Bob B. at the Sponsorship Conference – 1999

Good evening I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. To the grace of God and the power of AA a banana drinks is the 10th of December 1967 and for that I'm very grateful. This has just been a wonderful experience for us it is my wife is with me which Linda and we don't always get to travel together. So that alone makes it a nicer week. And the fact she's not been to Seattle before, I think kind of enhanced it a little bit. So Randy, who was nice enough to pick us up at the airport, also lent me his automobile. And if you knew how I drove, Randy, you wouldn't have done that. And my wife's appealing to the state to have my license removed. And we went into Seattle, we came in Thursday and went in Thursday afternoon and went downtown and looked around and did a little shopping and had a little snack and came back. And then we went down Friday morning. And it's just your city is so beautiful. It is just astounding to see ocean and mountains and hills and the vitality of your economy. My gosh, there's all these buildings since I've been, I think the last time I was here might have been the International. And, you know, there's a lot of changes that have taken place since then. But we've had a great time, and that's really nice. And we needed this trip, so it's been even nicer yet. This weekend has also been a neat weekend. Michael's talk Friday night I thought was disgusting. No, I... I think it's one of the more powerful talks I've heard in my time in Alcoholics Anonymous there were people who I used to pick and John Harris was one and there were other people who told stories that were so powerfully simple I tend to get in my head and I tend sometimes I get self-centered and uh but you're sitting there i mean i the audience is just full of people who you know checking the counter overdrawn or had a fight with their wife on the way downtown or you know are worried about their jobs or and there are certain talks you hear that are just so powerful it's hard to maintain you know a belief that there's a problem that you could have in your life that you cannot overcome if you apply those principles in your life and it is you know very special. That's not too bad, and she picks husbands very well. Her husband Ted is a favorite person of mine, and I enjoyed being with him. Marilyn I had not heard before, and that was just a terrific talk, you know, wonderfully humorous. When it gets content, I think it's going to be even better. No, the talk was absolutely wonderful. I bought two tapes, by the way, so I didn't get myself out of jail. It was just wonderful. I'd met Marilyn briefly, but that was wonderful. I'll talk about our beauties in a second. I think Jim and I were off the hook. They don't need us, Jim. This is just frosting on the cake. If all you got was what you got with Marilyn and Michael and Arbutus, you got a dump truck full. It was... And I think in a way that's a compliment to you. You know, when you're talking, you talk into something. There's pitching and catching. And there are some places you go to give a talk and you just, there's no reception for the talk. And it's harder to get that. So you don't get the talks you got without having some receptivity, you know, in the audience. And you're to be complimented for that. I met, I know I met Bill, and I'm not sure if I met Arbutus in early 70s in Durham, North Carolina at the Midwinter Conference. And Wesley was there, and Hillary was there. And Bill was there and of course Dave and all those guys. It was really the first conference I ever attended out of town. I guess I attended some regional ones, but this was a big one. I wanted to go see Wesley, and he wasn't going to be in Florida when I was in Florida, so I said, well, why don't you fly through North Carolina on your way to Florida? And I went there, and it was just a trip that I will remember all my life. Bill and Arbutus are two people who, when I think, if I was going to think of one word that I would use, integrity would be a word for both Bill and arbutus. They had more integrity with respect to their program. If you asked a question, you got an answer. You may not always have been happy with the answer. I mean, you have to be careful with the question. No, but life, but the world is short of truth-tellers. Those of us that have long-term sobriety, I think, understand the value of truth tellers. They're in short commodity and they're a little bit scary. There's something so special about the history that you have and the way you share it. There's a power in that, not just to talk. No, you're not a speaker, but there's something that is more powerful than speaking. And I'm grateful that I had a chance to be here to hear it. I started drinking when I was 14 years old, and it was when I was a freshman in high school. I was 4 foot 11, weighed 95 pounds, and I was the second smallest kid in my class. Had a big mouth, always trying to attract attention to myself. In grade school, I got thrown out of school tens of times. I had my desk in the principal's office. Today they would say I'm attention deficit. Then I was just an ass. I was I was just in trouble all the time and not big stuff, just could not keep my mouth shut eating candy all the time you know. I had a bad candy habit in those days. I got to high school and I just you know seemed like everybody else got to school an hour early held a meeting decided what to do for the day and I always missed the meeting it was just so I'd say hell of a meeting wasn't it hoping you talk about it but you know you couldn't get people getting people to talk about the meeting was hard and but that's how I felt I just felt like everybody else knew just a little bit more and seemed a little bit easier for them now of course you know now we know I'm looking at their outsides and I'm looking at my raw meat on the inside and I got to be you know I thought if I acted like you wanted me to act that I'd get to be a member of the in group you and I got to be a marginal member of the in-group. But never quite. I went to a military academy on a college campus. We drank in high school like most people drink in colleges. We had fraternities. My six closest friends, four of us are in Alcoholics Anonymous. One's in Al-Anon. A couple of us almost died of alcohol poisoning in high school. We drank hard and heavy. We're part of those Catholics. I never knew who drank a lot. I don't know if they drank more, but if we're having a contest, I'm going with my group. But my father and his friends were those Second World War guys who came back and were heroes. They just made life look easy. They worked hard, played hard, drank hard, as Arbutus talked about. They built businesses. And in our city, the Catholics, we had just clans. If you had less than seven kids, you either were sterile or had four miscarriages. I mean, everybody I knew had 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 kids. I mean we've had clans, and your families were friends from top to bottom. I still live in that town. I mean it's just wonderful. They say, oh, you're a Bazan. My kids, two generations later, can walk down the street and someone will stop them and say, you are a Bazans. That's a recessive gene if you've ever, you know. There's an ear growing right out of his forehead. you know that I had mine moved you know but but it's a big small town and it's it's it's wonderful but I drank when I found alcohol I had that magical experience that most people had I was you know I had a sense of ease and comfort that I'd never experienced before and I drank my brains out in high school I drank as much as I could I made false ID cards they got arrested for him I was talented it was good skill cracked up a few cars got arrested were drunk and driving once by the time I finished high school I was labeled a problem drinker in my high school and I thought well how could you not be a problem drink if the police catch you underage you're in trouble if my father caught two year in trouble I mean there's no way for an underage person to drink normally and we used to pretend you know we had my parents were always having these cocktail parties and we'd be stealing hooch and you know helping bartender as helpful as we couldn't we knew all the places in town that if you wore a suit and tie, you could get served, you know. And I had a chance to go away to school, figured my drinking become normal. Went away to the University of Notre Dame, my drinking didn't become normal, and I walked out in the middle of my senior year, which was kind of the story of my life. Great starter, poor finisher. And, uh, I was due to be commissioned as an officer in the Army that summer, and i had to get a medical release. The medical release I got was for alcoholism. Kind of funny. I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19. It's, that seemed like a joke you know it just it really did it didn't fit did not seemed inappropriate seemed inaccurate did not seem possible never fit what i don't know what i dont even know if i had an image of what an alcoholic was we were we all thought we were cool you know we were out there having fun and then i you know but the psychiatrist told me that he or told my parents and me that he thought my drinking was different the frequency of it was different he said i drank like my friends except i just picked different friends and did it more often he said you got in trouble You got physically, you almost died a couple of times. He said once or twice a year you have near-death experiences and it hasn't even slowed you down. And that had no impact on me. Went away to, you know, but it got me out of the service which I thought was wonderful for a while. I came back home and finished. I was the class drunk at Notre Dame. I was three guys petitioned to have me removed from the engineering school. I mean, I was a class drunk, not sort of. and you know you always asking alcoholics normal questions are difficult you know like where did you go to school you know Notre Dame always felt like a unfinished failure one of those things that people say where'd you go it's a social question who cares you know but the alcoholic kind of pauses and it isn't that he or she won't tell you it's just that they don't know how much time you have and uh and how interested you are you know if you ask an alcoholic are you married and they get this kind of confused do you have children you know those are you know and those are compound do you work you know those are those are not ordinary questions for an alcoholic and the end the school thing always just so when I had a chance like many of us I was asked to go down in Notre Dame and give it a talk when I was about I don't know 15 years over, 20 years over. And Milos came down with me, and I went down, and I was going to make some amends. It was the first time I went back to the campus, and I'm in the middle of my talk, 2,000 people, and I said, you know, I've always had a deep sense of failure about this place. And I said I just figured out why. I said it's because I failed. If you're looking for deep insights, you might want to take a nap tonight. But I came home, I finished school. When I finished school, my father asked me to leave home. He said, we love you and care about you, but you're just a pain in the neck, and it doesn't work for you. You don't follow the rules and your brothers and sisters are your problem. Goodbye. And I went out, got a job at a liquor store, and kind of waiting to see what I was going to do with Vietnam. I'm kind of trying to find either a guard unit or officer candidate school to figure out. Well, I eventually failed the physical Fourth time I took it, passed it the first three times. You know, I think that saved me from a dishonorable discharge, to tell you the truth. Worked as a waiter or worked at a liquor store. Almost killed a little girl back in on the driveway one morning with that truck. I, you know, bad drunk, worked there four or five months, quit, took a job working as a waitress. I'm living, oh, not on Skid Row, but close. You know, I'm in $10-a-night hotel rooms. I'm sleeping around with the waiters and waitresses. I live in an apartment in St. Paul, but I'm working downtown Minneapolis. I think in the six months I worked as a waiter, I made it home about two or three nights. You know Dr. Seuss, that child author? Those are actual photographs of people I lived with during that period of time in my life. I'd get up in the morning, and I'd drink a couple of beers, and I'd take a dexedrine, and I go to work, and I'd work as a waiter from 11 to 2, and from 2 to 5, I'd go drink beer. At 5, I'd buy a pint or a half pint and throw it in my locker, and I'd, you know, work as a waiter. It's just bad news. I got my face kicked in one night at a party, and i got fired as a wait looking the way I looked, and was tapped. I had no place to go. I went back to my parents and asked if I could move back in the house, and they allowed that I couldn't. You know, alcoholism meant a lot of different things to me, but one of the things it meant is about every six months I had to start my life over. It was always starting over. It's going to be different next semester, after Christmas, next year. And it was different for a day or a week, but not very different, not very long. When I moved back in the house, I made the largest effort of pulling my life together. I thought if I could restructure my life, I got back together with Linda who I'd gone with for a couple of years and say hi, Linda. I may not have a place to say this, but Linda's a real act. She just celebrated 32 years in Al-Anon. She would not have half the programs she has if it were not for me. I have been a constant source of growth for my wife. and sometimes that's not asked for and sometimes it's not appreciated but I really think I have prodded her to heights that she would not have achieved if it wasn't for me got back together with Linda who I'd gone with for a couple of years broke up with for almost a year and got a job as an executive trainee bought my first car and I thought wow it's finally going to happen only it didn't happen, could not shut my drinking down don't know what that was, my buddy shut it down I was a bar drinker. I just, you know, big corporations, tough places for alcoholics. Like they have to come in on Mondays, stay on Fridays. They've got lunch hours, you Know, and now I'm the company drunk. I'm in a company of engineers. I'm falling asleep at my desk. I'm fallen asleep in the john. It's just, I use up my sick leave the first three months, you Know, while I'm at, it's just bad. And I'm In trouble, and I quit the job, and I take a sales job selling business equipment. And I had that sales job, I guess, about four or five weeks and one of my buddies got married and I went out in about a four day drunk and I woke up one Thursday afternoon about two o'clock in the afternoon and I just panicked. You know, been in the suit for three days and I'm sweaty and I didn't know if I had a job, a fiancée or a place to live until I was married and that was an economic necessity and all of a sudden the recommendation of my parents and my psychiatrist that I call AA didn't seem like such a dumb recommendation and I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I got an old timer down at Central Office and he chatted with me, called another guy and came back on the phone and said, could you go meet a couple of guys at a cafe at 5 o'clock? And I said, yep, that I could. And afterwards I called and found out I still had the job and found that I was still engaged because we were getting the rings back once in a while during that period. And I thought, why the hell did you call AA? hey, you know, it's kind of an overreaction. You know, it's a little bit of a and but I wanted to go see what an alcoholic looked like and a little lack of insight at that time but I went to that cafe sometime in July of 1967 and met Warren who had six months and Bob who had 6 years who just passed away about 2 months ago and they sat me down in the booth and they introduced themselves we're from AA, we used to have a drinking problem we found an answer in AA we're here as much for ourselves as we are for you so don't worry about it no pressure on you we hope we help you but we know that telling our stories helps us stay sober they weren't getting a toaster for signing me up and it wasn't a multi-level marketing deal it was just a straight 12 step call and the magic happened in that booth They sat me down, and they told me their drinking stories. And I had, for all the help I'd been exposed to, the priests and nuns and bishops and lawyers and judges and psychiatrists, I had never been exposed to anybody who had a drinking problem. And these two men just sat me downstairs and told me the drinking stories, and before they're done, I'm starting to identify and share. We have many traditions in Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most wonderful of which is that we share our experience, strength, and hope, and not our thinking. There is a power in sharing your life with another human being. I believe that my life was changed that day in that booth talking to two alcoholics. No question. They asked me if I wanted to go to my first meeting of AA, and that night I went to my First Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank twice after that night, once on a business trip to the West Coast after I had about 30 days, and I was told to call AA the moment I got off the plane, and I didn't. I told everybody I had a $100 bet and wasn't drinking. that kept me sober for a week, but not the second week. Came back, got sober, and then I was sober for about three or four months, and we got married. And I think in the back of my mind I had a plan to drink on our honeymoon, but it was suppressed. And we honeymooned in Acapulco, and you know where the divers dive off those cliffs? And I dove off those clifts on my last drunk. I was in the audience watching a world's high diving contest, and I thought, God, that's not so tough. i could do that and uh i went over miguel alamon was there the ex-president of mexico went over and slobbered all over him his bodyguards are pulling me off i was roomed with his nephew sophomore year he was not impressed his body guards were not impressed i dove off the public landing split my swimsuit cut my leg and i'm climbing up this cliff and linda's going absolutely nuts and i get up about 80 or 85 feet and i got stuck i can't get up i can'T get down I'm watching the waves, you know, kind of come in and out. And I'm trying to decide whether to jump or dive, you know. And I finally, after what seemed an eternity, I said out of hell with it and I dove. And God watches after fools and drunks, as Arbuda said, and I made it. And if I would have jumped, I would have died, you know, one of those seconds and inches that, you know, Norm used to talk about. Because if you jump, you can't get out far enough. I didn't know that. Never, you know, never even crossed my mind. I was just one of those, you know, flip a coin sort of a deal. About ten years later, we were down on our tenth anniversary. We were looking at that chasm, and Linda gave me a picture of that chiasm that said, but for the grace of God. And we were watching the divers at midnight. I said, God, honey, that's the dumbest thing I ever did. And she said, Bob, it's not even in the top ten. I don't know how two people can share a life and see it so differently. I don't know, I've gained a little weight lately and I'm trying to get in shape and she was recommending that I get a bike and we were talking about it and I bought a bike. Now she's upset. I bought her a Harley. I did it for her, you know, just try as I may, you know just a half turn off. And, you know, but so now I'm in AA. I come back, you Know, thank God. I went right back to Alcoholics Anonymous, got involved in the group with my sponsor. I'm 24 years old and, you Now, I started to get involved. It was very clear to me. I made two discoveries almost immediately thanks to a conversation with my sponsor. They told me that, you know, I came there and everybody was telling me, you know Bob's a hell of a guy if he just wouldn't drink. I got the message throughout my life that what was wrong with me was swallowing bourbon. If I ever quit swallwing bourbon my life would clear up. Well, just before I went back to my senior year at Notre Dame I quit for, I was robbed and rolled and pistol whipped and shot at and thrown out of the second story of a hotel and ended up in a hospital and they were not going to let me go back to My Last Year but I talked my way out of a psych ward and got back to school on the condition that I wouldn't drink. And I went back, and I didn't drink for almost three months. My life didn't instantaneously get better. I didn' t all of a sudden become what I thought everybody was saying I'd become if I just wouldn' t drink. And I thought I proved two things to myself. Number one, you know, I could quit any time I wanted to because I just quit for three months, and number two, that just drinking bourbon was not my problem. Bourbon was my answer. I don' t know why I had a noise in my head. And it was like my amplifier was up around 9 all the time. I just had the noise in my head. I don't know why I had that noise, but it's like I did. And when I had three or four drinks in me, it's as if the amplifier went down from about 9 to about 4. And I could just kind of be with other people. And it seemed to be my solution. And I thought, you know, if you knew all about the dark crevices of my life, you wouldn't think I was just an alcoholic because you'd understand that I have other problems that I've had. But I was told when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I said, alcoholism was a disease. Didn't know that, thought it was a condition. Told me it was the disease that was physical but also mental and spiritual. And then once I crossed the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, that my alcoholism affected me all the time, when I was drinking and when I was not drinking. Boy, was that a piece of information. I mean, no one had ever even given me a glimpse of that. I remember my sponsor telling me that he thought the physical part of the disease was 10% of the deal. I mean, that just blew me away. I thought we'd be spending an awful lot of our time talking about how not to drink. He said, no, he said, I think once you gain physical sobriety, he said I think we use the rest of it as most of the program, which is using the 12 steps to find a different way to live to treat the mental and spiritual aspects of the disease, to change enough so that you don't have to use drugs or alcohol to do something for you that you're unwilling or unable to do for yourself. If you don' t change, if you don''t find another way to life, you're going to go back to drinking because you don ''t know how to live without drinking. wow, you know, in a nutshell. The other thing I observed was a lot of people who had drunk a lot of booze and taken a lot of other things, and now they weren't doing it. And the reason they werenít doing it is they liked what they found in sobriety better than what they had in a bottle. I thought I might have to quit, but I thought I was getting gypped, thought I got here too early, missed about ten years of drinking, and you know I thought my life might be over or awfully dull, but thank God I was able to identify the humor and the sparkle in your eye. There was a vitality and an energy that I have loved since the moment I walked into AA, and I was allowed to stay around. The first major thing that happened to me was I tore down my alibi system. I had a wall built up between you and me. I think the first thing drinking Rob as you have was a little bit extra than it takes to be a success at anything that you do, and then pretty soon you're not doing enough to get by. When you're Not Doing Enough to Get By, you start building that wall that hides that part of your life from other people. And the thinking behind the wall says, you like me, but you only like what I let you see about me. If you could see everything about me, you'd hate me because I hate me. And who knows more what a crummy, rotten, insufficient, incompetent person I am than me. I'm walking around, of course, comparing my inside with your outside. But at some point in time behind that wall, you become sick enough, tired enough, hurt enough, afraid enough that you start to tear the wall down. You say, hey, come and get me. I don't care who you are, where you come from, but just come and get me and help me not be who I am anymore. I can't stand me five more minutes. I didn't necessarily come to AA because I knew I was an alcoholic. I came to AA porque I just couldn't stand it. I just couldn't understand what I was doing to my life and doing to the people in my life and yet I didn' t have an answer and everybody told me it had something to do with alcohol. I started to tear that wall down and most alcoholics come to AA with a with a deep sense of uniqueness. Clancy talks about if there ever was a flag we could all pledge our allegiance to, the flag would say, but I'm different. And you have to lose that sense of uniqueness. If you do not lose that sense of unique, you're going to die because you will look for the differences. You will not believe that what worked in someone else's life will work in yours. You have to identify enough. When I started to tear that wall down when I called AA and continued to tear it down with my sponsor and completely tore it down. And my fifth step I made a discovery, and the discovery was I'm not unique. My personality may be unique, but not my illness and not my behavior and notmy feelings and notmyexperience. And I started to have a sense of hope that maybe what worked in your life could work in mine. And looking back on it, I've been able to identify what happened to me. I think when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, what I wanted to find was an expert on Bob. I wantedto find someone who would know Bob so well they could look right through me, look into my soul, and discern what I should do with, you know, my crazy life. I never found that. What happened to me is when I took the first step, Bob died, and I became an alcoholic. When I became a alcoholic, I had tens of teachers. I wasn't as interested in Bob. I was interested in alcoholism and the recovery from alcoholism, and I had people who knew an awful lot about that, and I just, for about six months, just sat around and asked questions. It was just this wonderful, you now, ask a question, got an answer. Ask a question. Got an answer, And when I'm about 11 months sober, I ask the question. Then I'm not sure they're right. But for the first six, you know, your ego starts to reassert itself. But for about nine months, I was on a honeymoon, and it was really one of the most teachable open periods of my life. And I think I sucked up an awful lot of Alcoholics Anonymous during that period of my life. I'm 24 years old, you now, and I'm starting my life over. And I was really excited. I thought, wow. You know, I've always been the underachiever. I was always the guy who could get the interview. I just couldn't do the job. You know, of the 14 guys that went to Notre Dame, I had the highest test scores of all the guys that went down. I was the only one who didn't finish. I'm the guy Who never finishes. My mother always said, Bob, you're not very bright. Dress well. And I have tried to do that. My mother is an 87-year-old college graduate business school at the University of Minnesota. She has a pretty sharp tongue on her. And, neat lady. But I thought, now, this is terrific. I've got the problem. You've got to answer me. What could be better than this? The reason I never finished these things is I was an alcoholic, and now I know I'm an alcoholic and I'm in a place that has the solution to alcoholism and my life ought to straighten out. I said, I've Got Four or Five Other Issues, kind of side issues, and if you've got The Answer, maybe I'll make those go away and it might take a year. Yeah, it's not that funny, Les. It was kind of disappointing is what it was. My problems didn't go away in a year or two years or three years or five years and haven't totally gone away in 31 years. My problems were kind of horrible but ordinary. I couldn't get up in the morning. Now, I found out later that that had something to do with when you went to bed. so we're gonna just wanted to throw a little tip out there but i couldn't get up in the morning then i go to work and i trouble staying at work never figured out what the hell you're supposed to do at work i just you know that was always a problem staying at working but i was one of those real active aa guys anytime anywhere the hand of aa reached out i wanted to be there so i went to three four hour aa lunches and did a lot of stuff had a little problem with work but I did a lot of AA stuff. I had some money problems. I spent $300 or $400 more a month than I made in 1967. If you do that over a long period of time, you'll end up in debt. Another tip. We had some marital issues. Everybody enters that, you know, she entered with her expectations, I entered with mine. Now I'm sober and she's going to Al-Anon and we're having arguments about how active I am and she's seeing less of me now that I'm you know we're married then she saw when we were courting and you know she's starting to get kind of snippy she's well starting to wonder if one of the places I supposed to practice the program is in our home thought that's none of your business you know you've got you've got your program I've got my program you know and then we started to have kids and I had great parents but even great parents make mistakes and I wasn't gonna make the mistakes my dad made and I didn't I made all the mistakes he made in a bunch he never thought of I was loud impatient angry immature and sometimes violent with my children I'm not proud of that fact but that's an accurate description of how I was that was sometimes rageful with my children and I had a gambling problem more of a hobby four or five hours a day four or 5 days a week it was just thought was but I was making seven to ten thousand dollars a year playing backgammon seemed like a second job seemed like you know I mean it seemed like an asset if you would have asked for an inventory when I first came in. Now, when I first came, I had all those issues and never noticed them. They did not show up on my inventory. My first inventory was a list of sins and misconduct. I had almost no insight into causes and conditions and the nature of my illness. I just told things that I was deeply ashamed which I think was fine I had limited insight when I was sober two or three months but one by one these issues arose to me and in my second year of sobriety after I got off my honeymoon one by once they were handed to me and I took them on and tried to take care of them if you would have asked me what the definition of recovery was I would have said recovery was the absence of problems no one told me that I don't know where the hell I got that definition I don't know if it was just that I was an idealist, but that's what I thought it was. And I thought problems were an indication you weren't doing things right. And so when I started to discover, isn't it funny that alcohol, when you discover something in your life that doesn't work, you feel bad about it? You'd rather have it and not know. I mean, isn'T that crazy? I mean isn'T THAT just nuts, nutso? But I'd start to discover these things. You know, that, you know, Bob, I think you have a work problem. Don't think two hours a day is going to cut it. You know? You just, not sure, kid, but I think, you know, not doing it. And, you know, I take it on and I thought, I guess I thought you'll get me well from alcoholism and I'll learn how to work. You get me well from alcoholism and I will be a parent. You get me well from alcoholism and I will be a husband. You get me well from alcoholism and I will deal with the gambling. Now I didn't intentionally wall off those issues, but I had them walled off. I think when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I gave you my alcoholism and everything directly related to it that I identified. But I didn' t give you my sex life, I didn''t give you my finances, and I didn ''t give your my job, and I did' n't give you parenting, I did'' n't give you marriage. I really thought that if I work on my alcohol ism, everybody knows how to do these things, I'll start doing them okay. It didn' T work that way. I tried like heck to change those problems I had were not quarterly or annual those are daily problems and I tried like heck to change those things over a period of time and a little bit of success I'm put I'm kind of like on the down escalator running up you know you stop and take a breath and you lose you know some of the progress you made in my second and third year identified among my third and fourth year they were bothering me my fifth and sixth year they ate my luncheon in my seventh year I'm on my way out of alcoholics anonymous I have my wall built back up Thanks a lot for helping me with my drinking problems. Stay out of my sex life. Stay outof my marriage. Stay outo my financial affairs. Stay out o' my gambling. Stay out'em brick by brick, sober, going to five, six meetings a week with the sponsors, you know, active in service. I built my wall back up. I'm seven to eight years sober and Alcoholics Anonymous and walled off from everybody around. Everybody's telling me, God, that Bazans kid, doing great, you know, starting to give talks, active and service. And I'm saying, can't you see? I'm in meetings with you three times a week. I thought my sponsor, I told my sponsor about 70% of what was going on. And I know that here in Washington you tell everything, but I know them. But in Minnesota, I don't know what it is, we just got a flaw. I think it's in the water. But I've got guys who call me up in the morning and they want to know whether to wear the white socks or the blue socks, and then oh by the way, I got married on Tuesday. kind of these, you know, slide it in, you know, kind of. I was so afraid and never even knew I was afraid. And I thought Warren didn't get it. I think, I think Warren got it fine. Now that I'm 55 years old, I'm sponsoring young men in their 20s and 30s, and I don't expect their lives to be perfect. I don'T expect them not to have problems. I WAS the one who expected me not to HAVE problems, NOT Warren. Warren thought I was on course, you know. And Warren just wanted to keep me active and keep me involved in the steps and keep me doing those things. And he thought it'd be all right. But for me, it wasn't happening fast enough. And I'm seven or eight years sober and I'm dying. I am hurting as much at seven or 8 years of sobriety as I was when I came in. The new guys coming in and giving me that bushel basket full of manure that they've got and telling me about his wife and the cops and all that stuff and I'm saying hey as bad as it is and as hopeless as it seems I'm glad you're here get a cup of coffee sit down you're in the right spot I know that you don't know this but if you just stay here and try to the best of your ability even imperfectly to do these steps and get a sponsor and get your nose in the book it's going to be okay see that guy over there got he's sober two years and when he came here and he was just a mess and now he's hitting it out of the park. It's going to be okay. Then I get in the car at 11 o'clock at night and I drive home and I say, Bob, when is it going to be okay for you? When are you going to learn how to work? You don't have a pass. I mean, what the hell do you think you're going to support your family without working? When aren't you going to stop gambling? When will you be nicer to your children? You just bought a $400 sport coat today and you had a $500 bill at the store and you charged it. When are we going to stop doing that? I didn't have an answer. Because I I've tried everything I knew how to try, and I failed regularly. But two things have saved my fanny in AA, maybe more than two. Two of the things I recognized, number one, I can't keep my mouth shut. So at least with some regularity, I shared some of the problems I was going through. They were kind of secret, but they were also out there enough that I wasn't. I think had they not been out there enough I would have been in even more trouble than I was in the other thing was I loved the old timer my sponsor has 45 years of sobriety and I just hung out listening to the old timers after the meetings and I knew what the answer was the answer to find out what God had to do with Wednesday the people who I admired in the program who at depth had a relationship with their higher power that was deeper than mine and I figured that's where I had to go but there was a problem Go knock on the door. God says, who's there? And I said, God, it's Bob. God says what do you want? I said well I want to sign up. Mate, you're sober. I'm dying. I said just absolutely dying. So the people who got what I want seem to have a better closer relationship with you and I'd like to sign up. God's going to say fine. I'm going to see okay what do I do God? God's gonna say quit gambling. Get up in the morning. Go to work. Stay at work. Don't spend more money than you make. Be kind and loving to your wife and children. I'm gonna say hell if I knew how to do all those things I wouldn't need God. I mean, you know, I knew what God wanted. I mean what's the use of going to develop a relationship with your higher power if you can't fulfill the conditions of the relationship? My idea was as soon as I get my act cleaned up, I'll go to God. But I mean why go to god if you cannot do what god is going to ask you to do? And I was stuck in that place for almost two years. And out of desperation, I went back to the steps. I don't, you know, not like I thought I left him. But I went back at eight years of sobriety and found out what step one meant to me. And I'll tell you, it wasn't very hard to identify powerlessness and unmanageability. The one that surprised me was step two. Step two for me was a throwaway step. I could have put my hand on a lie detector and said, do you believe God's going to restore us to sanity? Yes. Needle would not have moved. But at eight year of sobrietty, if you would have said, do you think God's gonna restore Bob Bazan to sanity, The answer was no, because I'm going backwards. Great starter, poor finisher, just one more time. This is not working for me, it's working for my friends and my pigeons are making more progress than I'm making. I had to come to believe again. When you get in trouble, I guess you get more active or less active, I got a little more active, and all of a sudden I started to see men and women with bigger problems with smiles on their faces walking through walls that I was trying to walk around and all of a sudden I started to again have the belief that God would restore me to sanity. I took step three on my knees with my sponsor in his office I'd not done that before. This time I wanted to cross the T's and dot the I's, I just didn't want to miss anything and I did a fourth step when I did my fifth step I said be careful this is my third step, I said whatever you recommend that I do when we're done, I'm going to do it. I said I feel like I'm dying of thirst lying next to a lake and there was like a plastic wall between me and the water I said I know what to do I know where the water is but I'm dying of thirst and when I was done with my first step we talked and cried a little bit one of the things he wanted me to do was go to a psychologist I had a lot of issues around money and success I had an extremely successful father he was my hero and I never thought I'd be as good as my old man I guess the fact that I never thought I would be as great maybe I didn't try hardly at all and I went to the psychologist, and I didn't want it, but I did. Remember the psychologist said, well, you get your mom and dad involved. And I said, no. He said, my mom and Dad have been over-involved. You know, they're almost 70 years old or 65 years old, and I said if you can't help me without helping my parents, could you recommend me to someone who could? He said well, get your wife involved. I thought, oh. You know when you get you wife involved you have a whole different data bank. they see things so differently but I said yeah I'll get my wife involved I said well you've got the kitchen boss I said they're really young I remember I don't know what it was three or four visits into it I'm on the verge of bankruptcy you'd think working two hours a day I would have no problems you know, I don't know. And we're talking about success and failure, and he says, why are you so afraid of failure? I wanted to pull the nose right off his face. I said, listen, you jerk, you're a doctor. You fail, you know. You just take your little sign, walk down the hall, put it on another door, and you're making 100 grand. I should say, I'm about to go bankrupt, and I'm going to lose everything I have. They're going to publish my name in the paper, and I'm done. Flat ass done. I'm going to lose everything I have. He looked at my wife and he said, Linda, if Bob lost everything he had would he lose you? Linda said, no, wouldn't lose me. He looked at Billy and Peter and he said, if your father lost everything he has, would he lose you?" And the kid said, oh, hell no. But if you can't lose, you can play. If you can't lose, you can't play. I'm the guy that when we have a marathon, I have a great pair of tennis shoes and a great pair of shorts, and I sound and act and talk like a runner. If we were all in a race, you'd think I was a pretty good racer. And I tell you that I won some race in Minnesota. When the race took off, I'd be in the top ten, and it would be in the top 10 for the first third to half of a race. But somewhere between a third and a half of the race, I fall down, hurt myself, and pull out. When a race is done, someone will say, what happened to that guy from Minnesota? Hell of a guy. I guess he won some races in Minnesota. He was up there in front. I'll pull the hamstring. That's too bad. But if you would have followed me around in a helicopter in my life for the preceding 10 years, you could have guessed within 50 feet when I would have fallen down because I don't finish anything. And I'll tell you that gets old. It gets old having potential and never being able to actualize it. It It gets old getting a job and not being able to do a job. It gets older being cute, but not being able to perform. If you would have asked me what my biggest problem was when I went to that psychologist, I would have said anger. You know what my big problem was? Fear. Anger was my response. I didn't know. I was afraid of being a salesman. I was scared of work. I was terrified of marriage. I wasn't afraid of parenting. I just didn't want to be in front of those problems. I ran away at every opportunity that I had. I was a salesman who didn't make sales calls. I just phoned it up. You never even had a chance to drag me across the desk and force me to sell it to you because I never got in front of you. Not too long after I was at that psychologist, I went home and I had one of the worst days I've had in AA. Got up late, went to work late, left early, got down on a backgammon game, won 600 bucks, missed dinner, missed the AA meeting. Came home, got in a fight with my wife and slapped one of the kids. It was one of those nights you would have liked to have had it videotaped and sent to the general service office to show what eight years of sobriety can do for you. One of those night you're just hoping your sponsor wouldn't drop in, you know, everybody. I was sitting in my chair. I said, gee, it happened again. I say, what do you mean it happened again. It's your life. I mean, weren't you there? I'm saying, yeah, I'm there, but it's so habitual. It's almost like I don't even, it's like I'm in a blackout. I don' t even think about it. And all of a sudden I realize that that was a bunch of crap. That my life was the way it was because I designed it to be the wayit was. You know, one of the words that sometimes people use for God is truth. They use the word love and they use lots of things, but sometimes they use the world truth. I believe that when I came an alcoholic synonymous i stood naked in front of my alcoholism and saw it at a depth that i had never seen it before and it my very being i believe that that night i stood naked in front of my life and told the truth about some things in my life i sounded like a guy who wanted to quit gambling the fact was i wanted to gamble whenever the hell i wanted to gamble and not have problems because of gambling I wanted money without work. I wanted my children's and wife's affection without spending time with them. Not a very good design. And that night I realized that I had tried as hard as I knew how to clean those things up and I had failed and for some reason I was given the grace to see that that was exactly where it was supposed to be and I was giving the opportunity to take the sixth and the seventh step of the program of AA. The sixth step said they were entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character. And the seventh, I've said we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. I have spent eight years trying to get rid of them. I don't have the power to get rid of it. What happens through me, not by me. I'm the pipe, not the well. And that night, out of fear of getting drunk or being a sober asshole, which was, I think, a harsh, impolite description of what I was, I got down on my knees, I took the sixth and the seventh step of the program of AA and four of the major problems in my life disappeared that night. Such is the power of God and the steps. A doctor doesn't heal, he creates a deceptive environment, creates an atmosphere in which healing can take place and God heals. A farmer does not grow, he create a fertile environment, plants a seed, creates an environment where growth can take places and God grows and we don't change. We create an atmosphere where change can take placed and God changes us In the atmosphere, I think of the attitudes of the sixth and the seventh step and the three requirements of being honest and open-minded and being willing. When you're really ready to make a change, you also put a structure of support in place. I'm the guy who, when I go on a diet, first thing I do is I go buy a bag of cookies and a little ice cream. It's already been a bad day. I'm just going to finish off the day, and I'll probably never have ice cream again. Just going to do that. it's a room full of people who understand that but I believe that when you surrender you're given a kind of grace and the next day I turned myself into my sponsor I made appointments with my sponsor about when I'd go to work and how long I would stay at work staying was the thing that just got me I could understand going I couldn't understand staying I started to date my wife. I've dated my wife every Friday night for the last 25 years, and I had her love and affection. It was the rest of the world's approval I was trying to get. I had to learn to go back and be with my wife in a romantic way and an attractive way. It felt like we were always talking about business and problems and bills and kids, and that wasn't how we fell in love. We started to shack up once in a while, go to Chicago for a long weekend, and it was a real live dangerous date. No one else went out on that date with us, and we went out. We got dressed up, and it was our time. And she knows and knew that one night a week we'd have each other's undivided attention. I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours learning how to be a better parent. I think being a parent takes 125% of whatever you've got. I mean, someone said having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your head. I think it is demanding. And today I have a good relationship with our three boys. Wouldn't it have been wonderful? All three of our sons are in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were problem kids, as you might expect, they would not have been an alcoholic synonymous the oldest boy is 30 and uh got sober when he went away to college he went graduated from the university of austin lived in europe for a while came back at his mba from columbia and this is 12 years sober the middle boy was the boy that i was nose-to-nose with all the way he and my he and i reversed roles to my father and myself my father and I were nose-to-nose and physical. And I just changed roles with this middle son and just had the greatest of difficulty with him. And he just was, you know, more than I knew. He was like dealing with five pounds of piano wire. I mean, just this high-strung kid who had no idea what to do with him and he was a horrible student and after he got sober, learned how to be a student, he went on to NYU and got a degree in film school and now works in L.A., and he has almost nine years of sobriety. And our youngest boy is 19 and just celebrated a year. Wouldn't it have been wonderful for Mr. AA to have been such an ass at home that his children did not want to join Alcoholics Anonymous when they had the problem? Wouldn't that have been cool? That almost happened. After I took steps six and seven and went through and did eight and nine, my life took off like a rocket ship and all of a sudden the guy who couldn't work was working just fine i have a partner who's pretty smart which helps too and we were in the real estate investment business and we built a company that had 500 employees and about 250 million dollars worth of real estate and investment portfolio and uh for about 10 years everything i touched turned to gold everything i wanted you want a house go buy a house you want mercedes go buy two You know, and there are problems with failure, but there are also problems with success. And I didn't, I never even anticipated there would be any problems with successful. This was my deeply shallow period. And I do that well. I have a gift for being shallow. and uh the uh you know i thought god was blessing me for being such a wonderful member of alcoholics anonymous how would you like to have been in meetings with me and my life became about what i wanted and it was subtle i just you know you want it go get it and And it wasn't bad. It just wasn't very good. It wasn't very powerful. You know, it's interesting. You don't learn much during pleasant times. There's nothing wrong with pleasant times and I don't, you know, but most of the learning and most of the growth takes place at the entry point if you're on a spiritual path is the point of pain. I don' t wish anybody pain and I d'on' t know why it is that that happens to be somewhat a truism for us but it is as Bill talks about in the 12 and 12. So, ten years later, you know, in 1986 they passed the tax act and between 1986 and 1991 I lost eight million dollars and lost almost everything I had. I lost the house, you now, I was negotiating my way out of bankruptcy, I'm back in front of the word budget. I don't like the word, budget word. I think it's a fine word for Al-Anon's but I think its very, its a difficult word for most alcoholics. harsh word i think for most alcoholics and uh it just it was just horrible i i just i'm back in front of failure i you know my youngest kid or my middle boy came back from noted or came back from wherever the hell he was in school in colorado got totaled out an automobile got arrested for drunken driving ended up in detox it was kind of his christmas present to his mother and i and uh he's in a halfway house and we're going to the meetings and i'm crying all the way the meeting starts and I'm in tears you know the whole I'm 22 years sober I can just see the people looking how'd you like to have what he has I think he's got the clap I'm not sure what he's done it was one of the most difficult times of my life you know I don't think God caused the real estate collapse to teach me a lesson but I think in every difficult time in your life there is a lesson for us individually and I had to learn who I was without money losing my money was not like changing clothes it was like tearing the skin off my body and that's how loud I believe the noise had to get for me to start to learn some of the lessons around money, success and failure that I had to learn the universe is relentless As Marilyn talked about it, it just progresses. It will teach you the lesson. It is just absolutely omnipresent. It's just right there in front of your nose. Life has fired at you at point-blank range. There is no preparation for it. It is startlingly fresh. I got more active during that period of time, and I somehow made it through. I don't know where there's a better place than Alcoholics Anonymous when you're in deep woods. I just, you know, I don't know how I would have survived that without my wife and I don' t know how would I have survived it without Alcoholics Anonymous. It was one of the most painful periods of my life. The last few years have normalized that from 1991 to 1995 the business cycle reversed and it got better and today I'm self-supporting through my own contribution and life's pretty good. Bob White died, I had a conversation with him, our beautist, and he talked about when he was 30 years sober. He said, you know what happens to you when you're 30 years over? He said I don't like giving talks. Bob White was this guy from Texas who was one of my heroes. He was just this wonderful man. He was our Chamberlain in Texas and he wasn't as articulate by just a little bit as Chamberlaine was from the podium but head on head in a room. I'd put Bob White. Bob White was like Chamberlains. People just sat at his feet and listened to him. He was a storyteller, and he just had a quality about him that was wonderful. I remember I asked a man to be my spiritual advisor at that time, and he said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I'd like to be more like Bob White. He said, tell me about this Bob White guy. And I says, well people just like being around him. They like being with him because they just feel like they're his best friend. They feel good about themselves. I'm so damn competitive, I'm always trying to be better than him. I'd like to be less competitive, less materialistic, and more loving. Within about three months, I started to lose everything I had. I went back to my spiritual advisor and said, we've got to talk. I said, I didn't explain it. I said I want to be left alone. I'm not materialistic but I want keep the stuff. today my biggest fear is being poor and happy not a joke most of us don't want to be happy we want to be conditionally happy so bob had a theme the theme he had before he died was a talk at canyon conference and his talk was on powerlessness and then he talked about the power being added one of the things that i have learned in the last few years that has been shocking to me is how difficult it is for us to face change i think if i were to ask everybody in the room to raise their hands and say how many of us would like to get rid of the things in our lives that don't work and cause problems and hurt to the other people in their life. I think we'd all raise our hand. Not so. I have a little thing that I do with some of the guys I sponsor now around the fourth step, and I say, you know, the fourth step's kind of tough in the book. It's got all those damn columns and stuff, and it's kind of confusing, and pretend the guy I'm talking to is 35 years old married with kids, and I said, look, just don't bother with that. I said I know you're having trouble with it. Just get your wife and your parents and your kids, a couple of your AA friends and your boss and two co-workers and your neighbor and your brothers and sisters and bring them over to the house. And then serve coffee and pass out tablets. Here's what I want you to say. We have a step in the program of alcoholics and we try to get in touch with their defects of character. am I having trouble identifying mine and I wondered if you'd help because we do know each other's defects of character we just have trouble identifying our own I don't know why we laugh at that because very few of us would call that meeting do you know why we wouldn't call the meeting we don't want to change but it's worse than that we don't even want to know we train each other we train our wives we're not talking about that nod your head up and down if you understand we're not having that discussion do you want to have that discussion going to be an expensive discussion we train our kids as to what they can say and can't say you get to a certain point in your sobriety you make deals with you know the chasers hang out with the chases the gamblers hang out Say, I got a deal. You don't call me my crap, I won't call you on yours. We'll go to meetings, we'll talk about the steps, we're doing the tradition, we'll sponsor people, but you stay out of my face. You got it? Not a good deal. Not a very powerful one, but one that many of us have made. There's a guy by the name of Scott Peck who wrote a book called Road Less Traveled. Later on he wrote another book called Further Along a Road Less Travelled. In that book he has a chapter called A Road to Omaha, which is a chapter about death and dying. and in that he talks about Libus Kubler-Ross's stages of death and dying, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And people say you have cancer, and the denial is maybe I don't or I'll get a second opinion, and anger, why is this happening to me? I've lived a good life, and I feel like I'm getting gypped. Bargaining, God, please remove this, and I'll do whatever you would have me do with my life. And when you get through those first three stages and you can't go anyplace and your nose is pressed up against, I'm not trying to play doctor. I'm talking about an appropriate depression due to the circumstances that you're facing. When you go into that depression, if you get through the depression and you go under acceptance, and Scott Peck said people when they hear about the stages of death and dying they assume that everybody who dies goes through those five stages, but they don't. They go through the denial, the anger, and the bargaining, but when they get to the depression, the pain is so great that they back off of the depression and go back and recycle through the denial, anger, bargaining. And Elizabeth Cooper or Peck says an interesting thing, and he says, interestingly enough, those are the same stages you go through in major changes in your life. But Peck said an interesting things. but if you allow the depression to do its work which from my own experience means to grind the ego to dust some pain is divine pain it is pain for a purpose it is the universe is trying to get if God wants to speak to you how is God going to get the message to you if you're married probably through your spouse don't tough tough way to get it through your parents through your sponsor through your boss or your children but the universe will get the message to you most of us try to avoid the message but if you allow depression to do its work which is grind the ego the dust you go through as clancy talks about there is no pain in change there's only pain in the resistance to change when you make a change there is energy on the other side a surprising synergistic energy that is beyond the absence of the problem there's an opening why is it that most alcoholics who seem very well equipped in the business of life often have trouble succeeding in life one of them is i think is because we have a model of survival and we have trouble getting out of that model we just you know you have an alcoholic who needs $20,000 to live if he makes twelve thousand dollars in the first two months of the year he will slow his income down and the other ten months of the year to make twenty right at the end because I think we have a survival mechanism and many of us unwittingly are locked into that but But there is so much fear with the alcoholic. And we hang on to these treasures that we have in our lives, to my gambling, to some of my laziness, these treasures. The problem with most of us is we have our problems filed under answer. Anger was a tool for me. I had it filed under Answer, not Problem. If you're only two of the hammer, everything starts looking like a nail and not a very good and powerful way to live life. But if you're surprised when you sit in an audience and you listen to a story as powerful as Michael's and you wonder why we're sitting here having marital problems, you wonder why we're having financial problems, you wonder why we have work problems with the power of the program is because we don't want to change. We're scared to death. The problems we have aren't new, they're old. They aren't weeks old, they aren't months old, they're years old. The universe is screaming at us that it's not working and we're scared to death because those are our solutions. Those are not treasures that you're clutching to your bosom, they are dog turds wrapped in gold tin foil. And those of us that are in the room have never who have taken the courage to walk through the fire which is the path of the spiritual walk through the pain. The pain's an illusion. The pain is in resistance. Once you walk through it, we've had the greatest example you could possibly have with the release of our dependence on alcohol and drugs. And yet for some reason we have trouble applying that same principle in powering our lives. So I just, my little thing is to say how resistant we are to change and how afraid we are underneath because it is giving up the very tools of which we have premises upon which we have built our life and it is scary but there is no safe way to take a spiritual walk there is not you can't know about life life is always fresh it is always new it always shows up you know immediate and different than we anticipated but our program is one of the most wonderful combinations of wisdom and practicality. The power is God, it is not ours. You don't have to worry about it. The change you have to make... One of the things that our program promises is that if we go through the steps and we take them, we'll have a spiritual awakening. I still have a tendency towards the same weaknesses and problems I've always had. I have a dependency towards anger. I have an overspending in money. I have the same tendencies I have. but you know the difference is today that you've awakened me so when I stand in front of a child is hard or almost impossible for me today to strike a child because I am more awake than I was I used to be a monkey on a string I used to be acute box you put a quarter and you push before I played before thought action thought action thought passion thought action no space no choice monkey on a string today I get a thought or a reaction and I have a space sometimes not very large but I always have a face and in that space I have a choice and then that choice I have my humanity I'm not a machine I am NOT not just the conditioned person I was when I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that choice has been a gift of the steps and the program and sponsorship and a gift that you have given me. I value so greatly the recovery community in which I am privileged to live my life. If you don't get well alone, the only thing you know how to do alone is get sick. It takes a village. It takes old-timers. It takes newcomers. It takes sponsors. It takes sponsees. We need each other, baby. We need Each Other very badly. The still-suffering alcoholic is not just the alcoholic who's coming in the door. The still suffering alcoholic are many of us sitting in this room. We lose a lot of people between six and ten years because they start to face the second level of their recovery and they are so afraid they don't know what to do about it and they go back out. It is not unusual to have serious... I think somewhere between six or ten years you're going to get your behind handed to you and I don't think it is an indication that something is wrong. I think it's an indication of progress It is an indication that you have progressed through the first stage of your recovery and you are in front of what's next and that you are matured and sensitized enough that you're starting to identify what you're supposed to do that you could not identify when you first came in This has been a wonderful weekend Thank you very much Thanks for watching!