Restless, Irritable, and Discontented — That’s Your Best Day, Not Your Worst – Burns B.

One of these guys who likes to hunt geese and come home and make love all night. Fortunately, I'm changing my partners in between there. I guess I'd do it in a duck blind if I had to, but in any event, that's the way it goes. But when I'm sitting in that men's meeting, I'm sitting in a meeting with a whole bunch of lab rats. I watch them, bank presidents, street people, doctors, lawyers, GE workers, the whole bit. And the one common thing they have is they're all hyperactive. Did you see Richard today? Richard is a solid member of recovery, but this is an ADHD. Whether he likes it or not, that's what he is. You hear me and watch me and listen to me tonight, you're looking at an ADHD. And those of you in this room that I know, by God, you are too. Now, you may not be to the point where you're dysfunctional, but I mean there's an energy level in you which is real clear, and it's this way. Irritable, restless, and discontented. And that's when you're on your best day. You know? That's what Silkworth said when he said, irritable, restless, and discontented. One of the things he's looking at is a form of ADHD. And 40% of women have it. Part of this study on women and genetics and alcoholism is looking at ADHD in women. Because all the young ones are, no question, this one is, you probably were. You know? And Libby absolutely is. I mean, my daughter Libby, who talked here last year, some of y'all may remember that she talked here last year. Libby's 37, been in AA, I think, 17 years. 16 or 17 years, something like that. I've got a son, 31, who's been in AA for 14. I mean, hell, if you're a Brady and you walk past a bar, you go to your first AA meeting on the next corner, hell, that's just all the way it is. And we'll get into the genetics of it here in just a minute. But ADHD, residual type. And we have to look at that. The question is, do they need medicine? I took, my drug of choice was amphetamine. For the first 12 years. I took it to study. I stayed on it because it allowed me to focus. Now, I can't read for longer than 15 minutes at a time. That's the best my concentration will do. But I've got tapes I listen to, or used to, I don't so much anymore. But used to listen to all the time. Tape library is incredible to deal with my ADHD. But give me medicine, the typical medicine of speed drugs. Why don't you just get a gun and shoot me right between the eyes? There are other drugs that can be used if it's severe enough, but it takes someone like me to make that call. Is it severe enough? And I made it with alcoholics that absolutely needed to be on medication. Because of their ADHD in their so-called residual or adult form. But don't, this irritable restless discontinuity has many components. It's very real. ADHD residual type. Gatlow and Heneke met with, they had about 75 to 100 alcoholics they worked with in the middle 70s. Heneke's a clinical psychologist. Gatlow's an addictionist. Heneke came back to Gatlow and she said, I found that every one of these alcoholics has a poor identification with a parent of the same sex. Gatlow, who thinks that Freud is a cuss word, went back and reviewed all of his charts since 1953. Presented a paper in 1979 to 1800. Therapists and people that were in this field. I was there with one year of sobriety. I wasn't in this field, but I was interested in what they were talking about. And he said to us, I'm telling you, it's true. And I'm sitting there thinking, damn, I'm having a hard time buying that. I said, my daddy's one of the neatest people I've ever known. And he was. My daddy was one of the neatest people I've ever known. I said, I'm having a hard time buying that. And so I went up to Dr. Gatlow after he was over and I said, Dr. Gatlow, please help me with this. My daddy's one of the neatest people I've ever known. He said, tell me your story. Well, I was born very poor. My daddy always had two jobs. He went to work in the morning before I got up and he came home at night after I went to bed. For the first 10 years of my life, my mother raised me. Most of my communication skills and interpersonal skills are female. That's what made me an outstanding person. I'm an outstanding primary care doctor because the best primary care doctors are women. I know I worked with 17 doctors and one of them was a woman and she was the best doctor we had. She couldn't diagnose better. She couldn't write better scripts. But she would listen and she would nurture and she would seek and she would make the patient feel like that they had dignity. Most of the male doctors would pop in and pop out and do the next one. It was a job. And I was the second best doctor we had because most of my skills were female. I'm a nurse. I'm a nurturer. I'm a caretaker. And that's exactly what I am. My male skills came out of locker rooms and bad books because my daddy wasn't there. I remember when I was four years old, he took me to my first football game and at halftime we went in to the restroom and I sat down on the commode and daddy looked at me and he said, Burns Mac, what are you doing? I said, I'm peeing. He said, why don't you use that and point it to the latrine. I'd never seen a latrine. Who took me to public restrooms? My mother. And she took me to the women's restroom. So I'd never seen a latrine. And daddy said, I'm going to have to start taking you to more football games. But the take-home message is, where do we learn our coping skills? We learn them from emulating people of the same sex. Big brothers and big sisters, what's the deal? We take a responsible adult male and put them with a male child and that male child learns to emulate that male. What do we do when we bring them in day eight? Get a sponsor. You get him. You don't get her as a sponsor. You don't get her as a sponsor. Well, why? Well, what we've always said, because you'll end up sleeping with her. Well, that's a big risk, I grant you. And frankly, it is a real big risk. But the real reason is so you can learn to grow up. So you can follow this man, so you can get with Richard and he can teach you how to grow up. You're grown up. You're a man. You can probably whip his ass. But the bottom line is, you don't know how to grow up. He's going to teach you. That's what a sponsor's role is. That's exactly... That's exactly what it is. And people say, well, I get a female sponsor. A male says, I get a female sponsor. I'm not going to sit in judgment of that. I'm going to give you the facts. You draw your own conclusions. And there may be circumstances where that's appropriate. They're rare. My first sponsor taught me early on, when you learn to relate to the people of your own kind, you've got a better chance to recover. The women will manipulate the men and the men will manipulate the women. But damn it. It's hard for men to manipulate men and it's hard for women to manipulate women. And we come in conning. And we've got a game to play. And if you've got a skirt on, I think I've got about two legs up and got you hiked up one second before you know I'm there. And you ask me if I think that's the agenda. I don't think it is. That's just the way it always turns out. And 15 years in recovery, and I'll talk about it tonight, I was still playing that same game. And didn't know it. You get with your own kind. You run with your own kind. Because you're learning how to grow up. Emulating people of the same sex. Psychological component of alcoholism. Now let's look at the biological. We're going to look at the genetics and the biochemistry. The genetics. The most compelling evidence we have today that this is a disease continues to be the genetic evidence. Between 1980 and 1990, there were 300 studies and 700 papers written in this country stating irrefutably the number, and that's been even doubled since then in the 90s, that the number one thing that is most compelling to indicate if a child will be an alcoholic is does that child have alcoholic kinfolx? Kenneth Bloom at the University of Texas, 11th chromosome. He published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He'd found a, this is a technical piece of language, but he'd found a gene allele for DNA. He'd found a gene allele for dopamine that was present in 77% of alcoholics on the 11th chromosome absent in 72% of non-alcoholics. Subsequent studies have shown that is not necessarily true. I've talked to Kenneth Bloom, and he said Burns, it's true. I don't know what it means, but it's being studied in the genetics, that $50 million study on the genetics. What we have known between 1935 and 1950 in three different Scandinavian countries, there were 2,000 adoptee studies and 500 concordant twin studies. Some of the results of these studies were not true. Some of the later studies have shown there may have been as high as 8,000 adoptee studies and irrefutable. No one has ever questioned the validity of these studies. There's some question about whether or not they would conform to the ethics because they put non-alcoholic, they split up twin babies and put one in a known alcoholic home and one in a known non-alcoholic home. So there's been a lot of question about the ethics, but no one's ever, ever refuted the validity of these studies. And what they proved conclusively is that if a child has a primary care relative that's an alcoholic, the chances of that child being an alcoholic are four times greater than the normal population, whether that child's raised in that home or not. You hear that? This is nature over nurture. David Ohms in St. Louis, who is a psychiatrist who's been treating us for about 35 years, said if one parent's an alcoholic, the chances of that child being an alcoholic are 45%. If both parents are alcoholic, the chances of that child being alcoholic, 94%. Whether that child's raised in that home or not, whether that child's raised in that home or not. See Robert Cloninger in St. Louis defined two forms of genetic alcoholism. One, or so-called type two, are highly heritable, and type one are milieu limited. Type two is the adolescent alcoholism. These kids are literally alcoholic almost from their first drink. Richard described that. to you today a typical type 2 alcoholic and early AA said they didn't exist and he will remember when he first came in probably if he came in and they accepted him right up front he was fortunate because around this country at that time if you came in and you were his age you were told to go out and drink more because you weren't ready and we have a lot of old-timers or a lot of people who are older in age with some of these so-called brats coming in and they're saying these kids aren't alcoholic yes they are my kids were alcoholic by the time they were 12 they were screaming drunks by the time they were 12 years old I've treated a seven-and-a-half-year-old alcoholic and the characteristic of that alcoholic is these kids lose the these kids will be almost alcoholic from the first drink they do not lose the ability to control the amount they drink they may not drink that often they may not drink that often they may not drink that often they may not much but when they drink they immediately lose all forms of appropriate societal behavior they become little animals and that's what we see when these kids come into our meetings I used to call them the little starlings I said they fly in shit and fly out and that's it but I'll tell you what they did they really stuck to us and we invited them in part of it was because of me and my kids part of it was the same affinity that this group had and these kids we had a cadre of them that in this was in the late 70s that came in to us 14 15 16 and 17 year olds that came into our meetings and some of them have now grown up to be incredibly wonderfully responsible people but they did not lose the ability to roll him out they drank but when they drank they just behaved bizarrely Sheila described it last night bizarrely and there's a whole the literature is full of a definition of male alcoholics that are called antisocial the young ones no they're not they're type 2 highly heritable male dominant that's seen nine times more frequently in male alcoholics of male out in males with male alcoholic with their father being alcoholic four times more frequently in the females when we get them into that homeless shelter dry them out teach them the big book they become pussycats most of them have been in prison the common denominator for those men I've done those fist that's with is they were all drinking before they were 10 they were drinking before they were 10 and they were all sexually molested as children I don't know what to make of the second but I know damn well what to make of the first one because I expected them to pay that way we're going to rewrite the textbooks these are not antisocial personality disorders they're type 2 adolescent alcoholics the treatment is different these kids if we can do it need to be put in some sort of alcohol and drug-free environment for a minimum of two years now it's just a two minute period this is the most important part of the test and as you know it's difficult to do that with our insurance the way it is but if they meet and the only place they can even come close to duplicating that environment is where eh and they run in packs and I love it when they run in facts because we don't have to take them to the woodshed they take each other to the woodshed you'll see when I'm come in he's had a drink and then they'll all disappear for about 15 minutes he comes back and he looks like God is just just entered into his life and we don't have to say a word first time i ever saw we were down in in atlanta 1800 people i went for nine years to this conference and they had four of these young kids oldest was 19 the youngest was 15 the least amount of recovery was three years and they were sitting up there talking to us and somebody said what kind of meetings do y'all go to and they everyone went around and said it we go to at least one meeting for just us the kids that's so we can play said we go to the rest of the meetings with y'all so y'all can teach us how to be grown-ups and how to live and i just started crying because i saw the truth the role model truth and what these kids are begging for what they're begging for type one milieu limited that's the adult form that silkworth talked that uh that uh jelnik talked about seven and a half year mean average that's these these are this is the adult form starts in the second third fourth decade can go to the end of life you , usually 60 more in women usually related to a societal event loss of a loved one breaking up of a marriage child dies something like that and they'll start to drink in seven and a half years of drinking and they reach full-blown alcoholism these people lose the ability to control the amount they drink but they will stay societally responsible until they can't do it any longer quarter whiskey a night but i never drank in my office richard crossed the line he drank and went to work he drank and went to work he would preserve that until he could no longer preserve it and the day that i put the shotgun in my mouth i couldn't either treatment number one treatment say sometimes detoxification is necessary we know that fifteen percent of people who quit drinking abruptly will go into the dts fifteen percent of those people uh will die uh eighty-five percent don't need medical detox takes a professional to know how or why the blood platelet uh if i cut myself there are about eleven steps to clotting you know blood platelets they're going to cut out blood platelets you're going to have to do that you're going to have to do that every single day that's an important step for the blood platelet and you're going to have to do it every single day so i'm going to do it every single One of those has to do with a component called a platelet. We take the blood platelet of an alcoholic, subject that blood platelet to alcohol, we'll see these three enzymatic processes screwed up. We take the blood platelet of an offspring of an alcoholic that's never had a drink, subject that to alcohol, we'll see that same screw up in 10% of the cases. Again, further evidence of the genetics of alcoholism. This will probably be a screening test that'll be available. Whether we'll ever be able to use it or not, it'll take at least 30 more years to withstand scrutiny. Stimulus augmentation. Whitlow and Henneke found out two things. They said, number one, there's a poor identification of the parent of the same sex. Number two is all alcoholics are stimulus augmenters, irritable, restless, discontented. We blow everything out of proportion. Brain waves. We run brain waves on alcoholics. In a statistically significant number of cases, there's a screw up of two types of brain waves, the P3 and the low amplitude alpha waves. These are the brain waves that have to do with the cognitive ability to process stress, i.e., affective mood disorders, i.e., irritable, restless, discontented. In 1984, stay with me on this, because it's going to get some really good stuff coming. In 1984, Mark Shuckett took 200 Southern California college students. These kids weren't alcoholic. He put a brain wave on them, and his agenda was to get them drunk, and he was going to have a sound. They'd go boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And he wanted to see how drunk they had to get before they couldn't tell the difference in the beeps and the boops, okay? So he got started. Now, the P300 brain wave is a brain wave that we use today in medicine to give us a preliminary diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. That's what we use it for in medicine. We know it has to do with the ability to process stress. So he gets these kids going, and I asked Mark one time, why did he do the brain wave study? He said, I don't know. He said, because that really wasn't what I was looking for, but I just hooked them up. So he got them in there, and they're going boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And boy, they get drunker than the Lord, but they can still pop that beeps and boops right on target. But 10% of them lost their P300 wave. Then they took those kids, and they did a full history on them. And that group of kids, 10% of them had primary relatives that were alcoholic. The other 90% didn't. Then they went and got another 200. They did their family history first, wired them up, started doing the same thing, same deal. 10% of them lost their P300, opened up their family histories. They had a primary history of alcoholism. Then he went back and got the original group, brought them back, said, we're going to do this all over again. They said, OK. Wired them up and got ready, gave them a glass of 7-Up and lipped the glass with alcohol. And the minute those kids took that drink and smelled the alcohol, their P300 disappeared. Now let me think about what that significance. We've always thought that the craving starts after the first drink. It starts at the memory of the first drink. You see what I'm talking about? Yeah. Don't go into a bar to buy your cigarettes. Don't smoke if you can keep from it. But if you have to, and I won't get into that now, but if you ever ask me any questions, I will. But if you're going to smoke, don't go into a bar to buy your cigarettes. If you used to go to country western concerts to drink, don't go to country western concerts because the minute you walk in, your brain starts. It's electrical activity. With our anesthesiologists, whose primary drug is a very powerful narcotic, we don't even let them back in the operating room for 10 minutes. We don't let them back in the operating room for two years because we can measure their pulse rate, their blood pressure, and the sodium chloride content of their sweat just walking in the room for at least two years, just seeing the drug sitting on the counter. Gedlow says, he asked every alcoholic, why do you drink? Some of us say we drink because we like the way it tastes. Everyone will say we drink because we like the way it makes us feel. He said what we have to find out is what do they feel like before they drink? Obviously, there's a payoff. You take a normal person, let them drink. They get a certain feeling, they quit. We drink, we'll drink, and die either getting the feeling or looking for it. He said what we have to find out is what do they feel like before they drink? Let me see, how did it? Yeah. No. Damn, I just went blank. This was work done in the UK. I can't believe that. I must be getting old. You like that? Of course you would, wouldn't you? I'm not going to talk about you being fat. I'm not even going to bring it up anymore. I'm not going to talk about you being fat. I'm not even going to bring it up anymore. I'm not even going to bring it up anymore. You just had to make me do it. I didn't want to. No, it had to do with the morphine, when they started the morphine studies that they did. I just confused them with the marijuana studies that were done in the UK in the early 60s. This was back in the middle 70s when they were doing the morphine studies. No, no, that's not what it is. I can't believe that. Okay, now, all right. In 1975, I'll stop here. I'll go back and get the rest of it. I probably won't get it while I'm in this lifetime, but in 1975, there were a series of studies that were done, and they would inject human beings with morphine. They would Geiger count the brain, and when the Geiger counted the brain, they found that that morphine that was shot into the humans went to receptor sites in the brain. The conclusion was that if there were receptor sites in the brain for a morphine given in a shot, then the brain must make a compound identical to morphine. Because if you got a receptor site for it, then you don't have boat docks without boats. So they started a whole series of studies, and they found the brain's own endogenous morphine. That endogenous morphine is called beta-endorphin. You've heard of beta-endorphin. Beta-endorphin is a runner's high. The runner runs and runs, and all of a sudden, can't go any further. They hit a wall, and then they just float. You take a normal person, put them in a dentist chair, and start grinding on their teeth with no anesthesia. In a little while, they'll be able to tolerate it, because they're making the endorphin. One of the leading producers of endorphin is orgasm. That's why early on in sobriety, we keep the men and women apart, because they really are getting relief from having an orgasm, because their brain chemistry is being re-equilibrated. We have proved conclusively on studies done in alcoholic animals and in humans that the alcoholic animal and human is deficient in beta-endorphin, and the offspring of those alcoholic humans and animals. It's the first feel-good compound that we are deficient in. Second feel-good compound was methionine enkephalin, another neurotransmitter. The second major morphine-like substance, and alcoholic animals and humans are deficient in it, and the offspring are deficient. Second feel-good compound, TK Lee at the University of Indiana, studying the neurotransmitters in a particular area of the brain called serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine. This is what you know from Prozac Zoloft. Prozac Zoloft and Paxil, they increase serotonin. Dopamine is what's increased by cocaine and Ritalin and amphetamine. He was studying this particular area of the brain in regard to these two compounds, and he found conclusively he had a whole bunch of rats over in a cage, and rats will not drink alcohol. You have to breed special strains of rats to drink alcohol, so he had these rats over in this cage. Now, the way they ran this experiment is they ran a double-looming catheter, almost microscopic, underneath this big muscle in the neck called the trapezius. Up into the brain under CAT scan technique, and they put it wherever they wanted to put it. They would inject a certain chemical, draw back on the other side, and find out what that chemical will do. So they had these rats over here in a cage. It's a darkened cage. They had a lighted conduit over to the lighted cage. Ten percent of these rats come over into this lighted cage. He called these risk-taking rats. He called these non-risk-taking rats. And when he measured the serotonin and dopamine on these non-risk-taking, non-drinking rats, their dopamine and serotonin was normal. He measured this risk-taking. Now, these rats will drink alcohol. They'll drink water. They'll drink alcohol. Whatever's there, they'll drink it. These rats won't drink it even if they'll literally die of dehydration, not drink alcohol. These rats will drink whatever you got. Their dopamine and serotonin was not as concentrated as these rats, and when they drank, it went back to normal. Now, he bred these rats, and he's got himself an alcoholic rat. This rat's looking for a bar, looking for a fight, looking for a woman. I mean, this is an alcoholic rat. I mean, this rat wants a drink, you know? And these rats had almost no serotonin or dopamine, and when they drank, it went completely off the page, went completely off the page. Now, he got these rats, and the way they did it, they'd have a light up here, and they got that little thing in their brain, and they got a pedal down here. And when the light comes on, the rat knows if he hits this pedal, down will come the booze, and he'd drink the booze, go boom, pass out, get drunk and pass out. I mean, here'd be showtime. He'd hit the pedal, and down it would come, he'd drink it, pass out. So they finally got the idea, they put on the light, they ran 7-Up down in there. The rat hits the pedal, gets 7-Up, drinks the 7-Up, passes out for two weeks, and then he realized they screwed him. That's exactly right. And then he won't touch it. And what they had done, what T.K. Lee had done had put the chemistry changes in the brain with the electrical mechanism in the brain, which shows that craving is related to euphoric recall. The thinking of the drink. But let's also look at what we've looked at. What is the alcoholic looking for? Relief. Deficient in beta-endorphin. Deficient in methionine and catholin. Deficient in dopamine and serotonin, the four major feel-good compounds in the brain, and we're running two sandwiches short of a picnic and two quarts low. You know, why are we irritable, restless, discontented? Because by God, the world is... The noise normal people hear is, uh, you know what you and I hear, just like that every damn minute. That's just it. Every minute. Here we are, red alert. And I never knew it was that way until I took my first amphetamine, and I thought, son of a bitch, they shut the noise off. The world got just completely quiet. And how many times have you taken that drink when you come in, at least before you became addicted, and you sit down and took that first drink? What happened? You got quiet. You got quiet. Never... The obsession to drink is for relief. And we are not like normal people. We are irritable, restless, discontented because we are lacking, under genetic predisposition, the chemicals that allow us to calm down. And we drink, and we bring them back to normal. And then the problem, because of the rest of it, which is still to be defined, and that is, how do we metabolize the alcohol once and for all? Do we take it? Do we take it? once it gets in now we will look at the compulsion we've looked at the obsession now look at the compulsion alcohol is metabolized to acetaldehyde to acetic acid to co2 and water the female alcoholic big book describes the female alcoholic as being ripped much more severely much more quickly physically medical science has also defined that the reason is because since I prepared this overhead we have found that the female alcoholic is deficient in the stomach lining in a compound called alcohol dehydrogenase which breaks down alcohol into acid aldehyde in the stomach even before it gets to the liver and the female alcoholic lacks that so the female alcoholic is getting the first three passes of metabolism of high-octane alcohol and that's why a thirty year old female alcoholic will look about ten years older than a thirty-year-old male alcoholic because she's getting ripped much more successfully Severely, quicker, physically. Much more severely. And you take what she does like that, then she gets much more severely ripped emotionally. And the mess of cleaning up the young female alcoholic is almost gargantuan. If it weren't for God's grace and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't think one single female would ever get sober if they become alcoholic before they're 20. Because the devastation physically and emotionally is incredible. And it's related to a great extent on the devastation of the chemistry of the alcoholism in the female. All alcoholics under genetic predisposition are deficient in acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. That's what breaks acetaldehyde down into acetic acid. This is where hangovers occur. This is where anabuse works. Anabuse will tie up with acetaldehyde and can produce death. There is virtually no place in the treatment of alcoholism for anabuse. I've given anabuse to three people in 15 years. The whole principle of anabuse. And these are the people who are so obsessive, compulsive, and impulsive. Usually with ADD and OCD. And they are so obsessive, compulsive, and so impulsive that they will drink because they just cannot not drink. I'm talking about, I had one guy that he would, every evening he'd come in and pour himself a shot, only take one sip, and sit down and start crying and call me. Finally I put him on anabuse, scared the hell out of him for about two months, and then I took him off him, and he was fine. He was fine. Virtually no place in the treatment of alcoholism for anabuse. And the reason is because the principle of anabuse is to frighten the alcoholic into not drinking. You can't frighten us. We were born frightened. The minute we hit the delivery room floor, we were scared to death. And I've just explained to you why. The noise is too damn loud. What does it say in the family effort? Alcoholics are sensitive people. You read that? It takes some of us a long time, to outgrow it. Wilson was talking about the spiritual growth to overcome the innate sensitivity of a too loud world. So you give us anabuse to scare us into not drinking. I've never seen one single person on anabuse if they wanted to drink and not figure out how to drink around it. You can drink around anabuse. You just got to figure out how to do it. If it doesn't kill you first, you got to figure out how to do it. And you can. And I will never keep anybody on anabuse longer than a couple of months while I integrate them into the program. If they're not ready to buy the program, then I take them off the anabuse because they're not ready to quit drinking. If they're not ready to quit drinking, I can't bear their consequences if I don't have a doctor and I'm working as a sponsor. I say, as you said, I won't leave you, but I got not much else to give you until you're ready to quit drinking. Then I'll give you everything I got. There's a side chain here. When acid aldehyde, the concentration becomes so great, then there's a side chain called dope aldehyde. Now that's important. In the early 1970s, there was a brilliant researcher named Virginia Davis. She did an experiment, which is a valid experiment. She took a rat, as I told you, they're alcohol avoidant. She put a plate of alcohol in a plate of water. She took this rat and she had been looking at a group of compounds called tetrahydroacylquinolones. They're metabolites of morphine and morphine-like substances. And she took this rat and she injected this rat's brain with THIQ. And that same rat that wouldn't touch the alcohol, they went directly over and drank the alcohol until it died. Now these studies have been duplicated a number of times and they're valid. She said, I've made an alcoholic animal. I wonder if that happens in humans. 17 years later, she published her paper saying that she had found that if she reacted dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter, with acid aldehyde, you saw where we got that, she produced a compound called sal-solanol. That's THIQ. She injected that into the animal's brain. Nothing happened. Then she reacted serotonin with acid aldehyde and got a rat. She got tetrahydro-beta-carboline. That's a THIQ. Into the animal's brain, nothing happened. Then she actually discovered the side chain of dope aldehyde that I showed you. She reacted dopamine with dope aldehyde, produced a compound called tetrahydro-pipavriline. Post-mortem studies on alcoholic humans, their brains, and alcoholic rats, their brains, showed that the concentration in her presentation was 1,200 times greater than in the normal population. She said, I've discovered the etiology of the compulsive rat and the compulsion, the addiction to drink. Approximately 50 laboratories have looked at this since 1987. And this was taught, some of you may remember this being taught in the middle and early 80s as the cause of compulsive drinking. These 50 laboratories are equally divided. 25 of them say it doesn't exist. 25 of them say that it absolutely does. And both groups are entirely reputable. This is part of the $50 million study. When I talk to you about aldehyde condensation products, I talk to you about that's what these are, T-H-I-Q. This is almost certainly where the compulsion to drink does exist. It's almost certainly where the progressive nature of alcoholism lies. But that's still up for grabs. Five years from now, if I'm still alive and you're still alive and we're both sober and God willing, all that will happen, then maybe we'll know where T-H-I-Q stands. And I'll come back and give you another lecture. But we do know that basically that it plays a part in the compulsion to drink. We've looked at an alcoholic, individual born into a world that's too loud. Looking for relief in this environment which says it's better to drink, drinks for that relief and finds it and the brain starts a whole screwed up mechanism of metabolism and you've got an alcoholic. Loose lattice work, absolutely scientifically sound, more will be added later, but I'll tell you what, if you don't have some insight right now into the fact that you are different, bodily and mentally, then you haven't been listening. When we call this a disease, it is well founded. You don't have to defend it. Somebody says, I don't believe you've got a disease. You can believe whatever you damn well please. When you get ready to do enough research that I've done, then I'll talk to you. If you want to give me your opinion, it's kind of like buttholes. Everybody's got one. I don't pay much attention to either one of them, you know. That's the way I feel about it. When you've got information, we'll talk. Until you've got it, you can talk to somebody else. Don't talk to me. So we can talk apples and oranges, apples and apples. Now, this is a critical part of recovery. The post-acute or prolonged recovery syndrome. Wilson defined it in 1935. He actually wrote about it in 1938 when he said that for a year and a half, he couldn't get a job because he was wracked with waves of self-pity and resentment. He was defining the first two years of recovery. And nobody wanted any more than Wilson, but he was saying he was wracked with waves of self-pity and resentment. In 1979, it was reported after an intensive study that the power of retentive memory for recent events will be screwed up for six months to two years. Sleep patterns screwed up six months to two years. Remember we used to go in, the old timers, and say, I can't sleep. And they'd say, hell, nobody ever died from lack of sleep. I'd say, they're insensitive. But by God, it's true. Nobody ever does. But nobody ever sleeps right. I don't know how many people come to me and say, Doc, please give me something for sleep. Okay. Give me a glass of milk and call your sponsor. And that'll cost you $19. I really never charged them for that, but I might charge them $5 because they had to be responsible. But it's true. And retentive memory for recent events, I lost my car drinking. All the time. I lost my car sober for two years. Those of you who've heard my story have heard that. I mean, I'd lose it. I lost it one time in an 11-space parking lot next to my office. Went out and said, where's my car? I'd driven Casey's car to work and walked out and I couldn't find my car. Went and got my partner and started crying. I said, somebody stole my car. He went out and said, Burns, you drove Casey's car. And I said, that's right, I forgot. So he assigned me a parking spot. An 11-place parking space. And he said, when Burns leaves the office, he's going to that parking space. And if he gets whatever's in it started, he's going to drive it home. And that was it. How many times have you... And I would get up in the morning and read the Curry Journal and couldn't remember it. I would take my meditation book and read it and think it was beautiful and close it and couldn't remember it. I thought I had messed up my brain. This was in 78. This wasn't known until 79. And when I read this, I just cried with relief. If you can find your way into this motel, even if you can't remember whether you drove your car or not, I promise you if you're in the first two years of recovery, you're going to be okay. Because the wet brain that you have the brain syndrome which only encompasses 2% of alcoholics, the Wernicke-Korsakoff psychosis, you couldn't find this room. If you can find it, you're going to be okay. Just keep coming back and trust me, you're going to be okay. And I did this talk in Bull Shoals, Arkansas one time and I said, you'll be okay. There was a guy sitting back where y'all are in front of that column. This guy had this little hat pulled down over his eyes, looked like he was going to shoot me or hug me when he got through. And when I said that, he jumped up and said, hallelujah, thank God, I thought I'd lost my mind. And I mean, for that whole weekend, he followed me everywhere and if I said shit, he wrote it down because he thought he had seen the Lord, you know, that I had brought him the message. Simple problem solving and stress management. Look at those two. Those are living skills. Every day is simple problem solving. Every day is stress management. And if that's screwed up for two years, you wonder why you're slapping hell out of somebody at a parking lot? You wonder why you can't figure out which bill to pay first? You realize when you can't really figure out if you go to the grocery what you're supposed to get? Or if you washed something or didn't wash something or where did I leave that suit or didn't leave that suit? Now, if you're my age and do that, you've probably got some real problems. Probably got Alzheimer's but the same, or at least pre-genital psychosis. But if you're early in recovery, this is going to happen. And during that time, that's why we don't make a dual diagnosis in the first two years because we look like everything. For two years, we looked like everything. I mean, you can't separate the fly manure from the pepper because we look like everything. Just stay with us. Sixty percent of relapses will occur within the first year, conservatively, because you lose hope and think you screwed up your brain. You'll be okay. Treatment, short-term, detox, non-medical, if you've got people who know what they're doing. If you don't, you really need medical detox. And this is where rehab centers, and let's go back. If you recall, Wilson was detoxed a number of times. He wasn't in a rehab center, but he certainly went through detox. And 15% of people, as I said, who quit drinking abruptly will go into DTs and 15% of those people will die. I even teach my doctors that if they're working in a med-surg hospital, to medically detox everybody because you don't have personnel to know when you're starting to go sour. In our facility, we've got pros sitting right beside the bed. You know who those pros are? People who've come through our program with more than two years of sobriety who have come from the streets. And they sit on the bed with those people when they're non-medically detoxing and talk them through detox. And the minute they start to go sour, we've got an immediate hookup with EMS. We shoot them right down to University Hospital and they go through medical detox. We've saved the city so much money that they're trying to fund our program. We just don't want their money because we don't want their rules. We've saved the government down there so much money because where do most drunks go that are down in a community the size of Jefferson County? They go to jail or they go to the hospital. If they're belligerent, they go to jail. If they're unconscious, they go to the hospital. They still do. But all the others are brought to us. Intermediate, a good treatment center, a good rehab program with a 12-step format. I'm not disagreeing with Richard, but there are some good rehab centers. There are some lousy rehab centers. You have to look real hard to find the good ones. They know their limitations. They do what they do and they do it well. And almost all of them are run by people who are in recovery who have been trained to know what AA is and what treatment is because AA is not treatment and treatment is not AA. AA is a spiritual mechanism of recovery. Anybody who calls it treatment, and I understand you have to look at definitions, but AA is not treatment and that's not where we try to analyze people and treatment is not AA. But sometimes, for instance, in my case, I was in a rehab program for three months and my brain was so toxic that I really shouldn't have been on the streets for three months because I couldn't make decisions. And there's a lot of people who can't stay away from a drink that long because their brain toxicity is so great. That needs to be made by pros. But you can send people to AA directly. You can put them into short-term or long-term rehabs. Outpatient treatment programs, I won't say they're a waste of time, but again, they have to be run very, very well and I'm not too sure that they certainly haven't lived up to their billing. Long-term AA and NA. Stanley Gitlow says the number one treatment for stimulus augmentation, the number one treatment for ADHD, the number one treatment for irritable, restless, discontented is improved interpersonal relationships. You know what that is? People loving people. Richard was strong today about love. Sheila was strong last night about love. And AA is a love feast. AA in its simplest presentation for this alcoholic is a love feast. It's where we love each other enough to be honest, tell the truth, stay with each other, never abandon, always support, but hold people up to the scrutiny of the truth. And that's love. When I'm giving this lecture to a group of people who aren't in recovery, I'll say, and most of these people come to want to know about us, I'll say, you, because of your heart, if I came and told you my problems, you would want to help me and eventually you could. I said, well, you know what? I'm going to go and walk into that men's homeless shelter with some of these guys right off the street and walk in and sit down beside them and start watching TV. And they'll look over at me and say, hey, doc. Hi, Reggie. You really love us, don't you? Yeah. You're here to help us save our lives. Yeah. I'm also here to save my ass. And I've sat beside those guys watching TV and reached over and taken the hand of a guy whose hand dwarfed mine and watched a basketball game. And I felt really great. I felt really great. People loving people. Yeah. First thing that comes back is opinions. And this program really shouldn't work. But it works because there are a number of us who truly believe that we were God's blessed and hope that you're ready to come with us as we walk this road of happy destiny. I hope I've helped you and some of you today and I hope I get the opportunity to help me and some of you tonight. Thank you for being patient. If there are any questions, I'll listen to them.