He’s an Expert on Good Intentioned Self-Destruction 😂 – Bob D.

My name is Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic. Can you hear me? Alright, good. Would you join me in a moment of silence? I'd like to open with a prayer. Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about You. Everything I thinkI know about myself. everything I think I know about others and everything I think I knew about my own recovery all for a new experience in you Lord a new experienced in myself a new experiences in my fellows and a much needed new experience in my own recovery amen I am delighted to be here there's a lot of old friends in this room and some new ones by the end of this weekend you'll know more about me than you ever imagined you needed to know I am not an expert on the big book I'm not here to teach anything, I'm here to do what Alcoholics Anonymous has always done the best and that's one alcoholic sharing as genuinely as we can our personal experience and sometimes in the process of one alcoholic sharing with another alcoholic there's a connection made a window opens actions become self evident and people's lives change I started doing this years ago probably because I was almost compelled to do it I think if you work this process in your life something happens to you and you just want to give it away you want to help other alcoholics You just, it's almost like you can't help it. And it's like the story of Lazarus when he was brought back from the dead. He was so amazed because he'd been dead. And he said, what do I do? And they just said, go tell everybody what happened. So this weekend I'm going to tell you what happened and you may not connect with my experience in this book. We're going to cover a lot of stuff out of this book tied in with personal experiences. In other words, what's this mean when you put it on and wear it? What's it mean experientially? And some of you will connect with it and some ofyou won't. But AA is such a broad highway that if you don't identify with anything I say, there'll be a speaker within the next couple weeks that you'll hook up with because we've got a wrench for every nut in Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm an expert on anything, I'm an expert of failure. I'm a expert on good intentioned self-destruction. I'm and expert on backing myself into a corner drunk and sober. I'm expert on what it's like to have a life that you can't manage. And the harder you try to manage it, the more unmanageable it seems to become. And what happened to me is after seven years of relapses from 1971 to 1978, and I don't believe it's possible for another human being to be as sincere about not drinking as I was. And yet I drank again. And not once or twice, but time and time again. I know what it's like to really get it that this stuff is killing you. And you swear to yourself and you mean it with everything in you, I'm never going to touch this again. And then seven or eight months later, I'm back at it. And I hate myself for that. And I can't stop it. And I am on a runaway train that is out of control with no brakes and I don't know what the heck to do here. Until 1978 and I tried to kill myself because I was literally in a trap I couldn't spring. and I came into Alcoholics Anonymous the last time in 1978 and the Buddhists say when the student's ready, the teachers appear and I got introduced to some of these simple actions in AlcoholicsAnonymous and they started to change my life and consequently I've spent my life trying to pass on what I found here. and i i'm sober you know almost 31 and a half years and i still go to eight meetings a week i have two hospital and institution commitments i do this almost every weekend or something like this maybe it's a traditions thing or something and basically i i was taught years ago if you're serious about the decision in step three then you just say yes without prejudice without self-consideration? Is it going to be inconvenient? Do I feel like it? You just say yes. And that's what I've been doing, and I've never changed that game plan. Well, we're going to start with step one, and we're going to spend a lot of time on step one because it was the most difficult thing I've ever done. It's so difficult, it kills most of us. This inability to fully concede inside ourselves that we really have this whole thing and everything that it is to have alcoholism. I came in and out of treatment centers from 1971 to 1978, and could so easily admit in group settings or at an AA meeting that I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. And I've got to tell you, I had no idea what I was saying. Not really. I mean, what I Was really saying is I'm Bob and I've got problems. I'm Bob and there's something wrong with me. I'm Rob and I got a DUI. But I don't know what it is to have alcoholism. I don' t have a clue. And I learned what it was to have alcoholism from you and from this book. I want to touch on a couple points that Dr. Silkworth talks about that I think that And I think AAO is a tremendous debt to Silky. If you remember Bill's story, he had no, he had zero success trying to sober anybody up until he talked to Silty before he went to the trip to Akron. And Silty said, stop preaching at those guys. They've been preached at by better preachers than you. Stop it. Tell them the truth. Tell him about you. Tell him about the phenomenon of craving. Tell him about what I've told you about alcoholism. And he went to Dr., when he met Dr. Bob, it's exactly what he did and the first man got sober who never drank again. And on page XXVIII Silkworth starts to talk about what he encouraged Bill to talk to Bob about. And he on this page he talks about two aspects of alcoholism that really make this a terminal illness it's a it's a description of me and inherent in the description is a sense of powerlessness that is absolutely hideous and he starts off on the top of XXVIII by saying we believe and so suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy. That the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class, chronic alcoholic, and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. What's he saying? Well, first of all, he's talking about a type of alcoholic. He's talking abut a chronic alcoholic. And I believe that there are chronic and there are acute alcoholics if you go to page 20 of the book and 21 it talks about the two types of drinkers that would ease both of them would easily be diagnosed as alcoholic and the first one it says at the very bottom of page 20 says then we have a certain type of hard drinker now check out these symptoms it says he drinks habitually he may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally this guy is drinking habitually to the point of physical and mental impairment now a doctor is going to say tell this guy you're you're alcoholic and it says it may cause him to die a few years before his time bad stuff this is a problem here and then here's the difference this is what makes this guy's alcoholism acute rather than chronic if a sufficiently strong reason ill health falling in love change of environment or the warning of a doctor becomes operative this man can also stop or moderate although he may find it difficult if he's been drinking around the clock every day for a while he may need to be detoxed he might be in danger of seizures but the difference is his problem ends where the bottle ends the difference is that with a sufficiently strong reason he can stay sober on a lifetime basis I've known guys like that I had a friend who I tell you if you were to look at him drinking and you look at me drinking you might think he was worse than I was and he got he fell in love with this girl and they got married, and she just said, you know, I can't live with you partying like this. And he put the plug in the jug, and just after a period of nervousness that lasted about maybe three weeks, he just settled into being sober. And 30-some, 40 years, I don't know how many years later, he's free. He doesn't need AA. He doesn'T need a sponsor. He doesN'T need God, even though he thinks God's cool. He doesn't need inventory, and he doesn't needs to spend his life helping other alcoholics because when he stops drinking, his alcoholism is over. That is an acute illness. Pneumonia is an acute illness, you've got pneumonia, it can kill you, it's a bad deal. But if they take you to a hospital and load you up with the right antibiotics, you get over that pneumonia once and for all, you don't need to go to no meetings or nothing. But if you have a chronic illness such as diabetes, certain types of heart disease or alcoholism. The physical stabilization of the condition is but a beginning in a lifetime regimen of recovery because my alcoholism doesn't stop where the bottle stops. As a matter of fact, right below the surface, I get eventually more uncomfortable, sober than I was when I was drinking. Actually, sobriety drives me insane. You think, well, what do you mean by that? I don't feel insane. I'm just curious. I kind of see a show of hands. How many people besides myself in this room had gotten to a point somewhere where you knew this, you knew you had to quit this stuff and you made up your mind and swore to yourself because you know this is really destroying you that you're never going to drink again and then drank again after that. How many people? The one or two that didn't raise their hand, I think are in Almanon. I mean, it's like... I mean that... Why would you... You would have to be out of your damn mind to go pick up something you know beyond a shadow but doubt's going to burn your life to the ground and yet abstinence eventually day in and day out drives me crazy. I'm a chronic alcoholic. And I tell you, for a guy like me, that is a very important piece of information because my life depends upon me knowing the hand I was dealt. See, I can't play your hand. I canít play the hand of a problem drinker. I will die of alcoholism. Now, a problem drunker could play the hands of a real alcoholic and it probably wouldn't hurt him. Maybe he goes to meetings he doesn't have to and does some self-examination he doesn' t have to. But for a real alcoholic to try to play the hand of an acute alcoholic is brutal. I had a sponsor back in 1976 who I look back and I am absolutely convinced this guy was not an alcoholic. I think he was a problem drinker. He had a three-step program of recovery And this guy was very happy, very productive, and he did very well sober. His three-step program of recovery was don't drink, go to meetings to fill the social void since you're not going to bars anymore, and sell Amway. And it was a great program of discovery for him. And it worked very well. It about killed me because I'm not an acute alcoholic. I'm a chronic alcoholic. And Silkworth goes on to say that when I drink alcohol, I have a manifestation that's an allergy. Well, I remember sitting in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in my years in and out in the mid-70s, and in treatment centers and in AA meetings, I would hear occasionally people refer to this thing as an allergy, but I don't get that. I mean, I know a little bit about allergies. I have a mild allergy to cats. When I get around cats, after about an hour, my eyes start to water and itch and my nose starts to fill up and run a little bit. But when I drink alcohol, I don't break out in watery eyes or stuffy nose. What's the allergic reaction? Well, Silkworth refers to it as a phenomenon of craving. And I also remember sitting in meetings and listening to people talk about the phenomenon of craving, and I don't get it. I mean, I get I'm in trouble. I get that I go too far drinking. I get all that, but I cannot, through self-examination, identify an allergic reaction to alcohol and a phenomenon of a craving. I mean I don' take a drink and then claw the walls to get it out. No, no, I don''t get that. But the odd thing about a craving is you don't realize you've got it until you can no longer satisfy it. Everyone in this room, without exception, this very second is in the grip of a craving you're not aware of because you're satisfying it, and that's the craving debris there. If someone were to sneak up behind you, put a plastic bag over your head, you'd instantly realize you got a craving debris there because you can't satisfy it anymore. And what was so difficult for me is that I intuitively, not because i think i'm alcoholic i just intuitively avoided situations where i could only get one or two drinks and couldn't get any more i remember going to a guy's house uh god i was in junior high school there was no way i thought i was alcoholic in junior high school and there's a couple of us are gonna hang out there for the whole day his dad was gone and he had one six pack of beer for three of us i passed he had three cases Oh, I'm there. And I don't pass because I think I'm an alcoholic. One six-pack, three guys, I do the math. It's like, what's the point? I mean, I don' want to... Nah. Now, isn't it odd I would react that way to alcohol and yet I did that all my life and I can't identify the phenomenon of craving because I always seem to find a way to satisfy it. And then one day I was in a meeting of AA and a woman told a story about a dinner party that she went to when she was trying to be good. And the light went on because I remembered a very similar incident. I was about 18 years old and I was dating a girl and she invited me over to her parents' house for the whole evening to meet her family. And I got to tell you, when I was 18 years older, you could have put me on a lie detector and said Bob is there any way in the world you could possibly have alcoholism I am convinced I would have said no and it would have said I was telling the truth but I had alcoholism as much as I do today and they didn't know it I was going through my better living through chemistry phase of my alcoholism but alcoholism doesn't care if you do other drugs it doesn't care if you're trying to be a rock star. It doesn't even care if you don't believe you have it. If you've got it, you've got it whether you believe you've had it or not. And I had it. And then I get to this gal's house and we go in and we sit down at this dinner table and they bring out a bottle of wine. Now, this is not the kind of bottle of wine one of us would buy. This is a wimpy little Al-Anon kind of ball of wine, one of those little blue nun or something. I mean, it didn't even have, I mean the alcohol content was below 15%, a waste of money, I think. But they bring out this little bottle of wine and they pour us all a glass of wine, sit the bottle on the table. Well, I always drank quickly. I don't know why. I guess evaporation is some kind of childhood issue with me or something.I don't know, but I drink quickly. And because I drank quickly, I've killed two glasses out of that bottle of wine. Now the bottle's dead and they're still sipping on their first glass. And I'm sitting there, and I've got two glasses of wine in me. And I've just sit, and I'm getting a little antsy. And all of a sudden, the things they're talking about are starting to become irritating. You know, just mundane, irritating stuff. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. I was kind of squirrely. Finally, I said to them, I said, God, that was really good wine. Do you have any more? They said, no, Bob. And they went back to talking about Vietnam and sports and all this crap. And I'm sitting there. I got two glasses of wine in me. I think I'm going to lose my damn mind. You know how you talk to yourself in your head? Well, it's getting a little panicky in there. And I finally blurted out. I said to them, I said, you know, I sure like beer. And they said, well, we don't have any beer, Bob. We don't ave nothing. Next time you come over, we'll get you a six-pack. They went back talking. And I was sitting there, and I think, I'm gone crazy. I finally excused myself. I went to the bathroom. I locked the door like a nut case. I went through all their cabinets. I found a bottle of cough medicine that was 35% alcohol with codeine and turpinhydrate, which is a bonus. And I remember sitting on that bathtub, just chugging that bottle of coughing medicine like a crazy person. And all the spin into my head just went... and I was able to sit there and focus and think straight and I came up with a story went back out to the dinner table I explained to them about this thing I'd forgotten about oh, I'm so sorry I have to take care of that tonight and they were sorry to see me go I got in my car drove down their block 25-30 miles an hour like you're supposed to turned the corner drove like a crazy person like 75-80 miles an hours to get to a friend of mine's house who had an open bar in his basement because I had two glasses of wine. It set something off in me that it always set off in me, but for most of my drinking I wasn't cognizant of it because I could always satisfy it. There's a test in the book that asks you to see, to test this thing. now we don't recommend this test anymore it's in chapter 3 but I remember back in the day when I used to see old timers just recommend this test to newcomers all the time and the test is if you don't think you're alcoholic go over to the nearest bar room and try to drink and then stop abruptly and it says try it a few times it says 1939 it might be worth a bad case of the jitters to get a true knowledge of your condition well we don't i think our society is ante'd up ratcheted up the price on that test a little bit so we don'T recommend it anymore and but i remember i remember watching a guy stick a twenty dollar bill in a newcomer's face and say here go find out if you're and i haven't seen that in probably 30 years but it's not a viable test if you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic as i have a mind that is influenced by the phenomenon of craving a mind that will justify and do anything necessary to satisfy a craving that you're not even aware you got if i were to take that test and i would go down here to the nearest bar room and i'm going to go okay i'm gonna go in i'm Gonna have two drinks. That's it. Now, you can't smoke nothing, take nothing, nothing. Two drinks, that's it. Well, about halfway through the second drink, it's going to become very apparent to me that this is a bad test day. There'd be some girl in there that I'd think, oh my God, that could be her. Got to have a drink with her. That game is on. Oh, I didn't know that game was on. My God, I can't leave now. Joe just, Joe walked in. Joe's always got something good to smoke gotta have a drink with joe and every drink of alcohol i've ever taken in my whole life has made me think and believe that one more drink is absolutely right and appropriate now i may think as i'm drinking you know five from now it's going to be a bad idea but this next one is always right the next one's always right i am i am the guy who this phenomenon of craving is so entrenched in me that if I'm still conscious I ain't done drinking I remember I was just up in Boston two weekends ago and I went up there when I was a kid on spring break and I went up there with a bunch of guys to go to a party that we'd heard about and it was a fantastic party they had kegs of beer, people were doing shots They had reefer. It was great. It was just a lot of fun. And in the middle of the party, a guy comes through the party with a bunch of capsules. Now looking back, I didn't even ask him what they were. I just said thank you and took a bunch up. Well, it turned out to be animal tranquilizer. Well, that's not good. About an hour later, I'm laying on the floor and I can't get up but I'm still awake so I'm trying to talk people into bringing me a drink, right? because of an allergic reaction to alcohol that punks me out. See, it uses my mind, so I think it's my idea. I never saw it. I never, I never thought I never know what happened to me when I'm in trouble and I just want to take the pressure off a little bit but I'm not going to get drunk and how I would start and every drink makes me feel like one more, one more. One more. And I have always had that. And sometimes the phenomenon of craving would take a left turn or a right turn. Sometimes I would be four or five drinks into a run and also get an obsession to do some other kind of chemical with it. But it all comes from a craving. You know, treatment centers will ask you sometimes kind of a bad question, really. They'll say things to guys like me, what's your drug of choice? Well, that's not a good question. I grew up in an era like you are, and I had alcoholism. You're on the streets. We just, as my friend Sharon says, we didn't say no. We said thank you. We just do whatever you got. And so you ask me, What's your Drug of Choice? And I'll go, Geez, what is my drug of choose? What week is it? What do you got? I don't know. I mean, I drank vanilla extract one time in a pinch. What they should ask me is, Bob, what happens to you when you drink alcohol? What happens to You? What happens To You when you have three drinks or four drinks and then somebody cuts you off and refuses to let you have any more? What happens TO You, Bob? And then that's the real question. Silkworth says that this never occurs in the average temperate drinker. As a matter of fact, as a result of his years, he says it earlier in his first letter, his years working in a hospital for the treatment of not only alcoholism but also drug addiction, He was diligent trying to find one symptom that would define alcoholism as opposed to, say, drug addiction or just somebody who's nuts. And over the years it sort of cooked down to this one symptom, an allergic reaction to alcohol. It's what defines me as an alcoholic, but not necessarily as a chronic alcoholic, but it defines me als an alcoholic. Silkworth goes on to say these allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. And once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve. Oh boy. One of the things that destroys guys like me is that the wreckage I incur from the last run I was on is so glaring that it distracts me from the real problem. Do you know that there are times, there are days when the sun and the moon are in the sky at the exact same time? And when that is occurring, actually the moon has a greater effect on the earth, on the tides, on everything. But when the sun and the moon are in the sky at the same time, you can't even see the moon because the sun is so glaring. And one of the things that just kept happening to me over and over again, I'd go on a run and I'd burn my life to the ground. I'd end up in a treatment center and go into these AA meetings and people are trying to say your problems alcoholism I go yeah but I got police problems I got emotional problems I gotten you should see boy if you knew the stuff I think I got mental problems I've got a financial I got oh I've got a lot of probably alcohol yeah yeah but this stuff is clamoring at me and so I sort of take this attitude, you know, I might do some of this AA stuff, work your stairs, do all that stuff, but I've got to take care of this stuff first. And I never could make it. I relapsed time and time again because I'm treating the symptoms and I'm never treating the cause. And there was a great psychiatrist, medical doctor in Pennsylvania, Dr. Torski, He was also a rabbi. I had had so much therapy by the time I ended up in this place that he worked that I was absolutely convinced that I could fix the cause of alcoholism maybe if I went back and reparented myself or something. I don't know. And Torski said, alcoholism is self-perpetuating. You have all these things that prop it up, financial problems, emotional problems, family trauma. employment problems relation all this stuff he said you can fix every one of them and alcoholism will grow new supports to keep itself right here and it always did uh dr jelinek was the first one to to comment on that when he in the jelenic chart curve when he talked about the at the last stages of alcoholism we experienced something that a lot of us experiencing he called it the collapse of the alibi system. That's where you don't have a job anymore so you can't blame your drinking on a boss no more. You don't know who you are and you don'T have a relationship anymore so you CAN'T blame the drinking on her. You haven't seen your parents in 10 years so you Can'T blame your drinking on them anymore. And all of a sudden, your life just cooks down to you. And there you are. and that seems to be the way of it for a lot of us Chamberlain used to say that if you be alcoholic eventually you'll no longer be able to put anything between you and you and there you are and that's not only drinking I think some of us get to that point well into abstinence where the shine of everything we've brought into our lives to fix ourselves in this futile effort to wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well. And it wears thin, and there we are. And there we Are. So these problems become astonishingly difficult to solve. Well, if the phenomenon of craving was all there was to alcoholism, then that Nancy Reagan thing would be the answer. Just say no. but there's an aspect of powerlessness that really makes this hideous I believe personally it makes this a terminal disease is that I can't continue to say no I can say no for a while you know I'd come out of a detox or out of jail or someplace where I'd been rendered sober and I never knew how long the fuse was, I didn't know there were times this sounds bizarre there were times where I'd go into a detox swear unto myself I'd never drink again and drank the day I got out and then there were other times it might be 7, 8, 10 months later I never knew how long the fuse was and I could say no and I said no a lot I remember working on this painting crew sober several months with a bunch of guys that every time they got off work they'd go out and party every single day you want to smoke some of this? You want to go to the bar? No, no, no. And I'd even get mad sometimes and say, no I told you, no don't even ask me. No and I'm not smoking anything either. No, I said no, well okay a little bit. And there was always a yes in every barrel of nose. Sometimes it's at the very bottom, sometimes to the top. I don't know where I'm going to find it. But when I fight alcoholism willfully, it's a losing battle. And I fought the battle and lost. I heard a speaker when I was brand new say something. I thought it was the funniest and truest thing I'd ever heard. I almost fell out of my chair. He said, I quit drinking over 50 times. He said every time I quit drinking I got drunker than ever then he said I think this quitting drinking is killing me and I'm sitting there going yeah wow because I quit over and over and every time I quit I got drunken than ever because I don't have what it takes to stay in a state of abstinence Silkworth starts talking about this at the bottom page XXVIII he makes a across the board statement. He says, men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. And I think that's true of everybody. My sister, I've watched my sister drink for years. My daughter now is 22 years old. She'll have a drink occasionally. I was out to dinner with her and my sister that day. She ordered something that was blue with umbrellas and fruit and stuff. I mean, it's this creepy-looking thing. I mean... You want to drink that or put it in a hat or something? I don't know. It's just a weird-looking drink. She drinks about half of it. Let's the rest go to waste. But she likes... And my sister, who are non-alcoholic, they like the effect, but they just like a little bit of it With me, I think it's more than that. I think its more than liking the effect. I think somewhere inside me where I really live, I think I need the effect. I yearn for the effect." The great psychiatrist Carl Jung, in a letter to Bill Wilson written in the early 60s, said something that... If you ever go to Stepping Stones, the original's on the wall. It's something that I thought was remarkable. Jung said to Wilson that as a result of working with Roland Hazard and countless other alcoholics, that he believed that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol was not really a thirst for alcohol he said that he believed it was a low-level thirst of the alcoholic's being for wholeness or unity you know that feeling and that desire to be connected to be a part of and then he says or it might be expressed by religious people as a union with god there's something inside of me that's always yearned for connectedness to be a part of to be hooked up almost spiritually to other people and this planet and there was a time in my early drinking where alcohol did exactly that and if you're an alcoholic as I am and you can remember back to the days when the hook was set those marvelous experiences where a guy like me who doesn't know how to talk to people really, it doesn't fit and I don't feel like other people look and I can't mix with other people the way they mix with everybody. And I seem to live in my head and I could walk in this state of semi-depressed loneliness and anxiety, walk into a party or a bar and have about three drinks and I Could Get Free. i could come out and play about five drinks and i'm really starting to become a part of i'm getting connected you know about seven drinks we're saying things to each other in the bar like i love you man i remember one night i was with a bunch of guys were passing around jugs of wine and reefer and i remember saying this gang of guys i used to run around with oh i remember We were saying things to each other like, I'll die for you, man. You know, wow! I mean, for a nobody who don't fit anywhere, that's as close to intimacy as a guy like me will ever get. I mean that's amazing. So is it any wonder that something inside of me just yearns for that, to get back to that? But alcoholism is progressive. so over the years my ability to get that magical effect seems to bleed out and the last few years of most of our drinking are very lonely very lonely alcoholism is a lonely lonely lonely business so we we drink not only because we like the effect but the alcoholic or guys like me somewhere i yearn for it and he goes on to say the sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false we've all been there we god years before we get sober or even go to aa we're sitting somewhere in a bathroom throwing up or hung over in bed or somewhere saying things to ourselves like, man, I got to quit this crap. I can't keep going on like this. We're not stupid people. We get the cause that we know what we're doing to ourselves. But this thing that happens to us, it's like a type of mental illness. The book later refers to it as a queer mental blank spot. Silkworth says that After a while, we can't differentiate the true from the false. What does that mean? Well, I'll tell you about the last couple of years of my drinking. I was no longer the guy playing in the band and singing. I was not the guy dancing with the girls in the bar. I'm not the kind of guy who's always drinking. I'm the guy laughing and having a good time. I'm he guy who holds up somewhere, seeks oblivion, and feels sorry for himself. I stopped bathing because the truth is, once the fun ran out of the party, the truth was, I don't really care. I don' t care about anything. I just seek oblivion. I just want to blot me out. And it's pathetic. And it' s lonely. And it''s self-pitying. Now that' s reality. That' s the truth. Socorro says we can't differentiate the truth from the false. That' s the true. Here' s The False. You get me sober about eight or nine months and I don't fit anywhere. And I got these low-level depressions and I worry about crazy things that don't make sense. And I go to work with a bunch of guys and they all get along with everybody and then there's me. And I don' t know what' s wrong with me. And I will start fantasizing that I can drink again like I drank when I was 18 years old. i will start imagining and yearning for that magic effect until i believe it's right there waiting for me in and i believe that in the face of my own pathetic painful experience at that party's been a dead horse for a couple years now but i will i have this psychotic wishful thinking my god i want that part i want to be able to get lit up so desperately i'll convince myself i could that there's a party where there ain't no party and you don't know that until you're about 10 drinks in and start feeling sorry for yourself and you realize it's the same again that's the isn't that the worst thing of alcoholism in the progressive nature of the disease it gets worse worse worse it gets so bad you think to yourself it can't get any worse and it gets worse, and then it gets the worst of all. It gets the same. Then it's the same. It's the same pathetic deal, and you go on like that until it kills you, which oddly enough takes a long time. I tried to take my own life in 1978 because a well-intentioned doctor told me I was young enough and physically fit enough, I was in my 20s, that I probably could drink, party like I was partying for another five years. Who knows? Maybe ten before it actually killed me. No, sir. I tried to take my own life because his words haunted. I thought, five years? I ain't doing five more weeks of this. I couldn't imagine it. And I couldn' t imagine it so but what happens to me that drives me insane later on in the book it says something he's interesting it says it talks about a spiritual malady and it says when the spiritual malody is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically so there's something in here that's gnawing away at me kind of like a stone in your shoe that doesn't go away and it eventually makes me crazy. It makes me so crazy, I'll go back to drinking. So what happens? What's the dynamic? Well, Silkworth starts to talk about it. He says, to us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. One of my big secrets, I couldn't even admit this to myself, in the light of all the hearts broken in the light of all the self-destructiveness all the burnt down opportunities of what i'm doing to myself mentally emotionally physically i couldn't admit it even to myself that i've always felt more normal when i'm whacked than i do when i're normal and i don't even i see i can't get my mind around that in the white of the damage i keep doing but that's the truth to me my alcoholic life seems the only normal one and then he then he starts to talk about what happens to me when i get sober he says they're they're restless we become restless irritable and discontented unless i can again experience that that sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. Drinks that I'll see others taking without punishment or with impunity. What does that mean? Well, I stopped drinking with the best intentions in the world. I've really made up my mind this time. And I got some hope my god they're going to give me my job back i think if i could send her enough flowers maybe she'll take me back i got hope and what happens the longer i'm away from that last drink the more restless i feel inside and it's sometimes it's a it's subtle vague restlessness it's it's just a an unexplained inability to really settle anywhere. You know, I'm the guy that wherever I am, it's not where I need to be. No, I don't know where I needs to be, it's just not really here. You know what I mean? Did you ever watch a dog circle the living room looking for its spot to lay down? I'm a dog that can't find its spot. There's like, I've lost here and I'm restless and I've just... And the second symptom he says is irritable. Well, I'm not irritable because basically I don't like irritable people. So I'mnotirritable. I can't help it that when I stop drinking I just see so clearly how stupid everybody is. My God! Every job I would get, they'd seem like nice people. I wouldn't even be there two weeks and man, are they idiots. and when you're restless you kind of have to tell them which makes abstinence a lonely business and I'm discontent I heard a guy 31 years ago in a meeting say that alcoholism was a disease of chronic malcontent there's been something wrong with me as long as I can remember where no matter what I bring into my life no matter how wonderful it is. The shine of it wears off so quickly for me. And I live in a world where people really appreciate the gifts in their life, and I can't for any sustained period of time. My parents lived in the same house for 35 years or so. They were just as grateful and in love with that house 30 years later as the day they bought it. I would have been sick of that house in three weeks. This just happened. Matter of fact, I came down here to Phoenix years ago. There was a new motorcycle company started, Titan Motorcycles. And I came out and bought their poster bike. We designed it, paid a fortune for that bike. This is the bike that's, I'm going to be there. I'm gonna be there with this motorcycle. Not only am I gonna be here, you're all gonna know that I'm there. I'll tell you something, I didn't have that motorcycle three weeks. I saw one I thought might have been nicer and didn't want my motorcycle anymore. What's wrong with me? And this is in sobriety. And so what happens if you're restless, irritable, and discontent? If you've got this undefined vacancy right in the middle of who you are and you can't really put your finger on it but yet it gnaws at you. if you're like me and you got the mind i got you start targeting things that look like it'll fill the vacancy that job and that steel mill making that kind of money my god that's buy a house own a harley have a boat money if i had that job i'll be good when i had that job I wasn't even there three weeks and they're a bunch of idiots i remember seeing a guy that i knew grew up with who who found fell in love with this girl and she adored him and man he quit drinking straightened his life out became very really very happy i remember thinking to myself my god well if i had somebody that loved me the way she loves him i'd be there when i found somebody that adored me i wasn't with her i don't even think a month and i started Noticing what was wrong with her. What is it about me that the shine? I'll tell you what I think it is. Now, this might sound crazy to some of you, but I think the magical effect that we experience in the early days of drinking spoils us for the rest of our lives. Unconsciously, I don't know that I'm doing this, but on an emotional level, unconsciously, I start comparing what it feels like to work in that steel mill to what it felt like to have five shots of tequila. Now the steel mill sucks. I start comparing what het feels like to be with this girl that loves me to what het felt like to drink a pint of Jack Daniels and do about four hits off a pipe. Now I don't even want this girl no more. And I don' t even know why I'm doing that. But I think it ruins us. It may, alcoholism of the type that I have maybe the greatest curse and the greatest blessing at the same time that God has ever given any of his kids. The reason I think it could be the greatest blessings is because from it I am pushed and sometimes dragged and sometimes kicked into taking actions that will make me more than what I was. Is there anybody in this room that would have come to AA if you got sober and were happy and okay and would have worked the steps? I know you wouldn't have paid back the money. So alcoholism in God's hands and also coming from a desperate position may very well be my greatest blessing. And Silkworth says that I get this way, I get restless, irritable, discontent. And then after a while, watching other people drink with impunity, he says, I'll succumb to the desire again. And then the cycle starts again. Once I pick up the drink, I can't stop. If you're an alcoholic of my type and you take a drink, it's like having sex with a gorilla. You ain't done till the gorilla's done. You can tell yourself all night long, me and the gorilla are just going to have a dance. No, you're not. No, you're not. And it starts the cycle again. And what happens? I end up somewhere swearing to myself, man, I'm never going to do that again. And it's in the shine of abstinence starts to wear off again. And the depression starts to sink in. And what happens to me, and we'll get into this a little more in the section leading up to step three. When I stop drinking, I just get me right on me. And I can't get me off of me. Did you ever watch that movie Alien where that creature attaches itself to your face? I'm that guy. and I don't know that I'm suffering from a disease that called alcoholism it doesn't make any sense because I suffer it drives me insane sober and that's what I can't get my mind around it, it can't be alcoholism it must be that relationship, it must be that job I know I looked I know I seemed like I had a good childhood. My parents were very kind, loving. They weren't alcoholics and they loved me. But they must have damaged me. I bet you. I bet ya. Because I felt damaged. And I'm desperate to hook it in. I want to connect it to something. But I must eventually own my own vacancies. No one caused them. they are part and parcel to be of who and what I am and we'll see in time how alcoholism is a wonderful thing in God's hands alone with you it sucks but in God hands and in this program it's a good deal let's take a 7 minute and 18 second break Thank you.