's wrong with me because I could remember when I was all about that I could remember when I was having that fun I could remember when alcohol did the magic for me that it won't do no more it's breaking my heart and the window opened the curtain opened and I could see the truth this is reality this is not the fantasies of partying like the good old days there's a seat in there where Jack Nicholson is walking through this waiting room in this psychiatrist's office everybody in there is a mope everybody in there is depressed everybody is doing poorly and he stops and gets everybody's attention and he says to him what if this is as good as it gets exactly how I felt when the curtain opened I could see the truth I could drink myself to death this is depressing this is self-pitying and this is a loneliness that is awful this is the loneliness at 4 o'clock in the morning you're trying to call up ex-girlfriends lonely this is that you're calling the helpline to have somebody to talk to you're calling AA for God's sake just because they'll answer the phone this is it's a pathetic pathetic way to live I never did make it back to that halfway house Monday morning I came to in a county jail facing two years in a state penitentiary for a hit and run DUI in a stolen car. In my own defense, I didn't really steal the car, but my friend was passed out, and passed out people cannot refuse to loan you their car. And I'd run out of booze, and I'm the kind of guy, if I'm still conscious, I ain't done drinking, so I had to borrow this guy's car and a little bit of money to go out and get some more to put myself to sleep. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in this county jail, I hope I never forget the feeling that I had when they offered me a phone call, and I realized there was no one to call. And I don't know how that happens to a guy who had had some amazing girlfriends, a guy who had a mother and father that would have done anything to help me, a guy who had a little sister who I was her hero, a guy who had a pack of friends that we were like this. How does that happen to a guy like me? Except alcoholism gradually rubs away everything decent in your life, slowly, tediously, until it gets you exactly where it wants you, all alone. And I understand why people commit suicide behind this deal. Because you get in a trap you can't spring. You can't get no more relief or fun, you can't jumpstart the party, and yet, abstinence is just too much. I remember asking, in this period that halfway, I was asking an old-timer one time, I was so depressed and bored and lonely, I said to him, I said to him, I said, what do you guys do in AA for? He says, he gets a big smile, he says, oh, we go to a lot of meetings. I thought, oh, do anything else? He says, oh, yeah, twice a year we've got an AA dance. You ever been to an AA dance with untreated alcoholism? Oh, my God, do you remember when I used to drink quick? Ow, it's all of those people in AA, and then there's you. It's horrible. Imagine life without good news and bad news. The good news, well, thousands of these stupid meetings, I'd stay sober the rest of my life, and the bad news, I'm gonna live a long time, because I can't imagine life without something, really. So I go before a judge who sentences me to two years in the state penitentiary, cuts me a break, says, if you get in, go to this place called the R-Cal, it's not a treatment center, none of the treatment centers will take me anymore, I've been in all of them, I've burned them all out. It's the only place left, it's the bottom of the food chain for treatment. It's a place down on Skid Row on the north side of Pittsburgh that houses about 200 guys like me, homeless guys or guys out of prison. It's run by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the judge says, you go in there, you stay a year, get good UAs, good PO report, make the restitution, you'll come back in front of me, we'll reduce this down to a misdemeanor, and you're good. But if you can't do the year in there and get the good results, it's a felony, you're gonna do two years in a state penitentiary. So I go into this R-Cal's with a determination not to drink. This time, I really, really mean it. Picking up your mind once and for all, this time for sure, was enough to overcome alcoholism. That would have been my sobriety date. Because you couldn't make up your mind any more than I did. That I'll never touch that stuff again as I did at that point. As a matter of fact, I bet you there's a lot of people in this room that have had points in their life where they swore to themselves and meant to touch that stuff again, and you did. That's called alcoholism. The problem with alcoholism, we ask ourselves the wrong questions. You know, it's like, well, if I don't work the steps and don't get a sponsor, don't do AA. The question is if I'll drink again. The question's not if. The question becomes when. It's an absolute inevitability. And it was an inevitability for me because lack of power is my dilemma. The most incredible resolve to not drink is of no avail for a guy like me. This place, and I hung out as long as I could. I just, I toughed it out. I got like a mule in a hailstorm, just all those emotions and loneliness and low-level depression. I just took it, and week in and week out, and month in and month out until I was just up to here with being abstinence. And the sad thing about it is I know there's no more relief in the bag and the bottle. But my emotions are putting the screws to me, and I don't know what else to do, and I've got to feel different than this. And so I try the frantic, futile attempt again to jumpstart the party, and it don't jumpstart. And I start feeling sorry for myself, and I'm sick, and I'm pathetic. So with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose, I go to a bridge, and I go there to take my own life. I want to kill myself. I'm not a suicidal guy. I just can't do this no more. And I'm not a suicidal guy, but you put me in a trap I can't spring. You put me in a place where drinking is depressing and pathetic and lousy. And not drinking is depressing, pathetic, and lonely. Suicide starts looking like a good deal to a guy like me. That's exactly where I am. I'm on that bridge, and I'm getting ready to leap and end it all, and I'm a coward. I can't do it. And I break down and start sobbing, and I smash my hand up, hitting it on this piece of metal on that bridge, cursing myself for being a weakling. And little did I know that I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die. And little did I know that within a few days, I would end up 2,500 miles away in a detox in Las Vegas, Nevada. Little did I know that something was going to happen to me that starts on the inside. I ended up in this detox, and they cleaned me up, and they got me away from seizures and all that stuff. And they got me some clothes, because I had no clothes. Because the clothes I was in, they were... He couldn't... He couldn't wear them. They were awful. I mean, they had human waste in them, and I mean, they were just terrible. They got me some clothes, and I started going to these AA meetings in an institution, in this treatment center. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous brought meetings in there. I never suspected that the people I met in AA when I was in institutions were the cream of the crop. I never suspected that, because I didn't get it. You know, to me, it seemed like they were the people that didn't have... I didn't know that those were the people that really had bought the whole package, that understood the primary purpose, and that they existed to give away what they had found. These were the people who had bought the whole package. I sat in those meetings, and for the first time in seven and a half years, something happened to me. I sat there, and as people shared, I remember my first sponsor sharing his story, but I remember sitting there, and I was nodding my head, and I'm thinking to myself, my God, I'm like this guy. I drank like that. I failed like that. I got sick like that. I ruined my life like that, and it was an amazing experience, and it was funny how through seven and a half years of sitting in meetings, I never connected with anybody, because there was too much of me between me and you. I couldn't stop judging you. I couldn't listen to you. This time, I guess I got just enough of me beaten out of me to be able to hear you, and I started to hear this guy, and I watched him, and he came in there a couple times a week, and this is a guy who'd been a homeless guy who had caught freight trains around the country running from the law, and he drove a brand new Cadillac, and he lived in a huge house up on the hill with tennis courts, and it seemed impossible to me. How do you get from there to there? You can't. Nobody died and left him any money. It was like he got lucky or something, and more important than that, he had something that I couldn't understand. He was happy and sober at the same time, and he laughed a lot, and he had that look in his eyes like he really was having a good time sober, and I can't imagine that. I wanted what he had, and I asked him to be my sponsor, and I started following him, and I started following him around, and I eventually started getting into the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and my life started to change. When I was new, I was insane. If you stop drinking, it doesn't shut this off. Matter of fact, if you're like me and you stop drinking, this gets a little noisier, and if you stop drinking, this discomfort in here gets a little more acute, because my alcoholism becomes more painful in abstinence. And so I'm going to 15 and 20 meetings a week as if I'm trying to outrun my alcoholism, and I suffer from depression. I suffer from bouts of anxiety. Mornings where I wake up afraid, like I don't even know what I'm afraid of, but I don't want to get out of bed. But I make myself get out of bed. I get down on my knees. I pray to a God I don't even know if it exists. I'm just doing what the people in AA told me to do. I go to meetings. I go to two, three meetings a day. I'm calling myself. I'm a sponsor, and I'm starting to have moments. I was new, said to me, he said, I was sober maybe five weeks, I guess. He said, I want you to do something. He said, I want you to sit in the meetings. Now that you've stopped raising your hand for 30 days, I want you to look for the guys that are still raising their hand. I want you to look in their eyes when they raise their hand until you connect with a guy that looks like he feels exactly like you felt when you were new. And he's your guy. And you go up to that guy, and you welcome him to Alcoholics Anonymous, and you let him know how you felt. And he said to me, and this is where he hooked me, he said, you know something? You might be the only one in the room that the rawness of that experience of coming to AA and getting sober is close enough to you that you may be the only one that can let this guy know he's not alone. And I started doing that, and I started feeling like I was a part of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I tell you, I discovered something that's convoluted but true. We get what we give here. You want to feel like you're a part of AA? Try to help other people to feel like they're a part of AA, and a funny thing will happen. You'll start to feel like you're a part of AA. Contrary to the natural approach of a self-centered person. Because self-centered people are childish by nature. And I'm the kind of guy that I want it to come to me. It's like I have this attitude of a guy freezing to death in a log cabin in Canada in the middle of the winter, and he says to himself, well, I'm not going to put any wood in that fireplace until I get a fire first. And that's my attitude. I want to get the result. I want to work the promises and hope the steps come true. Right? I don't want to work the steps and hope the promises come true. I want to work the promises. I want the results first, and if I like them and they meet my standards, then maybe I'll do some of that stuff you guys do in AA. In 1978, I started following directions from a sponsor. Little things that didn't make sense to me, like praying to a God I don't even believe in. And I discovered that it wasn't that I didn't believe in God, I was afraid of Him. I was afraid of Him. Prejudices that I developed somewhere along the way. And I don't know that they're prejudices. They're vague notions and opinions and judgments about this world and about anything that might be spiritual. And one of them came from my childhood. I had this vision that people on AA tell me I've got to find God. Well, I don't know if I want to find God. Because I think that God exists somewhere remote and distant, disconnected from me, and He exists to judge me. And He can see in the dark, which is not good for a guy like me. And He can read my mind, which is hideous, because I'm always thinking stuff I ain't supposed to be thinking. Matter of fact, I don't even have to do it, and they told me, the Catholic school told me if you just think about doing it, it's the same as doing it. Well, I'm always thinking stuff I'm not supposed to think. I could just walk by a magazine rack, see a couple of magazine covers, and rack up about 30 million years worth of stuff. I could spend years in purgatory just for thinking stuff. I haven't even got a chance to do nothing yet, I'm just thinking about it, right? I'm just that kind of guy. So I've got all these prejudices towards God, and the people in Alcoholics Anonymous helped me to dismantle those and set them aside, and they encouraged me to take actions that kind of work on it. It's like a working hypothesis, and they'd say things to me like, well, you don't know if there's a God or not. That's right, I don't. Well, let's act as if. And let's see what happens. And that's a working hypothesis, really. And scientists do that all the time. They don't know if there's really neutrons. But they will conduct certain experiments that, with the supposition that those things exist, and if the experiments turn out a certain way, then it proves conclusively that they exist. And so I started doing that in my own life. I started acting as if. as if there was a power greater than myself, and some funny stuff started to happen. I started to have some good luck. I was in two years in a state penitentiary. I'm sober about six weeks, and it's haunting me. You know, when I say haunting me, it's that you can't stop thinking about it. You've got that anxiety in the pit of your stomach. It feels like a cold wind blowing right through you, and I can't stop thinking about it. So I go to this old-timer in AA, and I start telling him about it, and I said, man, I don't know what to do, and he says, I'll tell you what to do. He says, you've got to contact the courts and your PO, tell them where you're living, and offer to go back there and do the two years at your own expense at any tackle in time they want to give you for splitting. And I'm looking at this guy thinking, what? Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? Hey, I'm sober now. Isn't this good? I'm going to meetings. He says, listen, kid, you have to do this. I said, no, what are you talking about? I said, no, I'm sober. I said, no, I don't jail well. I do not jail well. He says, listen, you want to die? He says, you want to die of alcoholism? No. He says, you want to stay sober? Well, yes. He says, all right, listen, how long do you think you're going to be able to go? Looking over your shoulder, cop goes down the street, you just kind of seize up inside. How long are you going to be able to go where you can't use a social security number? You're going to have to only work jobs where they pay you under the table. And you can never let them know who you are. How long are you going to go like that, kid, before the anxiety of living like that is going to force you to drink something or take something? How long are you going to go? And I knew he was telling me the truth. And I didn't want to hear it, but I knew. You know, you know, when you hear the truth, you know it. And they say the truth will set you free, but I'll tell you, it can ruin your day first, man. I'm telling you. And I knew this guy's on the money. I knew if I don't, if I don't face this, I'm going to die. So I said, what do I do? And he told me what to do. He said, I'll tell you. He said, write a letter to your PO. Tell him where you live. Give me the address of the half-glass. I said, no, can't I just kind of sidestep? He says, tell him where you live. He says, no BS here. Tell him where you live. Tell him that you're back in AA again and that you're willing to come back there and do the two years and anything else he wants you to do, you will do anything. To get free of this and put it behind you. He wrote the letter and he said, and he went after, he's telling me, he says, oh, tell him in the letter that you'll call him. Give him 10 days. Give him 10 days to have gotten the letter, read it, thought about it. Tell him you'll call him. Pick a day, 10 days out. Pick the time. Tell him you'll call him a certain time and a certain day, 10 days out. I picked the day. I remember taking that letter down to the mailbox and dropping it in there. And the minute I dropped down in that, I'm thinking, what have I done? What am I listening to this guy for? He's never even been to prison. Oh my, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. I'm ready to bolt. I'm going to leave town. I'm going to go to California. I'm going to hide on Venice Beach down there. They'll never find me. And this guy says to me as I'm back at the halfway house trying to figure out what I'm going to do, he says, you can't run, kid. He says, you'll drink again. I said to him, but I don't want to. I said, I don't want to. I said, I don't want to. I said, I don't want to. I said, I don't want to. I said, I don't want to. I said, I don't want to do the two years. He says, listen, from my experience, I don't think God's going to have you do the two years in prison unless there's somebody in there He wants you to help. And I thought, what kind of crap is that? I don't want to help nobody in there. The longest ten days of my life, every day I felt this horrible, horrible feeling, which I know today is self-centered fear. The day came and the time came and I made that phone call. I was shaking inside. This woman answers the phone. She says, Mr. Darrell, he's expecting you. Put me right through. He gets on the phone. He says, I've talked to my supervisor. We've talked to the courts. You don't have to come back and do the two years. He says, but here's what you have to do. And he had a whole list of stuff. I had to make the restitution. I had to have my case transferred to Nevada. I had to go to these DUI classes. I had to report to a guy once a week. But it was everything I could do. And he says to me, if you do all that, you don't get any money. You don't get any money. You don't get any money. You don't get any more trouble. It'll remain a misdemeanor. But if you screw up another time, kid, it's going to be a felony and you're done. Everything he told me I had to do, I could do. And I could do it easily. And I remember walking away from that phone booth with a feeling inside of me that was better than anything I've ever smoked or ever drank. A feeling of freedom. There was just a taste, just a little taste of what I was going to get later on in these steps. And it was like a postcard from God. Dear Bob, we got your back. I had an experience with a God I don't even believe in. And I didn't have one or two experiences. I had started to have an endless series of experiences like that. And I guess I came to believe the only way a guy like me could. I can't believe something because you tell me. I'm just not wired that way. I'm too much of a skeptic. I'm too much of a skeptic. I'm too much of a skeptic. It had to be real for me. And it started to become realer and realer as only as a result of changing my attitude and taking certain actions I didn't even believe in. You know, I have several friends that are pilots that have their own planes and they talk about attitude. And attitude, if you're a pilot, means something different to what you think it means. Your attitude is your angle of approach. You've got a bad attitude in the plane, you're going to land in the mud. You're going to land in the mud. So you adjust your attitude so you can land safely on the runway. And I've got a bad attitude so I keep turning my life to crap over and over and over and over again. And I can't see it. But anybody that's watched, that watched me the last two years I was out there, and maybe anybody that's watched you, would easily, easily come to the conclusion, whoever you are, whoever's making decisions for this guy, is out to kill him. And yet, I don't get that. I don't see that the common denominator in my demise, in my burning my life to the ground over and over and over again, is that I'm the guy that's at the helm of my own ship. I'm the guy. And I started to relinquish my hands from the wheel. Very slowly. Because I'm a frightened guy. And when I'm scared, I'm scared. And then, I'll be there for a little while, that speed, which I use it as a little action on me. And when that happens. And then when everything will change, then maybe that's when theunching. And then, I'll get posting where ever the titles go. And then when it doesn't work out. And if that happens, then that will be the you know what I mean. I later go through all. Then I think about I'm out of here. And then I, on the other foot, and I get prep understand Karate righteousness breath, 58 won, and I've got to do it again And ultimately surrendering my defenses and defense mechanisms in steps 6 and 7. And then cementing that in place by going and patching up the broken relationships and fixing it the best I could. Paying back the money. Facing the people that I thought were going to beat me up. Doing all of that. What I discovered is there is a power. There is a power in this universe that waits to help you. And the problem is for most of us there is too much of me between me and that power. I am blocked. As I started to unblock myself and help others and clean up the wreckage of my past I started to actualize this experience. I was over in England two years ago with a whole bunch of guys in AA. And we were touring around and we had a great time. The streets of London, in parts of London the streets have gas lamps rather than... Rather than electric street lights. And years ago, before they had the electric starters on those gas lamps they were started, they were lit every night by a guy whose job it was to go up and down the streets of London with a key. He'd turn the gas on, he had a long pole with a flame on the end and he'd light that gas lamp. It was called a lamp lighter. And back in those days you could climb up to the top of the highest building in London and look out over that city. No matter how hard you looked, you couldn't see, you couldn't see where that lamp lighter was. But you could always see where he'd been. I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the center of my own life. A life that has been started to redeem itself. At two and three years sober and I could not see where God was. But man could I see where he'd been. And I think that... And more distinctly than seeing where he'd been in my life, I could see where he'd been in the lives of the guys who got sober after me. Because I started coming into places like this and trying to be helpful. And the first two months of my sobriety I've gone to meetings like this non-stop for over twice a week for over 28 years. And so in my first couple of years of sobriety, I saw the guys that had buried themselves in debt to such a degree that they're not going to live long enough to get out. And then two and a half years later they're buying their first home. I saw the guys that will never see their children again because of the restraining orders. And they've done so much damage. And they're at their meeting taking their third year cake and their kids are with them. And more importantly the lights on in their eyes. I saw men and women who were so depressed that they should be on medication for the rest of their life. And two or three years later you see them in the back of the meeting with two or three people they sponsor. And they've taken nothing. And they're vital and alive. And they've been enthusiastic about being here on this planet. And I started to see the hand of something in their life. You can't get from where they were to where they are. And you can't get from where I was to where I am. And I think that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to do. It's designed to create the impossible. To take a guy like me who can't really imagine life on the long term without something. And change me slowly into the guy that slips right into this life. The way I slipped into it when I was 17, 18 years old. And I just had about a half a pint of rum and I'm with my guys. And I'm connected and I'm a part of. If Alcoholics Anonymous will not do that for you, you probably won't stay here. You'll be sober. And I'll tell you something, it won't do that for you just going to meetings. There's a program of recovery in our book that's designed to do exactly that. It's designed to really give you one promise. Even though there's a lot of promises in the big book and a lot of the action steps, three and five and nine and ten. But it's really, there's one promise that's paramount in AA. I think it's the only promise worth anything. And it's read at every meeting and most people don't hear it. Having had a spiritual awakening as the single most only result of these steps. I think that that's what happens. I think that that's what has to happen. I think that I got a spiritual awakening from five shots of tequila at one time in my life. A guy whose spirit was sick and depressed and did not fit and felt like it was dying could have five shots of tequila at one time and it would vitalize my spirit. And I would be alive and awake and present and right here. And I could hear the music, I could talk to the people, I could listen to you, I was a part of, I was connected. And Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to that end. It's about seven, I'll tell you one little quick story and I'll end with something and that'll be it. I told you I was seven and a half years as a relapser. I was a couple of years sober. A woman asked me, she said, you were in and out of AA all those years, what happened to you? What was the difference? Was the last run the worst run you've ever been on? And it wasn't. It really wasn't the worst run. I had won about three, about two years prior to that was horrific. I mean it was a nightmare. This is a nightmare. This one wasn't dramatically bad. It was just, it was just awful enough that it was just another straw in the camel's back. You know, it was just, it wasn't the worst drunk. And she said, well, what made the difference? What happened to you that brought you to the table where you're finally willing to buy the whole package where you never were able to do that before? What brought you to the point where you got a sponsor? You made commitments to Alcoholics Anonymous. You tried to start working those steps. What brought you to that point? And I told her something and it happened to me. This brand is pretty new in AA. You know, I came off the streets so I didn't have any clothes to wear. I didn't have any cigarettes. I didn't have a ride. I didn't have a driver's license. People in AA gave me rides to meetings. They gave me cigarettes. They gave me their old used clothes to wear. And one day a guy who had given me a bunch of clothes also gave me some old books. He was cleaning out his books he'd already read. I'm sitting reading one day this novel. Now this is not a recovery book. It's just a novel. And I read a passage in that novel that blew my mind. It told me exactly what had happened to me. What had brought me to the table in AA. And it wasn't anything that I would have imagined in all the years I was in and out. I think I had the great delusion that I'll hit the ultimate bottom and that'll snap me into sobriety. My last run was not the ultimate bottom. And I read this story. And in this story is an account of scientists doing experiments on the human brain. And they discovered that in the human brain is a little part called it had a long Latin name. But in the book they called it the pleasure center. It's the part of the brain that allows you to experience the euphoria from drugs and alcohol. It's where you get high. So what these scientists did is they took these laboratory rats and they put two tiny wire filaments into the pleasure center of the rat's brain and they would pass a mild electric charge through those wires just enough to stimulate the pleasure center. And what would happen is the rat would get high. So what they did is they hooked up the juice to a pedal in the rat's cage. And the rat would learn he could hit the pedal and get high. So the rat would just lay on the damn pedal. I mean he don't eat, he don't drink water, he don't even have sex no more because he's just partying hitting that pedal, right? Now every alcoholic gets that. I can tell by the glazed look in some of your eyes there's some rats in this room. And these rats would hit that pedal until they died. Usually at dehydration because they're not even drinking water. They're just hitting that pedal. That's not what blew my mind. What blew my mind is that these scientists would come along and they'd get these rats that were just about dead from hitting that pedal. And they'd turn the juice off. And now the rat comes back and he hits the pedal. But nothing happens. And he hits it again and nothing happens. And again and again and again. And after countless futile attempts he realizes the truth. And the truth is that the party's over. The truth is there's no more juice. And when he gets that instead of going back to being a rat he curls up in a ball and lays on the floor of the cage to die. Because without the juice there's nothing to live for. I'm reading this and I'm weeping because I know I am that damn rat. I know that I came to Alcoholics Anonymous not for any other reason except that I felt exactly like that rat and I had nowhere to go. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I could not jumpstart the party. The juice is gone and I can't live without it. And I am stuck. Abstinence is such a depressing place that I will take my own life eventually if this is all there is. And drunkenness is such a depressing, pathetic place that I will take my own life if that's all there is. That something must change and that's what brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous. An absolute lack of alternatives. And I'll tell you something that I know like I know I'm standing here 28 years later at Alcoholics Anonymous. But Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to do one thing and one thing only. And it's not designed to get you to quit drinking. Want to quit drinking? Hit a cop. You'll quit drinking for a little while. Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to turn the juice back on. The single thing it's designed for is to awaken something inside you that once was awoken with five shots of tequila where you were alive and vital and you could see the big picture and you were connected and you were a part of. Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to turn the juice back on. 17 years ago I was up in Northern California at an AA event and I'm getting ready to get on the plane and a guy's showing me around. And he takes me to this forest where they had these trees that were 250 feet high, 25-30 feet in diameter. I'd never seen anything like it. It was like I was in Jurassic Park or something. These trees are unbelievable. And we're walking around there for a while and we get in the guy's truck and we're driving cross country to see some other stuff and we're driving by these fields and meadows and he says to me, he says, do you notice how you won't see a 300-foot tree all by itself out in the middle of the field? I said, yeah. He says, you know why that is? I said, no. Why is that? He said, well, it is their nature to aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that they literally outgrow their roots capacity to support themselves and they will literally eventually topple over on their own aspired magnificence. He said what must happen in God's plan is that they must grow up in community and what happens is they literally intertwine and interweave their roots into a net below the floor of the forest and literally support, feed and hold each other up and that allows them to grow into their nature. And I thought to myself, oh my God, that's exactly what happened to me. There has been a defect within me as far back as I can remember and it's a dissatisfaction. It's a hunger and a thirst to take bigger bites out of life, to want more and this defect that is part of my nature almost destroyed me alone out there. And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I intertwined the foundation of my life with people I sponsor and a sponsor in a home group and some accountability and started working those steps and you've allowed me to grow into my nature. I'm the guy that takes big bites out of life. It doesn't hurt me today. It always hurt me before. Thank you for my life. Thank you.