Recovery Is Not the Absence of Problems – Bob B.

I'm Bob Bazanz and I'm an alcoholic. For the grace of God and the program of AA and sponsorship, I haven't had a drink since the 10th of December 1967. And for that, I'm very grateful. I always thought that was a great deal, that Lenny showed up at Detox in Minnesota and Warren wasn't supposed to take him in because he wasn't a Minnesotan. But Warren arranged it anyways. And that's one of the great things. You never know when something that you do it's going to make a difference, and Warren and Lenny have had a relationship, and Lenney's the kind of guy that maintains that relationship. He calls Warren every couple of months and is interested in how he is, and Lennie's a grateful guy. As much as I hate to admit this, Lenny's one of the better members of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've run around in a long, long time. He's also kind of a prime example of men in AlcoholicsAnonymous that overmarry. you've got one of the better wives around. And if you were married to Lenny, you would not need a television. You would have all the entertainment you would need right kind of in your own home. So that would be... But I have... You know, it's easy, I think, to have a good program when everything is going well. And it is something sometimes when tragedy strikes, at times they're not so easy that you get to see what people are made of. And I have a great love and affection and admiration for Lenny and Pat and their programs and their activity in our program. This has been a nice weekend for me for a lot of reasons. My friend Jack Ford and his wife Molly came down from Vancouver, and Jack and I were delegates together in 1979. And some of those, you know, I can remember when I first got sober, Warren kept wanting me to go into the open houses. I was going to the meetings, but I wasn't going to the meetings after the meetings and I wasn'T going to the open house. And I said, gee, I want to go to the meetings, but I just don't know if I want to get involved in the social activity of Alcali-Samos. And he said, Bob, you've got to make friends in AA. If you don't become friends with the people in AA, it isn't going to get into you deep enough to make a difference or change your life. and I started going to the meetings after the meetings and I decided to go into the people's houses and of course you took me into your hearts and my life has never been the same since and it's just been astounding to me you know, I've lived well over half my life at Alcoholics Anonymous and today I count, you know my friends are probably 80% in the program and I just couldn't envision every once in a while if you're an active member of AA You keep meeting people who you don't have any room, but you have to make room because they're very special people. And Jack Ford is one of those. Jack and Molly are one of the people for me. I've enjoyed the talkers here this weekend. I got a chance to know Billy a little bit better. I've met Billy a number of times in Las Vegas. And that's one of other things that I enjoy so much is you get to meet the more active members of Alcoholics Anonymous wherever you go. So, Bob Smith is a man who I've admired. I don't know how long I've known Bob, but I think it's been 20-some years. And there are two things that stick out with me. Bob has a dignity and a presence that I so admire. There's a humility and a solidness about Bob. And I think of how many demands are put on him. And Bob used to jokingly say, I'm the only guy that they ask to talk because of who I know rather than what I know. And that's a joke because that's not true. That may have been true at a moment in time, but anybody who knows Bob Smith knows that's not true and I think you've carried the responsibility you have with, you've carried that mantle marvelously well. And I just love the story about the fact that he was home visiting his dad and his dad gave he and Betty a copy of the big book and you took it back to Betty's father and they founded Alcoholics Anonymous and he kind of got the impression in 1944 that even in 1944 because of the way their lives were that you didn't have a full appreciation for what Alcoholics Anonymous was. You know, here was a man at the inception, you know, and I always think isn't that interesting, you know, that now that we're so big and we're so large and we have such an appreciation for our history, many of us know all about those little details. And, you know, many of the people who were there present at the early moment, at that time, could not see the immensity that was about to unfold because it wasn't predictable. I mean, it wasn�t anything that you could take a look at and say, you now, this is going to�all of a sudden there�s going to be two or three million people that are going to � lives are going be changed by this and all their families. And how grateful I am that your family had the character that it had and the contribution that your father and mother made, this room would not, we wouldn't be here. I mean, it's extraordinary, the miracle that happened at the gatehouse at the Cyberling estate in May of 1935. Astounding. And I think it's astounding that we count our fellowship from May of 1945 rather than from November of 1934 when Bill got sober. You know, isn't that interesting? We don't count it when Bill gets sober. We counted when Bill called on Bob, and Bob got sober because the magic of the transmission of the message, you know. And it's a marvelous thing. So thank you, Lenny, for the opportunity to be here. Thank you for introducing my wife and embarrassing her. Lenny has a long tradition of embarrassing people, and I'm glad to see that you haven't changed that. I think that's – I've done a good job with her. She wasn't much when I got her, Lenny, but little by little, you know, Lennie. My wife just celebrated 35 years in Illinois. And I mean it when I say that I have been a constant source of growth for Linda. That is not an exaggeration. But I can't tell you how grateful I am for the partnership that we've had over the years in our recovery. I don't know, I think both of us would say we're not sure we'd be married today if we both weren't in the fellowship. I don'T know if that's so, but I know we wouldn't be as happily married and I know he wouldn't begin as much love as we are today. And that was the ability that when we had tough times, we turned the lasers on ourselves and looked at our part rather than turn the lasers on each other and destroyed each other. And I think there were times in our marriage when things were pretty tough that we might have destroyed each other had we not had a program where each of us could take a look at our own part in that. So it's been a great deal, and thank you for your participation and partnership in that process. I started drinking when I was 14 years old. I was a freshman in high school, and I was 4'11". I weighed 95 pounds. I was the second smallest kid in my high school class, mostly mouth. and I was one of those kids that was premature I got sent to school early I'm one of seven kids I think my mom got us out of the house as early as she could you know and I just never felt like I belonged just kind of the typical alcoholic very self-centered and didn't feel like they mixed my earliest recollections is I never thought it was okay and I never though I was okay I don't know where I got that message the long and short of my story is I was born on third base and congratulated myself for hitting a triple I have a wonderful, you know, great family, great parents, great background. Had an easy time, but I never felt like I fit. I felt like everybody else got to school an hour early and held a meeting and decided what to do for the day, and I always missed the meeting. I'd try to get you to talk about the meeting, but you never talked much about the meeting. But one night a buddy of mine went out, we had a fifth, and we split that fifth, and my life changed. When I drank that alcohol, I felt on the inside like you looked on the outside. That guy that was on the outside of the circle all of a sudden felt like I was on the inside. I could talk to people, I could be humorous, I could be part of, I wasn't so aware of the things about me that I thought separated me and when something works that well you go after it as hard as fast as you can whatever the circumstances present. I went to a military academy in high school on a college campus. We drank in high school like most people drink in college. We had fraternities, a couple of us almost died of alcohol poison in high school. Now, Bob talked about Catholics drinking, and Bob, I thought that was kind of prejudicial. I mean, I never knew Catholics drank more than other people, but I think if we're ever going to have a contest, I'm going to take my people to the contest. I think we do a pretty good job. Of my five closest friends in high school, there was a group of five of us. Four of us are in Alcoholics Anonymous, and one's in Al-Anon. And three of us were friends since grade school, before we ever picked up a drink. We had a lot of alcoholism, but we had a lot of recovery. So we got into a mess of trouble. We were always false ID cards, arrests, car accidents, all those things. And people were always talking about my drinking problem. I thought my drinking problem was I was underage. Because if the cops caught you or your father caught you, you were in trouble. And I never thought I'd be in trouble because my heroes were those men and women who came back from the Second World War. My parents and their friends, you know, they had big families. They started big businesses. They were active in their community. They drank hard and they played hard. Cocktail parties were the order of the day, and they were very attractive to me. And, you Know, we were just kind of playing house and copying those people. Those were our models. Great people. And when I went away to school, I thought I'd get away from that authority and things. My drinking had become normal. If my drinking became normal, I guess you'd have a different talker. To make a long story short, I drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame middle of my senior year. A lot of things have to happen for a guy to walk out in the middle of his senior year. Class ring, in-the-year book, and all that sort of stuff. I was a class drunk at Notre Dame. I had three guys petitioned to have me removed from engineering school in my junior year. And I just couldn't shut my drinking down. I started out as a B student and ended up as a C student. But it gets kind of tough to bluff your way through a thermodynamics exam. I'm going to school about one day out of every ten. You know that movie Rudy? I watched that the other night with Linda he had the experience of going to Notre Dame I didn't, I just kind of passed through and that's what happens to an alcoholic you never get to have a life you never gets to have the experience you never use your gift you never really have the life and experience that you were intended to have and be able to do the things that you Were intended to do because alcohol interrupts that process it's a hell of a price to pay and we keep paying it over We aren't able to be the people we're supposed to be in our families, in our churches, in our communities, in Our schools and our jobs. You know, we've got the talents. We have the gifts. We have The abilities. But the disease stops us from being able to participate. And it's pretty hard, you know, to be able to not have a life when you've got all the equipment and just about the time you're ready to start up the machine, someone pulls the key out of the damn thing and takes it away and you never get to do what you're supposed To do in life. It's a pretty big cost. And I was due to be commissioned in June of that year when I got out of the school and the Army, and I had to get a medical release. And the medical release I got was for alcoholism. I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19 years old. That seemed impossible to me. It seemed like kind of a bum rap. Once or twice a year I'd get in trouble or a car accident and I'd gets arrested. And they had me, you know, when you're young and in trouble, they bring you to a lot of people for help. But I was diagnose by a psychiatrist as an alcoholic and I was nineteen. I didn't believe that diagnosis, and I went on drinking. But it got me out of the Army. I came home. I finished school at a local university. And when I finished high school, my father had a little chat with me, and he said, Bob, I want you to leave the house. He said, I love you and I care about you, but you're a pain in the neck and you're an example to the rest of the family and you can't live here anymore. So I went out and I got a job at a liquor store. and have to use your gifts. And this was to be the last year of my drinking. I'm 23 years old. I go out, and I got a job at a liquor store. I worked at that job, I guess, about four or five months, and I was drinking mostly a quarter day. I'm a daytime drinker. I'm an nighttime drinker, almost killed a little girl back out of a driveway with that delivery truck one day. One of those moments, I knocked that girl off her bicycle, and she was under the truck, and she was not her to think of, a little girl about four years old. And I picked her up and I asked her where she lived and she pointed down the alley and I ran down the valley and I stopped and where I stopped, where she pointed, was the house I was born in. Kind of one of those God moments, you know, one of Those Moments of Coincidence where you're standing there with half a buzz on at 930 in the morning with a four-year-old child in your arms and you're taking a look and the neighbors start starting to come out of their houses, you know. And you wonder, how did I get here? how did I get here? I didn't start out to be the kind of jerk that I am to live the life like I live, you know, to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning, take a couple of shooters to go to work and drive, you know. How did I got here? I lost that job. I got a ticket for going 80 miles an hour with a truck. I got fired, and I took a job as a waiter, and I'm working as a waitress at a private club in Minneapolis. I'm living not on Skid Row, but I'm living in $5 night rooms, and and I'm shacked up with waiters and waitresses that I'm living. You know Dr. Seuss, that child author? Those are actual photographs of people I lived with during the last year of my drinking. And I'm getting up in the morning, and I'M taking a couple of beers. I go to work at 10 o'clock. From 10 to 2, I work as a waiter, and from 2 to 5, I go drink beer, and at 5,I go buy a pint or a fifth. And from 5 to 11, Iwork as awaiter, and then I figure out where I'm going to spend the night. And I did that for about six months. And one night I went to a party and I got my face kicked in, and I get fired as a waiter, and I had no place to go. I was tapped. And I hadn't been home for about nine months, and I went home and asked my parents if I could move back in the house. And my father allowed me to move back into the house in the condition that I wouldn't drink. And I lied, but I promised I wouldn' t drink. And when I moved back in th ehouse, you know, if you would have asked my dad what he wanted from me in life, put him in one room and put me in another and asked each of us to make a list about what they wanted for Bob, the list would have been almost identical. But you couldn't convince anybody in my family that what I wanted for me was identical to what they wanted for мне because it looked like I was hell-bent for election to destroy my life and to humiliate myself and my family. It looked like i was self-destructive. It looked like it was intentional. It look like i kept on going out time after time after time to just tear it apart. That wasn't it. My sister did graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris, and my brother was five-bit a cap in law school, and I always kind of lodged between those two show-offs and didn't look very good. And I wanted my life to be like theirs. I just kept on saying, wouldn't you like to be alike your brothers or sisters? I said, yeah, where are the directions? How do you do it? I mean, it isn't like I haven't tried. It isn't Like I don't want it. I know I've got some ability, but I just don't seem to be able to put it to use over an extended period of time. The wheels always come off it. I don't know why the wheels come off and when I moved back in the house I made the largest full court press to try to get my act together that I had ever done. It occurred to me that if I could put certain structures in my life, my life would become normal. If I could find a woman that I loved and got married and that's when I got back together with Linda. We had gone together for about two years and then the last year my drinking we separated and I was out. I called her about once a month just often enough so she couldn't forget me. She'd be dating other guys and she'd be getting interested in them, and then I'd just kind of bug her. And then I got back together with her and we got engaged and I got a job as an executive trainee with a manufacturing concern and got my first automobile, and I thought, wow, it's finally going to happen. You're finally goingto become an adult. Only it didn't happen because I couldn't shut my drinking down. Big corporations are tough places for alcoholics. They like to have you come in on Mondays and stay on Fridays. And, you know, I use up my sick leave in the first three months of work. I'm falling asleep at my desk. I'm just, you Know, now I'm the company drunk. I'm in a company of engineers, and I'm standing out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This is after about six months at this company. I know it's not working, and I quit that job, and I took a sales job, and I was selling business equipment, and I got that job I guess about three months, and I go out on a four-day drunk when my buddies got married, and weddings were always good for about a week. I woke up Thursday afternoon sometime in July 1967, and I don't know if I have a job, a fiancé, or a place to live until I'm married, and that was an economic necessity. And all of a sudden the recommendation of my father and my psychiatrist that I call Alcoholics Anonymous didn't seem like such a bad idea, and I called Intergroup. And I got an old-timer down at Intergroup, and he sent two guys out. He said, could you go meet two guys at a cafe at about 5 o'clock? And I said, yeah, I could, and I went and I met these two guys. And I said, when you're young and in trouble, they send you to an awful lot of people for help. But it's usually you're the subject of the meeting, but you're not a participant in the meeting. You know, your family is doing most of the talking. And after they ask you all these questions, when the meeting is done, they've got a recommendation. And I'm 23 years old, and I think I'm going to go meet these two guys. They're going to ask me a bunch of questions. It's going to be similar to that. But I went and met these two guy. One guy has got six years. One guy's got six months. And he sat me down in the booth, and they said, we're from AA. hey, we've got a drinking problem and we found an answer in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're here to share that with you, and we hope it helps you. But for some reason, talking to people like you that are looking at the question about whether they've got an drinking problem helps us. It seems like the more we do that, the less we go back and drink. And they sat me down in that booth and they shared their drinking history with me. It was the first time in my life I'd ever talked to another person who had my problem. And within a matter of about 45 minutes to an hour, I found myself identifying with them. I found myself sharing stuff that I'd never shared with anybody. I found yourself interested in what they were talking about, and that night I went to my first meeting of AA. It was extraordinary. We have a lot of traditions in Alcoholics Anonymous, but one of the best ones is that we share our experience, strength, and hope, and not our philosophy, not our ideology. We don't preach at people. We share our lives. We pass those principles through our lives, and we share Our Lives. And in the sharing of their lives that night, they changed my life. I drank twice after walking in the front door of AA. Once after a month, I was on a business trip to the West Coast and I was told to contact AA and I didn't and I got drunk and I came back and I went sober almost three months and Linda and I were married and we honeymooned in Mexico and I think in the back of my mind I was always going to drink on my honeymoon and I did not tell anybody because I guess I had it slightly submerged and also I was a phony. And you know where the divers dive off those cliffs in Mexico? I dove off those clips on my last drunk. I was in the audience watching a world high-diving contest. I thought, God, that's not so tough. I could do that. I had a swimsuit on under my Bermudas, and I went down. I climbed up the cliff. So I got to split my swimsuit, cut my arm. I'm up 85 feet. I can't get up. I can'T get down. I'm stuck. I'm looking at the waves, trying to figure out whether to jump or dive, trying to decide. And finally, after about seemingly an eternity, I decided I was out of hell with it. And I dove and God watched it after fools had drunk that I made it. And if I would have jumped, I would Have died. You can't get out. You've got to get out almost 30 feet to hit the middle of that channel. I didn't know that. Maybe I knew it intuitively, but I sure as hell didn't Know it informationally. About 10 years later, Linda and I went down there many years with the kids on vacation. And we were standing there. And on our 10th anniversary, she gave me a picture of that chasm. And it said, but for the grace of God. And I said, honey, that's the dumbest thing I've ever done. And she said, Bob, it's not even in the top ten. So. I don't know how you can share a life with someone and they see it so differently. You know, a number of years ago I was gaining a little weight and I told her, I said God, I've got to exercise. I think I'll get a bike. And she says, good idea. I went out and I got a bike and she was upset. I got to Harley. And, you know, she's getting tougher to please right along, so I don't know. So I got home. When I got back, I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. I got out of that airplane. I had my last drink on the airplane December 10th, 1967, and I got back, andI was embarrassed to go back to the meetings, but she said, oh, for gosh sakes, call Warren. And Warren, who just celebrated 48 years, I've had the same sponsor since I walked in the front doors of AA. And he was an Irish Catholic, which almost everybody in our group. St. Paul is kind of an Irish-Catholic conclave. We have these large clans, these families with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 kids that we grew up with. They're like clans. I mean, your families are friends and families. You know, your kids go to school for decades with the same members of those families. I mean today my nieces and nephews are going to school with the kids of other people that we went to. So St. Paul is like a big, small town. It really is very cool, and I've lived there all my life, and I enjoy that continuity. And Warren was an Irish Catholic postman, and he was not the guy I think I would have tried to get someone fancier, and he turned out to be the most perfect man that I ever could have run into in Alcoa Least Anonymous. We had a club of about 200 members, and in St. Paulo we had what we called squads, and I don't know why the guy who founded AA in Minneapolis started these squads. And there'd be a big club, and then each small group within the club would be called a squad. I don't know why they did that, whether that was because they were in the Army or whatever the hell it was. But an individual squad might have 30 people in the meeting, and they'd say, when you go to AA, I go to Uptown. What night do you go? I go, you know, go Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 o'clock or whatever. And Warren was the 12-step champion of that place. I think he got about a third of all the 12 step calls. And I found myself very early in my sobriety going out on 12 step call and going to jails and going to prisons. First talk I ever gave was at a prison. We're going out to a prison and Warren says, well, I want you to come to the prison. I said, I don't think I'm ready, Warren. He said, well I want you to come. I said Warren, I've only got about three months sobriety. I said he said Bob for God's sakes there's five of us going out there and I said all right so I get dressed up in my little blue suit and I go out there and what he didn't tell me there were five guys there were 5 meetings. So I'm three months in my little blue suit with 30 guys at the state prison. If I could have gotten my hands on Warren, I would have killed him. Guy asked me for a cigarette. I gave him the whole pack, you know, just wasn't nervous. Nope. Wasn't nervous talked a little quick, but wasn't there. But that man got me active in every aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's turned out that my life in AA has been rich and full primarily because I've just simply followed Warren around and did what Warren did, and it was an extraordinary thing, and I'm grateful for that relationship today. So I'm walking to AA. When I've been a young man, I've Been in Trouble, and people are always telling me that drinking was my problem. I thought drinking was My Answer. I thought, yeah, I'd get in trouble, but alcohol worked for me about as well. You know, people talk about alcohol like it's a problem. Boy, it's A Solution. I mean, for a long time, it works awfully damn well. Every once in a while, you get a bad batch of ice and get in some trouble, But, you know, you get over-served or something. But, I mean, it isn't. But by and large, it worked pretty damn well. And I like what Bob said. You know, the first phase of drinking is fun. The second phase is fun and problems. And the first stage is problem. That's what happens. The solution becomes a problem. But you're so connected to the... But sobriety is not an answer. For most people who've got a problem, most of us have had periods of forced sobriete. Sobriety doesn't work. I mean just abstinence doesn't works. But, you know, I've had periods. Just before I went back to my senior year at Notre Dame, I got in trouble one night and I went out and I got robbed and I get rolled and I was shot at and I go pistol-whipped and I were thrown out of the second story of a hotel and I ended up in a psych ward. My father found me on the streets and I end up in the hospital and they were going to keep me in the psych ward and not let me go back to senior year of school and I talked my way out of there and they let me back to school and for my last three months in Notre Dame I didn't drink But I didn't become, you know, I mean, what they're telling me, if you just wouldn't drink, you'd be okay. Well, hell, I didn'T drink for three months. I didn' t become an A student. I didn''t become a model kid. My problems didn' T go away. And I thought I proved I could quit drinking any time I wanted to. And I though I proved that alcohol wasn' T my problem because I just quit. I still had a hell of a lot of problems. I said, there's something wrong with me that you can't see. I don't know. It's like a built-in failure mechanism. I don' T know what the hell it is, but I, you Know, I don'T think you understand. Why don't you just kind of get off my back? That was kind of my attitude when I walked in the front door of AA. But they told me when I walk in the front door and I can remember the seat I was sitting in when my sponsor told me this sometime in the first month that I was sober. He said, Bob he said we work in here he said alcoholism, alcohol is a symptom of your problem. It's not your problem and I remember when he told that to me it kind of got my attention. Drinking is not my problem. He says if drinking was your problem, not drinking would be your solution. He asked have you ever not drunk? I said yeah. He asks did it work? I said no, it didn't work. He answered no what's wrong with us is alcoholism. Alcoholism is a three-fold disease. It's physical, but it's also mental and spiritual. See, what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous once we take our last drink of alcohol and take our last drug is we use the 12 steps of the recovery program to change, to significantly change enough so that we don't have to use drugs or alcohol to do something for us that we're unwilling or unable to do for ourselves. If you don't change, you're going to go back to drinking because you don'T know how to live without drinking. That was like the Gettysburg Address of Alcoholics synonymous. I mean, as I say, that still is a profoundly true statement for me. So now I'm in AA. After I had that drink on my honeymoon, I come back and I say okay, I'll buy it. I'm an alcoholic and you got the answer for alcoholism. I said if I'm an alcoholic, and you've got the answer alcoholism, I've got five or six other problems that are going on in my life and if you've go the answer, you've gotta be able to help me with those problems. And hell, it might take a year. It's not that funny. My problems didn't go away in a year and they didn't away in two years, they didn t go away five years and they haven t totally gone away in almost 35 years. When I came back, you know, everybody was always telling me what a fairly well-equipped young guy I was in the business of life and I really expected that now that I found out that alcoholism was my problem, that when I got into Alcoholics anonymous and I started to put these principles in action in my life, I wasn't going to have any more problems. You know what I thought recovery was? I thought recovery was the absence of problems. No one told me that. I mean, I'm dumb enough. I'm sitting in meetings in discussion meetings five nights a week listening to people talk about their lives. And for some reason I think recovery is the absence a problem. They got to be an idiot because they're talking about their lies. But for some reason I dismissed other people's problems. And I guess maybe because I was so self-centered. I'm not much, but I'm all I think about. And so all of a sudden, the first thing that happened to me when I came into sobriety is I had a wall built up between you and me when i was drinking so that I could hide the part of me I didn't want you to see. And the thinking that went on behind the wall said, You like me, but you only like what I let you see about me. If you could see everything about me, you'd hate me because I hate me, and who knows more what a lousy, insufficient, crummy person I am than me. I'm walking around comparing my inside with your outside. But at some point in time behind that wall you get sick enough and tired enough and afraid enough that you start to tear that wall down and you say, hey, come and get me. I don't care who you are or where you come from, but just come and help me. Just come and give me and help not be who I am anymore. I can't stand me five more minutes. For the first time in my life I shared the whole deck of cards with someone. I never shared the full deck with anybody. I'd give you a few cards and you a couple of cards my family a few cards, and I'd tell you what the piece you didn't have. You'd come and you'd say something to me and I would say, well, you think that but you don't know the whole deal so I could neutralize whatever advice you gave me. That's one of the reasons it's so important to have a sponsor. It's so importante to have someone who knows all about you so that you can't neutralize them with information. That's why it's necessary to disclose your life to someone. That's profound that you have a relationship with someone who knows everything about you, and that person is harder to neutralize because of that fact. So I tore that wall down. I started to tear it down when I called AA. I continued to tear down in conversation with my sponsor, and I tore it all the way down when i was taking my fifth step and I made a discovery. The discovery was that I'm not unique. My personality may be unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my feelings, and not my experience. And I started having a sense of hope that maybe what worked for you would work for me. Clancy says there's a saying, if there ever was a flag in AA, we would all pledge our allegiance to, the flag would say, but I'm different. Most of us have a profound sense of uniqueness when we come in. If you don't lose that sense of unique, you may well die of the disease of alcoholism because you're not going to believe it will work for me. You're going to look for the differences. Not the similarities. You won't believe that what worked for me will work für you. What happened to me is I lost that sense o uniqueness and I started to have a sense of hope that AA was my answer. so I got very active in Alcoholics Anonymous I started taking the steps, I'm moving on and one by one I started to get handed the issues of my life I had five or six issues, they were very ordinary but they were très troublesome to me I had trouble at work I had troubles going to work I had problems getting up number one so I usually got to work late I had problem staying at work and I had problema working other than that it was okay I had financial issues I spent about $300 more a month than I made in 1967 if you do that over a long period of time you end up in debt I just want to report that to you I don't know if you're running that one I had some marital issues Linda and I were married and Linda's dad was a very different man than I was he was a wonderful gentleman and Linda his dad was home every night at 5 o'clock and, you know, all of a sudden I'm Mr. AA and I'm gone every night of the week and she's a nurse. She's getting up at 6. You know, I'm still in bed when she gets up. I pass through the house at 5 o'clock after work and she broils something because that's all she can do at that time is broil. And I go to a meeting and I come home about midnight because I don't want to miss anything. You know? I'm afraid that I'm going to miss something. So we're like ships passing in the night and then she's starting to get a little picky. She's wondering if one of the places I'm supposed to practice the program is in our home. I thought, God, that's none of your business you've got your program you've gotta be happy that I'm sober so we're starting to fight a little bit and we started to have kids and I had wonderful parents but even wonderful parents make mistakes and I wasn't going to make the mistakes my parents did and I didn't I made all the mistakes my parents made in a bunch they never thought of I was loud impatient angry immature and sometimes violent with my children I'm not proud of that fact but that's an accurate description of how I was And I had a gambling problem. More of a hobby. Four or five hours a day, four or five days a week is all it was. But I was making about five or six grand a year playing backgammon. It was like a second job. Now, I didn't have these problems on an annual basis or a monthly basis. You know, I had them on a daily basis. I had all these problems in my first year of sobriety and I never noticed them. I took an inventory in my first year of sobriety. None of the issues I just talked to you were on my inventory my first year. My first inventory was kind of a confession of the worst things that I had done. It wasn't very insightful, but it was an important experience for me. I did the best I knew how to do. It just wasn't great. It wasn' t very deep and it was what it was. But as I got into my second year of sobrietry, I started to get a list of what my defects of character were. But my third year of sobriery, I had a pretty damn good list and I started to work on it. One by one, I took these things on. And I started to feel that the problems I had, I shouldn't be having. I mean, if I was a good member of AA, I wouldn't have to worry about it. I shouldn'T be having these problems. So you know what I did? I built that wall back up. Brick by brick, sober in AA. Thank you very much for having my drinking problem, but stay out of my marriage. Thank you for having me on my drinking program, but stay out my sex life. Stay out of marriage. Stay out my gambling. Stay out on my work. Brick-by-brick, sober and AA going to five or six meetings a week, I build my wall back I'm five or six years sober. I got that sucker back up. People are patting me on the back telling me what a good job I'm doing in AA because now I'm starting to get active in service, and I'm giving talks, and I'M sponsoring guys. And I'M starting to die on the inside because I'M trying to change these things. I go to the club, and a new guy comes in and comes in with a bushel basket full of manure that he's got, and he talks to me about, you know, the wife and the job and the police. I'M saying, hey, as bad as it is and as hopeless as it seems, You're in the right place, baby. Get a cup of coffee, sit down. If you stay here and you just try. You don't have to do it perfect. You just try to put these steps in your life and you get a sponsor and you can do it. When you get into the book, it's going to be okay. You see that guy over there? God, two years ago his life was just crap. And today he's knocking it out of the park. It's goingto be okay." Then I get in the car at 11 o'clock and I drive home and I'd say, Bob, when's it going tobe okay for you? You're five years sober. You just bought a sport coat today for $300 at a store that you had a $400 bill at. When are you going to stop buying things you don't need with money you don'T have to impress people you DON'T like? I did not have an answer for that. When are YOU going to learn how to work? I said, Bob, you don' t have a pass. I mean, most people know how to walk. When the hell are you GOING to learn HOW TO WORK? When are You going to be more gentle with your kids? When are YOu going to quit gambling? I didn' t HAVE AN answer because I'm trying to do all these things. I care about how I live my life. I really was trying to get rid of these defects of character, and I was making not much progress. I'd make a little progress, and it felt like I was on the down escalator going up. Every time I took a breath, I just lost some space. And by the time I'm six-and-a-half, seven years sober, I'm really having a tough time. You're at that point where you're, you know, I's starting to think about suicide again. Seven years sober. I'm starting to thinking about suicide. I'm staring to think that, Bob, you're a great starter. You interview well. You just don't work well. You start well. You never finish anything. AA is just going to be one more place that you start out like you look like you're really going to do a good job. It isn't going to turn out to be that way. And then I thought, God, if I had to go to a different program for each of the different problems I had, I said I'd be so damn busy I wouldn't be able to do anything else. I mean, you know, I'm thinking maybe I've got to goto Gamblers Anonymous or Spenders Anonymous or whatever the hell I've Got to Do because this isn't working. And then the two things that have saved my bacon in AA is, number one, I have a big mouth, and I talk a lot. And in those conversations, I would confide generally what was going on in my life. I was telling my sponsor about 70% of what was going on In Oregon, you tell your sponsors 100%. I mean, I know you do, and I congratulate you for doing that. But the fact was that I was only telling myself about 70%, what was it going on. I wasn't strong enough or honest enough or open enough to be able to see what was going on in my own life. Much left to tell my sponsor. And I didn't think Warren got it. Warren didn't seem to be upset about all the issues I had in my life, and I was the one that was very upset. Now I'm sponsoring guys that are in their 20s, and I'm almost 60 years old, and I don't expect their lives to be perfect. I wasthe one that expected my life to be perfectly fine. Warren didn' t expect me to be problem-free. weren't understood very well that I was going to have issues of unmanageability in my life. He understood plenty well what was going on in my Life. I was the one who didn't understand it. And the other thing that has saved my Life is that I've had great examples in AA. I love the old-timers for whatever reason. I'm very glad that I wasn't attracted to the older member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've always hung around. I stayed after the meetings and listened to those guys. I remember it was confusing to me. They'd sit down, they'd be talking to guys about how to pay bills. They'd be talking to guys about fights they had with their wives. They'd been talking about problems they had at work. And I said, they were not talking much about how not to drink. I thought we'd be spending a hell of a lot of time about talking how not to drink and they were talking about how to live. So by the time I'm six or seven years sober, maybe seven years sober, I'm in a tough place. My life is really unmanageable. I had paid all my bills off in my first two years of sobriety. In my seventh year, I got as much debt in my seventh year of sobrietty as I had when I walked in. My marriage isn't very good. I don't feel very good about how I'm doing as a parent. I've got a business that's going broke. I don'T know why I'm busting my ass two or three hours a day, and it's just not working. And I'm in serious trouble. And you know, you're at that point where you're either thinking about killing yourself or talking to your sponsor. You know,you're just really not quite sure what you're going to do. I knew what the answer was. The answer was to find out more about what God had to do with Wednesday. The people that I knew that had lives that I admired and had their lives together had a connection with a higher power that was deeper and more daily than I had. Now, the problem I had is I wanted to have that relationship, but I, number one, wasn't sure about how to go about to get it. And number two is as soon as I went and knocked on the door and God said, Who's there? And I said, God, it's Bob. And God says, What do you want? And I say, I want to turn myself in. I said I'm eight years sober. and I'm busting my britches in Alcoholics Anonymous and my life's going backwards and I want to come sign up. God's going to say, fine. And I'm going to do it. I'm not going to go and say what every pigeon says to his sponsor when he's got in trouble. I say, okay, what am I supposed to do? Because they always want to know what to do. And God's gonna say, well, go to work. Stay at work. Don't spend more money than you make. Be kind and loving to your wife and children and stop gambling. You know, I've got to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the hell God's going to say to me. Well, you know, I'm going to see how if I could do all those things, I wouldn't need God. You know what I mean? So my idea was, what the heck is the use of going to God to develop a relationship if you can't fulfill the conditions of the relationship? I mean, I know what God's going to ask me to do. What the hell do you think I've been trying to do for eight years? So as soon as I clean my act up, I'll have a relationship with God. And I was stuck in that place for almost two years. And finally, out of just being afraid and scared, I went back into the steps. I'd been through the steps twice. And at eight years sober, almost eight years over, I took a look at step one and figured out what powerlessness and unmanageability meant to me. It wasn't very hard. Boy, I was powerless, no question about it. My life was as unmanable as it had ever been. You know the step that shocked me? Step two. I believe step two for us corporately if you would have asked me do I believe God's going to restore us to sanity I could put my hand on a lie detector and say yes and the needle wouldn't move at all but if you were to ask me do I think God's gonna restore Bob to sanity the answer is no because I make your sober and I'm going backwards baby I got sponsees that are making more progress than I'm making I mean this is I'm looking bad this is not good I'm scared to death I'm thinking more about killing myself than I am drinking, but I'm not in a good place. And you know when you're in trouble, you either get more or less active. I got a little bit more active and all of a sudden I started to see men and women in my meetings with bigger problems than I had, with smiles on their faces, walking through walls that I was trying to walk around. And all of the sudden watching them with the dignity of which they were living their lives and their sobriety, I came to believe that God would restore me to sanity. I went back and I reclaimed step two for me. I had lost the belief in step two for me I took step three on my knees with my sponsor in his office we didn't do that much back then you hear a lot more of that now but it wasn't done much but this time I thought heck I'm going to dot the i's and cross the t's and then I did another fourth and fifth step I'd done my first two with clergy, which was our custom where I was. And then I decided to do this one with my sponsor. I said, be careful when you're done because whatever you recommend that I do, I'm going to do. And I said... You know, I feel like a guy who's dying of thirst lying next to a lake. I said I could pass the test. I could tell you what to do." I said,"I just can't do it. I feel there's a plastic wall between me and the water. And for whatever reason, every time I go to take a drink, I am blocked from doing it." And I said, I'm so galldang unhappy. I just couldn't tell you how unhappy I am. And I think I'm ready to do whatever is necessary for me to do. And after I took my first step, took my fifth step with him, we talked and cried a little bit. One of the things he wanted me to go do was go to a psychologist. I had a lot of issues around my father. My father was my hero. He was a pretty successful man. And I thought, I'll never be as successful as my old man. You know, I will never do what he did. I had issues around failure, and I had issues around success, and i had issues with my father. And he wanted me to go to talk to someone, and thought, I don't want to go to a psychologist. That's kind of like admitting there's something bad with my program. But I promised him I'd do it, so I went to the psychologist and this guy worked with different people in companies, and he said, will you get your parents involved? I said no, I won't. I said, my parents have been over-involved in my life, thank you. And I said if you can't help me without without getting my mom and dad involved, please refer me to someone who can. He said, well, you get your wife involved. I thought, well crap. Well they see it so differently, it's just going to be confusing. You know, it might be more honest, but it's going to be confusing, and then he wanted to know if I'd get my kids involved, and I thought well they're pretty young, but yeah, I guess if I have to I will, and I didn't want to get my kid involved because of the way I was as a father. and I can remember I guess I had gone to this guy's six or seven sessions and we were having a talk about my business going broke he looked at me and he said why are you so afraid of failure and it was like he punched me in the chest and I said listen you jerk I explained I said you're a doctor you go broke or you go bankrupt, I'm about to go bankrupt. I'm going to lose everything I have. I said, nod your head up and down if you understand that. I said you go broke, you just take your little sign, walk down the hall, pound it on another door and you're making $100,000 within a couple of months. I said I'm above $100K. I'm not about to lose every thing I have." He looked over at Linda and he said, Linda, if Bob lost everything he had, would he lose you? And Linda said, Nope, wouldn't lose me. He looked at my boys. They were pretty young, and he said to Billy and Peter, he said if later we had Daniel, he said, if your dad lost everything he had, would he lose you? And the kids said, no, he wouldn't lose us. You know, if you can't lose, you can'T play. I'm the guy on the football team. I got the uniform. I do the locker room, and I do it. I do all the calisthenics, and they put the uniform on me. When they blow the whistle to block and tackle, I go up in the stands because I don't block and tackle. I never finish anything. I start well, but I never finish anything school, church, business I never finish anything and what he got me in touch with was how afraid I was I had done three inventories, and my fear inventory was like snakes in buildings. Heights. No insight whatsoever into fear. And what I found out in that moment was that I was afraid of being a husband. Afraid of the responsibility of being an husband. I was scared of being married. I was worried about being a father. I was a friend of failure. I was afraid of success. I was affraid of work. I was swimming in fear like a fish in water and didn't know what water was. That was one of the most important discoveries I've made in my sobriety. I had absolutely no sense of how much fear saturated my life. Not too long after that meeting, I was home, and I had one ofthe worst days I've had sober. Eight years sober, and I got up late, went to work late, left early, got in a backgammon game, won about 800 bucks, missed the AA meeting, missed dinner, came home, got in fight with Linda and slapped one of the kids. One of those days you'd like to have videotaped and sent to the General Service office to show what eight years of sobriety can do for you. I'm in my living room reading some non-conference approved literature about 11 o'clock at night, and I said, gee, it happened again. I said it happened again. I mean, weren't you there? It's your life. And I'm saying, yeah, but it's so habitual, it's like I'm in a blackout. It's like, I don't even have to think about doing these things. It' s like they just happen on a map and all of a sudden I realized that was a bunch of crap. I realized my life was the way it was because I designed it the way it was. I sounded like I was the guy who wanted to quit gambling. I wanted to gamble whenever the heck I wanted. To gamble for as much money as I wanted, to gamble and not have problems because of gambling. I wanted my wife's love and affection without spending time with her. I wanted the love and care I wanted to spend time with them. I wanted money without work. Not a very good design. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I surrendered, I stood naked in front of my alcoholism. And the truth altered me. I drank twice after I had that surrender but it was never the same. I knew when I drank I wasn't going to be able to continue to drink. I knew I was an alcoholic. The truth will change you. First it will irritate the hell out of you, but then it will change you. That night in my living room, I stood naked in front of my life and I took a look at my gambling, I took look at sexual activity, I took look at finances, I take look at parenting, I took my work, and I take a look my kids. I saw the unmanageability and I saw that I had tried pretty darn hard to change those things and I had failed them for whatever reason I had the idea that maybe I was where I was supposed to be and I was given the opportunity to take the sixth and the seventh step of the AA program. The sixth step said we were entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character. The seventh step said, we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. I had spent eight years trying to get rid of them. I don't have the power to get out of it. I am the pipe, not the well. It happens through me, not by me. I'm responsible and I'm in the game and I have to participate in that process. A farmer doesn't grow. He creates a fertile environment, plants a seed, and creates an atmosphere in which growth can take place and God grows. A doctor doesn't heal. He creates an aseptic environment in which healing can take place, and God heals, and we don't change. We create an atmosphere in which change can take place, and God changes us. And I believe it's the atmosphere and the attitude of the sixth and the seventh step and the three requirements of being honest, open-minded, and being willing. That night, out of fear of getting drunk, but mostly out of a fear of being a sober ass, which is what I was, I got down on my knees. I took those steps, and four of the major problems in my life disappeared that night. now I'm the kind of guy that when I go on a diet I buy a bag of cookies and a quart of ice cream well it's already been a bad day I'm just going to finish off the day and I'm probably never going to have ice cream again if you know that type of thinking you've made a lot of resolutions you've not been able to keep but I had an idea when you really have important changes that happen to you you put in a structure of support for whatever reason I was given the grace to put in the structure of sport I started to meet with my sponsor, and I made appointments about when I would go to work, when I Would leave work. That day I quit gambling. I started a date with my wife. I dated my wife almost every Friday night for the last 25 years. I had her love and affection. It was everybody else's love and affections. But we found ourselves, we were always out talking about kids and money, and that wasn't how we fell in love, baby. We were not talking about children and money. And we had to get back and create a romantic environment and go shack up someplace and start taking trips and doing things that would make us attractive to each other the way we were attractive, and we recreated some of that romance in our lives. That's been one of the best things we've ever done. I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours learning how to be a better parent. I think being a parent takes 125% of whatever you got. I think having kids is like having a bowling alley installed in your head. I think it is one of the most demanding processes. I mean, the lifelong relationships that you have to maintain, whether it's being a parent or whether it'S being a child, whether it' s a lifetime relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're going to have a lifetime relation ship with anything, it's a demanding process because it' S going to change over that period of time. There' S gong to be obstacles. There' s going to be times where you feel like you've been greatly damaged in that process. And your relationship has to be strong enough to be able to handle those assaults that life brings to them. Each one of us has been in groups, we've had sponsors, we've met different people who we've greatly admired that we feel have hurt us. And we've got to deal with that and resolve that as you go forward to maintain our relationship with our groups and the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is our lifeblood that maintains our recovery. Maintaining a lifetime relationship with anything is extraordinarily difficult. And in that process of maintaining those relationships, the universe will present you what's wrong with you. The process that I went through in my recovery, the process of having all those problems, when Bill talked about, you know, that God wants you to work on anger, he'll bring you anger. That's how the universe works. If God wants You to get a message, how is He going to get the message to you? Bad news, probably your spouse. maybe your parents maybe your children when you're raging mad and all of a sudden you look over and you see a look in their eye a fear that's been there before but all of the sudden in this moment you can see it that's how the universe presents messages to you from the relationships in your life and the message is it's not working it's just it's it's it's not working we don't want that message you know when I came in AA in my early days I tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and I still grew but there gets to be a time in your middle sobriety maybe somewhere between 5 and 10 years where you get to a point where you try and fail, try and failure and you still grow but you get a point where all of a sudden you've got to change or you stop growing and when you get to that fork in the road you either change or you build an addition onto your house to accommodate the problem the chasers hang out with the chasters the gamblers hang out with the gambler and you start making deals I won't call you on your crap You don't call me on mine. We'll talk about the steps and the traditions. We'll go to meetings, but you stay out of my face, I'll stay out of your face. Deal? Bad deal. I got just the opposite deal with about four guys in AA. My deal is if you see me in tall weeds, you grab a hold of me by the neck and you tell me, you see something you don't like about what I'm doing, please come and tell me that you think I'm out of line. I know that might be difficult. I know you think I might get upset with you, but I promise you. I will resolve that after we have that difficult conversation. Please bring it to my attention. That's the kind of deal, and that's the kind of friend that you need in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to keep growing, because problems don't go away. Recovery is not the absence of problems. It's the ability to become more spiritually awake to deal with the issues that life presents you. Our tendencies don't change. I have resolved very significant problems in Alcoholics but I have the same tendencies today. I have to same tendencies to anger, but I don't act on them with the regularity that I used to act. I don' t strike children anymore. I don''t take it out on waitresses. You know why? Because I am more awake today. I never used to be awake. I used have a thought reaction, thought reaction. It was like a monkey on a string. You put a quarter in, you push B5, we are going to play B5 baby. but all of a sudden over a process like water on stone over a practice of maybe 15 years all of the sudden I had a thought and I had space and in that space I had choice about whether I played B5 or didn't play B5 and in this space I became a human being not a monkey on a string It was like being let out of jail. I used to think if you thought it, you got to do it. I mean, it was just what there was. That was my reality. It was plastered. You know, if you get a thought and it's plastered on your eyeball, that's all there is, baby. That's your reality. You get it an inch away, it's still pretty much your reality, but if you give it up, if you don't get it out here, which is what you've allowed me to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, I get some of those crazy thoughts and I go, wow, where did that come from? I haven't had that one in two years. Now, you know, Frank Milo used to talk about you've got a Grand Central Station mind. You don't have to get on every train that goes through the station. I thought I used to get On Every Train That Came Through the Station. Now I can let those thoughts go through without engaging them. And I used think they engaged me. And now I know I'm the thinker and I have a choice. What you have done is you have made me more awake. I have the same weaknesses, but because I am more awake, I see the problem earlier and I have a choice about whether I engage in it or it has me. That choice is more freedom than I've ever had in my life. And it's due to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's what I think the program promises. Circumstances, when Bob Smith talked about the death of his son and the death of his wife, and if you're going to be sober a lifetime, if you'RE going to have tragedies, you're GOING TO HAVE BANKRUPTCY, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE ILL HEALTH, YOU'VE GOT A SET OF PRINCIPLES THAT IF YOU PUT IN ACTION, HAPPINESS IS BASED ON THE IDEA THAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE POSITIVE. CIRcUMSTANCE ARE NOT ALWAYS GOING to be positive. But peace and joy are not conditioned upon circumstances being positive. You can have peace and enjoy and serenity in the middle of chaos. Things could be, you know, some of those firemen working, you know, 9-11, doing those jobs. Lenny when his son died. They're different. There are just undigestible situations. Just they so assault The human heart divorces. Someone comes home and says, we're done, and you've been married for 25 years. I mean, what do you do in situations like that? There's no answer. I mean what the mind wants to know is why. The mind's not deep enough. What psychology wants to Know is explain it to you. Psychology is not deep Enough to give you the peace that surpasses understanding, That gives you the Peace to be able to stand In the middle of life and be okay. the answer that we have is spiritual it surpasses intellect it surpassES ego when we get ourselves out of the way and we become gods Chamberlain used to say you've got a choice you can have a self-centered life and suffer the consequences you can also have a God-centered life and suffer the consequences and in a God centered life when you're centered you've gotta choice you either have your ego and intellect in charge of it or you have God in charge of it now none of us Spend all the time centered in God. Because you need an ego to take the trip, and the ego is a pretty demanding thing, and it keeps engaging us. But as you become more awake, as, you know, the program says having had a spiritual awakening, you become More Aware of How the Ego Operates, and you start to get a choice about being centered in the program and being centered on your higher power. And when you're centered on Your Higher Power, there is no problem. You're okay. It's okay, and you're okay." I mean, the reason that I'm sober today and I'm a participant in Alcoholics Anonymous is I found in AA what I was looking for in a bottle. I mean it is, it ain't perfect, but it's profoundly wonderful. I'm in love with my wife today. I have a good relationship with our three children who are sober 15, 11, and 4 years. it wasn't fun having your kids go through the process of getting there but how lucky and what a gift it has been and your kids don't want the answer from you they get it from someone else and how grateful you are that there is someone else there wouldn't it have been wonderful that I was such an asshole excuse my language that when my children had the problem they wouldn't want to come in AA because of how I was in my own home that could have happened baby had I not had some change in my life in my 8th or 9th year of sobriety my children might well not have wanted what I had and I can't tell you how grateful I am that I was able to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous long enough and late as it was put those principles in action in my wife and start to gain a relationship with those kids that today is wonderful I'm self-supporting through my own contribution you're going to have trouble So after I'd had that great breakthrough at eight years of sobriety, for the next ten years my business took off and I was a good worker. We built a company with 500 employees and I Was in the real estate investment business and I made enough money in those ten years to burn a wet elephant. I mean, I had the big house and I had The Big Cars and I Had Lots of Stuff. In 1986 they passed the TAC Act and between 1986 and 1991 I went broke. so I mean I lost 8 million dollars in 3 years and I'm in a meeting my kid's in treatment he came home from school he got arrested for drunken driving told about an automobile and ended up in detox that was his Christmas present to his mother and I and I go to the halfway house to go to The Meeting he's going to on Friday nights and I start crying when The Meeting starts I cry all the way through The Meeting I got 24 years of sobriety couldn't you just see a guy looking over and say how'd you like to have what he has I'm not sure I think he's got the clap I don't know what the hell is wrong with him and you know when I went broke there's problems with lack of success but there's also problems with success during those 10 years when I had all that money I became arrogant and I was unaware of the fact that I became I thought God was blessing me because I was such a wonderful member of AA. Wouldn't you like to have been in meetings with me, driving up in my $1,000 suit and my expensive car? What a pain in the neck I was. And it was invisible to me. It was invisible. It was visible to me, and when I went broke, it wasn't like changing clothes. It was like tearing the skin off my body. I got a spiritual director about 1991, 1988 when I was going broke, And I remember I went to him, and he said, what do you want, Bob? And I said, I want to become more loving and less materialistic. Within six months, I started to lose everything I had. And I went up to him and I said we've got to talk. I said what I meant was I want keep the stuff and be less materialist. And Jack watched me go through that. And, you know, the fact is today I wouldn't trade the money for the lesson. I take the money and the lesson. I had to find out who I was with money, and I had a lot of time to think about it. And I had no way to find OUT WHO I WAS WITHOUT MONEY. And I have issues in that area of my life. I today have issues in that era of my live. If there were two or three areas of my lives that I say the tendencies are the same, I'm a spender. I'm not materialist. I'm still in balance. My life is self-supporting through my own contributions. But I have to monitor that. I have pay attention to that. I mean, it isn't like that problem is, like, gone. It is something that I have to pay attention to, and I have a suspicion that I'm going to have to pay some attention to that throughout my entire life. It would be fine with me if that gets removed, and I would like to grow to a point where it gets removed but it ain't been removed yet. And you'd think that that process of going through and making all that money and losing all that money, I thought, how could anybody lose all that money? I thought, why wouldn't you drag something out of the game? I mean, how dumb do you have to be to lose it all? You know, 24 years sober and you lose it all. It's been a hell of a trip. There is no straight line that would have taken that young guy at 23 years of age with the problems and issues and defects of character that I had, with the lack of maturity that I Had, and I get into Alcoholics Anonymous thinking that all I'm really doing is solving a problem. All I'm doing is trying to remove alcohol from my life, and what I found out is that you gave me the key. You gave me The Key to Life. That my problem, what I was looking for, was the answer to life. And what I got was a higher power. What I got was a village of people that I could live with. What I get was teachers. What I've got was friends. What I'v got was mentors. What I'd got was meetings. You can't stay well alone. The only thing you can do well alone is get sick. You need a community in which to get well and prosper. You need confidence. You need people to know who you are. You need those connections because God speaks to us through each other. I'm very glad that I had an opportunity to be here with you this weekend. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.