Bob D. Addressing the Illusion of Control and the Spiritual Malady

My name's Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic. Through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in, that I found out through AA who was absolutely crazy about me and has no taste. The 12 steps as they're outlined in the big book, good sponsorship and a persistent and consistent commitment to the primary purpose of trying to help other alcoholics. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering substance since Halloween 1978. And for that I owe you not only my life but my freedom because abstinence without freedom from the one thing I have to get free from isn't worth very much at all. It feels like I'm doing time. I want to welcome anybody that's new. I'm glad you're here. I really hope that you hear something or see something or feel something this weekend that will light something up inside of you that will push you to take some actions that will change your life. The epiphanies and the profundities you may hear this weekend will not change your life because they will dissipate like smoke in the wind. but hopefully they will motivate you to take some actions that will. It is the actions that'll change your life. I'm delighted, I want to thank Brian and Ben and all the members of the committee for asking me to come up here. It's really a privilege, and I've had a great time. The speakers have been really good up to this moment. I enjoyed Sheldon. It was a great talk. I'd heard him share some things I'd never heard him share exactly like that before it was I really enjoyed it it was it was a genuine talk I know I was there through a lot of it and I want you to know it was funnier from the podium than it was up close and personal it was actually some of it was quite tedious but it was genuine and I don't know and he's a good example of Alcoholics Anonymous that I don't think there's higher praise in AA than a genuine good example of AA. And Russ, this morning, I've had two reminders since I've been up here that this is... There's some things up here that are a little different. Went to a meeting Thursday night where I'd never... I've done meetings all over the world and I'd ever heard it incorporated into a format about not chewing tobacco and spitting in cups in meetings. I've never heard that in a format anywhere in the world. And then Russ got up and started sharing, and he got this gleam in his eyes. He was telling us how much he liked animals. I'm surprised he didn't start drooling. He had this funny look in his head. He said, I got that from his dad. I bet you never had to put a sheep's head in the vice. They just kind of come along. They don't argue. I'm supposed to tell you as honestly as I can and as genuinely as I'm capable of what it's been like to suffer from and recover from a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body, a malady of my spirit that I suffered from most of my life and didn't even know I had. I didn't know what was wrong with me. But whatever it was, it seemed to be in place and the tendrils of it were in place before I ever picked up a drink. There was something wasn't quite right with me. And I'm here to tell you that I didn't come from an alcoholic home. I wish at times that I had come from an alcoholic homer where maybe I was beaten or abused or something. Then I could hang my weirdness on somebody. But I'm hereto tell you I had wonderful parents. I had parents that loved me. I had parent that would have done anything to help me, that would've done anything for me. And I'm not telling you they were perfect, but they were way above the bar. And I was very glad to have them. The problem was within me. It was almost as if I was born with some sort of incompleteness in the center of my being. And I didn't understand it. I didn' t know what it was. But it drove at me subtly, vaguely. and when I was about 12 almost 13 the best of my recollection this this malady of my being was touched by alcohol for the first time an event that unbeknownst to me would literally change the course of my life and basically I could tell you a lot of things that happened that day but the bottom line is that when I got lit up with those guys I felt so good that the way I would be on the natch without that effect from that moment on was never ever going to be enough again for me and I just seemed to start living to get lit up and I didn't know that. I didn'T know that I was driven by an incompleteness that seemed like I was a little more whole when I was lit up but I just it was almost as if I just existed doing time between opportunities to party and in the early days of my alcoholism my active alcoholism there was a magic about it those are the days when the hook is set I could a guy like me who doesn't who has all these secrets the secrets are is I don't really feel like other people look I don' t really feel okay I don''t really feel afraid a lot I don'T really feel tough and I have to pretend I'm somebody I'm not and I'm a pretend human being always with an anxiousness that somebody's going to see through the facade somebody's gonna challenge me and see I'm NOT as tough or as cool or as smart as I'd like everybody to believe I am and i'm coming from behind and i uh and man i could take four or five drinks and all of a sudden i don't have to pretend anymore four or пять drinks and i could get free four or Five drinks the guy that walked into the dance that was so locked up in his head i couldn't talk to anybody so paralyzed because and smothered by myself and my emotions could just get free and a couple of pulls off a bottle of 151 rum and they're mixed with a little coke maybe and man i i could dance can't dance but you get me half drunk i can i feel the spirit of the universe flowing through me man i can dance get about half drunk um i'm funny i'm not funny sober Where you get me half drunk, I crack me up. I'm funny. You get me about half drunk. I'm smart. I'm deep. I remember one night with a bunch of guys smoking reefer drinking wine. I remember telling them, this is what Buddha saw. See the big picture. And then I sober up and I'm back to being me again. And my big secret is I never really liked that much. and I existed to party, and by the time I'm not even six, almost 16 years old, I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time. Now, if you'd have asked me why I was there, I'd have given you stories. I'd Have Told You About Snitches. I'd Had Told You about a society that wants to limit and curtail real freedom. I'd have told you about people that were just out to get me. But the real reason I'm standing before this judge is that there's something wrong with me, and I don't have a clue. And what it is, is every time I go out to party with my friends, I have an inability to just shut her down when you really should. Now, my friends get drunk, but I don'T just get drunk. I get drunk-drunk. And when I'm drunk, drunk, there's some stuff that seems like a good idea. Not a good idea. And I don't know that I have an allergic reaction to alcohol. I don' t have a clue. That every time I pick up a drink, it lights something up inside me that just yearns for more of that feeling. Our book says that this is the definitive characteristic of alcoholism. It's what defines us, sets us off as a distinct entity. Our book says it never ever occurs in anyone unless they have alcoholism and I had alcoholism at that time and I didn't know it and I'm standing before this juvenile court judge and my mother and father were in that courtroom and they loved me and I am in a lot of trouble and they are talking about sending me away to this juvenile facility that had a bad reputation, bad reputation. And my parents, because they loved me, would have done anything to help me. Years later, I broke their heart so much that they would have nothing to do with me. You can actually beat love out of someone. It's a long, tedious process. But at that time, they'd have done everything to help you. And they went to bat for me and they made it somehow got a deal going on with this judge and instead of going to the place that was really horrible I had to go somewhere else and live for a while well I go to this new place and I'm the new kid on the block and if you're like me and you're the new kit of the block and you feel like you're coming from behind and you don't measure up and you don't fit what I do is I always target the hip kids the kids a little bit of juice the kids that have it going on, and there's this one little gang of kids that seem to be like they had their own little thing going on. They were hip. They're a little older than I was, and I'm talking to one of the guys, one of the leaders of this group one day, and i'm telling him about me and the gang of guys I run around with, the trouble I'm in, but you know, you just don't tell him. You got to enhance it a little bit. When you secretly don't feel like much, you got to make yourself a little bigger than you are just to kind of look even. You know what I'm saying? So I'm making myself a little bigger than I am. I'm bragging a little bit to this guy, and after he listens to me for a while, he says to me, he says, so you like to party, do you? I said, yes, I do. I was hoping he'd pull out a pint because I was a little overdue to get lit up. He didn't pull out no pint. He says, well, you drink that liquor. That liquor will make you stupid. I said oh, man, I don't know. I liked it. That time, I loved that 151 rum because that would take you downtown now, man. I mean, there ain't no social drinking of 151 rum. You drink 151 rim for one reason and one reason only, and that's to get there. And I love that 151 room. And he said to me, he says, but you can't control that and you're always in trouble. He says, what if I told you that I could give you something and make you feel, oh, maybe that good? Only they're not going to be able to smell it on your breath and you won't slur your words, you won't stagger as a matter of fact nobody will even know you're high and you could keep a whole week's supply in your shirt pocket what would you say to that i don't even know what he's talking about but it's like sign me up right and he introduced me to drugs and i gotta tell you i'm a real alcoholic alcoholics should not do drugs it's bad man oh my god every drug i ever picked up i do it alcoholically i'm trying to reproduce the effect of a pint of 151 rum i am like a crazed guy and no god in no time at all i'm i'm sticking needles in my arm because i can't i can'T GET ENOUGH OF THE EFFECT SO I HAVE TO KEEP RATCHETING UP TRYING TO REPRODUCE WHAT I'D FOUND IN ALCOHOL AND I CAN'T GET EnOUGH AND I'M SHOOTING METH IN NO TIME AT ALL BUT I DON'T JUST SHOOTE METH LIKE GUYS THAT SHOOE METH SHOOTS METH I GOT GUYS WHO HAVE BEEN DOING IT for years that are telling me, hey kid, you better cool it. I think in not even six, eight months at the most of doing that just a little tiny period of time, I turned myself into some kind of paranoid schizophrenic or something I became the guy that if you left me alone in your car and you went in to get cigarettes when you came out I've dismantled your dashboard looking for microphones from the FBI, right? I am nuts man a guy came along and he said try some of this and i don't know what it was he hit me up with something when the throwing up stopped i could think straight all that crazy insane paranoid spinning in my head just went huh and he introduced me to heroin but i'm a real alcoholic alcoholics should not do drugs it was bad man i just took that to the wall and methadone and pills and eventually full circle back to alcohol again and i don't know this for sure but i suspect that when i was almost 16 years old and i changed horses i it was because i was so my my alcoholism was so out of control i'm looking for another means to control it I suspect that I did the drugs for several years for the same reason that Dr. Bob took drugs every single day of his life for 17 years, according to his story. Because it bought him periods of abstinence because every single time he picked up a drink and started, he couldn't stop, just like me. For God's sakes, the day Bill Wilson tried to call on him, they couldn't call on Him because he was taking a nap under the dining room table. I mean, you've got to like a guy like that. I'm that guy. I'm a napper. I played in a band one time and it was like, oh, the main job of the leader of the band was to find me some kind of diet pills or something else because we'd play bars where the drinks were free. You can't do that to me. I'm taking a lap in the booth by the second set because I drink like a crazy person. I can't get enough. I can' t get enough I am the kind of alcoholic that if I'm still conscious I ain't done drinking right? I have never in all the years I drank ever once been at a party or a bar and been drinking for an hour and have the bartender say Bob would you like another drink? I've never had the experience of sitting there thinking nah this is just right never once it's always one more I went to a spring break one time I went to a party up in Boston and it was odd we were drinking and I'm getting pretty lit up some guy came around with a bowl full of pills I didn't even ask him what they were I just said thank you and it turned out to be animal tranquilizer well like in no time at all I'm laying on the ground and I can't get up but I'm lying there asking people to bring me drinks right because I got that phenomenon of craving on me right I got dead one more one more you know that never occurs in other non-alcoholic there's some alanons here they they look at us and the way we drink like like within it's incomprehensible why we do what we do. And I'm going to tell you, I look at them and I don't understand how they drink either. They do the weirdest things. My sister is not an alcoholic and I've watched my sister drink on a lot of occasions. I mean, I watch, I'll watch my sister drink like your cat will watch you eat a tuna fish sandwich. I watch her drink and I want to see, I want To see the action, but there's no action. What happens to her is after about two drinks she just she gets that feeling where she's starting to feel it you know and it starts and she goes whoa and she shuts her right down it's inconceivable to her to get knee walk and cry baby drunk she won't do that she won't drink till she pukes and then so she could drink more she won'T she's not sign up for any of that it's inconceivable to her but it's inconcevable to me that she stops just at the point where i'm revving my engine when when i get to the same point where my sister starts feeling like she's losing control and she shuts her down i have an allergic to abnormal reaction to the effect of the alcohol that my sister never has because it lights up something inside of me that comes with a yearning for more of that feeling. Man, I want more of this. More of that. And I drank a lot of my drinkings with a sense of urgency. I'm the guy in the bar that I usually have a double shot, another double shot of beer and when I'm getting down to only one left I'm looking for the bartender, right? I've got to keep them coming. I'm the guy that's, I still have half of a half gallon left and I'm already worried about where I'm going to get my next one. Right? I can't get enough. It's insatiable to me. And I didn't know that I have alcoholism. I didn'T know I was in the grip of a progressive illness. Our book says over any considerable period we get worse, never better. And that is a frightening thing. I was just talking with a friend of mine before the meeting about what happens to guys, and he's sober a long time, what happens to guys like us that drink again. We don't pick up where we left off. I believe that the alcoholism is progressing while we're sober. And I'll tell you, the reason I know that to be true is I have watched, I've been sober now long enough to watch a lot of people get sober, stay sober 15, 10, 20 years, and then drink again And I watched them when they came in 20 years ago. And I watch them where they pick up. It's not the same place. The disease has progressed so much more in them. If they could pick up where they left off, there'd be hope. But it just, it takes, it's so bad so quick it takes their breath away. They don't know what's happened to them. And they can't get back. And they can't get back because the thing that's progressed within them, and it is subtle. You don't see it. It's worse than the money. It's worst than the emotion. It's the ego. That is what has grown within them. And they become the I know guy. They become the guy you can't tell nothing to. They become The Guy Who Goes to Meetings and Can't Hear Anything Again because they can'T stop judging everybody and they know what's wrong with everybody. They're a closed system. nothing gets in and that is the ego I think that's all the ego wants is to separate me from everybody else it just wants me just to be superior and separate from everyone else and if it can't get me as superior and separate, it'll get me at the bottom of the barrel, it will put me in the gutter it doesn't matter, it just want's me separate and I have all this progression of this disease and I tell you I have a lot to lose today I guard my recovery guys like me don't make it back I can't I have one shot here this alcoholics anonymous recovery from alcoholism is kind of like joining the mob you don't get out alive I mean, you just better be a good member because it's just, you know, you ain't getting out of this deal alive. And I got this progression of the disease and it's in me and as the years are going on, I'm getting in more and more trouble. And I don't understand. It's like my life's getting out OF control which that in and of itself wouldn't be so bad because I have an ability to roll with stuff. You know, I end up in jail every once in a while. Inconvenient. But I roll with it. It's funny how we can adjust. The stuff we can ajust to in order to keep drinking is bizarre. Remember the first time you ever drank so much and you passed out and wet the bed? How horrible that was? How mortified you were? Three years later, it's like, again? again. Some of us realize you keep flipping that mattress, you get about an even yellow after a little while. And we just adjust to all this stuff. But what is hard to adjust to? I can adjust to the consequences, the progressive nature of the trouble. What I can't adjust to is the diminishing returns on the effect. and that is what is breaking my heart and making my alcoholism just crazy because as time goes on my ability to get the magic to fit, to become external to feel like I'm part of to feel free is getting more and more elusive and I entered into a stage of alcoholism that's bleak and as it's getting bleaker and the effect is getting worse and worse and more pathetic the problems are getting more and more I was a blackout drinker it got to be frequent, almost regular blackouts. Any blackout drinkers in here? It's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do Did you ever do anything good in a black out? Nobody ever came up to me the next day and said, oh Bob, you were so helpful last night at the party. You peed in our kitchen. You hit on my wife, you stole my stash, you sideswiped my car, you passed out on my front lawn. The most horrendous one, this guy cornered me, I was shaking, I needed a drink bad, I'm on my way to the state store for that medicine and he corners me and he says, you know you told everybody last night you beat Bruce Lee in a karate match? I want to die. It's just so pathetic. You know, it's just, you want to crawl into a rock somewhere. And so what happened is my, as the disease progresses, I started becoming the guy who's drinking over my drinking. And I get drunk and do bizarre stuff that I don't like myself for and it fuels the need and the yearning for the effect. And I'm driven more and more desperately to obtain an effect that I need and am having a very hard time obtaining. The last couple years of my drinking was so pathetic. You know, I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before I was old enough to take a legal drink. and i'll tell you something now this is the most horrific painful desolate self-loathing years of my life were after i went to my first a meeting i don't think there's a hell on earth for a guy with the malady that i have that's worse than sitting right in the middle of rooms full of people that are alive and their spirit is bright and they're recovering and I'm stuck and I don't fit with you people I don' t fit anywhere and I suffer from these low level depressions when I stop drinking I have a mind that just gets on me and won't get off of me and it's not good this is not user friendly stuff This is bad stuff. I'm the guy that walks into a room, and I remember this. They took us in the van to this big AA meeting. Walked in the back of the room. I've got to sit somewhere. I'll sit over there. No, those people think I like them or something. I don't want to sit over. Oh, they saw me looking at the chair. I'll seat over there, but then those people are going to think something. What are they going to thing? And then if I don't sit over there, they're going to think I don'T like them. Now I'm going to have to sit over... Nah, I ain't sitting over there with those people. I'll have to seat over... Nah... And I'd end up standing in the back of the room like spinning in my head and every time somebody looks in my direction I think they're thinking stuff about me. I've been at points where I've wanted to start a fight with someone based on what I think they're THINKING. Right? If you identify with that, that does not give you a high mental health quotient. I get, oh God, I have this, I get this mind that's just crazy. I remember, I getthis ego that is getting larger and larger and larger. I remember one time I was, one of the last phone calls that I ever had with my mom And at the very end, they wouldn't even take my calls. They'd just hang up. Of course, I'd call collect and they wouldn'T have to take them. But one of the last conversations I had with my mom, and I'm really down and out. The disease has progressed to the point where I'm sick all the time. I can't really get well anymore. I get a little less insane as I take the medicine and I drink that cheap wine, it gets a little bit of the madness off me. But I'm not the guy that's drinking and laughing and carrying on and shooting pool anymore and running with the guys and talking to the girls. I'm no longer the guy who drinks and goes on crying jags that drinks and feels sorry for himself that doesn't even bathe anymore because once the fun's rung out of the party, the truth is I don't really care about anything. I've got sores that won't heal because I don' t eat. I ain't against eating. I'm just not going to eat up my drinking money. And I can only put together so much. And if I have a couple bucks, it's get a half gallon of wine. It's not going be get a halve bottle of wine, a half-gallon of wine and a cheeseburger. I have to have a lot of money to eat because the call and the need and insanity that gets on me and the needs for the medicine is so strong. So I got these sores. I drink and I feel sorry for myself. And this is the reality. This is the real world. This is not a party, this is pathetic. And yet the book says we cannot differentiate the true from the false. The idea that somehow, someday I'll control and enjoy my drinking is this great illusion that drives some of us to the gates of insanity and death. And you, that's my reality and yet you put me six months sober in a halfway house and I will start fantasizing that I can drink like I drank when I was 18 years old again. And I will focus on that fantasy and that yearning for that effect to the point where I'm convinced myself it's just all it's right behind the cracking of a lid of a bottle and I will believe it. I can't tell you how many times I would go be sober a number of months and I'm on my way to get drunk excited because we're going to rock and roll and I'd start drinking and it's just pathetic there ain't no rocking and rolling I drink and feel sorry for myself if I'm sleeping on your couch in the middle of the night because I keep coming to I'm on your phone at 4 o'clock in the morning calling ex-girlfriends because you know they need to hear from you I'm calling Alcoholics Anonymous I'm callin' suicide prevention because I'm just so god awful lonely and that's the word in our book it talks about we get to a place where we know a loneliness such as few do and it's more than the fact that you drank away your family and your friends it's that the one thing the only thing that ever allowed me to feel like I was connected and a part of and gave me a sense of conviviality and community doesn't work anymore and now I drink it in bar rooms and in street corners with guys that are getting lit up and it's working for them and I don't know what's wrong with me because I can remember when it was magic and I'd have given anything, anything to recapture that effect again but once that door closes I've never heard of a case where it ever opened again. Most of us will die chasing something we will never ever catch and there's a futility to that, that is very sad. It's like paying rent on a house that's burnt down. You're paying all the dues and the effect has been in your past and you never recapture it again. I've never known anyone to roll it back to the good days once it turns on you. And in 1977, I was in a halfway house in Pennsylvania and I'd been sober a while. It seemed like coming close to a year, but objectively it was probably several months. It just seemed like a year. It was, oh God, it was just brutal. And I'm going to these stupid meetings. I'm washing dishes. I'm cleaning my room. I got this dumb job with these idiots that I've got to work with that I don't get along with, not my kind of people. I just, I'm just, oh God, I feel like I'm doing time here. It's just I can't take it much longer. And I just the obsession starts hitting me. But it doesn't come in the form initially of the obsession to drink. It doesn't become like all of a sudden I'm fantasizing about Budweiser's. It doesn' t come like that. What it comes as is a yearning for freedom. What has happened to me is I got so much of my emotions and my life and my anxiety is on me that my spirit just feels smothered. I just get me on me like that creature, an alien that attaches itself to your face. You know? How you doing, Bob? Just hanging in there. Remember people used to ask me how I do it. You know what the first thing I'd do? I'd sigh. How you doin', Bob? All right? And I'm in this place, and I'm hanging on. And during that time, I went to this AA member. I say he's an old-timer. He's probably sober a year and a half. But to me, he was an old timer. I went through this guy. He was one of those people. And I said, what do you guys do for fun now that you're not drinking? And he gets excited. He says, oh, he says we go to lots of meetings. I thought, uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, meetings, oh good. Meetings, good, yes, I know, good meetings. But there's got to be something else, for God's sakes. He said, oh twice a year we have an AA dance. Oh. If you've ever been to an AA Dance with untreated alcoholism, you'll remember why you used to drink quickly used to bring us in the van full of losers we'd just walk in the back of the room where all the happy people are that loved each other forever and then there's me oh man I can't imagine life without alcohol I can see the fact that how bad it is when I drink now I just yearned for that effect so desperately, so pathetically. To me, AA had good news and bad news. The good news is that maybe if I went to thousands of these stupid meetings, I'll stay sober the rest of my life. And the bad news, I'm going to live a long time. I can't imagine life without alcohol. And I'm so pathetic. And I had that conversation on the phone with my mother the last time I talked to her. And she told me about these guys. I'm living in this park, right off the park. Sometimes I live in the park when it rains. I live In this abandoned building going there and hole up. I'm dirty. I'm really a mess. And my mother had started telling me About the guys I went to high school with and how one of them is an intern he's about to become a doctor another one owns his own insurance agency another one's having his second kid they have a big house and how wonderful all these guys are doing and i'm smarter than every one of them i'm smarter than everyone but i think to myself in my patheticness with the sores and the dirtiness and the urine-soaked pants. I think to myself, homeless, living outdoors until I can eventually get into another detox. I think of myself, yeah, they got all that. Yeah, but they couldn't take it living like this. Just kind of puffed up a little bit. So I'm in this halfway house and I'm hanging on until I just can't take it anymore and I plan to drunk. I got a hold of a guy I'd been in detox with who I suspected was back to drinking. He was. And we talked on the phone. He said, man, come on down. You can crash on my couch. It'll be great. He says, I found this bar with amazing women and great bands. He says I got some tie stick. Tie stick was big back then. I got something. Tie stick. He said man, come on. And I'm drooling. I'm over ready. I'm over ready. I've been a really good sport up to now. I've bene washing those dishes. I've ben cleaning stuff. I've be going to those stupid AA meetings. So, I plan a weekend, get a weekend pass out of that joint. I'm going to go down here and I'm gonna get lit up all Friday night, all Saturday night, Sunday morning. I'm coming back. I ain't gonna hurt nobody. I ain' gonna get in trouble. For God's sakes, after going through all of this, I'm entitled to a day and a half or two days of fun for God's sake. I don't want to hurt nobody see I'm so deluded I think that I can control and enjoy it I think I'm going to jump start a party that I haven't been able to jump start in years and I think I'm gonna be able to reap that fun and that ease and comfort and keep the damage down to something reasonable and get away with it and I hope I never forget this experience I had in this bar I'd had a couple double shots and I'm sitting there waiting for the thing to happen so I can have fun and it ain't kicking in all that's kicked in is the phenomenon of craving and I'm starting to sink into this depression this it's really a self-pity I'm feeling sorry for myself as I look out at the people that are having fun and I're sitting there just feeling like oh my god this is what's wrong with me and it was like a window in my delusion opened up and I could see the truth. And the truth was horrible. The truth is, this is it, Bob. This is as good as it gets. And that's an unbearable truth to me. I'm living on freaking hope that I can get some fun and effect like I used to. Because if that door really, really and truly is closed 100%. What's the point? Why should I even go on? Why do I work at some stupid job if I can't go feel better Friday night? I don't see the point of anything in life if that party's really over. The book says at that point you can't imagine life without alcohol, and then it says someday you'll get to a point where you won't be able to imagine life with it or without it. and then you'll be at the jumping off place you'll wish for the end and I never did make I think I'm going to control it and enjoy it I never even made it back to that halfway house Sunday night, I came to in a county jail Monday morning facing two years in a state penitentiary for hit and run DUI in a stolen car it was a borrowed car actually I'm not going to get into that right now And I have nowhere to go. They gave me a phone call. I don't have anybody to call. Nobody will take my calls. I am all alone. There's nobody to help me here. And so I signed up on a piece of paper to go to some AA meetings, and I'm not going for recovery. You've got to understand, by this time, I've given up on alcoholics. I like the people. They're always very nice to me. But I know something. I know Something from years of sitting in your meetings and I'd sat in a lot of AA meetings and I've watched you and I watch what happens to you when you quit drinking and to be honest with you, if I resented you for it, but the truth is you were magnificent. You fit, you laughed, you enjoyed life, you were connected, you were everything I wasn't because when I stopped drinking, I'm restless. I'm irritable. I'm discontent. I suffer from low-level depressions, some god-awful loneliness and an absolute painful ability to fit or belong anywhere. I am full of fear. I spin in my head about crazy stuff and I can't change any of it. By this time, I had been to some of the greatest psychiatrists on the planet. My dad, before they gave up on me, he had gotten me in to see a guy who had found an institute in New York. I used to go up there on the train, spend a whole day with him doing individual counseling and group therapy and all kinds of stuff. He had to be a movie star to see this guy. He'd written books, everything. He was like the head of a whole psychiatric movement. I was in another therapist that studied under Fritz Perls. He Was a brilliant, brilliant man. I had tried every medication on the horizon. I had been to church. I had Been hypnotized under the, under, I suspected that even though I know I came from a seemingly good family, someone must have damaged me somewhere. I felt damaged. I felt damage. Someone must have done this to me and regressed back in my child, never found out what it was. I primal screamed which is the silliest thing I've ever done at one point in the primals therapy the therapist had me laying on the ground kicking my hands and feet yelling screaming mommy daddy it was oh god I can't believe I did that because I'm trying I've tried some pretty bizarre stuff under the guise that if I can make myself better sober or maybe I don't have to kill myself, or at least I could moderate it. I wouldn't be so wacky. And nothing works. Nothing. When it says in the book that no human power can relieve our alcoholism, you know why I buy that? It's because I tried everything on the radar. I tried everything that was available at that time. And I'm at the end of my rope and I go to this AA meeting not for recovery. I went for cigarettes. I'd given up on alcoholics I didn't understand that I was becoming the thing you have to become to qualify for AA. The thing I don't want to become, the thing I'm fighting to become. Not to become! I'm becoming an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. And I go to this AA meeting for cigarettes and I'm in the meeting hall in the room waiting for the do-gooders from AA to come in. And they're always coming in, you know. And here comes this guy, Woody, and he's with a couple guys from AA. And Woody, I don't like Woody. Woody used to take meetings into the detox I was in. Woody brought meetings into The Halfway House I just was in and to another treatment center I was at. I didn't understand that Woody was part of the cream of the crop of Alcoholics Anonymous. He's one of those guys that believed in the primary purpose and devoted his free time to looking and fishing for guys like me. I just thought he was some kind of creepy do-gooder. You know, he's always a weird guy. First of all, he is happy and sober at the same time, which is creepy to me. He has one of those books, almost like a minister or something, under his arm all the time. Grateful guy, grateful for everything. I don't even like anything, right? But here he comes. Oh, you're a guy who doesn't want to see him. A guy who can't get away. Locked up. Stuck. So I knew he was very successful. He was a boss at this J&L steel mill, and he had a brand-new Cadillac in a big house, wife and kids, and a very successful guy, and I knew we had some money. The people in AA, they say they want to help you. So I explained it to him how he needed to put his house up so I can get out on bail. And these people in the AA, I tell you, they're hypocrites. They say they won't help you until you explain it to them. he don't want to put his house up. He wants to give me a book and help me with some stairs or something. I don't know what he wants me to do, but I don' t want no big book. I want out of here. And he won' t help me. So I get mad at him because he ain' t doing things my way. And I get a little blustery. I told him, I said, I don''t need you. I'm going to get out of there. I'm gonna beat this thing. I'mma get out here getting a good halfway house. I'mna get some of that voc rehab money. That was big back in those days. You can get money from the government, go to college, be something. Because you're an alcoholic, you say you're alcoholic, they give you money. I'm going to get that Vokery, I'm gonna be a doctor. I might be a lawyer. And Woody starts laughing at me, right? Now where's the AA love? You know, he starts laughing and he says, kid, you're not going to do any of that stuff. You're not even going to stay sober, you'll probably die of alcoholism because you haven't hit a bottom yet, kid. You haven't surrendered. and i don't say nothing but he's aggravating me i just i remember sitting in the meeting just you ever sit in a meeting you don't see anything you just think it people do you ever just think it you know i'm thinking what i'm saying is what do you mean i haven't hit a bottom you don't know nothing about me you with your big house and your cadillac i live like an animal when they gave me a phone call there's nobody to call haven't surrendered surrendered what for God's sakes there's nothing left of me a few years ago I had a pretty girlfriend I had Harley I had some I think there was a time I might have had a little bit of self respect I don't have any of that now I don' t have nothing I have no idea what he's talking about I know exactly what he' s talking about he' S asking me to surrender the one thing that until I could give it up I was going to die of alcoholism and I couldn't give it up. The sicker I got the more I held on to it and that's my opinion and my judgment. What Woody saw when Woody looked at me is the same thing I've seen weekly in institutions in Las Vegas for the last 30 years and I see this almost every week in somebody as I'm sitting there in the meetings what he saw a guy who was dying who was lying of alcoholism literally burnt his life to the ground and yet in spite of that consistency a guy whose insisting on being at the helm of his own ship insisting I fit the old adage you can always tell an alcoholic you just can't tell him much I was unteachable unsponsorable undirectable I was a closed system unto myself. I didn't listen to anybody unless except this or something out here if it agreed with this, which is so bizarre. I mean, when you think about that, I'm retreating to my head for direction in my life. I'd have been better off using Charles Manson as a spiritual advisor than listening to my head. And yet, isn't it funny how I can't see the picture? If you'd have watched me then, you would have seen it. You'd have seen easily, you'd seen, man, whoever's making decisions for this guy is out to destroy him. But isn't het funny how inside of us, it never looks that way to us because of our infinite ability to justify and rationalize and explain. We tell stories to ourselves about what had happened so it's okay. but i can't see the truth and i uh i went before a judge who sentenced me to two years in a state penitentiary and then stayed the commitment told me if i went into a place and stayed a year made the restitution got good uas good po reports etc i he was going to ratchet it down to a misdemeanor but if not it was a felony it was two years and it was an stayed commitment to so i went into this place called the ark house it wasn't really a treatment center the real treatment centers wouldn't take me it was the only place left it was the bottom of the food chain for treatment in western pennsylvania was run by a guy down in skid row and they have had a house maybe close to 200 guys like me either just out of prison or on their way or off skid rows with the skid roll winos and i went in to that place with a determination not to drink again I think everything's on the line here and besides there's I'm starting to get the truth and there's no fun left in it anyway there's and I and I stay in that place depressed in a deep depression as long as I can take it and I went on what was going to be my last drunk I didn't know it I didn'T know it at the time and on that drunk I was so pathetic and so hopeless and so lost I came to one morning and I went and I got a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose for courage and I want to a bridge to kill myself because that past year a doctor had told me in a detox that I was young enough and healthy enough that I could probably go on for another five years or more no sir and I'm on this bridge because I'm going to make this stop. And I am in a trap I cannot spring. Drinking is horrible. Not drinking is horrible, drinking is depressing and self-pitying and lonely. Not drinking as depressing and lonely, I have nowhere to go here and I am not a suicidal guy but you put me in a place where door one is horrible and door number two is horrible suicide can start looking like a good deal to a guy like me And what the one secret trait about me that I hated the most saved my life. And what I've always secretly hated the Most about me is I've always secretly been a coward. I would cover it up with violence and anger, rage. I would pick fights with guys and get beaten to a pulp rather than have them know how scared I am. It drove on me, and I hated it about me. I detested the fact that I'm afraid all the time. And it saved my life. A more courageous guy would have gone sideways. And little did I know that I was going to end up in Inalcoholics Anonymous one more time, and something would happen to me. I came off that run about eight or ten days later in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a hospital. And I was really sick. And after they had tubes and IVs in me, and I hadn't eaten anything for days and drinking that cheap stuff. After they got me stabilized, they sent me to the in-house meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous where a guy that was to become my sponsor and some of the people he sponsored used to bring meetings. And the Buddhists say that when the student's ready, the teachers appear. And I remember sitting in those meetings. Now you've got to understand by this time I'd been in 100, 150, I don't even know how many meetings. I've been in a lot of meetings and institutions for six, seven years. But it was the first time that I was ever in a meeting that I found myself listening to the people share and inside myself I'm nodding my head and I'm thinking oh my God I'm like this I didn't understand that what had happened to me is that I had just enough of me kicked out of me that I could finally hear you. You see I've always had too much of me between me and you and you'll never get through my judgment you'll never get through my contempt you'll ever get through my defense mechanisms but I had enough of me kicked out of me that I could hear you and I had this very little window of opportunity when my ego had been squished down, I want you to know it grew back like a bad tumor in no time at all but I have this little window and in that little window I got a sponsor I got a home group I started forming five habits in my life that would allow me to survive myself and the habits were the meeting habit, I was told if there was a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous going on anywhere in town I didn't have to be somewhere else and have another obligation something else I needed to take care of, I wasn't supposed to be there they told me how to go to meetings they said go a couple minutes early, shake some hands listen, try to do something, help with something stay a couple minutes late talk to some people i started doing that another habit they gave me was the prayer habit now now i don't even believe in god i am an i don'T know that i there was times i fancied myself an atheist i DON'T think i was really an atheist I WAS JUST A GUY THAT WAS AFRAID THAT IF THERE WAS A GOD I WAS IN A LOT OF TROUBLE AND IT WAS BETTER I WAS KIND OF HOPING THERE WASN'T a god because i was going to burn you know but i read it really an atheist and they told me to pray and i was so demoralized that the people in aa took advantage of my weakness and i just started doing it i just got up in the morning and i felt like a hypocrite i'd get down on my knees and i ask whatever's running the universe for help not believing in god i believe in the people in AA that I'm starting to connect with. And I believe in my own hopelessness. So what the heck? What do I got to lose? So I started doing it. They told me to start to read some of that book every day. Oh, that was a hard time. I don't know. I thought I had brain damage or something. I was the kind of guy you could stick a pistol to my head. Have me read four or five sentences in the big book and then said if you don't tell me what you read I'm going to blow your brains out. I'd have been done. because I couldn't, it was like taking a paragraph and throwing it into a tornado in here because it's so crazy. Nothing stuck, but I just kept reading it and I kept reading and I started going to book studies where other people would read out loud and when people read out aloud, I could hear them. It's funny, I couldn'T hear them in my head reading it, but I could here it when you read it and then you'd discuss it and I stated to piece some stuff together and the thing they told me to do service every day that I had to do some kind of service. And they pushed me into 12-step work when I was brand new against my better judgment. And they told me to be transparent. They said, you guys like you will die with your secrets. It'll fester inside you and eat you alive. You must be transparent with at least one person. You cannot survive yourself if you don't. And I started doing this stuff, and the 12-step work probably saved my life. I couldn't understand for a long time why I'm doing this 12- step work, why I am going into these institutions, why I m going on 12- step calls. It doesn't make any sense to me. And I don't, I'm stupid because I don t get that it's actually doing me good because what happens is I go on a 12-step call or I go into the detox or I get, I actually, my spirit is uplifted while I'm in there thinking about these guys but the problem is I got right back to my life and sink right back into me again so I don't think it's working because I think stuff that works should be permanent. Right? As if, I don' know why I thought that. Alcohol wasn't that way. Did you ever have a drink that just kept the stick you just never stop being high from it? I mean, it wears off. You've got to take another one. It's the way AA is. It wears off, you've gotto take another on. I mean it's that way. And I don't get, I don' think it's doing me any good. And I can't see what's really going on. And then one day I come home from work and I'd been to a noon meeting and I've been to meeting after work actually. It was two meetings that day. I had talked to my sponsor and I prayed and I started sinking into a deep depression. I'm the Bill Wilson type of alcoholic. I was very prone to depression. It's a miracle that I stand before you free and free of all medications and not depressed and haven't been in years and years and year through alcoholics. A psychiatrist told me one time that's the way I was and I was probably going to have to take medication all my life and I've been free all this time. But I didn't get free just because I quit drinking. Matter of fact, it got a little worse. And I'm coming home and I'm sinking into this abyss of this depression, this self-pity. And it's the self-pitie that happens when you start pondering your life. What is it about guys like me? I've never pondered my life for 30 or 40 minutes and came away joyous. I've ever had that experience. It always looks bleak to me. I get the deficiencies under this magnifying glass, you know. And the more I look at it, the relationship I was in went south on me. The more I looked at that, the more realized I'm going to die old and alone. And the job is not going anywhere. And whatever I put under that magnifying, glass just gets bigger. And I'm sinking into this abyss. And I am becoming so depressed, I feel like I weigh a thousand pounds. I can't get off the sofa, and it's horrible, and it's scaring me, and I said a little prayer, and I looked at the clock, and it's almost 10 o'clock at night, and I thought there's a meeting at 1015 up on the strip at a chapel up there at Duffy's. If I could, God, if I could get up there, maybe, maybe I'd hear something snap me out of this, and somehow, I guess through God's grace and an extreme effort on will, I pulled myself off that sofa. It was hard to even get up. I'm so depressed. Shuffled out to my car like a mope, got in that car, drove down there. There was a parking space right in front of the door to the chapel. Parked there, went inside, sat in the back of the room. The problem is I can't hear nothing. I am so – when you're really spiritually sick in the extreme, what happens is I reverse my relationship with reality. healthy people are very present here and in their head is like music in a doctor's office they don't really pay much attention to it when you get sick that reverses and what happens is all i can see is the chatter and here is the chatter in my head and what's going on in the meeting is like music in the doctor's house it is very distant and i'm disassociated from it and none of it's coming through it's just like a because the big shows on the inside and I'm sitting there and I am doing worse and it's really bad and I think the subject was gratitude or something there is a guy sitting down across from me in the back who is coming off a drunk and he is in bad bad shape he can't sit still he is grabbing himself and rocking back and forth and trembling like he wants to jump out of his skin. He can't sit for that long. Then he gets up, he paces back and forth right behind me. I'm sort of in the second to last row so he's right behind me back and fourth like a caged animal. Periodically he's in the bathroom. You can hear him go in there. He's in there dry heaving. I have all these problems. I'm trying to figure them out. This guy is annoying the crap out of me. The meeting is over. I feel worse I don't know what else to do I stay after the meeting to help this guy Charlie who's the secretary with the chairs and the trash and everything in the chapel and Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the chapel Charlie's locking up he's on his way to work he works at one of those graveyard shift at one of Those casinos and we look over and the guy that was coming off the run is laying on the ground in a fetal position in front of my car now I'm going They have to step over him to go home and ponder my life more deeply. Which is really what I want to do, except that Charlie's there. And Charlie says, you going to help this guy? And I say, no, man, I don't want to help him. Charlie's got a big mouth. And if I don' t help this guys, he's going to tell my sponsor and everybody in AA what a lousy member I am. And I don''t want to helped this guy. And I go over to him, and he stinks. He's peed his pants, and it's just a mess. He has no medical insurance, no money, so I can't get him into the care unit. There's only one other place to take him. That's a county hospital because they get some government funds. They're forced to take a certain amount of engine and alcoholics, but they don't like it. I've been down there before in 12-step calls. Sometimes they make you wait four, five, six hours to treat you like a redheaded stepchild. It's a bad deal. They have this attitude, bad attitude. They have an attitude like we'd rather treat the legitimately sick guys than you self-induced guys that are probably going to be back here next month anyway. Bad attitude. I got this guy in my car. I've got to go to work in the morning. I'm driving down to that hospital and I'm thinking, oh, my God, isn't it enough that my life's crap? I've Got to do this. Doesn't anybody else step up to the plate except me? I'm going to get tired in the evening. I'm not going to feel tired inthe morning. I'mgoing to goto work. I'mgonna have a bad attitudeup. probably get in a fight with my boss and lose my job. That's a lousy job anyway. I don't say none of that. I'm just driving. We get down to the hospital. We go in, sign up on the deal. We're sitting in the waiting room and he starts to open up to me and he starts to tell me about himself and he stars to tell me about the shame and the remorse that he can't even drink away anymore for the things he did to the people who loved him. He tells me that for some time he'd been thinking about suicide. He just doesn't have the courage to do it. He told me, then he said something to me that really got me. He said, I don't know why you're wasting time with me. I'm not like you people in AA. I always drink again. And he's telling me about me. I was a seven year relapser by that point. Everything he's telling me is me. And in the wee hours of the morning, I'll tell you something. I fell in love with that guy. I remember sitting there, and I wanted and yearned for him to be okay, and there's no logical reason. There's nothing he can do for me. I mean, he can't get me a better job. He can't do anything for me, probably not even going to stay sober a year and give me some kind of credit for something. There is nothing this guy can do for me except that he suffered from alcoholism exactly like i suffered from it i fell in love with him and what i realized later much later is what i fell In love with was the me that is in him an aspect of me that i needed desperately to come to terms with and love but could not love directly could not and not from a lack of trying i had a therapist one time big really a big one. Love yourself. Gotta love yourself. She gave me these positive affirmations. I was supposed to stand in front of the mirror, look myself in the eye, which is very hard, and say to myself over and over again, God loves me. God forgives me. He forgives me. God accepts me. I love me. I forgive me. I accept me. Bullshit. And I gotta tell you something, I could have stood in front of that mirror and said that till the planet it blew up and it wouldn't have changed how I felt about myself. But in helping the me that is in you, change the me that was in me. As I came to love these people in Alcoholics Anonymous that struggle with alcoholism and forgive them and understand them and accept them as is, what happened is it came back on me. The problem when you're the other way and I've been the otherway all my life and you're this insecure guy that's scared and you compensate by judging other people the problem with that that wouldn't be so bad if when you unleash the dogs of judgment they just bit the people you're unleashing them on the problem is they always turn around and get you and the same stick you're beating them up with in your mind you'll turn it on yourself in the wee hours of the morning for being such a worthless loser see i always the bar i set for you is the bar I set for me that's why in the lord's prayer it forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us as i loved and forgive and took you off the hook what happened is i found myself off the book it's a weird dynamic in the realm of the spirit you get what you give you don't get whatyou try to get and you'd think that we'd all know that but it's we're slow studies most of us i mean there's this delusion that it talks about in the big book that we're victims of it we can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world if we only manage well. The reason it's a delusion is that there's not a demographic on the planet that has ever spent more money, more energy, more obsessive concern on making themselves happy and satisfied as we have. And here we are. Here we are, absolute failure. and i remember they finally checked that guy in and i remember driving home in the wee hours of the morning the sun's starting to come up a little bit and the sky's getting a little brighter on the one side and i remember driving back home and i'm crying and i see the sunset probably the first time i really ever saw it and i cry not because i'm depressed i'm crying because i don't know in my whole life i ever felt more complete more right about me more like I was in the right place at the right time doing the right stuff there was a unity a oneness between me and everything at that moment I felt the presence of God at a level that I never felt through prayer and meditation Bill Wilson talks about the concept of enlarging your spiritual life in his story and he says you don't do it through prayer meditation he says unless the alcoholic can enlarge his spiritual life through self-sacrifice and constant work with others you will never survive the certain trials and low spots ahead and i came home that morning and i knew that this is the juice the way i felt that morning is i want to feel this way the rest of my life i was free and i claimed my primary purpose that morning i think up into that and i was sober a while in aa and up until that point my primary focus was me and my feelings and my finances and my sex life what you think of me and me me me and the problem is is that there's a desolation in that there's a vacancy in that that is brutal when helping others is my primary purpose there's fullness and satisfaction and rightness in my life I heard this from a new guy he wasn't even sober 60 days and he says to me the funniest thing he says why is it when I sit and think about how I can make my life better I feel terrible when I think about what I can do for you I feel better because he's being relieved of the bondage of self. There's only one thing in this whole deal I ever have to get free from, and that's the bond age of self One of the guys I sponsor calls 12-step work. He says, that's a good dope. It's a Good Dope. And some people miss that or some people taste it and then the clamorings of self come back in as it happened for me in my 19th year. And you get off the track. You get re-inundated by self and ego again, and you don't know it. When I was 19 years sober and I got so full of me, I'm still going to meetings every day and I'm also sponsoring people. And it was the first time in all those years I'd experienced a depression again because I was so wrapped up in me again. And I got free again because a guy reminded me, set me straight, And I got back into doing what I'm here to do today, and I'm here to every day in my life. Every day is the day where I have to be relieved of the bondage of self. And the only way I can do it is that I've got to care about and think about and do for somebody other than myself. I think that's God's way to saying, Bob, you're talking too long. I want to tell you a quick two-minute story, and I'll shut her down. Maybe 19 to 20 years ago, probably 20 years ago, I was up in Northern California at an AA event and I had a day to sightsee. I'd never been up there before and a guy gets me in his truck and he takes me to this place where they have these trees that are like 250 300 feet high. And some of these trees were huge. I mean 25 feet across. They were unbelievable. And we stayed there for quite a while. I was very impressed it was it was like primordial it was amazing he says come on we're gonna go down we're gonna get our ways to drive we're going to get on the ocean look at these rock monoliths coming out of the ocean so we're getting his truck we're driving we're gone by these meadows and fields and he says to me he says you see how you don't see a 250 foot tree all by itself in a field i said yeah he says do you know why that is i said no i don't he said well in god's plan it is their nature to aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that they will literally outgrow their roots capacity to hold themselves up. They'll literally grow so big that they'll topple over on their own aspired magnificence. He said what must happen in God's plan is that they must grow up in community and they will literally intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest that literally holds them up and that allows them to grow into their nature and as he said that i thought to myself that's exactly what alcoholics anonymous has done in my life i've had one defective character that almost killed me it is and it is with me to this day i think it's irremovable god has never taken it away i don't think it'll ever go bill wilson had it father ed dowling told me he called it divine dissatisfaction there's been this part of me that is thirsted and hungered to take bigger bites out of life there's always been an aspect of me the just wants more i want more love more good feelings more i won't be in lit up by one more And alone, that all but destroyed me. And I came to you and I got a sponsor and a home group and I started sponsoring people and unbeknownst to me, I literally started to intertwine the very roots of my life with yours and you've allowed me to grow into my nature. And if I live to be 1,000 years old, I can't say yes enough in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can'T hear enough Fifth Steps. I will never, ever be able to do enough to repay the freedom that I have found here. And I am glad. I thought there was a time I would do enough and I'd be satisfied. I am Glad I Can Never Do Enough because it keeps me yearning for more of you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching!