“One Drink Fixed My Fear of People, So I Had a Thousand More” – Barb C.

Hi, I'm Barbara. I'm an alcoholic. Was it Diane that asked me? Thank you. Get back at you. My sobriety date is August 16th, 1992. And my home group is the West Portland Group, up in Portland obviously. And my husband and I came down here to watch his little brother play baseball for the Dodgers. and he got traded. So my husband said, we might as well, you know, we're going to AA meetings so we might as well be there and hear our favorite speakers. So just kidding, just kidding. What it was like, what happened, what it's like now in a nutshell. I hit my bottom right over on Camrose Cam Rose, right by the Hollywood Bowl, 15 years ago, almost exactly 15 years ago. My entire life I had felt very much on the outside and very uncomfortable in my own skin, just really miserable. Even if I had success, even if people praised me, even if I felt like I was in the right place, I just could not fit into to the world. And when I was 16, my mother had gotten rid of my alcoholic father and she felt like she had finally found a solution to getting some peace within our family. And then she took me to a wedding reception and there was a couple of really popular kids there. And I had had a lot of sips of alcohol. You can't grow up around an alcoholic and not at least try a sip, but that That had not been a sufficient amount to get into my system and do the magic. And at this reception, this guy, his name was Dennis, he pushed this beer across the table. And, you know, I was upset because the bride was getting a lot of attention. And, uh, you now, I'm just kind of a wallflower and I thought, I am here, you knoW. Um, but at the same time there is that bravado and then there is the feeling of, you kow, don't look at me, I'm not worthy, you know, just I'm such a, you know, less than. And so my mom was across the room and it never occurred to me to say no thank you, even though I had seen all, just a lot of sadness and wreckage in my family of origin. I just took that beer and it was instinctual and I just slugged it down probably a third of it. And I physically felt it first, but I drank a little bit more and I believe this is what makes me alcoholic. The room was a hostile place where I was not good enough and yet I was, you know deserved more attention and I drank alcohol I got a sufficient amount in me I looked up and the room had changed completely. I was completely comfortable I mean completely and I'd only had maybe half a beer but I weighed 128 pounds and I was 16 years old and I'll tell you something thing my mother can move when she wants to and she was across that room and on me and she tore me out of that wedding reception threw me in our little honda and drove home and that summer breeze was the best breeze i'd ever felt and she told me to go to my room i was in trouble which i isolate so god you know that's not punishment and i put on my little headphones on my stereo and i listened to the cars a song called moving in stereo and it moved from side to side now that's no big deal now but that was a big deal then and i've been listening to that song for a long time and it was magic and i just laid there and i all i could think was this is going to happen again this will happen again and from that moment on no exaggeration every waking moment i pursued drinking because i I had gone from someone who could not function in the world, who always felt like everyone else had all the information. I'd gone from just being completely on the outside. All of a sudden, I had the solution of how to actually take a full breath, how to settle into my skin, and I felt a part of something. And it's interesting because all of my buddies that I had hung around with prior to that, turns out were all alcoholic. And none of us hadn't even really drank yet, but I intuitively knew who to connect to. And then we had that one poor little Al-Anon, you know, that drove us and held my hair back when I vomited. You know, those good friends. And so, you Know, I pursued my drinking as best I could. I never really looked old enough, but I had a boyfriend who had a mustache and beard, and, you Now, I didn't really like him with big nose and everything else. If there's anything wrong with big noses, he was not attractive. But he could buy alcohol, so that's why I stuck with that boyfriend. friend. And I went to college and, you know, my alcoholism progressed, I would say slowly. I got sober when I was 28, so I only drank for 12 years. But when I went to college, I actually met my husband, Chris, and his alcoholism progressed very quickly. And in contrast to mine, I thought, now that guy needs to quit drinking. He had a problem. And that's what I often did. I surrounded myself with, you You know, he wasn't a lower companion, but he was a harder drinker. And his disease was further along. And he was blackout drunk. And my drinking was just a lot of vomiting, a lot patheticness, a lot values thrown aside, a lotta dreams unrealized, and just a lotta kind of volatility. I'm a person that has a really bad temper. And I don't like being told no. I don' t like the way you drive. I don''t like the wa y you look at me. I have a lot o f opinions. minions, and so when I drink, you know, everything's like butter. It's not a problem. It was just smooth. Life is very, very comfortable. I graduated college, and I realized that the problem was Oregon, wouldn't you? And I had been born in Northern California. I'm an Oregon, I'm a California girl, I thought, so I moved to Southern California. My goal was to become mayor of San Diego. I hate politics, and And I got a degree in elementary education, so I have no idea what I was thinking. But I thought, you know, I was always trying to figure out what will complete me because the reality is that I could not stay drunk 24-7. And so there were big chunks of dryness in between the rewards. And I'm one of those alcoholics that really strives to pay my bills, to suit up and show up, to show up to work. I'm like the opposite. I'm just this extreme. I'm willing to die for my look good. I want you to perceive me as an earth person, as a successful, normal person. And so I came down here, and I had dated that guy in the front row there in college briefly, and I told him never to come around when he was drunk, and he came by one night. And I said, don't you have to come round when you're drunk? He's like, I'm always drunk. You know? Yeah. That was my favorite kind of guy. But I promised myself I wouldn't end up with a man like my father. My dad's an alcoholic, and that was one of my promises, that I would not become like my Father and I would never be like him. I would marry my father and I became my father, technically I married my father...creepy. Don't go anywhere with that one. Anyway, I spent five years down here in Southern California and I took a life that was full of promise and I dove it hard into the dirt. I just blew it up, and I ended up with this long-haired loser who I was supporting and took more time in the bathroom than me. And it was an ugly, ugly life, and he was in the industry, you know, and he just thought he was all that. And I'm like, anyway, he did B movies, and He Was a Loser. And not that there's anything wrong with B movies. You can say that in Oregon, and people are like, B movies? I don't even know what that is. But, you Know, I just had a broken picker. And what ultimately happened is that Chris came down to Southern California, and we had stayed in contact. And we met up down in Laguna Hills. I had a friend down there. And we just took a drive on the beach. And he said, you know what, Barb? You deserve to be happy. And it had never really occurred to me that I was truly miserable. And what was happening is that every once in a while when I really tied one on, I wasn't even getting buzzed. I was getting no relief, nothing. And it scared me. And yet I still didn't realize that alcohol was my best friend. So Chris was up in Oregon. I moved to Oregon because the problem is Southern California. And I went back to Oregon, and I moved in with Chris, and he said, I said, I won't drink if I live with you. I won' t drink. We got engaged, and within a short period of time, the cops had been called on us. I was completely and utterly insane. I was more uncomfortable than I'd ever been in my entire life. And he asked me, If you were to drink, what would you do? And I said... Oh, I'd go down to Santa Fe. It's a bar. I have a double shot corporate gold with a beer back and head over to the Mission Theater that serves alcohol, and I get a couple of pitchers of beer, and we go from there. I couldn't even find the grocery store, but I knew that. And he said, what would your mom do? My mom's not an alcoholic. She'd have a grasshopper. She'd drink half of it and let the rest evaporate. She makes me crazy. What would your dad do? My dad says he's an alcoholic, and my dad would go down. I have double shot, corporate gold, with a bear back. And I stopped short, and he said oh, my God, am I an alcoholic? And he says you're going to have to decide that for yourself. and I went to my first AA meeting the next day. I am an alcoholic. The people in that meeting talked about alcoholism. They identified themselves as alcoholics. It saved my life. If anything else had been discussed, I swear to you I would have turned the other way and never come back because I'm an alcoholic and I need to have identification. I deeply believe I'm different than and apart from, so if I don't have that connection, that's it. I'm gone. So I've been sober almost 15 years. My life has just been amazing. I've been married almost 15 years to the same man, and I like him. We drove all the way from Oregon, Portland, and no bruises. You know, I've raised two dogs, andI don't have any children, and I have the best life that you could possibly imagine. For those of you that are new, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. You have found your home if you're drunk like me. Thanks. This is a speaker workshop meeting. Our main speaker will share with us, and then there will be a 10-minute period for questions and answers. At this time, it is my great pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker. Would you please join me in welcoming Chris C. from Portland? Hi, my name is Chris. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is February 5th, 1987, and My home group is the West Portland Group. Thanks, Chuck, for asking me to come talk. And that part my wife talked about where she said the cops were called on us and cops were calling on her. I was sober. Anyway, welcome to all the new people. And I don't know if anybody will get anything out of anything I have to say, but I know that when I come and I share my experience with the idea that it may benefit somebody else, I get something from it. It enlarges my spiritual life, so I'm grateful for that opportunity. A little bit of what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. My drinking career was only 11 years long, and for whatever reason, it progressed very rapidly. In those 11 years, just to kind of sum up my drinking, I was arrested 15 or 16 different times for alcohol-related arrests. I had three DUIs, went to two treatment centers. I was somebody that became a daily oblivion drinker. I drank to unconsciousness and blackout on a daily basis the last couple of years, somebody that lost control of my bodily functions and wet the bed on a fairly normal basis. And in the last year and a half, I was pretty much just living to drink. And just to give you an idea where my head can still go sometimes today, I was speaking a few years ago at a meeting, And before I went into the meeting, I was thinking how I was going to start my talk off. And I thought, well, I'll just kind of summarize some of my drinking low points or high points. High points in AA. Low points before we got here. And so I was kind of going through my head. Okay, 15, 16 arrests, three DUIs. I used to get alcohol withdrawal at the shakes. I'd have auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations when I'd come off of alcohol. Detox hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal. and I was going through the thing and all of a sudden my head goes maybe I'm not really an alcoholic and I recoiled from that thought as if from a hot flame however, I've got to tell you those are the type of thoughts that at one time used to get me drunk because I would have this insane idea that somehow I was different than you guys and that I wasn't a real alcoholic or I was a different version of an alcoholic or that I was an alcoholic but I would be able to control and enjoy my drinking. And an insane thought like that would go right down until it didn't seem insane at the time. It only seems insane in hindsight. But those things don't necessarily make me an alcoholic. They're a pretty good indication I'm an alcoholic, but all my life when I wasn't drinking, I was somebody that felt different than and apart from. I felt alienated from everybody. everybody, I felt less than. I had a tremendous inferiority complex coupled with a superiority complex. I have these feelings of impending insanity and impending doom. I was hypersensitive. Just a casual glance would send me reeling. I was hyper self-conscious and terrified of people. I was so terrified of the people that if I was walking down a street, walking on the sidewalk walk and somebody was coming the other way, I would literally cross the street so I wouldn't have to have eye contact with another human being. And if I did happen to stay on that side of the street, I could just look at the cement and walk by and hope they wouldn't say anything to me. Now that was the way I reacted to life when I wasn't drinking. If I had ten drinks in my system, however, it was a whole different ball game. I could talk to people, I can look them in the eyes. Those feelings of difference and less than and so so forth, went away mostly. I mean, not totally. Early in my drinking career, a lot of my drinking was just for relief. A certain amount of alcohol gave me relief from the, my underlying causes and conditions and that ism that I had. And, uh, I've heard people say in Alcoholics Anonymous that, um, that they believe that alcohol actually preserved their sanity. I'm one of those. I believe that I'll call preserve my sanity. Had I not had that medication to take on a a regular basis, I think I just, you know, I would have exploded like a pressure cooker. Later on in my drinking, it became the fuel, the solution allowed me to go out and participate in life. And, you Know, 10 drinks made me feel the way that I thought you guys, well, not you guys, but those people out there felt normally. And the problem with that is, and the truth is this, is if I could have maintained what what those 10 drinks did for me, I never would have came to Alcoholics Anonymous. The problem is that I suffer from that phenomenon of craving and a loss of control. After I get a certain amount of alcohol in my system, I crave more and I can't stop feeding that craving and I totally lose control. In the beginning, it was just occasionally I would get that and then later on it was pretty much on a daily basis and I drank into oblivion. Early on in my drinking, I was a daily drinker my entire drinking career for the most part. Early in my drinking career, I ran away from home on numerous occasions. I'd get drunk, run away from my home, feel guilty, remorseful, and come back home. I was kicked out of high school as a result of drinking. I wrecked my first car when I was 14 as a reason for that. As a result, I was given my first field sobriety test at the age of 16. You know, I drank a lot. And when I was kicked out of high school, I went to work in the woods logging up in Oregon. I grew up in Portland, and I was kind of a maybe upper-middle class family. And my dad came from a lumbering family, where most kids rebel against their parents. In Portland they were doing it by haircuts and tats and stuff like that, I just went into the industry that he ran from and I became a logger. I spent about two years working in the woods logging and I drank with some true professional drinkers. And at the age of 18, I stood out as the lush. I stood up as the rush on the crew. I got our crew kicked out of taverns. And already I was starting to attempt to control my drinking. drinking. When I was about 16, it was the first time I recognized the loss of control. I had gone out to a kegger in high school. I went to a private high school and we drank very similar to the way that people drink in college and that is we have keggs on Thursday night, Friday afternoon, Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. I want out this this one time, and most of the time my drinking was intentional to drink to intoxication. This time, however, I had something that I wanted to do the following day. So I planned, okay, I'm only going to drink maybe six or seven cups, keg cups of beer at this kegger because I need to get up tomorrow morning and do whatever it was I was going to do. And I ended up going to this keg. I went into a blackout, and the next thing I know, I came to the next morning. I had no recollection of driving home or anything like that. And I thought, you know, it's interesting because I had no intention of this happening. And I had that, this kind of fleeting thought that there's something really wrong with this. And that just became, that became the norm for me. I also very early on in my drinking realized I was somebody that had, my emotions were just totally out of control. I mean, I just, I mean I lived with like this lump of emotion in my throat. It just burned, you now. You know, if somebody did something to me or, you know, I fancied that somebody did something tome, you now, I just would live with this emotion and I learned right away that a certain amount of alcohol, when I would drink that alcohol, it would just simmer those emotions and take me back to being even. You know? I was so tightly wound, I felt at all times like I was about ready to break, and then and I'd drink, and I could just breathe. And then I was okay. Anyway, in the logging business, not only did my disease of alcoholism in terms of the drinking progress, but the isn't progressed as well. And I became a worse drinker, but I also became more insane. I had the despair and the loneliness. I heard somebody once say that they almost died of loneliness. Man, I really identify with that. I was somebody that almost identified with loneliness, or I almost died with loneliness. During that time period, I remember I drove this truck for this logging company and it had the big truck mirrors on the side and I couldn't look at myself in the mirror without getting teary-eyed. I mean, I was in so much pain and despair when I wasn't intoxicated. And fast forwarding, in the fall of 1985, I had a conversation with myself and I determined that I couldn't sink any lower than I'd already sunk. This is several years forward. And I decided that I'm no longer going to try to control my drinking. I've been battling this. You know, I did a 30-day stint without drinking. I've got all sorts of plans and so forth to not drink and would end up drinking. And I just gave up the control. And so I gave up The Control and I went for the following three weeks after making that decision, I blacked out every day, and I drink to blackout every day. And at the end of three weeks, I thought to myself, my God, am I going to ever be able to stop this? But second thought was immediately was, I don't care. This is the happiest I've ever been. No job, no responsibilities, and daily oblivion drinking. I've heard that alcoholism is the only fatal progressive disease that has a fun phase, and this was... And that was my fun phase. And it lasted for about two months. And in that two months, because prior to that, my drinking was primarily just relief drinking. It was despair drinking. And during this period, I actually was able to engage. I was a bar drinker, and I was in a bar where the type of drinking I did was acceptable and all sorts of weird behavior was acceptable and I was engaging in some pretty weird behavior too. And at the end of those two months, once again I started trying to control and enjoy my drinking or stopping altogether. And I went through a series of different things. You know, I tried eating certain foods. I tried drinking glasses of water in between drinks. The only thing that that ever did is I wet the bed earlier in the night. But I tried everything and I gave it my all. I mean, I gave everything I could to not drink and would drink. And it was on a daily basis. I would come to full of guilt, remorse, shame, which was the way I had been living for a long time. Regardless of what happened the night before, whether I had done some sort of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralizing thing or whether it was just a night of drinking, I still suffered with this guilt and shame every morning. I would piece the night together, piece the blackout the best I could together and I would swear off And I would have, like, somewhere after swearing off, several hours later, I'd start to feel a little bit better. I'd get through the shakes, get throughthe sweats, all that. And so a light bulb would go off in my head and say, if I only drink some way, you know, this way tonight, and I wouldhave some strategy in where I was going to drink, and it would make total sense, and Iwould drink again. And I did that day in and day out. In June of 1986, I went out and did do a pitiful and incomprehensible demoralizing thing. And it came to the next morning with one of those ones, oh my God, I can't believe I did that. I was living in a town called Ashland, Oregon. I got out on the freeway. I knew I needed to stop drinking. I was afraid of the DTs by this time. So my plan was is I was going to go through the withdrawal process from alcohol and wean myself off of alcohol. I got out on the freeway, hitchhiked up to Portland. That first night up in Portland, I think I drank five or six beers. The second night, I drank like two or three beers. And then the last night, or the third or fourth night, I can't remember how it went, but I didn't drink anything. And I came apart. I started getting the shakes. I had the anxiety. I was having anxiety attacks over and over again. My head would not stop. I was racing. And I had a visual hallucination the night before, which really scared me or I might have been may not have had the truth is I may not have had that visual hallucination I was so concerned about having hallucinations I may have dreamt that I had that hallucination I'm not sure I mean I was so out of it I definitely had the auditory hallucinations I was somebody that when I would come off of alcohol after a day or two I would get this like weird organ music playing behind me and then I'd hear this Chris and I'd do that several times before I realized And actually, I literally thought that everybody that had a hangover had auditory hallucinations. I had no idea that was part of alcohol withdrawal. Anyway, I checked into a detox. And so I weaned myself off of alcohol for three or four days. I went into this detox. They filled me full of Librium, kept me in there for five days and monitored my blood pressure around the clock. While I was in there the five days, there was these guys coming in that were old men and they were seeing snakes. They truly were having visual hallucinations, seeing snakes come out of the wall and so forth. And they were ejected into the treatment center after three days. And I'm still there after four or five days. And I suddenly realized what this treatment center was doing. They were holding me in the detox longer to try to convince me that I'm really worse than I really am. And so I felt that there's this conspiracy to keep me in this treatment set. So, anyway, I had a physical from the staff physician who said I had this, you know, I had liver problems and that if I didn't stop drinking, I'd probably have full-blown cirrhosis within the next five years, most likely definitely within the Next 10. I, again, thought this was like the treatment center closer, you now, who was just trying to sign here for our 30-day program. and I did stay for the program. I went through the treatment. I was exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous at that time. However, whether I had selected hearing or whether it was the meetings that lacked a primary purpose that I was going to, I did not identify with AlcoholicsAnonymous. Came out of that treatment center and within a couple weeks I was drinking again. Soon after that I did a geographic up to Alaska and went up to a dry logging camp about an hour and a half float plane ride from Ketchikan and got up there. I worked for three weeks and had no alcohol, didn't have any problems. I work six days a week, rested on Sunday, worked six days. There was nowhere to go. I mean, it was an hour and a half flip plane ride from anywhere and from the nearest tavern or bar or liquor store until these guys showed up with a bottle of liquor. And these guys, they showed I showed up and they said, do you want to drink? And my head very quickly calculated, well, it's been three weeks. I haven't had DTs. I haven' t even had a craving. I must not be an alcoholic, sure. So I took the bottle and I tipped the bottle open and went dunk, dunk, dunk, and they grabbed the bottle from me and they said, hey, we've got to make this last. I thought we were going to sit there and drink the bottle. Now, the problem is that I suffer from that phenomenon of craving and I had probably the equivalent of about three or four shots of whiskey in me and no liquor. So I sat there that night with like an itch that I could not scratch. I mean, I was just coming unglued. So next morning, I caught a float plane into Ketchikan. There's a bar in Ketchikian called The Folksel. And the Folk's Bowl is like this notorious drinking bar. It's where all the loggers and the fishermen meet, and they knife each other and fight and all this. We'll just give you an idea of what kind of art it is. When you go in and you order, say if you order Jim Beam's, they give you the bottle of Jim Beam with a glass on top. And that's the way they serve it. So I went in there with this guy named Dan. This guy from camp, his name was Dan. And we sat down, and he must have been on his fourth drink or something. I don't know. But all of a sudden, he turned to me and said, so you think you're pretty badass, don't you? And the night just erupted from there. And I ended up in jail in Ketchikan that night. And I was kind of a cop fighter also. I wasn't, which I don' t have time to talk about that. I went in. I was thrown in this jail. And just to give you an idea of how pitiful I am, my wife hates when I tell this story. just giving you how my mind operated I was fighting with the cops all the way they beat me up pretty bad by the time I got to the police station or the jail and I was still fighting within the jail and they threw me into a holding cell with two other guys and because I was finding they had strip searched me and they throw me into the holding cell naked and then threw my orange jumpsuit in after me and I thought as I was going through the door okay, I'm walking into a holdings cell and Ketchikan, Alaska, where women are scarce in the first place and I'm in jail, I better do something to ward off any advances. And so I walked over naked and punched the wall in the cell and then dropped to the ground and did about 25 push-ups then put on my orange jumpsuit thinking in my mind that throughout the jail this rumor was going to spread that, you know, God, you've got to watch out for that guy. You know, he's some sort of badass. But the truth was, it was pathetic. When I woke up, the guys were like, God, what were you on last night? Anyway, when I came to in the morning, the guy on the top bunk was hanging over looking at me and he said, he goes, hi, my name is so-and-so. He goes, I'm from Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got 30 days sober and I'm in here. or my sponsor made me come in here and do some amends. I owe 10 days of jail time because I tried to commit suicide. And I remember looking at him, he was hanging from the top bunk, looking at me like that. I thought, my God, I can't even get away from AA in here. Anyway, when I left Ketchikan, I was released after I went to court and so forth, and when I leave Ketchikian, never once did I think I have a drinking problem. And as the plane was taking off Ketchikan, I thought to myself, I will never come to Alaska again. You know, it was always something or somewhere else, you know, but it had nothing to do with me. Anyway, I ended up back down in southern Oregon and a town called Ashland is right on the border of California and Oregon. I owed eight days of jail time for my third DUI. I did the jail time on weekends. Starting in January of 1987, I'd go in on Friday nights, come out on Sunday, spend the weekdays doing what I was supposed to be doing, something besides what I was doing. And I'd come back in and I'd spend the weekends. Between the third and fourth weekend on a Wednesday, I managed to get arrested in between my stints in jail. And the Ashland Police Department knew me on a fairly regular basis by now. I mean, in my last 12 months of drinking, I was arrested nine times for alcohol-related deals with the exception of one arrest I did have that had not a lot to do with alcohol. I had a warrant out for my arrest and somebody had stolen my car and I called it in stolen and they came and arrested me and they said you can either spend the day in jail or get your fourth DUI. But anyway, I'd been arrested nine time and the police took me aside and they said, you know, Chris, you've got a hell of a drinking problem. You've got to do something about this. Go see this guy, Joe Fisher. He's an expert on alcoholism and he can help you out. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Sure, I'll go see this guy, Joe. The following day, or yeah, it was the following day because it was Thursday, I was walking down the street and in Ashland there was one of these sidewalk preachers that would stand there and read scripture to anybody that would come by and I was coming by and he read something out of the Bible and I kept walking and then it suddenly dawned on me and I had no idea what it was but somehow it clicked and I thought it seemed to be related to the police telling me to go see this guy Joe Fisher and I though now if I was one of those AA people and there are no coincidences I would think that this is God and some sort of fate and I should actually act on that and I took a few more steps and I thougth to myself What would happen if for once in my life, I didn't dismiss something like this as being trivial and stupid and actually did act on it? And almost out of my own amusement, I acted on it. And I remember kind of smiling to myself as I was going to walking towards Joe Fisher's office. And I went into Joe Fisher'S office, initially wouldn't see me because he knew who I was. And when his secretary said, what do you want? I said, I want help with my drinking problem. And I really did. I desperately wanted to quit drinking. And as she was going to get him, I remember thinking, please be aversion therapy. Please be 10 days and a couple two-day follow-ups. And now you have five years and your life's wonderful, but not Alcoholics Anonymous. And sure enough, Joe took me into his office and he was a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous. And he told me his story and at the end of telling me his stories, invited me to a meeting and out of a sense of obligation since I did ask for help I went to the meeting I did not want to go I had already had exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous and I just didn't have any interest in going but I went sat in the back of the room and at this meeting it was a speaker discussion meeting and when there was somebody that was new at the meeting what they would do is they generally it was an topic and they'd talk about a topic and then they'd call on people but when there was somebody new I knew they would make the topic a little bit of what it used to be like, what happened and what it's like now. The speaker talked for about 20 minutes, shared their story, and then started calling on people. And little by little, I started identifying. I drank like that. I drank with that. I thought like that, I felt like that and there was one guy a couple rows in front of me and he stood up and he talked about coming out of a blackout with a revolver in his mouth and then going back into the blackout and coming to the next morning with the revolver on the floor or next to him. And I had almost the exact experience and it gave me goosebumps. I came out of a blackout and I was holding a carving knife to myself and I'd gone back into the blackout and I came to later in a chair with a carving knife next to me. The only difference is I had stepped up the furniture throughout the house. But I came away from that meeting with a sense of hope because I'd identified here were some people that drank the way I drank they thought the way I thought and they felt the way I felt and they weren't drinking and the next day I didn't take a drink which was remarkable because of the way I drank but I didn' t keep coming back so I ultimately drank again and I drank for I think about a week more and on February 4th 1987 I went out one more time to prove that I could drink or can control my alcoholism and my plan was as I was going to go out drink 10 drinks cut it off and at 10 or 11 o'clock that night I would come home go to bed get up the next morning and be like a regular civilian. The guy that was supposed to come pick me up to take me to the bars was late. I drank 9 beers in my living room waiting for him before we headed to the bar so I already kind of blew my limit before we even headed down to the bars. Went down tothe bars I remember I had one hand over one eye. I was drinking vodka Collins, and in one bar I went to another bar, which was my drinking hole, and sat down and was drinking there. I was in and out of a blackout, but I remember having a conversation with the bartender. His name was Cliff, and I had some of those light bulbs go off in my head, and I thought if only I was a bartender, then I wouldn't have the problems. That way I could work, drink, get up, work, drink, and just live in a bar. and I was a shoo-in for the job Cliff assured me that I had the job but a little bit later he cut me off from drinking which they never cut anybody off in this bar so I grabbed Cliff and pulled him across the bar and was going to work him over on the bar and he kind of weaseled away from me and ran into the refrigerator and locked himself in there and called the police and I took off running through backyards which was something that I was accustomed to doing and running through backyards and the police chasing me and finally the police caught me and they ended up catching me and I don't know what happened because that night was not really that big of a deal compared to a lot of the stuff that I've been through but something happened inside me something changed I couldn't do this anymore and they took me in they arrested me they booked me and then they took my home that night and I went to bed and my last conscious thought before I passed out was I wonder if I'll feel this way in the morning and I did when I came to I was at a bottom death was a more attractive alternative than continue living the way I was living at that point had I had a crystal ball that morning that said if you just drink for another 90 days or another 6 months you'll be dead I would have drank until I died my fear was is that I was going to continue to live for another year or two and I was gonna spiral down this miserable existence of a life that I had created further and further and have to endure this for another one or two or five or ten years. And I cried out to a God that I did not want to believe in and I said, God, please make this stop or kill me. And that was February 5th of 1987 and I became willing to do what they had said in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because of that Clay Street meeting where I'd been the week prior where they had talked about alcoholism that I identified with and were not drinking, I knew that there was a place to go. And so I checked into Alcoholics Anonymous and I started doing the things that they told me to do. They said, go to 90 meetings in 90 days, get a big book and start working the steps, get a sponsor and I stated doing that. And all was well for about 44 days and at the end of 44 days I had an anxiety attack which I'd never had before. I ended up in the hospital and I'd done the first three steps by the way. And I kind of missed that place in the book where it says that although this was a vital and crucial step, it'll have little permanent effect unless it's once followed by this next step, the fourth step. And so anyway, I started going crazy in sobriety. And I don't have a... I'm kind of running out of time, but I'll just tell you that what finally happened is about nine months of sobrietry, I hit another bottom in sobriety, and I surrendered again. And I came to the conclusion that I'm going to work steps four through 12 exactly as they're outlined in the big book with my sponsor, like he had been urging me to do and the other members of the group had been doing. And if I get to step 12 and I still feel the way that I am, then I'm gonna commit suicide. So I started in on my fourth step, and I wrote a very thorough fourth step and got together with my sponsored to do my fifth step. did my fifth step halfway through my fifth up I went into the restroom to take we took a break and I went in the restroom one of the things that I had always done is I'd always go to the mirror and I would judge myself you know it either come from somewhere in my soul and I'd either say I built myself up you know I'm great I'm this on that and that lasts for about two minutes it was fleeting then I go right back to being a loser generally it was I would tear myself down I would look in the mirror I go this is what's wrong with me this is what's wrong with me, you know, God, what's wrong with Me? And it would come from the soul. Anyway, halfway through this fifth step as I was looking in the mirror, I was looking and I didn't get that reaction. And I started, I said what is this? What is this that I'm sensing? What is this I'm feeling? And I realized that what it was was comfort. And it was the first time that I'd ever experienced comfort in my own skin without a certain amount of alcohol in my system. and I went from there did my fifth step I did steps six and seven and several weeks after doing six and seven, my entire world had changed. Nothing had changed but everything had changed as they say it just was as if a shift had happened internally within me and I started having some peace in my life the fear and anxiety started dissipating the hate and resentment towards everybody on the earth started going away Anyway, the self-consciousness started drifting a little bit. The self-pity was a ton of the self pity was removed. A lot of my character defects, you know, a lot of them were removed. Some of them just enough of the power was taken away from them to where I could go out and function comfortably in life. And I went into the steps eight and nine and got the benefits from there. And, you know, I am sober from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous today. And I'm not somebody that – I didn't like AA when I came here. I didn' t like God. I didn''t like, you people. I didn ''t like anything about it. But I knew it worked. And I started doing it because I saw it working. And I just hoped that it would work for me. And I found that it did work for m me. I live a life today that I could have never imagined living. I wish I would have taken a little more time to talk about some of that stuff, but through a set of circumstances and curious circumstances and coincidences, I met my wife and was married to the woman I always wanted to marry. Through intuitive thoughts and through prayer and meditation, I ended up getting a job, and the type of job that somebody like me doesn't get. And then I ended through practicing the principles of... I had heard Chuck Chamberlain say, you know, wiping out a record and practicing that in this job that I ended not liking. I ended owning 50% of the business in that industry and have grown in that in industry. So, you know, everything in my life today is a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, as a design for living, when I put this thing first and I really live this thing, most of the time my life goes pretty good. Most of the times I'm reasonably comfortable in my own skin. My reaction to life circumstances because life still happens happens is significantly different than the way that it once was. And, you know, there's only been two things that have ever worked in my life and that was 10 drinks and they gave me a certain amount of comfort and ability to go out and participate in life and taken a whole bunch of God-centered and other-centered action and that has given me peace and comfort and allowed me to go outside and participate. And I can't live in between because in between If I can't, if I'm not drinking and I'm not doing and living this thing my life is, you know I'm just, I'm nuts and uncomfortable so very grateful to have been asked to do this and grateful to be sober today. Thanks. Now it's time for questions and answers. Please feel free to ask Chris questions, so there will be more time. Please ask questions only. Do not share or crosstalk, Chris. Chris? My name is Chris Manofimali. Hey, Chris! Thanks for coming down, Chris and Barbara. question was why I think primary purpose and identification is so important in Alcoholics Anonymous well my experience mean there's literature that that talks about that but my experience with primary purpose and singleness of and purpose, and so forth, is that I had to, when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, it's as if I had divided the room up into categories where there's alcoholics, alcoholics and heroin addicts, alcoholics and cocaine addicts. Alcoholics and marijuana smokers. Alcoholics in garbage cans. Alcoholics are sex addicts and so forth. Had I come into a room full where where there wasn't singleness of purpose. And there's a lot of people that suffer from alcoholism that have other addictions. And had I come into that Clay Street meeting and they had been focused on an addiction that I didn't have any experience with, I would have sat there and it would have been foreign to me. But the one thing that we all have in common is alcoholism. And the one things that Clay street meeting had in common was alcoholism and when they talked about that I understood that and I identified and it got me. And my experience prior to that point, I'd been to meetings where there wasn't a primary purpose or a singleness of purpose, and it was foreign. I mean, it was, it were foreign to me because they didn't hit my niche of other stuff. So, and the identification saved my life. Had I not been, had I not identified that night, yeah, I don't know what would happen. Thanks. Scott? Talk about sponsorship and playing God. The question is talking about sponsorship and playing God. The sponsorship, I have never been somebody that's reacted to sponsorship in a way where I have real directive sponsors, where they say do this, do this. You know, step in tow or do that. It just doesn't, it works for some people, but it's never worked for me. I am at my best when somebody shares their experience with me. When they say, this is what happened to me and this is what I did, I listen all day long and I get off that phone and I'll take action on it. But when they get to a point where you need to do this, you should do this, so forth, it just doesn't work. Now, I know it does for some people, so, I mean, just my personal experience. And so with that, that's the way I try to sponsor. I try I try to sponsor with, you know, this is what I did. You know, take it or leave it. And if they take it and they do it, you know, we continue on. And if there's a habitual where they don't do it I get to a point where it's like, you know, what are we doing here? And move on. I certainly have had my times of playing God in sponsorship and in lots of areas of my life. When I was two years sober, I had a sponsee who I've made amends since, but he wouldn't do his fourth step correctly. And I literally grabbed him and was shaking him against the wall. And my words that came out of my mouth were, Don't you want what I have? Thanks. Next. Can you share a little bit about your God of your own understanding with us? The question was, can I share about the God of my understanding? I have no understanding of the God that I believe in. God is a mystery to me. I know God's there. My higher power is there. I came to believe in early sobriety. I've had too many series of things happen where had I gone down road B, I would have ended up drunk or dead, I would assume. And I ended up going down A and I was at the crossroads and I believe it was only through meditation and intuitive thoughts that I went down road A. If there was no God in my life, that means I've been awfully lucky. And if I'm lucky, my luck's going to run out sooner or later. You know, I make a decision every morning that the choice it says in step two is that God's either everything or God's nothing. And I'm not somebody that can say one time, God's everything and live my life. I have to get up every morning and I have to live my wife as if God is everything. I have to take actions as if God is in my life and everything. I know there's a higher power in my life, but to understand it any further than that, I just don't I'm not one of those people that does and you know I I just know it works Rick Rick the alcoholic Hi Rick Which was the hardest amends that you had to do? The hardest amends I had to do um uh the hardest amends off my original aid step was probably to my family but the hardest amends I've ever had to make was when I was about six years sober, I got away from practicing the principles of AA and all of my affairs and I did some damage in my relationship with my wife and had some secrets and that was probably the hardest sentence I had to make. So, you know, I know guys that do these lists where they make their eight-step list and they say, the ones you're willing to do and you know where they're at, the ones where you're not willing to do and you know where they're at and the ones you're unwilling to do and you don't know where they are and the ones you're willing to do and you never had anything but the willingness man I don't want to ever drink again I don' t want to ever feel the way I did I'll make any amends I have to I'm willing to go to any length so yes Steve I appreciate your share the story is all about looking in the mirror and being different for the first time, can you tell us a little bit about how the promises reveal themselves to you after you did your ninth step or as you were doing your ninth steps? The question was, after I did my ninth step work, he was referring to when I was looking in the mirror in experience comfort, and he once asked about the ninth step promises. The truth is there are some promises on page 75 right between steps five and six. And those were far more impactful for me at that time than the ones laid out in Step 9. The ones in Step 8, or halfway through Step 9, or some people... Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. Those were just extensions of what already started to happen between Steps 5 and 6. And all sorts of things happened. I had some self-esteem. I had Some confidence. And I'd never worked on having self-esteem. I've never worked on anything like that. I've Never Tried to Get Self-Esteem. I Never Tied to Reduce Fear and Anxiety. I've Taken Actions That Seemingly Are Unrelated to Fear and Anxiosity, Seemingly Unrelated To Self-Estime. And Through the Magic of the Program, I Got Those Gifts. Thanks. Yes? Yes? The question was, Has there been a time in my sobriety where I've drifted away from the program and got dry and crazy and so forth? Yes. At about six years of sobriery, I went through about a year-and-a-half period where I did drift away. And, you know, I was somebody that I truly had a spiritual experience prior to this point. I believed in the steps as a way of life. I believedin this program as awayoflife. I believedn living what was in this book, not just knowing where it was inthis book. and still at six years sober little by little I started prioritizing other things in my life that got up and near where my sobriety was and then ultimately pushed out sobrietry and made those other things priorities and the cunning baffling powerful process that went on there is that things still went well for about a year and then the wheels of the wagon just fell off and I went crazy. I mean, I became to a point where I was so uncomfortable in my own skin and all that hyper self-consciousness and sensitivity and rage and anger and so forth came back and I kept sitting there going, what's wrong with me? What's wrong mit me? At seven years sober you're not supposed to feel this way. You know, it must not be anything to do with AA or alcoholism. It must be something else and I kept searching and luckily one of those roads where A and B I had a moment of clarity and I thought I've been here before in early sobriety and what I did then was I immersed myself into this program and did the basic actions of this program and it worked and my thought was I wonder if it'll work again at seven years which I believe is a very dangerous point. I could have easily gone the other way and not done it but instead I immersed my self back in this program and I thought that after about two weeks of attending meetings every day that I would be right back where I once was it wasn't true I had to go back and revisit the steps step one and what that meant in my life at seven years step two step three I had write another four steps which had 105 resentments on it and I had to go back through the steps and I really had to carry the message to other alcoholics I started taking a meeting every week and do a detox talks and doing a lot of carrying the message and a lot of service work. And little by little, I started getting better and I was relieved of that. But it took some time. Yes? Mark Alcohollick. How vital is your home group to you? Say that again? How important is your home group? The question is how important is my home group to me? My home group is very important to me, although I'll say that that's something that has has been in about the last five or six years more important to me than it had been in the past. The area that I got sober in and just the ethic that I was involved in was very step and big book and God-reliant type AA. The fellowship was a secondary thing, and I'm grateful for that because I was grounded in the belief and a power greater than myself and grounded in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and not grounded in a lot of social activities. And I know that those are important for some people, so I'm not saying that that's not important for some people. But my program did suffer because I was not as fellowship-oriented as a lot OF people. And in the last five or six years through starting several groups, two groups, I became much more involved in the fellowship and the fellowship has become much more meaningful to me. And I don't mean to say that it wasn't important then, but the social fellowship activities and so forth became more important to me Now on a different note, my home group from the standpoint of where I do my work is very important. In Portland, we have horrible H&I in Portland, by the way. I mean, we don't have it, to give you an idea. We don't have H&I in Portland, and we have a kind of treatment center coordinators, and it's very rough. Carrying the message to institutions is a difficult process in Portland. The majority of my 12-step work is done in my home group. So from that standpoint, my meaningful work that I do in AA in terms of carrying the message, providing a place where a newcomer can come, and delivering the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to them, and that's where most of my work is done. So from that standpoint, it's very important. Jamie, I think this is the last one probably, right? Yeah. Okay. I'm curious. You and Barbara seem to be in love with each other and have a good marriage, and you're both in recovery. So I'm curios. Do you pray and or meditate together? The question was that she stated that she thought that Barbara, my wife, and I are very much in love with each other and wanted to know if we pray and meditate together. And we do. But we also have very separate programs. you know, we've never worked on our relationship but what we have done is carried the message of Alcoholics Anonymous and worked with lots of new people and have continued to take inventory and done all sorts of, again, again, seemingly unrelated actions to our relationship. And as a result of those actions, we've been able to come together and do pretty good together. But, I mean, you know, it's not... We're not perfect, and we have our moments. But yes, we do pray and meditate together, but not probably 50% of the time, I'd say. That's it. Thanks.