Getting Off the Defense and Onto the Offense – Bob P.

Hello, Frank. This is Paul Lovgren up in Louisville, Kentucky. You had given me the blank tape and asked if I would send to you a copy of the various talks at the 8th Annual Tri-State AA Convention held on November 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 1968 at Gilbertsville, kentucky the talk that follows is bob p of heron illinois this was on friday night uh incidentally frank i'm only going to put the talks on and with luck and at the one and seven eighth speed we can get them all on this one 1800 foot tape uh say hello to our friends at the Harbor House, and hope that Bonnie and I get down that way someday and can stop in. So here we go with the first talk. So without anything further, I'm going to turn this over to Bob P. for Fairdale Loans. Bob? I am Bob. I'm an alcoholic. And I start off with a semi-apology because probably I will break during the course of this speech It is not a real apology for I undoubtedly will inadvertently break my anonymity. I am a last-named man. I think of myself by the last name, and I talk about myself by the last named. But let me assure you, I have contacted all the major news agencies that are covering this meeting, explained the tradition thoroughly, and they will not use my name in print. However, I had a little trouble with the representative of the New York Times because he thought that possibly it might improved the circulation to be able to use my name, and had to threaten him that I would cut off my entire following from his subscription list. And this brought him in line, and incidentally I have my entire followings with me tonight, and she is sitting in the second row, and her name is Helen. I said I am an alcoholic, and will not make any attempt to define an alcoholic, for there are as many definitions of alcoholism as there are alcoholics present. I think possibly the one that we can use for the purposes of this talk, an alcoholic is anybody that drinks as much as you do and you don't like. And I like that one just about as well as any because I think it says just about as muchas the rest of them. Now this is an AA talk, and we have a certain tradition even in talks. However, let me define an AA talk outside of our regular traditional methods. An AA talk consists of three things. One, what you have plagiarized from other speakers that you have heard. Two, quotes from the grapevine, and three, which is relatively small, your own personal experiences. So as I go along, I'm sure you will recognize great portions of this talk. Now actually an AA talk, and I will adhere to the tradition, is what you used to be, what happened, and what you are today. And I can cover that very thoroughly. I used to be drunk, I joined AA, I am sober. Now that sounds relatively simple, but actually that is the greatest talk any alcoholic can ever make. You don't have to say another darn word. That does it. I could call for 30 minutes of meditation right now and every one of you could make that speech to yourself and probably better than the one you're going to hear, because that is a remarkable speech. Let me make that speech again. I was drunk. I joined AA. I am sober. Now that means nothing to a non-alcoholic. In the first place, I was drunk. What does that mean to an average social drinker? That means he put on the lampshade last night at the party and made an ass out of himself to a certain extent. To us, we're talking about life and death. And believe me, I am talking about life and dead to me. I will sound flippant. I even sound floppant on Mother's Day as far as that's concerned. I get flippants on some of the most serious things in my life. By nature, I sound that way. In reality, I'm not. And I am by no means flippante about the AA program. I am deadly serious, and I firmly believe that I am talking about life and death to me. Now, the first part of it, what I used to be like, normally we call a drunk log portion of it. And I have heard very interesting stories. Unfortunately, my part of it doesn't get too darn exciting, and certainly not very funny. In fact, and I quote my following in the second row there, I changed from a meek, mild, inoffensive little drunk to an arrogant, loud-mouthed, insolent, sober bragger. And I probably did. And I can rationalize on that statement. I am no longer on the defensive, and that is a tremendous thing to me. I spent years on the defense. I was wrong within myself, so I had to be wrong every place else. I didn't want people to know that I was even a mild meat drunk. I didn't want them to know I was any kind of a drunk. I was on the defensive all the time with my friends, my wife, my family, my business associates and now I don't have to be on the defense. And to me that is one of the greatest things in AA. I think it's an extreme pleasure to take the offensive particularly at home. It's marvelous. I can remember on Saturday mornings, you come down peacefully, calm, and my wife says, well, aren't you going to do it today? And I say, do what? She said, paint the kitchen like you promised last week. I don't remember promising to paint the kitchen, but what can I say? I don' t remember promising her anything, but I'm wrong immediately because maybe I did. I'm a little bit foggy about it. Now I can come down on Saturday mornings. She says, aren't you going to paint the kitchen? And I can say, paint your own darn kitchen and get by with it. And to get on the... I was confined in the Anna State Hospital, which is a mental institution for alcoholism, just a little over three years ago. And the first thing that I thought about after sobering up was, well, how do I explain this to people? Now the hardest part when you get out of a mental institution is on your friends. It's not so hard on you. I was not ashamed. I certainly wasn't proud. But I knew I had to go back to the same environment. I hadto go backtothe same people. I hadtoworkwiththesamecrew. And people don't just come up and say, well, did you have a nice time down at the nuthouse? And so deciding, I was sincere in wanting to put my friends at ease, not myself as much. Because I was, by this time, familiar with the story. So I figured, again, getting off the defense and on to the offense. I got picture postcards of the mental institution, addressed them to all my friends, and sent them, having a wonderful time, wish you were here. Now, that entails some laughter, but actually, seriously, it did put my friends at ease to where our relationship, when I returned, was much better than it would have been. They could possibly kid me a little bit. They kid me unmercifully now, years later, at the time just slightly, you know, feeling their way. But it did put them at ease, and I think it's rather difficult when we recover from something like this to get back on an even keel with our associates. And I think the offense is possibly the best defense. I've used it so much that I heard somebody say the other day, have you talked to that Bob lately, that he's gotten to be the most offensive person in Heron. So it can revert to you. So this, while I was down at Anna, we searched diligently in the therapy sessions as why did I drink? And I went along with the crowd. I searched. Why did I Drink? I ended up, out of 21 people there, I had no reason for drinking. I never did find a reason for Drinking. Normally, the group, you go through the routine, a nagging wife, a possessive mother, or a domineering boss. Now, I had none of the three. I had no good reason, and everybody could come forth with delicious stories, and there I'm sitting like a darn fool, and I didn't have any reason for drinking. I finally decided that probably I had the same reason every good young American boy has when he starts drinking, to get courage, and of course to get courage to chase girls, and that seemed legitimate. And I don't think that my reason for drinking had anything to do with my alcoholism. In fact, I never considered that I had starter problems. It was brake problems that I hade, and I got concerned about my brakes and to heck with the starter and let it go. Probably it ended up, and, I quote again from The Grapevine, Bob you drink too much why do you drink so much well I have a problem what is your problem I drink too much now isn't that basically what happens to us eventually that we get into that treadmill that we're back to the drinking too much incidentally on these little funnies and I'm glad to have a strange audience tonight In my hometown, they have a WWL society. That means we won't laugh. And if you visit our groups there, you are very carefully cautioned about laughing at Pearson's jokes. And there I did it. I broke it. I knew I would because they don't want to encourage me. The only trouble I ever got into in bars, as I said, I was pretty mild and meek while drinking, was telling jokes. And this was not among strangers. This is among my friends. I had been thrown out of more bars for my jokes than any other reason. After a few drinks, I would get around to, as Cleopatra said to Mark Antony, I'm not prone to argue, and I thought it was the funniest joke in the world, and off I would go, and I could hardly wait for the holiday season to come up to come off with, show me a man that's afraid of Christmas, and I'll show you an old coward. And those were my kind Now, it is not necessary to laugh. You may join the society. In fact, there's probably membership cards available and you may want them after the completion of this talk. Now, I finally, after quite a few years of drinking in a social fashion, I really had to work hard to become an alcoholic. I wasn't one of these, as the Beards describe them, primary alcoholics. I worked real hard at this job of becoming an alcoholic, and it took a lot of years to really become one, and I became addicted, an alcohol addict. I was an everyday drinker, and that means seven days a week. Now, I never got violently drunk, did not have wild weekends, and I may have to ask my wife to stand up and swear to this statement. I did not miss any appointments on account of drinking. I had a drink every evening after work. Dinner in my house was at 6 o'clock. I was there at 6. I never missed an appointment. Of course, I was half-tight at every appointment. I was halftight at dinner. I was Halftight by noon. I drank every morning, every noon, every afternoon. This thing about wasting money. I don't think I wasted as much. I have a friend that I consider has wasted a terrific amount of money on drink. This friend I used to meet at the Club Legionnaire in Heron at about between 5 and 5.30 every evening in the world. Now, I would go in and order the customary double and give me another and then another and dann another and he would order one gin and squirt. You could not have twisted that man's arm to get him to drink more than one gin und squirt in the evening. That's one a day. At that time, gin and squirts in this particular club were 40 cents apiece. Now, there's about 312 days taking out Sundays, and I didn't check up on him on Sundays. And do you know that's $124.80 a year that man wasted on booze? Now, if I ever saw a waste of money on boozes, it's having one drink per day. And that I could never understand. And I doubt if any of the alcoholics here, possibly some of the Al-Anons. After so long a time of this and the plateau that I tried to maintain would gradually get a little worse. I am probably telling other people's stories here who had the same problem that finally my boss called me in and he demoted me with no apparent reason. I was hurt, I was wounded, I was wounded to the quake but I was demoted in my work and demoted badly enough to really hurt which absolutely stopped me from drinking for quite a few months. Now I was surprised I didn't hear something because I made a sincere statement then and I made it not too long ago very sincerely after this demotion I stopped drinking for quite a couple of weeks and quite a Few months and my following over there in the second row spoke up two or three days. Now, I'm sincere. I thought I stopped drinking for months. She said it just seemed like months. And it was actually, I guess, I have to admit that she was probably right. But after a sincere, serious emotion like that, I stopped drinkin'. Two or three day, she says. Boy, it sure seemed like months to me at the time. However, starting back to drinking and by this time I was beginning to soak through this sick skull that maybe Pearson you got a problem. It wasn't soaking too good but it's a problem but it is a problem that I can handle of course. Again, I am going through the same routine. This gets possibly monotonous because so many of us have been through it. I have a problem, but I can handle it. In fact, I got toying with the word alcoholic even. So I went to the doctor and I said, doctor, I have, and this again, one of Pearson's funnies, which is a quote from Alan King, said he went to a doctor and he says, doc, it hurts when I do this. Doc says, don't do that. That'll be $15 please. And that's basically what happens to an alcoholic when he goes to a doctor, because with all respect, and this doctor was my friend, he would have given anything to help me. He could recommend AA and he could say don't do that, and that was about all. Incidentally, he didn't charge me for that call, so it's not quite the same as Alan King's joke. Then we went through the same routine. I'm down to the psychiatrist now. Now, none of us alcoholics, while we were drinking, ever went to a psychiatrist cold sober. We tried to maintain a certain amount of sobriety, but we had to get enough juice in us that we could freely confide to the guy with the beard. And literally, no, my psychiatrist didn't have a beard at that time. He's grown one since. I don't think I had anything to do with that, however. I went to three sessions, as I remember it. The third one, and I thought I was screamingly funny. The first one, the third one was a very funny one. The second one was funny. And I quote literally. We got around to this. I didn't believe it happened. But he said, and when did you start hating your mother? And being an extreme humorist, I said I've seen this movie before, and that was the end of the psychiatry deal. The next step was the suicide route. I'm not going to dwell on it too much, but I am going to tell it because I want to make a point out of it. I would say that all alcoholics, I should never make that in brief, the majority by far have considered suicide, and many have tried it. Now, I considered suicide and rationalized on economics. I literally made up a balance sheet on this side financially. On this side was my, and I have two sons, and I figured it would take seven years to complete their education. So I put my estimated annual income for seven years on one side, providing I could even keep my job. And there was no assurance of that the way it was going. On the other side, I lined up my insurance and checked all my insurance out and would pay in case of suicide. My debts that I incurred, and as like all alcoholics, I had the same debts that you had. I had a remarkable system of financing going. In our town, there were three small loan companies and the bank trusted me for a small loan, too. And all you had to do in these was go in and sign your name. You'd get $500. It was the most wonderful thing for an alcoholic there ever was. So with four small loans at a pretty good rate of interest for $500, you could make a payment at them, and it seemed like at least once every four months you could refinance your loan and you had cash in hand again. It was a remarkable deal, and it seemed to work. I've been tempted to try it sober, but it worked pretty good. They say you're not supposed to remember any particular times after you sober up. But there is that time, and at your second birthday, when you make the last payment to the small loan company, and I think that is one of the biggest times in any A.A.'s life. Well, back to the gory details of this suicide attempt, which I was lining up economically, logically, and I was going to do it irrevocably. Now, I was not going to be prosaic enough to go to sleeping pill routine where they can take you to the hospital and pump your stomach and everybody says, oh, he was trying to get sympathy. I was hunting the irrevocable. Now, the irrevocible is a caustic. The strongest caustic that's in the home is Drano. And I figured it all out, lined up everything, and drank a Drano cocktail. Now, this Drano Cocktail, what it will do is completely burn your esophagus all the way down. So I say I don't want to get maudlin or gory about this suicide bit, but it did, and for all practical purposes, when they finally got me to the hospital, I was dead. However, for some strange reason, I came out of this and returned home seemingly recovered. But then the scar tissue that was generated by it started closing my esophagus until it closed completely. I was unable to swallow. That means liquids, not only solids, it closed gradually until I was able to swallow anything. I had to be taken to the hospital and fed intravenously to get even liquids in me. I was down to 120 pounds. I stayed in the hospital 30 days with an excellent surgeon, trying every way possible to open my esophagus so I could swallow. Even he finally gave up after trying everything to where he'd get me to swallow just slightly until finally, and the crux of the situation incidentally was to swallow a piece of string, surgical string so that he could follow it with a dilator to get down to open it up. Finally, even after he'd given up and I left the hospital I got this down and he started dilating me and he got me open enough to where I could swallow liquids and this is the point of the whole story and I probably don't have to go a bit further than that. The minute my esophagus was opened enough to swallow liquids, what liquid did I swallow? Now that is something every alcoholic here understands. I don't like the word understand sometimes. I get hung up on words. We alcoholics talk about we hope people understand us. We try to get the community to understand us Heck, we don't understand each other or ourselves. It's not understanding, it's acceptance. You accept that statement. I doubt if you can say you really understand it. I certainly don't. That after what I had been through, and I had been through quite a bit, it could even get gorier if you want to hear about my operation when I see me afterwards. But after that, the first thing that I was was to head for the bar and put it back down. I had to take treatments every other day for a while, and then every week. And it lasted, in fact, for several years. But in order to take the treatment, first I had to get a shot of scopolamine in one arm and a shot of Demerol in the other to dope me up real good. And then you had to wait an hour in the waiting room before he could do the treatment for the injections to fully take hold. Well, within a half a block of the hospital is the Northside Tavern. So there's no point in sitting in that boring waiting room waiting for this treatment. So between scopolamine, Demerol, and booze, I was ready when he was ready. then I had after that the next major event in this life of ill repute was the car wreck which again is nothing new to any of us I had the same thing happen that many of you have had happen I was viciously attacked by a driverless parked car while peaceably on my way home and my car was totally demolished It wasn't long after that that my wife said, don't you think you ought to do something about this problem? And we proceeded to call AA. I finally was ready. I'd been asked, oh, a year, two years before, when I was trying to sober up and demote him, are you a member of AA? That's when I Was Doing Good. I said, why heck no, I'm not a member of AA. I'm going to walk on my own two feet. And how many people here have said the same thing? I don't want a crutch. I'm gonna walk down that road on my own two foot. I can whip this problem in a great eye. And we sure proved it. Every one of us now has been whipped so much. I was ready for 42 crutches if it took that, it made no difference. I could not go on these two feet. I was ready. I was yelling help as loud as I could. They came. They talked and they talked nicely. My wife insists that that was the most beautiful man in the world that walked in that front door and said, I am from AA. If you only knew, Jake, the most beautiful woman in the whole world. We talked to AA and made a date to go to the meeting Monday night. That was the next meeting down at the Anna State Hospital. Monday night, by meeting time, I could not be aroused off the couch in the living room because I was drunker than a hoot-out. But I did go to the Anna state hospital that night but I didn't make a meeting that night. But my introduction was at the hospital. Now I'm ready for AA. I wasn't sure AA was ready for me, but I was ready for AA." This is what I found the hardest, and I think it possibly is hard for many of us. I think to oversimplify it, the basic honesty with yourself. For years, I had built up a facade around the real me. Nobody was about to see the real me. I was showing them a he-man, a virile person, had muscles, strong. This was the impression I thought I was giving. I would not let them see what was really inside. Now suddenly I'm a member of AA and they asked me to drag out this shriveling, craven, naked person that's really me and put it out for everybody to see. That is the hardest thing in the world. We still want to give the impression of the He-Man. And it is indeed fortunate that we are among people who can look at what's really in there, not sympathize. Sympathy isn't the word. Empathy possibly. understanding of what is going on. But here I am asked to show a guy that can't even whip a bottle, and nobody likes that. No man. We are he-men, and I think that is one of our biggest problems. Now I've got this no good guy that cannot hold his booze, that isn't strong enough, that has no willpower, that's weak-willed, that nobody can possibly like. I've been showing the likable person I didn't know they didn't like it, but I was showing what I considered the likable person. But I've got this shriveling idiot here now that I've gotta hold up for public gaze. And I've Gotta Live With It. One of the definitions of an alcoholic, I particularly like it because I think I invented it, an alcoholic is a schizophrenic that hates each other, and you're the one that I hated the worst. I've got to live with and he is the one that I've got to say is me and that is one of the hardest things that I went through and I think another hard thing, I've not only got to stay, this is really me not the muscles that I have been showing all along this is realy me this weak knee no good naked, shriveling, coward is really me. Then I've got to learn to like the son of a gun. If I'm going to live with him, I've Got to Like Him. If this is going to be me, I've GOT TO LEARN TO LIKE HIM. And I think that is important. I think I've Gott to a certain extent, I've Gotta Like the real me. Or I can never be basically honest with myself. I've gotta say, This is Bob. This is Bob. Honestly, this is Bob He's a little bit nuts He can't hold his booze He can say no to a jug He has resentments He's little stupid at times And this is really the Bob And I've got to live with him And I'm learning to like him I'm trying to teach my wife to like And she is doing a rather remarkable job But it is very, very difficult to face up to the fact that this is really me, that I'm not the strong will. I am not the dominant male. I have a weakness I cannot control. I must ask for help and I must beg for help whenever necessary. And begging doesn't come easy to us alcoholics. and we've got to learn to do it and have a certain amount of pride in our doing it. To me, on the AA program, you can line up the things that are important. I would say the one thing that I would think is the most important thing to me in AA and this I firmly believe. The most important things to me in AA is faith. I have to enter this program with this no-good, shriveling idiot. And I haveと believe that this program will not only keep him sober, it's going to make a man out of him. Faith is absolutely, to me, the most important thing. I believe the program will keep me sober. I don't know why. I don' t care particularly why. I believe and my faith is strong enough in this program that by this I can stay sober. And this is what I want. We have to want to live a sober life. We haveto want to stop drinking. We havetosaythisisthelifewewant. This is the life I want tolive. This is my kind of existence, and I am proud of it. I have faith that this will keep me on this path. The next most important thing to me is a sense of humor, and I think it is essential that we are able, if we're going to live with this saying that we have brought out and said is the real me, the real us, we have to be able to laugh at it a little bit. I have to take my idiosyncrasies, which I formerly hid under a facade that was partially alcoholic, partially bravado. I haveと take this, bring it out, and say, well, it's not so bad, so you're a little bit nuts. So what? Who in the heck isn't? And laugh about it a little bеt. My wife and I play a game. Sure, many of you have read the book. It's not particularly an alcoholic book. the games adults play. And I was particularly impressed with the wooden leg game, and I'm sure I play it quite a bit. You know, this alcoholism, the horrible disease, what do you expect out of me, a hopeless cripple? And I will come in sometimes, and obviously it's showing. My wife will say, is your wooden leg bothering you? Yeah, my wooden leg, I come in limping quite a little bit. And it's amazing how much a little in-joke between the two of us can help that out a little bit. We can laugh about my wooden leg. We know it's there, but I can take this wooden leg of mine and I can walk down with people that have two legs down the street and just as proud as they are and walk just as straight and not stagger one bit. I'm proud of the fact I can do it. I'm not necessarily proud ofthe fact that I have a wooden leg, that I have the illness and everything. I'm proud of the fact that with this handicap as such that I am needful of other men. Maybe I can't play tennis anymore like I used to, but tennis is not such a fascinating game at my age anyhow. But I can certainly walk down the street and hold my head high and be proud that I can walk just as well as the rest of them. another thing that I think many of us and me in particular we get hung up a little bit as we enter this program on the spiritual side I think that's more common than uncommon because after all after 35 years of drinking and drinking as hard as I did in particular and as most of you did there hadn't been too much room for Sunday school attendance in our lives and we come into the program and we're on the defensive about those kind of people when we come in. During our drinking days, they're good people, you know. We are always trying to prove that we Barclays are really basically better people than those who go to church. No, no, don't, didn't you? I did. Basically, we are better people then those who goes to church because they're kind of hypocritical about the whole thing and we are absolutely honest. We are what we are. I used to have one of the, he was a gambler in town, primed for this sort of routine. If we'd get talking about those people, I'd say, let me show you the difference. Now among us guys, we'll give you the shirts off our back. You can't do that with these good peoples. Wallace, come here. Wallace, give me a hundred bucks. He'd reach in his pocket, he'd peel it off. I'd say, see, these are my kind of people. I'd put it in my pocket after the conversation's over. I'd go give it back to Wallace. We had a little understanding about it. But I could prove that we barflies really would help the poor and downtrodden. So we enter this AA program, and we know, we know this. We know firmly we have a problem that we can't whip. When we take that first step, we are powerless over alcohol. We are admitting defeat. Now, we can't stop there if you admit defeat. That doesn't do one darn thing for you as far as the problem is concerned except to admit that you're whipped. You have to go to the higher power bit. That is absolutely essential. And here we are, graduates of Joe's Bar Room, coming in and have to go to something along spiritual lines. Rather horrifying to most of us. We get to thinking about it a little bit. But there is no way out. Without that, we have no hope. I forget who it was. One of the philosophers said if there were no God, man in all his misery would invent one. And we would. So we've got to, if we don't have one, invent one at the start of our sobriety. Many of us call it many different things. Those of us that were fortunate enough to come in still founded in our religion, and I did say fortunate, are the ones that can go to their traditional god for help. That is a fortunate way. There are many that come into the program, I think in our group they call me a Buddhist, for lack of a better term, that do not return at least immediately to that forum but still have a certain amount of faith in what they are talking about. They have faith that there is a power that can help them. And I don't think that getting hung up on that particular part bothers most of us after we're in the program a while. We get, by thinking a little bit, meditation, we can accept whatever there is and perhaps not categorize it, not define it, just let it take hold. I was thinking of a word when I was thinking about this speech and I did think about it off and on at times to classify what I call my sobriety and I've heard for some reason as I said I get hung up on words, this word happy. Now happy somehow to me connotes a bunch of little children gleefully leaping through the daisies, you know, and chattering and all. And if I ever see a bunch or gleeful old children leaping though the daises, I basically know they've either set fire to the St. Bernard poured molasses on the living room carpet or put cement in the commode. And the word happy doesn't particularly do anything for me. I like the word comfortable I am comfortable in my sobriety and what does the word comfortable mean really if you have to define it why you are immediately lost but I think that comfortable in sobriete that I can take a dozen fifths of whiskey sit around me sit down in the middle of them take off my shoes and go and that's about it that I have to be so that I am not afraid of that bottle anymore. I respect the bottle. I respect what it can do, what it has done to me. I have no fear as such of it because I have a power that I can draw on that is greater than any power that's ever been put in a bottle. I still respect it. I respect it tremendously. I will go along with the sly, cunning, baffling portion of it. But I do not fear it as long as I have this reserve that I feel is with me at all times. I was reading in the Reader's Digest the other day an article that had nothing to do with alcoholism and I read AA into it I read AAA into quite a few things but this particular article was on high wire walking training people to be high wire artists tightrope walkers, whatever you want to call them said the biggest thing they had to teach these people was to keep their eye on where they were going, not to watch their feet. And I read A.A. into that, that I think sometimes that we watch our feet so carefully that they stumble over each other, that our objective is sobriety. We know what it is. We know how to do it. We know why we want. We're going after it. and if we can firmly keep our eye on the objective and not get too shook up, not hung up over some of these things. You can go to an AA meeting, you know, and say, well how in the world can that guy say that? I'm all shook up about it. And you get to watching your feet too closely and you can stumble very easily. This reading everything in AA, I was watching this, the Olympics on TV. Did you see this high jumper? Now, I read AA into that. I can read A.A. into anything. I was sitting in one of the best armchair coaches in the world, and that has nothing to do with alcoholism. That's my age and my inherent arrogance anyhow. So I'm sitting in the armchair. I watch this kid come up, and he jumps. And I say, man, you can't jump like that. Nobody can high jump that way. He gets on his back, goes over backwards, lands on the back of his neck, and that is not the way to high jump. Now, I know how to high jumping. I've seen excellent high jumpers. I know exactly the way. And there, until he made seven feet four inches. And then I had to back up a little bit, but it wasn't the way to high jump. And I got to thinking of a friend of mine who has 11 years sobriety. That is over three times what I have. And I have gone to meetings, and I said, man, you can't stay sober that way. That's no way to stay sober. And I wonder if we don't do that quite a bit. I enjoy A&E meetings, and I fully appreciate the cliché that we use. I used to be a guy who hated all Dale Carnegie's and all clichés and all. Now I just spout them at the drop of a hat like the rest and love them all. Utilize, don't analyze. And I buy that. I buy it. I buy a lot thoroughly, but I still like to get off a little bit. So I coined a word for what I do that I call it fantasize. Now, that is a little bet fancier, and it's not quite as serious about it. So quite often I come up with solutions to the whole problem. And I have what is known as the Pearson BQ solution to alcoholism. I'm still working on it. It's not finalized. That means booze quotient. Now, we have all bought the IQ, the intelligent quotient, we know what it is, it's an inherent capacity for learning. Now, I believe that everybody has an inherent capacity for booze. And if you exceed that capacity, you become an alcoholic. It varies from individual to individual. And all you need to know, and this is where I get hung up. I can't quite solve it. If you knew your capacity, you could stay under it in your lifetime and never become an alcoholic. Now, if you could find out, and this I am working on, You need to know exactly your capacity and how long you're going to live, and then if you divide the years into that, then you could drink exactly as much as staying under your quotient and never become an alcoholic. I'm working on the final answer, but I'm sure that we can eventually solve the problem, which unfortunately would destroy such a pleasant meeting as we're having this weekend here. But I like to theorize, I like to fantasize, and it is very interesting at AA meetings to get on this sort of deal. One of the most interesting things is to hear the old-timer in the back row thoroughly slap you down that it will never work, you know, takes it seriously. But AA, not only. I joined AA, I went for therapeutic reasons. I wanted to stay sober. No other reason. If they had told me to recite the Koran instead of the Lord's Prayer, it would have made no difference to me. If they'd told me to stand on my head in any sort of fashion, I would have tried that. I would've done anything. They told me go to four meetings a week. I went to four meeting a week, I listened, I went, I had to stay sober. And like the rest of you, I got hooked on this. I don't know how many meetings I have to go to now. I go to four and five a week. I don' t care how many I have to go too. I go, I enjoy AA meetings. There is nothing I enjoy as much as an AA meeting. I like to listen, I like the talk, and you get to do both. Now, the important thing, and I'm getting down to what I consider the prime essential. The important thing is to, well, we say quite often, get out of the driver's seat, let somebody else steer the boat. Whatever analogy you want to use, let's stay on the boat deal. The important things that you've been steering this boat and you've done a lousy job of steering and you know it. Everything has happened that could possibly happen to a boat, but it is fortunately somehow still afloat. But you know it can't stay afloAT long with you at the helm. You come in and you say, I am ready. I cannot steer this boat. I will never steer thisboat again. I must have someone to steer thisboat. Somebody steers it for you. That's one of the amazing things. All you have to do is ask, and someone will. But too many of us then think we're a passenger on the darn thing. We lay on the sun deck and start getting a suntan. We're not. We're a deckhand. We have to be down whatever you do, splicing hossers, swabbing the deck. We are not a passenger. We're no longer a passenger, but we're not getting a free ride. We're at deckhanding. We have to work at this. Now, personally, I do not know who's steering my boat. At the moment, I don't know who is steering my ship. But I do now care who's stirring the boat. They're doing a fine job. I have turned it over to them. I firmly believe that someday I'm going to turn around to this skipper and I say, Hi, skipper. My name's Bob. Who are you? And he will probably say, I'm God. And I'll say, God don't ever turn loose of this helm. Thank you.