Applying the Working Hypothesis of AA to a Broken Life – Bob D.

Great introduction, Jerry. Could you put that in writing? We'll get it notarized. I'm Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic and I am sober and free of all medications since October 31st, 1978. And that's as a result of very is my ability to remain sponsorable and very principled sponsorship. a process outlined in a book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous and being encouraged to make the primary purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous my very own. That my life is about that helping drunks. I have a good life as a result. I'd like to welcome anybody that's new. Glad you're here. I'm sure that the things I just talked about are probably not a program of attraction. Probably to have some guy tell you what to do and devote your life to helping people you don't even like and following something in a book that was written in the 30s, it probably seems like creepy stuff. And if you're like me, you probably suspect that you need more advanced, deeper intellectual answers to alcoholism than these simple little actions of forgetting yourself and helping others and going to meetings and saying yes to commitments and developing a relationship with a God that you suspect has been against you, if he exists. None of this looks like something that would work. And Alcoholics Anonymous is like that to the alcoholic mind. I've talked to hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of new people over the years. I do a lot of meetings and detoxes where I meet the people that are brand new. And I've never, I've not met one, not one, that's ever sat in the hopelessness of recently burning their life to the ground that looked at Alcoholics Anonymous and thought to themselves that would work nobody says that I mean we don't even know that AA works until after we've done it for a while and and that's so if you're new here I encourage you to suspend all your opinions and your beliefs and your perception of Alcoholics Anonymous and take some of these actions and see what happens. Alcoholics Anonymous is presented to guys like me and I suspect people like you as a working hypothesis. We're not trying to tell you definitely that AA will work, we're trying to tell you do what we do and find out for yourself. And it's sometimes scientists will come up with a theorem that is unproved and they so they enter into a working hypothesis what their working hypothesis is we're going to take actions and position certain things in the universe as if this hypothesis is a possibility and if we do this properly then we will know because if it's not and it's a bogus, erroneous theorem, we'll discover that. But if it works, then we create an experiential reality that something works that we didn't know worked. And Alcoholics Anonymous is much like that. And what happened to me in 1978 is I got to that place that Chris Christopherson talked about in the song that he wrote It was made famous by Janis Joplin, Bobby McGee. And there's a line in there that says, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. And it's almost as if everything that got between me and AA had to be chipped away. All my prejudices, all my feelings of self-reliance, all my intellectual snobbishness, all my ability to be offended by things I didn't agree with. All of it had to fall by the wayside so that I can get to a place that the Buddhists refer to as the place of enlightenment where you know the most important thing you'd ever know and this is exactly what I knew in detox in 1978. I knew I didn't know and that is the most amazing and yet often painful place it feels like everything the I know Bob has been crushed and yet from that I was able to ask a man to sponsor me from that I was unable to take some directions that I wouldn't have ever taken I was facing two years in prison when he told me to write my PO and offer to go back to Pennsylvania and do the two years. Let me tell you something. There was not a cell in my body that thought that was a good idea, but yet I knew I didn't know, and I was at that place where what do I got to lose? You know, I was destroying myself on my own ideas. I was finally suspect, deeply suspect of my own perception and my own opinions and what I think I should do and what I think i need because i've been chasing those i've Been chasing those rabbits down those holes for years And it keeps getting worse that part they read at the beginning of the meeting was i lived that The progression of the disease when it says over any considerable period of time we get worse never better and it was almost as if while in in the short periods of abstinence and i came to my first meeting in 71 didn't get sober to 78 and i had various uh lengths of sobriety nothing nothing really longevity i never i don't never made a year but i get that start bumping up close to a year and and then i drink again all right all right not always start drinking right away i mean so one time i got two bottles of nyquil i didn't have a cold but i sensed one coming you know and i just kicked that thing right off you know inside me that allergy you know and i uh i'm getting worse and it's almost as if i'm getting worse while i'm sober because when i i go back out drinking again it's not it's not like i don't quite pick up where i left off i'm a little more demoralized my drinking is a little more pathetic you know it's just in the getting sober the next time in is a little more difficult abstinence is a Little more uncomfortable my ego and my head is spinning a little louder and a little More you know crazy about things and i live the progression of the disease of alcoholism, which is it's frightening when you think about it because if it's true to form that would imply that over the last almost 42 years the disease has been progressing within me and if I let it get its foot in the door if I stopped the vigilance that Alcoholics Anonymous has provided me to maintain my spiritual condition enough, not perfectly, but enough that I, the drinking doesn't, the alcohol doesn't look like medicine anymore. If I don't do that and I pick up a drink, my mind reels to think where would I be if the diseases progressed for almost 42 years? Because in 1978, after relapsing and living the progression of the disease for almost seven years, I got to a place of anguish that was unbearable. And I got into a placeof hopelessness that there was not any vision of hope anywhere. And this is not temporary hopelessness. This is hopelessness that streams into infinity because I knew something that made life hopeless. I knew that no matter what I smoked or what I drank, what I did, that I cannot recapture those great moments of getting high like that I had when it lit me up when I was 18, 17, 20 years old. When alcohol set me free. And I'll tell you something, when you're locked up inside yourself and you're in late stage alcoholism and drinking has turned on you and now I drink in depression and I'm stuck in this lonely, pathetic, depressed state when i'm drinking and i drink and i cry and i drink and I call people on the phone at three in the morning so lonely when you're living that um and yet and you get sober intermittently and sobriety is not any better not really I mean you know if you're like me I get I'm in treatment and I get hope I get hope when I go back to drinking I'm dying from hope and the hope when I get sober is well, I'm going to go to school I'm gonna get a girl I'm gotta get a good job I'm like one of those engines that won't turn over because lack of power is my dilemma I ain't going to do nothing except get drunk because I don't have the power to live and that's one of the things the book says When it says lack of power is our dilemma, they're not talking about the power to not drink. I mean that's a byproduct of a spiritual awakening. I don't have the power To live. I don' t have the Power to come out and play. I don''t have thepower to get any kind Of sense of freedom in my life. I don ''t have The power to fit. I don't have the power to ward off this depression, these depressions and this anxiety that at times I would get worried about stuff to the point where I would feel like I was having a nervous breakdown. And the crazy thing about that is if you ask me, well, what is wrong, Bob? I don't know. It's not anything in particular. It's like everything is wrong. It's Not That Anything's Wrong. It's Like Nothing's Right. It's When I Look at the Future, I Don't See Anything Hopeful. I've Never Checked My Future and Came Away Joyous. You Know What I Mean? I've Got a Mind that's Like a Problem-Seeking Missile. And All It Does Is Threat Assessments. So When I look at the future, I Don'T See, oh, my life's going to be good. I don't see that. When I look at you, I don' t think, oh, you're a friendly kind of guy. I think you're judging me. You know, I see the negative. I'm a negative seeker and I don''t know it because my ego has convinced me that everything I perceive and believe and all my opinions are right. And if you're not like that God bless you, but it's tough being like that because people, well-intentioned counselors, people in AA, they'll always try to talk me off the ledge and they always try to imply that, no, it's not like that at all. It's not bad. You just think it's bad. It's if things are going to be all right. And you know, if you're like me, the minute they start down that road, it becomes very apparent that these people are very stupid. They're just stupid. They can't see. I would have to lose 30 IQ points To see life like they see it They're just not very bright They don't have the intelligence To see the problems in the world So clearly as I do And so I get sober And I don't do well I don' t do well sober I can't shut my head off I can't change the way I feel. I can not fit anywhere. There is a loneliness about me when I get sober. I remember sitting in those AA meetings that I would be made to go to every time I get sober in an institution, whether it is a county jail, detox, treatment center, even the Salvation Army. The AA people would come in there. every time I go to an evening, I'm sitting in those meetings and I just I don't fit there and I came to an erroneous conclusion that was backed up by a whole bunch of other stuff and the erroneious conclusion is whatever's wrong with me for God's sakes is not the same thing that's wrong with you because I listened to you and I watched you and you guys quit drinking and became wonderful i mean i hated you for it but you were one i mean your life worked and great relationships i'd hear your miracle stories and then they all were grateful and oh my god i just i just sit there and feel like i'd feel so depressed because my life's a piece of crap and now i have to sit and have my nose rubbed in how wonderful you are you know it was just creepy to me but I didn't know that what I was doing is something that newcomers have been doing for ages. I was staring obsessively because my consciousness is centered on me. I'm self-centered. I'm staring obsessively at my feelings and my fears and my anxieties and my chronic dissatisfaction. satisfaction. And at the same time, comparing it to how you seem to be with a program of recovery in your life. And I'm coming up so short and I knew that I'm not really like you. And I had other things I would tell myself. I mean, if I'm an alcoholic, I'm not an alcoholic like you, I must be a special kind of alcoholic, like an alcoholic with emotional and mental disorders. I have a special kind of alcohol. And I had other things to point out. I mean, I did a lot of drugs. Like you put, see, my case is different. You don't understand me. I was on methadone. You don'T understand me, I didn't heroin. You DON'T understand, I DID a lot OF pills. You DON' t understand, I SMOKED pot for a lot Of years. You DON't understand ME. YOU SAY YOU DO. BUT I KNOW. I KNOW I'M DIFFERENT. AND I FELT DIFFICULT. I felt so different all my life that I remember having fantasies about what was wrong with me. And they were crazy. I don't know why, when I'm sober and I'm locked up, like in county jails, I've spent several stints in county jail. No hard time. That's because even though I fancy myself a gangster, the police keep telling me I'm a public nuisance. And I do short little time in county. And in the county jails, often they'll have a library cart that comes up and down the cell blocks. And I'd grab books out there. I remember reading two instances in county jail. One time I was reading this one book. And this character in the book had advanced syphilis. And it went to his brain. And because of that, he would do bizarre things and not remember them. I remember readin' that quote. Ooh. Ooh. he'd have he'd go into almost so withdrawn, almost catatonic states whoa he would he would fly off the handle of people for no reason just in rage and stuff and he'd even go from rage to depression and back and forth and do things he couldn't remember I remember reading that thing man Man, I got late-stage syphilis. It's gone to my brain. It explained a lot of my life. Tried to sell that to a doctor at a treatment center one time. He says, well, you may have syphillis, but we're pretty sure you're alcoholic. One time I read Eric Von Donagut's book, The Chariots of the Gods, and fancied that I was left here by people from another planet. It didn't make perfect sense to me because I didn't even fit with my own family. I remember many, many Christmases at my grandfather's house where the whole family would gather and I would be surrounded by people who, they're my kin. These are people who I know intellectually accept and love me. but there was one poor SOB at that table that didn't fit and it was me now maybe if I'd had a pint of whiskey I not only would have fit I think I'd have been leading them in Christmas carols but sober there's something wrong with me I don't know what it is Silkworth describes it as a state of restless irritable and discontent I think the discontent is the most baffling the irritable is what angst me up until I'm in so much stress and conflict I feel like I want to explode but the most baffled of those three aspects I think is the discontents why I get so much hope I get such hope in my drinking and the drinking has turned on me and then I get sober and I get hope in sobriety like with a relationship or with a good job or something. But surely then I will be, I'll feel better about my life. Maybe I won't have to drink. If I got everything in order, maybe I wouldn't haveと drink. Maybe I'd feel good enough sober. And I spent years just, I didn't want to fix the whole deal. I just want to fixed one end of the equation, just one end. If I could fix the drinking part where I could get it back, where I can I could get high again like I did when I was 18, 20, 19, 20 years old. Oh, my God. If I Could Have Done That, that had been amazing. I'll tell you, if I could have done that, I'd have been if a genie popped out of a bottle and said, Bob, I'm going to let you I'm gonna let you drink and party like you did when you were in your late teens. but you're going to get six months every year drinking like that and then you're gonna have to spend the other six months in jail what do you think Bob six months like that I'd have signed up because that's really all I wanted I chased it and I chased the ghosts of parties past for years and I'd never catch it because once alcohol turns on you, it never turns back. Wilson used a beautiful analogy of a boomerang that takes to such majestic heights and then comes back around and cuts you in the quick. And alcoholism was very much like that in the early days of drinking. It was spectacular. It Was magical. It was freeing. It seemed to solve all the secret unrecognized internal problems that I had that I couldn't live with. It was just extremely uncomfortable. And it solved those problems. And I became obsessed because there was power there. There was power in alcohol that was so spectacular. I mean, when you think about it objectively, you take a lonely depressed, anxious guy like me who's the best he can do is pretend he's okay and you send me into a bar or a club or a party and after five drinks the transformation is spectacular it's unbelievable so no wonder I chased it to, the book says to the gates of insanity or death and I did and it's a baffling disease because I didn't like to drink with people at the end i didn't like to go to bars i mean i sometimes i'd have to when that's the only way i can get drunk but i my idea of a good time and this is not a good time this is a pathetic time but my idea drinking at the inn was get a half gallon or two of vodka or a gallon of richard's wild irish rose and just hole up somewhere and seek oblivion I didn't want to be around people because people break my heart Because in a bar or a club or a party People are drinking and they're laughing They're drinking and They're having a good time I can see how free they are And I can't get that anymore And I'd just rather be by myself and the loneliness of late stage alcoholism is overwhelming it's overwhelming and in 1978 after all those years of relapsing all those years of swearing to myself sometimes tearfully swearing at myself i'm never touching that again because i understand how it's killing me and destroying me i understand that I'm not stupid. And I'd mean it, and then I'd go into this thing called abstinence, and I'd get so uncomfortable. I'd gets so angry and depressed and worried and lonely until I just couldn't take it anymore. And I drank, and I burned my life to the ground again, and it was pathetic. And I drink in depression and loneliness. And I'm in a trap I can't spring because when drinking has become horrible and pathetic, and sobriety is not much better. It feels like I'm doing time, and I ain't no good sober. I get this abnormal reaction to abstinence. I get these abnormal reactions to drinking, and both states are unbearable now. And so I've been ricocheting back and forth by miserable, pathetic drunkenness, the miserable, depressing abstinence, the misery. And I'm ricochiting back and fourth, and I can't do it anymore. And I come to in the park, and i'm sick, and I've Been thrown out of a place And I'm facing prison time And i'm alone And i can't even get high right anymore Or Clancy, one of my favorite things he would talk about is getting to a place where there's no friendly direction. Not even the bottle. There's no hope anywhere. You know, I was dying from hope because I kept having hope that I'm going to be okay if I can do a certain thing sober. Maybe I won't have to drink. Or if I'm drinking, maybe if I threw the right drugs in the mix or if I kept hoping that somehow someday I'll control and enjoy my drinking or somehow someday i'll control and enjoy My abstinence And this hope is killing me and in 1978 all hope was crushed And I couldn't go on I couldn'T go on a doctor told me that I if I kept drinking it'd kill me but it might take five years because I'm a young kid in my 20s can't do it I can't hang anymore I made the decision to kill myself and I couldn't do that either because I was so terrified by the concept of the bridge I was going to jump off of wasn't high enough then I wouldn't die just being painful in a painful state and possibly be paralyzed. I'd probably end up just debilitated staying in some hospital for 50 years. And our book talks about a place that says that before you'll ever come to believe in God, before you're ever going to believe that AA would work for you, before that you'd ever come to believe in your sponsor, You'll come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of your life as you've been living it. Believe that. I lived that. The hopelessness и futility оf chasing parties you can't catch and the misery that you're reaping when you're trying to reap fun is brutal. i know hopeless and i know futility and it says at that point when you then at that spot when you're approached by those in whom the problem had been solved bob there's nothing left except to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools which i didn't know anything about that you know what it meant to me is i'd ask a guy to sponsor me And I do what he said. And I remember my dear friend Clint Hodges used to talk about surrender. He said, I really understood this because I need pictures sometimes to get stuff. And he said, we all know what surrender is. We see it in a hundred war movies when a person is faced with extinction. What do they do? They lay down all their weapons, all their means of defending themselves, and then they sit down and they wait for someone to tell them what to do. and i guess that's i guess i was surrendered by the bottle i didn't know that till i heard chuck chamberlain speak in 1978 late 1978 and he talked about that okay i didn'T get the first time i heard chuck i DIDN'T get much out of it because chuck went over my head i mean you got i think you gotta be sober a little while before chuck makes sense but the first time I didn't get much, but I got that. He said he was surrendered by the bottle and all of a sudden I thought maybe that's why all of the sudden I was willing to get a sponsor and I'm following his directions and I am doing things that I never would have done before and maybe I was surrendered by the bottle. Maybe I had enough of me crushed and kicked out me that I could listen to you. And that was the window, the little window of action that would change my whole life. You know, it doesn't matter how surrendered you are. Harry Thiebaud talks about the amazing recuperative powers in the alcoholic ego. And I'm telling you, it comes back like a bad tumor and it comes back smarter and cleverer and it come back armed with information about the steps and the traditions and it's a weaponized return and you don't know it because it's very clever and what happened to me is that by the time My ego started to come back. I had too much in place. I was tethered. By this time, I had a home group and I had commitments. I had H&I commitments. I was taking meetings into several detoxes and treatment centers and then I'd started the prison. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I had to have a routine of being transparent with my sponsor. I was praying and I was starting to have an experience with God. It wasn't a conscious contact yet, but as a result of taking these actions, I started to experience something in my life. You know, I love the line in We Agnostics when it says God does not make hard terms with those who seek him. And I didn't – I don't even know that I was seeking him so much. I was just following my sponsor's directions and he wanted me to pray every day. And I don' t believe in God but he said it doesn' t matter. He kind of said just do it. And I started praying. And from the moment I started turning my consciousness towards God, it was as if there was some sort of massive shift in the very fabric of my existence and in life itself. And it looked to me like all of a sudden life is becoming accommodating. All of a suddenly things are showing up in my life exactly when I need them and they're exactly what I need. And things started happening to me. And, you know, and I have never, ever been a good luck magnet. But now it's like I'm a good look magnet. and things are going and I'm starting to first I started to suspect that there's something going on here isn't this weird that from the moment I started the prayer I started to get lucky and they kept telling me things like God loves you God wants you to be happy joyous and free there's only one person that doesn't want that Bob for you That's you. And I started the steps, and I had various approaches to the fourth step. It wasn't until I was four years sober that I spent enough time listening to Joe and Charlie, and actually, I took a guy through the fourth step before I'd done it out of the book. I'd gone two fourth steps. I did the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions version, Chapter 4 with the 30-some questions and the seven deadly sins. I did The Life Story in my first year of sobriety with 40 pages of all the things I was held secret and was ashamed of. And then I finally did the one in the book. It was revolutionary to me. It changed my life. It transformed me. because i didn't understand i was suffering in my sobriety with going to 15 meetings a week sometimes and suffering from alcoholism i had service commitments i had more service commitments but i knew but i was still suffering because i i had a two legacy program and i'll tell you you can stay sober a long time on unity and service having a home group being a part of connected with people, and serving Alcoholics Anonymous and doing 12-step work. But I lacked the awakening from the steps. And so my ego was still – it still owned me, and I didn't know it. I love that line in Chapter 5 when Bill says that guys like me, it's not that we just have a problem with selfishness and self-centeredness. He says that we are extreme examples of what self-wants, of wanting, of self-will run riot. It's not a problem. It's extreme. It's off the freaking charts. And yet then he says right behind that, you know, we usually don't think so. The ego has a hard time recognizing the ego. One of the greatest tricks my ego's ever did is either to convince me, divert me from its existence and try to convince me it doesn't exist or to convince me that it's me. Because it talks to me in my head, in my voice. I think it's be. I remember early in sobriety, I had a great unforgettable experience. I was coming apart It just seems, I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. I mean, I was like chicken little, the sky's falling and all these problems. And I grabbed this old timer and I just dumped all this stuff on him. It was all these horrible problems, these depressing problems. And when I was done, he looked at me and he said, you think that you or your mind, you think you're your head, don't you? i looked at him i said well yeah it's my thoughts my mind it's my head he said no no no that's not you and i looked at him and said no he said no you're the idiot that listens to this crap and it was the first time in my life that i thought there might be something more to me than the shatter in my head. It scares the crap out of me and causes me anxiety and conflict and resentments. And so I enter into this process in the fourth step. And you know, just like Harry Thiebaud talks about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego, it came back. And that's why I was suffering. Because I was judgmental i you know i i was four years sober i did my first legitimate fourth step my resentment list was mostly people in aa because i've been watching you you know what i mean i just i just I don't see the good in you isn't that odd what isn't that crazy that you could be 95% just perfect good person i'll see the 5% and ignore the 95 that's good. And I guess that I do that because my ego needs the leverage. It clamors for self-grandizement and significance and control and one-upmanship, and it clamors for that. And so it can't see the good in you because it might make me feel less than. So it looks for the bad in you is if I can pull you down enough, maybe I won't be so pathetic and feel so stained and so wrong. And so I got this long list of people that I resent. My mother and father on there, they were the big ones. You know, I blamed them for everything. When they stopped bailing me out of jail and they stopped helping me And my life even skid, skidded down lower into patheticness and I could have died. But they stopped helping me. I made that, I made everything in my life their fault. And I went back and I connected things to my childhood where they didn't really love me right. And, you know, I just, I looked, I found, I find crap that didn't exist. and i started doing this this resentment inventory and the book says that after you list the first three columns it says are you prepared to look at these from an entirely different angle and then it tells you how to do that in a two-part realization and this was our course and when I started to do that then I started to look at all the things that happened between me and my mother and father through their eyes I was ashamed of what I saw I was ashamed that I could have blamed them for everything but I could see how I broke their heart over and over and over again when I saw it through their eyes i i just i i never felt so wrong about so much and i did the same thing with my exes and the bosses and the police and the friends that i thought had turned on me and you know i had built cases against everyone all the people in aa and the a some of the a resentments were silly they were just when i looked at him i thought oh my god this is so stupid i hated you for what i think you're thinking about me my sponsor says so you're a mind reader are you the ego imagines and then i think i'm right you know and and i was wrong a lot and every time i dismantled a judgment of my ego is what the is what my ego does the best it gets me to climb up onto the throne of judgment in a state of separation and smug superiority hoping that i can look down on the rest of the world when i started to dismantle that every time i every time I saw I was wrong about my mother it was like a notching down and wrong about my dad was a notcing down on my ego and it was it's almost like that scene in the wizard of oz where they throw a bucket of water on the linch and she's screaming, I'm melting! As I got smaller and smaller. Because I was growing by my willingness to be wrong. Nobody grows from being right except the only thing that grows from trying to be right is your ego. But I grow and I become smaller and humbler as a result of my willingness to be wrong, and I'm wrong a lot. I get little things today. You know, I just don't know what it is. It's a pathetic mindset when I still catch my mind seeing the negative. You know? Building the little cases. I think the one difference maybe today is I don't act on that stuff anymore. I try not to. I have a couple of close friends that will vent each other about certain things that we won't say because you know why you don't say, I don't save stuff? Because I don' t want to make amends. So it's better to keep your mouth shut. I think sometimes silence is the source of much wisdom. The book refers to it a little different. It says pause when agitated. That's a new experience, isn't it? I don't know about you. I don' t pause when agitated. I accelerate when agitating. I attack when agitated. But to pause, to take a gentle, quieter, slower approach to life, to be mindful. And when my head starts ringing about what you're doing wrong, to remember, to go back and remember all the times I've been wrong. And is it possible, Bob, that I could be wrong right now? And the possibility is overwhelming. Of course it's possible, Rob. You've been wrong a lot. And I've reduced a lot of conflict in my life by my willingness to consider that I'm wrong under all circumstances. You know, Bill said something in the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions that's brilliant. he gave us a road sign that tells us when i have work to do and he says that it's a spiritual axiom now if you've ever taken geometry an axioma is something that's true under all conditions he says it's the spiritual axiome that when i'm disturbed at all and there's there's types of disturbance that i don't think are disturbance excitement is a type of disturbance. How many bad decisions have I made because I was excited? Ralph has a great saying, he says, isn't it odd how trouble always starts out looking like fun? Isn't that, you get, I get excited. This is going to be great. And so it's a typeof disturbance. Just as resentment's a typodisturbance, anger's a typodisturbence. That when I'm disturbed at all, when there's ripples in my soul that Baba you gotta know something here and the something is that when you're disturbed at all no matter what the reason Bob there's something wrong with you that is the flag to pause and do the five things that it talks about in step 10 and i one of those things is amends and i'll tell you it took me 25 years probably or longer to really connect the dots with why it says promptly i'm one of Those kind of guys okay i've hurt you i get it i know i was wrong i know I hurt you. Now the next thing that's called for after I ask God to remove this thing and discuss it with my sponsor I'm supposed to go make amends. Well, okay. But I don't want to rush. I'm not a guy that likes to rush into amends, especially if they're embarrassing or if they cost me money. I don'T want to Rush into it. So I'll put it off. And I put it off for several reasons, consciously and unconsciously. Like, hey, maybe he'll die. Maybe he'll Die. I won't have to make the image. Maybe the planet will blow up. And I would delay and delay and it took me a lot of years, decades here, before I realized an experiential truth that I suffer in the interim between the moment the resentment is called for and the actualization of it. I suffer In The Middle. And I'll tell you something, I don't like to suffer. When I started waking up to that, it's like I bite the bullet. My ego hates it. My ego hate looking wrong. It hates paying money. It hates embarrassment. It hates telling you how wrong I was. But I like the feeling of freedom. And those of you that have made a bunch of amends, you know, every time you can have a depressed hostage spirit because you're a hostage to your own bad behavior that you have not amended yet. And the minute you make the amends, it's like cutting off a sandbag off of a hot air balloon and you just get that lift. And how many times have I done that after delaying for quite some time and then say to myself, my God, why did I delay? why did I make myself suffer these last couple months I suffered for my ego yeah I guess I did and so Alcoholics Anonymous really is a path to freedom and it's a path to serenity and it'a path to peace and maybe it's really true that AlcoholicsAnonymous is God's vehicle to carry out what he wants. And maybe what he wanted all along is he just wanted us to be happy, joyous, and free. He wanted me to be one with you and one with him. And the Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step process and everything we do in AA, especially sponsoring people and doing service and 12-step work because nothing will diminish my own obsessive self-involvement more than shifting my consciousness away from me and on to someone I can help. It is the path to freedom. I have a purposeful life today. I used to wonder, I'll say this and all through my life, I knew people who just everything worked for them. Everything they touched turned to gold. Their relationships, their friendships, their business things, everything was wonderful for them And I'm killing myself, banging my head against the wall of life, climbing uphill just rigorously and getting nowhere. And these guys, they just, everything they touch works for them. And they all have a confidence about them. They all have arightness. And they're not lost and confused and spinning in their head and not even sure who they are. They seem to know who they are. And they seem to know what their life's about. I asked my daughter one time who's one of the most spiritual people I know, what's your life about Kate? She said, I think it's about helping people. And I know exactly who I am today. My name's Bob Darrow and I am alcoholic. and I know exactly what my life is about. I've been given a divine purpose that has been crafted out of my failure and my defects and everything bad in me has been turned by God's alchemy into everything good in me that makes me useful. And I have a purpose in life that I'm divinely crafted to help people like me. Mark Twain said one time that the two most important days in any human being's life is the day he was born and then the day he realized why. I know why I'm alive, and I know who I am. And that is a freedom that is indescribable. Thank you for listening.