Craving, Service, and Bob D.’s Take on the Big Book

My name is Bob Darrow, and I am alcoholic. And I'm sober today only through the grace and power of God in the program, the people, and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd like to thank the group here for asking me to come down here and share with you. It's a privilege to participate in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I'd love to congratulate the birthday guys, and it's good to see Mike again. It's always a pleasure, Mike. i'm uh i'd like to welcome the new people i'm real glad you're here and i don't want to say that to embarrass you i it's terrible i was a newcomer i was i was an alcoholics anonymous for probably seven years i think i was the 12-step practice dummy of pennsylvania you know everybody would come and try to share their experience strength at home with me and um i hated being new. And I hated being a newcomer because they would always make me stand up in a meeting and introduce myself, and it's never a high point in my life when I want to be recognized. I mean, you know, it's not like things are going well and I want attention. I feel like I want to crawl under a rock and they want me to stand up and be recognized, I hated it. I hated coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, but if you're new, I got to tell you that you have an opportunity here to latch into something that will do more for you than anything you've ever found your whole life. And this is the best deal I've ever got. And even though I went to great lengths to resist it for a number of years, something about me that didn't want to be here. I think I was born with alcoholism. I'll tell you a story. When I was about three or four years old, I was living back in Pennsylvania, and I went with my parents one Sunday afternoon to this farmer's market. And we were going out there for the specific reason of seeing this one farmer who my dad raved about made this special type of horseradish that was hotter and more potent than anybody in the whole part of the country. It's won several awards, and my dad liked stuff like that. He liked the hotter the better. And we're going out there and he gets this jar of horseradish and he's telling my mom how great it is. And I'm like three, four years old. I'm listening to all this and I wanted some. And I asked him for some and he said, no, son, you can't have any. This is only for adults. It's too powerful. You're just too young. And I want those kind of guys that I may not really want something that much until you tell me I can't Have It. And then you tell Me I Can't Have it, I get real obsessed with getting it. And I bid my time and waited until my folks were visiting the neighbors and I snuck in that kitchen, went in that refrigerator, got that big jar of horseradish out, got myself a big spoon, sat on the floor of that kitchen took that lid off that horseraddish, stuck that big spoon in there, put that in my mouth. This was before LSD. But I saw some shit that day. You know, snot's pouring out of my nose and tears are coming down my eyes. I spewed horserradish all over that kitchen. I got so sick it was unbelievable and I gotta tell you that was a lot of years ago and I've never sat with a jar of horseradish in a big spoon once didn't have to go no treatment center get no sponsor go to no goddamn meetings or work no steps but I gotta also tell you that if that horseraddish would have done for me and made me feel the way alcohol made me feel I'd have spent the rest of my life making myself sick with horseradish every chance I could get and that's I believe that I was an alcoholic before I ever picked up a first drink I was kind of like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol because I desperately needed to have something done that I didn't even need no I needed to Have Done until I found alcohol and alcohol did something for me that I think I'd always wanted to have done didn't even know how to have it done prior to out prior to ever picking up a first drink there was something wrong with me i always had this feeling i don't quite fit uh there was nobody in my family in my neighborhood and the kid nobody in school that looked the way i felt it was i went through life and with the feeling like it was all of you and then there was me and i felt separate and apart from and I had felt that way all the time and I always felt like I desperately wanted to fit and I desperately want it to be like the people around me and I took my first drink I was 12 years old I'm hanging around with a bunch of older kids or the juvenile delinquents in the neighborhood and I'm doing everything I can to fit because I want to desperately want to belong and I think that if I act like they act maybe I'll feel like they look and I never felt like they looked and one day we pulled this burglary and one of the things we stole was out of this somebody's house was a bunch of bottles of whiskey and we're passing around this quarter seagram seven and i have no idea what that whiskey did any of those other kids but i've got i took a big hit off that bottle it burnt like hell got down inside of me and spread out and for the first time in my life i felt like those kids i was hanging around with for the first time in my life i didn't have to pretend anymore i was connected i could talk to them i felt like i was a part of and it was a tremendous thing for a guy who lived in the loneliness of untreated alcoholism for 12 years of my life because i think i was born with this spiritual malady called alcoholism and alcoholism being born with alcoholism is like it's kind of like going through life with a stone in your shoe and everybody every once in a while you take that shoe off and you look inside you shake it out and you rub it and you can't get nothing out of you put it back on you're walking and there it is again just that mild irritation something just kind of gnawing at you and no matter what you do you can seem to get that stone out of your shoe. And I live with that with that it's like a hole inside of me it's something was missing. And the only thing I ever found that really filled that hole up was alcohol in the early days of my drinking. And, the problem with alcohol is it's a two-fold, it's a spiritual malady but it's also a twofold disease. It's a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession and the mental obsession started the moment I found the thing that did for me what I needed to have done and then the physical allergies what kept destroying me over and over and over again i'm the guy they talk about in the big book dr silkworth says guys like me have this physical allergy unlike a lot of other allergies when i take a drink alcohol i don't break out in hives or a rash i break out what silkworth calls a phenomenon of craving now i sat in meetings of alcoholics anonymous i came to my first meeting in 1971 i was a young kid i was in an institution and i i didn't i didn' t know why i was here and from the years 1971 to 1978 i was in and out of institutions in and out alcoholics anonymous and many times through those years i would hear people talk about the phenomenon of craving and i would sit and try to examine myself and think to myself well i don't have a craving when i drink i mean i saw days of wine and roses in the last weekend i mean I'm not like that i mean, I don't take a drink and claw the walls to get it you know i don' t not like that but the funny thing about a craving is is that you don't realize you have it until it's interrupted everybody in this room right at this moment is in the grip of a craving that you're not aware of and that's the craving to breathe air but if somebody were to sneak up behind you and put a plastic bag over your head within a few seconds you're going to realize that you've had this craving to breath air all this time you didn't weren't even conscious of it that's why there's a test in the big book in chapter three It says, if you don't think you're an alcoholic, try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. Now, I don't recommend that test. Some of you guys wouldn't survive it. But what I had to do is I had to look back through my own life and find a time when my drinking was interrupted. And I did it by sitting in a meeting listening to some woman share her experience and she reminded me of something that had happened to me when I was 18 years old. And when I Was 18 Years Old In My Mind there was no way I was an alcoholic because when I was 18 years old, I wasn't really drinking alcohol per se that much. I was in my hippie stage, better living through chemistry phase of my alcoholism, right? And I was dating a gal and I guess it must have been kind of serious. I don't know. She invited me over to her house to meet her parents. One of those have dinner all night deals, right. And I went, I don'T like stuff like that, but I went and they had a bottle of wine with dinner and I always drank quickly. I don't know, evaporation might be a serious issue with me or something, I don' t know. But because I drank quickly I finished two glasses out of that bottle of wine and everybody is still sipping on their first glass and the bottle of wines empty. And I'm sitting there and I got two glasses of wine in me and I said to them, boy it sure is good wine, you got any more? And they said, nope, don't have any more. Went back to talking. I'm sitting there, and I'm starting to get real uncomfortable. Now, I don't know anything about alcoholism. Don't know nothing about physical allergy, mental obsession. I don' t know anything craving. I don''t know anything but anything. I'm just sitting there and I''m getting real... My head's getting busy. The way you talk to yourself and your head's going faster and faster. All this crazy stuff. I feel real antsy. I don ''t know what's going on. Finally, I blurted out. I said, You know, I like beer. They said, Well, that's nice, but we don'''t have any beer. And they went back to talking about Vietnam and sports and all this other kind of stuff. And here I've got these two glasses of wine in me, and I'm going out of my mind. And I finally blurted out, I said, you know, I've learned to enjoy a nice cocktail with dinner. And I said well Bob, we don't have anything at all. We didn't know. Next time you come over, we'll have a six pack of beer for you, whatever you want. We're sorry we didn't known. They went back talking. And I'm sitting in this dinner table, and I felt trapped. I felt like the walls are closing in on me. and I'm going crazy, and I've got two glasses of wine in me. I don't know what's going on. So I excused myself from the dinner table. I went to the bathroom, andI locked the door, and like a crazed animal, I went through all the cabinets in there until I found a bottle of cough medicine. It was 35% alcohol with codeine and terpenhydrate. I opened it up. I took a big hit off of it, and there was hope. And I chugged that bottle of cough medicine down, and all of a sudden I got real focused, and I could think. and I came up with a story and I went back out to that dinner table and I was very gracious and apologetic and I told him, I said, I'm so sorry. I forgot to take care of this certain thing and I must leave and I really hate to go. We must do this again and they were very nice about it. You must come back. Yes, yes. And I got in my car, drove like a gentleman 20, 25 miles an hour down to the corner and then I drove like 90 miles an hours like a maniac through this suburban area to get to a guy's house who had a bar in the basement because I had two glasses of wine. Now, I was the only alcoholic at that dinner table. If those other people had been alcoholics, we'd all been in that goddamn bathroom going through those cabinets. But something happens to me when I take a drink of alcohol that doesn't happen to normal people. And I don't think I really understood that until I was sober and Alcoholics Anonymous over four years. I came into AlcoholicsAnonymous knowing and giving, surrendering to the fact that I couldn't take a Drink. But I secretly, and I had this phenomenon of craving, but I secretly suspected that everyone who drank, once alcohol, they started to get the buzz from drinking, got that feeling like more, more, like that I always had. And Silkworth in our book says that's not true. He says people like us are the only ones that ever get that. He says that this phenomenon or craving differentiates us and sets us apart as a class. Normal people never experience that. and i was four four years four and a half years sober and i finally understood that i was dating a gal that wasn't an alcoholic and we would 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 would take a sip talk for 10 minutes stir it let it the ice had melted i mean it's like alcohol abuse You know what I mean? And she, the whole time I knew her, I never saw her finish two complete drinks. I would see her often order a second drink, drink a third of it, fourth of it... half of it or two thirds of it. And she would push it aside and say the most incredible thing you've ever heard. She'd say, I don't want any more. I'm starting to feel it. It would be easier for me as an alcoholic to have sex and after two strokes say, I don't want any more of that. I'm starting to feel it that it would be to do that with two drinks of alcohol. And I started to understand that I really am different from those people. See, my friend, when she pushed aside the second drink, she was not trying to prove a point to me. We were all capable of that If your spouse is on your back about your drinking, you can go out to dinner and you can have two to show her. If you're out to lunch with your boss and he's on your back about your drinking, you can have two to show him. It takes an effort of will, but we've all probably done that, most of us. But my friend's not trying to prove anything to me. When she takes two drinks of alcohol, she gets a feeling like she's losing control. I take two drinks or alcohol, I get a feeling like I'm getting control. It shapes my world up. It does something to me that opens up a black hole inside of me that i can never satiate i have never once in my life ever drank people told me i drank too much all my life i have Never drank enough i have NEVER once in a bar been in the drinking and said to the bartender whoa don't bring that next one this is just right this is JUST RIGHT I DON'T NEED THAT THIS IS FINE I HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE I HAVE NO I DONT UNDERSTAND BEING THERE ONE DRINK of alcohol opened that gate inside of me to more and more and more. And the only time I stopped was when I ran out of money. I had to be stopped. I had run out of money. I'd have to be 86ed. I'd be arrested. I would pass out, which was my frequent way of stopping drinking, was to drink until I passed out. I was a pass-out drinker. That's when I knew I was done drinking. I was unconscious. Now, if that was the whole deal with alcoholism, I might have gotten sober in the early 70s. God knows I needed sobriety. Because there came, maybe not when I first, probably not when i went to my first few meetings in the early 70's, but by the mid 70's and the late 77, 76, 75 even, I got to a point where the progressiveness of this disease was overwhelming. And I had started to lose everything around me. And i was one of those guys that i was blessed to go all the way out to i lived homeless on on the streets without a roof over my head for a couple years i was one of those guys that you see that pan handles nickels and dimes on the street with the hair down to here that hadn't bathed in weeks and i in and out of salvation armies and hope rescue missions and i did all that stuff you know that sounds real dramatic but i gotta tell you a secret it's better once you get there you know what's really hard is when you're still trying to maintain a family relationship and jobs and stuff. Once you've drank all that away, it's like, phew, thank God that's over with. Now I can drink. It's really not as bad as it sounds. It sounds real dramatic from the podium that I was homeless, but it's actually kind of a relief to be there. No responsibilities, nobody's on my back about my drinking. I was totally alone. I'd hook up with little wino partners and share a bottle once with them, you know, occasionally, and that was it. And I, but it got, what really started getting progressively worse was the inside stuff. And as my, alcoholism is a disease of diminishing returns. In the beginning of my drinking, it was a tremendous effect on me and a whole lot of fun and a little bit of problems and a Little bit of pain and as the years went on the scales tipped and The effect diminished in the fund diminished and the problems grew and the problem's got worse and the pain got greater And and as years progressed and the disease progressed in me. I progressed away from the good times and The pain got Greater and Greater and greater until the last couple of years and my drinking, there was really no fun left in it at all. I think, and I believe this with everything in me, that I think alcohol is possibly for some of us the most immediate and effective treatment for alcoholism we've ever found. And I got to tell you something, if alcohol still worked for me the way it worked for me when I was 18 years old, I would probably still drink it and pay the price of homelessness and losing everything in my life. What brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous is that alcohol, as the scale started to tip, it was no longer a good deal. And it stopped being an effective treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism. And when I say a treatment, you've probably had the same experiences that I am. I think alcoholism is a disease of separation and a disease of loneliness. And I can remember times in my life, I remember one time I was probably in 10th grade, and I went to this party, and it was some people in 10TH grade, most of the people were in 11th and 12th grade—a little older than I am—I remember walking into this house where the party was, and over in this one room is a bunch of kids dancing, over here there's a bunch kids sitting on these couches making out, in the kitchen there's a bunch of guys that are laughing and carrying on. And everybody there is having fun, except me. And I get that feeling it's all of them really having a good time. And then there's me. And if you've ever been there, that's a sick, sick, lonely feeling. And i walked through most of my life with that sick, slick, lonely, feeling of not fitting. Andi remember walking around that party until i got to the corner where there was a card table with a bottle of 151 rum and and a couple six packs of coca-cola and some glasses and i poured myself a big half and half thing of cocapella and 151 room and within 10 or 15 minutes i got a girlfriend i'm dancing i've met new guys i'm telling jokes i'm connected i got lifelong friends i feel i feel like they look i feel as much a part and as whole as anyone in that room and at that time in my life alcohol was an immediate and most effective treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism this spiritual malady that i was born with it did for me what i desperately needed to have done because i just didn't fit nowhere now what happened to me is the scales tipped over the years and it stopped working. It got to a point where I'd be sitting in some skid row bar and I'm drinking and I am not the guy that's having a good time anymore. I am not the guys down by the pool table laughing and shooting pool and talking to the girls and telling jokes. I'm the guy who is sitting down at the end of the bar, drinking himself into oblivion, crying. Crying in his beer because I don't know what's wrong with me and i feel so sick inside and i look out at everybody else in the bar that's laughing and carrying on and it breaks my heart because i hunger for for what they're getting because they're obviously still getting the effects from alcohol that i used to get and i can't get that no more and i don't know what's right or wrong and i i started imagining things were wrong. I remember one time thinking, I read in some book somewhere about the seven warning signs of cancer, and I kind of sort of met a couple of them, a little bit. You know, I would throw up blood once in a while, and if I sat and thought about it, I could kind of feel a brain tumor kind of growing in my head. It would explain a lot. Probably that's why I do things and don't remember them, you know? And I can sort of fantasize about, you know, one of these days they'll come down and get me out of the park and they'll find out I'm dying of cancer and take me to the cancer ward. I could imagine them notifying my family and maybe some of my ex-employers and girlfriends. And they'd all come running over to the hospital to beg my forgiveness, realizing how wrong they'd been about me. You're not a drunken bum. My God, you got a brain tumor. How did we do it? We didn't know, Bob. We didn' no, we're sorry. They'd beg my forgiveness and I might forgive some of them, might not, I don't know. And I used to have those kind of feelings. I remember one time reading in this book, in a novel, one of the characters in the novel had had syphilis and it was in the advanced stages and it went to his brain and it started to make him crazy and he would have these memory lapses and he would get real withdrawn and sometimes he'd just like be so distant from life, and then other times he'd go into rages, and I read that, and I thought, that's it. I got syphilis. It went to my brain. That's it, I ended up in a, in some skid row detox not too long after that. I remember they're doing an intake, and there's this doctor or somebody there, male nurse or somebody, he's talking to me, and he says, you're, you obviously are an alcoholic. I said, well, I don't know about that, but I think my real problem is that I, I got SyphilIS, and it's gone to my brain, and he looked at me. He says, well, you may have that too, but we're pretty sure you have alcoholism. You're sure to fit the description here. And I didn't have syphilis. I did blood tests to accommodate me. I didn' t have syophilis, I had alcoholism, and I was always looking to see because it never made sense. I would go to the AA meetings, and people in AA are telling me that my problem is drinking but I would sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as sober as a judge and I become so painfully aware that there's something else wrong with me because I don't feel the way anybody in AlcoholicsAnonymous appears to feel. It seemed to me that you people were people who quit drinking and became happy about everything. You quit drinking and it seemed like every speaker was more grateful than the people who spoke before him. I mean, it was... And you loved everyone and you just laughed a lot and you had these success stories where, you know, it's like, oh, six months ago I was living in a dumpster and through God and these wonderful AAs, 12 steps, I'm now the president of United States Steel or, you knows, all these stories, right? And here I sit, I'm sitting in the middle of a room of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm dying of untreated alcoholism. And I know what it's like to sit in AA rooms and die of alcoholism because I don't have no program or recovery. I haven't worked any steps out of no book. I don'T have no sponsor. I haven'T done a fourth step as it's outlined in the book. I haven'T made no restitution. I'M not thinking about anybody except myself. I'M NOT sponsoring anybody, doing any service or going on any 12-step calls. I'M just taking up a chair and I think I'm part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not part of AlcoholicsAnonymous, I'm a part of the passing parade that goes through AA on its way to the graveyard. Sitting in a meeting of AlcoholicsAnenomous does not make me a sober member of AlcoholicAnonymous. Sitting in an PTA meeting doesn't make you a parent. But I don't see that. All I see is that it seems to me I'm doing what you're doing and I'm not like you. See, one of my problems is that every time I stop drinking my alcoholism really starts where the bottle ends. And eventually it's the emptiness of my own abstinence that drives me so insane. It drives me such a crazy person so insane that I will pick up something that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is going to destroy me, and I'll pick it up anyway. They used to say back in Pennsylvania, we just think the drink through. Well, I know what it's like to think it through and drink it anyway. I'd just get it up to here with being sober. A feeling would come over me that if I don't do something to change the way I feel, I'm going to lose my mind. And not all the time did I pick up a drink. Sometimes I would suffer from depression and go to a psychiatrist and he'd put me on pills what's the difference really what i'm suffering from is alcoholism i'm suffered from what happens to a guy like me when i go into a state of abstinence and it's a it's it's deadly deadly disease you know i just watched a close friend of mine with 15 and a half years sobriety i just went into us into an intensive care ward about two months ago and watched this guy strapped down. He was in intensive care because his vitals were so erratic they thought he was going to die. And it all started, he never picked up a drink. This guy, he wasn't a drug addict. He never did pills in his whole life. But at almost 15 years of sobriety he stopped working the steps. He wasn't sponsoring anybody. He wasnít going on any 12-step calls and he got depressed and went to a doctor who put him on medication and the phenomenon of craving eventually caught up with him. It took about almost a year, and it just snowballed into something that was so out of line that here he is strapped down in intensive care, sobbing uncontrollably, wanting to die. And I saw this guy 15 1⁄2 years ago when he was in detox and talk about the progressiveness of this disease. He wasn't that bad then. And this is like so much—the guy I saw in that bed not too long ago And the guy I saw in that bed 15 and a half years ago, the one guy 15 and half years ago looked well compared to the guy I saw a couple months ago. And he'd only been on those pills for a short period of time. Now, you might call that a lot of things. I think that's alcoholism. So my problem really started where the bottle ended and I didn't understand what was going on here. Every time I'd stop drinking, sobriety to me feels like I'm doing time. And I'll tell you what happened to me in 1977. I was living in this halfway house and I couldn't stay sober. I wanted to, I just couldn't. And me and this guy that were in there, we both busted out of there and he had a little trailer, this little run-down trailer park and he let me sleep on the couch in there. I started drinking with him, and we went out one night a couple nights after we left the halfway house. And we were out drinking, and he came back to his trailer and he passed out and we ran out of beer. And I ain't passed out, and if I ain´t passed out I ain' done drinking. And he left his car keys in his wallet on the counter, which is a bad move for him. So I made a little loan just gonna pay it back and took his car key to go out and get some beer. and i got in a felony hit and run dui in a stolen car which uh was like they didn't believe me when i said i borrowed it no registration no insurance no driver's license i was put in the county jail i've stayed there for several months because i couldn't make bail because homeless people can't make bail usually have to have an address to get out on bail and i stayed there until it was time to go to court and i went before a judge and the judge called me up in front of him and he said we've went over your probation the po report here and Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you sign these papers it's a done deal if you can the probation department says there's only one place left in this part of the country that they'll take you you've been in all the rehabs They don't want you. You have one shot left, and you go into this place called the Ark House, and it wasn't really a rehab. It was more like a mission. They housed about 200 to 300 homeless winos down on Skid Row in Pittsburgh. And he said, you go in there, andyou stay in there for one year, and you do get good UAs, you get a good PO report, you make the restitution, the court costs, all that stuff. You come back in front of me with all good reports at the end of the one year and maybe this will go away. but if you cannot fulfill any of those requirements i've already signed the papers it's a done deal you're doing the two years you don't even have to come back here so i went into this place and i went in this place with a determination never to pick up drinks a drink again uh i don't want to go to two years in prison i've been on the inside i don' t jail well i don''t like it i'm not it's not my kind of place um and besides winter's coming on and i'm afraid of freezing to death on the streets of Pittsburgh. I spent some time homeless back there, back on the East Coast, and it's a tough thing to do. If you're not in a halfway house or if you're not in some kind of Salvation Army or mission program, it's a tough way because you've got to walk all night long. When it's five degrees out, you can't even sit down because if you sit down, you're going to fall asleep. And if you fall asleep and it is five degrees, you are dead. So you walk no matter how sick you are, no matter how bad you need a drink, no matter how much you're shaking. You've got to make yourself walk all night long looking for doorways that are warm and things like that. I just didn't want to do that no more. And I knew that if I pick up a drink I'm going to do that until the police catch me and then I go through two years if it doesn't freeze to death first. So I'm in this halfway house and I'm determined with everything in me not to pick up A drink. And i gotta tell you if enthusiasm or determination or willpower were enough to overcome alcoholism, I'd have gotten sober years before. But I'm the guy they talk about in the big book when it says lack of power is my dilemma. I can make up my mind with everything in me never to pick up a drink and the problem is I can't carry it out. I could intend to carry it but my willpower seems to dissipate and it becomes like smoke in the wind and eventually what happens and it talks about this in the book it says there comes a time when we have a seeming inability to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or month ago we were without defense against the first drink and the further i got away from my last drink the vaguer and the hazier that was the reculation the recollect the remembrance of that pain was. And my determination to stay off that alcohol became vague and hazy and started to fade. And as it became hazy, and fit and vague, the acuteness of my untreated alcoholism and the emptiness I live with became sharper and more intense. And eventually, I would start out with real solid weight of not drinking a little bit of an urge to and the scales would start to tip. And eventually one day, the day would come where I couldn't stay in sobriety anymore and the emptiness of abstinence and I would have to pick up a drink. And when that time came, no matter how much I tried to rethink it through, I couldnít grab on to the memory of that pain with any kind of impact. I donít think that thatís a trait thatís just true with alcoholics. I think thatís a human thing. I think if that werenít true, most women would not have a second child, if they could really fully remember the pain of childbirth at depth, I don't know that they would do it again. And I don�t know that if we could remember what it felt like to come off our last drunk, I would ever pick up another drink. But see, when I�m empty and I don �t fit anywhere and I�am lonely and isolated and detached and disconnected, I �don�t remember the pain. I remember when alcohol worked. AndI remember the good times because I hunger for them with everything in me. And my mind needs that so it can only focus in that direction and I can't control that. I have never, never once on my way to a liquor store after any period of abstinence stopped and thought about the pain. All I could, I was like a dog panting, waiting for the effects that I'm thinking it's going to be like it was when I was 18 years old. And it never was and what brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978 is that it I finally knew the truth I finally knew that alcohol was stopped being an effective treatment for alcoholism and I ended up drinking in that half halfway house and I couldn't stay couldn't say sober and I went on the run and I'm running from the law and I hitchhiking trying to get to California and I ended up in Las Vegas in a detox in a county hospital and there were my sponsor and members of a group called the floating big book group of alcoholics anonymous they do a lot of 12-step work in las vegas they probably do 90 percent of all the hospital institution work there and they brought meetings into that hospital detox and the buddhists say when the students ready the teachers appear and my sponsor and member this members of this group would come over to that hospital several times a week and when i got out of there i started following them around. I was just ready. And I was ready because I knew the truth. I knew that the party was over. And what brought me to that point of surrender, where I was willing to do some things that were against my judgment and follow some directions, was not the homelessness and the fear of prison. It was not The Shame and the Guilt. It was none of that stuff. What brought me to that point is that i finally knew that i was stuck sobriety was unbearable and drinking was unbearably and there's nowhere to go i could not drink effectively and have fun doing that anymore and yet i can't stay away from it i love wc fields he says i was sober one time was the most boring 45 minutes of my life right and i felt stuck when you can't live sober and you can'T live drunk there ain't nowhere to go and i started to do what these guys told me to do and these i was so fortunate to have fallen into the hands of a group of people that were thoroughly enmeshed in the big book of alcoholics anonymous they didn't believe in anything else except this book and they started me on a process it's outlined in this book it started to change my life and i uh i could i could spend some time talking about that process and i'll touch on a couple things i uh when i got sober i didn't believe in god but there's a line in the book before before we agnostics it's in is a solution it says before we ever come to believe in God we first come to belief in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we had been living it and i could believe in that and i believed i was stuck and so when my sponsor said to me i want you to get down on your knees every morning and ask whoever is running the universe for help and get down in your knees at night and thank that power i just started doing it and i didn't believe in god i kind of felt like a hypocrite i remember in the halfway house i would go in the bathroom and close the door and pull the drapes over the window and make sure nobody put a towel underneath the door in case somebody was laying down there I'd try to peek so I'd get down on my knees. You know, I didn't want anybody to see me, right? But I started doing it, and I felt stupid doing it because I thought, like, I'm just saying these words to the air. And the most incredible thing started to happen. As a result of acting as if there was a power greater than myself in my life, I started to experience an endless series of coincidences. and i can't tell you how many hundreds of times in my first couple years of sobriety and even still today but i think it had more impact then when it was new that i would sit in a meeting of alcoholics synonymous and i'd be all jammed up and i'D BE JUST NUTS AND FEELING AWFUL AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW I DON'T HAVE THE PRESENCE OF MIND TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M FEELINGS OR TO EVEN understand what's going on let alone know which way to go with it and i don't even understand it well enough to tell my sponsor what's gone on i just i'm just all jumbled up and just felt terrible and i'd be sitting there in the meeting and some stranger in the meeting would start sharing exactly about what's going on with me and it would blow my mind and first of all i would know i'm not alone and i would know that i all of a sudden i could see clearly through his eyes what's going on with me and through him also i would find my way my solution of what action was necessary to take and that didn't happen to me once or twice that happened to me over and over and ever and over again and i started to come to believe the only way a guy like me could ever come to belief that there was something here some kind of power that's working in my life and i didn't understand what it was but i knew i started to become convinced by the reality of my experience that there was something here going on and it's kind of like the story of the lamplighter uh they're over in england around the turn of the century the streets of london were lit by gas lamps and there was a guy that at dusk he would go around and he would with a long pole with a flame on it he'd light the gas lamps of the street of london he was called a lamplighter and you could go up to the top of the tower of lондon at twilight and look out over the city and no matter how hard you looked you couldn't see where the lamplights were but you could see where he'd been and i could sit in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous at two and a half and three years sober and i couldn't see where god was but let me tell you something i could see where he'd been not only could i see where he's been in my house my life but more more clearly is that i could really see where he'd be in the guys that came sober six months after i did out of samaritan house and starting point the skid row detoxes in las vegas and and the salvation army and i could see how their life had changed and within two years they're they're back they're back with their families they're working they're paying taxes they got a sparkle in their eyes. They're useful, productive members of society and you can't get from where they were to where they're at. It would take a miracle and I think I could see God working in you before I could even see him working in me. I belong to a group that's entrenched in service in AA. We do 10 hospital and institution meetings every week. I sponsor a lot of guys. I'm responsible for three those meetings every week if you're ever in las vegas on a monday a tuesday or thursday i'd be call me i'd been glad to take you to one of either one of the halfway houses or one of detoxes where i secretary a meeting and i do that because it is the essence of my sobriety i believe with everything in me that my sobrietty is absolutely worthless unless i'm trying to give it to somebody else it is meaningless and i i have seen something in these skid row detoxes that Most people, unless you do a lot of H&I work, will never see an Alcoholics Anonymous. I see the guys that were sober 15, 20, 25 years that drink again. And the reason we never see them in mainstream AA is they never get this far back into Alcoholics Anonymous They die going in and out of Skid Row detoxes and Hope Rescue Missions and Salvation Armies. They never make it back this far into AA as a member of a home group. And I've got to tell you something. I've been doing these meetings for 19 years, and there's not a week that goes by that I don't see a member of Alcoholics Anonymous that's been sober a long time that at one time had vital and active sobriety that has drank again. And I always ask them the same thing. I always asked them, well, what was going on the couple weeks before you drank? And, you know, you hear some people say, well, it must be that they didn't go to meetings. I've seen people that went to eight meetings a week and still drank. Well, some people would say, well, their relationship with God's not right. I know a guy that did a third step and went out and killed himself the next day. But the one thing they all seem to have in common is if you ask them the question, when was the last time you sat down for five or six hours with a new guy that's coming off a drunk? When was the last time you were actively sponsoring someone and taking them through the steps? When was it? When was this the last times you heard a fifth step? When was that last time you knew that your life was dedicated to help another alcoholic? Most of them will say, I'd stop doing that two years before I drank. I did a lot of it years ago. This one guy was telling me, he says, when I was 10 years sober, I sponsored over 30 guys. And here at 18 years sober He's dying of alcoholism, and he hadn't sponsored anyone for three years. And all the guys he did sponsor, they were going about their own business. Most of them had gotten new sponsors or they didn't call him anymore. And this one guy in my home group that drank at 18 1⁄2 years, I got to tell you, he blew my mind because he was one of the guys that helped me a lot when I was new. And the day he drank, his life was picture perfect. he had two brand new cars had a big house an agency that was probably producing him well over $200,000 a year he had a wonderful marriage and I asked him the day that you drank was there anything bothering you were you having a fight with your wife was the IRS on your back there had to be something going on and you know what he said to me my life was never better he says i was at a rotary luncheon like i've been to every week for years and they serve cocktails there and i'd been there hundreds of times and never had a drink and all of a sudden the waitress came around with a tray and i just grabbed i just said yeah i'll take one of those he says i don't even know where it came from and i think what happens to guys like me and it talks about this on page 20 of the big book it says our very lives as ex-problem drinkers depend upon my constant thought of others their needs and how i can work for them and i think what happened to my friend is that his life became wonderful as a result of practicing the principles of these steps but he stopped doing the 12th step and he stopped trying to help other alcoholics and even though his life was rich and full and abundant it was nothing except all about him it was just all about him and for people if you believe like I believe what it says in this book that selfishness, self-centeredness is the root of my troubles I will die if my life is all about me no matter how rich and abundant it may be no matter high my self-esteem is no matter great my relationships are with people if my wife is all about me I'm a dead man And I've seen this happen over and over and over. And it's a progression. It's a progressive disease in sobriety. I watch guys all the time. They come into Alcoholics Anonymous. Their first year of sobriete, it's like they really have a big case of alcoholism. So big that they go to a meeting every day. They pray every day, they talk to their sponsor every day., they go on 12-step calls, they're on committees, they're secretary of a meeting, they are just doing everything they can possibly do they're acting as if they really have alcoholism it's a fatal disease and if they don't do something they're going to die at three years sober they're going about three meetings a week they call their sponsor once a week they shook a hand of a newcomer about a week ago somewhere and they're moving from a lot of alcoholism into not quite so much alcoholism and then at eight years it's well i go to meeting once a week and and i don't really have time i got this i'm involved in this church in the rotary and i'm involved with my marriage and i really have time to to work with newcomers or just give a guy a ride to a meeting besides i did all that my first few years and what happens is that we progress in the disease of alcoholism into alcohol wasm and there's a line in the big book it says the idea that we are like other people that means non-alcoholic people the idea that we're like them or presently maybe like them has to be smashed and I've watched people over the years people I have loved I did they start moving from alcoholic to non- alcoholic as if they no longer have alcoholism and then when they pick up a drink, they're surprised. Dr. Silkworth wrote an article in the Grapevine a few years ago about relapse and he put it better than I ever heard it. He said relapse from alcoholism is a lot like heart disease. If you have a heart attack and you go to the hospital and they said, you know, you almost died, but you can live another 20 years providing you do certain things. You got to lay off these certain foods and salt, et cetera, et We want you to walk every day. You've got to take this medicine. They're going to give you a regiment to live by, and if you do all those things, you'll live a normal lifespan. And you get out of the hospital, and you're doing all those thing, and it's great, and you feel wonderful, and your life is, you feel like you have no problem at all. And then one day, you're out to eat somewhere, and boy, the person with you orders something that you shouldn't have it, but boy, you really like it. You know what I mean? It's just, you haven't had it for a long time, and you order it, eat it. And you know what happens? Nothing. So next week, you have it again. And then you start thinking, man, I feel great. I don't have to walk anymore. And pass the salt, will you? And six months later, you're back in the cardiac unit wondering what happened and how like alcoholism that is. That if I stop treating this disease and I start acting like I don't have it anymore, then the same thing is going to happen to me that happens to other people. And my ego would like to tell me that I'm superior, that what can happen to you can't happen to me, but that's a bunch of crap. If I have the same disease that you have, what can happened to you, can happen to me. I am not bulletproof. I'm not immune from alcoholism. I have a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. I try to stay real current in my life with Alcoholics Anonymous. I work with the guys that I sponsor pretty closely. Seems like I always got somebody that's going through a fifth step. And I got to tell you, sometimes it bugs me. Like this weekend, the last three days I've had to speak in three different nights in three difference cities. I got go back to Las Vegas monday night do a step workshop and tuesday night do a detox meeting and a step workshop at my house and sometimes sometimes i just feel like enough why doesn't somebody else do this stuff and yet i call my sponsor up and he tells he's doing more than i'm doing you know he tells me about all the places he's gone and and that the reality is as a result of my participation in alcoholics anonymous and my trying to give this thing away my life is richer than it's ever been and I there's a principle in AA that doesn't make any sense but it has been the reality of my life the last 19 years is that I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and I've washed up I'm no good for nothing so I give up and I turn myself over to God and I try and as I said in the third step prayer to make my life none of my business i said god i offer myself to you for you to build with me and you to do with me as you will i'm out of the loop and if i try to leave myself alone and help god's kids while i'm doing that god seems to do for me what i cannot do for myself and the most amazing thing about about recovery and alcoholics anonymous in direct proportion to how much service I do for others does my life improve and get richer. And the problem is, the truth is that I know I don't deserve the life I got. Not really. So as God gives this abundance to me, I owe. And because I owe, I've got to do more service. And the trouble with doing more service is that then I get more good stuff that comes to me. So now I owe more. Right? So I've Got to do More Service. And the more service I give, the more I owe it's like God's the worst loan shark in the universe. I mean, I'm never going to get out of this thing alive. And it's through trying to help other people that I'm relieved of the bondage of self. And if you've never, if you're sitting in this room and you've ever sponsored anyone or gone on a 12-step call and you never have had the experience when after sitting with a guy for two or three hours, something deep down inside of you reaches out and touches some kind of spot of pain inside of him. And at that moment you feel more connected and more vital and more whole than you've ever felt, a very similar feeling to when you were a young kid and you just had five shots of Jack Daniels and you feel good about yourself, good about this life and you know that you're in the right place doing the right thing. If you've never had that experience, look forward to it. It is the essence of Alcoholics Anonymous. AlcoholicsAnonymous to me is not a self-help program. It is a program of self-abandonment. either god is everything or he is nothing i am either here to help his kids or i'm here to help myself and if i'm hier to help myself all i'm gonna get is more alcoholism because that's the nature of this disease and just to the extent that i'm her for you does my life seem to get better and it is the only relief i have because i'm the guy they talk about in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. Selfishness, self-centeredness is the root of our trouble. I think underneath everything, I'm basically self-obsessed and self-absessed, internally focused, self absorbed people like me never really fit in this world because we're not in this World. I'm in this one. i'm a deep thinker and there's a lot of deep thinkers in alcoholics anonymous and the problem with with that is is is it alcohol at one time relieved me of the bondage yourself five shots of tequila and i could come out and play i could get out of here and really be here with you and honestly care about you and somehow through the process of these 12 steps, do I duplicate the effects I'd found in alcohol? When I have a moment when I'm sitting with some new guy and maybe I've had a day where I've been full of fear and things at work are scaring me and I don't know what's going on. It seems like life is out of control and after an hour or two hours sitting with a guy listening to a fifth step or just a guy coming off a drunk, something happens inside of me that turns around my whole perspective of life. And all of a sudden, everything is right. And there's a rightness about me and there's a rightiness about this world. And only alcohol ever did that to me prior to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'll tell you a quick story and then I'm going to shut up. I always share this. It's the story of the last 19 years of my life. It was a Sunday afternoon. The guy's got the day off. He's sitting in his easy chair reading the newspaper. He has got a six-year-old daughter and she comes up. She says, Daddy, please play with me. He says, not now, sweetheart. I'm reading the paper. And she says, daddy, please pay with me, and he looks in the paper, and there's an ad for an airline. It's a full-page map of the world showing where the planes fly. He gets an idea. He tears it out of the newspaper. He tears up the map of The World, the little pieces. He grabs a roll of scotch tape. He said, sweetheart, here's a puzzle. Take this in your room. If you can put it together, bring it back, and I'll play with you for the rest of the day. And she takes off down the hall. He sits back in his cherry figures. He's off the hook. She's six years old. She don't have a shot. Ten minutes later, she brings it back and it's taped together perfectly. And he goes, my God, sweetheart, how did you do that? And she says, it was easy, daddy. On the back was a picture of a man. When I put the man together, the world just kind of fell into place. And if you're new, i encourage you with everything in me to abandon yourself to this simple program find a sponsor who's entrenched in this book and is active in alcoholics anonymous and do everything he tells you to do and follow the people that have gone before you and you will observe the most incredible miracle of your whole life a world that you never seem to really fit in unless you were half drunk a world it seemed hostile and alien to you will become the most incredible place you've ever lived. Thank you.