Four Defects Fell Away in One Night When I Finally Took the Sixth and Seventh Steps for Real — Bob B.

Hi, I'm Bob Bazanza, and I'm an alcoholic. For the grace of God and the power of AA, I've been having a drink since the 10th of December, 1967, and for that I'm very grateful. This has been, without question, an above-average experience of conferences that I have attended around the United States. This is one of the best organized. I love the way we're dressed tonight. So many places we go, I think we're looking tacky, and I like the feeling in the room when everybody is dressed up. I want to thank the committee, Tommy and Ken and Beth and anybody else who had anything to do with my being here. I, for some reason, have been kind of dry lately, and I'm about to dive back into some step work that I think I did this week. And this has been terrific. Just all the speakers, I think, have blended together. Every place you go, there's kind of a collective consciousness, and the collective consciousness of this. This room is very good. Everybody, you know, it's just been very cool. I've been with most of the speakers before. Because I play golf, I didn't hear everybody, and I arrived after one or two of talk, but I really do think there's been a synergism of what everybody has said and kind of a theme. It's kind of run together, and it's been very cool. I especially like Larcine this morning. Larcine would be a good reason to start to urine test Al-Anons. I mean, I've been a little worried. They talk about all the level of energy in Southern California, and I think June and Larcine are just a little flat. And what I like best about Larcine is, you know, the story that they've survived through, but they love each other. And I really think at their best, our stories are stories of love, and I think Larcine's is that story, and I think that's cool. June's story, to me, is the story of Christmas. You know, it's just almost your head keeps saying, that's not quite possible, it isn't quite. And for me, there's always been one or two stories, maybe John Harris, maybe John Vacar. There are different people at different periods of time where I'm kind of a, you know, I think too much, and I compare. And there were certain stories that if you hear them, you just could not think and you could not compare. They just take you in such a way that they, you know, kind of astound you, and June's is one of them. One of those stories for me. So it's been nice. I've enjoyed Keith and Julia this afternoon. I like your relationship. It was a very sweet relationship. I like that. Relationships are challenging, and I think that's good. So to be here with Dick, and that this is also a service conference. I mean, you know, you've got a couple of ex-staff members from General Service. You know, you've got Betty and Helen, and you've got enough ex-delegates around here to cause serious damage. If they ever got together and started talking. And then the extraordinary amount of sobriety that's in this room, which is very cool. One of the things I've always liked is being around the big people, you know, the people who have more sobriety. And I think the ones that are here, like Liz and Katie, and the people who had, you know, 40-plus years. I don't know that I've ever been in a room where you had, you know, 25 people or 30 people with over 40 years of sobriety and a half a dozen. People with over 50, that is really cool. And for some time, I have been recommending when I go to conferences that the person who gets the book for the least sobriety, give it to the person the following year. This is the first place I have ever been where the young woman who got it last year gave it to the young woman who got it this year. That is just very cool. Most enjoyable has been my time with Sandy. I love Sandy, and he's been one of my... heroes. I think he's our, you know, one of the great communicators. His use of language is kind of poetic, but I like his program, and I like who he is. And so I enjoy my time with you very much. I started drinking when I was a freshman in high school, 13 years old. I was 4'11", weighed 95 pounds, second-largest kid in my class, mostly mouth. I went to a military school on a college campus, and we drank in high school. Like most people drink in college. We had fraternities. Of my five closest buddies in high school, four of us are in AA, and one's in Al-Anon. And four of us were friends since we've been nine years old, so we didn't pick each other, you know, because of our drinking sort of thing. In my high school class of 115 guys, we have a dozen members of AA. So we had a lot of alcoholism. We had a lot of recovery. When I found alcohol, it was kind of like you've heard everybody talk about this weekend. It was not just like an improvement. It was kind of like a sex change operation. It was kind of like a sex change operation. It was kind of transformational. It just, you know, it took me from the fringes and put me in the middle. I was an uncomfortable kid. I mean, you know, you're the second-smallest kid in your class. You feel a little insecure. You know, to start with, and alcohol made me part of, just solved all my problems. It was a solution. I loved it enough that I chased it. I went after it. Almost died of alcohol poisoning a couple of times in high school. By the time I finished high school, my drinking problem was the largest subject of negative conversation in my home. I come from a great home. In St. Paul, we're kind of a Catholic town. And we have these Catholic kind of thongs or, you know, clans. You know, everybody had, you know, somewhere between five and a dozen children. And so it's a small town. The Twin Cities were kind of the Fort Worth of the, you know, of the St. Paul and Minneapolis. And so families knew each other. It's more like a village. And I got kind of a reputation for drinking. I didn't, you know, seek that. But I thought my problem with drinking, was that I was underage and my father was too strict. You know, when you're underage, if you get caught, it doesn't matter, you know, how much you drink. It was just the fact that you were drinking. If my father caught you, it didn't matter how much you were drinking. And I thought when I had a chance to go away to school that that would be solved. And I went away and it didn't get solved. I drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame in the middle of my senior year. And that's what my dad said. That was, you know. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. In the yearbook, with my class ring. But I was in civil engineering, carrying 25 credits a semester, going to school about one day every two weeks. And it gets tough to bluff your way through a thermodynamics exam. I was a class drunk. I had three guys petition to have me removed from engineering school. They used my room as a study hall. Someone was talking about one of their favorite movies was Rudy. You know, if you've seen that movie, he went there. I passed through. I mean, it was just... I remember many years after, or a few years after, it was over, maybe 15 or 20 years, I got invited to give an AA talk at Notre Dame. And I went down there. And I had some amends that I wanted to make. And it was really kind of an emotional reunion for me. And I went back there. And I'm in the middle of my talk. And I said, I've always had a deep sense of failure about place. And I said, I think I just figured out why. I think it's because I failed. I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19. That seemed impossible and inaccurate to me. It didn't seem to... I was always in trouble. Once or twice a year, I almost killed myself in a car accident or some other like event. And when he diagnosed me, I kept on pleading with him that I say I drank like my friends. And he said, well, maybe some of your friends are alcoholic. But he said, I think you drink differently than most of your friends. I think you drink with different people more often. And I think you get in more trouble than the average person did. I didn't buy that. And, you know, when I was... When I walked out of Notre Dame, I was due to be commissioned as an officer. In the Army, I had to get a medical release. The medical release I got was for alcoholism. It got me out of there. And I went home and I finished school at a local university. And when I finished school, my dad asked me to leave the house. He said, we love you. We almost can't stand you right now. You know, I'm one of seven kids. I was the family problem. Couldn't follow the rules. So I left home. I got a job at a liquor store. And I have to use your gifts. And I'm drinking. I don't know, a quarter a day. This is the last year of my drinking. I'm stealing booze. I'm absolutely a mess. I get fired from that job for going 80 miles an hour with a delivery truck. And I get a job as a waiter. The last four months or five months of my life, or my drinking, I worked as a waiter. I'm living not on Skid Row, but $10 night rooms. I'm shacked up with different people that I work with. And, you know, Dr. Seuss, the child author, those are actual photographs of people I lived with during the last year of my... Sobriety. And I'd get up in the morning, you know, take a couple of decks of drinks, drink a couple of beers. I'd go to work. I'd work from 11 to 2. I'd go to a bar and I'd drink beer. And at 5, I'd go buy a pint. And that was my life day in and day out. I didn't want anybody to kind of know where I was. I was out of touch with my family for four or five months during that period of time. And then towards the end of that, I went to a party and I got my face kicked in and I got fired as a waiter. And I had no place to go. I was tapped. And I went back. I went back home. And I asked my dad if I could move back in the house. And he said if I wouldn't drink, he'd allow me to move back in the house. And I promised. I lied, as it turned out, because when I moved back in the house, I'd been drinking a better part of a fifth a day for most days during that year. And I started to go through withdrawal, so it was necessary that I drank. When I moved back in the house, I was so tired of being the family problem that it would be hard for... I was so tired of being me that it would be hard for me to explain to you. And when I moved back in, I really wanted my life to change. And I started... I thought if I could change the circumstances of my life. So when I moved back in, I had just got back together with Linda. Now, my wife is a 37-year member... 38-year member of Al-Anon. And that's been a great partnership. And she's a lovely lady and she's mad at me that she's not here this weekend. We both made a decision not that she wasn't going to come. But when she heard it was on the program, she's a little upset that she did not come. So she wants it both ways. And I remember we were talking the other night and I just got my face kicked in. We had broken up for the last year of my drinking. And I'd call her about every month and a half, kind of like a low-grade headache, just about the time she'd start to date someone. I'd call her and kind of bug her, just to let her know I was still there. And I went into this party that she's at. She's got a date. I walk into this party. My face is kicked in. I'm drunk. And I walked up to her and I asked her if we could get together. The next day she said yes. The next day I got together with her and I said, I would like us to see if we could seriously look at Mary. At that time, she was a psychiatric nurse working on an alcohol ward. And she said yes. And not too long after that, we became engaged to be married. I got a job as an executive trainee in a manufacturing concern. Bought my first car. And I thought, wow, it's finally going to happen. I'm finally going to be an adult. Only I couldn't shut myself. My drinking down. I just, now I'm the company drunk. I'm in a company of engineers. I'm in the research department. I'm falling asleep at my desk. I use up my sick leave in the first four months of work. You know, I'm just a basket. When I went back to make amends to my boss at that company, he said, you interviewed so well. And I interview well. I just don't work well. Isn't that interesting? We can get in good schools. We just often can't finish good schools. You know, we can do the extraordinary. It's the ordinary that we have trouble with. Isn't that? And we are a room full of people who can do the extraordinary but have trouble with the average. And I worked at that job for four or five months. I got in some trouble. I left. I got a job as a salesman thinking it would give me more flexibility. I worked as a salesman for three or four months. A buddy of mine got married. I went out in about a four-day drunk. Called in the first couple of days. Didn't call in the next two. Woke up a Thursday afternoon in August of 1967, or July of 1967. I didn't know if I had a job, a fiancé, or a place to live until I was married. And all of a sudden, the recommendation of my father and my psychiatrist that I look into AA didn't seem like such an impossibility, and I called central office. I got an old-timer on the line, and he talked to me for about 15 minutes, called a couple of other guys, and arranged an appointment. And I met two guys at a café. And when I went there, you know, after I hung up the phone, I called work and found out I still was employed and found out I was still engaged and found out I still had a place to live. And I thought, well, I'm going to go to work. And I thought, well, I'm going to go to work. And I thought, well, I'm going to go to work. And I thought, well, I'm going to go to work. And I thought, why the hell did you call AA? I kind of went overreaction. But I wanted to go see what an alcoholic looked like. So I went and I met these two guys. One guy had six years. One guy had six months. When you're young and in trouble, you get put in front of a lot of people for help. Doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, bishops, nuns, priests, psychiatrists. And you're always the subject of the conversation, but not always a participant. And usually there's recommendations after they meet with you. And I thought that was going to be kind of what this was. I was 23 years old. But it wasn't what it was. These two guys said, we're from AA. We had a drinking problem. We found an answer in AA. We want to share it with you. And they sat me down in the booth. They told me their stories. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever been tried to be helped by someone who had a drinking problem. I found myself identifying and sharing with them. And that night I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have many traditions in AA. One of the most wonderful ones of which is that we share our experience, strength, and hope. And not only do we share our experience, strength, and hope, but we share our ideology and philosophy. There is something very powerful about sharing your life. Those two men and the sharing of their life with me changed me that night. There was something significant that happened. I went to my first meeting of AA. And it was an extraordinary experience. I thought, you know, I was 23. Almost everybody else in the room, probably average age 45. They sat me down. I still have the same sponsor that I got that night in alcoholics. Alcoholics Anonymous. And he talks about he's got a sponsor for the last, you know, 42 years. And I have the same sponsor that I have had for the last 38 or 9 years. He's 52 years sober and he's 87 years old. And he's still an active member of AA. And not bad. I drank twice after walking in the front doors of AA. Once on a business trip to the West Coast after 30 days of sobriety. And once on our honeymoon. I think I had planned to drink on my honeymoon. It was kind of subconscious. But we honeymooned. In Mexico, you know, where the divers dive off those cliffs in Mexico. I dove off those cliffs on my last run. I was in the audience watching the World's High Diving Contest. I thought, God, that's not so tough. And I had a swimsuit on underneath my Bermudas. I dove off the public landing, climbed up the cliff, got up to about 90 feet. I split my swimsuit. I cut my leg. My wife is going absolutely nuts. And I'm stuck. I can't get up. I can't get down. I'm trying to decide whether to jump or dive. I'm watching the waves. And finally, I figured out, to hell with it. And I dove. God watches after fools and drunks because I made it. And over the next 20 years, we went down there quite a bit with the kids. We vacationed down there. And on my 10th anniversary, Linda gave me a card with a picture of the chasm at La Cabrada. And it said, there but for the grace of God. And we were watching the divers. And I said, God, that's the dumbest thing I've ever done. And she said, Bob, it's not even in the top 10. I don't know how you can share a life and see it so differently. And I got back on the airplane. I got home. I was embarrassed to go back to the group. But she told me to call Warren. I called Warren. I got back active in AA. And I can remember, I didn't think I was an alcoholic. I've been being told I was an alcoholic for some time. I thought alcohol was my answer, not my problem. I thought if they knew about the other issues of my life, they wouldn't think I was just an alcoholic. They were telling me that bourbon was my problem. I quit drinking once or twice. Just before I went back to my senior year, I was beaten. I was beaten, robbed, enrolled, and shot at. Ended up in tough shape. Ended up in a psych ward after I got patched up. And they were not going to let me go back to my senior year. But they let me go back on the condition that I wouldn't drink. And I went back. And I didn't drink for two or three months. And my life didn't get instantaneously better. I didn't all of a sudden become what I thought you were telling me I'd become if I just wouldn't drink. And I thought I proved that I could quit if I had to. And I thought I proved that alcohol wasn't my problem. That there was some other kind of built-in problem. That there was some other built-in failure mechanism that was operating in my life. I remember that Warren sat me down when I walked in the meeting. And he said, Bob, alcoholism is a disease. It's a three-fold disease. It's physical, mental, and spiritual. Once you cross the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, your alcoholism affects you all the time. When you're drinking and when you're not drinking. The idea that alcoholism could affect you when you were not drinking was a brand new idea. It was like rocket science. I had never heard anybody say that. He said, what we use. And what we're after in AA is not just abstinence. We're after sobriety. What we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is when we take our last drink and our last drug, we use the 12 steps to change, to find a different way to live, to deal with the spiritual and the emotional side of alcoholism. And if you don't change, you're not going to stay. This is a program of change. And those were the truest. That was like the Gettysburg Address of AA. And what I found in Minnesota, especially at that time, all the meetings were closed-step discussion meetings. All we did, we got in a room. If there were 30 or 40 or 50 of us, some man or woman would get up, give the step for 5 or 10 minutes. We'd count off and we'd go into 2 or 3 different groups. And we'd finish the meeting with a discussion about how the step operated in our life. The steps were... And after the meeting, I'd come early, I'd stay late. And after the meeting, all the guys would meet with their sponsors and they'd be talking about the different issues. And I thought we'd be talking a lot about how not to drink. Almost no conversations about how not to drink. They assumed that you didn't want to drink. The conversations were how to live. Fights you had with your wife, problems you had at work, making amends, making lists. It was a... I pretty quickly got the idea that this was about living, not about not drinking. And I got back and when I got... I was always an active member of AA. My sponsor was the 12-step champion of our group. And he was phenomenal. And I said, okay, I'll buy it. I got the problem. And if I got the problem, you've got the answer. I got a half a dozen other things that are going on in my life. And if you've got the answer, those issues ought to be dealt with in AA. And hell, it might take a year. Yes. My problems were horrible but ordinary. I had trouble getting up in the morning. I later found out that it had something to do with when I went to bed. But at the time, I had... There was no... I had some work issues. I had a little trouble getting to work. I had trouble staying at work. And I had a little trouble working when I was at work. But other than that, I was a pretty good worker. I had money issues. I spent $300 more a month than I made in 1967. And I'm supporting most of that habit by gambling. And it doesn't seem like much money now. But in 1967, that was a pretty good amount of money. And then we started to have kids. And I had a great mom and dad. But even great parents make mistakes. And I wasn't going to make the mistakes that my parents did. And I didn't. I made all the mistakes they made in a bunch. They never thought of. I was loud, impatient, angry, immature, and sometimes violent with my children. I'm not proud of that fact. But that's an accurate description of how I was. And I had a gambling issue. It was more of a hobby. Four or five hours a day, four or five days a week. It wasn't a big deal. But I was making five or ten grand a year playing backgammon. And it was kind of like a second job. I had every one of those issues when I walked in the front door of AA. And none of those issues were on my first inventory. My first inventory was, you know, in hindsight, not very insightful. It was the best I knew how to do at the time that I was two or three months sober. And it was kind of a recitation of the things that I felt the most ashamed about and the things that I was trying to hide and bedeviled me the most. And it was still a good process for me. It was a process that I felt a significant amount of forgiveness and an idea that I was going to take my life in a different way. It was a different direction and it proved an important, very important process for me. So I had these issues, and one by one, they kind of came up. During my first year, I had trouble identifying my defective character. It was kind of on a honeymoon. I liked everything about AA. It was one of the most pleasant times that I've ever had in my life. Isn't that funny that many of us, when we come in AA, that the circumstances of our lives are so mixed up with the first year's offense in many ways? And I think because of the surrender that we have, we're, you know, and it was one of the most exciting, nicest times I've had in my life. And then in my second year, which I found to be much less comfortable, one by one, I started to take on the issues of my life. And one by one, I would grab them and I would take them and I would try to deal with them and I'd make a little bit of progress, but mostly I wasn't making much progress. By the end of my second year, I had a pretty good list of my defective character. I worked on them pretty hard during year two, three, and four. And then in my fifth and sixth year, they started to bother the hell out of me and eat my lunch. And in my seventh year, I had a pretty good list of my defective character. And then in my seventh and eighth year, they were really grinding on me. Now, I'm an active guy. I'm a sponsoring guy. I'm going out and 12-step work. I'm active in the service. I'm starting to give AA talks. And I'm trying to deal with the issues in my life, and it's not working. And I felt pretty familiar. It's kind of like everything went in my life. I'm a great starter, but I don't finish many things. I interview well. I just don't work well. And now I am an AA, and everybody's patting me on the head for the first year or the first two years, and now all of a sudden I'm an AA. And you know, the first thing that happened to me when I came to L.A. Anonymous is I tore down the wall that I built up between you and me. I had a wall built up so you couldn't see the unattractive things that were going on in my life, and the thinking that went on behind the wall said, you like me, but you only like what I let you see about me. If you could see everything about me, you'd hate me because I hate me, and who knows more what a lousy, insufficient crumb I am than me. I was walking around, as Cecil would say, comparing my own... my insides with your outsides in a very good way. But when I came in, I started to tear that wall down. I started to tear it down on that first 12-step call. I started to tear it down in conversation with my sponsor, and I tore it all the way down when I took my fourth and fifth step, and I made a discovery. And the discovery was that I'm not unique. Most of us come in with a profound sense of uniqueness. And if you do not drop some of that sense of uniqueness, we probably won't stay because we'll be looking for the differences rather than the similarities. And when I dropped that wall, I made the discovery that I'm not unique. My personality may be unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my experience, not my feelings. And I started to have a sense of hope that what worked for you would work for me. And that was why I was on that honeymoon. That was the first place I had ever been where I felt like I was home and where I felt like someone understood me. But as I started to get sober, and I'm two and three years sober, and I'm one of the younger guys in the group, I started to have problems with sex, or I started to have problems with money. I started to have problems with work. And when I started to have those problems, I said, thank you very much for helping me with my drinking problem, but stay out of my work life, stay out of my gambling, stay out of my marriage, stay out of my parenting. And brick by brick, sober, going to five or six or seven meetings of alcoholics down almost a week, I built my wall back up. When I came in AA, what I wanted to find was someone who was so insightful that they could see through me and see the issues that I have and help me straighten my life up. I didn't find that. What happened to me is I came to AA, I made a surrender, and I became an alcoholic, and what I had were hundreds of people who could help me with recovery from alcoholism. And then as I started to get sober and move through, I started to look for an expert on Bob, not on alcoholism. And when I was six or seven years sober, I was feeling pretty alone. And I think the experience I'm about to describe to you is not an unusual experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think a lot of us, between five and ten, or five and twelve years of sobriety, your pants catch back on fire. I think we are surprisingly wonderful at dealing with the early issues of our sobriety. We come in with a list of things that we've got to take care of, and we are amazingly successful in Alcoholics Anonymous with dealing with some of those issues in early sobriety. But there's a lot of things that we are not bright enough or insightful enough to put on that list. We wouldn't have put them on the list if you told us to put them on the list. You know, and that was the list that started to get me in trouble. And at seven or eight years of sobriety, I'm not thinking about drinking, but I'm thinking about suicide. I'm in the meeting, you know, a new guy comes in with a bushel basket full of manure that they have, and I sit him down, they share it with me, and I say, Hey, as bad as it is and as tough as it seems, you're in the right place. I'm really glad you're here. I know it seems hopeless for you, but if you come in here, you get a sponsor, you get in the book, you take the steps, you're going to be okay. You do not have to do it perfectly. You just have to have a reasonable attitude, get into this stuff, and not drink, and your life's going to be okay. You see that guy over there? That guy over there I called on 24 years ago. I was his sponsor in St. Paul, Minnesota for quite a number of years. I said, You see that guy over there? His life was a mess, and now he's hitting it out of the park. You're going to be okay. And then I'd get in the car at 11 o'clock at night, and I'd go home, and I'd say, Bob, when's it going to be okay for you? You're seven years sober. When are you going to learn how to work? Everybody knows how to work. You don't know how to work. When are you going to stop spending money you don't have to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like? When are you going to be gentle with your children and more loving with your wife? When are you going to quit gambling? And I didn't know, because I'd been trying as hard as I knew how to try to get rid of those defects of character, and I had failed. And by this time, I knew what the answer was. The blessing that I had, I've always liked the old-timer. I had great examples. I knew that what I had to find was something, you know, what God had to do with Wednesday is what I think I had to discover. As a Catholic, I had so many issues around religion that that was a very uncomfortable subject. We talked a lot about spirituality, and I was so uncomfortable with spirituality, if the meeting got, we had an upstairs and a downstairs, and if the meeting got too spiritual, I left the meeting and I got too spiritual and went to the downstairs, which is often a breakout meeting for a new guy. My blood pressure went up 15 points just going by a church. And I had a lot of unresolved, and it was that way because it was important to me, and I had a lot of unresolved issues around that that I didn't know how to, it was clearly explained to me the difference between religion and spirituality, but at that point in time in my recovery, I didn't understand the distinction. And I knew what I had to do, but I had a problem. And the problem was, as I go knock on the door, God says, who's there? I said, God is Bob. He said, what do you want? I said, I'm eight years sober and my pants are on fire. I'm dying. I need help. It seems to me that people who have a better relationship with you are doing better than I'm doing, and I want to turn myself in. And God's going to say, okay. And then I'm going to say what every drunk wants to know. What do I do? You have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what God's going to tell you to do. Get up in the morning. Go to work. Stay at work. Work at work. Get on a budget. I think that's an Al-Anon word. I think that's a harsh, I think it's a difficult, it's a harsh word, I think. Stop gambling. Be more gentle with it. Be more loving with your children and be more loving with your wife. And I'm starting to have trouble at home. I'm going to all these AME, and my wife saw more of me when we were dating than when we were married. And she's starting to wonder, one of the places I'm supposed to practice a program is in our home. I thought, God does none of your business. You've got your program. You know, I've got my program. You know, we're not supposed to take each other's inventory. And I was stuck in that place for two years. And the problem was, how do you go to God to develop a relationship? If you can't fulfill the conditions of the relationship? I thought, as soon as I clean my act up, I'm going to develop a relationship with God. But right now, I don't know how to do it. And then with the desperation that I guess I hadn't felt for some time, when I was about seven years sober, I went back to the steps. And for the third time, I started to formally go through the process of taking the steps. Step one was really easy. My life was powerless and I was unmanageable. It was as clear as night and day. You know what I had lost? Step two. And that was unusual for me. I believed it for us, but not for me. I absolutely, without question, believed that God would restore us to sanity, but He wasn't going to restore Bob to sanity. I had lost belief in that because I'm seven or eight years sober and it looked like my life was going... I was on the down escalator going up. And I think when you're desperate, you get more or less active and out of desperation. I started to see people with bigger problems, with smiles on their faces, walking through the walls that I was trying to walk through. And I started to walk around. And out of that observation, I started to believe that God would restore me to sanity. I took step three on my knees with my sponsor in his office. We didn't do that in those days, but I started to go to conferences and I started to hear people talk about doing that. And I thought, I'm going to try that. And then I did my third four-step. And I think that maybe was my best one. And I did my fifth step with my sponsor, which we also didn't do in our group. We did it with clergy. And I told him, I said, be careful when I'm done, because whatever you recommend that I do, I'm going to do. I said, I feel like I'm dying of thirst lying next to a lake. I said, you know, if you gave me the test, I could pass the test. I know what to do. I just can't do it. And I am so tired of not being able to do it. So I did my fifth step with him. And when he was done, one of the things he wanted me to do was go to a psychologist about work and money issues. He said, Bob, you've got a lot of... I had a pretty successful dad, and the idea was I'm never going to be as good as my father. And I had a lot of money problems and a lot of failure in my life. And I did not want to go to a psychologist. But he lined me up with an industrial psychologist, and I said, okay. And I called the guy up, and he said, can you get your parents involved? I said, no. I said, my parents have an over-involved life, and I don't think at this stage they need to... Mommy and Daddy need to come with me. He said, will you get your wife? Will you get your wife involved? I said, oh, crap. Well, they see it so differently. Maybe more honestly. You know, I mean, it's tough. Will you get your kids involved? And I said, they're pretty young. I didn't want my children involved. I was ashamed of... Not only did we have a pattern of alcoholism in my family, we had a pattern of rage. And I hope that, as I've helped in my family, once you have the example of recovery, that becomes available to other members, and we have... Quite a few members of Linda and I have three sons that are in recovery. My father got in recovery. I have a brother in recovery, and I have two... I have a couple of nephews in recovery. But I said, yeah, I'll bring the kids. I did not want... I was ashamed of how I was. And we had a pattern of rage in our family. That's two or three generations old, as near as I can tell. And I also hope I'm going to be of help breaking that pattern in our family, because there are... Those are old ideas, and those patterns do. So I go to the psychologist. Linda and I and Billy and Peter are there. And we're having this discussion, and he looks at me and he says, I'm going broke. My company's going downhill. I don't know why I'm busting my ass two or three hours a day. Times are tough. It's bad business times. And he looks at me and he said, why are you so afraid of failure? I wanted to punch him. I said, look, you don't understand. You're a doctor. I said, if you go bankrupt, you know, you just take your little sign, walk down the hall, pound it on another door, and within six months, you're making a hundred grand. I said, I'm about to lose everything I have. I said, nod your head up and down if you understand that. I said, I'm in the investment business, and I'm going broke. I'm about to lose everything I have. He looked over at my wife, and he said, if Bob lost everything he had, would he lose you? And my wife said, nope, wouldn't lose me. He looked at the kids, asked them the same question. The kids said, no, wouldn't lose us. If you can't lose, you can't play. I'm the guy that if we were going to have a marathon, I'd look and talk and act like a runner. I'd have a great pair of running shoes and a nice outfit. I'd tell you I won some race in Minnesota, and you'd expect me to be in the top ten in the race. And for the first third of the race, I'd be up front with the top ten. And somewhere between halfway and 60%, I'd fall down and hurt myself, and I wouldn't finish the race. When the race was done, someone would say, what happened to that guy from Minnesota? I said, I don't know, a hell of a guy. He won some race. He must have pulled a hamstring. But if you would have followed me around in a helicopter in my life for the ten years preceding that race, you could have guessed within 50 yards when I fell down, because I don't finish anything. And I'll tell you, it gets old. It gets old to have gifts you'd never get out of the box. You want a price for alcoholism? It's not having a life. If you listen to a guy like Sandy, who didn't feel very good about himself in early sobriety, you look at the qualities that that man has and the accomplishments that he has, and you wonder, how could anybody not feel very good about themselves? Well, most of us feel that way. I mean, we are this complex sort of thing where we have this love-hate relationship. We can do great things, but we know that over a period of time, you know, that life isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And we don't do well in marathons. We're quick. Not too long after that. And what I discovered in that interaction with the psychologist was fear. Now, I've done three inventories. My fear inventory had to do with dogs, snakes, and high buildings. It was as uninsightful with respect to fear as it could possibly be. And what I discovered in that meeting with the psychologist is I was afraid of being married. I was afraid of the responsibility of being a husband. I was afraid of the responsibility of being a father. I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of success, which was an interesting discovery. So I was a guy who was swimming in fear. And Chamberlain used to talk about the three fishes in the ocean with the three fishes. He said, isn't the ocean wonderful? And the other fish looked over and said, what's the ocean? I'm swimming in fear and don't know what it was. Two weeks after that meeting with the psychologist, I've had one of the worst days I've had in sobriety. I got up late, went to work late, left early, got in the backgammon game, won 600 bucks, missed dinner, missed the A&M, meeting, came home, got in a fight with my wife and slapped one of the kids. One of those days you'd like to have videotaped and sent to the general service office to kind of show what eight years of sobriety will do for you. And I'm in my living room 11 o'clock at night reading some non-conference approved literature. And the other big book as it happened to be at that moment. And I said, gee, it happened again. And I said, it happened again. Weren't you there? Yeah, I was there. But I said, it's so habitual. It's almost like I don't have to think. It's like it happens. It's like I'm in a blackout. It's like it happens automatically. And all of a sudden I stopped. And I realized that was a bunch of hooey. I sounded like a guy who wanted to quit gambling. I wanted to gamble for as much money as I wanted to gamble whenever I wanted to gamble and not have problems because of gambling. I wanted money without work. I wanted my wife's and children's affection without spending time with them. And all of a sudden I realized that I had designed my life to be the way it was. And I said, I had tried pretty darn hard in Alcoholics Anonymous to clean my act up and I had failed. And for some reason at that moment that seemed okay. That had never seemed okay for a moment up until that moment. And I was allowed the experience to take the sixth and the seventh step of the program of AA. The sixth step said that we were humbly that we were entirely ready to have God remove our defective character. And the seventh step said that we humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. I had spent eight years trying to get rid of them. I didn't have the power to get rid of them. I'm responsible but I am the pipe not the well. It happens through me not by me. A doctor doesn't heal. He creates an aseptic environment creates an atmosphere in which healing can take place and God heals. And I don't. And a farmer doesn't grow. He plants a seed creates a fertile environment which growth can take place and God grows and I don't change. I create an atmosphere in which change can take place. Maybe the to be an honest open-minded and being willing or the attitude of the sixth and the seventh step. And God changes me. It happens through me not by me. Most of the time most of us have the profound experience that out of our surrender we stop drinking and stop using and most of us know that at that point in time it took very little effort. It was removed from us. You read page 84 and 85 and it talks about you know that we're not using any effort. It has been removed. And that's how I believe that change happens in Alcoholics Anonymous to a significant extent. And that night I got down on my knees I took the sixth and the seventh step and four of the major issues in my life disappeared. That night such as the power of AA. I knew that I'm the guy you know when I go on a diet the first thing I do is I go buy a little ice cream and a bag of cookies. Well it's already been a bad day I'm just going to finish it off and I'm probably never going to have ice cream again anyways. And I knew that I needed to put some structure in place or that wasn't going to happen. And God gave me the grace I made an appointment with my sponsor about when I'd go to work and how long I'd stay at work and a little conversation about what I'd do at work. I started dating my wife. I dated my wife every Friday night for 30 years. We stopped doing that the last number of years because we travel so much and I think we've got to pick that back up. That was the best thing in the world. She and I knew that one night a week we had each other's undivided it was a real live dangerous date. We got dressed up no one else we were alone no one else went out it was you know often a night of romance it was a very good thing. And it was awkward. I had you know we found ourselves talking about kids and bills. That wasn't how we fell in love. You know we had to kind of reestablish a romantic environment. We started to go to Chicago and shack up for the weekend and start to do some fun things and reestablish our relationship. I quit gambling that night. I spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to be a better parent. I think being a parent takes 125% of whatever you got. I think having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your house. It's like having a bowling alley installed in your house. It's like having a bowling alley installed in your house. It is one of the most demanding processes. It is one of the great privileges of life. And as most of us know that the great relationships of life being a child to a parent being a parent to a child being a spouse those are the unavoidable relationships. I guess you can annul those and you can walk out of them but for practical purposes they're unavoidable. And what you keep running into is yourself. You keep presenting yourself with the message of the universe saying this time this doesn't work. We keep wanting a different message. It's kind of interesting. If God wanted to get us a message who would he get it to us through? Bad news. Probably your spouse. Maybe the eyes of my children as I get angry or go to strike one of them. Maybe a co-worker. Maybe a boss. Maybe your sponsor. Maybe someone at a meeting. But it's going to be someone close to you. Probably. And when I got through that period when I made that change my life took off like it was on a rocket ship. And for the next ten years everything I touched turned to gold. The guy that couldn't work I have a business partner thank God. Part of my business success is picking partners well. Part of my marriage success is picking women well. My wife's activity in Al-Anon we just last night a couple of months ago had eight people over at the house mostly widows people who were in the Al-Anon and AA group when we came in 38 years ago. And the women said we had everything we could do to tell Linda they're talking to her to tell you not to get the hell out. You weren't married. Why are you going with this nut? I mean, you know she's in Al-Anon we're engaged they cannot understand why someone would marry someone knowing they were alcoholic. And Linda said I wouldn't have listened. We were in love. We were, you know she was 25. I was 21 years old. I was 22 and I was 24 and we wouldn't have listened and thank God you know because it's been a great run. But I'll tell you without each of us having a program I don't know if we would have made it. I can really be a horse's ass. But I'm not a bad guy. I love my wife. It isn't like I'm the worst guy in the world but it's, you know to have a woman who's a partner that when you're being a real horse's ass that can still look for her small part in that situation to diffuse it rather than turn the other on me is a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. And so all of a sudden my life took off and part of it was because it was the right time the right business environment and the guy you know we built a company with 500 employees and we put together a real estate investment company and this was my deeply shallow period. Everything I touched turned to gold. We bought the big house and I had two Mercedes and I was the guy in the very expensive suit and the very expensive tie showing up in the Mercedes at the meeting thinking that God had blessed me because I was such a wonderful member of AA. How'd you like me in your group? There's problems with failure. Well, there's problems with success. I mean, I became arrogant and then that was as invisible to me as some of the defects of character were invisible to me during my lack of success. And then in 1987 they passed the Tax Act and between 1986 and 1991 I went broke. I lost $10 million and gained 40 pounds. I was going to write a book but I couldn't find a publisher. If any of you were out there praying to be a millionaire you might include the idea of keeping it. It never occurred to me that once I got it I'd lose it. After the Tax Act changed I lost everything I had and negotiated my way out of bankruptcy in 1991. So the guy who was a failure who was a failure who became business-wise a success lost it all. My dad was always concerned because I've always been a spender kind of a spendthrift and I was a guy who liked things and I liked money and he was always nervous. I said, Dad, don't be nervous. It's going to be okay. Well, of course, my father saw things in my character and in my behavior that made him nervous and I just couldn't you know, just before I lost everything I went to a guy and I asked him to be my spiritual advisor. He's still my spiritual advisor to this day. He said, what do you want, Bob? I said, I want to be less materialistic and more loving. And within six months I started to lose everything I had. I went to him. I said, we have to talk. I said, what I really want to do is I want to keep the stuff and be less materialistic. We laugh about that today. Today I wouldn't trade the stuff for the lesson. I'd take the money and the lesson. But I'm... But once again, when you're in pain you get more active and I got more active and I'm... I think one of the great lessons in my life I had to find out who I was with money and who I was without money. At that time, our middle boy came home from college and he got arrested for drunken driving and totaled out an automobile and up in detox. It was kind of his Christmas present to Linda and I. And he went to a halfway house after he went through treatment and I go to the halfway house this big halfway house for the meeting. And Friday nights and when the meeting would start I'd start crying. And I'd cry all the way through the meeting. And can't you see someone there? See that guy? He's got 24 years of sobriety. How'd you like to have what he has? I think he's got the clap. I'm not sure what he's got. And then over the last almost 20 years I've built that business back up and today I'm in love with my wife and I have a great relationship with my three boys. Our three sons all of them are in the program. I've turned my wife into New York as a carrier. Our oldest boy has 17 years of sobriety and he's 37. Our middle boy has 15 and he's 34 and our youngest has 8 years and he's 26. Your children very seldom come to you to get well. We are in a program where I'll take care of your kids you take care of mine. I am as grateful my business partner helped initiate the recovery of all three of my children. He's got 43 years of sobriety. I don't know why we're so lucky but it's wouldn't it have been wonderful if Mr. AA the big talker was such a horse's ass at home that if I would not have been able to correct my violence at home that when my children developed the disease of alcoholism they didn't want to come to AA. But he gives a hell of a talk. You know, wouldn't that have been a bad deal? I am so grateful that this program helps us take the issues of our lives and as Sandy talks about chip away the unworkability. The process of finding God is a process of removal not addition. It's a process of coming home. It's a slower process than I would have liked. But I have the privilege of being in this village. I have the privilege of sharing my life. In the last little bit of my talk I want to talk about change which I think is the Sandy and I over the weekend have been talking about some of the great old timers and it's really interesting most of the young people in the program today wouldn't know who we were talking about. I've had the privilege of listening to and being around some of the great members of Alcoholics Anonymous. They just were heroes of mine. Heroes are not very fashionable today but I've always had heroes in Alcoholics Anonymous and it's been an important it's been a very important thing to me. And I've always had the message that AA brought us to recovery brought us to God that it was a program of change and that I had a responsibility and what I like today we have become so big that there are people who talk about what it is to be a good AA and you can be a good AA by getting all your merit badges. How many people you sponsor how many meetings you go to how many talks you give how many committees you're on. But the real measure of what it is to be a good AA is how it's changed your life and the world. Go to your husband go to your wife go to your boss go to your brothers and sisters and see if they think your life has been improved by the process of Alcoholics Anonymous. I always thought if I were going to ask people to raise their hands and I'm not if I said how many people in this room want to get rid of the issues that hurt themselves and the important people in their lives I think most of us would raise our hands and say that's what I want to do. You know we don't have a very we don't have a definition of alcoholism we have a couple of descriptions of alcoholism in our literature. The one joke that I like the best is if you take a normal you take this room and you have a normal person and an alcoholic and you go out that door and there's a guy with a baseball bat that hits you over the head. You go out that door and there's happiness forever after. The normal person will get up go over to that door open it up get hit on top of the head come back in and then go out that door and there's happiness forever after. An alcoholic will go over to that door open it up get hit on top of the head and come back in and they get up and they go over to that door and they get hit on top of the head and they do that six or seven times and they go out there for the last time and the man isn't there so they go looking for him. I was enormously afraid of change. I thought my behavior and patterns was who I was. I had a collapse of distinction between what I do and who I was. The behavior of our lives that we don't think we can change is just behavior. It is not skin and bones. It is not who we are. It is just what we do. In Alcoholics Anonymous the transformation that takes place which is a kind of a quantum leap from change the transformation that takes place is a transformation of the heart and mind. It is not just an improvement. It is a change. It is a change. It is a change. It is a change. It is a change. It is a change. It is a change. It is a total change. Our program says that we are going to have a spiritual awakening. What happens to us is we become more awake as we take these principles and put them in action in our lives. Pretend for a moment that I am working with a guy who is 35, 38 years old married with kids and he is having trouble doing the four steps. You know the columns and stuff like that gets kind of complex and I say to him look, I know you are having trouble don't worry about that. Just get your mom and dad and your wife and your kids and a couple of co-workers and two guys from your group and a couple of co-workers and bring them over to the house and your brothers and sisters and here is what I want you to say to them. I want to say in Alcoholics Anonymous we have a step where we try to get in touch with our defector characters and I am having trouble identifying mine and I was wondering if you would help. Most of us wouldn't call that meeting. You know why? We don't want to change. But it is worse than that. We don't want to know. We train each other about what we can say and what we can't say. You train your spouse. We are not having that conversation. You want to have that conversation? It is going to be a tough conversation. You train your kids about what they can say and what they can't say. You train your boss. You train your co-workers. You train the guys and gals in your group. Look, I won't call you on your crap. You don't call me on mine. We will talk about the steps. We will talk about the traditions. You stay out of my face. I will stay out of yours. For the first eight years of my life I tried and failed to change some of the significant defector character and unworkable areas of my life. I tried and failed. I tried and failed. I tried and failed. But I still, I still grew. But there comes a time where you either change or you stop growing. And that is a different point for many of us. For some of us it is earlier and for some of us it is later. And when you get to that point you either start changing or you build an addition onto your house to accommodate the problem. Chasers hang out with the chasers. Gamblers hang out with the gamblers. Make a deal. We will talk about the program steps, activities, stay out of my face. You know, bad deal. But there is so much fear around the idea of change. And I thought change took effort. I thought it took information. That is why I think so many people, I think the study of our book is terrific. But I really think that most of it, but there are more tapes and more studies about the big book today than there ever has been. I don't know if there is much more transformation than there was in the early days. The steps are not mechanical. If they were mechanical all we would have to do when we got in trouble is say the third step prayer and click our heels and we would be back in Kansas. But sometimes when you are in trouble you go to that prayer and no one is home. The program isn't just about doing. It is about being. There is a way of being in the process of taking the steps. And it is hard to describe. Chamberlain one time talked about when I shared that and the thing that Sandy and I did about he went to a symposium where all the experts were in alcoholism and someone asked him what he thought of all the experts. And he said well they don't know much about surrender. Which is the key. If you have someone in trouble and their pants are on fire what you would like to have them do is surrender. But you can't tell someone how to surrender and you cannot surrender for them. So the process how do you when you go to the steps there is lots of people doing lots of us at different periods of time do step work but have trouble sometimes making the change happen in the process of taking the steps. I still think that process is worthwhile but sometimes it is drier than we would like it to be and it doesn't work as well as we would like it to be. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. And that is the key. Because the ego almost says go ahead do what you want to do. You want inventory it is fine. You want to study it is fine. You want to talk to someone it is fine. But get this straight it is not changing. Do whatever the hell you want to do to make yourself feel better. I think that is good but it is not changing. And that is where the real issues of our lives rest. And our program says having had a spiritual awakening what happens to us is that we are is as a process of taking the steps we awaken. I still have a tendency to anger but because you have helped me be more awake I no longer strike children and I no longer have anger as an issue in my life to the extent that it causes me serious trouble with the important people in my life. That is how it happens. It is like it falls away. But most of us as I say have collapsed the distinction between behavior we have so strongly identified with us that we think it is who we are and we almost think that if we were to change those things we would be gone. And that is what Sandy was talking about. And the world today is absolutely nuts. The world today supports I think when I got sober in the 1960s I think the world supported recovery. I mean today it is just crazy out there. And this very strong message is you just need more money bigger houses faster cars I mean it is just you know the answer to that is the answer is external it is not internal. And thank God when Sandy talked about the message from Carl Jung that you need a spiritual awakening and to have a society that will support that spiritual awakening. And that is what we have. We have a set of principles spiritual in nature that are practiced in our lives that allow us to be useful and whole. I don't know where you get a better deal. I mean the privilege of being able to walk into a room many of us sometimes have difficulty with one another but I don't know that I have ever been in a meeting where people don't want the best for you. I don't know that I have ever been in a meeting where we had an argument about a step. We argue about the traditions a lot because we use them as rules rather than principles but I don't know that I have ever heard an argument about the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of us have such respect for the program and the steps we know that we do not none of us are experts in the process in this process because it is a process of living not just studying not just information I have always known what to do I have always been able to pass the test I have always had the information but the information is the booby prize. There are people today that have the first 164 pages of the book memorized and they are horses asses. I am serious I mean it is it is and please don't in any sense of that think that I am not encouraging the study and the application you know the study of the book and the you know that is our text it is I think greatly inspired but I think the process is spiritual it is of God and because it is of God you can't own it and you can't describe it it is a rough track out there all of us you know we do pretty well most of the time but I will tell you if you are going to be sober 30 years or 15 years or 10 years you are going to have your turn in the barrel your wife is going to turn up with cancer they are going to downside your company your kids are going to get sick you are going to crash the car you are going to lose your insurance your health insurance and something is going to happen to you you know dick that health issue that you had that comes slapping in your face I have seen people with programs that have dealt with issues in life big issues in life and have been able to meet them with great dignity and well I think we see more miracles in Alcoholics Anonymous on a regular basis than you would see any place else it has been a privilege to share thank you very much for having me this weekend God bless you