Dr. S. on the Restless Irritable and Discontent – Bob

Well, you wound him up. I hope God's going to let him go. My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. And I'm sober today only through the grace and power of God in the program and the people and in the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm also a member of good standing of the Friday night floating big book group from the hitting bottom capital of the world, Las Vegas, Nevada. I'd like to thank Sterling for the privilege to come down here and share with you the gift that I've received from people like you in rooms like this. I'd to thank Lou and his lovely wife for their hospitality and Donna for picking us up at the airport. It's been a great weekend up until about five minutes ago, at least for me. If there's anybody here that's new, I'm real glad you're here. Or maybe if you've been around Alcoholics Anonymous for a couple years and you've had a hard time staying sober, I'm real glad you're here and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you'll hear something this weekend that will light a fire inside of you for Alcoholics Anonymous where you'll make this the center of your life because for guys like us, that's the most incredible adventure we ever get on. I'm one of those, I'll tell you a story about me and this kind of will tell you a little bit about the type of alcoholic I am maybe, I don't know. I was about three or four years old and I was living in Pennsylvania with my folks and it was a Sunday afternoon and they went to a farmer's market. They had these places out in the country where all the farmers bring all their produce and meats and stuff and it's a Sunday afternoons and I'm tailing along with them and my dad's on a mission. He's going out there to get this type of horseradish that's the hottest, most powerful horseraddish in the whole area. It's one of all these blue ribbons and on the way out there he's telling my mom about this horserradish and he's so enthusiastic and I'm a little kid, I don't know what horseradhish is but it sounds like something I'd like and he gets some of it and I want some ofit and he said to me, he said Rob you can't have any, he said this is only for grownups, this is too powerful for you. Now, I'm the kind of kid that I may not even really want something until you tell me I can't have it. And then there's something about me, I just gotta have it! And I bid my time and I waited till my folks were gone and I snuck in that refrigerator. I got out that jar, got a big spoon, sat down on the floor of that kitchen, got that lid of that jar off, stuck that spoon in there, put that in my mouth. I think I saw God I'm not sure I spewed horse radish all over that kitchen I had snot running out of my nose tears coming out of my eyes I was so sick I was one of the most I remember to this day and I gotta tell you that was over 40 years ago and I have not sat on a kitchen floor with a jar of horseradish and a big spoon. I didn't have to go to no goddamn rehab, get no sponsor, work no steps or go to no meetings. But I also got to tell you square business that if that horseraddish would have done for me what alcohol did for me I'd have been making myself sick with that stuff every chance I could get it for the rest of my life. And I'm the guy they talk about in the big book, Alcoholics Synonymous. I'm bodily and mentally different from my fellows, and I believe that there was always something wrong with me. Before I ever took a drink, I think I must have been like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. And, I say that because I remember I remember the first time I ever drank, and I remember after that alcohol got down inside me and it lit that thing inside of me, I just couldn't get enough. I had found the thing that I had secretly hungered for all my life. Something that finally, finally gave me a sense of connectedness to this life. finally something that allowed me to feel like the kids I was with looked and it was a wonderful thing and I'm the guy that Silkworth talks about I had that phenomenon of craving I have the allergy to alcohol I had the phenomenon of grieving from the very first time I took a drink but I spent years under the grip of that phenomenon and craving and I never knew that I had it and in later years I started ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous through different institutions when I was about 20 years old and I would sit in meetings and I was and I'd hear people talk about that phenomenon of craving and it was one of the driving forces in my life and yet I could not see it and I could not see it because the funny thing about a craving is that you don't realize you have it until it's interrupted that's why there's a test in chapter 3 in the big book it says if you don't think you're an alcoholic try some controlled drinking try to drink and stop abruptly try it more than once it may be worth a bad case of the jitters to find out the true nature of your condition I don't recommend that I think some of us wouldn't survive that test but I had to look back in my own drinking history when I finally got to Alcoholics Anonymous and find how that was true for me and then the harder I I looked, the more elusive it became. And I'm one of those kind of guys that I've never I've had a seeming inability to learn anything constructive and true about myself from direct examination. There's something about me that I have certain defense mechanisms that come into play that when I'm trying to find out what's wrong with me by direct examination, I can't see it. Because what I'm looking for, I'm looking with. and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous is that in AA nobody in AA tries to tell somebody well there's a few that do that most of us don't try to tell other members what's wrong with them and what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous that's perfect for a guy like me is we talk about ourselves as honestly as we can and I'm sitting in a meeting of Alcoholic Synonymous in the early 70s, probably around 1974-75, somewhere around there. And I'm listening to a woman share her experience and because she's talking about her, I'm not trying to defend myself. She's not tryingto tell me anything about me. And I started to identify with a couple of things that she said. It was probably the first identification I ever had in Alcoholics Anonymous. and I remembered an instance that happened to me when I was about 18 years old and when I Was 18 Years Old in my mind from my way of looking at things there was no possible way I could be an alcoholic no way when I WAS 18 YEARS OLD I WAS GOING THROUGH MY HIPPIE PHASE OF MY GROWING UP IT WAS BETTER LIVING THROOUGH CHEMISTRY I MEAN I WAS SCREWED UP IN A LOT OF AREAS BUT AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME IN MY LIFE THERE'S NO WAY I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I WAS AN ALCOHOLIC The funny thing about alcoholism, it doesn't really care what you think. And I listened to this woman and I remembered an instance. I went to this... I was dating this gal and I guess it must have been serious because she wanted me to come over to her house and meet her family for dinner. And I'm trying to be a nice guy and I agreed to go. I don't like things like that but I went and we're at the dinner table and we were going to be there all night long and they had a bottle of wine. and I always drank quickly. I don't know why. Evaporation may be a childhood issue for me or something. I don' t know. I don''t know why I drink quickly, but I drink quick. And because I drink quickly, I got two glasses out of that bottle of wine. I'm done two glasses. They're still sipping on their first glass. And I'm sitting there. I'm 18 years old. I don'T know about alcoholism. I don't know about phenomenon of craving, but I know that I've got two glasses of wine in me and I'm starting to feel real uncomfortable. And I don' t know what's going on. And I finally blurted out, I said, you know, that sure was good wine. And they said, well, that's nice, but we don't have any more. And I sat there and they're talking and I' m getting more and more uncomfortable. And I d' n't know, you know how you talk to yourself in your head? It's getting real loud in there. It's get' n, you kno, I'm getting a little insane in my head and I don't know what's going on. I'm feeling real antsy and I finally blurted out, I said, you know, I like beer. They said, well, we don't have any beer. And a couple minutes later I explained to them how I've learned to enjoy a nice cocktail with dinner and they were really nice people. They just said, Bob, we don'T have anything. The next time you come over we'll get you a six pack of beer or something but we don' t have anything else. and they went back to talking about Vietnam and all this other kind of stuff and I'm sitting there and I am going out of my mind. Now, I don't know about phenomenon of craving. I don' t know about any of this stuff. I'm just going crazy and I don''t know what to do. I can't think straight. My head is like a washing machine going out control and I finally excused myself from the table and I went to the bathroom and I locked the door and like a crazed animal I went through all the cabinets in there and I found a bottle of this cough medicine and it was 35% alcohol. And I remember sitting on the edge of the bathtub and taking a big hit off of that and I was like, there's hope. And I drank that whole bottle of cough medicine and my thinking got real focused and all of a sudden I had a plan. And everything just kind of fell together and I went back out to that dinner table and I came up with this story about this thing I forgot to take care of and I was so apologetic and they were very nice and they said, you'll must come back and do this again. And I said, well, I can't wait. And went out and got in the car and drove like a gentleman 20, 25 miles an hour down to the end of the street and then drove like I'm crazy. I was a crazed maniac 90 miles an hours through this suburban area to get to a friend of mine's house who had a bar in the basement because I had two glasses of wine. Now that's a phenomenon of craving And the reason I couldn't see it through most of my life Is that I went to great lengths To protect myself from ever getting In that kind of situation I was the kind of guy If you invited me over to your house one afternoon To watch a football game And there were maybe three of us sitting there And you pull out a six pack of beer And that's all you got And offer me a beer I'll pass I look in your kitchen I see a stack of cases going up to the ceiling I'm there but now I never knew why I did that it was just an intuitive deal with me I knew not to take just one drink if I can't get another one and I lived my life like that I was driven by that to protect myself from that scenario and the few times like that time at the dinner table and a couple of times when bartenders had cut me off, oh, I'd get violent. I'd go crazy. He'd give me about 20 drinks and then say you're too drunk, you can't have any more. I may be laying on the ground trying to fight you but I'll be there. You know, I can't do that to me. And, you know, Silkworth says something in the book. He says that this phenomenon of craving differentiates us and sets us apart heart as a class, that it never occurs in the average tempered drinker, that normal people never experience that. And that's true if those other people at that dinner table had been alcoholics, we'd all have been in that goddamn bathroom looking through those cabinets. But I secretly, even I got sober in 1978, the last time after many years in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I came into AlcoholicsAnonymous in 1978 and And I knew that I was a real alcoholic. I knew it by hundreds of attempts to try and fail and try and fail and trying to stay sober. And I know what it was to be powerless at a depth that most of us have to experience before we come in here and get this thing. But I also secretly suspected that everyone who ever drank drink alcohol must surely get the same feeling that I get when I take a drink, that feeling like I want to have another drink. That's one thing. You hear things, a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous, you hear people say, well, I took a couple drinks and it made me feel less fear or I took several drinks and I felt like I was somebody or I felt like I fit. And that's all true but the most consistent thing that alcohol always did for me is that a drink of alcohol always made me feel like I'd like to have another drink of alcoholic. And I thought even in the probably three, four years of sobriety that everybody did that. I just thought for some reason the people that didn't make it to Alcoholics Anonymous, that didn�t ruin their lives had some kind of control or willpower at some level that I could never quite get a hold of. And Silkworth says that's not true. He says that guys like me have this thing and those people will never have it. And I didn't understand that until I was sober probably four years or so and what really brought it home to me, I was dating this gal that wasn't an alcoholic and we would go out to dinner and I'm telling you, she'd order a drink. I swear to God, it'd take her a half hour hour to drink one drink. I mean, she would sip it, talk for 10 minutes, stir, the ice would melt. I think that's like alcohol abuse. The whole time I knew her, I never once saw her finish two drinks. I saw her order a second drink many times, she'd drink a half of it, a third of it and she'd do the most peculiar thing you've ever seen. She'd push it aside side and she'd say, I don't want any more. I'm starting to feel it. I don' t want to offend anybody but I got to tell you it would be easier for me as an alcoholic to have sex and after two strokes say I don''t want anymore of that. I''m starting to feel it than it would to do that with two drinks of alcohol. And by watching my friend drink who was not an alcoholic, I started in stark relief seeing more about my alcoholism. See, my friend, when she pushed aside half of the second drink, she wasn't trying to prove a point to me. We're all capable of that. When your mate's on your back because of your drinking, you can go out to dinner and you can have two to show her or show him. Or when our boss is on our back about our drinking and he's trying to tell us we've We've got a problem and we'll show him. We'll go out to lunch with him. We'll have two and stop. We've all done that. We're all capable of that. My friend wasn't trying to prove a point. When she took two drinks of alcohol, she got a feeling like she was losing control. I take two drinks of alcohol and I get a feeling like I'm getting control. And it does something for me that it never will do for them. And just as they were as baffled by my drinking and my folks and my sister and people that I worked for in my life that would look at me and they just could, why do you drink like that? People said things to me like you drink like you're driven by demons. And I would look at them and watch them throw away half a drink and I'd think to them, why do YOU drink like THAT? And I'm as baffled as the way they drink is the way that we drink. As they are by the way we drink. And there's a bizarre line in chapter three that says that there's no treatment except abstinence. It says science may one day come up with a cure or something for, make alcoholics social drinkers but it hasn't done so yet. And you know something? It never will. It's against the nature. People who work on things like that in laboratories don't understand the nature of alcoholism. First of all, if they came out with a pill that would make an alcoholic a social drinker, the first thing that's going to occur to me is if one of those would make me a social drinker. I could get real social on about five of them. And I bet you there'd be people in this room crushing them up and snorting them. There'd be There'd be people smoking them. There'd people injecting them. There'd pick people and crush them up, mixing them with orange juice. There'd... Because, first of all, people who think things like that don't understand alcoholism. Who in this room, except maybe the Almanons, would want to go have one beer and go home and cut the grass? I mean, what's that about? I mean, you know? So I got this phenomenon of craving. It differentiates and sets me apart from other people. It is what I am. I'll always have it. I'm a member of a group that does a lot of service in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have had the honor for the last many years to secretary and do two meetings. Actually, right now I'm doing three, but two meetings a week in a Skid Row Detox in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I get to see something in those meetings that a lot of people in mainstream Alcoholics Anonymous don't see. There's something about Las Vegas that if you take a drink with 25 or 30 years of sobriety in Iowa or New Jersey or Florida or Connecticut or Paris France alcohol Las Vegas is like a magnet and they end up busted on the streets homeless and I see him in that detox and I've seen circuit speakers in there I've seeing people with 15 20 25 30 years of sobriety that have drank again and I watched what it says in the book so true that that That phenomenon of craving never goes away. If I'm sober 35, 40, 50 years, I'm the epitome of mental and spiritual well-being and I pick up one drink of alcohol, I'm done. I am done. That's it. And everything that I've accomplished in those 30 or 40 or 50 or how many years I'm sober is absolutely worthless. Absolutely worthless. and I see that time and time again now if this phenomenon of craving was the only problem a guy like me faced then I wouldn't need Alcoholics Anonymous I'd just need a detox and I'd be done the problem with what's so deadly to me and was so confusing to me in my exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous for the years that I was in and out was that there's something that happens to me once I quit drinking that is what is so deadly. Dr. Silkworth puts it better than anybody. He says that guys like me, when I'm not drinking, when I am dry, I become restless, irritable, and discontent unless I can again experience that sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. So my problem is I crash and burn. I go on a run, and I'm living homeless on the streets drinking Richard's Wild Irish Rose with wine sores, and I am a mess. And I end up in some rehab somewhere, some detox or some halfway house, and they clean me up and they get me physically better. And I am determined, my God, I am never going to do that again. I am not going to touch that again and I mean it. I mean it. The problem is that what happens for me from the minute I put down my last drink is two things. It talks about both of them in the book. It says there comes a time when I have a seeming inability to bring into my consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. I'm without defense against the first drink. So two things happen to me from the minute I put down my last drink is one, the further I get away from that last drink, the vaguer and the hazier the memory of, the real gut level memory of that pain is. I always know about it in an abstract intellectual sense but I don't know about this to the same depth I knew about it when I was begging that guy at the desk in that detox to please take me off the streets that I was dying. And the further I get away from that, the vaguer and the hazier that memory becomes. And at the same time, the further away I get from my last drink, the sharper and more acute the emptiness of my own alcoholism and abstinence becomes. And I become more and more restless, irritable, and discontent. And what happens, I go into one of these halfway houses and I'm going to get sober and if it was like a scale I have all this conviction on one end that has a lot of weight I'm never going to take a drink again I know what this is killing me I'm ever going to do this again and that has alot of weight on that scale and over here just a little bit of weight is a little but restless a little be empty a little discomfort but not too bad and what happens is time goes on this gets heavier and this gets vaguer and hazier and all of a sudden one day the scale tips and it just seems like a good idea to have a drink where a week before if you to ask me if I was ever going to drink again you could have put me on a lie detector and I'd have said no man I'm never gonna touch that stuff and it would have said I was telling the truth and that's what it's like for me to live with untreated alcoholism. For all practical purposes, my alcoholism begins where the bottle ends. And it is the emptiness of untreated alcoholism that will drive me so insane. I'll tell you how insane it will drive you. It will drive us so insane that even after three or four rehabs, even after watching all the Father Martin movies and listening to the doctors and all that other kind of crap, after all of that intellectual self-knowledge to a point in myself where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that to pick up a drink means self-destruction. I know I got the phenomenon of craving, etc., the whole deal. That the emptiness of abstinence will drive me so crazy that I'll pick up and drink knowing that. Because what happens to me is I get to a place or a point overwhelming that i start to feel like if i don't do something to change the way i feel i'm going to lose my mind and i just get it up to here with drinking and what happens is i can't take it anymore i pick up a drink and the phenomenon of craving kicks in and i crawl out of the bushes or i get arrested right i'm one of those guys that has once i start drinking i have have to be stopped. I have never stopped once in my life on my own. I've never been in a bar and the bartender is coming along and asks me if I want another drink and I'd say to him, no you know this is just right. No thank you, this is fine. This is just, I've never been there, I have ever been the guy that when somebody said you wanna go out and and get another, once we're chipping in, we'll get another half gallon of wine. I never was a guy that said, you know, I really better not. If I do, I think by next week I might be in jail. Better not. I've never been there. I had to take it to the wall every single time and be stopped. And I had be stopped by running out of money, getting arrested, getting what, at the end what used to stop me so much was my physical condition. I would get so physically sick that I literally could not hold down a drink anymore and without holding down a Drink I would start to have DTs and seizures and all that kind of stuff. And the dilemma I kept encountering in Alcoholics Anonymous in the meetings every place I'd end up they'd send me to meetings and I wasn't so sure I was an alcoholic but I'll tell you something every time I drank I kept ending up where all the alcoholics were at You know, County J, I mean, rehabs, detoxes. And every time I'd end up in these AA meetings, I'll tell you what I observed that was so baffling for me is that I would sit in the back of the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous experiencing the raw emptiness of my own untreated alcoholism and I would look out at you people And what I observed, what seemed to me, is I observed people who quit drinking and just became happy. They were happy about everything. I mean, oh, they just were grateful for everything. When my life is miserable, I don't like to be around happy, grateful people. I just, I don't like, you just make me crazy. I don' t know what you are, you're like some kind of bizarre cross between Amway and the Salvation Army or something. I don''t know. But I would sit there and I would just feel so separate and so apart from. Now, I d'on't have a sponsor. I'm not working any steps. I think I'm part of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm taking up a chair. I'm not part of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what I am? I'm part of the passing parade that goes through Alcoholics Anonymous on its way to the graveyard. I'm not a member of Alcoholic Anonymous but I don't know that because I don' t even have a sponsor to tell me that. And even if I did, back in those days I suspect that even if I had a sponsor I don''t know that I was capable of listening to anything except this. And I sit in the meetings and I just feel so... I know what it's like to sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and die of untreated alcoholism. Die by inches. And the sick, sick feeling of being somewhere where everybody around you acts like they love you and accept you and you're incapable of feeling it. The problem was never in the people in AA. there was something wrong with me why I was so distant and removed I remember walking into meetings of AA and having the feeling like it was all of you and then there's me big book Alcoholics Anonymous chapter 5 says something I think is paramount until I understood this I don't think I even had a clue what I was up against it says it's selfishness, self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles and i self-centered self-focused self-absorbed people like me when i'm sober i don't feel like i fit anywhere i don'T FEEL LIKE I'M A PART OF THIS I DON'T FEel LIKE I LIVE IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE YOU KNOW SOMETHING I DONT I LIVE In THIS ONE AND I'M SO WRAPPED UP IN HERE that everything out here seems so distant and remote and so far away. And so I spend most of my life like that. And I'll tell you something, this may sound real strange to some of you, but I'm convinced of this with everything in my being that alcohol was the most effective treatment and the most immediate treatment for this spiritual malady of alcoholism that I had ever found. I remember walking in probably ninth grade, walking into a party and just feeling that sick, sick loneliness of apartness. There was a group of kids over here that were dancing. And there were some kids in the living room sitting on couches, necking. And in the kitchen there was a whole bunch of guys. They were laughing. You could hear it all. They were having such a good time you could hear through the whole house. And then there was me. and I remember slinking around that party and I found over in the one corner, I found a card table with a bottle of 151 proof rum and some Coca-Cola and I remembered pouring myself a big glass of that with half Coke, half rum and chugging that thing down and within 10 or 15 minutes, I am connected. I got myself a girlfriend already picked out. She don't know it yet. I'm dancing I'm telling jokes I'm right in the middle of stuff I feel like they look at that point in my life alcohol was an immediate and effective treatment for the emptiness of alcoholism and I've got to tell you something else and I don't make any bones about this if alcohol still worked for me the way it worked when I was 18 years old, I'd still drink it. I'm not sober because it's a good, nice, righteous thing to do. I didn't get sober because my life would be better because somebody said, Bob, you get sober in 20 years you'll be real rich, have a big house and drive a BMW. No, I didn' t get sober for any of that. I got sober because alcohol stopped being an effective treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism. I think alcoholism is a disease that diminishing returns. I start out drinking, there's a tremendous amount of effect, tremendous and a lot of fun. Little bit of dues and as time goes on, the dues grow and the effect and the fun diminishes until the end of my drinking. I'm desperately trying to wring some kind of fun, some kindof feelings like I fit, something to tear the loneliness away away from me and I can't come up with nothing. At the end of my drinking, I'm the guy they talk about in chapter 11. It says that we get to a point where we can't imagine life with alcohol or without it. We will know a loneliness such as few do will be at the jumping off place and will wish for the end. And at the end, am I drinking? I'm not the guy that's in some skid row bar talking to the girls and shooting pool and having a good time. I'm a guy that sitting over over in the corner drinking himself into oblivion sometimes sobbing because he feels so sick at heart looking out at everybody else in that bar that's laughing and having a good time and wondering what's wrong with me because i could remember the glory days i could remember the days when alcohol did for me what it was apparently still doing for them and it broke my heart and the book says we know a loneliness such as few do I don't think there is a sicker more dramatic loneliness at depth than sitting in a bar drinking whiskey the only thing that I ever knew that made me feel like I fit and I still don't fit and it got to a point at the end of my drinking where I couldn't live with it I couldn'T live without it alcohol was killing me and there's no more fun left in it and I would get sober and sobriety was unbearable I love W.C. Fields he says I was sober one time it was the most boring 45 minutes of my life you know to me and I've been going to A&A meetings for years and to me it's like Alcoholics Anonymous has good news and bad news The good news is that maybe if I go to a lot of those stupid meetings, I'll stay sober the rest of my life. And the bad news? I'm going to probably live a long time. I could not imagine life without alcohol. I couldn't imagine it. And yet I couldnít imagine going on like I was going on anymore either. And I was at the jumping off place. And I think that's why I thought about suicide so much. I had a couple feeble attempts, and I just never had the courage. I remember in Pittsburgh one time, I was standing with a bottle of Mad Dog on this bridge looking down over these railroad tracks with about a 100-150 foot drop. And I'm standing there all by myself, and I'm sobbing because I don't have enough courage to do the right thing. To do the Right Thing. Just jump off that bridge and get it over with. Because if I jump off the bridge, My mother's not going to get any phone calls in the middle of the night no more. It'll be done. I jump off that bridge, I don't have to beg nobody for nickels and dimes no more to get another bottle of wine so I don'T go into seizures. If I jump Off That Bridge, I don' t have to end up in some mission again singing or in some halfway house doing what some guy tells me to do. And if I jump Of This Bridge, my God, I won't even have to go to any more of those AA meetings I gotta tell you the years I was in and out I kept ending up here but I hated Alcoholics Anonymous first of all one of the things that people back east northeast in Pennsylvania where I used to come in and out if you were a newcomer which when I'm new I don't feel very good about myself and they always would want me to stand up and be recognized I mean, I don't want to, it's like, this is not a time in my life where I want recognition. I mean... You know what it felt like? Now, I understand today that this is an important part of AA because we want the people that are sober and wild to see who the new people are so they can go up and reach out to them after the meeting. But I've got to tell you, it didn't feel like that to me. What it felt Like is... That real loser back there, Bob. would you stand up so we can all look at you and realize how lucky we are that we're not you? And then when you come up to me after the meeting to shake my hand, I just thought you were just feeding off of that even more. You know, and I just hang my head. And if you're new, I want you to hear this. And if I say nothing else tonight of any importance, at least importance to me, I want to say this and I hope you hear this if you're new. In the years that I was in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, I came to a false conclusion. And the false conclusion I came too was that the people in AA obviously had what it takes to not drink. But there was something wrong with me that was different than what's wrong with them because I don't have what it takes to not drink. I get to a point where I can't stand it. And if you're new, I want you to know that Alcoholics Anonymous is designed specifically for people who do not have whatit takes to live in this world without alcohol. and the only thing that separated me from you was that I never did the actions of AA I never bought the whole package I never got a sponsor it's not that it wasn't handed to me I remember in 1977 right before one of my last run I was sentenced to two years in prison for a DUI and a stolen car and I hit and run and a bunch of stuff. And this judge sentenced me to two years in prison and he cut me a break. He told me if I could go and live in this Skid Row place for alcoholics and live there for a year, I wouldn't have to do the two years. And winter's coming on and up in the Northeast, it's a bad time to be on the streets. I've been on the street since the winter homeless. It's a tough way to go. I don't know why I do that stuff to you. So I go into this place and I really want to stay sober. But I got untreated alcoholism and I got a mind that tries to figure stuff out and has an opinion about everything. I don' t know about anybody else but I go on a run alcohol take everything away from me I end up in Alcoholics Anonymous. The first thing I get back is my opinion. You know, I've got an opinion on everything. And I'm sitting in this meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm dry several months. I'm living in this halfway house and I am getting ready to drink. You know you can feel it coming where you are just about up to here with being sober. The boredom and the loneliness and that not fitting is just so overwhelming. I am just starting to fantasize about the good old days. You know how you start that crap? You start thinking about when you met her at the bar and all those things that happened when you were 20 years old. And I'm getting ready to go. I know it, I've been down this road before. And I am scared because I don't want to do the two years in prison and I don' t want to be on the streets. And I' m sick and I do' n't feel very good. And I grabbed this old timer in AA and I said, I need help. And it was probably the first time in my life I really ever reached out to someone honestly and asked for help. and I started to tell this guy about what was going on with me. And I told him about the two years in prison that I was facing and I told them about these emotional problems I have and I didn't understand them. I thought maybe what I need is a good therapist because there's something wrong with me, I'll just be sitting in the room watching TV and I'll feel great and then five minutes later Later, I'm almost suicidally depressed and no one's even said anything to me. I would just go on these roller coaster mood swings. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I had mental problems that I didn' t understand. I had a hard time sleeping and sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking weird stuff and spooked, you know, just scared of stuff. And I'd have all these conversations with myself nonstop in my head, just all rapidly all day long and living with my head in early sobriety was kind of like driving cross-country in a van full of eight-year-olds that have overdosed on sugar and none of them like you you know all these and I'm telling this guy about this I can't work I can I can get a job I can keep a job and I don't know and I don't why I can' t keep a job people are always saying things to me that I don' t understand they're saying things to me like, Bob, there's something about your attitude. What? What about my attitude? I don't get it. Or they say things, you know, you're a hard worker, but you're just not a team player. You know, and I don'T get it, and I DON'T understand what they're talking about. I can get a job, but after I'm at work for a while, I just get on the muscle around people. You know, I JUST get up tight and just kind of leave leave me alone, and I growl at people. And I don't mean to do that because I'm scared. I don'T even know that that's what's going on. So I can't work, andI can't stay sober. I've never stayed sober before, and I have all these feelings of guilt and shame for the things I'd done to my family and the people that loved me in my life and how much I'd hurt them and disappointed them. And I'm telling this guy in AA all this stuff, and he says, I need help. Tell me what to do. And he points to the wall in the meeting room, And there's this thing on the wall with the 12 steps. And he says, Bob, we have these 12 steps that'll take care of all that stuff. Now I'd been around AA for a number of years and I thought to myself, you know, I better really read these this time. And I started reading them and it took a couple minutes. I didn't say nothing. I read them. And it came real clear to me that this guy hadn't heard anything that I had just told him. He hadn't read none of it. There was absolutely nothing, nothing in those steps that related to anything I just told him. There's nothing up there. I need a set of steps like step one, make Bob's police record disappear. Two, give him $5,000. Step three, bring her back properly ashamed of herself. Step four, make his family realize how wrong they'd been about him. Or even give me a step that's going to talk about where I'll just feel better. Or give me an example where I'm fit. But no, we've got stuff like turn your will and your life over to the care of God. Ooh. I was raised a Catholic and that has nothing to do with Catholicism but I somehow how with my distorted alcoholic mind internalized an image of God as this guy who exists just to judge me. And he can see in the dark, which is not good for a guy like me. He can read my mind, which is hideous and I'm always thinking stuff. I remember as a little kid in Catholic school the nuns used to say you've got to be pure of thought we're indeed in X-rated movies and just start going through my mind. And I can't stop it, you know. And I... I can' t turn my will and my life... I would rather turn it over to a narcotics agent. And then the one that really got my attention, making amends. I mean, I could see how you guys could make amends I looked around Alcoholics Anonymous. There were some really, really nice people in AA. And I thought to myself, so I know you guys. You drank too much. You probably yelled at your wife one night. You better say you're sorry. You might have cheated at the expense account at work. I bet you there's people in AA that probably took a couple pens home, you know? But I lived on the streets and I did things that I never heard anybody in AA talk about, you Know? I mean, I was the kind of guy that if you met me on the street and you felt You felt sorry for me and you said I could stay on your couch when you went to work. I robbed you. I mean, it was not personal. I just did that kind of thing. There was one time in my life I got arrested and I was facing 20 years in prison and to save my own butt, I dimed out a whole bunch of guys to the police. I could just imagine. I'm going to go up to this guy that just got out of prison from doing 10 years, the head of an outlaw motorcycle gang and say, Cheech, I'm a sober member of AA today and I want to tell you I'm sorry. I might as well just put a gun to my head, you know? So I looked at these steps and I looked this guy, this well-meaning guy here in AA and I just said thanks a lot and I left left because I knew that Alcoholics Anonymous was a nice thing, but I felt so hopeless because it couldn't have possibly applied to my particular set of problems. And I got to tell you something, the only thing that has ever stood between me and all the richness and abundance God God would give his most loving child has been my judgment. When I was offered the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in those early years, it was kind of like walking down through a skid row neighborhood and having some little old man crawl out of the bushes that's been living in the weeds for months. And he asks you for a quarter and you give him a quarter and he says, You know, I like you. I'm going to give you $10 million. And he reaches inside his third inner coat and pulls out this dirty check that he's obviously stolen from somewhere and he writes out this check for $10 billion and he gives it to you. If you're like I am, you'll walk away and when no one's looking you tear it up and you throw it away because you know, I mean he's a bum, right? He can't even afford a pack of cigarettes. You know? Well, the problem is that the check's good. This is some nutcase like Howard Hughes or somebody. And that's what I did to Alcoholics Anonymous. My judgment and my opinion constantly, I just tore the check up and threw it away. And I was being given the thing that was the answer to all my problems. But my judgment told me that couldn't... My case is different. This doesn't apply to my particular set of problems. I need something else. And I got real lucky in 1978. I got to that point, talks about a vision for you, couldn't live with it, couldn't leave without it. I drank, leaving that place. I was wanted for the law. I was running, hitchhiking cross country with another guy that was in that halfway house and we ended up in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I was just at the point that it talks about in the book. It says that we finally get beaten into a state of reasonableness where we're as open-minded and as willing as only the dying can be. And I think surrender is the solution to alcoholism, but I think like most solutions, it evaporates very quickly. and I was so lucky that when I was at my point of surrender which was a very brief window of opportunity before the recuperative powers of my alcoholic ego returned that during that very brief period that I had fallen into the hands of some members of Alcoholics Anonymous that were grounded in the principles in this book called AlcoholicsAnonymous and they believed in Alcoholics Анonymous with everything in them And they were really vital, active members of AA. And they started to encourage me at my point of surrender to do some things that maybe six months later I wouldn't have done. And that for sure six months prior I wouldn'T have done and I was given a unique opportunity and I started to form the habits and the disciplines of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and I stated to form a meeting habit habit. And a prayer habit. I was told, we know you don't believe in God. It's quite all right. You just get down on your knees every morning and you ask whatever is running the universe for the power you need to stay sober. And you get down to your knees at the end of that day and you thank that power and know that you didn't do that. And I started to do that and I didn't even believe in god. But I believed what it talks about in this book. And it says, and there is a solution. Before we ever come to believe in a power greater than ourselves, it says we first come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we've been living it. And I'd been drunk and sober, drunk and sober, and I couldn't do that anymore. And I was willing to do anything that it took to change that. So I started getting down on my knees. And they told me that I had to do something that was really hard for a guy like me that I was supposed to try to start becoming transparent with other members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I started talking to my sponsor and a couple members of my home group and start telling them what's going on inside of me and what's doing on outside of me. And my group was really big on the big book, Alcoholics Aanonymous and I had to read something out of this book every day. And I got into this book and I started going to book studies because I don't know Something about me, I can't. I read this book by myself and it doesn't make sense. I'll read it with some other people and all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, well that wasn't there yesterday. It's a funny deal. And then the last thing, and my group's real entrenched in service that I was supposed to do something for somebody else every single day. And it talks about that in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. It says, my very life as an ex-problem drinker depend upon my constant thought of others, their needs and how we can work for them. Constant. Constant thought of others. I mean, who did they write that for? Al-Anon? I mean constant. I mean I've got to tell you, I do a lot of, I sponsor a lot OF guys. My phone rings all day long. I go to, I took, I checked my voicemail last night. There were 10 guys on there from that day. Just from that day that I had to answer, return turn all their calls. I do three hospital and institution meetings a week. And if I would stop doing all of that stuff right today, I would start thinking about nothing except me. I'm just wired that way. And I've watched people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I watched a member of my home group who drank after over 18 years of sobriety. And I got to tell you something, it scared me and the reason it scared me is that when he drank his life was picture perfect. He had an incredible marriage to a gal, she wasn't in AA but she was just a wonderful lady. He He had his own insurance agency. He was probably making, he had a lot of people working for probably $250,000 a year. Had a big brand new Eldorado and a brand new Corvette. Beautiful, big house. I asked him after he came back in, I said, on the day you drank, was anything wrong in your life? Was there something bugging you? And you know what he said to me? He said, Bob, my life had never been better. He says, I was at a Rotary luncheon, which I go to, I've gone to every single week for years. And there's a couple of the guys there that have a beer at lunch. And he said, all of a sudden it just seemed like a good idea to have a drink. Eighteen and a half years of sobriety. And I'm one, I believe in a principle that if I have the same disease that you have, what can happen to you can happen to me and I hope I never think I hope my ego never gets so bloated that it thinks I'm immune to any of that stuff because I'm as I'm a I'm vulnerable to alcoholism as anyone in this room or anyone sitting down at our local detoxes and rehabs and I started asking my friend well what was about what he was doing he was going to meetings And I said, when was the last time you were on a 12-step call? Were you working with carrying a wet drunk around in your car or sitting with a wet drum? He says, oh, it's probably been five years. I said when was he last time he sponsored anybody? He said the last guy I sponsored quit me about three years ago. And I'll tell you what, this is my observation, but I think my friend, his life was so beautiful but it was all about him and I think that is deadly for a guy like me and I you know the frightening thing is about it is that I live a lifestyle that's incredible I have everything that I could possibly ever want become very successful materially live in a big house I have a great lifestyle and I'll I'll tell you something, I think the richer my life becomes, the more service I need to do in Alcoholics Anonymous and the more diligent I have to be with a 10th and 11th step because there's something very seductive about the fruits of recovery. And I think a lot of us are seduced by the fruits OF our own recovery into a state of complacency. I watch it in my home group. I watch it in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And there's an, it talks in the book in chapter three about a delusion that destroys a lot of us. And it says the delusion that we are like other people, non-alcoholic people, the delution that we're like other people or that we presently may be like other people has to be smashed. And I'll tell you, I watch guys, and this is a very common experience in alcoholic subs. They come into AA in their first year of sobriety, if you watch their feet they act like they're really really really alcoholic. I mean they go to 10-15 meetings a week, they call their sponsor all the time, they're getting on committees, their secretary at meetings, they are going on panels into hospitals and institutions, they're struggling with that inventory. They're trying to pay people back. They're doing the whole kit and caboodle. Three years sober, they paid off a lot of their amends. Their life is good. They found her. They're going to five meetings a week. Talked to their sponsor probably every two months, every two weeks maybe. maybe. They shook a hand of a newcomer a couple weeks ago. Five years sober, they're going to three meetings a week. They forget to pray sometimes. They haven't worked with a newcomor in a long time. And what happens is they start working themselves from having a tremendously high degree of alcoholism until all of a sudden it's like I don't have as much alcoholism as I had then. And now at five years, I really have a lot less alcoholism than I had in one year. And then at ten years, you know something? I stop by that home group, get that cake, show everybody how wonderful I'm doing, but I'm acting really like somebody who doesn't have alcoholism at all. And I go from alcoholism to alcohol-wasm. And it's no wonder. And then those guys see him, they end up in detox and they say things like, I can't understand what happened to me. I understand exactly what happened to you. The same thing that would happen to me if I walked down that road. The exact same thing. I have a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. And as long as I try to trust God even though I'm most of the time very scared and I try to clean house because I make a lot of mistakes. Step 10 says, it says when we were wrong. It doesn't say if. It says when we were off and I'm wrong a lot. I'm right. I'm not wrong a lot. Sometimes you get me scared enough. You get me frightened enough and I am liable to say things that I am going to regret later. I am liable to lie to you. I may not want to but you get me afraid enough I am liable to do some and things that I'm not going to like myself later for. And I have to clean up and diminish the state of separation that my own actions based on self will create between me and the people around me. Or once again, I will find myself in a situation where it's me and then all of you. And I struggle with that kind of thing. I think, you know, in the part on step three in the big book, it makes a statement. It says, first of all, we had to quit playing God it didn't work and I would go to my sponsor in early sobriety and I'm one of those kind of guys that I just notice what's wrong with people you know it's just I got that divine awareness sees right to the nature how screwed up they are you know and I I go to My sponsor and only survived I got lists of people People in AA that are out of line. People at work that are out of lines. I go to them and I say, you know, this guy's cheating on his wife and this guy is on a big ego trip and she's trolling in the meetings and on and on and he says the same thing to me over and over again and I don't get it. He says, you've got to quit playing God. I'm not playing God, I'm reporting accurate information here. Playing God, what are you talking about? and I couldn't see it and what I was doing is that I was creating I was accentuating the alcoholism in my own life I think alcoholism, the ism is that I separate myself and by sitting on the throne of judgment and playing God I'm creating a state of separation between me and the people around me and I'll tell you what's so frightening is that I watched myself almost judge my way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't even know that it's, I can't see that that's what's happening because from the inside of me it looks like I'm right. It looks like my observations are the right kind of, that they're grounded and I don' t understand the underlying sickness is that I'm creating that state of separation by putting myself above you as if I know what's wrong with everybody. and I've watched people actually judge themselves right out of Alcoholics Anonymous and I have seen some do it to the point where they have never been able to come back and by the grace of a very loving God and a whole bunch of newcomers in my life and guys that I sponsor and a good sponsor and a home group that's grounded in the principles in this book if I continue to do certain things every day of my life I get to stay in a place called Alcoholics Anonymous and receive a daily treatment for the most insidious disease I've ever heard of, a disease called alcoholism. The only disease that I know of that if you have this disease it uses your own mind against you. And that's why if you go down and you hang around halfway houses and treatment centers and you see people dying of alcoholism and to them they can't see that that's what's killing them. to them it looks like they live in a world that just is very unfair to them and you guys taught me the truth here and you taught me in the fourth step when I finally was able to do it the way it's outlined in the book that if I'm not the problem there is no solution that I'm the guy that has to change and you also taught me in the first step and this was our course to see beyond the judgment and like it says in the book to realize how the people that harmed you were perhaps like you and to see the sameness in me and you and I'll tell you a real good 10th step a quick version of the 10th step is go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous or walk into where I work and stop and look around me and if what I see is I see people that are sometimes afraid sometimes frustrated sometimes struggling with a lot of the same things that I struggle with and I see the commonality and I see that you're doing the best you can do just like I'm doing the best I can do I'm in pretty good shape but if I look around the same room and what I see is real self-centered idiots and people that are really out of line and really screwed up, I am in a lot of trouble. Because I have a tendency to project onto you the sickness that is going on in me. I'm going to tell you a little story and then I'm gonna close. I share this a lot. It's a story of my life that lasts a little over 19 years. It's Sunday afternoon and the guy's sitting in his easy chair. He's got the day off. Read the newspaper. He's got a six-year-old daughter, and she comes up and says, Daddy, please play with me. He says, not now, sweetheart. I want to read the paper. And she won't go away. Daddy, please play with me, and he looks at the paper, and there's a map of the world, and he gets an idea. He tears it out, and it's this map showing where all these airlines fly, and he tears it up into little pieces. He grabs a roll of scotch tape, and And he says, sweetheart, here's a puzzle. It's a map of the world. Take it in your room. If you can scotch tape it together, bring it back, and I'll play with you for the rest of the day. So she's excited and runs off into her room. He sits back in his chair. He figures she's six years old. She don't have a clue. He's off the hook. Ten minutes later, she comes back, and she's got it taped together perfectly. He looks at her and he says... My God, sweetheart! How did you do that? And she says, it was easy, daddy. On the back was a picture of a man. And when I put the man together, the world just kind of fell into place. And if you're new, I encourage you from the bottom of my heart to grab someone in Alcoholics Anonymous that is sober a long time and believes in the principles in this book and be diligent and buy the whole package of AlcoholicsAnonymous. And ifyou do that, I guarantee you there'll come a day when you look around and you won't see a person on the face of the earth you would rather be than you. Thank you.