Sharing a Room with a Heroin Addict’s Wife Was Not How Notre Dame Was Supposed to End – Bob B.

Good evening. My name is Bob Bazans, and I'm an alcoholic. For the grace of God and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have not had to take a drink since the 10th of December, 1967, and for that I'm very grateful. I'd like to thank all the people who helped put this roundup together. It's really been a terrific experience for me for a number of reasons and an important weekend for me. There's a lot of neat things that have happened this weekend, and I thank you and I'm appreciative of the opportunity to be with you. I feel like I'm about to give one of the more unnecessary AA talks I've ever given. You have had quite a collection of sharing so far this weekend. You really have. For those of you who have been here all the time, or for those of you, you must have some sense of that. And for those of you who haven't been to a lot of these things, this is not ordinary. So you've had a very nice... I got in for the last half. I got in for the last half of Jack's talk when I flew in Thursday night, and Jack was sharing his humor and his experience and his program, and he did that with such a nice combination and got everything kicked off really well. And Jim and Vinoy were a great combination. Jim gave just a great talk on sponsorship, and I enjoyed that. Vinoy gave a wonderful... I bought five tapes for Vinoy. I haven't bought five tapes in a long time. And... talked about some things that are going on in relation to the traditions that I think are kind of important. Albert and Sally Meyer were wonderful. I mean, it's a great... as you will find out later on, I have, you know, fathered some boys who are going through some interesting things and listened with interest both how you shared your program and how you shared your experience, so that's very meaningful for me. Sharon, you may never give another better AA talk. That was a powerful talk. You did good, lady. That was really, really good. Bob Weilman, I don't... I'm now getting enough sobriety that I probably will have... It's one of the first times I've been at a major convention where someone I sponsored has talked, and that was... You did great. I enjoyed... It's been a privilege to be a partner with Bob in his recovery. I... He's in the game. He's got a helmet on, he's got his uniform on, and he's playing. He's not in the stands, and it's always a privilege to be in partnership with someone who's in the game and not in the stands. Looking forward to tomorrow. Geraldine, I'm going to miss your talk. I'm going to be on an airplane going home to see my wife and family in a family function. But Geraldine, who talks tomorrow morning, has got over 40 years of sobriety, and from the reports of the people who know her well and know her story, it's going to be my loss, and I will listen to the tape when it is sent to me in St. Paul. I took my first drink of alcohol when I was 13 years old. It was a real big deal for me. And it was a... I miss now. I'm sitting here looking, yeah. I'm going to correct that right now rather than wait until I went through. I don't know how I did that going through the... I'm going to talk about some of what you said later on because it relates to the end of my talk. I... You must have seen me cry through the last half of your talk. It was not an average experience sitting in the audience. Really, it was very special. In order to have something that special happen, there has to be something special in a room. You can't get what you got without having something in the room. You can't have that kind of communication without someone to receive it. I mean, you just can't shove it out. So that also says something about the intentionality of your program. I took my first drink of alcohol when I was 13 years old, and that was a big deal for me. It was a big deal for me because I was 4 foot 11, weighed 95 pounds, and was the second smallest kid in my class. And as far back as I can remember, I never liked who or what I was. I always wanted to be something different. I wanted to be bigger, better looking. I wanted to be an athlete. I kept trying out for football, but I had a back problem. I had a yellow streak down the back of it. I was a follower. You know, more than anything else, I wanted to belong. I wanted approval. I mean, every alcoholic tells that story in one way or another, I guess. And I think every human being tells that story. I think we tell it like it's unique to us, and it's not. But it feels unique to us. The exaggerated way in which we experience those feelings, you know, seemed very profound. And I determined that I wanted to become part of the in-group. No matter where you are, there seems to be a group of people who seem to know more about the business of living life than you do. It seems as if they live it with an ease that I didn't have. And it was as if they knew a secret about living life. And I wanted to hang around them. And I thought if I hung around them and pretended like I did, I also knew what the secret was. One night we'd be out, and they'd start talking about the secret, and I could overhear. I could overhear what made it easier for them. What seemed, you know, they just seemed to coast through issues that just seemed to be so difficult for me. So I kind of sold out a little bit and just, you know, tried to be whatever I had to be. And I was successful enough, I guess, at doing that that I got to be a marginal member of the in-group. Except even after I got there, I didn't feel like I belonged. I felt like I was there because I was pretending to be what they wanted me to be. And if I ever stopped being that, they wouldn't want me anymore. And one night we were out at a party, and a friend of mine had a fifth. And I went out, and we split that fifth, and I made a discovery. The discovery was when I put alcohol inside of Bob's eyes, I got a feeling of comfort and well-being. The likes of which I had never experienced up until the time I took a drink of alcohol. It still is amazing to me that that transformation was so complete. I mean, I just didn't feel short. I didn't feel like I didn't belong. I really didn't feel like I was part of it. Hell, I felt like I owned the group. I mean, it just, it literally changed the way everything appeared to me. Nothing, in fact, changed. But my perception of everything else, all the relationships about it, changed totally. From that moment on, I became a social drinker. Anytime anybody else said, I'll have a drink, I said, so shall I. I just never passed up an opportunity to do it. When you're underage and you do a lot of drinking, you get into a lot of trouble. And I did both those things. And by the time I finished high school, my drinking problem was the largest subject of negative conversation in our home. I come from a really neat home. I'm one of seven kids. I've got a great mom and dad. No particular reason why I should have been a drunk other than genetics. We have a lot of alcoholics in our family. I didn't think I had a drinking problem. I was underage. And when you're underage, and in my family, it didn't matter if the police caught you or your father caught you, it never mattered how much you drank. The issue was just flat, were you drinking? It didn't matter if you had one drink or 15. I never wanted to get caught with one drink. I figured if I was going to go through all the crap I had to go through if I got caught drinking, I was going to get the job done. So I thought a lot of my drinking issues had to do with the fact that I just was for bad to drink. So I had a chance to go away to school. And I figured out that if I went away, and I had a chance to be like an adult, and, you know, where I could drink when I wanted, my drinking would become normal. So I had a chance to go away to school. I took a large portion of how I made that decision. The decision was to escape the authority in my family, and away I went. And had my drinking normalized, I guess I wouldn't be here. But to make a long story short, I drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame in the middle of my senior year. One day I just walked out. Now, a whole bunch of things have to happen to a status-conscious young guy before he just walks out of his senior year at Notre Dame. And the long and the short of it is that I just flat had lost the ability to predict my behavior once I took a drink of alcohol. I was caught up in a disease process. I never stopped trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. Anytime there was some action going on, I kind of thought that it was like a campfire. If someone didn't keep the fire going during the week, when everybody gathered over the weekend to have fun, there wouldn't be a fire. It was like my job to keep the fire stoked during the week. I don't know what it was. But, I mean, it was like, it was pretty lousy is what it was. I went back, as you'll find out in a few minutes, I finished school someplace else. But walking out of Notre Dame in the middle of my senior year was, didn't feel very good. And it was a, kind of a big piece of failure in my life. And it was always kind of one of those unfinished things that you kind of have, like a smoldering little ember. People would ask, you know, it's real important to you and it's not important to anybody else in the world. They asked you where you went to school. Simple questions, social, you know, and you didn't know how to answer it. You know, drunks never know how to answer that. Where did you work? You know, and that's a complex question for us, you know. It's not supposed to be a complex question. For a long time it was a complex question. I went down to Notre Dame. I hadn't been back there in many years. And I was down there a couple of years ago giving an AA talk in the convocation. I had 2,000 people. And in the middle of my talk I stopped and I said, I've always had a deep sense of failure about this place. And I said, I finally figured out why. I said, I think it's because I failed. It took me about 15 years to figure that out. I was due to be commissioned at June as an officer in ROTC and I had to get a medical release. The medical release I got was for chronic alcoholism. I was diagnosed an alcoholic at age 19. I didn't think I was an alcoholic. I thought that diagnosis was goofy. I didn't think someone 19 years old or 18 years old, 1961, could be an alcoholic. That just didn't fit with what I thought. But as long as it got me out of the service, that seemed okay to me. And I showed up back at home to a set of very disappointed parents. And I finished school at a local college in St. Paul. And about the time I finished school, the family asked me to leave home. I came home and found my suitcase. It was on the porch. It was about how that went. And I, with my college degree and my newfound freedom, I struck out to make my mark in the world. I took a position as a carryout boy in a liquor store. I lost that job for going 80 miles an hour with a delivery truck. I almost killed a little girl one morning, drunk, backing out of a driveway, knocking her over in her bicycle. I took a job as a waiter at a private club in Minneapolis. I'm living on Skid Row. You know, this is the trough of my alcoholism. This wasn't typical. But it was the bottom of my alcoholism. I was living over there. And I was working as a waiter. And I'd get up at 10 o'clock in the morning. I'd drink a six-pack of beer and take a couple of dexedrine. And I'd go to work. And I'd work as a waiter from 11 to 2. And at 2 o'clock, I'd go drink beer at a local bar. And at 5.30, I'd go by a fifth. And I'd put it in my locker. And I'd work as a waiter from about 6 o'clock to about 11, 11.30, 12, whenever the business was there. I really didn't have a place to live at that time. I had my stuff stashed at a place in St. Paul. But it was 9 or 10 miles away. And I never seemed to quite get back there. So I just kind of lived out of a couple of paper sacks that I had. And I kind of slept around with the different waitresses and the different people. At the end of that, we had a waiter that I worked with. And he was a heroin addict. And his wife was a prostitute. And she and I shared the cost of a room. Whenever she had a customer, I used to go walk around the block. And when she was done for the night, I got the room. And things weren't going real well. That wasn't how I had it pictured when I was at Notre Dame. And I went out to a party one night, and I got my face kicked in pretty good. And I got beat up so badly, when I came back to work as a waiter, they fired me. They didn't want me on the floor looking the way I looked. But I didn't have any place to go then. And when you really have no place, you go home. You present yourself to your family as one more opportunity for a reunion. And I went back to my family and asked if I could come home. And they said, yeah, you can come home. We love you and we care about you. But you're really a problem. And there's eight other people in this house. And, you know, there's certain rules you have to follow. And like a good little drunk, I promised to follow the rules. They let me back in the house. Alcoholism meant a lot of different things to me. Maybe what it meant more than anything else is about every six months, I had to start my life over. If you're an alcoholic and you're in this room, you know about starting over. I mean, you're just flat. You don't know much about finishing. But you sure as hell know a lot about starting over. One of the confusing things in life, if you would have put my father in a room and gave him a pencil and paper and said write down what you want for Bob in life and put me in a room and had me write down what I wanted for me in life, those two lists would have been very close. They would have been very similar. You couldn't have convinced anybody in my family or anybody who knew me that what I wanted in life, from observing the way I lived my life, that what I wanted in life for me was what my family and people who loved me wanted for me. It looked like I was just absolutely dead center destroying my life and everybody around me. It wasn't so. So I made maybe the largest full-court press of putting my act together that I had ever done. It occurred to me if I could put certain things into my life, I could order my life. If I found a woman that I loved and she loved me and we got married and I got some structure in my life, that would make a difference. I thought that if I could get a job that was really kind of a career sort of thing rather than just screwing around waiting to see what the service is going to do with me, that would make a difference. And if I could get out of the house, which is interesting because I was just moving back in the house, that would make a difference. So I started to put the things in my life that would order my life. I got back together with Linda, who I had gone with for a couple of years and broken up with for eight or nine months, and we became engaged to be married, and today she is my very lovely wife. She is a real active member of Al-Anon. And I know that once most of you sobered up, you never had any problems or issues in sobriety, but I dragged a few problems into my life. I dragged some issues into my recovery. And it's my opinion that if we both hadn't had programs, the likelihood of us being together today would have been not very high. We became engaged to be married, and I got my first job as an executive trainee in a manufacturing concern about my first automobile. I thought, hey, it's finally going to happen. You're finally going to become what you always wanted to be when you grew up. Only it didn't happen because I continued to drink and have difficulty. You know, God, I just, you know, I was a young drunk in a large corporation, and it was just real rigid, you know. They wanted to have you come in on Mondays and stay on Fridays, and, you know, they had lunch hours, and I just usually was so sick or hungover I, you know, sleep on the way to work, you know, pull my car over on the freeway and some cop would wake me up at noon, or I'd get to work and I'd take my mail and I'd go in the john and I'd fall asleep in the john, you know, and then someone would page me and I'd stumble down the hall because my legs were asleep. It was classy stuff, you know, for a guy who... I was real classy. But a photographer at that company that used to let me sleep my hangovers off in the darkroom, he used to hide me, put up boards up over the developing tanks, and I'd go in there and sleep it off, and he'd come get me if anybody was looking for me. My career wasn't progressing very well. It somehow just didn't have the oomph that you think of, you know, most careers having. And with that keen sense of timing that an awful lot of drunks have, I left that job, I took a job selling business equipment, and I had that job about, I don't know, two months, and I went out on a four-day drunk, the first two of which I called in, the next two of which I didn't. And I woke up after a six-hour blackout, and I didn't know if I had a job, a fiancé, or a place to live. And I was scared. And all of a sudden the recommendation of my psychiatrist and my father that I look into Alcoholics Anonymous didn't seem so impossible. And I picked up the telephone and I asked the operator for the number of AA, and she gave it to me, and I called it, and I got the automobile club. The lady at the automobile club gave me the number of Alcoholics Anonymous. The scouts on heaven. And I got an old-timer by the name of Stu at central office, and I said, my name is Bob, and I think I may have a drinking problem. And Stu talked to me on the telephone for about a half an hour, and towards the end of the call he got on another line and called two fellows and got back on the line with me and said, could you meet two guys at a café in about an hour and a half? And I said, yeah, I could. He described the two fellows, and we hung up the telephone. And I called in to work and found out I still had a job, and I called Linda to work and found out I still had a fiancé, and I called home and found out they were concerned, and concerned is always better than mad. And I thought, you know, why did you call Alcoholics Anonymous? I mean, that's really an overreaction. I mean, that's a... You're just feeling guilty. You always feel guilty when you get up. You're only 23 years old. You're not an alcoholic. I think the first evidence of some power beyond myself started to operate right at that moment. Because I had made a promise to a man I'd never met, and I felt an obligation to go keep it, to go meet two fellows I'd never known. I made promises to the most important people in my life with disgusting regularity and broke them all the time. And I just made a promise to a man I'd never met. He didn't have my last name, and somehow I thought I ought to go. The other thing that saved me was my denial. I wanted to go see what an alcoholic looked like. All minority groups look alike. I thought if I could go see what an alcoholic looked like, I'd come away with a better idea as to why I was not one. So I went over to go meet these two guys. If you wanted to sit me down and talk to me about my drinking, you had a couple of choices. You also had to be willing to sit down and discuss the rottenest thing that I knew about you. Or you had to be willing to wade through as much anger as I could put out. The idea was that you can come and get me, baby, but it's not going to be for free. And as a result, not too many people had heart-to-heart chats with me about my alcoholism. But these two fellows threw me a curve. So they sat me down in a booth, and they talked to me. Not about me. They sat me down in a booth and talked to me about themselves. They told me what their drinking was like, what had happened, and what their lives were like today in Alcoholics Anonymous. We have so many special things in our fellowship and in our program, but one of the most special traditions that we have is we share through our experience, not through our intellect and not through our ideas. People aren't very impressed with what you think. They're more impressed with who you are. I could have gotten up out of the booth after those two men shared their life with me. I mean, it was so obvious. They were just there. They weren't getting a toaster. I mean, there wasn't any prize for them. I mean, they were there because something was going on. I didn't know what it was, but there was something important going on. I could have gotten up out of that booth and said, I don't want to do what you guys did. But there was no way I could have gotten up out of that booth and not have known that what they told me about themselves just was so. I mean, it just was. It just was the way it was. Something very powerful about sharing who you are. And I hope that we treasure that and that we, you know, that's what our story is. For an awful long time, I didn't know what my story was. I don't know why I was embarrassed to share my story when I go on a 12-step call. I used to talk about the fellowship and the program and the philosophy and the steps and all sorts of stuff. And it took me a while, and I was a pretty active 12-stepper, but it took me a while to really have confidence in the fact that what I had to share was my life. That's all I needed. I didn't need anything else other than what had happened to me. And they asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting, and I said I did, and the next night I was allowed the privilege to go to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And over the next couple of months, I was to make two discoveries which were to change my life. I drank twice after walking into Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank once on a business trip to the West Coast. I was told the moment I got off the plane to call Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't. I got off the plane. I went to a two-week business session. I told everybody in the class that I had a $200 bet and I wasn't going to drink. The second week, I told them that the bet was called off and drank my plane ticket and got in trouble and didn't have a very good second week. Came back, stayed sober for a little over two and a half months and got married. And I think a lot of people in the group knew I was going to drink on our honeymoon. Not me. I still had a lot of denial, but I drank on our honeymoon. And you know where the big honeymoon denials come from? In Acapulco. You know where the divers dive off those cliffs in Acapulco? I dove off those cliffs on my last drunk. I was in the audience watching the world's high diving contests and after about nine planters punches, that doesn't look so tough. I mean, if you're trying to picture something real classy, I mean, that sounds classy. It was not classy. It was like the ugly America. I was sitting next to the ex-president of Mexico. And I went over and, you know, introduced myself to him and told him his nephew happened to be one of my roommates at Notre Dame. And then I went down there and I climbed. I dove off the public part. I split my swimsuit. I'm climbing. My wife is going absolutely bonkers. I mean, she's trying to get the police or kids to get me down off the cliffs. And I climbed up the cliff. I got to a height of about, I don't know, 90 feet. And I got stuck and couldn't get up and couldn't get down. And God watches after fools and drunks because I dove and, you know, made it. But it was not classy. I want to make that clear, you know. And I had my last drink on the airplane on the way home. And the two discoveries, which I want to, before I share those two discoveries, I want to share the attitude I walked in the front door with. And I share that with you because it's an attitude that is important to my story. And it's an attitude that recurs in my life today. I'm just going to ask all the questions that people ask you who are confused by how you live your life. And they love you. And they're hurt. They don't know what's going on. I'm just going to ask questions like, Bob, why do you drink the way you drink? I never used to have an answer for that. What went on in my head was something like, I drink because I got problems. I don't have problems because I drink. If you know how many times I started out, that would all be okay and it just kind of disintegrated. You know, if I just took my batting average up a little bit, I'd be okay. I just got these problems. As soon as the problems go away, I'm not going to have a drinking problem. So why don't we just drink? Why don't we just talk about something else? I was lodged between a sister who did graduate work at the Sorbonne and a brother who was 5A at a capital law school. When you're lodged between two show-offs like that, you don't look so good. I used to get asked questions like, Bob, why don't you be like someone else? And I'd say, yeah, I'd like to be like someone else. What are the directions? How do you do that? I mean, I really would like to be like other people. I mean, I really would like to be like them. How do you do that? If they said this next thing to me once, they said, I've had a hundred times my relatively short drinking career. Bob's a hell of a guy if he just wouldn't drink. I get the very clear message, and if you're young, they talk about potential. I get the very clear message that what was wrong with me was swallowing bourbon, and if I ever stopped swallowing bourbon, my life would be okay. Most people who end up here have had periods of time in their life where they've been abstinent and their life didn't turn out to be okay. Just before I went back to my senior year at Notre Dame, I was out on a drinking episode and got into a hell of a lot of trouble, and I was beaten up, and I was robbed, and pistol-whipped, and shot at, and thrown out of the second story of a hotel, and it's a long story, and I ended up in a hospital. My regular doctor didn't come. I mean, some doctor passed me up, but my psychiatrist came. And they weren't going to let me go back to school. They were going to keep me in the psych ward for a while. And if any of you enjoyed my talk here this evening, you should have heard the one I gave 24 years ago to get out of the psych ward at Miller Hospital. I mean, it was one of the better talks I've given under stress. And... They let me out of that hospital and let me go back to school in the condition that I wouldn't drink, and I went back and I didn't drink for three months. And my life didn't instantaneously get better. I didn't all of a sudden become what I thought you were telling me I'd become if I just wouldn't drink. I didn't become a model kid. I didn't become an A student. I got so I liked you, assuming that if I ever stopped drinking, my life would really come together. I got scared to death that if I ever really sobered up, I'd have to become something that I never... I'd lost any semblance of an idea that I could be. It kind of made me say, Bob, I think you're an alcoholic. Or, excuse me, at the end of that period of time, I thought I proved two things to myself. Number one, I could quit drinking any time I wanted to because I was a daily drinker and I just quit for three months. And number two, I thought I proved that drinking was not what was causing my problem because I just quit and my problems didn't go away. So, you know, bourbon's my answer. It's not my problem. I mean, by and large, it works as well as anything I've ever found in my life. I know where to get it and how much of it to take. Once in a while, it's out of hand. But literally, it's what makes life work. It's what makes all this crap tolerable. Without alcohol, I mean, I just couldn't hack it. It kind of made me say, Bob, I think you're an alcoholic. And I'd say to myself, quietly in my mind, I'd say, you think I'm an alcoholic because of what you know about me. But there's an awful lot of things you don't know about me, an awful lot of things that no one knows about me. I've had problems before I ever drank. I mean, I've had attitudinal problems, hangups, even during the worst of my drinking, some of my worst behavior, some of my goofiest thinking was when I was cold stone sober. I mean, you just don't understand. I think if you knew about all the dark crevices of my life, you wouldn't think I was just an alcoholic. So thanks a lot for your concern. Why don't you just get off my back? That, to the very best of my recollection, is how I presented myself to you in 1967 in July. I was 23 years old. I was scared stiff. I didn't know whether to call you by your first name, your last name. I thought you were going to give me a test and ask me why I was there. But you know what happened to me. I came and I found a group of people who were warm and accepting. I found a group of people who knew more about me without knowing me than anybody I ever run into. I mean, that story about you thought people had read your mail, I thought you had talked to my family. I mean, there were people in that room in the town I'm from who knew me and knew my family. And I thought they had checked. You know, I mean, honest I did. There was just a level of understanding that was scary to me. I heard you laugh and talk about things that I've been hiding all my life. One of the most wonderful things about you is you never ask me why. You say they never asked you about, you know, how did you get to look the way you looked when you went in the first place. You know, when you're young and in trouble, you're always in front of people who are trying to tell you what's wrong with you. I mean, someone's always pointing a finger at you. And they're trying to, you know, they're asking you, and they're almost always asking you why. And it doesn't work when you really have screwed it up. I mean, when you've done something important. When you just walked out of school. You know, when you were assigned a semester away from finishing. And someone sits you down and says, why? I mean, saying, got me, you know. I have no idea. It doesn't work. You never, you never ask me why. You just, because you're a group of people who have made those same kinds of decisions and had those same kinds of consequences. It wasn't unusual. And I sensed that, and I knew I was home. The two discoveries I was allowed to make in AA was that number one, alcoholism is a disease. And you say, well, God, everybody knows that. Well, I didn't. I thought alcoholism was something that happened to you when you were a lot older and a whole lot sloppier and you had a problem living your life if you were just physically drunk all the time. That didn't seem to describe me. It described me fairly well, but it didn't seem to describe me. But I was told that alcoholism was a disease that affected me as a total person. That was physical, but it was also mental and spiritual. Now, once I crossed the line from problem drinking to alcoholism, my alcoholism affected me all the time. When I was drinking and when I was not drinking. God, that was important for me to find out. Because, I mean, if I knew one thing in the deep recesses of my being, I knew that bourbon wasn't my problem. I just knew that. I remember one old-timer said to me, he said, Bob, you don't have a drinking problem. And I said, could you put that in writing? He said, no, smart aleck. He said, you've got a drinking problem, but if all you have is a drinking problem, all you'd have to do is quit. He said, have you ever quit? And I said, yeah, I quit. He said, did it work? I said, no, it didn't work. He said, I didn't think so, because what's wrong with us is alcoholism is a symptom of alcoholism. Alcoholism is a drinking problem. What we have to do is once we take our last drink of alcohol and maintain our abstinence, we have to use the 12 steps of the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous to find a different way to live. A different way to live that's sufficiently better than the way we lived before so that we don't have to go back to drugs or booze to do something for us that we were unwilling or unable to do for ourselves. And if we don't find another way to live, we're going to go back because we don't know how to live without drinking. That's one of the truest things anybody ever told me in my life. Not only did I not know how to live, I surely did not know how to live without drinking. The other thing I learned is that there was a whole bunch of people in that room who had drunk an awful lot of booze and taken a lot of other things and now they weren't doing it. And the only observable reason for them not drinking is they like what they found in sobriety better than what they found in a bottle. And it had occurred to me by now that I might have to quit, but God, I thought my life was over. I had so much of my identity caught up in my lifestyle. If I looked at you and I listened to you and you were out there chasing the bottle, turning the lights, and trying to have fun and do the different things that I was doing and it got to be too much and you quit. And it was so obvious to me that your lives weren't over. I mean, there was a sparkle, there was a vitality, there was an energy about you that I didn't have. And that attracted me and I wanted to find out about what that energy was. Because the God I found in Alcoholics Anonymous is a loving God and because your program worked in my life, I've been able to find that out. You know, as much as we tell the story of our drinking life and our drinking and that's kind of an adventure and it's progressive and it's a disease and all that kind of stuff, recovery is where the action is. Recovery is really the adventure. It's about, it's a hell of a lot more unpredictable in many ways than the disease process is. The longer you're around, if you were up in a helicopter following people around that had the disease process, I mean, it is predictable. It's very predictable. But my recovery, for me, hasn't been predictable. It's been an adventure. I'm glad, a couple of people have said this weekend, I'm glad I couldn't predict it. I'm glad I didn't write out what I wanted because I would have shortchanged myself. The first thing that happened to me, the first major event in my recovery was a breakdown of my alibi system. First thing drinking robbed me was a little bit extra than it took to be a success in anything that I did. It kind of took to hop off my fastball, you know. The next thing it did is I wasn't doing enough to get by and when I wasn't doing enough to get by, I lied and cover up. I built a defense system. I built a mechanism between you and me so you couldn't see the things in my life that didn't work. I built a wall up so you couldn't see me. And the thinking that went on behind the wall was something like this. It said, you like me, but you only like what I let you see about me. But if you could see everything about me, all the dark, dirty, lousy, unattractive, insufficient things about me, you'd hate me because I hate me. And who knows more what a lousy person I am than me. I was walking around comparing my insides with your outsides and the only way to come out doing that is second betting. But at some point in time, I got sick enough and tired enough and I hurt enough and I was afraid enough that I started to tear that wall down. I said, hey, come and get me. I don't care who you are or where you come from, but just come and get me and help me not be who I am anymore. I can't stand it five more minutes. And for the first time in my life, I started to share the whole deck of cards with someone. Up until that time, no one ever had the whole deck of cards. My family had part of it, my bride had part of it, my friends had part of it, my employers had part of it, the police had part of it, but no one had all of it. And I'd kill you with a piece you didn't have. I was like terminally unique. You'd come to me and you'd say, Bob, this is what's wrong with you. And I'd say, yeah, you think that because of what you know. But there's a whole other section over here that you don't have. And if you had that section, that section of information about me, you wouldn't be saying what you're saying. So I could neutralize you with what you didn't know about me. I was looking for someone who was an expert on me, who knew so much about me that just literally knocked me off my feet. Now, the only person who knew enough about me to do that was me, and I was sick. When I came to Alkali Synonymous out of the pain in my life and out of having no other alternatives, I started to tear that wall down. I started it when I called AA, central office. I continued it in meetings and in conversation with my sponsor, and I concluded tearing that wall down in my fifth step. For the first time in my life, I shared the whole mess with someone, the whole deck of cards, and I made a discovery. The discovery is I'm not unique. My personality made me unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my experience, not my feelings. And it was absolutely vital for me to know that I'm not unique. Because then I started to have the first ray of hope that if I wasn't unique, that maybe a solution that worked in your life could work in mine. It's hard to have that hope. But prior to that, Clancy talks about if there was a flag that all of us could stand and salute and give our allegiance to, the flag would say, but I'm different. And that literally is what kills more alcoholics than anything else in the world is the unique feeling that we have that we can't learn from one another. See, I was in a family system that worked real well for everybody else in the family. It didn't work for me. I was in a faith that seemed to work for people around me and didn't work for me. I went to a school with 15 other guys in my high school. I had the highest grades of everybody who went down there and I was the only one of the 15 who didn't finish. See, I'm different. I'm kind of like you. It's close. Similar. There's a lot of things about us that are, you know, remarkably the same. But I'm different. That will keep us as sick and as separate and it will dilute the power that the program has to make us available. When I came to AA, I said, okay, I'll buy it. I got the problem. You got the answer. I'm an alcoholic. If I got the problem and you got the answer, there's six or seven other things that are going on in my life that are just tearing my life apart and if I got the problem and you got the answer, you have to be able to make those things go away. Then I'll be reasonable. Hell, it might take a year. I had a list of problems and difficulties in my life that caused me a hell of a lot of problems and a lot of pain. I had them when I first came in and I didn't notice them. The second year, I noticed them a little. The third year, they started to trouble me. The fifth year, they started to eat my lunch. I'm going to talk for the remaining portion of my talk about problems and sobriety and I don't have enough time to set it all up and explain a lot of things that I'd like to explain if I had the time. It's kind of like my early sobriety wasn't very good. My early sobriety was just fine. But you know how you stand up here when you get your one-year pin and you thank everybody and tell them how wonderful your life is? And then when you stand up and get your second-year pin, you tell them how sick you were your first year but now things are better? There's a way we have about looking back at our lives with insight because we learn things. Our program is experientially based and we learn I think after we go through it and looking back we get insights about our life that empower us to help other people and to help ourselves. And I'm going to share with you some of the insights that I've had about my recovery and about the problems that I've had and still have. And my early sobriety was just fine. I had a mess of problems that were horrible but ordinary. I couldn't get up in the morning. I set the alarm clock for 7 o'clock and I'd get up at 9. Get to work at 9.30. When I got to work at 9.30 I'd go out for a two-hour AA lunch because anytime, anywhere the hand of AA reached out I was supposed to be there. I used to spend about $300 more a month than I made. If you do that over a long period of time you'll end up in debt. I just want to report that to you. You may be out there running that experiment. I had a gambling problem. It really was more like a hobby. It was, you know, three to five days a week, four to five hours a day. I played backgammon. I made $5,000 to $10,000 a year playing backgammon. It was like a second job. I thought I needed the money. I was going to seven meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous a week and I had a young bride who didn't think she wanted to spend the rest of her life in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous since her entire social life was 60-year-old people. I thought that was unreasonable and ungrateful. I mean, here I was sober and I thought she had a crappy attitude. She wanted to know if one of the places I was supposed to practice the principles of the program was in our home. I thought that was none of her business. I had a great mom and dad and when I became a parent I wasn't going to make the mistakes my parents made and they only made a few and I didn't. I made the few mistakes my parents made and a whole bunch of mistakes that my parents never thought of making. I was impatient and I was loud and I was angry and I was afraid about being a parent. It's a bad combination. I don't want to give the impression that those problems were cyclical. They weren't monthly. They weren't annual. They were daily. They were all the time. I had them when I first came in. Didn't notice them. Started to notice them. Started to work on them. Worked as hard as I knew how to do with little or no success. The harder I worked over a longer period of time, the less results that I had, the less acceptable that was to me. And I started to not communicate about those problems in my life. I was in meetings and everybody was telling me how good I was doing. I mean, I'm five years sober. I'm working three hours a day. I'm working for my dad. You know, that really helps if you want to work three hours a day or four hours a day working in a family business and making a great contribution to find a place to do it. And I'm saying, can't you see how messed up my life is? I mean, if AA works, if we're this close, I mean, I'm sitting in meetings and you're telling me I'm really doing great. I mean, can't you see how screwed up I am? I mean, did you buy my bologna? I mean, with your insight, I mean, don't you really see it's not working? A newcomer would come in the door and I'd get him a cup of coffee and we'd sit down and he'd share his bushel basket full of problems with me about his or her spouse or his or her job and the police and the finances and all the problems. I'd say, hey, as bad as it is and as hopeless as it seems, it's going to be okay. I know you don't know how that's going to be, but it is going to be okay. If you just come in here and do the things that we ask you to do, even imperfectly, just try. It's going to be okay. See that guy over there, Bob? Boy, he had a hell of a time and now it's okay for him. Just try. Just stick around. It's going to be okay. Then I'd get in the car and I'd drive home at 11 o'clock at night and I'd say, Bob, when's it going to be okay for you? I mean, you're six years sober. You just bought a suit today. Your checking account's $700 overdrawn, Bob. You bought a $400 suit today on an account that you already owed $1,100. When's it going to be okay for you, Bob? When are you going to learn how to be a father? When are you going to learn how to work? When are you going to stop gambling? I didn't know. I mean, it was really getting tough. Real tough. Now, I knew what the... Because I'm an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I started to be exposed to people who had great programs. I started to try to make distinctions about what worked for people and what didn't work for people. Now, I knew what worked for people. Okay? I knew that people had a relationship with a God of very own understanding. That was what seemed to make the difference in life. But there's a problem with that. The problem is that I'm going to go to God and I'm going to knock on the door. God's going to say, who's there? I'm going to say, God, it's Bob. God's going to say, what do you want, Bob? I say, God, things aren't going real well. I've got some serious issues in my life and it seems to me that people who have... You know, I've been working like hell on Alcoholics Anonymous and I've, you know, made a little bit of progress but it isn't working. And I think to get where I've got to go, I've got to have a relationship with Him. And I wondered if you'd be open to that and God's going to say, sure, fine. And I'm going to say, well, God, what am I supposed to do? And God's going to say, well, get up in the morning. Go to work. Don't gamble. Don't hit your kids. Be nice to your wife. Don't spend more money than you make. I'm going to say, hell, if I can do all that, I wouldn't need God. He's going to ask the very things of me that I've been busting my britches to do for five or six or seven years and fail that daily are going to be the conditions of having a relationship with the God of my very own understanding. I can't fulfill the conditions of the relationship. And I was literally stuck in that place for almost two years. And I was really down. And out of desperation, I started to go through the steps. Six and seven years over. I went back to step one and found out what powerlessness and unmanageability meant to me. I went to step two. You know, I always believed step two for us corporately. I mean, I always believed step two for us corporately. I mean, I always believed step two for us corporately. I mean, I always believed that God would restore us to sanity. But I had to come to, I, but the truth of the matter is, I discovered for me that I didn't believe that God would restore Bob Bazan to sanity. I believed it for us, but I didn't believe it powerfully enough for me. And I had to get right at that and come to believe that God would restore Bob Bazan to sanity. I took the third step with my sponsor on my knees in his office. I had not done that before. He had not done that before. It was awkward and it was embarrassing and I just didn't want to leave anything out. And I had heard someone in AA talk about that and I thought I'd try it. The third step for me today is no longer a step that I take. It is simply a recognition of a fact. My life has always been and will always be and is right now in the care of God as I understand Him. Such is the nature of God and such is the time as it goes around the bend that I'm steering the log. It's an illusion. It is an illusion. It's simply a recognition of the way it is. That's reality for me. I took a fourth step in depth. That was my fourth, third, fourth step. And I went to one of my sponsors and I said I'm going to take a fifth step with you. And I said, Tom, I'm in an awful lot of pain. I'm in a lot of pain. I'm going to take whatever you recommend that I do. I said I know that it is necessary that the level of unmanageability I have in my life is there. And I said my pigeons are making more progress than I'm making. I'm watching other people grow. And I said I just feel so stuck. I just can't stand it. And I need some help and I think I'm willing to do whatever there is to do. I took a fifth step with that man and after quite a few hours we cried a little bit and hugged a little bit. And one of the things about my work is that I went to an industrial psychologist and I can't tell you how much I didn't want to do that with seven years of sobriety. But I went to an industrial psychologist and I got in touch with some things that I was able to bring in my program and put to work. I can't tell you I got in touch with how afraid I was of failure. I remember I sat in that room and my wife was in that room one day and I went to him and I was so tired of being a problem. I had been through therapy. He wanted to get my family involved. He wanted to get me out of it. My parents have been through all they want to be through with me. I've been the family problem for a hell of a long time and I don't want my 65-year-old mother sitting down with me anymore talking about me. She doesn't have to go through that. I said, let's work with me. I mean, we were sitting down in a room and we were talking about it and he said, what are you so afraid of failure for? She said, what's so bad about failure? I wanted to kill him. I wanted to grab him by the neck and pull him and he said, you lose every bloody thing you have. I mean, you file bankruptcy, you're shamed in front of everybody. I mean, it's like dying. You lose everything you have. He looked over at my wife and he said, Linda, if Bob went bankrupt, if he failed, would he still have you? She said, yeah. Yeah, he'd still have me. He said, Bob, would your kids still be there? I said, yeah, my kids would still be there. I started to get a sense that I could survive failing, not die in the process of failing. I mean, that's what it felt like all my life when you're in front of that audience, when you're in front of them and you screw up and when you blow it, when you fail, when you put it on the line. I never put it on the line. See, I was the guy who looked good. That's why I bought those $400 suits. I probably sounded almost as good as I sounded right now when I, early when I came into Alkali's because I mimicked people and how they talk. If we went to a race, it was a mile race, and we got to the starting line, I'd have a great pair of tennis shoes. I'd have a good pair of shorts. I'd have a little singlet on that would look like I was, I'd look like a runner, I'd talk like a runner. Out of the conversation that I would have with you if there were 100 people in the race, you would get the impression and my talk would be such that I would be in the first five people who would finish that race. When that race took off, or the first third of that race, I'd be in front. And somewhere between the first third and the first half of the race, I'd pull up holding my leg and fall down on the side of the track. And if you were watching me, you'd say, boy, that's a crime. That guy really had a shot at it. Now, what you would not know about me, if you were watching me around in my life, is that's how I did everything. That's how I did absolutely everything. That's how I did marriage. That's how I did parenting. That's how I did school. That's how I did work. I never finished anything. I was so afraid of failing, I didn't play. I was in the stands. I mean, the closest I ever got to a race was when I was on the sideline. I mean, I had my uniform on. I had my helmet under my arm. I used to roll around in the grass and get grass stains on my uniform to look like I was a player. But I was an observer. I was not a player. You know what it took me almost eight years to figure out? There are no stands. All these marks on my body. But when you don't think you're playing and you're standing in the middle of the field and Oklahoma and Nebraska are playing, you might very well end up with some marks on your body. And in that conversation, I got in touch with the fact that maybe I could survive failure and I started to get better. And it had been a crummy day. I mean a really crummy day, but on a day where I hadn't done a whole bunch of things that I was supposed to do and I'd done a whole bunch of things that I wasn't supposed to do. And I said to myself, ah gee, it happened again. And all of a sudden I said it happened and I leave the office to go do something and the next thing I know I'm in a backgammon game and it was four hours later. I mean it just happens to me. And all of a sudden I realized that was a bunch of hooey. Life didn't happen to me. I chose it. My life was exactly the way I wanted it to be. If you want to do something you have to do it. And that's what I wanted to do. The truth was I didn't want the consequences. I wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it and I didn't want the consequences. When I say gee I wish I didn't spend more money than I made that was a lie. I said I wish I could be a good husband. I didn't want to be a good husband. I had her love and affection. It was everybody else's love and affection I wanted. I didn't want to spend time with her alone. But I sounded like what was holding those things in place in my life was a lie. My life was exactly like that. It wasn't that way because I didn't want it that way. It was that way because I chose it that way and I worked like mad to keep it that way. And I had a conversation that had a high element of baloney in it that sounded like I didn't want it that way. But I knew that when I thought about it in my mind and felt it that it was like a bar of life. And I realized that I did it. That's a second step for you. And I shouldn't be tongue tied in another life. So the that we humbly ask and remove our shortcomings. I had spent seven years trying to get rid of my defects of character. I submit that you go about the process of getting rid of your defects of character differently than you go about the process of getting entirely ready to have God remove them. If I had the power to remove my own defects of character, I wouldn't need this program. I do not have that power. I do not have that ability. I do not have that muscle. And I got down, and that night out of fear, I became entirely ready to have God remove them, and five of the major problems that were going on in my life disappeared. Now, I had to cooperate with them. You know, when you make a commitment, and you say, I'm going to change my life, you get a chance almost immediately thereafter to find out if that's serious. I weigh 210 pounds. Twenty times in the last six weeks I've said I'm going to lose weight. It's not serious. Absolutely bullshit. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. It is not serious. If you talk to me, I tell you that I really want to change the way I eat. It's not true. That night, that night, my life changed. I hired someone to get me up in the morning. I got someone. I never missed an airplane. I never missed a fishing trip. I never missed a handball game. I just missed work. I got someone who I respected enough to call me so that I would get up. I turned the finances over to my wife. She had a job. She had this unbelievably amazing ability. She could pay half a bill. I mean, it never occurred to me to pay half a bill or a third of a bill. You know, she didn't have this ego problem that I had with the handling of money. I went on an allowance. I started to date my wife. I have dated my wife for the last 15 years every Friday night. And when I'm out of town, and when I'm out of town, you know, and it's a real live dangerous date. I mean, she gets dressed up and I get dressed up and we go out alone. There's no one else around. And that's been a very important part of our relationship. I started to interact and spend time and start to learn how to be a father with my children. As intimidated as I am in that process. I quit gambling. I went to my psychologist and I made appointments to go to work and I made appointments to stay at work. And I made deals about going on sales calls. I used to have to sit in the car and open the big book. I was a salesman. I was a salesman. I was a salesman. I was a salesman. I was a salesman. And I went up and say that third step prayer, knowing damn full well, I was going to go up with to someone to make a call that who didn't want what I had to offer them. And I knew that that was what I was supposed to do anyway. See what had happened to me when I came to you is much what Bob talked about. And we've talked about before I came to you, I gave you my alcoholism. I gave you my drinking and my going to bars things that related directly to my alcoholism. What I didn't give you were the other elements of my life. I didn't know to give them to you. I didn't give you my sex life. I didn't give you my marriage. I didn't give you my children. give you my finances i didn't give you my work i didn't know that that was part of my alcoholism i kept those things and i managed those things to the best of my ability i've always wanted to be a good man i tried the very best i knew how to do and i wasn't up to it that night what happened to me when i took step six is i took step one with my life i took my life and i surrendered it to you the power that we have in the program of alcoholics anonymous is not the power of information it's the power of surrender that night i became teachable when i entered alcoholics anonymous and i took the first step for the first time i stopped looking for an expert on bob bazan someone who knows so much about me that they could tear me apart because that night when i took step one i became an alcoholic and once i became an alcoholic there were hundreds of people who could help me about with information and insight into the recovery from alcoholism i had hundreds of teachers i was a teachable as i had ever been for six or seven months when i asked a question i got an answer after about a year i'd ask a question and i get an answer and i weren't sure you were right but for almost a year i was teachable and then i started to shift from being an alcoholic to being bob bazan the problems i had i said hell i've handled sobriety i mean i'm sober six and seven years my life's a catastrophe it must be there's something especially wrong with me that i got that i've not a good parent or something i mean i should go to someplace else and learn how to be a parent i got a gambling issue maybe i should handle that that i don't spend money right that i'm an angry guy that i i mean all these different things i mean i've handled my sobriety i'm naa everybody i'm active as hell i'm going to the meetings i'm doing all this stuff maybe i am different and when i went back to the steps when i surrendered again what i surrendered was my life and i made the discovery i tore my wall down and i got what was going on in my life in the game into my recovery and into my program and what i discovered is i'm not going to i'm not different i became an alcoholic again not a guy who had handled alcoholism that's got a lot of other problems i became an alcoholic and today with absolutely no reservation i believe that the program of alcoholics anonymous is a set of spiritual principles and i believe that the program of alcoholics anonymous is a set of spiritual principles that i can put into action in my life and deal with any issue that's going on in my life such as the power of alcoholism we sit in these chairs and we listen to people talk about their lives we sit and we listen to the amazing stories about people who get restored to their profession and become mothers when their lives were tragedies we listen to the jim shaws and the sharons and the bobs and the clancy's and the johnny harris's and and we think my god the power of this program but if you know if it can transform lives like that do you think you can work on marriages i mean do you think he can work on jobs give me a break it is the power of our program is unlimited because it's the power of the higher power our alcoholism is not only the symptom of our alcoholism was a drinking problem our alcoholism continues in the mental and spiritual conditions of our lives and when we continue that conditions of our lives. And if we continue to participate and to put what's going on in our lives today into the program, to put our lives into the program, to open the door with the thing that has always opened the door, which is surrender, today I have absolutely no doubt that the place I am meant to be and the place I am meant to learn about how to live my life is an alcoholic synonym. My life today is pretty good. I'm the father of three children. I have a 19-year-old, a 16-year-old, and an 8-year-old. That is still the most demanding, challenging area of my life. I feel more inadequate in the presence of being a parent than I do anyplace else. I keep getting presented that they fire that stuff at me at point-blank range. I mean, I'd like to be a parent, but I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I've got every kinds of issues. I've got drinking issues, and car-driving issues, and school issues, and sex issues, and parent issues, and my anger, and my inadequacy in the face of those things, and how upset my bride gets with some of that. I mean, I am up to my eyebrows. I'm in that game. I'm doing the very best I know how to do with that, and it's better today than it has ever been, and it's still the most challenging, difficult, and the most called insufficient area of my life. But today I'm self-supporting through my own contributions. I'm in love with my wife. And my life is pretty much as I present it to. And it isn't perfect. Chuck Chamberlain was a man who was, I think, one of the wisest men I've had the privilege to hear in Alcoholics Anonymous. He's a guy who I think we allow the privilege of sharing with us at a level that we don't allow everybody to share. We somehow gave him a wider path and the ability to share spiritual things in our program. And one of the things that he shared with me once, it was we started a conference in Minnesota that was very much like this. And I know that your program was probably put together by Dick Martin, and I think Dick helped start this conference. The contribution that that is to a community is enormous. I mean, the privilege that you, you all have of putting this on, it's like something of its own that lives on and makes a contribution year in and year out to the quality of our sobriety. We had a chance to put together one of those things and one of the first speakers was Chuck Chamberlain, and I guess I was about five years sober and we were sitting in some guy's living room and Chuck was holding court. And he held court like only two men that I've ever had the privilege of being around held court, Bob White and Chuck Chamberlain. And Chuck sat down and he looked at me. And we're having a conversation about something. And he said, son, you're not going anywhere. You already are everything you're ever going to be. And he said, I can tell how deeply disappointed you are in that fact. And he couldn't have said a more disappointing thing to me than that. That I didn't want to be me. I wanted to be you. I wanted to be someone else. Taken me a lot of years to come to understand what I think that man was trying to tell me. I worked pretty damn hard at being a good man. I know. I'll call these diamonds for 20 years. And if you looked at me, you'd say, God, an awful lot of things have changed in Bob's life. But you know what? I'm still Bob, not a different man. There isn't anything in my life today that wasn't always there. You helped me discover some things about myself. You helped me uncover some things about myself and put them into my life, into action in my life. But they were always part of me and they were always there. And I say this because today, I'm still 45 years old. If things work out, I may be around for a while. I've still got a lot of things that I want to work on. This isn't enough. I want more. I want the whole enchilada. I want everything that you have for me. I want full recovery. I want to be a lover. I want to be a parent. I want to be a success. I want to serve you and I want to serve me. And I'm going to go out and try to make other things happen. But I have a sense that if I work 20 more years, at the end of that period of time, I'd still be Bob. And that everything that I would have discovered would have always been there. And I get a sense that what we are more than anything else is we're these perfect sphere. The deep inside of me is a perfect round sphere. That's, you know, that's magnetized. And throughout my life, I dragged it through a junkyard. And in that process, an awful lot of things covered it up. And you'd never know by all the junk that was around my, the perfect cylinder that there was this wonderful thing underneath because it just looked like there was just a lot of junk. And over a period of time, what you've helped me do is take that junk out. Let it fall off. And I started to get a sense that what I really have to become is simply me. There's something so comforting about the fact that I don't have to become you, which is what I've always wanted to be. I don't have to become something else other than I am. And that you are going to empower me. To simply become me. I'm not going anyplace. I already am everything I'm ever going to be. And that is what we touch in people's souls. We talk about Christopher being perfect. Everybody in this room doesn't have to be anything else other than what they are. There isn't anything missing for us to be wonderful. There isn't anything missing for us to be well. There isn't anything missing for us to be successful and loving. And recovered. It's all there. And this program is a structure and there's principles in which we can uncover that and find out that perfection in each one of us. We've been given a gift in the program of Al-Quali Saddam. I don't know if there's ever been anything in the last 50 to 100 or couple of hundred years that has so tremendously touched people's lives. Certainly, we sometimes have compared ourselves to Christianity. And an awful lot of it, I mean, there probably has never been in the history, mankind, something so powerful as Christianity that has touched people's lives. I do not say that in deference to Judaism or Buddhism or Mohammedism or Zen or any other thing. But in our culture, Christianity is probably one of the most powerful forces that has ever happened. But for an awful lot of us, as powerful as that was, somehow, for an awful lot of us, the power of that has diminished such that we can walk into churches and not be touched by the power that transformed millions of people's lives. Al-Quali Sananimous is only 50 years old. There was a power that came about that we were given the privilege and the combination that Bill was allowed to be an instrument to design a program that allowed people to recover from alcoholism. Today, it is possible to walk into certain meetings of Al-Quali Sananimous and not perceive the power of that program. There's a lot of noise in the room tonight, a lot of enthusiasm. I hope that we... I hope that we have the same enthusiasm about living the principles in all our affairs. There were times in my life where I clearly lacked that enthusiasm when it came to cleaning my act up. Our founders are dead. They've given us a program. They've given us a task to do that no one else can do. No one else can share their experience, strength, and hope with respect to the recovery of alcoholism. We are recovered alcoholics. The place people will go to recover is here. Lots of places can treat the disease of alcoholism wonderfully well. I support them. I applaud them. But the place you go to recover from alcoholism is Al-Quali Sananimous. This is where recovery goes. The pro... The answer to recovery is in our book. But the true answer to recovery is in the book applied to our lives and the example that that is for one another because how we share that is eyeball to eyeball. I got a couple of kids right now that have issues with alcohol. I want them to have... to have what was available to me when they walk in the front door of Al-Quali Sananimous. What I got when I walked in was Al-Quali Sananimous undiluted, intact, and unchanged. If we took everybody in this room and we went on a trip and we put them in a spaceship, we went to the nearest star. The nearest star is a star called Alpha Centauri, approximately. It's about eight million light years away. When we got in that spaceship, we would all know who we were, where we had come from, where we were going, and why we were going there. But it isn't very hard to imagine because it would... You know, we went 100,000 miles an hour. It takes 300 years to get there. But if we didn't very carefully pass that information on from generation to generation, that 200 years from now you could have a spaceship just chock full of people who didn't know who they were, that were literally lost in space. When I came in, the older members of Al-Quali Sananimous knew Bill Wilson and were direct links to the founders of the program of Al-Quali Sananimous. They had a courage. They started groups. They started conferences. You know, I mean, they sat with a coffee pot with two people in a room. I walked into a room with 60 people in it. If I don't like my group, I've got 200 groups in my city that I can just go pop over to on any given night. There's just so much that we take for granted. But I hope that we take this program, because it's getting confusing out there. There are so many more people interested in alcoholism and in our fellowships. There are so many. I mean, I've never seen so much public interest. We are being sucked into the culture. We have lost some of the protection. People didn't want to know about us. They weren't interested in us. You had to put a bag over your head to go to a meeting. Now it's getting chic to be a member of Al-Quali Sananimous. But we are being pulled. Our success is presenting us with issues that we never dreamed of. We are growing at an accelerated rate. We used to get a newcomer once every two weeks. I mean, now you get busloads of people who are newcomers that are coming in. You get groups full of people that you may have an average sobriety in a group of a year and a half. Our success is starting to present us with issues and problems that we never dreamed of. And it's wonderful, but it is not an issue. And what I hope is that we take the program of recovery of Al-Quali Sananimous as it was given to us by our founders, that we pass it through our lives intact and unchanged, undiluted. There is no danger for Al-Quali Sananimous if we simply do our job. We don't have to fight anybody. We don't have to worry about anything because no one else can do what we do. We only need to do our jobs. And as I see my job, and I get hooked. I mean, God, all this stuff. I got opinions about everything. If you asked me about how to do brain surgery, I'd start out and say, well, I'm really not sure, but. But what I know in my heart is what my job is, is to live those principles in my life and to work with other drugs. If I do that, and if you, everybody in this room does that, we aren't going to go anyplace. No one can get to us. So I hope we take that book, pass it through our lives, and have it intact so that 20 years from now, if one of my sons or one of my sons' sons walks into a meeting in a room like this, that we don't have a room full of people who don't know who they are, where they've come from, where they are going, or why they are going there. Thank you.