Bob D. on Silkworth’s Theory of the Physical Allergy and Craving

Thanks for choosing Dicob Tapes. If you enjoy this tape, you can order other titles from us by calling 1-800-999-3381 or visit our website at www.dicob.com. well you wound him up i hope god lets him go my name is bob darrell i'm an alcoholic and i'm sober today only through the grace and power of god in the program and the people and the principles alcoholics synonymous i really want to thank marie p and the members of the committee for the privilege of coming down here and participating in this weekend. I'll tell you, it's been a great few days up until now. I was watching the readers and everybody, they'd get done and half the people look like they don't know, should I clap or shouldn't I clap? They're clapping. They're not clapping. If I clap, what's that mean? Does that mean I think they read better than anybody have ever heard in AA, or does that mean I'm applauding their service? It's like a Mexican brothel. You don't know who gets to clap and who doesn't. It's just a weird deal. I'd like to welcome the newcomers. I'm glad you're here. I go to a lot of conferences. Most of the conferences are getting signed now. That's a good deal. I think anything that we can do to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous is a good deal. But I don't know what AL, American Sign Language, I don' t know how to understand it so I never know what they're saying. And I might think they're just conveying my story and they might just be going, boy this guy's boring and he's making my hands tired. You know? They keep doing this at conferences, I'm going to have to learn it just so I'll put my mind to rest. I'd like to welcome the newcomers. I'm real glad you're here. If you suffer from alcoholism, the way I've suffered from alcoholismo, I'll tell you something. There is a tremendous amount of hope in Alcoholics Anonymous for people like me. And if you're new here, I'm really glad you know me. I'm so glad you are here. Or maybe you've been in Alcoholic Anonymous and you're edging your way out of AA and you are not even aware of it. I'm glad youre here too And I hope something happens during this convention that causes you to catch on fire for AA once again. Because this is the salvation for a guy like me. In 1978, I stood on a bridge in Pennsylvania with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose, sobbing uncontrollably because I was trying to get up enough courage to jump on these railroad tracks about 100 feet below and just end it. And I'm there, and I want to kill myself, and my life's a mess. I'm facing two years in the state penitentiary, and I can't stay sober. By this time, I've been in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous for seven years. I've sat in the rooms, and I've listened to the people share, and I've drank your coffee and I keep drinking again. There's nobody left on the face of the earth that cares about me. My parents won't even answer the phone when I call them. It just breaks their heart to, they just can't do it. And I'm there and I'm trying to commit suicide and if you would have come up to me at that moment and you would Have said to me, Bob, what the hell is going on with you? Is it alcoholism, Bob? Is it the booze that's killing you? If I'd have been able to be honest with you, I'd of told you no. If I had been able of being honest with ya, I probably would of told ya I was dying of loneliness. Because I got to a point in my drinking where I was totally alone when I'm drunk and I'm totally alone when I sober and I don't fit nowhere drunk and it was a bleak desolate existence and I had entered into that realm of unbearable, empty, desolate, lonely abstinence always followed by disgusting, sick, rummy drunkenness and went on and on and I wanted out but I didn't have the courage to do it. If you had come along at that time and said Bob why don't you go try AA? Have you ever been a part of Alcoholics Anonymous? I'd have told you I was a part of it. I said, I tried that. I was apart of AA. It doesn't work for me. But the real truth is, even though I had been to hundreds of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was never part of Alcoholic Anonymous. What I was, I was part of the passing parade that goes through AA on its way to the graveyard. And I didn't know that. I was dying of alcoholism, and I didn't understand what was happening to me. But it always wasn't that way. I came from a really good family. I grew up in Pennsylvania. This is the closest. I do this a lot at conventions, but this is the closet. This is closest I've ever been, participated in an AA meeting, that close to where all my wreckage is. So if there's any unmade amends here, just see me after the meeting and we'll just, you know, it could happen. I've done the best of my ability with Step 9, but there's a lot of people I couldn't find. And if there is one of them in this room, please, please see me at the meeting. I came from a good household. I didn't come from an alcoholic household. My parents loved me. They did everything for me. They really cared about me. I knew intellectually that they loved me, but there was something about me that I couldn't feel it. The big book Alcoholics Anonymous says that selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. And even as a very small kid, I was very self-involved, very self focused, self absorbed, wrapped up in me. My mother used to tell me, and I never understood what she meant. She used to say, Rob, you're full of yourself. I didn't know what she mean until I got sober in AA and went, oh yeah, I know what that means now. I look back over my childhood, and the only thing I can really remember is me. I remember all about me. I remember about my life. I can't tell you anything about my folks or my sister unless it had to do with me. It was all about be even as a little kid. and we came from a I came from a close-knit family and we did we did a lot of stuff together and one Sunday afternoon after we were out on a family outing on the way back to the house my folks stop at this farmer's market and my dad's going in there because he wants to get this horseradish that's won all these awards it's hotter and spicier than all these other horseraddishes my dad loves stuff like that And he's going in there and he's bragging to my mom about how powerful this horseradish is. So I'm a little kid, I'm three or four years old. I'm here in the commercial. So he got the horseraddish and I said, Papa, can I have some? And he said to me, no, Rob, you can't. It's only for adults. It's too strong. You can't have any. Well, there's something peculiar about me that I may not really want something until you tell me I can't having it. you know and then I just can't stop thinking about it to this day I can't make it past the do not touch wet paint sign without going like this you know what I mean it's it's just my nature so I waited till my folks weren't around I snuck in that kitchen opened that refrigerator got out that jar of horseradish got a big spoon sat on the floor of that kitchen open that horseraddish stuck that spoon in there, put that in my mouth and I think I saw God that morning I'm not sure snot's pouring out of my nose and tears are running down my eyes I am sick, sick, all pain all sick, sickness spit horseradish all over that goddamn kitchen I gotta tell you that was over 40 years ago when I had not once sat with a jar of horseraddish or a big spoon, didn't have to go to no meetings get no sponsor work, no steps none of that deal but I gotta tell you square business that if that horseradish would have done for me what alcohol did for me I'd have spent the rest of my life making myself sick with that crap every chance I could get because I was born with a hunger and I was borne with an incompleteness and I was born what the book calls a spiritual illness a spiritual malady called alcoholism and i i didn't take my first drink until i was 12 years old and i gotta tell you something it made me feel so good that the way i felt from that moment on without it was never enough again and i lived for it and when you're 12 13 14 years old 15 years old you can't drink every day but i drank every chance I could get. I'm the alcoholic that it talks about in our book. Dr. Silkworth talks about guys like me, and I love the doctor's opinion. And if you're new, do yourself a favor, read that. Silkwood says that guys like we have a physical allergy to alcohol. But unlike other allergies, like if you are allergic to strawberries and eat strawberries, you get hives. When I drink, I don't get hives. I break out in what Silkworth calls a phenomenon of craving. Now, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I became my first meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous in 1971 as a young kid in an institution. And from 71 to 78, I was in and out of AA, and I would hear people often talk about this phenomenon of gravy. But I didn't get it. I mean, I drink and I get in trouble and I got DUIs and all that and I always drink to get drunk but so does everybody I drink with. Right? And it ain't a craving. I've seen the days of wine and roses and the lost weekend. I don't take a drink and then claw the walls to get another drink. It's not a craving but the funny thing about a craving is you don't realize you have it until it's interrupted and it was so hard for me to see the phenomenon of craving in me because I never allowed it to be interrupted. I never put myself in a position where I could only get two or three drinks and then could not get any more for the rest of the day. Now, I didn't do that because I thought I was an alcoholic. I just did it intuitively. And I'm sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-70s And I'm listening to a woman share her experience with this disease, and all of a sudden I remembered something that had happened to me when I was 18 years old. And the light went on, and for the first time in my life I could see the phenomenon of craving. And what had happened is when I Was 18, and you've got to understand, when Iwas 18 years Old, in my mind there's absolutely no way I could be an alcoholic. I'm going through my long-haired, better-living-through-chemistry phase of my alcoholism, right? But alcoholism doesn't care what your palmatics are, how long your hair is, or what other kind of stuff you do. If you're an alcoholic, you're a alcoholic. And I was an alcoholic even though I would have believed and bet anything I wasn't. And I'm 18 years old, I'm dating this gal, and she invites me over to her parents' house for dinner to meet her family. And I don't like stuff like that. You know, being under the microscope. But I'm trying to be a good guy and I went. And we're sitting at this dinner table and we're going to be there all night. And they bring out a bottle of wine. And I'm not talking about a big bottle of wine. Just a little bottle of wine. And they pour us all a glass of wine and I always, I don' t know, I've always drank quickly. I don''t know if evaporation is a childhood issue or something. I don't. But I drink quickly, and because I drink quickly, I've killed two glasses out of that bottle of wine. They're still sipping on the first glass, and the bottle's dead. And I'm sitting there. I don't know anything about alcoholism. I'm sitting there at that dinner table. I got two glasses of wine in me, and I'm getting a little antsy. I want another drink. And I finally said to them, I said, God, that was good wine. Do you have any more? They said no. They went back to talking, and I'm sitting there, and I'm getting crazy now. You know how you talk to yourself in your head? It's getting a little panicky in here. You know, and the voices are, you know. And I finally blurted out, I said, sure like beer. And they said, well, that's nice, Bob. We don't have any beer. We didn't know. The next time you come over, we'll get you a six-pack of beer or whatever. And they went back talking about Vietnam and sports and all this other kind of crap. and I'm sitting there with two glasses of wine in me and I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. And I finally excuse myself from the dinner table. I go to the bathroom, lock the door like a crazed maniac, go through the cabinets in there, found a bottle of cough medicine. It was 35% alcohol with codeine and turpentine hydrate, which is a plus. Sat there on the edge of that bathtub, chugged that bottle of coughing medicine and it instantly developed what it talks about in our 12 concepts, singleness of purpose. All of a sudden, all the voices in my head got real focused with one agenda, let's get out of here. And I was able to go back out to that dinner table, and I had a story made up about something I forgot to take care of, and I told them I was sorry to leave. They said, we're sorry you have to go also. And I went and I got in my car, drove like a gentleman 20 or 25 miles an hour down their street, turned the corner, then drove like a maniac 70 or 80 miles an hora to get to a friend of mine's house who had a bar in his basement because I had two glasses of wine. Now, I was the only person at that dinner table that was an alcoholic. Those other people have been alcoholics. We'd all been in that damn bathroom looking through those cabinets. But something happens to me, and it happened the first time I ever took a drink when I was 12 years old, and happened the last time I started my last run in 1978. And this phenomenon of craving that happens to me doesn't happen to non-alcoholics. Now by the time I get sober in 1978, I couldn't have told you the words phenomenon of craving but I knew finally I'd been intellectually and emotionally bludgeoned into the realization that I'm one of those kind of guys that once I start I can't stop. But I secretly suspected that everybody who drank got the same effect from alcohol that I got. Dr. Silkworth makes a statement where he says that to us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. So it made a funny kind of sense to me that everybody that drinks gets that fired up feeling and wanting more just for some reason. Some people could control it and guys like me can't. But Silkworth says that's not true. He says those non-alcoholics never even get that. They don't get it at all. And I got sober, and I thought everybody got that. I went to work almost a year sober as a cashier in a store, and one of the things they sold in that store was alcohol. And, I would see people come into that store and buy like a six pack of beer for two people for a weekend. Or like a bottle of wine for a dinner party of four. I thought my sponsor was sending them in there to mock me or something, you know? How do they do that? See, I think that they get the reaction from alcohol that I do and I don't understand how they can do that. Silkworth says they never get that. And it wasn't until I was four and a half years sober that I really saw it. And I'll tell you what happened to me. I was dating a gal that wasn't an alcoholic. And we'd go out to dinner, and she'd order a drink. And I swear to God, it would take her a half hour to drink one drink. I mean, she'd take a sip, talk for ten minutes, kind of forget the drink was there. You ever forgot your drink was here? I know where my drink is. I know Where Your Drink Is. I'd sit there and watch the ice melt. That's like alcohol abuse, you know what I mean? The whole time I knew her, I never saw her drunk. I asked her one time, have you ever been drunk? She said, yeah, one time in college it was awful. I'll never do that again. She told me a story. She said she was at a party one time and a guy gave her a marijuana cigarette from Thailand and she had taken two hits off of it and she was saving the rest for New Year's Eve. You might not live that long, you know? That's stupid. The whole time I knew her, I never saw her even finish two drinks. On occasion, she'd order a second drink like on a long dinner or at a cocktail party or something but she'd drink a half of it or two-thirds of it and then she'd do the most bizarre thing you've ever seen. She'd push it aside and she'd say, I don't want any more, I'm starting to feel it. Let me tell you something. It'd be easier for me to have sex and after two strokes say, I don' t want any m ore of that, I' m starting to fee l it, than to do that with two drinks of alcohol. And I started to understand by contrast of experience what Silkworth talks about in the book when he says that this phenomenon of craving differentiates us and sets us apart. That these non-alcoholics will never experience that. Never. And I guess maybe that's why my drinking is so baffling to them and their drinking is så bafling to me. We come from, when book says we are bodily and mentally different from our fellows, man, I really am. Now, if that was the whole thing about alcoholism, then AA would really only need a one-step program of recovery. Step one, don't drink. But there's another aspect of this disease that really kills guys like me. And it kills us and we don't understand why we're dying. And we don'T understand what's wrong with us. Silkworth also makes a statement. He says that when guys like Me stop drinking i become restless irritable and discontent unless i can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which i had once found in taking a few drinks so for all practical purposes my alcoholism really starts where the bottle ends that's why i'm the guy that sits in meetings of alcoholics anonymous for seven years and i don't understand what's going on because i've quit drinking and I'm drinking your coffee and I'm sitting in your meetings and I don't feel like you look. I don'T get the same result out of this sobriety thing that you get. I used to hear these miracle stories about guys that get up to the podium and they'd say, I was living in a dumpster eight months ago and I put the plug in the jug, came to Alcoholics Anonymous, found God, now I'm the president of some big corporation. I'M sitting in the meetings, I'M sober several weeks or several months and abstinence feels like I'm doing time. I love W.C. Fields. He says, I was sober one time. It was the most boring 45 minutes of my life. Because I stop drinking, I get restless, irritable, and discontent. I'm prone to depressions. I end up in a psychiatrist's office misdiagnosed several times as clinically depressed. I am not clinically depressed, I'm spiritually depressed and the real treatment I need is alcohol because I have alcoholism and I didn't understand what was happening to me all I knew is that I stopped drinking and I was going to your meetings and I'm dying inside I stop drinking and I end up in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous and I get a sense like it's all of you and then there's me and what's wrong with me? Whatever it is apparently is not the same thing that's wrong with you because you stop drinking and look at you. You're doing great. I stopped drinking and I got a hole inside me you could drive a Mack truck through and I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm restless. I'm like one of those a dog that's circling a room looking for his spot only I can't find my spot. Wherever I go that ain't it. I'm irritable. People in life, sober, just rub me the wrong way and I don't know how to be different. So what happens is I either get on the muscle with people and get aggressive and just be a real jerk or else I withdraw so far inside myself that I'm being diagnosed as clinically depressed. And then Socorro says, discontented. I think my alcoholism is a disease of chronic malcontent. I'm the kind of guy who can give me a brand new Rolls Royce and in three weeks it's the wrong color. Nothing is ever really enough. Not really. But people that are chronic mal contents like me, I develop these cases of the when-eyes. I'm not happy now, but when I get that job, when I gets that promotion, when I got that relationship, when I this, when I that, and what happens is I manipulate myself into a position where I get stuff and that ain't it either. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I keep returning to drinking because I can't stand the emptiness and the desolation of abstinence. and I go back to drinking, and then I end up back in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I just hate myself for being that way. I hate myself for being the kind of guy that can't stick to it and just stay here and not drink. But I have alcoholism. And if you have the same disease that I have, my alcoholism demands treatment. And if I can't treat it through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll treat it with drugs or I'll go back to alcohol or compulsive gambling or sex or workaholism or something that I have to put between me and me because I can'T live in a state of abstinence with my own emptiness. It just eats my lunch. And I don't understand what's wrong with me. and as the years went on the disease progressed and it got worse and worse I ended up on the streets last year and a half I was sober I ended upon the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania living in abandoned buildings in and out of rehabs detoxes I don't know what's killing me but I'm dying I was in this one rehab and I was sober about a couple months about as long as I could stand it and I couldn't take it anymore and there was a guy in there and he had a trailer and a little bit of money and he became my lifelong best friend and we went on a run and drunk together because he had to go and he didn't have a place to stay and he let me crash on the couch in his trailer and we came back there one night after a long drunk and he went in the bedroom and passed out and I'm standing there in the kitchen and I'll tell you something I'm the kind of alcoholic that if I'm still awake I ain't done drinking and he left his car keys in his wallet on the kitchen counter now I am not a thief by nature but I do know when a loan is appropriate I borrowed a little money out of that guy's wallet I took his car key and I went out to finish the deal the next thing I know I'm coming to in a county jail. Drunken driving, hit and run, stolen car. I get my phone calls. I call all these, nope, my family won't take my calls. I call these bail bondsmen. Bail bondsmen are a funny breed of cat. I mean, they like want you to have like a job and an address, you know? I don't have a place to, I'm a homeless guy, right? I'm a bum on the streets. Nobody will do my bail. So I sat there in that county jail until I went before a judge. I went for the judge and this judge knew a lot about me. And he knew about, I guess they tried to, I found out later that the PO department tried to get me into a rehab and none of them would take me. I'd been in all the rehabs around Pittsburgh. They finally got me into this place called the Ark House on the north side of Pittsburgh. It wasn't really a treatment center. It was like a mission run by a guy in AA had housed a couple hundred homeless down-and-out skid row winos and guys out of prison. And I went in there, and I went in there determined never to drink again because this judge had sentenced me to two years in the state penitentiary, and he stayed the commitment. And he told me if I went into this place and I did good and got good UAs and a good PO report and made the restitution and did everything I was supposed to do, I could come back before him in a year and I wouldn't have to do the two years. So I'm in this place and winter's coming on and I don't want to be out in the snow either and I'm hanging on there and I're not drinking. I'm not picking up day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. I'm just getting it up to here with sobriety. And I go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and everybody just loves everybody. I don'T even like anybody in AA. There's a few people I'd like to know where you lived and when you wouldn't be home. I don't fit in AA. And I'm sober a couple months, and I'm getting ready to jump. And I, I'm starting to fantasize about, I, I'm just so locked up inside of myself and so depressed and so restless and uptight all the time. And I just, I start thinking about that relief, man, I could get if I could just go out and tie one on for a couple days. And I'm scared because I don't want to drink. And there's an in-house meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in this big dining hall at the bottom of the bank where they had the rehab, and I grabbed a guy after the meeting, and I did something I'd never done before in AA. I grabbed the guy, and I said, I need help. And he sat down with me at a table, and I started to tell him everything that was going on with me. I told him about facing the two years in prison. I told him about my inability to stay sober, how by this time it had been over six years in and out. There had been times I swore to myself I would never drink again, and I did. I told them about the shame and the guilt that I carried for the things I did to my mom and dad. See, my folks were never anything but on my side, and I broke their hearts over and over again so they couldn't stand to even hear from me anymore. One of the worst things I did to my parents is I kept getting up again. And they'd get their hope up, and then I'd just do it again to them. I told them I had these mental problems, and I didn't understand what it was, but I had all these little chattering conversations that went on in my head nonstop, and none of it was good. I mean, I could walk into a room and somebody didn't say hi to me. My head would tell me how the guy hates me, andI need to punch him out. You know, I'd go to work at a place and a boss would say something to me and I'd just go off on him because my head's telling me all this crap. My head would tell me I had cancer. I remember getting headaches. I could feel brain tumors growing in my head, you know. It was just chattering, just nonsense to me all the time. I got these living with my head in abstinence with untreated alcoholism is like driving cross-country in a van full of 8-year-olds that have overdosed on sugar and none of them like you. I can't, I got emotional problems and I don't know what's wrong with me I'm the kind of guy I could be sitting in the TV room doing good feeling great and then all of a sudden I'll get so depressed I want to go out in the garden and eat worms and nobody's even said or done nothing to me I just go on these roller coaster rides that are just wacko i can't work i can get good jobs i just can't hold them i'm always the guy they're calling to the office and saying things like well bob you're a hard worker but we're going to have to let you go there's something wrong with your attitude what do they mean by that you know nobody explains that or the one that used to hurt my feelings they said to me one time you've been a real hard worker but we're gonna have to let you go because you're not a team player oh man yeah you're right i'm not sober i'mnotateamplayer give me a pint of jack daniels i'll lead your goddamn team sober i don't fit very well with people i don' know how to make i don´t know how to go to work and mix with people like they mix with each other i don''t know how to kid around with people sober when i stop drinking everything is serious and heavy i don't fit very good and i'm telling this guy all this stuff and he reaches in his pocket he pulls out his card and he gives it to me and he points to the wall and on the wall they had the 12 steps of alcoholic synonymous and he says if you'll put those steps into your life and i'll give you a hand he says all that stuff you're telling me is gonna just gonna it's gonna take care of all of it. And he gets up and he walks back to the end of the dining hall to get a cup of coffee, and I'm sitting there, and i'm looking at the 12 steps of the wall. Now, I had seen them in meetings, but I never really paid that much attention to them. I kind of thought that was something for some fanatical branch of AA or something. I don't know. So I'm sitting there and I read these steps, and the more I read them, the more i realize that this guy has not heard a word I told him. There's nothing in those steps that applies to any of those problems. I mean, you could stretch your imagination all you want. There is no connection here. I mean I need a set of steps like step one, make Bob's police record disappear. Step two, make my family realize how wrong they had been about me. Step three, give me $1,000. Step four, bring her back properly ashamed of herself. I mean, give me a step so I'll feel better. Give me a steps so I don't feel so much shame and guilt all the time. Give me steps so that I feel like you look. But instead we got stuff like turn your will and your life over to the care of God. Now, I gotta say this and be fair. I was raised Catholic. And I went to Catholic school. And I've got to tell you that what I heard in Catholic school and what was actually said may not be the same thing. I suspect that there was something a little screwed up with my receiver even back as a kid. Because I didn't hear about a God of love, I heard about a god of judgment. And he could see in the dark which was not good for a guy like me. That's a bad deal. he could read my mind which was hideous I remember I'd be sitting in in school just daydreaming and all of a sudden I'd Be imagining what the nun looked like under her habit you know and go oh no oh Jesus I know they're gonna put me in hell for that one and burn me and torture me forever and ever oh there's a Catholic priest one time I had to go see this priest I'm always in trouble as a kid i don't mean to be i'm just too good at being bad and too bad at being good i had something about me and the nuns used to when they they were tired of beating on me they'd send me to a priest you know and i'd get out to see this priest and i i'm real ashamed of myself like i always am you know when i said to the priest i said you know i'm sorry father i don'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG i'M JUST PROBABLY GONNA GO TO HELL and he said oh no son he says you know god in his infinite mercy has created a place for guys like you. It's like it's called purgatory. In purgatori, it's a lot like hell. They burn you and torture you, but it only lasts for maybe, in your case, a couple hundred million years, right? So I get to be 12 or 13 years old, and I don't want to offend anybody, but I discovered masturbation, and I could picture a meter in heaven clicking off the millions of years, and I haven't even done nothing. I'm just practicing. So I get to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think that step three, turn your will and your life over to the care of God. I'd rather turn it over to an undercover narcotics agent than God. I'd have a better shot. And the amends step horrified me. I mean, I looked at the amens. I knew what that meant. I looked around AlcoholicsAnonymous. I thought, that's a good step for you good people. I mean, I'm sure some of you have gotten a little too drunk one night and said something unkind to your wife. You should make them apologize, make amends. Maybe you padded your expense account, go make it right. I lived on the streets like an animal. There's guys walking, there's a guy walking around I've never been able to make ammends to. To this day, I've looked for him on the internet that I opened up his chest with a knife. There's people that went to prison as a result of me. There were guys that felt sorry for me and let me stay on their couch. And when they went to work, I robbed them. It wasn't personal. That's just what guys like me do. I lived on the streets like an animal. I can't make amends for that. There's not enough time left in my life. So he came back to that table and I just gave him his card back and I said no thanks and I shuffled off to my bunk and I started what I didn't know was to be my last drunk. You see, I'm one of those type of alcoholics I go on a run and alcohol just destroys me until there's nothing left of me. And I end up an alcoholic synonymous the first thing I get back is my opinion. It's my opinion and my judgment that kept me from doing what you people do because it didn't make sense to me. it wasn't that I had a problem with the steps I thought to myself, looks like a nice thing if I ever got my life in order I might do some of those steps hey, I might join a gym too, who knows but none of AA seemed to apply to my particular set of problems I had an deep-seated sense that my case is different even after many rehabs of being intellectually blungeoned into a knowledge that I have alcoholism It's like, yeah, okay, I'm an alcoholic. But I'm a special type of alcoholic. I'm not like you people. And I've been offered the program of Alcoholics Anonymous for over six years and I kept throwing it away because I got an opinion of what I need and what's good for me. So I never bought the whole package. I did bits and pieces of it. I did phony rehab four steps that mean nothing at all and have nothing to do with AA. I went to a lot of meetings, but I never bought the whole package that's outlined in the big book. And I'm the type of alcoholic that dies of untreated alcoholism until I do that. Coming off my... i ended up with that suicide attempt right after that hooked up with another guy that was in the ark house that had busted out on a drunk and he had a little bit of money and we started hitchhiking cross-country i was trying to get to california i figured if i could get there i could make it through another winter on the streets i didn't want to do another winter in the northeast i know what it's like to have to walk all night long because you can't even You can't even sit down because when it's 10 degrees out and you sit down and you're tired, you'll fall asleep. And if you fall asleep and it's ten degrees, you're dead. So you'll walk all night long. So I thought if I could get to California, I could survive and maybe the police wouldn't catch up with me and I could maybe get a change my name or something. And I ended up in a detox hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I didn't know that that was to be my last drunk. something had changed inside of me and all of a sudden I'm going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in this detox and I'm hearing things different than I'd ever heard them in AA before I'm here and people talking about the way I feel and I'd never heard that before now maybe it was said in meetings but maybe I was just too wrapped up with myself to listen to you or maybe it's just the view changes from the bottom but I heard things in AA I'd never heard before and I started identifying with people in Alcoholics Anonymous and I got a sponsor and I Got a home group and I've got a commitment and a dedication and I left a group of people in AA that I'd been around and been with for over six almost seven years. In every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a line down the middle of the meeting and on one side of that line there are the people that are dying of alcoholism and on the other side of the line is the people that are recovering. And the line is defined by one of the first sentences in chapter 5. You hear it at every meeting. There are those who do not recover, people who will not or cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. I was one of those guys. I'd do bits and pieces of AA, but I could not get off the fence. I could Not completely give myself to this simple program. I'd Do anything I felt like doing or anything that made sense to me. Made sense to this? I'd be better off getting Charles Manson as a spiritual advisor than listening to my head. In early sobriety, a guy said to me, I'll never forget this. we're sitting i'm sitting with his old timer we're talking about the steps and he's talking about the second and third step and i said i told him i says i can't do that i don't believe in god i can'T turn my will my life over something to i can'T do it i don'T believe in God he said that'S okay he says i'll tell you what you turn your will and your life over to that chair and i guarantee you an instantaneous miracle i said okay i turn my well my life or the chair What's the miracle? He says, the miracle is your life's no longer in the hands of an idiot. And when he said that, I sat there and I thought, yeah, yeah that's right. Because you know something, if you took a picture of me with a Polaroid picture of Me every time I was ever in trouble since I was a little kid, there's one thing in common in every picture. I'm in it. I're the guy. I may have blamed you, blamed them and blamed a lot of stuff but it was me and I started in a process in those steps and it's changed my life so dramatically that it's frightening sometimes sometimes I I think that God's got the wrong guy sometimes I have a feeling like God's going to one day go oh Bob Oh, that's not your life. Oh, no, no. Oh, here we want you scrubbing dishes in a homeless shelter. Here, we're going to put a good person in your life I don't have my life. I don' t deserve. I always know what I was and where I came from. And I guess maybe that's why I know I owe. And I owe big time. I owe dig time. i fell into the hands of a group of people that had a big book study and we started going through the process in that book and if you're sitting here and you're new or you're on your way out and you've done everything in aa except the fourth step as it's outlined in the big book try it there's a lot of four-step guides floating around i think every alcoholism counselor that has some untreated alanine in him writes another one You know, with 180 questions, do you ever sleep with a goat? Did you give the goat flowers in the morning? It has nothing to do with alcoholism. It has Nothing to do... See, I think the ism is I separate myself. And it is the feelings of separation and not fitting and being locked up in my head that always drove me to drink. Because I could walk into a bar just fed up with life, pissed off at the world, locked up here. I can't talk to anybody, and five shots of Jack Daniels and I could come out and play. I seek relief from separation and the loneliness of untreated alcoholism. And when I did that, thank God I did this step out of the book because there came a time, and I'll tell you something, there's a lot of things we do in AA that you do them and you don't know why you're doing them. Why am I doing this inventory? Why am I making these amends? Why am i paying back these people that don't even know where i am and don't expect me to pay them back and i'm paying them back anyway? Why am ich working with all these newcomers? Why do i have all these hospital and institution commitments? Why am ik doing my life's good? I'm not thinking about drinking. How come i keep doing all this stuff? And i think sometimes it's like we're forging a weapon. That someday you're going to need and your very life's going to depend on it. and if you forge it anything less than what's outlined in that book when that day comes a guy like me either drinks, takes medication or blows my brains out and I have seen some good guys blow their brains out and commit suicide with many many years of sobriety and I don't want to be one of them in my 11th year of sobrietty I found out one of the reasons I did everything I did the first 10 years. I was married to a gal I met in Alcoholics Anonymous and we had a daughter. She was a little over a year old at the time and we started sort of growing apart, I guess. I sort of noticed it, but I'll tell you, one of my character defects is that I get so wrapped up in my own life sometimes that I don't pay attention to stuff around me And if there could be problems, and if you're not waving a red flag, I might not get it. Because I'm so into my aid commitments and job and everything. And evidently there were some problems because my wife came to me one day and she says, I want out of the marriage. Okay, now I get it now. That's a red fly. All right, I get that. There's a problem here. So I talked her into it. I said, let's go to some marriage counseling. So we started going to some married counseling. And my sponsor at the time, not the sponsor I have now, but the sponsor I had then, was on vacation. He took like a long he retired and he bought this RV and he was traveling all over the country and he just wasn't available. So there was a guy that I sponsored named Craig. And Craig and I, he was like my best friend. Of all my pigeons, the guys I sponsored, he Was the one I was the closest to. And he became my confidant with my marriage problems. And we're going through this marriage counseling, and one day my wife comes to me and she says, I don't want to do the counseling anymore. I just want out. So in Las Vegas, if you don't fight it, you can get a divorce quick. We were divorced on a Thursday, and the next day, Friday, my wife and my daughter moved in with Craig, my best friend. And I found out that they'd been sleeping together the whole last year of my marriage, and it seemed like everybody in AA knew about it except me. Now, I'm in my 11th year of sobriety. You guys have been telling me for 11 years there's no such thing as a justifiable resentment. Well, I got one now. And I can even find people in AA sober a lot of years that'll agree with me, you know? I'll tell them what had happened and they'll say, oh, Bob, didn't you just buy her a new car? And I go, oh yeah, the holes in my hands, the nail holes would open up a little more, you Know? And you get a little bit of ego gratification by being wronged deeply. But if you're an alcoholic of my type, it makes you real sick inside. And I started becoming afraid for my life. I was afraid I was going to do something stupid or drink. And I couldn't shake it. And people in AA would give me weird advice. Like one guy said, well Bob, just don't think about it. yeah do you know a good lobotomy surgeon how do you stop thinking about something you can't stop thinking I had another guy come up to me he said well if you believed in God it wouldn't be a problem geez I believe in God let me tell you it's a problem but God was very merciful to me and you know what he did and I see it happen in AA all the time he threw waves of newcomers and people sober a while at me that were going through relationship breakups. Now, there's no one on the face of the earth more self-obsessed than an alcoholic in a relationship breakup. You can go up to a guy like that and say, I just came from the doctor, I have terminal cancer, I have three weeks to live, and he'll go, and you know what else she said, man? So, I got my car full of these guys, right? And we're going to meetings, like two, three meetings a day. One meeting right after another. We're like the depressed section in the meeting, you know what I mean? You can hear the secretaries tell the chairman, don't call on them. They'll talk about that relationship. But these guys gave me islands in my day where I'd sit in a car or coffee shop with one of them and he'd start crying. and I'd be pulled out of me temporarily. I'd been relieved of the bondage of self and it gave me enough relief from me to get me to a point where I could come back and I could do the fourth step as it's outlined in the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I put both their names down on the resentment list and I put down what they did, the lies and the infidelity and everything else And I looked at what was hurt, threatened, affected or interfered with. My pride, my self-esteem, my pocketbook, my personal relations, my material security, everything. Everything was affected. And then the book asked me to do something that was very difficult and it saved my life. It says this was our course. you must realize how the person who had harmed you was perhaps like you spiritually sick even though you didn't like their symptoms and how they affected you that they, like you, are sick too and the book asked me to put myself in their shoes and to look at this situation through their eyes and I'll tell you something when I did that I didn't Like What I Saw when I put myself in the place of my ex-wife what I saw is I saw a gal who came from an alcoholic home and because of the way she was raised she had an inability to face confrontation or tell you that there's something wrong and she married a guy and she put her whole life into this marriage and the truth was that this guy was so wrapped up and working 70 hours a week, building his business and his AA commitments and the guys he sponsored that the real truth was he just wasn't there very much. There's a line in The Family afterwards where it talks about we become emotionally unaccessible. Now I can tell you, and there's some truth to it, that I had to do the AA stuff in order to keep sane with alcoholism and that's true. And I could also tell you that I had a window of opportunity to build this business that I hade about three years where I had to work about 70 hours a week and that it was necessary, and if I had do it over again, I would do it again. I built a business that will take care of my children and their children's children and we will never want for money for generations. And I had o do that. But there's a deeper truth, and the deeper truth is, yeah, all that stuff's true, but it was also very convenient. because I didn't know how to do intimacy very well. And a guy like me, after six months of telling you all the stories and everything I know how tell, I don't know, I run out of things to say. And I wasn't centered enough in God yet to be okay with that. So I get busy, and I stay busy. And when I was able to see the relationship from both of their eyes, I realized to myself, my God, how did she stay in there as long as she did? And I could see easily how if I would have been in her shoes, I could have had an affair. And I can see how if I would've been in their shoes and did that, how I probably would have paid a price for it and wouldn't have liked myself very much for doing it. But I could understand at a gut level how she did it. And when I was able to do that, I was able to take her off the hook and then do the last part of the step where it says referring back to our list we ask ourselves these questions in this deal where was I selfish my god it was all about me I never stopped to consider her or anything else once where was i dishonest I made this big fantasy in my head about what I was doing and all this great husband I was it was all crap. Where was I self-seeking? The whole deal. And where was I afraid? I was terrified. I had never had, I had a wife and a daughter and I never had anybody rely on me before. It scared the hell out of me. The feeling of responsibility sometimes was oppressive. I felt so inadequate and my center with God was not strong enough to trust in him and know that it was going to be okay. I was only 10 years sober. And I think trust in God takes a long time here. It doesn't take a long time to talk about it, but to walk it takes a lot of time. It takes a long time. And I came out the other end of that deal and I realized that I owed them amends. And I started that process. I sponsor Craig again today. Matter of fact, he's one of my number one pigeons. We do a lot of stuff together. He's a good member of AA. He paid a tremendous price for that. He paid the same price I would have paid if I had done something that dumb. Part of my dishonesty and resentments is I pump my ego up thinking I'm superior to the person that I resent, like as if, oh, I would've never done that. Well, that's crap. Under the right set of circumstances, if I've learned nothing else about myself from the fourth step, I've learned that I am like all of you. That anything that another alcoholic has ever done under the right circumstances, I could do. If I haven't done it, it's by circumstance, not by virtue. And my ex-wife and I are pretty good friends today. And our daughter, she's doing well. I've you know I went as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous I got to make amends to my parents and it was what a tremendous thing when I got sober in 1978 I told people in AA they'd ask me about my folks and I said I drank them right out of my life and I'll never have them back in again I really believed in my heart of hearts that I had done so much damage that it was irreparable. But people in AA told me, well just pretend like it's not. Start calling your mom and don't call her collect. She didn't know who it was. She said, are you in Pennsylvania? No mom, I'm in Las Vegas. I'd never called her without calling collect. I started sending the Mother's Day and Father's Day cards. I started sending the Christmas stuff. I started acting like a son. And very, very slowly, I started to rub away the wreckage of my past. And both my parents have died in sobriety and before they died, I had a tremendous relationship. My mother died about, must be close to three years now. It'll be coming up on three years ago and it was a tough death. You know, she had lung cancer and emphysema. By the time she died, she was less than 50 pounds. And she died at home. She didn't want to go into a hospital or nothing. And I'd go over and I'd sit with her every day, day after day, and I would watch her waste away. And she was in a lot of pain. And I got to a point where we had to change her diapers and we had give her medication and try to feed her. It was a tough thing to do. and I sat with her the last 23 hours watched her take her last breath and I helped her to go home and I told her, I said my dad's going to be waiting for you it's goingto be okay mom and I watched her leave and I could feel her presence leave the room and she left two surviving heirs my sister and myself and she left a will And in the will, it was 50-50 right down the middle. And we were supposed to go to the safety deposit box, and my mom had left about $250,000, $260,000 in Naveens and mutual funds and stocks and bonds and that kind of stuff all in the safety deficit box. And my sister and I were supposed to go there and divide everything up. A day or so after my mom's death, my sister comes to my office and she hands me an envelope with my father's handwriting on it, with my name on it. It had about $300 in old dollar bills in it. It was the last of my father'S coin collection. And she said to me, Mom wanted you to have this and she wants me to have everything else. Now I'm sitting there and thank God for some of the things you hear in AA. There's a line in the 12x12 that talks about cultivating restraint of tongue and pen. so i kept my mouth shut i mean my head was talking like crazy but i kept my mouth shut didn't say that i said really she said yeah and walked out of my office now i'm going crazy and i go around to alcoholics anonymous and i ask some of the old timers and people are telling me stuff like don't let her get away with it get an attorney you got a cop get a copy of the will you know you're not a doormat they said all that stuff to me but as they're saying it it just doesn't seem to ring true I think that there's a place inside of us where the things are right and things are wrong and just what they're telling me made sense intellectually but in my heart it didn't make sense and I called up my sponsor and he was the only one that told me the truth I called him up and told him what happened he says let her have it you didn't earn it money's not your problem alcoholism is your problem let her have it he says you don't need any money you make more money than you know what to do with how many $80,000 cars do you want I'd already figured out I was already picked out a new Corvette in my head you know he says let her have it so I said alright done deal I walked away with it and I was really okay with it really okay and it came to pass that as my sister tried to cash in all this stuff. They all want certified copies of the will, and everybody starts sending me checks for half. So I call my sponsor up. I says, what do I do? He says, offer to sign them over to him. Now by this time, I'd already picked out the wheels and everything. I mean, it was because I think God's doing... I said, look, see, I did the right thing. God's rewarding me. I'm to get a new car and another Harley, it's going to be great, right? He says, offer to sign them over to her. And I did that, and I'll tell you what happened. I'll tell you how my sister said to me. She says, no, just keep it. Maybe I was wrong. You see, when my mother died, my sister lost her financial backup. My mom was always there for her. If my sister ever got in trouble, my mom was always good for a thousand bucks. When my mom died, my sister became afraid. And I don't know about you guys, but I'll tell you what I've learned about me. You get me afraid and I am capable of acting badly. Now, if I would have done what my head told me to do and my ego told me to do, and some people in AA told me to do it, I'd have ended up in the exact same spot with half minus attorney's fees, but I would have lost my sister, my only surviving relative. And even worse than that, I've been making a statement to myself and the universe that money is more important than people. What would become of me if I did that? Where would I draw the line? As a result of Alcoholics Anonymous and the good sponsorship, my sister's in my life. It came to pass she went through a divorce right after that and I was the only one she had to turn to. And I was able to be there for her because we didn't fight over nothing. This is a tremendous, tremendous journey. If you're new here and you've identified with anything that I've said I want to tell you I want to make you a promise. If you are an alcoholic of my type and you can completely give yourself to the simple program of Alcoholics Anonymous as it's outlined in the big book of Alcoholic Synonymous. I will promise you that there will come a day when you could look around you at work, in your neighborhood, in your AA groups, and in your family and you will not be able to see a person on the face of the earth that you would rather be than you. And I don't know about you guys, but when I was drinking, I'd have rather been anybody. I'd had rather been somebody who could successfully commit suicide than me. I hated myself by the time I got here. And I was suspect of anybody who liked me. That's one of the things about AA that I couldn't understand. Why are these people, why were they so friendly to me? You made me crazy. First of all, if you take alcohol away from me, Don't put me in the middle of a lot of enthusiastic people. You make me nuts. You were like a cross between the Salvation Army and Amway or something. I don't know, you were weird to me. But I had never been around people who could laugh at themselves. I'd never been round people who had recovered from alcoholism. You don't see many people recovering from alcoholismo in the institutions I visited. And if you're new here, I welcome you. And I really hope from the bottom of my heart you can grab onto this thing with both hands and make it the center of your life. And if You can do that, I promise you that Alcoholics Anonymous for You has good news and it has bad news. The good news is what we have here really is an effective treatment for the feelings of separation and the inside desolation, loneliness, and emptiness of alcoholism. The bad news is that it doesn't work as fast as five shots of tequila. Thank you for my life. Thank you.