Mental Obsession and Physical Craving – Big Book Workshop – Montgomery – Part 4 of 8 – Local AA Speakers

There you go. Morning. Good morning. My name is Chris Raymer, a very grateful, recovered alcoholic. Okay. Somebody warned me about them collard greens last night. I didn't listen. This could be the quickest talk on history. I'm delighted to be here. Real quick before we get started, anybody in here? I don't want to embarrass anybody, but was anybody not here last night that's here this morning? if you're brand new in here? Got a couple here. That's good. All right. All right, that's good I want you to tell me why you weren't here last No I'm just going to pick you up because I want to remind everybody before I get started here y'all see this jacket? That's pretty cool That's a Hugo Boss Nice, huh? Everybody see it? They're supposed to be respectful from the podium I wore a jacket, I just didn't leave it on If it gets any warmer by this afternoon We'll be down to skivvies That's okay And that's okay too To bring y'all back up to speed I'm going to talk about this stuff I know some of y'ALL can't see it That's perfectly okay It's more for me than it is for you And I passed out some little handouts that talks about the little physical craving and the mental obsession stuff. It shows the page numbers of where it talks about the specific first step stuff in the big book. And I've got it there. And if any stuff we talk about today, guys, again, we talked about it last night, I can send you a click in an email. I can I can Send it to you. So if we're writing something up here, you can't see it. That's it's OK. Well, I just let me know and I'll send it to You. And be glad to do that. Guys, I tried to start getting sober in the early 80s, and I didn't get sober finally until 1987. In and out, in and out. I know we kind of hit it pretty hard last night, and I just want to bring our newcomers kind of up to speed. None of us today are going to – we're not taking shots at AA. We're not taken shots at groups. We're taking shots individuals. You know, the cool thing about this is that there's a lot of ways to do this. But the goal is the same thing. These little stickers I had up here, some of you guys snagged one up there, a little quote out of As Bill Sees It. It says, our chief responsibility to the newcomer is an adequate presentation of the program. And if you don't explain first step to me, you're not giving me an adequate representation of the problem. Can I get a witness on that? We want to talk a little bit about that this morning. And I finally got sober in 1987 because a bunch of guys opened the big book for me the first night I walked in, detoxing, sitting at their AA table. And they opened the Big Book and they started showing me the circle triangle and they starting explaining to me why I couldn't stay sober for seven years. In and out, in and out. I'm on all these medications. I'm therapized. I mean, I still walk into a neighbor's house and lay down on the couch because I think that's what you're supposed to do. And I can't even be in the room with my mom alone because, I mean, that's all we talked about for 10 years in therapy with my mom. And it's like, oh, my God. And I'm a better person for all of it. I'm not knocking any of that. But I've got to tell you, folks, I never could stay sober until I did the work and had a spiritual experience. Now, guys, that is my experience. And again, I'm going to say this and we'll move on. All we're here to do is share our experience. And if our experience doesn't jive with your experience, that so cool. I mean rock on. Make sense? I don't want to be arguing with anybody later on down the road. I just, it's a little frustrating to me. There's a Little Quote. Martin Luther King was kind of a hero of mine. I'm a kid of the 60s and 70s. And there's a quote he said in this deal. Don't try to look for this. It's not in the big book. But it probably should have been, Meyer said. Our lives end the day we become silent about things that matter. Did you all get it? But, guys, you've got to stand for something. You know, even if it's wrong sooner or later, you've Got to take a stand. And a lot of the problems that we have out there in AA land is that we see lots of crazy stuff happening, but we just kind of shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way it is. Well, that' s the way It Is. And I say, if we could go back and look at our history, if we go back to look at the archives and talk to the old timers and the people that are still around from those days, they can tell us what happened. Some of the things I want to mention real quick, and this fires my passion around this, and I guarantee it does the same with Myers. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in its second forwards talks about a 75% success rate. In the big book when it went into its second printing, we had a success rate, this is 1955, we had a success rate in the United States of 75% people getting sober. You know, I've talked to New York I've talking to the old archivists they all agree with that. You know it's just 50% got sober at once and a few messed around and in and out a little bit but by the time all the dust settles they were sober. And we had great success rates back there and we were doing one thing up to 1955 we were going to do we were only doing one thing Big Book This confuses the newcomer This is a big book This is a little big book. I don't know. Anyway, you look at it today. These are some statistics. I know you can't see them. And these are 2012. I have 2013s, but I couldn't download them this morning for some dang reason. Operator error. But these are stats out of Dallas, Texas. We talk about this a lot. And I'm going to tell you going in the door, I'll explain it to you a little bit. But this is not scientific. Don't come up after the meeting all blustery. and that's not very scientific. I know it's not. I'm cool with it, but I think it's an indicator. Houston Intergroup has the same kind of stats. Dallas Intergroup, they produce these statistics. They print them in their little newsletter to kind of show you. These are chip sales in the various areas. These are in Dallas. We've been monitoring these since 95 when we got hooked up with Krusty Cliff down in Dallas These nice people at Intergroup have been sending them to us ever since, and bless their hearts. Desire chips. These are, again, 2012 stats. The 13s are identical. The percentages, the numbers have changed, but the percentage is the same. Desire chips, 14,763. Y'all follow? Little knucklehead walked into an AA meeting and picked up a, anybody want to stay sober 24 hours at a time? Yes, okay, and hugs, not drugs, and here we go. And we pick up a chip and we put it in our little pocket. If you can stay sober 30 days, you get a little red chip, a little one-month chip. In Dallas, Texas, we sold 3,897 desire chips. Now, guys, again, since 95, these percentages haven't changed very much. Y'all see a slight drop-off? Nearly 15,000 chips down to 3,897. In 30 days, we had that many people split? One-year chips. If you stay sober a year, no pot. Come on, boys. No weekend, just sober. We'll give you a little bronze tip. It's pretty cool. 1,241. Some of you guys, you've got your little phone out, you can do the math. It's less than 9%. Some people just get angry with this. You're making it sound like AA doesn't work. Guys, AA works great if you do it. But the problem is what we see out there and some of the stuff we're going to talk about through the day is that we have so many mixed messages out there for the newcomer. It's like if you're a little newcomer and you don't know which group to go to, you just walk into an AA group. You got it off the internet. You've got it up from intergroup meeting schedules. You walk into a group and we don't Know if they're carrying big books there. We don't I'm not saying that there's a bad AA meeting out there. I'm just saying in certain groups, you will never hear the solution out of the big book because they don't believe in the big books. All they want to do Let's talk stuff. Our own literature can confuse the daylights out of alcoholics if they're not careful. Read that piece of crap. Oh, I just can't. Living Sober. I mean, they're just now in a revision state. They actually added the steps to it so people wouldn't get so confused. I mean they present them and see some of y'all are already getting right at it. See the look on your face. I love that book. They gave it to me in treatment. Rock on. I love it too. It makes a perfect coffee coaster in my office. I just set my coffee off, spill coffee. I'm not going to read it. I've read it, you know. It presents Alcoholics Anonymous as a self-help group. Guys, we've got to get on that same page because if this is going to make you irritated, you need to get you a Krispy Kreme and go smoke. I don't know what to tell you. I'm with you. I'm here. I'm there for you. AlcoholicsAnonymous is a spiritual program of action. It is not now or ever will be a self-help program. If I could have self-helped myself, I would have done it eating out of dumpsters in Houston, Texas. You all follow? The real alcoholic is not going to recover because he changes some of his habits. A real alcoholic's going to recovery as a result of a thing called a spiritual experience with a God that you may not even believe in, for heaven's sakes. But if you do the work, you will. I mean, it's a pretty good deal. There's a guy in my sponsorship lineage real quick, a guy named Don P. Don Pritz. He's passed away a long time. He was a friend of mine. He was an lovely man. And one of the things he says, you can actually hear it on his last talk. He said it other times, but one of those things he said, and I'm paraphrasing, it's not an exact quote, but he says at some point during the game we stopped focusing on recovery and started focusing on sobriety. You'll get it? And a lot of y'all are going to be confused there because you think it's the same thing. Not drinking one stupid long day at a time is not recovery. We talked about it last night. Not drinking with no freedom around it is a nightmare. All of us, anybody in here can stay sober for short periods of time, grinding our teeth. I've stayed sober for weeks just to piss people off. My motives don't have to be great along this. But I can't stay sober living under that kind of pressure. What happens to me is I've got to get taken to a position of neutrality, safe and protected so that the obsession goes away. Y'all are all clear, right? And there's some people that haven't done the work and that's not it. I fight the temptation every day. Welcome. I hope you stay through the day. And I hope this doesn't get too hot for you to handle because we're here for you. We're preaching to the choir. A lot of you guys in here have had spiritual experiences as you know exactly and I'm grateful you're here. But my heart goes out to the cats that are sitting in our rooms so confused about what this is about. Our own fellowship, I'm not going to get into it. This was, I got in trouble from the podium before on this and so I don't want to hit it too hard. This is our wonderful publication, our meeting in print, The Grapevine. Cover title, Don't Drink and Go to Meetings. if that was the solution to the problem don't you think Bill Wilson would have written it in the book I'm not objecting to the idea of going to meetings but I'm just trying to say if you can do this you're not an alcoholic if all you've got to do is go to a meeting to stay sober turn to page 20 in your book if you've got it. We'll go quick with this. Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone. In some of these cases, guys, because I know we've got some little dope fiends that snuck in. This is applicable for the drugs. But I'm just letting you know. Welcome. I know most of you little dope fiends is a garden variety alcoholic. I just need to throw that out there. But that's okay. Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving it up entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone. We call these cheap dates. Take them to a place with a bar, great. Take them someplace they don't have a bar is no big deal. They don't care. They're not there to drink. i never actually knew any of those people personally but then we have a certain type of hard drinker these are bill wilson's words he may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair himself physically and mentally it may cause him to die a few years before his time here's the kicker if if a sufficient strong reason comes along ill health falling in love changing an environment warning from a doctor becomes operative this cat can stop or moderate although he may find it difficult troublesome maybe need medical attention. Got it? Hard drinker. This is where some of you get a little sweaty because you haven't got off the fence yet. And I'm with you. I'm going to help you. But what about the real alcoholic? Bill Wilson's quote, not mine. What about the really alcoholic? The real alcoholic. He understands that everybody that drinks abusively is not an alcoholic. He's talking about the cat that's got the illness. What about the real alcoholic? And he starts off as a moderate drinker, may or may not become a continuous hard drinker. But he loses control once he starts. And then he's spending these pages, guys. And that's what I want to talk about this morning. But Bill Wilson, there's three other places in the book where he separates the different types of drinkers. He understood when he wrote this book that people were going to get confused. Am I saying if you're a hard drink you're not welcome? Absolutely not. You're welcome. I'm saying if your heart newcomers sitting in the rooms, don't assume that the person sitting next to you is a real McCoy. Because maybe all they've got to do to stay sober is to just go to meetings. I want to read something to you. Where's my glasses? If any of you guys get a chance, I've read this from the podium. I hope I get to meet this guy sometime. No, I don't because I'll have to shoot him. I know. It would almost be worth it. Those Texas boys, I don't know. This is an article in Wired Magazine. I love it because I read, you guys send me stuff all day long every time you see something around recovery. And I've collected it for years. But this was an article. In 2012 in WIRED Magazine. Any of y'all know what WIREED Magazine is? Y'all get it? Little computer geeks. It's a great magazine. They got some good articles. But this guy wrote an article and basically the premise, and I'm going to, there's a big blizzard coming in New York. The article starts out this way. Big blizzard Coming in New Work. and they're going to close down New York City. You follow? And everybody in this meeting is freaking out because there won't be a meeting tomorrow because of this blizzard. Everybody's freaked out. The guy that wrote it is not in recovery. He's sitting in this reading listening to these people. That won't been a problem for this thick-set man in baggy beige suit. I can see him in my mind. I bet he's got a beard. It doesn't matter how much snow we get. A foot, ten feet piled up in front of the door, he says. I will leave my apartment tomorrow and go find a meeting. He clasps his hands together and draws them to his heart. You understand me? I need this. Daily meetings, the man says, are all that prevent him from winding up dead in the gutter, shoes gone because he sold them for booze or crack. He hasn't had a drink in more than a decade. So to the millions of people that read this article who are not alcoholics or possibly are alcoholics or are considering going into AA, what can they take from this article? They can take from this article that all you've got to do is be in a meeting every day and you can stay sober. You hear me? Guys, I get emails from all over the world. You keep knocking meetings. Guys, I love meetings. We talked about it last night. My fellowship is the absolute love of my life. But if you have to go to a meeting to stay sober, you're not recovered. You're not well. I've got to make a decision. I'm going to go into my son's little league game and watch him pitch his last game or I'm gonna go to the meeting. If you go to that meeting, I'm going to find you and spank you. Y'all follow? This is the stuff that drives me crazy. This is why I'm so passionate about this. I want people out there to get an adequate presentation of the program. I want them to understand what this is about. Early on, guys, meetings are so important it's not even funny. Go. But I'm saying downstream, you've worked the steps, you've had a spiritual experience. If you miss a day at going to a meeting, you're not going to die. And this idea, this makes us look like a cult. This guy's going to get out in a dangerous blizzard to find a meeting because that's what he has to do to stay sober. Listen, I can't. Shut up, Chris. There's a guy named Dr. Milam up in Seattle one time. This guy was the bomb. Back in the 70s, he wrote this. Alcoholism is selectively addictive and the selection is biological. This is not in the big book. I'm just going to tell you guys. We've got to get on the same page before we get into this first step stuff. Alcoholism and drug addiction, guys, there's a genetic predisposition. For years we've argued this. They've done study after study. If any of you guys ever want to see any of these studies, holler at me and I'll flip them to you in a heartbeat. The jury's in. Dr. Carlton Erickson in the University of Texas believes that almost 60% of this illness is genetic in nature. How many of you, just for the record, just per grin, can see active alcoholism or drug addiction in your family tree someplace? Yeah. There's a few of you who didn't. I'm just saying, you've got to look around. It can skip generations. It's the same kind of stuff. I can look at pictures of me and Myers, and I can Look at Pictures of My Father, and look at this. It's like, God, weird. Y'all see how I stand sometimes? Always like this. I saw a picture of my dad in Okinawa in World War II, and he's standing there like that, and he'd hold it in his wrist. It's exactly... I mean, so much of our life that we thought was environmental is the way we're born. That's just... That's the way they are. That's what we are. Some of us have a propensity for weight gain, for high blood pressure. It's got nothing to do with nothing other than that's the genetic bullets that we got. Just say it. It's progressive in nature and that's one of the things that we always have to kind of watch out for. The symptoms I'm going to talk about are not easily seen if the illness hasn't progressed very far and it will gradually become more apparent as the illness progresses. I just want to mention this thing while we're talking about it. You can't look at this thing chronologically. We look at some of these old geezers in here and says well they're real alcoholics you know old guys but the truth is you you look at some of the young guys in here some of these young people in here are or in worse shape than some of us old guys we their illness progressed so much faster than than it did in us because of some ofthe drugs they exacerbated they started younger than we did um i've been in the industry treatment center business for 20 years and watching the young people come in and watch them that's a lot of these these these people started drinking when they were 10 11 and 12 years old before where their bodies were fully developed. And it will press you beyond recall at a much faster rate. We know genetically that it travels faster in women than it does in men for some strange reason. I just think because they're evil to begin with. I don't know about that. That's called humor, folks. It's just a joke. You can look at it and see. If any of you guys happen to have any North American Indian blood in you, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's just, for years what we thought that was all about poverty, and it's not. It's just the genetics. It's juste that simple. So my external, I left the issue man out here with a little X's around him. My external stuff absolutely exacerbates the problem. And I've got to get in there with it a little bit so your hairs don't catch on fire. I'm going to say, if I'm an alcoholic and I'm doing something wrong, or I'm getting through a divorce or my family's had a death or I'm dealing with poverty or child abuse or something horrible that happened. That can all exacerbate and make this twice as bad. Y'all follow? But good therapy, medications in some cases, time, maturity will allow us to outgrow that over a period of time unless you're genetically predisposed and then you can do all of that and still not be able to drink and drug like normal people. Y'ALL ALL CLEAR ON THAT? you don't have to agree with it but I hope I'm making myself clear there needs to be that genetic my twin brother and I, we caught the bullet I got two sisters that didn't raised in the same family so it's difficult to point a finger and say well I've watched people come to treatment with the finest, most wonderful families on earth and had the worst, sickest little alcoholic you could possibly ever imagine and I've watch people that were raised by wolves literally Y'all follow? Not be alcoholics. They ate kind of sloppy. No, never mind. Very good. Okay. Okay. Here's what we want to do. And hopefully the idea is all of this bring us around is if we can understand this. One of the things that kills me, we were talking about it last night. I don't want to hit it again today. But the big propensity going to the meetings is to tell our war stories. And, again, war stories are really great. as far as the podium goes and a 12-step call. But once we've got somebody sitting in the meeting, already sitting there, we need to be kind of careful with the war stories because that separates us unless... Y'all follow? I never sat down with a woman and talked to her and told her my story about eating out of a dumpster in Houston, Texas, that her eyes didn't glaze over and she checked me out. Y'All follow? I'm just like, okay. I didn't go to prison. And that's the problem. The guy in here with the worst story is not the worst alcoholic. We've just got to get clear on that. Some of you get real grindy about it. Again, Myers quoted it last time. All we have is our story. No, shame on us. If all I've got is a story, we're in trouble because my story won't fix you. If we can connect that story to the symptoms of alcoholism, then we're golden. Everybody in here, when y'all look around the room, we talk about it, we've got some drop-dead gorgeous people in here. We've got a few homely buckaroos in here and that's for sure. We've Got black people, white people, gay people, straight people, Yankee. There was a Yankee in here last night, dead ringer. I heard his accent. You can look, big hair, little hair, and they don't make any difference. I mean, come on, guys, look at this. This is a cross-section of humanity. We've got biker dudes in here and cowboys in here. Look around the room, okay? What ties us together is not all the drama. What ties this together is the symptoms of alcoholism every one of us have. You give me a little 18-year-old girl over here, and you get me next to her, we couldn't put anybody different. But the symptomsof the disease are the same. If we'll ever get around to talking about it, then they can get comfortable in their skin, oh my God, I'm an alcoholic, and they can git with the program. Yeah? If all we do is tell another story, all they're going to do is wait and say, well, I haven't had a blackout yet. I haven' t had a DWI yet. I'm not as bad as you guys. And they are. You could have diagnosed me with alcoholism at 17 years old. Had anybody known the questions to ask? They didn't. we've got to stop scaring people into recovery folks it will not work you might scare them through the door but you're not going to keep them here with fear if you don't remember your last drink you haven't had it my book tells me on page 24 which you can turn to right now somebody asked me the other day what's your favorite page in the book this is it Y'all, we're going to read this one little thing. You stick your finger in it. Middle paragraph. The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd to your mind and deter you. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old bread-bearer idea that this time we're gonna handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove. This is the mental obsession that the book's saying. My big book's telling me you won't remember the consequences of a week or a month ago. Come on, guys. Y'all remember me talking last night about my wife and I told her with tears in my eyes that I would never drink again? And I meant it. And two weeks later, I drank. Did I remember her and the promise I made when it came time to take a drink two weeks later? I didn't even give her a second thought. You follow? You won't remember the DWI. One of the toughest cases that we ever deal with in treatment are liver transplant patients. They come to treatment because they got to get a new liver and they can't get a New Liver because they're loaded. Y'all follow? We have a tendency to not want to give livers to people that are still shooting dope and drinking alcohol. Kind of narrow-minded of us, you know? There's only so many livers to go around, you know, and so that's the deal. And so they come to treatment and you would think they would be the most motivated patient. They're the hardest patient to get through because all they want to do is, you don't understand. If I drink again, I'm going to die. No, you don'T understand. Everybody in this facility is going to die if they drink again. You'll follow? They can't make that leap. I've treated probably seven or eight of them right off the top of my head. I know one of them that got a liver. One of them is still alive. The rest of them are dead. You all follow? The belief that fear would keep them sober, I don't need this stupid big book. I don' t need those steps. All I'm going to do is remember. This is the symptom that kills alcoholics. So let me go through this. There's about 15% of us in the United States. It's higher in some countries. It's less in other countries. Southeast Asia, Asia in general has less incidences of alcoholism than you can shake a stick at. Y'all see any Asians in here? I think I saw one last night. I mean, come on guys, I've treated two in my 20 years in treatment. Two people, Asians. Why? I mean you'd think what? Somebody was trying to say stress is what causes alcoholism. It's like have you seen pictures of Tokyo? You don't talk about stress. I look like a bunch of little ants, you know, just move. Oh, my God. Guys, it's nothing. It's just the genetic predisposition. They drink. They drink lots. They're heavy drinkers, lots of them. But the percentage of actual alcoholics are very slim, very small. It's the way it is. So, I don't know. It's pretty cool, I think. About 15% of us in the United States are alcoholics. So that's the deal. These are the symptoms right here. There's a three-part. Remember we talked about the three-party illness last night, body, mind, and spirit? it. And this is it. This is exactly what Bill Wilson's talking about. Up in the front of the book, from the doctor's opinion up to page 23, we talk about this thing called a phenomena of craving. Got it? Now, this is one of the pieces that separates normal drinkers from the real McCoy, is the phenomenon of cravings. If you don't have the phenomenon of craving, we've got to hold you suspect. We've got find out what's going on with you. Because everybody, it's exactly the same. The 18-year-old, the 80-year old, it' s the saying. When I start to drink, now guys, listen, it doesn't say when I start to drink I drink it to a blackout every time. It says there are certain times I can't control the amount of alcohol I put in my system. So the question we need to ask you first off, if I'm just working with you, the question is when you drink can you guarantee me how much you're going to drink every time? Well I can sometimes. Yeah I know and that's the last essay question I'm going to ask you. It's yes or no. Y'all follow? Can you guarantee me every time? The question we ought to ask, I've seen the brochures about 44 questions, 20 questions. The big book asks me to ask you two questions. They do these multi-page psych socials when they come to treatment. It is like, guys, just cut to the chase. Did you ever get sick drinking? Yeah. Here it is. Did you ever get sick more than once? Yes. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. Come on, guys. Normal people don't do that. I watched my little sister get sick one time. She said, I'm never going to do that again. And she has never done that again and she's had alcohol since then but she gets to a certain spot. She says, no. I said, Lisa, you want another drink? She says no. I'm starting to feel it. me too. Do you want another drink? I don't understand what you're saying. I drink until I puke, right? Go to the bathroom, come back out, wipe my mouth. Must have been the chicken. Must have Been that guacamole. No, it was the 12-pack you drank before you ate the guacamola. You know it. Y'all follow? The physical phenomenon of craving. One of the deals for some of you guys with kids, we were talking to Amanda about our kids earlier and like this. One of those symptoms that y'all need to look at is a high tolerance for alcohol. If you've got little knuckleheads in high school and he's out there training ground a little bit and he starts to drink, you find out that they can drink a high quantity of alcohol. It should have been our indicator that we had a problem. It's the number one thing that you'll start to see. They can drink anybody under the table in that group. And you think, oh, he didn't have a problem, he can out-drink everybody. Be afraid, be very afraid. Because we have this really high tolerance early on When the illness is in its infancy, we can drink huge quantity. Remember those days? Oh my God, stay up 24 hours a day. Go to Willie Nelson picnic and make a fool of yourself. And oh my God. Walk around for a whole day and forget that you didn't have a patch on. Oh my gosh. It was working then, I tell you. Oh God. And towards the end, because of the progression towards the End, I could leave work, have a couple of beers, call Myers about something. And Myra's going to say, have you been drinking all day? In two beers, I'm slurring my words. Have you all experienced that? It's the progression. Buddy, when it worked, it was great. You keep drinking long enough, it's going to keep working, but it's gonna be a pain in the butt. And if you keep drinking longer than that, it's gunna be a hell. Bill Wilson talks about it in A Vision for You. He says, you're gunna know loneliness like few do. You're guna wish for the end. It's a terrible place to be. Of course, nobody, until they get there, believes they're ever gunna get there. Just saying. The physical craving is one of the things that we have to look at. We've got this big old target. Y'all can picture this target. If I could drink... Here, I'll put it up here. This is that little happy spot right there. Right there in the center. That's the little happy place. That's cool zone, buddy. If I can drink and hit that little target, you can't touch me. Y'ALL REMEMBER? Y'All remember John Travolta on Saturday night? Yeah. I probably shouldn't have told that. Never mind. I don't remember it either. Come on, guys. Disco, buddy. I was hot. When alcohol was working, I could outsell you, outwork you, out everything. And then I start getting outside the target a little bit. Chris, you got a little drunk last night at the party. You kind of made a fool of yourself. Yeah, I know. and I'm going to reel it back in. I'm not going to do that anymore. And I don't for a couple of weeks, for a week, for ten days, whatever. And then I get back at it again and I hit, y'all follow? And this is when the glide path starts. I start to drink and I say I'm no longer going to drink. I'm still not going to do it. I'm just going to control it. I'm only going to hold it together. But the craving kicks in and I am off to the stupid races. I keep drinking and I end up... I'm really drunk. I'm drunk. I'm even close to the target. Y'all understand that? This is a drunk driving charge. This is like a fight with your wife. I mean, you really showed your butt with this one. Y'all follow? It's like, oh my God, I really have a problem here. I'm not going to do that anymore. Y'ALL FOLLOW? Yeah. And always, your little mind is telling you downstream, but I can have one beer. You put it in your system and the craving kicks in again and you hold it together for a short period of time and then it explodes again. Guys, look at your truth based on your experience. Don't let me paint a picture that this is you. Ask yourself the question, did you ever set out to drink just a little bit and it ended up getting away from you. I'm going to mention something that a lot of people don't mention, and I think we should. When I do these workshops, when I do them in treatment, I'm talking to the little newcomers, and I'm trying to explain to them what this is about. One of the things that we talk about is this craving, and they get to the space that says, when you drink, do you drink more than you intended ever? And they go, oh, every time. You see, that wasn't my case. We need to understand that at some point in our career, alcohol on certain days can be satisfied. That craving can be justified with different amounts of alcohol. How many of you all remember the days that you had a couple of beers and just went home? I mean, I did that 1,000 times, guys. If I was drinking to a blackout like I did at the end stage stuff, early on in my career, I never would have been as successful as I could have been. It's different in different people. Sometimes the phenomenon of craving is satisfied with three glasses of wine. And I've got it. I'm done. I go home. If you can manage to stay there, then we don't have anything to talk about really. You're a loser. Go away. Okay. But that's not my experience. You'll follow? The book talks about every time. You all with us? So in any group when you do it, somebody will paint a picture that every time I drank, I drank until I passed out. I drank till I was the drunkest on earth. And I think we do the newcomer a disservice if we don'T make that clarification. You all follow? There's a lot of professional business people that we don't see in treatment until 30 or 40 years of drinking history, and then the wheels come off towards the end of their career. Make sense? They drank socially. They got in some trouble. They had some rough days, but it didn't come wheels off until later on down the road. And we were talking about it earlier, and I've sponsored a guy that had two DWIs and he drank twice. Y'all follow? Just absolutely no social time whatsoever. So it's different in different people. I don't know what that's about. The physical craving everybody understands. Any psychiatrist, doctor, TV personalities, they all understand the physical craving. You little alcoholics, once you stop, onceyou start drinking, you can't quit. Okay, yeah, that's right. But you see, at this point, all we're doing is dealing with something. It's like a food allergy at thispoint. You'll follow? Well, if you know you can'ct control it, because sometimes it gets away from you, then quit. Damn! You'll follow? This is what your families think, I've got to tell you. Doesn't she know she's killing the family? Doesn't he know she knows she's going to get arrested? Doesn't He know that He's damaging the kids? Of course He knows. You don't understand what alcoholism looks like. The disease is horrendous. This is the second piece. Y'all follow? Even Oprah understands the physical craving. Guys, everybody understands it. Dr. Phil, everybody understand the physical crave. A treatment center industry, that's our goal in treatment. We're going to keep you away from alcohol, the triggers, anything. Y'All follow? We're gonna keep you way. That's why we keep people in treatment and put them in halfway houses and transitional living. We just warehouse them for years, some of them. You know, we don't want them to get out, which is exactly opposite of what the big book says. Not a fan of warehousing people. Y'all follow? The idea is if I don't put alcohol in my system, I'll get better. But you don't understand. We watch these people go to these halfway houses six, seven months out there and they self-destruct. They come undone. Well, we don't know what happened. He was in a halfway house. He was on the halfway house, untreated alcoholism kicked his butt. Irritable, restless, and discontent came back. Y'ALL FOLLOW? And the mental obsession came back and said, You could eat a Klonopin. for your anxiety. Don't get me started. From 23 to 43, there's 20 pages that talk about the mental obsession. Now, if any of you guys got family members that want to know more about alcoholism, you can hand them the book and say, here, read this. Or you can give them the books and say read from 23 to 44. Bill Wilson continues to refer in several places in the big book and back in the back. He talks specifically about if you've got somebody that doesn't understand the disease If you've got somebody that's fighting about God, let them read these paragraphs. Let them read These Pages because this is what will convince you that you're the real McCoy. These 20 pages saved my life. It wasn't the stupid stories in the back. Thank you very much. It was these 20 pages that finally explained why I couldn't stop drinking. This is the mental obsession, guys. The big book talks about this thing. Go back to page 24 where we were. on 23 we stopped talking about once we put alcohol in our system and then turned the page and now we're talking about what happens when I don't have it in my system why can't I stay stopped the fact is that most alcoholics italicize on the top of the page guys you guys I'm stamping your books today and I'll flip over and look and if you haven't got this paragraph marked I'm going to shame you come on guys If there's a secret handshake at AA, it's this paragraph right here. It's that important. Bill Wilson was crystal clear. Stop worrying about the drama and start looking about the symptoms. The fact is that most alcoholics, he's trying to be very diplomatic, all alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice in drinking. Our so-called willpower becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory and suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. You'll follow? It drives me crazy when I go into an AA meeting and listen to somebody share, I got up this morning and chose not to drink. I didn't. I didn's. I have lost the power of choice in drinking. You'll fallow? Uh-uh. Now, this is why we need the spiritual experience, guys. If you can choose not to do it and make it stick, go for it. But some of y'all are doing it, you're grinding your teeth a little bit now because you've been doing it every day. I get up in the morning and I choose to not... Okay, that's fine, but could it possibly be you've also worked the steps, you've had a spiritual experience and the obsession's just gone? So actually, there's no choice that needs to be made. Y'all know how many times in 26 years I've wanted a drink so bad I could taste it? None. Not once. That's what the book's talking about. If I'm not obsessing about it, I don't have to make a choice. It's the idea that you have a choice and this is where the treatment centers come in because they want to make you believe that you do. You have a chance to have a good choice. Yeah? Guys, I don'T have a CHOICE whether I'M going to drink. I DIDN'T 26 years ago and I DON'T today. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF CHOICES. I WANT YOU TO STICK WITH ME. I'M NOT TALKING OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF MY MOUTH. EVERYBODY IN THIS ROOM, WE HAVE LOTS OF CHOCES, DON'T WE? How many of you guys had to make a choice to come to this workshop this weekend and learn some about our literature or go do something else? But you made a choice to come here. Yeah? Some of you got up this morning and we got on our knees and we did a little prayer with God. Was that a choice or not? Choice. Guys, I choose to stay in recovery. I choose zu stay connected to my brothers and sisters in this room. And I do that every day. One day at a time. This is not self-help for the real alcoholic. For the little disco drunk, hard drinker, you can paint the picture any way you want. But for the real McCoy, y'all follow? These are the two things you got. This is the death knell, the mental obsession. This is what makes this fatal because it doesn't matter. Everybody's sitting in the rooms out there in treatment land, in our AA rooms, waiting for it to get bad enough. Y'all following? I talked to a family member yesterday. When's it going to get good? When's he going to be bad enough for him to quit? Guys, you don't understand. The problem is he's not understanding there's a solution and doesn't think he has to do a solution because he's waiting for his drama to catch up with him. We talked about it last night. Some of you are just too damn pretty. You're too good looking. You're two smart. You're not going to end up... I talked to a lady one time, honest to God. She said, I've never had a DWI. And I said, yeah, yeah. And I watched her out there and she's got a driver for God's sake. There's a limo pull. Do you all understand the rationale behind that? It's like, oh my gosh. I knew this wealthy lady and that's all she did was go from one cruise to another cruise to another cruise. How can you get in trouble at that? It's working for her. She's got endless supply of cash. Some of us... Oh my God. Physical craving, mental obsession. That night in 1987 after that suicide attempt and I walked back in and they started explaining this to me. We didn't talk much about the stories because I was already in a room, but they started to explain it, the phenomenon. Chris, can you tell me some instances where you just weren't going to have a couple? You know, yeah, I was on that date and that really nice girl and I ended up drinking too much and slurred my words and she was afraid to get in the car with me to drive home because I'd had too much and I was embarrassed to death. Did you choose to do that? No, I just did. There you go. You understand the craving? It kicked in and it ain't going to stop until you, yeah? How many of you guys ever raced at 9 o'clock? I don't know about Alabama, what time they closed the liquor stores and the stores. In Texas, you can't buy booze after 9 o'. So, you know, you got to run. I mean, that's where the cops do. They hide out beside the liquor stories and catch you squealing into the parking lot with the kids not strapped in in the back because you were particularly thirsty last night, yeah, No, I started drinking about 6 o'clock and the craving still kicked in and I ran out of booze and I'm not finished yet. I buy a 12-pack of beer, have one beer, maybe another half of a beer, set it on the nightstand and go to bed. It's nothing. I didn't pass out. I'm fine now. I'm okay. The phenomenon of craving was satisfied that night with that amount of alcohol. Y'all follow? And sometimes you'll end up drinking around the clock because you can't satisfy the craving. That's called end-stage alcoholism. It's a crappy place to be. They start putting pressure on you in the middle of sessions, it's the same stuff. Chris, have you been given sufficient reason to stop drinking? Yes. Guys, what's the sufficient reason? It doesn't have to be killing somebody in a car wreck or a DWI or going to jail. What about sufficient reason when somebody that you love leans across the breakfast table and says, You're scaring the bejesus out of me. Would you stop, please? Isn't that sufficient reason to quit? I say yes, I will, and I mean it. I don't understand that I don t have the power to pull that off. That's a fatal segment of alcoholism. Guys, we can get past the physical pace. It s called detox. Once this is out of my system and I'm detoxed, y all follow? It s one of the reasons we re having so much trouble today in treatment trying to detox opiate addicts in the same 30 days we were detoxing alcoholics. It doesn t work very well because you're still detoxing off opiates At 30 days, if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you know what you're dealing with, it's risky at best. Y'all follow? You've got to get it out of their system first. I've been detoxed a thousand times. Guys, I'm a quitting fool. I'm just a better starter. I'm off the races. I want to get with you real quick on this third piece. Again, the two symptoms you need to really look at with a newcomer is the physical craving and the mental obsession. But I think from our sponsorship lineage, we do a lot of people the disservice when we don't talk about the spiritual malady. This is not about a belief in God, guys. The spiritual malady Big Book talks about is this resurgence of the ego. It talks about it in the doctor's opinion about being irritable, restless and discontent. And it talks about on page 52 in the bedevilments. Y'all follow? When I set booze down I've seen hundreds of thousands of alcoholics do it coming through treatment. They set the booze, they set the dope down and they leave Further away from the alcohol and dope than they've ever been, what happens in the internal condition? Y'all look at this. The little issue man. Some of y'all got the little pin. This little internal condition right here is what we have to look at. The internal condition is what Bill Wilson's trying to get us to see. This is the untreated alcoholism. I got the alcoholanddope out of my body. That's not the problem. Come on, guys. Can I get a witness? Sit with it just a second and answer the question. Do you remember times when you weren't drinking and drugging, that your life was so unmanageable it wasn't even funny? Up on the steps when it talks about the first step business, that our lives have become unmanangeable. Bill Wilson's not talking about your external world. Everybody thinks it is. You go into a meeting and start talking. Let's talk about unmanagability today. And everybody will talk about the credit cards and the kids and the drama and the husband and the crazy boyfriend. Everybody's going to talk about them. That's not what the book is talking about. The unmanageability that ties us all together is what happens to me when I lay that stuff down. The alcohol and dope, the stuff that made me okay inside, now I don't have in my system. And I think that's enough. Well, I'm not drinking today. Yeah? Uh-huh. More of us commit suicide in sobriety than we do out there drinking because nobody wants to talk about this. The depression comes back. How many of you haven't seen this? Two, three weeks out, away from a drink and drug, Irritable, restless, and discontent comes by. Y'all follow? I'm driving them crazy. Chris, you look so good, man. I know it. I should have gotten sober years ago. I feel great. Everything's just shit. And then something just happens. I'm diving to work and somebody pisses me off and I'm throwing a finger and I'M IRRITABLE, RESTLESS... Yeah? Somebody passes a memo at work and I didn't get one. I'm going to get fired today. All of a sudden the whole world becomes about me again. I'm all like a big old ingrown hair. You know, I just... Fearfulness comes back. I'm 52 in the benevolence. Y'all are with us? Fearful, depressed, prey to misery and depression, no sense of direction. Yeah? Drives me crazy. This ego starts to reassert itself. Pretty soon I've separated myself from you and everybody else. And at a certain point, with every real alcoholic, the pain of not drinking a stupid day at a time will outweigh the benefits. and the insanity will return, and your head will say, whatever. You can smoke pot. You can eat a Klonopin. Near beer. That's the ticket? Near beer? O'Douls. You can't get drunk on O'Douls. Yes, comma, you can. You've got to drink a case, but what the hell? Y'all understand? My first wife, Some of y'all heard me talk about it. She came home one time and I had a bunch of that. It was called Texas Select in Texas. It was a non-alcoholic beer. I had killed 12 of them in the morning watching some stupid television show. I was in the food business. I worked the night shift. And I had 12 of these things laying down. She walked in and she said, My, you were thirsty this morning. Thirsty? Come on guys. I like Dr. Pepper too but I've never drank a 12 pack in the middle of the night. In the morning. there's enough alcohol in there for the craving to get triggered and now I'm off to the stupid races. Until that craving is satisfied, I'm not going to... Y'all with us? Yeah. I don't want to get this because everybody on the spiritual malady... How many of y'all know family members that are not alcoholics that suffer from the spiritual Malady? They're just not happy. Irritable, restless, and discontent. They'rejustnot... So I don' t want to confuse the issue here. Y' all follow? Because everybody experiences that. Your family members that are non-alcoholics won't experience the physical craving and the mental obsession. Yeah? But if we don't talk about it with a newcomer, what happens is they think they're doing a great job because they're just not drinking, but they're not working the steps. This is why our success rates are so dead gum low is because we don' t start talking about this. It's not okay to be sober and unhappy. You can do it for a short period of time, folks, but that's not what this is about. Sooner or later, you will crumble like a deck of cards. Can you all agree with that? I don't want to put all the importance here. Irritable, restless, and discontent is not what makes me drink. It's just not. I can stay sober through a lot of uncomfortability, but what takes place is it saps all the energy out of anything else. I just want you to understand that just not drinking won't fix alcoholism because eventually this insanity will return and you'll be off to the stupid races. I've got to say this real quick and mention one other little thing. We're seeing, I was talking to one of you last night about it, we're seeing in the industry, treatment center business, we're seen hundreds and hundreds of people who had long-term sobriety coming back into our rooms again, into treatment. 20 years, 30 year people, long-time sobriete, 15 years, 10 years, back in treatment again. What happened for most of them is they got tangled up in prescription medication. How did they get tangled up with that? They went to the doctor because they were unhappy. I'm depressed. I'm not talking about antidepressants. The anxiety, they always end up with an anti-anxiety medication. They start taking benzodiazepines and they relapse. And it's tragic to watch. What happens is a lot of these people, and it certainly happens in my lineage and people around me, is they try to live on a spiritual experience they had 20 years ago. Can you all get down with that? I'm trying real hard. I mean, we really understand the daily reprieve. We really understand that this is a day at a time. My connection with God depends on it. This is what this is about. I'm not excited about my life and living off a spiritual experience. And I had a barn burner in 1987. But I'm nicht leben auf der kulturellen Erfahrung. I'm living off current experience with you guys. Current experience of correspondence I have with current experience with my fellowship and my little recovery club. Y'all follow? You've got to keep it current. Because if you're trying to live off that experience from the past, That's why we work and rework the steps. I stay active in all three parts of the program, and that's what that's about. That's what so many of y'all in here are doing now. You're going to get a new experience from this weekend, and there's lots of people out there that are not. And I hope they get the message, and I hope They Can Come In. We've got to stay... The book talks about staying current, and that is what we're looking for. I want to mention one thing real quick. I've got a couple of minutes. This is a TV commentator. I've talked about this from podiums. This is the TV guy. He's not on the air anymore. And I actually like the guy, but he busted his anonymity on TV and that's perfectly okay with me. It would be perfectly really okay if he would introduce himself as a recovered alcoholic, but he insists on introducing himself as a recovering alcoholic. Y'all follow? Because that's what they told him in treatment. Yeah? He's on Larry King and Larry King's interviewing this guy. this was ages ago this was in 2007 what gets me about these celebrity folks is hey, we have a choice whether we drink or not just get up and make the choice not to drink it's that simple see some of this is going right over your head this word choice is so important it's not even funny and I'm rooting for you this guy on national television with millions of people listening is telling people that all you've got to do He's feeding into the family's belief that if you really loved me, you'd stop drinking. If you really wanted to work here, you quit. And I've got to tell you guys, sometimes this stuff is downright disrespectful. Nobody wants to say anything about it. Nobody wants walk on eggshells. We've got guys in meetings sharing this every day. I got up this morning and chose not to drink. Quit it. If I hear somebody in the meeting, I'm not one to look for fights in meetings, but I've Got to Tell You, if somebody says that in a meeting when there's a bunch of newcomers, I guarantee you, I will follow him up and I will make it perfectly clear that a real alcoholic has lost the power of choice in drinking. Again, I've got thousands of choices, guys. I choose to be in the program. We're not willy-nilly. Everybody thinks we're letting them off the hook. We're Not. But the opportunity for this man to share some hope with the newcomer, he passed it up with the belief of what he understood in treatment is that he had a choice. And maybe he does. Maybe he's not the real McCoy. You'll follow? It's disrespectful when I look at a woman with kids and say that if you love your kids, you'd quit drinking. Shame on anybody that wants to say that. I love my kids. I love the kids. I love family. I love work. I love job. I love country. That's got nothing to do... Y'all understand that? You go up to a diabetic, oh buddy, man, you've got diabetes. I mean, if you really loved your family, you'd quite. What? Next time somebody's puking in the bathroom, I'm going to knock on the door and say, Honey, honey, if you really loved us, you'd quit. What? Guys, I don't have a choice. I didn't ask for this bullet, but I got it. I guarantee you. And there is a solution to it. It's called a spiritual experience. That's what we're going to talk about. What we're gonna end up doing, I'm gonna give Myers a chance to share for just a second. I want to make sure... What we are trying to accomplish today is we're not going to be talking about We're going talk about working these steps at a pretty good clip. again, the guys I sponsor, you've been sober 10 years and we're going to sit down and we'll reread the book and we are going to do some special stuff. There's lots of stuff that we can do. We're going read some other information about those steps. We're open to 12 and 12. We can expand our knowledge of the book until the day we die. Y'all are cool with that, right? But initially going in the door, what this is all about as far as I'm concerned is triage. Some of you nurses in here, y'all know exactly what I'm talking about. And it's like, man, let's stop the bleeding first. Let's get this guy on solid ground. And then downstream we can start splitting hairs. I get a little cranky with people when they sit down with a newcomer. Okay, I want you to read the doctor's opinion for a few weeks. Nowhere in the book does it say that. I'm going to sit down avec you and I'm gong to open the pages and I m going to cherry pick. I m gong t go through this work. I m gonna get you this little sheet and I ll let you read it. Guys, go home and I want yo u to read these pages. But right now we're gong te ask the questions because if I don't get you to a place where you understand what this is about, you're going to leave. The insanity is going to close. There was a great author out there, a guy named William White. He's an absolute... Love this guy. He's the author of a book called Slaying the Dragon. If any of you guys... It's out in its second edition now and it's absolutely fantastic. Wonderful guy. He's out of Florida. But one of the things he talks about... He's got an article. I can send it to you if you're interested. He talks about this little window of opportunity How many of you all have ever recognized that? This little window of opportunity. You come in, you sit down, you get your feet on the ground and you feel pretty good. A lot of the old timers want to make fun of it. Oh, he's on a pink cloud. There's no such thing as a pink crowd. And again, it's a disrespectful... I'm sorry. It's called God's grace. And I believe lots of us experience that. I can think of dozens of times in those seven years I was in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous where I would come in and make a commitment to stay stopped. I would detox. The obsession would go away and I would feel pretty good for a few days. You know, I'm okay. And then the obsession would come back and I'd get caught in what the book calls that mental blank spot and I wouldn't remember my promises or the consequences and Iwould pick up and drink. Make sense? Guys, there's a clock ticking. That window is... I don't know how long it's going to stay sober. Some of you little knuckleheads, you seem to be able to just bounce around for months and do nothing and stay sober That's how cool. Maybe your illness hasn't progressed as far as the person sitting next to you. But when that window closes, you're going to get loaded. No, I'm going to call my sponsor. No, you won't. I'll think through the drink. No, you won'T. Y'all with us? That little window, I don't know how long it's going to stay open. To get through it, I need to work the steps. If you look at the archival material, everybody, Bill Wilson's in Towns Hospital on his ninth day detoxing as Ebby's working the 12 steps with him there. He does a little third step. We didn't even have the steps then, but the rudimentary basis of the steps, the principles, he was working with Bill Wilson. There was a little inventory. He's fixing to go make restitution to the people that he's harmed. He's doing this while the cat's in treatment. I have watched hundreds and hundreds of people have barn-burning spiritual experiences sitting in treatment because they're doing the work in treatment because they are in facilities where they allow them to do that. And this idea that you've got to be sober years before you have a spiritual experience is absolutely ridiculous and does not jive with my experience. Make sense, guys? We've gotto get them through pretty quick. Dr. Bob, I mean, come on, guys, read the archival stuff. In just a few weeks he's worked the 12 steps. He's out there working with other alcoholics. Bill Wilson, the next day after he gets out of the hospital, he's out here looking for number two. Nobody took longer than 30 days, a couple of weeks to work the steps in the early days. Read the archive. I'm not making this stuff up. There's a great book called How It Worked, The Story of Clarence Snyder that talks specifically. It got written by a wonderful guy named Mitchell Kay out of New York. They talk specifically about that. Get off your butt and start working with a drunk and you're going to be okay. But if you listen to somebody tell you that you're not sober long enough to go work with a trunk, you'll die. And we're going hit that so hard this afternoon it's not even funny. We're going talk a lot about that Y'all good? Rock on. If some of y'all are feeling a little tense around the first step stuff on break, and you're out there smoking a butt, do a third-step prayer, and that tension will leave instantly. You got anything? Anybody got a real quick question? I've got about five minutes actually on my time. The question is about first step, not sponsorship, not anything else. We're going to do this by step by step. We're gonna group these together. Someone already said last night, I said, y'All are going to go through all the steps in one day? Yeah. And if we were doing it the way we wanted to do it, we would be finished by noon. Guys, it's not that complicated. Y'all follow? It's just not that difficult to do. Bill Wilson didn't intend for that to happen. Questions on anybody? No? What's that? Do you hear what she's saying? Working with somebody that had long-term sobriety under their belt and then relapses, it's a challenge to get them back on track. One of the damages that we do is that we tell them to come back as a newcomer. And I don't want them to do that. They've got 10 years of sobriery. They've Got all that experience. Come back with a recommitment to do the work. One of things I find with the people that had long-term sobriety and lost it and I'm sure Myers can attest where did he go it was the rapture real quick and I'll answer one of the things that we look at with long-terms sobrietry with people that relapse is dishonesty one of those first things I sat down when one was coming back in I said buddies give me the areas that you're being dishonest in because I guarantee you there's always a little piece of dishonesty that untreated alcoholism started to come back and I've started to rationalize why it's okay for me to have a little affair or cheat on my finances a little bit or you know what I'm saying or today again statistically I've gone to a doctor and a well-meaning doctor who should have known better and didn't has prescribed something that will trigger that physical craving and they're off to the stupid races. Make sense? Yeah, yeah. Let's go smoke guys and we'll come back. Thank you.