Four Questions on Page 345 Did What Seventeen Years of Intellectual Step Work Could Not – Ajit S.

Good morning.
I kind of identify with Mark Twain.
He says he's embarrassed when people compliment him.
He feels they're not saying enough.
Excuse me.
And before I give you my name, I read someplace that people of higher intelligence have very little problem pronouncing a foreign-sounding name.
My name is Ajit.
What a Mensa crowd, a shy one, though, a Mensa crowd.
It's good to be here.
I want to thank Mary Kay for asking me and for Ron and Bill for being kind enough to come and pick me up at the airport.
Bill warned me that look for trouble.
Two confused people.
What I found was two very serene-looking guys.
So I'm happy to say that I made their acquaintance, and they've been very, very kind.
Thank you for the wonderful gifts that you gave me, a little bag with lots of good goodies, with a bottle of wine, and the cigar was a bit of an overstatement.
I'm teasing.
Actually, step three goes great with a good Cabernet, I mean, if you try it.
For Al-Anons only.
I want to welcome my Al-Anon friends.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Welcome, my friends in AA.
I went double once.
Why do we do that?
You know, I saw a comedian, he said, alcoholism is the only disease you get yelled at for.
You don't go to a cancer patient and say, why did you get cancer again?
I thought it was intermission.
I think at some basic level, we have a hard time accepting the fact that alcoholism is a disease,
because we wouldn't be wagging fingers and yelling and screaming and doing the things we do when we are in the midst of this crazy disease.
It's a crazy disease called alcoholism, because we truly believed it was a disease that be continuous compassion.
That's the other thing about Al-Anon, there's an Al-Anon slip is five minutes of laughter, or 30 seconds of compassion.
I want to thank the speakers that have preceded me.
Sandy, what a delightful trip.
Thank you.
That was very inspiring.
And then this morning, Ed, gosh, I'm moved.
I'm also moved by the fact that both speakers spoke nicely about Al-Anon, said nice things about Al-Anon.
Typically, I hear some rather pejorative stuff about it.
I say, why does an Al-Anon woman close her eyes when she's making love?
Because she can't bear to see the alcoholic have fun.
The other side, the Al-Anons say nasty things about alcoholics.
You know why God made alcohol?
No, why?
Because, so the Irish wouldn't take over the world, and also that ugly people could have sex.
So I'm glad that we AAs and Al-Anons are getting along well together.
I want to tell you very quickly my problem.
My problem is I can't remember exactly when I walked into Al-Anon.
It was circa 1980.
But I can tell you to the moment when she walked into AA.
May 25th, 1983, 8.02 PM.
At the University United Methodist Church in the corner of University and Culver and Irvine.
It was 8.02 because we had problems parking the car.
That tells you where my focus has been my entire life.
Somewhere in the middle of the city.
Somewhere else instead of here.
For a long, long time.
And that's been my problem.
So if you ask me is alcoholism a disease, I really don't know and I don't care.
Because that's really not my problem.
My story's going to be more about in terms of how I've become more aware of my choices
instead of focusing on a problem that really isn't mine.
I like what Babs from Texas says.
She says, every time I get my ducks in a row, they tell me they're not my ducks.
And I've been chasing ducks all over the place claiming they're mine.
And
the other problem I have is a problem called image management.
I may look, I may feel like crap, but I got to look good.
And I know you're judging me because you're judging me also by the company I keep.
So I'm very conscious and aware.
I like what Dr. Paul says.
He says, I'm not much, but that's all I think about.
I go one step further.
It's not just that I only am thinking about me, but
I think you have no life of your own, so you're thinking about me too.
That you're constantly observing every move I make and you're keeping an eye on
what I'm doing, what I'm saying, and whom I'm with.
And that's an awful way.
It's an awful way to live because you become very shallow and very out of focus.
And that's been the bane of my existence for a long, long time.
And I'll give you the reasons why that happened.
Not that they matter, but I've got to fill an hour here.
Anyway,
I grew up in a home and as I'm reflecting, I was reading a book in Al-Anon.
I volunteer at the Al-Anon office once a month.
And I was looking at this book called From
Survival to Recovery.
It's for people who've grown up in homes where there has been rampant alcoholism.
And I figured I hadn't grown up in such a home, so
let me see what this book is all about.
And I'm reading this book and I started to identify with a lot of the stuff in
the book and I was surprised and I recognized that even though there's no
direct alcohol in terms of the consuming aspect of it,
the insanity and the behavior was there.
I mean, when you have a crazy uncle running around on a nice bright day, shutting all of his stuff,
and he's like, you know what, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to do that.
And so you have a crazy uncle running around on a nice bright day, shutting all the windows and doors and drawing the curtains and turning on the lights and you walk around on eggshells because your punishment is that when your dad comes home and he goes to bed, you're going to go and lie right next to him so you wouldn't move.
And that was your punishment.
You know, there's a lot of dysfunction in that type of family.
And you're constantly observing what other people say and think about you.
They say, what will they say?
What will they think?
And you're always concerned about someone else.
That to me, from what I've heard, my friends who've grown up in homes, you know, I'm the kind of guy who's always worried about what they're going to do with their children because you know, I'm going to do this.
You know, I'm going to do this.
homes where there's been rampant alcoholism. That's the kind of behavior they have. Constantly
wary, always watching what's going on, looking over your shoulder. I remember I was always
the class monitor, too. You speak, I write your name. I went to a Catholic school for
12 years. I became like that character, the English, the guy with the big eyes. My eyes
could rotate 360 degrees. I knew what was going on. I didn't know that trait would come
in real handy later on in life. But I grew up in a home where the word alcoholism was
never even mentioned. I didn't know what it meant. Welcome, Ed. It was a great talk, by
the way. Thank you. But the problem was we, I think, were in total denial because we lost
an uncle to this crazy disease. He died with cirrhosis of the liver, blind in both eyes.
His wife literally pushed him out of an almost-stopped car at another hospital. He was
at another uncle's door saying, he's your problem. I thought she was practicing the
art of detachment. Not my problem. But I know today that's not detachment. That's geographic
distancing. Out of sight, out of mind, he doesn't exist. And we did not attribute what
he had to a disease called alcoholism. We thought he was just a bum. We thought he was
morally decrepit. He lacked in willpower. He indulged in activities that sort of coincided
with that kind of situation. He drank a lot. He smoked a lot. He gambled a lot.
He hung around with the wrong kind of women. God forgive him. He lived in the wrong part
of town. We were snobs to boot. So we condemned him. We kind of tolerated him. And I, not
in this fashion, but it was a different kind of tolerance. One of a sneering type, looking
down upon like he was a scum of the earth. Unless he was passing out cash, he happened
to be quite generous to boot. When he made money, he handed it out. I like alcoholics
in that sense. Anyway, and God bless. Rest his soul in peace.
Hope he's happy where he's at. Never found the program of AA. In fact, I discovered that
my headmaster in high school, in school, had started the first chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous
in Bombay, India. And I asked a friend of mine, I said, what the heck is Alcoholics
Anonymous? And he said, they get drunks off the street and get them sober. Little did
I know that AA would come at least figuratively to my now former spouse's saving and get her
into AA.
How should I say? Gratitude. She's now going to be celebrating 21 years in AA. And it was
all because of me. Because I detached. I moved away from a problem and magically she found
a way into AA. God, I tried so hard to get her into it. So when we were married, every
time I wanted to say something to her meaningful, I would call a sponsor and then relay the
information to a sponsor and let her sponsor talk to her. Somehow she heard what AA had
to tell her. We couldn't communicate directly a lot of times.
Anyway, I finished up at school and walked up the proverbial mountain to see my guru.
I said, oh, great one, I seek serenity in life now that I have a bachelor's degree in
God knows what. And he said, go to Detroit, Michigan, and join Al-Anon.
Kidding. The bastard neglected to tell me I had to marry an alcoholic in the process.
So I left the shores of wonderful Bombay, warned by well-meaning friends and family.
They said, do not get involved with American women unless they happen to be from AA. I
said, why not? They said, oh, they drink and smoke in the open like men do. Translation,
discreet Indian women do it behind closed doors.
Now I did not care about the fact that the American woman smoked. Kissing an ashtray
was not really a problem here and there. But I loved the fact that she drank. Because it
says, candy is dandy, but liquor's quicker. It made my progress in an evening extremely
cost-effective and expedient.
I was like Alan, the older character in MASH, my kind of woman, drunk. How stupid can you
be. I tell you, it was funny. I went to work for Xerox. Ron and I share a common enemy,
IBM, I'm teasing. He worked for IBM. He said, do you work for IBM? I said, bite your tongue.
And went to work for Xerox, I'd finished up with my masters at a university in the Detroit
area.
dran.
hang around this little watering hole called Yesterday's in Southfield, Michigan, to lure
my next prey. And the way I lured my prey, because here I was seeking serenity, I knew
I had to meet an alcoholic so I could find Al-Anon, which is why I'm now grateful for
the alcoholic in my life. I used to hate that when someone said it, but today I really
am. Because if I hadn't found this program, my first half of the story is going to show
you what I was, a very shallow, crass, what do I say, a prick, for lack of a better term.
I'm not supposed to be profane, but nothing can describe me as aptly as that word. That's
what I was. And so there's been a transition, thank God. I've kind of transitioned into
not being so much of a prick, less so. And when I become one, I'm conscious now of what
I'm doing.
So anyway, I should...
And now the way I used to...
The way I used to go and get these women to go out with me is I used to invite them
to go with me to downtown Detroit. And downtown Detroit from Southfield, Michigan, was like
going on a major adventure. And you had to wear flak jackets and all that sort of good
stuff. But I'd take them to a safe haven called Greektown. And the reason Greektown was so
safe is because it was policed by the Greek mafia.
And the reason I like Greektown is because in those days, going back to the 70s, you
could get a four-course meal for about 25 bucks, and it included a wonderful thing called
Rhodides wine. And Rhodides wine had this magical quality of transforming an absolute
stranger into the best of friends over the course of a meal. I don't know you two. Let's
go.
And it was fun. And I walked up to my wife one day after I'd married her. I said, you
know, we Al-Anon carry little beams in our forehead. Alcoholic? No, don't waste your
time. Alcoholic? She doesn't eat. Taking care of alcoholic? She doesn't eat. No, no, no.
Move on. Move on. Because you see, I went out with all those women. I had all these relationships.
And to me, relationships is really...
Stretching the word. It was like a week and a half, two weeks was the max. Sometimes a
couple of days. And I said, my beam did not strike theirs, so they moved on. And look,
I married you. You're an alcoholic. And here we go. Our beams have matched. And she said,
you're an idiot. If you had married one of them, you would have driven them to drink
two like you did me. You never win the battle, right? Even a family would say, oh, Susie
never drank like that till she married you. I said, she ought to be grateful she found
out. Eh, eh, didn't she?
Anyway, it was because of this image management thing that got me into trouble. I was working
with Xerox, and my boss had invited me to a party. And the woman I was seeing, and I
know some of you are getting very angry at me when I say this, but I'll say it anyway
because it's my story, is the woman I was seeing did not match the image I wanted to
project at this party. So I was looking for the right image. I walk into my student hangout
called TJ's. I used to take a couple of my friends after class for a drink or two. And
here comes this woman to wait at our table. She's working her way through nursing school
at this university. And my beam takes off, and her beam takes off. I say, oh, my God,
I met the reason for my existence. I can make her excuses, tell her lies, mend her relationships,
blah, blah, blah. And she said, I met the moron who'll do all that. I asked her out,
and she said yes. And we went out. And my ego allowed me to believe it when she said,
oh, you're the very first patron I'm going to go out with from this place. Oh, how wonderful
of me.
And we went out to dinner. Now, my God has a sense of humor. He sent me signals galore.
When I usually go out to dinner with a woman, and most men would probably identify with
this, I listened with an open mind, in one ear, out the other, because I'm strategizing.
You nod your head, kind of with that glazed look, and the woman thinks you're listening,
but she knows you're not listening. And then you parrot everything they've said. Say, how
did you know? I was listening, sweetie.
But when I took this woman out to dinner before the party, I was actually indulging in intellectual
intercourse.
I was actually listening to what this woman was saying. That was a very scary feeling.
I should have left her at the restaurant, gotten in my car, and driven away. But no,
I was going to find the serenity thing, so we went to this party.
And warning number two shows up in the form of my buddy, George. He looks at us, and he
said, gosh, you look so comfortable together. How long have you been going out? Five, six,
seven years? I said, George, I met this woman last week. This is our first date. He said,
oh, no. Must be something from your past life. Now, if you feel that comfortable on your
first date with someone, leave, because the rocks in their head are probably fitting
the holes in yours. And that's why it's such a very nice, comfortable feeling. I'm teasing.
Love at first sight. What the hey.
And so at this party, everything is going wonderfully well. And we get into this relationship,
and it's terrific. Now it's four and a half months into this wonderful alliance, if you
will. And there's a knock on the door, and it's at like about 10, 10.30 at night. And
I open the door, and out stands this woman with a bump on her head. And I'm like, oh,
my God. And I said, what happened? She said, my mother struck me in an alcoholic rage.
Now the father in me, the knight in shining armor, the parent. I mean, personalities that
Sybil and Roseanne would have been fighting over came gushing forth. I didn't know I had
that many personalities in me. I thought I was schizophrenic. Maybe two. And I look at
this woman. I said, you will not move in with that woman. You will move in with me. Now,
a Hindu from Bombay, India does not ask a Polish Catholic girl to move in with him.
Now, the scary part wasn't the fact that she was moving in with me.
But to actually see her very Polish Catholic, God-fearing mother, who disavowed sinful relationships
in terms of living together, actually helping her daughter move in with me.
Now, seriously, these two women, grabbing their furniture and moving in. I was very
scary. I should have left them in the apartment with my key. But I didn't. I decided to live
there with her. And now you would say that maybe I was in denial, because strange things
were happening. There were strange sounds sometimes coming out of the bedroom. And I
wasn't even there. So I don't know what was going on.
And oddball stuff, like I'd come home and she's sipping on a glass of wine, watching
TV. And I'd taken classes in sociology that said, one does not drink alone because it's
a social lubricant. You sit with someone, have a drink to open up a conversation or
something like that. I couldn't understand who she was socially lubricating with. It
was a general hospital or something like that. So strange things were happening. But you
might think that I was in denial. But for me, denial is really progression. I was clueless.
.
.
When you have no depth to your personality, when you're not connecting with someone at
any deep level, you're almost sociopathic, because they're there for some use. And they're
there for some function. And if the function is being served, nothing else matters. So
here's this woman. Something's going on. I don't know what. But I'm not in denial, because
I'm not even aware. I'm totally clueless.
And it wasn't until things were getting a little out of hand, we decided to do the next
best thing. We got married. Things are not going well. But I'm married. Everything will
be alright.
.
It's that magical ring which transforms the person from an idiot to someone really super
intelligent.
.
And here we go. We bought this little place. It was a condo in a town called Warren, Michigan.
If you're from Warren, Michigan, be grateful you're in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
.
Big cry. Big, big difference. And we had this little half bathroom that became the place
where my cluelessness came into denial, came to awareness and what have you. This is strange.
I'd walk into this little half bathroom. I'd open up the cabinet and six or seven empty
cans of beer would topple out. And I was ticked off that they were not in the trash can. That's
how anal I was.
And I'd go up to my wife, so clueless, and say, what were those empty cans of beer doing
in the cabinet? They were not even in the trash can, damn it. And she'd say, Aunt Bunny
came over and had a few beers. I never questioned why Aunt Bunny would take a six pack into
the bathroom. Was she eliminating the middle man? I don't know.
And I swear, no one has been able to give me an answer to this. I know there are special
stores for alcoholics. They sell special paraphernalia like they do to the dope, dope guys.
My buddy came over. I said, Tom, would you like a glass of wine? He said, ah, sure. So
I reach into the cabinet and I pull out this bottle of wine. And I swear to you, this bottle
of wine has a cork. It has that gold wrapper and it has a little red thing around it. But
it's empty. Do they have special stores that sell long syringes to empty out? I said, let's
screw with the Al-Anon's mind to be Al-Anon's. But it wasn't, again, image management that
came to getting me out of this. My family had moved into the area and I was going to
introduce them to my new wife. She happened to be the white sheep of the family, if you
will. And I wanted to present the right image. Because they had warned me, watch out. So
I'm driving to meet my family and Sue, I think, had imbibed a little bit. And we got into
this rip-roaring royal spat.
And I said, I can't take you in looking like this. We're not in the right frame of mind.
So I'm going to drop you off at home and I'm going to go by myself. I'll make up an excuse.
So she goes and she rushes into her little bar, that little half bathroom. And I sort
of follow her for some reason to go into the kitchen to grab something. And I see her trying
to shut the door to the cabinet. And they say it's a disease of perception because what
I thought was she was shutting the door on was a 55-gallon drum of gallow wine that somehow
she had fit into this little tiny cabinet. What was this? A half-gallon jug.
And I stood there and I'm staring at it. And all of a sudden it's as if time came to
a standstill. And a little voice in my head said, your wife's an alcoholic, your wife's
an alcoholic, your wife's an alcoholic. And all that cluelessness, the lack of awareness
and denial, everything came crashing forth into one little cataclysmic moment says, your
wife's an alcoholic. And if God had morphed himself or herself into some kind of form
that communicated clearly rather than in metaphors with me and said, your wife is not going to
exist.
Your head is where she's going to exist. You're going to have conversations with her. She's
going to respond back. You're going to feel her feelings, experience her emotions. You're
going to think her thoughts. You know exactly what's going to happen. When she walks by
you, you'll pick up, you know, just her breath will tell you how it's going to be that day.
When she says hello over the phone, just that tone is going to tell you what's going to
happen that day. And I would say, God, you're crazy. No, it's not going to happen to me.
I'm individuated. I'm not that enmeshed, to use a psychobabble term, with someone else.
But that's exactly what happened for the next three and a half years. A friend of mine described
it aptly.
He said, if you want to know how I feel, stick a thermometer up my wife's you-know-what,
and you'll know exactly what my temperature is. And that's so sad that you get so hooked
into someone else that you stop existing, and you're so focused on this other person.
I became very adept at being a little ballet dancer. I could move around eggshells. When
she was happy, I was elated. When she was angry, I was confused. It was just totally,
constantly on the watch. That was amazing. I didn't know that. And then the next thought
hit me.
The logical thought. You know, we men suffer from this disease called logic that's really
very illogical. I think we're more emotional than women. But you women have made us believe
that we are logical, so you control us that way. I said, I'll take care of it. How will
I take care of it? I've been watching television and see Schick's Shadle commercials. You guys
remember those Schick's Shadle commercials? I thought I believed in truth in advertising,
right? It's this commercial about a woman who goes up to her husband. She said, sweetheart,
you have a drinking problem. He says, darling, you're so right. Let's go get fixed.
And they head out to Schick's Shadle. Who writes these commercials? So I walk up to
my wife and said, darling, you have a drinking problem. She said, you're an idiot. I don't.
I don't have plan B in place. So how many of you are new to Al-Anon? You are living
in the midst of this disease. And if you're new, this part is for you. If you don't have
much of a life and a lot of time on your hands, and you think that this just might get the
alcoholic in your life sober, you may want to try this. First of all, I don't refer to
it as active alcoholism. I don't refer to it as active alcoholism. I refer to it as active
alcoholism. I refer to it as active alcoholism. I refer to it as active alcoholism. I refer
to it as active alcoholism because there was nothing active about my wife. She was
rather sedentary. She sat on the couch and drank. And the only activity she showed is
when she was flinging stuff at me, like plates, dishes, lamps, knives, whatever was handy.
And she had a lot of power. I don't believe how she did it. And I don't call it practicing
either because she had perfected the art of alcoholism. I don't refer to it as a problem.
She had no problem drinking. She could drink a lot of stuff. So we leave all those adjectives
out of the way. Here we are. I said, I'm going to...
If she's denying it, then the logic is that I must catch her in the act. Then she'll know,
I'll know that she has a drinking problem. But I've got to be subtle about this.
So I sit on the couch watching a blank television set, pretending to do the crossword puzzle.
What's a five-letter word for boredom? Anui. And how many of you are experiencing it right
now? Who uses words like anui? But here I'm writing anui. And now I'm watching the reflection
of what's going on in the kitchen. Because she's pouring her little drink, and she's
hiding the bottle under the cabinet. And I'm making this Archimedean exclamation. Aha!
Like I've discovered a new law in chemistry or physics or something. Then I watch her
crawl her way up to a bedroom with some dignity, because she did hold her head high. And then
I'd go into the kitchen and I'd move the bottles around or put them back on the counter, thinking
that when it comes to two o'clock feed time, she'll know that I know. I had no clue. Good
alcoholics and good standing have their booze about 19,000 places just in case they forget.
I thought that...
I thought that...
I thought that just because she'll see that bottle on the counter, or she won't find it
in the place where she put it and she remembered where she put it, she'll know that I'll know.
So two o'clock I'd sit up, go, aha, when I heard the clinging and clanging downstairs.
And she'd come and beat the crap out of me, and I'd pretend I'm asleep. And she's just
upset that it took her longer to find her booze. And so every day, the same thing over
and over again for three and a half years. So I decided that this wasn't working. We'll
try the next best trick. And how many of you have done it? Go? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage. Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage? Marriage?
I
battle.
To me, I didn't know the meaning of the word sobriety.
All I wanted to do was have this woman drink two glasses of wine,
specifically Chardonnay, no more, no less, because that was her limit.
If she could only do that, my image would be intact,
but she made me look like an idiot.
They say you spot an alcoholic from the behavior of the person with them.
I'd go to the restaurant with my wife, and I'd look at her in total disgust.
I'm having a soda because I don't want to drink this wine
because I would enjoy wine with my steak, but no, I'm going to have a soda.
She's just guzzling booze. This is interesting.
My friends would say, Ajit, what's your problem?
I'd say, what's my problem?
She's got mozzarella dripping down her chin.
She's got pepperoni stuck in her eyebrows, and you're asking me what my problem is?
She said, oh, she's having a great time, and she was.
I was the idiot who's all tensed up.
As I walked, the furniture in the room is following me because I'm so ticked off.
I've got a pucker factor going, so I'm so righteous
because I don't have a drink.
I'm thinking, problem she does, oh, my God.
So I educate this guy, and we go in to see him,
and he looked at us rather ponderously, and he said, so, what's the problem?
And I'm saying, you moron, in my head.
I've educated you for 30 minutes. What's the problem?
I said, my wife drinks too much.
She's crying. He makes notes.
Long story short, he lets her go on an outpatient basis, never to be seen again.
So this time, she said, I'll find a counselor.
So we go see counselor number two, who's been to school with counselor number two,
and he said, so, what's the problem?
I said, so, my wife drinks too much.
He said, so, what's the problem?
And I thought he had a problem with my accent, so I spoke louder and slower,
like I was stupid and deaf.
Now I'm doing charades, right?
And he said, so, what's the problem?
Meaning, what's the problem with that?
And I swear to you, if you shut the lights off in that room, his nose gleams so red,
he could have served as a beacon on a dark ocean guiding ships.
I mean, Rudolph wouldn't have to borrow his nose.
I looked at my wife.
I said, oh, my God, he's one of you.
And she said, oh, no, he understands.
Of course, they spoke the same language, red nose and all.
I make a long story short, we disappeared, never to be seen again.
So finally, I said, you know what?
What's this nonsense?
We don't have kids, not much assets.
I have a choice.
I can leave.
So I pack up my stuff in my little polka dotted cloth, and I got my stick,
and I'm walking like Porky Pig, you know.
Show's over.
And she said, if you leave, I will commit suicide.
I said, that I want.
I want to watch so you don't botch it up.
Wrong move.
And I'm just not making fun of people who want to commit suicide.
That's sad that you reached that stage.
But this was a threat, and I wanted to see if she'd go.
I was that angry.
I didn't have the guts to kill her, but I would certainly not stop her
if she wanted to kill herself.
I was that angry at the time.
So I'm following her into the kitchen, and for some reason,
between those 15 nanoseconds, the intentions change from suicide to homicide.
So she's about as far as Iran is, and I'm standing about this table.
There's a television.
It's set behind me, and dishes are coming at me at 90 miles an hour.
You son of a, you this and you that, and profanity galore.
You wanted to see me die.
I'll show you what death's all about.
And she's tossing the stuff at me, and this image-conscious idiot
is tossing these dishes because I don't want to run out the door
because my neighbors might find out that I have a drunk at home,
which brings me to the point.
Why do alcoholics get anonymous after they get sober?
If you're drank anonymously, no problem.
Operation successful.
Patient died peacefully.
Everyone.
Everyone's happy.
But you have to make a noise when you drink,
which creates a problem for image-conscious guys like me.
If you drink quietly, not a problem.
But it's sad.
And from my story, you're not going to hear a lot of the pain and suffering.
That doesn't deny the fact that it happens in homes where there is alcohol.
Children are affected.
Fortunately for me, all my kids were born in sobriety.
Not necessarily in sanity, but certainly in sobriety.
Sanity was sort of creeping in.
And so they've been affected.
They've been affected by the effects of the alcoholism in our home,
regardless of whether it was my behavior or my now-former spouse's behavior.
So I said, okay, she's got fatal attraction.
I can't leave.
She'll kill me.
My ego is really near no bounds, right?
This woman has fatal attraction.
So I figured that, you know, if I can't leave and she won't die, then I'll kill her.
How many of you have thought of killing the spouse?
You know, they say they've got a few hands going up.
I heard Mildred Frank from Toronto say, she said,
the difference between 12-step programs and nudist colonies are in nudist colonies,
there's a lot of comparing going on.
And in 12-step programs, there's a lot of identifying going on.
So I know I'm not the only one who's contemplated homicide.
I'm reading this English magazine called Argosy,
and it's a story by Alfred Hitchcock where he describes the perfect murder weapon.
I see a few people kind of leaning up a little forward.
It says, the ideal weapon is an icicle which dangles outside your window on a cold February.
It's called an icicle, and it's an icicle that you can use to kill someone in a Detroit morning.
And if you kill someone with the icicle, the icicle disappears and, hey, home free.
Now, this thought, even though it was for 15 nanoseconds, comes from a guy who comes from the land of Gandhi.
You starve yourself.
I could have sat down and said, Sue, I'm going on a hunger strike until either you get sober or leave.
But starvation was not an option because it would have taken too long
and perhaps would never have accomplished my objective.
So I'm going to kill her.
And I figured I'd kill her.
And then I go into the basement and dig it up.
I knew nothing about masonry but details.
Who cares?
And I was going to pour fresh cement over it.
Then a second thought hit me.
So what if your mother-in-law finds out?
She lives three blocks away.
She'd show up and see dust on your wife's car.
And she'll call the police.
And, hey, kid, you did not come to Detroit, Michigan, to befriend some guy named Bubba in a Michigan.
You know, being traded for cigarettes was not an option.
This moron. You know, two packs of cigarettes.
You drank too much.
And I shared this at my Friday meeting because I felt guilty that I actually contemplated,
even if it wasn't passing, just a fleeting fantasy,
that I'd actually thought about killing my wife.
And a woman came up to me.
She said, oh, my God, I'm so glad you shared that.
I said, why?
She said, because I've been carrying this guilt.
She said, my husband was passed out on the couch the other day,
and I was going to snuff him out with a pillow.
And I said, why did you not do it?
And thinking, she'd say, God, it's a heinous thing to do.
It's wrong.
It's morally, blah, blah, blah.
And instead, she said, oh, the police would have found cotton in his nose,
and they would have known I'd done it.
You know?
Her sense of preservation saved the poor bastard's life.
I mean, I said, use tweezers and pull the cotton out.
So that did not work.
So killing was not an option.
So finally, the twins came to my rescue.
And I'm not talking about the Swedish bobsled team.
I'm talking about Dear Abby and Ann Landers.
Oh, man of the 80s and 90s.
I read Ann Landers and Dear Abby.
In fact, in Al-Anon, my feminine side has been so well developed,
I don't need to date anymore.
I just take myself out.
I talk to myself.
If I want to cuddle with myself, it doesn't matter.
That's sick, when you take yourself out dining and dancing.
So anyway, I'm reading this.
And it's a big banner in the Detroit Free Press.
And it says, your mother, or father, or child, or whatever,
go to Al-Anon.
So finally, finally, finally, someone will show me how to get this woman sober.
So I stride to my first Al-Anon meeting.
I walk in.
There's about six women.
And, you know, this is all perception.
The room is as brightly lit.
And the women are about as old as I am, which is going to be a little over 51.
And I'm in my 20s.
And I walk in and I look at this room.
Today, if I looked in there, they would have looked very nice and beautiful.
Instead, what I saw was six women, average age, deceased.
That's what I saw.
Six dead women.
I walked up to the deadest of them all because she looked like she knew what was going on.
She happened to be the president of the group, I thought.
So I walked up to her and I said, how does this thing work?
And this woman was taken aback.
She would not even stand up to give me a hug.
She was mortified.
I said, this guy really looks sick and dangerous.
And I wasn't 6'10".
I didn't have long hair.
And I didn't wear dark glasses and glower at you either.
So she points me to a distant table.
She said, there's literature on that table.
There's a pamphlet called 12 Steps.
Go pick it up.
So I waddle over to the 12 Step thing and I pick it up.
And I figure you take 12 Steps, Step 13, you hit some kind of a printer and out comes the answer on how to get her sober.
Today, I know what Step 13 means.
And I read what I thought was an escape clause at the top.
It says, these steps are taken from alcoholics and owners.
We change one word in the 12th step.
We call it, say, others instead of alcoholics.
So I said, okay.
One was we are powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.
I said, it doesn't apply to me.
I'm not powerless over alcohol.
I can drink to my limit.
And certainly, my life isn't unmanageable.
This is really denial.
People whose lives are unmanageable don't go about making excuses for their spouse's drink, you know, using their spouse's drinking as an excuse.
My boss at a new company had hired me.
And my boss said, Ajit, we had such high expectations of you and you're not performing as well as we thought you would.
And I said, oh, my wife drinks too much.
What does that have to do with anything?
So, you know, here I go.
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could do.
A power greater than ourselves could introduce us, could restore us to sanity.
And I said, I'm not the insane one.
She's the insane one.
I'm the sane one.
Sane people don't go about contemplating homicide.
They don't go about encouraging suicide.
They don't come home and they look at their wife and say, darling, how are you doing?
And she says, fine, really?
And you reach over and you kiss her.
And you go, sniff and kiss.
God, you suck the breath out of that person when you do that.
How many of you have done that?
You've been drinking.
Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
I said, why would God give his will to me in the first place if he wanted it back?
If I did that, that would make God an Indian giver.
I can say that.
Took a searching and fearless mortal inventory of myself.
Oh, God, I loved myself.
I was so damn perfect.
No defects of character.
I lived with her.
That was enough.
Five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being.
I said, that step is totally against the credo of image management.
First, there was nothing wrong.
Two, if there was something wrong, I'm not going to tell you about it.
Are you nuts?
I'm going to hide it from you as far, as much as I can.
Step six and seven, I just glossed over because there were no defects of character to be released.
And seven, and seven was dangerous because it contained a word I wasn't very familiar with called humble.
Actually, I thought I was so humble I was proud of it.
So I moved on to step eight.
Made a list of persons I had harmed.
They deserved it.
You know, do unto others before they deserve it.
Do unto others before they do unto you was my principle.
Step nine did not come into play because no amends to be made.
But I was waiting for her to make amends to me for all the harm she had caused me.
And step ten, I continued to take inventory.
And I really felt very uncomfortable because the halo was fitting a little too tight.
The head was getting larger.
I was feeling very self-righteous and good.
And so I moved on to step eleven.
Saw through prayer and meditation.
I did not get to the second half about asking for the knowledge of his will for me because I said,
Oh, I've got to pray all the time.
Six Hail Marys, God, if you kill her.
The Indian equivalent, that is.
Twelve Hail Marys if you get no one else killed because I don't want to pay lawsuits and stuff like that.
Damn it, just bring her home, God.
God would get confused because every time I'm driving home I'd say,
I hope she's passed out.
I hope she's passed out.
I hope she's passed out.
Because I wanted quiet.
I'd get home and she's passed out.
I'd say, damn it, she's passed out.
Then I'd get in my car and I'd drive where?
To find me another alcoholic.
I'm going to a single spa.
Why?
I have no idea.
I came in a Mormon to look for 16 different wives that have drinking problems.
So I get there and I pull out this ugly-smelling cigar that no woman in a 30-mile radius would even come close to me.
And I'm cussing the cigar, cussing my drink, praying again.
I go, I hope she's passed.
I go, what a way to live.
What a lousy, lousy way to live.
So I was spiritually awakened in about three and a half minutes in this meeting and I look at this woman and I said,
Now what?
And she said three words that I hated for a long time.
She said, Keep coming back.
I said, Why would I want to do that?
She said, Because you're sick.
And she said with such emphasis.
Maybe she was psychic.
I don't know.
So I said, Okay, I'll come back.
Which I did.
Every six weeks I'd go back.
Now I'm embarking on a life-changing program.
And, you know, even in AA you read books about there's more to quitting drinking than quitting drinking.
And alcoholism is really just the window to the other stuff, the stopping the drinking.
Because you have to deal with that thing inside you.
In Al-Anon I hated the word disease, for example.
You know, I said, Disease is not mine.
The alcoholic is diseased.
I'm not.
Until I heard a member of Al-Anon in my Wednesday night meeting, she said, Dis-ease the insides, not matching the outsides.
Not being comfortable in my own skin.
That I identified with.
Because all through my life with this image consciousness thing, there was no parallax between the insides and the outsides.
I portrayed an image that was not reconciling what was going on inside.
Not that I had to do a soul-bearing fifth step with everyone I met.
But I wasn't being authentic in the way I dealt with people.
You know, you saw something different than what was going on in here.
And a lot of times I really didn't know what was going on in here.
Because I hadn't taken the time to be introspective.
Other than to just, you know, pick and choose here and there.
Rather than doing a full-scale fourth step inventory type of thing.
So anyway, here I am.
Embarking on this program that's going to reach the core of my psyche.
It's going to turn this school.
I know just so much that I've changed my perspective on life.
One that of being a victim to saying, hey, I create my reality in terms of the way I respond to situations.
Or react to people.
Or the way I think about things that create my reality.
And I'm going to do this by going to class every six weeks.
Ain't going to happen.
And those six weeks I'd go in and we'd discuss disease.
And I hated.
I hope you and us in Al-Anon.
I don't do it and I hope you don't either.
And I don't proselytize from the stage.
Because we each have our own story and our own experiences.
And our own means of gathering experience.
And strength and hope.
But I pray, please don't equate alcoholism to a disease like cancer or diabetes.
They're not anything alike.
At least in my mind.
Because when you tell a pseudo-intellectual like myself, oh, don't leave her because she has a disease like cancer.
Or she has a disease like diabetes.
My mind breaks up into 16 different fragments.
And they all have conversations that make absolutely no sense.
One side of the brain will say, oh, she's got a disease like cancer.
Then why isn't she seeking chemotherapy?
And then the sound will say, well, she's got a disease like diabetes.
You can't leave her.
And then the other side will say, why is she seeking insulin therapy?
Then all this thing that's stuck on this concept called disease.
Because it's got to be physiological in some fashion, way, or form.
So it can stick some medicine into her.
Or give her some kind of injection.
Or do something to her to cause the disease to disappear.
I heard a member of AASA at Beautifully.
He says, alcoholism is like making love to a gorilla.
You ain't done with it until the gorilla is done with it.
And I had no idea that I was dealing with this.
This 300-pound gorilla who was just absolutely ravishing my wife.
And I couldn't stop it.
So then I get transferred to Chicago from Detroit.
And I walk into my first meeting in Schaumburg, Illinois.
In the meanwhile, she's been to a treatment center.
I'm not casting aspersions on treatment centers.
They do have their place.
But she came out.
And six weeks later, she was drinking harder than she'd ever had.
The AA guy says, to him, the Pacific Ocean was like alcohol.
He was afraid it was going to evaporate.
And that's how she drank.
And I went from Cloud 19, where I was so glad because she was sober or dry.
See, I'm so connected to this person.
Because when she's doing okay, I'm doing wonderfully well.
And here she comes down and drinks again.
I crashed from Cloud 19 to subground zero.
But fortunately, I'm in Schaumburg, Illinois at this time.
I walk into my first Al-Anon meeting there.
And I'm not suggesting we do this in every Al-Anon meeting.
As a matter of fact, I was chastised in one conference for even mentioning this.
But it's my story.
Take it or leave it.
At Schaumburg, when I brought up this disease thing,
I was getting rather intellectual about disease, cancer, diabetes.
And I have problems with this.
And they pointed me to the literature table.
And they said, if you want to know about the disease, go to the text.
The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous was on the literature table of the Al-Anon meeting.
So I went and buy the book.
And I read it.
And the first time it occurred to me that a disease transcended the concepts of physiological disease
and entered the realms of psychological, spiritual, mental.
You name it, realms that mankind has not been able to identify.
He said, what causes a person to become alcoholic?
It can't be totally genetic because there are other members in the family that don't turn out to be alcoholic.
One person does.
Who knows what it is?
So I am now wondering what this disease thing is all about.
And I realize today that alcoholism is not my problem.
If you ask me if it's a disease, I don't know and I don't care.
My problem is that I want to drive four cars on the freeway at the same time.
You know, I want a guy.
The guy who's doing 90 in front of me is not doing fast enough.
The guy behind me wants to ride in my back seat.
The guy in my blind spot won't let me cut the guy in front of him.
So I want to drive all four cars at the same time.
My problem is my obsession with behavior.
My wife stopped drinking.
I started to focus on her eating.
She had a food disorder.
So now I'm listening to the sound of flushing cans instead of listening to the sound of opening cans.
Obsession is the same.
She had an obsession with spending.
She thought shopping is a religious experience.
I didn't concur.
We had a problem.
I walked up to my sponsor.
I said, oh, my God.
You know, she stopped drinking, but I'm still in the midst of all this.
And he said, don't you realize we have the same problem?
I said, what do you mean?
She said, they're obsessed with substance, addicted to substance.
We're obsessed with behavior.
I walked up to my wife one day.
I said, you know what?
You're an alcoholic.
You give a booze.
Then it's cigarettes.
Then you're obsessed over cigarettes.
You give that up.
Then it's sugar.
You're obsessed with sugar.
You give it up.
Exercise.
You're obsessed with your obsessions.
Your addictions move from substance to behavior to behavior to substance.
And she said, isn't that wonderful?
Yours has moved right along.
You're observing us all doing it.
That's my thing.
I'll go on a date to a beautiful woman.
God bless her.
She could be a drop dead.
You count the number.
I don't go beyond 10.
And it's just this vision sitting in front of you.
But if she has one bit of lettuce stuck in the tooth, the woman disappears, and I see
a bulb of lettuce staring at me.
A head of lettuce.
And I want to take a toothpick, and I want to scrape.
I want to take floss.
I'm exaggerating a bit, but you know the feeling.
And that's my problem.
My problem is not alcoholism.
I'm faced with it in terms of it's brought me, you know, as Ed was pointing at, you point
that finger.
There's something going on inside of you both ways, positive and negative.
I'm observing this behavior, and I'm so focused on, I'm looking at what's going on with me.
I'm justifying my behavior, saying, just because I don't put that substance in my system to
the extent that it starts to alter my perceptions beyond what they are in terms of altered already,
then, of course, I don't have a problem.
But I'm not realizing that my problem is not alcoholism.
I'm realizing that my problem is wanting to drive four cars, sniffing and kissing,
contemplating homicide.
These are the things that have nothing to do with someone else putting stuff into their
mouths.
They just brought it.
You know, people say, my qualifier is.
My qualifier is between my bloody ears.
She just ushered me in, and I'm so grateful for that.
So anyway, here I'm going to three meetings a week, and everything is going hunky-dory,
and I'm stuck in my head here because even these meetings are very literature-oriented
to the point we're not talking about stuff, but we are interpreting.
We're interpreting what's in the text.
At least that's what I recall.
There's a lot of theory.
There's a lot of concept.
There's a lot of ideas.
So the program is stuck here, and I'm working the steps, I think.
Everything is going well.
And I want to tell you today that my program finally took hold of me in 1997.
Seventeen years later, I felt the descent from here to here, where I actually was taking
some time getting in.
I'll come to why it happened and how it happened, but it came here.
See, I've been living in my head.
My problem is when I read something and understand it, I think I've done it.
And Ed put it so nice and beautifully today.
You have to experience it for yourself.
If you keep telling me about God, I just know what your experience about God is.
And the funny part about that is if you can describe your experience of God, then you
haven't experienced it either because it's then intellectual.
It has to come from here.
So I have to feel it in here, and I'm not feeling the steps in here because I'm stuck
in the intellectual aspect of it.
I'm interpreting them.
What did he mean by powerless?
And I've seen people send me emails.
They'll actually break the step down into single words and try and interpret each word,
and I think it loses out on the spiritual connection with that thing because I like
what the steps are all about today.
The steps really have a metaphysical aspect to them in the sense they're all in the past
tense.
They're an affirmation.
It's a done deal, and you just bring it into awareness.
I like what Chuck C. had to say in his new pair of glasses.
When you pray for something, you're claiming that it's not happened, so you affirm that
it's happened.
Prayers are prayers of gratitude, meaning it's happened already.
And I thank you for it.
Now, I didn't realize all of this stuff, so I'm stuck for 17 years in this head, and it
took two broken relationships to bring me down to doing an honest fourth, which got
all that gunk out.
So here I am now, transferred to California.
I'm going to my steps.
My wife, she found sobriety in California, and two and a half years later, she started
popping out those kids.
They were all immaculately conceived, of course.
We call them Jesus 1, 2, 3, and 4.
It's easier for me to affect your spiritual sensibilities.
I'm kidding.
I look for the star every day.
I look for the star every time, and I know I had something to do with it.
We had twins, a boy and a girl.
They'll be 19 this June.
I'm very, very happy that the disease so far has spared them in terms of imbibing and using
drugs, unless I'm in total denial.
I have a 17-year-old boy, and then I have another 13-year-old boy, so three boys and
a girl.
And I started a new business.
We bought a house in California.
It was a sticker shock.
You know, you move from a $40,000 home in Michigan to a $100,000 home in California,
and you're stuck.
It was a $150,000 home in California at the time.
Now they're like, you don't find anything for $150,000 in California.
But so this is back in 1983, and I started a new business.
Everything is going hunky-dory.
For the first year, making a lot of money.
Things are good.
The kids, the twins are here, the new house, blah, blah, blah.
And all of a sudden, the second year, everything is crashing.
And it's crashing because I'm now blaming my business partner, who finds women other
than his wife more attractive and business.
Instead of conducting business, he's using alcohol and is hanging around these women
and doing things that aren't right.
So I'm blaming him for the business going down.
I had a choice.
I was in there.
I could have left.
And I find myself occasionally paying my mortgage with my credit card.
And it's very scary.
And I've got these little babies.
And the third one arrived 18 months later.
And I get on my knees.
I'm eight or nine years in the program.
And I get on my knees, and I stick my hand to my wife's bookshelf.
And I close my eyes to pull whatever book would come out.
She had a lot of spiritual books.
And out jumps again the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I close my eyes, and I open up the book.
And it opens on to step three.
I said, oh, my God, what a message.
I haven't surrendered.
I'm still indulging these machinations.
I'm talking the talk, but I'm not walking the walk.
I can speak.
As Ron said, I can be articulate because I had to study 1,000 English words before I
came to this country in terms of passing my GMAT for my master's.
But I agree.
I grew up speaking English.
I dream in English.
I went to a Catholic school where the medium of instruction was English.
And I was forced to listen to the All India Radio where the diction was absolutely right.
They used $5 words when they could have gotten away with a nickel word.
But you had to listen.
You had to practice saying those words.
You had to speak that way.
So I could articulate my concepts rather well and communicate clearly in that regard.
But it was all this, none of this stuff.
So I'm coming apart because I can talk the talk.
And you think that I'm walking the walk based on the fact
that I'm talking the talk so eloquently.
And I have people I'm sponsoring.
And my wife and I are actually helping other couples in their marriage
when our marriage is falling apart.
And I'm getting down, and I'm praying.
I said, God, help me.
I walk up to my sponsor, and I said, you know, I'm a fraud.
I'm going to quit.
And he said, why?
I said, because I've been talking the talk.
I lie.
I speak wonderful things in the meetings when I go out.
And I'm not necessarily honest in my business dealings.
I'm not loyal to my friendships.
I'm faithful in my relationships.
I've been doing everything that is non-program in terms of that.
And I, again, thank you this morning.
And I'm not taking anything away from Sandy.
She said, Sandy, it was too long.
I don't remember exactly what she said.
I'm teasing.
It's great stuff.
But when Ed talked about just because you're being good
does not mean that's when the program is working.
It's when your darkest moments is when the program comes to rescue you.
And that's how it came to rescue me.
My sponsor said, Ajit, if you hadn't been working the program,
you would not have come to this realization.
I don't know how you came up with that logic, but I'm so grateful he did.
And for the first time in my life, I said, oh, God,
Dean, tell me how to work this program.
He said, what I would do, that's a pregnant pause.
It makes you feel, you know, pay attention to the next step
because it comes from my sponsor.
I said, what do I do?
He said, go back to the basics.
I said, what do you mean?
He says, I would go back to step one.
And I said, how would you do it?
See, I'm now being a baby.
I've read the first step thousands of times,
but I'm asking this guy, what do I do with the first step?
He said, I would read it from the big book, little book, green book,
blue book, white book, gray book.
Whatever book.
And then write on the first step as it applies to the situation in your life.
Don't stand up in there and say, I'm powerless over people, places,
and institutions unless you really mean it.
Because, see, it sounds so beautiful when you hear people in the meeting say,
oh, you know, I'm not only powerless over the alcoholic,
I'm powerless over myself.
I'm powerless over people.
I'm powerless over places.
I'm powerless over institutions.
Then you go out and try and control the entire universe.
I've heard many people in Al-Anon say, I don't know about the AAs,
you know, I have TASH, but I'm also a control freak.
How can you be a control freak?
How can you be a control freak and be detached at the same time?
Impossible.
Someone's lying to someone within you.
So I said, really?
So I'm starting to write on the stuff of powerlessness.
And I recognize in my One Day at a Time there's a passage that says,
step one is admitting the existence of a reality.
And I'm driving my car, and, you know, when you have a mind like mine,
it's very scary because it pretends it's intellectual and it's not.
And then it hits me.
The reality is really based on perception.
So admitting the existence of a perceived reality,
and then a thought occurred.
What if your perceptions are off?
Then is your reality really your reality?
And that's an LSD moment.
And I've never had LSD.
You know, because everything is so warped.
Everything is so warped.
You know, I'm hacking at the leaves instead of getting to the roots.
I'm trying to change behavior without getting to the exact nature of my wrongs.
Because I think surface is all is needed.
Act as if in the wrong sense of it.
If I act this way, then everything will change.
Getting down to the core and saying, what is wrong?
What are the exact nature of my wrongs?
So I'm talking to my sponsor.
I said, 911, having a strange moment about perceived realities.
I'm lost.
So we sit and talk about the situations in my life, what's going on.
And I'll jump to what's going on currently in that regard.
So I started working the steps again.
I said, step two, what does it mean?
And he said, step two means options.
What are my options?
Because sanity is restored.
When you're insane, you're focused on the problem.
In step one, you've identified the problem,
and you recognize what it is.
And step two gives you options.
I'm the kind of guy, and this happened rather recently,
I was taking a shower.
I do that every day, sometimes twice.
But I don't mean to sound like, oh, I took a shower.
So I'm taking a shower.
And in front of me, behind me is a shower.
In front of me is this white tiled wall.
And it's nice and clean white.
I just cleaned that thing.
And there was a black ant stuck on one of the tiles.
And all of a sudden, my eyes just focused right on that ant.
And I'm thinking, what kind of protein came out of that ant
to cause it to stick to that wall,
despite all the water I'm throwing at it?
And all this time, the wall is kind of shrinking,
and the ant is growing.
And it hit me.
I had an epiphany.
I have most of my epiphanies in the shower for some reason.
That that's how I view life.
I take a problem, and it starts to magnify.
It starts to grow.
And I'm so focused on the problem.
And then I realize those are not my ducks,
because I'm focusing on the wrong thing.
Alcoholism was not my problem, yet my focus was on alcoholism,
on the alcoholic, if you will.
Alcoholism is a problem.
The alcoholic, I was focusing on the alcoholic,
to the point I was excluding the fact
that I have an obsessive personality
that throw the alcoholic out,
I could be obsessing on the next damn thing in the world.
So here I am, working this thing wonderfully.
Now I'm starting to gain some perspective on the program anew.
I'm working my steps again.
And my wife came to me and said,
after our fourth was, before our fourth was born,
she said she had a memory
of some childhood stuff,
things that had happened to her
when she was quite young by a priest
and by her father and uncle and you name it.
And I didn't realize this whole generation
of perverts running around
that caused her so much pain.
And she came to me and said that
things are going to change between us.
And I tell you, it had a tremendously
deleterious impact on our relationship.
It went from being physically intimate
and otherwise intimate
to only otherwise intimate
and very little physical intimacy,
and in 1994 and 95,
we started to sleep in separate rooms.
She couldn't even have me around her.
And here we have 4 kids,
and this is where image management is amazing.
We were actually counseling other couples
while we were sleeping in separate bedrooms.
What gall.
I mean, this is total denial.
And eventually she had the guts in 1996 to say,
This is over.
And I tease.
I use the Elizabeth Taylor joke.
They said, You're divorced after
your wife found sobriety?
left her. She looked at me. She said, I was married to you. So on July 4th, 1996, I left
very, very angry. I was asked to leave, but I refused to leave. I found me a barracuda of a
lawyer because I was going to prove to the world that my wife was psychotic, neurotic, schizophrenic,
you name it, thousands of whatever diseases she had, that she was incapable of raising children,
owning a home, doing anything. And I was going to teach this woman a lesson. And I was paying
this barracuda 250 bucks an hour to prove to the world that she was a rotten one, that I was a
great one. And all of a sudden, as I'm having a discussion and strategizing with this attorney,
my sponsor shows up on my shoulder. And my sponsor, I guess, had been to school with the
first few guys, and he's not even a therapist. He says, so what's the problem? Define the problem.
You're so angry, and you're going to take this action that's going to have life-altering
consequences. And you need to know what the problem is before you do this. And I looked,
and I said, I'm going to do this. And I said, I'm going to do this. And I said, I'm going to do this.
And I said to my voice, that voice, I said, I don't want to lose my kids. Because see, I used
to referee soccer games. And I used to watch the sadness in the kids' eyes with dad sitting in one
corner with his new girlfriend or alone, and mom sitting at the other side of the field, angry at
what's going on. And this kid is searching the field to see if his parents are going to get along
or they're going to create a scene in front of everyone. Or dad's not there, or mom's not there
because she's doing something else. And I didn't want my kids to experience this. So I'm saying,
I don't want to lose my kids.
And my sponsor said, have you asked her if you're going to lose your kids? I said, what, every woman
who asks her husband to leave wants child support, and she wants full authority. You know, all this
perception. I see it, so I know it. And I've drawn conclusions without getting to the exact nature of
what's going on. So he said, why don't you call her? So I excused myself from the attorney. I picked
up the phone, cell phone, and I called my wife and said, I won't take you to court on one condition.
She said, what? I said, I don't want to lose my kids. She said, you're an idiot. We have four of
them. I don't want them to myself.
So the blessing is that we never went to court. We never fought over stuff. I didn't care about the
stuff. She still lives in the home we own together. And I walked out with two bags, still very angry,
still very angry that this woman had asked me, God's gift, what a wonderful guy I was, to leave.
And I'm saying that that was the only thing that contributed to the demise of our relationship. You
take people for granted. You have all this anger stuffed inside from the drinking days, the lack of
trust.
Because checks were being pulled out from the middle of the checkbook. Or the credit card was being run
hell over the limit because she liked what she saw on Shopping Network or what have you. And all the
anger. But you come to Al-Anon and you think, because you have to be good, that you can't experience
anger. Because if you experience anger, it means you're not working the program. You can't be upset about
stuff because that means you're not working the program. So the image management thing says, keep that
inside. And you don't even know you're doing it until she says the marriage is over and everything bubbles
out.
And out comes the 75-year-old woman. And she says, I don't want to live with you. I don't want to live with
you. And the 75-year-old Jewish guy says, I put up with you for 17 years and now you're asking me to
leave. And then OJ shows up and you've got this cleaver jumping on the ground and you're kicking in the
kitchen drawer and you wonder what the kitchen drawer did to you. And you're going to kill this woman for
asking you to leave. All she wanted to free herself of what was going on in her head. I don't know if I
was even the cause. My self-centeredness told me I was the cause. It doesn't have to be. It's not about
me. It always starts and ends with me, but it's never about me. See, that's the thing I'm learning in
Al-Anon. It's never about me.
I walk into a room. I identify what they're saying. 299 people say you're great. One person says you're
wrong. Oh, God, you focus your entire attention on this person. But it's never about me. It must be
something around that person's head. And usually is. And I have no concept. So here I'm all upset. I
moved out. But the blessing is no courts, no thing. And my kids have been well served as a result of
it. I moved about six, eight blocks away so we'd have our own what you call privacy. And the kids
could come and go.
They did not have a written arrangement. It was very flexible. The kids had keys to both homes. And she
was very generous on her alimony settlement. And I was very, very fair in the way I've dealt with the
family. So very well served as a result of it. Today I live about a mile and a half, two miles away.
And they come and go at will. They have rooms in both places. My eldest, the twins, have decided to
stay primarily with their mom because they don't want to spend the extra gallon of gas to drive over
to meet their friends.
And they do live in that area. So it's mostly self-serving for them. But they're full access. They have keys to both
homes. There's no hang-ups in that regard. But right after I got divorced, my then therapist, we were going to
divorce therapy, which we had sought marriage counseling, but we didn't. We go to divorce therapy. And the woman
warned me. She said, don't get involved. Why do we say don't get involved? Don't get involved with another
woman for a year. You're going through a transition period and you need to come face to face with yourself. So I
said, women? I said, I'm not gay, but I think I'll move to the island of Lesbos so I could be around women who don't want to be with men.
But I have nothing to do with another woman, romantically speaking. And she laughed. She said, we'll wait. We'll watch and see what
happens. But I'm warning you, don't do it because a year later, the relationship will end and you'll come out bloody-nosed.
And I didn't believe her. And I was not intending to meet someone. But my God has a sense of humor. He knew I hadn't worked the fourth step.
So he got me involved with this woman.
We had great, wonderful relationships about three months after I'd moved out. And I rationalized. See, I'm great at rationalizing. I'm sure none of you are.
I said, I've transitioned for seven years. My marriage was dead for two. I'm transitioned. So I meet this absolutely delightful, wonderful lady in Al-Anon we have.
She gave me everything that was lacking in my marriage for seven years. The physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the spiritual, everything. I mean, I was just, my plate was full.
But as had been predicted by the therapist, that relationship ended a year later. And I came crashing down. I wanted to kill myself, but I didn't have the guts.
So I walked up to my sponsor, said, do you have a gun? He said, why? I said, shoot me. I'm in pain. Because that, the end of that relationship hurt me more than my divorce, because the divorce was in the coming. This just happened.
Instead, my sponsor said, when was the last time you were alone? So where'd that come from? He said, seriously, when was the last time you were alone? I said, I can't recall. I had the kids, you know, wife, marriage, kids.
17, 18 years prior to that relationship
and now than this.
He said, I suggest that you lock yourself up
for a couple of days.
This to a guy who wants to kill himself.
My sponsor's telling me to lock myself.
Not very wise.
But he knew I didn't have the guts to do it myself
because I asked him to shoot me.
And I said, what do I do?
He says, I would take up page 345
in the Courage to Change book,
probably selling it outside,
and do the fourth step according to that.
I said, why that?
He said, there are four questions
that will be very revealing to you
in terms of what's going on.
You'll get to this depth.
And see, I prepared myself in terms of,
I started reading these books.
I read a book called Conversations with God, Part 1,
which resonated like crazy with me.
Then I read Chuck C's book, A New Pair of Glasses.
If you haven't read that book, God, what a treat.
Then I had read a book by Thomas Merton
called Zen and the Birds of Appetite,
which is a treatise on step three again.
I was really hankering for step three.
How do I surrender my will and my life
over to the church?
How do I surrender the care of God?
How do you go through that?
How do you experience this?
Because I thought if I turn my will and my life over to God,
he'll send me to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa.
I don't know why everyone who turns their will and life over
has to go serve with Mother Teresa.
I didn't realize that God's will works in many ways.
I could be a businessman.
I could do anything I want.
So here I am, and then I read the last book I read at the time
was suggested by my therapist.
It says, How to Be an Adult.
God, that was scary.
So now I'm armed with all this information
that's in my head,
and it's in my mind,
and it's in my psychological stuff,
and I look at page 345.
The first question is, Who are you?
No clue.
Because I'm like the character in Z-Leg
in that movie by Woody Allen.
If I'm a jazz artist, I become a jazz musician.
I know nothing about music, but who cares?
If I'm with doctors, I start talking like a doctor.
I know nothing about medicine.
I just write like one, scribble.
You know, I just change my personality
to suit the occasion,
and I do it without even realizing it.
Second question was, What are your values?
You know, I'd been to Catholic school.
They talked about honesty, loyalty, fidelity,
blah, blah, blah.
They were all concepts.
I actually asked my sponsor, I said,
What do you think I value?
He says, Do you value children?
I said, Yes.
He said, How do you show that?
Do you value your business?
I said, Yes.
How do you show that?
Action.
Do you value your friendships?
I said, Yes.
How do you show that?
Write all that stuff out.
Show if you're really putting action into your concepts,
because I'm the kind of guy who gets stuck in the concept.
I don't get into the reality, the meat of the thing,
the action of the thing.
Next question was,
What traits of character do you wish to get rid of?
Steps six and seven happening here.
I'm writing this.
I want to get rid of this.
I want to get rid of this.
Blah, blah, blah.
And the last one was,
What traits of character do you wish to keep for yourself?
I like that story about St. Augustine
who wanted God to remove his lust and his worldliness,
but not yet.
Some of it.
A lot of you are human.
So I'm writing on this, and I'm screaming,
and I'm crying, and I'm writing,
Who am I?
And I'm starting to write a letter to my father,
and I'm very angry at my father.
My father was absent.
He was absent for most of my life.
He traveled a lot, eight, ten months of the year,
and I'm ticked off that he didn't say he loved me or hugged me,
and I'm ticked off that he didn't play cricket with me.
My father couldn't know what end of the bat to hold, for God's sake.
He was not athletic of any stretch of the imagination.
Neither was I, but I thought I was.
But here I'm writing on this anger.
All this victimhood is coming out,
and I'm angry at being insecure.
I'm angry at being jealous.
I'm angry at other people.
I'm angry at this.
I didn't realize all the crap that I had inside of me,
and suddenly I realized that my father did not wake up
at three in the morning and wake up my mother
and say, okay, how are we going to screw up Ajit's life today?
So at age whatever, he's going to sit and write this hateful, angry letter.
My father did not have to tell me he loved me.
He showed me what love was all about
by making sure that I had clothes on my back,
food in my belly, a roof over my head,
and I went to school, and I had my mom there to take care of me.
She was a stay-at-home mom.
A whole different approach to life than what I conjured up in my head,
what love should be instead of what love was.
So I'm writing all this stuff off, and I'm done.
This was Thanksgiving of 97.
And Friday of 97, I'm done.
And it's like Darth Vader has shown up.
Welcome to the dark side.
Because he had denied that part of me that I considered the insecure,
the negative, the dark side of me that really bothered me
because it created an image issue with me.
And I looked at my sponsor on Saturday morning.
I did my fifth.
I want to tell you, at that moment, I heard an A speaker say,
he said he felt like his feet were firmly planted in midair.
I felt my feet come down.
I could actually look in the mirror, and instead of preening in terms of the image,
I actually liked what I was seeing in the mirror
because I could now breathe without that knot just holding my breath back
and saying, you're not who you claim to be,
and someday they're going to find out who they are.
I don't know, but they're going to discover you,
and no one's going to like you.
You're going to die alone, and no one's going to show up in that room
to say goodbye to you because who cares?
You lied all your life.
And for the first time, I felt, you know, it's okay.
I felt okay because my...
Defects of character were out there, and I could deal with them,
and I knew what the hell to deal with.
I want to tell you that I was spiritually awakened.
I developed gossamer wings, never looked back, but that would be a lie,
and it's been a growth experience ever since.
Every crisis that has happened in my life, and I look back upon it,
has been a tremendous blessing.
My divorce caused me to become a better father
because, see, I was there.
I went to their soccer games, basketball games, hockey games, this game, that game,
but I never really got emotionally involved.
I never really talked to my kids to the level that I am today.
Today, I can sit and talk to my kids.
Today, my 18-year-old can give me a hug and say,
Dad, I love you, right in front of his friends.
And it's scary to see this big, husky guy saying I love you and put his arm around me.
Today, my daughter is just a wonderful, dear friend.
In fact, she's visiting a friend in Philadelphia.
We're going to connect at Charlotte, coincidentally, and then fly home together.
My 17-year-old son who lives with me, he's the oddball one.
He's quite the quiet one, doesn't say love too much,
but he's always there, and you can see it.
They're all tough marshmallows in my book.
And I said, 13-year-old, just a delightful relationship.
I have a good relationship with the former spouse.
The anger was gone.
You guys taught me.
Friends in AA told me, get on your knees and pray for her.
I didn't want to do that.
But for 30 days, I prayed for this woman, and I felt the rock fall away.
And it's not just the steps.
It's not just the meetings.
Because, you know, I can go to meetings.
I heard people say, by osmosis.
I don't think it works that way, for me at least.
I can stand in a garage for 10 minutes.
I don't think it works that way, for me at least. I can stand in a garage for 10 minutes.
For 10,000 years, I do not become a car.
I can stand next to a car and breathe in the fumes.
I do not, by osmosis, become a car, unless you shove a transform,
I mean, a transition, I mean, what do you call that thing?
I can't even remember that.
What's that? Transmission.
Up my rear and a radiator down my nose.
Perhaps I'll come close to being a car, but not otherwise.
I have to come into these rooms, work the bloody steps for myself.
I don't call it the selfish program, because the definition of selfish
is making other people to suit your needs.
When you take care of yourself, that's not selfish, that's just self-caring.
And I like that about the program.
And the real crux of the program is this one-on-one thing.
And I'll end it with this.
When I was going through my divorce, I was so angry.
I sought out a friend of mine in Al-Anon.
He had the marvelous gift of being able to articulate very, very clearly
and connect the intellect with the emotional side.
See, I denied the emotional side of me for so long by rationalizing it intellectually.
Today, I can say I'm feeling crappy,
and admit and accept it and recognize it,
and then respond to it intellectually by saying,
what perception is creating this feeling?
Because to me, I know today that my perceptions create my feeling.
My worldview, the way I feel the world owes me,
or the way I treat the world, is what creates my feelings.
So if I feel like a victim, then I'm standing there saying,
I'm entitled to you, better give to me.
And if you don't give to me, it's your fault, so I'm feeling down.
Today, that's changed to say, you don't owe me anything.
I have to go out and get it.
And this guy sat across from me and explained
my feelings to me, and I tell you,
I don't know the meaning of the word feelings at that time.
And I was going to my men's tag group,
that's the first time I heard men talk about feelings.
So much so, I was so disconnected from this feeling thing,
that I was actually driving my car after a meeting,
sipping on a soda, and I feel a welling in my heart,
and I said, oh God, I'm experiencing a feeling.
What is it?
I'm not happy, happy, I'm not sad, sad.
And all of a sudden, I feel some carbon dioxide escape me,
and I said, oh, that wasn't a feeling after all,
it was just my soda.
That's how disconnected I am.
That's how disconnected I am.
from feelings, and this guy is telling me
what I'm going to experience for the next year
in gory detail, and he said, feelings are like tanks,
they're going to come at you.
Just don't react to them, stay in those trenches,
let them go by, because they have nothing to do with you.
They'll just go away, don't respond to them,
don't react to them.
And actually, sitting down across from the guy and crying,
this was very scary, because the guy looks somewhat effeminate.
He's a small guy, and he's wearing a vest,
and he's not exactly, he doesn't walk,
he's got a little effeminate side to him.
And you're in Laguna Beach,
and he's wearing a vest, and he's not exactly, he doesn't walk,
He's got a little effeminate side to him.
and he's wearing a vest, and he's wearing a vest,
I don't know if you know of Laguna Beach,
but it's the haven for, you know what,
not that there's anything wrong with that.
But sitting and chatting, and I'm suddenly realizing
that we look like a bloody couple on a Saturday night.
He's, I'm crying, and he's nodding,
like we're breaking up or something like that,
and people are kind of looking at us like,
what's going on?
Really interesting.
So I come to these rooms, because,
and people say, you don't have alcoholism in your life,
why do you keep going back?
I said, I'm dealing with this, that is my creation
in terms of my perceptions,
and if I don't keep constant watch on this,
not in terms of paranoia, but just observing,
then that is gonna start changing and cause me problems.
That cannot affect what's going on here.
This affects what's going on out there.
I love what I heard someone say, he says,
program is like, you're coming into a restaurant,
or a banquet, and you sit down,
and you watch people having a lot of fun.
They're eating great foods, great meals,
and everyone's having a great time.
See the waiters and waitresses,
bustling by, and all of a sudden,
you notice that no one's waiting on you.
Now you're starting to get a little upset,
and you're getting angry, you're getting resentful,
that everyone's having fun, they're having a great time,
except you, you're just observing the food,
and no one is waiting on you.
Then all of a sudden, you come to the realization,
it's a buffet.
You gotta get off your rear,
and do something about it.
And on that note, I wanna say thank you again
for letting me be here, and allowing me to share, thanks.
Thank you.