Something’s Wrong With Me and I’m Not Enough — Fifty Years Guarding One Secret – Bob E.

I'm Barbara. I'm a drug addict and alcoholic. And I'm delighted to be here for the 28th anniversary of your club. And I'm sorry that nobody who was here when it started is here tonight. Which will bring me to a lot of the things that I have to talk about. So maybe somebody will be here 28 years from tonight. Next time you have a club. I'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. Just remember you paid my plane fare. I always laugh when people say to me, you really made me mad, you know. I mean, that's terrible things to say. You really made me angry. And I, for years, I mean, I've been cleaning this over for 24 years. I've been looking for the place that says I'm supposed to make you happy. You know, that you've got to like my talk or like me or like anything. You know, I think it's good that we have speakers that make you happy. You know, I think it's good that we have speakers that make everybody mad and angry and say off-the-wall stuff and nuts and go out and try crazy things and come back and report it didn't work and save us the trouble, you know. Bill and Dr. Bob were both seekers. Bill was an incredible seeker. You know, we get so careful sometimes and so cautious. You know, it's like, I don't know what happened. I mean, we forget that Bill and Dr. Bob used to hold seances at Dr. Bob's house. Part of this program was put together by spirits, guys. By people talking to ghosts. And then we get, oh, no, I've got to be serious. We've got to hold this thing in check. They never intended for this thing to be held in check. They wrote some really careful phrases in the big book about more will be revealed. More will be revealed. God will constantly disclose more to you and I. Constantly disclose. More will be revealed. A lot has been revealed. And I get the feeling sometimes because I'm of this nature, myself, I don't like change. You know? Let's have our meetings like the good old days. I know groups in Los Angeles that are trying to emulate the meetings that were originally held in Akron, Ohio, 48 years ago. Give me a break, will you? What the hell for? You know? I mean, we have a lot more information since 48 years ago about life and people and God and spirituality and health. And so much stuff. So much information. And to me, sobriety is about recovery. I did drinking and using real well. I got a straight A's. In jail, nuthouses, drinking and using. Right down the line. It got me here, so I must have done good. Real good. But boy, I got here and without getting loaded, without actually ever using drugs or alcohol for my first meeting, I got here. I got here. I got here. I got here. I have drawn some serious F's in recovery. It appears there's recovery that I know the least about. You know? And I am the most resistant to. I have only one problem since the day I got to this program. When the day I stopped using drugs and alcohol, they ceased to be my problem. Once they were no longer in my system, they were no longer my problem. I became my problem. I suddenly became aware that I was living with the most evil person and the most evil son of a bitch I had ever met in my life. And nothing would make him happier than to kill me. He didn't care if he did it fast or slow. Because it's my mind. My mind has always been my enemy. And it's just so out of whack that it believes that it can kill me and that it'll go on. You know? It has this attitude, well, if you should die, that would be terrible. You know? But I'll be okay. It's always there to give me a lot of support and encouragement towards new things. It's always there to wake me early in the morning, 4 or 5 a.m., to tell me what a wonderful life I have and how joyous things are and how much I should love God. It wakes me at 4 in the morning to remind me that the IRS is looking for me behind every bush. And that my life is over and I'm really the world's biggest screw-up. You know? It loves to create anxiety attacks. Have you ever noticed, if you're like I am, the favorite thing of all for your mind is worry. It loves to worry. It'll look for things to worry about. You can't have a good day when you've got a mind looking under the front, you know? Ah, there's one. I can remember one time I was laying on a couch watching a football game and it got boring. I started to worry about something. I mean, serious. This was a major problem. This was the anxiety-raising kind of problem where you cut your breathing off to right here. You know, where you just create more anxiety by not knowing how to breathe. Ten minutes later, the football game got interesting again. I got all back involved in it. Ten minutes later, it gets boring again. And I found myself laying there trying to remember what it was I was worried about. God forbid I got bored. God forbid I got bored. God forbid I should just go on without it. You know, no sense having a happy day. Everyone knows when you have that really weird, odd moment in your recovery where you're struck with happiness. You have that four and a half seconds where everything's okay. And you kind of smile to yourself and say, wow, isn't this great? And the mind says, what are you so happy about? Unfortunately, you don't know. So you say to the mind, geez, I don't know. And then my mind would say to me, well, if you were in touch with the reality, if you were in touch with the reality of your life, you wouldn't be happy. Well, conversely, I can be struck with sadness for no reason at all. No reason at all, just sad. But feelings are like that, which is why I ran away from them all my life. Suddenly, I'm just sad. My mind will say, why are you sad? I'll say, oh, I don't know. It'll say, that's because you work a bad program. That's why you're sad. But the mind has me convinced that if I experience feelings in recovery, something's wrong with me. Something is wrong with me. Probably the best example of this I've ever seen was during the Olympics, the last Olympics that we had. And they were real emotional for me for a lot of reasons. I had a lot of fun with them. As most people know, I have a great fondness for teddy bears. And I own about 70 some teddy bears. They're all over the place. They're all over the house. And they all watched the Olympics with me, in different rooms of the house, on different television sets, with different flags representing the countries they were from. Cheering, of course, for, you know, whoever the hell it was they were cheering for. But I was watching. The thing that was breaking my heart was, when they were doing these little individual profiles. See, I'm like most of us. I'm from the typical alcoholic home. You know, one alcoholic parent, one non-alcoholic parent. Raised by an alcoholic father, non-alcoholic father. Not mother. Anyhow, these guys would get up and talk. You know, one guy talked about his mother and dad had ridden from Michigan, I think it was, to California on a motorcycle, to be there to watch him participate in the Olympics. And even though the odds were very good that he would not win his event, you know, but they came to be there for him anyway. And it broke my heart. I mean, I cried like a baby. I cried for two reasons. I cried because I remember all the mother and parent, teacher, parent, child days where no parents ever showed up. It might be half. And all the other events where one or the other parent was required and nobody ever came. And I was also tears of joy for him. That he had that experience. That two people were there who loved him and supported him and cared about what he was trying to do. And that happened time and time again. Some of you may remember the wrestling. I don't remember the wrestler who had Hodgkin's disease who won his match and won his medal and broke down and just sobbed on national television worldwide. I loved it, you know. No need to look good. I mean, I love the fact that in AA we still try and look good. Impressing. This much? Come on. You wouldn't have had him to a dinner party when you were drinking, you know. This is the place we should let our hair down. And this one kid was marvelous. Because they interviewed him and he had missed the Olympics when Carter kept the Americans out of the Olympics. And so he waited four more years to participate. He was a swimmer. Nice kid. Real energetic, enthusiastic kid. And I asked him, well, you know, what is he here? What's this? What's that? And he says, well, you know, I want to try and break the world's record. I want to break the world's record. He knew he was going to win his event. He didn't doubt it for a minute, which I like that. You know, I mean, I love seeing that kind of attitude, man. That's healthy. We get twisted occasionally and think it's egotistical. It's not. It's someone willing to take a chance. Anyway, he went out and he swam his event. And he was right. He won it. And he broke the Olympic record. But he looked up and saw the clock and he realized that he missed, like, by two hundredths of a second breaking the world record. And he was visibly upset. He was visibly upset in the swimming pool. Visibly upset. And afterwards, when they had an interview with the sportswriters, he said he was upset. He vocalized, he verbalized that he was angry and he was upset and disappointed. You know? And he wasn't yahoo and all happy because he won a gold medal and broke the Olympic record. And because our press is so bent, they piled on this kid so hard for that, that the following day, he found it necessary to hold a press conference and apologize. Apologize for his attitude. And I gotta tell you this, in the annuals of mental health, mental health, he was right. He was correct. The kid said, I am here to break the world's record. And he failed. And he was disappointed because he failed. And he was angry because he failed. And he was emotionally upset because... But goddammit, he came and he said, this is me, this is what I'm gonna try and do. And he was upset because he didn't do it. That's life. That's life. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Not a thing. I spent some time here about three months ago, maybe a little longer, five months ago, with the most spiritually evolved person I have ever met. And he passed on two, I think, really, things that meant a lot to me. One was, we got to the subject of enlightenment. I like the fact that this club is named Take It Easy. So I asked this guy, I don't know, I mean, my experience has been in bumming around out there, looking up people who are on one spiritual path or another, that anytime I find one who's really gone beyond and lives daily, moment to moment with no doubt in their mind ever for a second that there is a god and that he is all-powerful and all-loving and all things are in perfect order, they're very silly people. They giggle a lot. They just aren't what I expected at all. I wanted serious, stern people. Authoritative people. People who'd knock me on my ass like my old man to get the point across, you know? I want to talk to you about god. Sit down. All right? So the subject of enlightenment came up, and this guy started to giggle, right? And he said, enlightenment, enlightenment. He says, wonder how well people learn that enlightenment very simply means lighten up. That's it. Lighten up. And the other thing he said to me, which absolutely knocked me over was, that we are here for one purpose and one purpose only. Our life, our whole life on this planet is geared to one thing. Learn. It is a school. We are to learn here. This process of life is meant to learn. Only learn. And therefore, if we are only here to learn, you can never, under any circumstances, no matter what happens in your life, fail. You cannot fail. It's impossible. Because you're just here to learn. Wow. Sort of takes the edge off taking chances, doesn't it? Yes. Because that's my mind's first excuse for me not trying something new. Oh, go ahead. But you're going to fail. If he's going to tell me I'm going to fail, I'm going to look silly. And God, I hate to look silly. I will do anything to avoid looking silly. Because if I look silly, I'm afraid you're going to find out my secret. And I have guarded and protected this secret through 15 years of life, followed by 11 years of drug addiction, followed by 24 years of recovery. I have guarded this secret with my life. It's a simple secret. It's that there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with me. And in any situation, under any circumstances, whether it be in an AA meeting in the Skid Row Mission or at a high-level meeting with executives at a motion picture studio, I'm not enough. So I better be something else. And I got to tell you, just because I came in AA and stopped using drugs and stopped drinking, that doesn't change. That didn't change. I carried that same thing into the program. I didn't change a thing. The first three months of recovery for me were a bliss. I was living outdoors and my brains were fried. I had used every drug known to man. I had no wiring left that was connected at all. I spent my days in doorways looking in a window, you know. That was it. At nights, I slept on roofs, you know. I wound up in an AA meeting. It's wonderful in the beginning when you're that whacked out. You just do what the hell you're told, you know. You can sit here. Okay. Put up your hand. Yeah. All right. Read this. Okay. You know, I mean, you don't know who's a good AA, who's a bad AA, what's a good club, what's a bad club. You know, what's a good meeting, what's a bad meeting. You don't know nothing. You just sit down. Okay. And if you're like I am, I find that in the beginning, I had a tendency to pick sponsors that were just like treating me just like my father, you know. Basically like dog shit, to be honest, you know. You can talk in 90 goddamn days, you idiot. Mop the floor. Move those chairs. Get the car. You know, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, this is comfortable. This is familiar. I'm used to this. Sure, yeah, I'll do that. I don't know that it's bad we do that. I'm just making it as an observation. I'm not saying it's good or bad. Maybe it's very good that we pick people like that. Okay. I don't know if I would have known what to do if somebody had sat me down and said, you are an incredibly beautiful human being. And I'm going to take you here and put you on the first steps of an adventure beyond your belief. And we're going to love you through this adventure and we're going to support you through this adventure and we're in your corner no matter what. So when you call us up and you tell us that you're in bed with a new girl with three days, we won't, you know, we'll just love you instead of publicly embarrassing you at the next meeting, you know. Somebody had treated me like that, you know. So the first 90 days were easy. Then the brain starts, some of the wiring starts to go back. And then I start to think. Now we've got real trouble. My thinking isn't very good. And one of the ways I wipe myself out in life, and this includes now, 24 years later, is that I think, mark that word, think, think. I think. I think. I think. I think that things have to make sense to me in order for me to participate in them. Now I'll tell you what a trap that is. Everything spiritual I have ever read has said two or three things to me. One is the only constant thing in this universe is change. It is the only constant thing. Everything else is temporary. Everything is temporary. Change is permanent. Change is constant. And I must be willing to change. I must be willing to go to new adventures. I must be willing to do that. Well, in order to live a life based on change, one must be, by my understanding, have the capacity to be spontaneous. You've got to be able to turn left and go down a dark alley that you've never been down before. And if you have no self-esteem, you can't be spontaneous. I've never met a new alcoholic with self-esteem. So here's the trap. I'm supposed to be going down this path of life, open to change, and I've got a mind saying, if you don't understand it, don't do it. Understand, nothing can make sense to me unless I have already have information about it in the bank. Okay? If I've got no information about it, it won't make any sense to me. It won't. It can't. It's like people that don't understand our disease. They've got no information about it. They look at us and say, how could you do that? How could you possibly do that? And from where they are, they're right. They're right. How could you do that? How could you do that? See? Because they've got no information on it. So if I live my life in this trap that I've got to know before I do it, I'm going to stagnate and die in recovery. I'm going to stagnate and die in recovery. And you don't have to drink to do that. You don't have to drink to do that. Okay? Well, here I am. Supposedly, I'm supposed to be going to new adventures. Huh! I mean, I don't think I went to a different meeting the first year, you know? Why? Something new? New people? A new chair? Not me. I'm like in control, you know? Control is very important to me. I can always tell when I'm really over the edge. And when I'm over the edge, I can watch it in my behavior. It's got nothing to do with what I'm saying to anybody. It has to do with my behavior. I've become real repetitive with my behavior. Because when I'm really in control, I'm afraid. So I don't want anything new rocking the boat. So I'll go to the same meetings, park in the same spot, sit in the same chair, drink coffee out of the same cup, say the same things. Won't move. Why should I let go? Something good might happen to me. I knew that something was wrong with me and that I'm not enough, and that recovery didn't change that. So I would have to do in AA what I've done everywhere else all my life. I'd have to watch you to find out how to behave. Then I'd be okay if I behaved like you behaved. So I started watching everybody and their behavior in recovery. The first and what I thought most important point I learned about sober people in recovery is that they're always fine. It doesn't matter what's going on in their life. They're always fine. I would walk up to a forum meeting to somebody, to George, and say, Hi, George, how are you? And George would say, I'm fine, thanks. Bob, how are you? I'd say, I'm okay, yeah, I'm fine. George would walk away and Bill would come running over and say, Did you hear what happened to George? I'd say, God, no, I didn't hear what happened to George. What happened to George? Well, his wife divorced him. He lost his job and he repossessed his car and one of his kids ran away. I'd say, Oh, okay, I got it. No matter what happens. You're fine. Nothing is to affect you. It's like home. You know? It's like having a co-alcoholic around. Nothing affects them. Goddamn house burns to the ground. They stand there in the ashes saying, Is something wrong, dear? You know? Relax, I'll get the A's much worse before I'm done. We'll get to that later. Anyhow, what happened to me in my recovery, people would come up to me and say, How are you, Bob? And I'd say, I'm fine. And all problems started to arise. The longer I stayed sober, the crazier I got. But nobody told me that would happen. Everybody always spent, you know, 55 minutes of their talk telling me how much they drank, who they drank it with, where they drank it, what happened to them when they drank it, the funny car wreck they had when they drove to the drugstore, the thing, the thing, the thing, and then they'd have five minutes left to sum up 20 years of recovery, and they would do that with how wonderful it had been since they got to AA. So, that's all you got. You know, I don't know any more than that. There was no articles on AA and recovery. I didn't have any course before I got here on recovery. So I figure everything's always okay. So now I'm a couple years sober. I'm sitting in meetings and I'm getting nuts. Okay? I'm working with people. I've got four panels in institutions. I'm driving 40,000 AA miles a year. I'm sponsoring 10 people. I'm in missions. I'm here. I'm there. I've got favors. I've got junkies throwing up in the house, on the car, you know, on me. I've got to watch them all night so they don't steal anything. I mean, I'm active. I'm reading that 12 in 12 like it's part of me, you know? But I'm getting nuts every day. I'm getting crazier, absolutely crazier. And my sponsors, you know, they see that look in your eye that says that, you know, the next stop is, like that little thing in the car window that says the next stop is the Twilight Zone, you know? And they look at you and see that look in your eye, so they give you more to do, you know? So now you're driving 45,000 AA miles a year. You've got six panels instead of four. You've got 20 babies instead of 10. And, you know, you can't sleep anymore because of what's going on in your life. But I'm nuts. And by the time I'm 3 1⁄2, forget it. I'm seeing meetings with a mind that's saying to me, you realize you won't stay sober. You realize you are one of the ones who is constitutionally incapable. Your recovery to this point has been blind goddamn luck. It's over for you. But, yeah, I'm walking into meetings, but by now I'm 3 1⁄2 years sober. I have created what I like to call my recovery personality. Now, this recovery personality that I have created has nothing to do with who I really am. I sort of put it on in the parking lot before the meeting, like Superman in the phone booth with his cape, right? Now, if you saw me in AA meetings, and you said, if you had met me in AA meetings and met me on the job, you wouldn't know it was the same guy. And if you had met me at work and then met me in an AA meeting, you would not know it was the same guy. There was no reality to this personality at all. But I was well-liked. I was well-liked. God, that's important. I had not been well-liked for years. And I, you know, was doing everything everybody asked of me. And I would walk into these meetings in my recovery personality, you know, and somebody would come up and say, hi, Bob, how are you? And I'd smile and stick my hand out, and I'd say, I'm fine. Thank you very much. Reality would have been, you know, I should have dropped to my knees, grabbed the guy around the ankles, and begun to sob uncontrollably on his shoes, you know. If I did that, the secret would be out. My secret would be common knowledge. You would know that there's something wrong with me and that I'm not enough. That I'm not enough. So I kept tucking it in and holding it in, you know, and being a good AA. And I behaved like a good AA. I behaved like I thought I was supposed to behave. I behaved like the people around me behaved. I had no conception of being myself. There are professional people who are brilliant, who will say to us, the easiest thing in the world to be is yourself, and we spend all our energy trying to be something else. All our energy goes into being something else. It's like I'm not okay no matter what I do. I'm not okay. It's not enough. I've spent a lifetime that way. So I trudge on down the road to recovery. Well, by the time I hit five years, forget it, okay? I am so far into the twilight zone. There's no coming home from this one, right? So I had absolute, complete, total desperation. I surrendered completely and absolutely to God. Completely and absolutely. Just, that's it. If there is no God, I'm dead. I'm going to die. I screamed at Him. I screamed at Him in desperation in my apartment. The actual prayer was, If there is no God... Which, the moment I said it, it worried me a lot. I always sort of thought I needed to have the proper metaphysical terminology to talk to God. And without it, I'd be in trouble. And I felt sort of like I just blew it, you know? So I did whatever I did. I always did the first five years when I even began to even get the least inkling that God was around. I just made myself smaller. So maybe He'd get you. And leave me alone. Because I was trying to do penance and become a good guy. Well, I go to work the next day and break my back. In a freak accident. They take me to an emergency hospital. I'm laying in the emergency hospital. They're telling me that I've got all kinds of serious problems as a result of fracturing these two vertebraes in my back. I have a bad back. I have a... vertebrae that have been fused. I have a pelvis that was snapped in half and put back together. I mean, I'm... So when you're drinking and using, you don't have a good attitude. Those things happen then, you know? Pieces of bones that have been removed by bullets. Just little parts of the body that aren't there anymore, you know? Thanks to practicing the disease. So they're telling me all these bad things. I can't go back to the line of work I was doing. And I can't stand for long periods of time. And they all leave. The doctors leave this little cubicle. And my mind says to me, See? I told you. Let go, and he'd get you. And last night, you surrendered to God. And today, he broke your back. First time in my life that I ever remember a little voice from down in my stomach, down below my stomach, screams at my mind. It says, why don't you shut up? There in this emergency hospital, in this cubicle, and I suddenly find myself in the position of a moderator. I have voices coming here. A lot of them here. And one down here. So now, a decision must be made as to which one to listen to. Okay? Because these 13 to 30 had occupied all of my early recovery. You know what it's like. Guys, come on. You get in the car in the morning alone. It's like you've got 12 kids in the car that don't want to go where you've got to go. Six of them hate you. And the other six can't stand you. Then you guys all move to the desert, right? Screw cliffs. Out of your words. Flat. That was one intuitive decision you made that was correct. You removed cliffs from your life. I'm stuck in this position with all these voices. Decided I'll listen to the one coming from down here because it's new. And I've been listening to these for years and my life is not in great shape. And I decide, maybe make busting my back is not a good idea. Busting my back is not a bad deal. It's not a bad deal. And I'm here to tell you tonight, 19 years later, that when things transpire in my life, that my immediate interpretation of the event is that it's the worst thing that ever happened to me. It will invariably and eventually become one of the best things that ever happened to me. Because I'm being moved. The only way I'll go. Right? Hard, man. Hard. I don't know how to go to my good easy. I don't know how to go to good easy. I go hard. I gotta be drugged to it. Kicking and screaming. I gotta have my doors in the hallway of life slammed on my head, my fingers, my knees, you know, my feet, everything. Because I don't want to go down that hall. To all that good stuff. So as a result of breaking my back, I am a phonetic speller. I still spell dead, D-E-D. I don't care what anybody says. A is unnecessary. And dictionaries don't help phonetic spellers. But that's what all these meatheads always tell you. Look it up in the dictionary. You can't find it in the dictionary. If you're trying to spell character and you think it starts with a K, or you can't hear the H, you gotta start at the beginning of the letter with a ruler. And go word to word till you find it. So that's how I began a writing career. Well, I surrendered to God and God kept His promises. He kept His promises. Every promise I have ever heard uttered about God was brought forth in my life. Whether it was the ones I was watching on Christian television at 4 o'clock in the morning, or whether it was the ones I was hearing from people in AA podiums, or from ministers I was seeking counsel with, or from, you know, yogis sitting in a pond somewhere. Whatever the promises were that all these people, including the ones in the book, that told me would come forth in my life, all came forth in my life. Poured into my life. Money, success, pretty girls, everything. Everything. Because I have a lot of trouble with relationships. Very hard relationships for a lot of us. Very difficult. For many of us it just depends on what an outstanding relationship mom and dad had. Because that's the one you use as a yardstick. So I never did well with them. Because like everything else in my life I had to create a person. Somebody walked up to me in the parking lot and said, Bob, what's the disease of alcoholism? I'd say it's stuffed feelings. Feelings. We use the drugs and we use the alcohol to stuff the feelings down, to hold them down, to keep them prisoners, to not let them up. What's the number one problem in recovery? Stuffed feelings. See, because I stand here tonight, and I'm a man, I'm absolutely, totally, thoroughly convinced that's who I am. I am my feelings. That's who I am. I can't think of anything else than I am. I'm on the human level now, okay? If you want to take it ethereal, we can go. We can. I'll be delighted to make everybody really uncomfortable. We'll bring a couple of spirits in the room. How do you want to go? Let's have a dance. So, sometimes I don't believe myself. That's why I always say, I always love it when people get really upset at my talks, you know, and stay awake for three days wanting to, I don't know, do what to me. Because I can change my mind on the way home. You know, I just show up. I could be on a plane on the way home saying, I don't know that I know that. I don't know if I think that's right or not. Geez. And then 3,000 people are nuts in some state, you know. Yeah, I should, I don't know. I'm just going home trying to figure out what it all means, you know. . Well, I'm not my personality. I can change that from room to room at a party. Okay? It's certainly not my body. It's changed a lot since it was originally put forth in the world. Pieces of it can be removed. You know, I'm still here, you know, so it's not the body. It's certainly not my job. That can change in a second. I'm not my house. Man, I can be ashes by the time I get home, you know. I'm sure as hell not the car I drive. You know, that changes. So if I'm not any of these things I thought I was, I must be my feelings. Well, what are they? I don't know. Well, how come you don't know? Well, I haven't paid any attention to them. I've been busy creating people with relationships I created like a vaudeville routine. The initial encounter is always easy because you have so much lust in it that there's margin for error. . Little things will be overlooked, you know. That's when you spot each other across a room, you know, and the eyes connect, which is the first sign of danger, but we never see it, you see. Because they see Prince Charming on his white horse looking wonderful, the rescuer, ready to do battle for them, save them, protect them, give them the love and affection and attention that they never got from their father. We're going to pay if we don't, too, by the way. . And we can't, so that'll give you an idea how much trouble we're in already. . It can't be done. And we, of course, macho and tall and strong and brave, see Mom. . Relationships on shaky footing, you know. . Particularly when the first set of needs arise, if both have them at the same time. . And start looking to see who's going to fix it. . The initial encounter in the first six weeks that you spend out of sight, nobody sees you. . Sponsors go crazy, you know, they know you're both going to get drunk. . And then you surface six weeks later, no support from anybody. . The relationship begins. . And a few weeks down the road after that, a woman would look over at me and go, . She wants something. . I have no idea what she wants. . You see, if I don't know what my needs are, I can't know what yours are. . If you want to know what kind of a relationship you're going to get into, watch how the person you're involved with treats themselves. . It is absolutely psychologically impossible for them to treat you any better, in the bottom line, than they treat themselves. . They can't. They cannot do it. So now I've got a woman there going, I don't know what to do, so I do dance number one of my vaudeville routine, or song number one. I have three songs, three dances. I sing song number one. I get them up out of bed, take them out in the living room, go through the phonograph albums, pick out an album, and I say, on this album is the one song that means more to me than any song in the whole world. . And I hear this song without it bringing tears in my eyes. I have wanted someone to share it with. And I put it on and play it. And I cry, and they cry, and I tell them how grateful I am to have them there to share this song with. . I neglect to mention I have played it for 37 others, with the same basic results. . You don't stop doing what works. . They tell you, here, if it works, don't fix it. . Maybe the next time they go, then I don't know what to do. Now I do dance number one. . Get them up out in the car, drive down to Malibu, walk along the top of the cliffs, down a goat trail, climb over some rocks, slide down a sand dune, around through the water, around into a little cove, and say, this spot here, in this cove, is the most precious spot on the face of this earth to me. . I have shot morphine in this spot, and I have come here in recovery to pray to God. . I have been alone here, isolated here, I have been with my maker here, and I have wanted somebody else to share this with. . Ignore the footprints of the 37 others. . When I became a writer and started making money, I got one more dance to do. I could give them a credit card and let them go shopping. . No one can shop like an emotionally unhappy woman. . But the fact that morphine just moves them into the twilight zone, you know. . They can slam dunk Rodeo Drive, you know. . Now, just to give the guys a break, you know, before your girls get a little too comfortable. . You have your own, and your best one. . The one we always fall for, that I love the most is, I've never done this with anybody before. . Which, of course, always follows the logical question, and how come you know how? . Three songs and four dances will come one more time, and they stand there and they go, . I've got nothing else. . This relationship has just ended. . You don't know that, and I won't tell you that, because that would require a kind of communication that only people who are in touch with their feelings can participate in. . But the relationship is over, because you are making me look at the one thing that I fear more than anything else in the world. . You have brought the secret out. . Something's wrong with me. . I'm not enough. . So it's over. . And I will drive you out. . I'll probably do to you what my dad did to my mother. . I'll drive you out with silence. . I might even move you into a new house first. . You know. . But I'll make sure you like it, because I know you're going to be living there alone. . You see? . So we'll let you pick it out. . But I just want to talk. . I'll become a couch lizard. . Either zero in on the television set, or just quiet. . Just silence. . I'm jumping around. This is okay. . A couple of years ago, I was in a situation. . I was in a relationship with a really great gal. . At one point in my recovery, when I was ten years sober, someone who I had dated for two years and been married to for four months, who I absolutely loved and adored more than anybody else I'd ever known, died. . So then here, a couple of years ago, I was in a relationship. . I mean, the gal I was in a relationship with got very sick. . She came out of the living room one day, and she looked at me. . This is after, you know, by this time now, I've been in therapy for four years. . I went into it at 17 years of recovery. . Highly recommend it if you get stuck in your recovery. . And I learned a lot of things. . And I learned about being an adult child of an alcoholic. . And I learned about the inner child, the little child that lives inside of me that I have to love and nurture and take care of. . So this girl came up to me, and she looked at me, and she said, there's something, there's distance between us. . Something's wrong here. . I, of course, when confronted, always react with a really brilliant answer. . And she said, what are you doing as you're standing two feet in front of me? . That's it. That's the best I can do at the time. . What the hell, you know, at least I'm there, you know. . She said, no, there's distance. . There's distance. . And I said, look, there's no distance. . What the hell do you want, you know? . I mean, God, I get to the pharmacy, I get the prescriptions, I get here. . I think to the doctor, yeah. . She said, no, stop. . She said, that's custodial care. . I can hire a nurse to come in and give me custodial care. . There's distance. . And that's what my feelings immediately when confronted. . I just can't, I don't, not even today, you know. . Now 24 years, I still don't. . I got to have some time, anywhere from five minutes to 24 hours before I can do it. . I just can't. . You may want an answer, but at least now I don't have to give you one. . I used to always just give you one, you know, and go on, then try and make it true. . Now I just say, I don't know. . So then I went away for about ten minutes, and I came back out. . I told her I had to go away somewhere. . Ten minutes later, I had tears streaming down my face. . And I looked at her, and I said, you're right. . There is distance here. . There is distance between us. . And I said, the reason there's distance between us is because the last time somebody I really cared about got sick, they died. . And there's a little tiny guy inside of me who put on his running shoes and his little hat when the day you got sick and took off. . I said, and he's not coming back. . Because he cannot live through the grief again. At least that's what he thinks. And I said, so what you're getting from me now is the best there is. It's all I have. If you need more, you're going to have to go elsewhere. You're going to have to go to your therapist. You're going to have to go to your sponsor. You're going to have to go to your friends. You're going to have to go elsewhere to get whatever it is that you don't feel you're getting here. . What a change. There's two whole people in the room. I don't have to tell her she's not feeling what she's feeling because I can't stand it. And I don't have to run away and beat myself up because I am who I am and I'm giving what I'm giving. Anyhow, I don't know how I got there, but if you stay with me, you're in a lot of trouble in your recovery. . If you're lost, you'll probably have a pretty peaceful life. . So God, you know, I believe that all of us at some point in our recovery, we must arrive at this decision. Either there is a God or there isn't a God. And either this God is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-present, or not at all. Not at all. And if he's all-powerful, all-loving, and all-present, what are we worried about? What's the concern here? You know, what's the problem? The problem is that to follow the path of a God who's all-loving, all-powerful, and all-present, I must be able to be spontaneous. People always say, how do you tell what God's will is? How do you know what God's will is? The problem is that to follow the path of a God who's all-loving, all-powerful, and all-present, I must be able to be spontaneous. People always say, how do you tell what God's will is? How do you know what God's will is? It's easy. It is the easiest thing, the simplest thing. the simplest thing in the bloody world, in my opinion. Get up in the morning, go out the door, start moving, man, and when you hit a wall, turn left. That's it. That's how complicated it is. You hit a wall, turn left. Walls are only on the path to guide us, to move us, to turn us. Unfortunately, for years, I didn't understand that. I'd be moving, trucking on down the path. I hit the wall, and like, geez, this isn't what I had in mind. Well, it's not bad. There's not a lot of distraction here. I guess I'll stay. Or conversely, you get back and get a 150-yard running start at the wall, because God doesn't know what's good for you, and you go straight through the wall and wind up in this garbage dump on the other side, saying, this isn't what I had in mind. I don't understand. I don't know how to be spontaneous, because to be spontaneous, I must risk looking like a fool. I must risk embarrassment. One of the obvious ingredients in self-esteem is people who have a great deal of self-esteem ask a lot of questions. I don't ask questions. I observe. I watch you. Then I emulate you, but I don't ask questions. People who ask questions, I don't ask questions. I don't ask questions. I don't ask questions. I don't embarrass me. I used to go out publicly with a friend of mine who used to drive me absolutely nuts. Wherever we went, if he didn't know something, he would ask. He and I made our first sushi bar trip together. The son of a bitch started at that end of the sushi bar and went to this end of the sushi bar asking about every goddamn fish in the case. How does it taste? What's it like? Where do they catch it? How much does it cost? Would they recommend it? I don't want to die. I don't want to die because I think if I ask you a question, my secret's out. Something's wrong with me. I'm not enough. So God kept pouring all this good stuff into my life and I kept wiping it out. See, I'm convinced that a lot of us have deep underlying issues here. And if you don't deal with them... See, my problem is learning that I am a human being and a spiritual being. And that I don't... I always get confused and i have a lot of trouble allowing myself the human reaction and then turning to my god and going quietly on down the path of life see i think something's wrong if i get upset somebody hurts my feelings i get angry i go oh god some of them but jesus god damn him you know that's it oh no don't do that yeah no no no no you're not working a good program man you should forgive him and bless him i forgive him and bless him and then i have acid indigestion i walk around consuming 36 rolls of roll aids and this son of a bitch goes home and makes love to his wife right because he feels fine see so i gotta get the anger out maybe not necessarily him maybe i have to beat up my bed you know just pound the hell out of my bed get the anger out then i can turn to god once i deal with my humanness my being a human you and blow up then i can say father you know forgive him i want him to have all the things in his life that i want for me and i'll picture this person visually having all those things to take it away but first i gotta be a human first i gotta react well i don't know any of this stuff see so i surrender to god i become a writer i start making money i still have problems with relationships but i also there's a real issue here for those of us for many of us heavy issue for adult children alcoholics is the inability to handle money big issue okay so i could spend a whole year in a studio and make a fortune an absolute fortune okay low to medium six figures in a year walk out from underneath that contract broke absolutely penniless rent a department leased car everything temporary everything nothing no pension plan no savings accounts nothing i had to continually wipe it out because obviously if there's something wrong with me and the good starts to come in i do not know how to handle it responsibly i do not know how my behavior is the opposite because that's the behavior i learn so anyhow 17 years of sobriety i roll i find myself in the same fix i was in when i was five years sober i've written 32 inventories i've done everything i know how to do i'm sponsoring probably 100 people at that time a lot of stuff going on and i want to die i just want to die 17 years sober in a penthouse apartment in the beach at santa monica driving the expensive car working under an expensive contract at a motion picture studio and i want to die hey speaker big deal that's a trap that's a hell of a trap you create this goddamn statue you know you become a speaker you become a statue you create because the need for approval is is so great you know back in those days man i was only talking about the insanity because people laughed they didn't mind hearing about that you know so i create this statue and then i become maintenance man and janitor for the statue with no life of my own so i go to a convention and instead of taking the recovery personality off the plane i take this speaker statue off the plane all right here's bob speaker you know gave great talks people love me a lot more to do today i love it so anyway somebody suggested to me that i go to therapy so i went to a therapist picked a woman i thought they were my problem went to this woman sat down we had this get acquainted meeting where we chit chatted she said tell me a little start with your childhood she said tell me a little bit about yourself so i said well okay uh when i was 15 years of age they threw me out of manual arts high school i discovered the wonderful world of drugs and alcohol i spent the next 11 years running the streets committing crimes drinking alcohol using drugs and i've been a sober member of a and n a for 17 years she said no no no wait a minute i said start with your childhood she said you weren't born at 15 years of age so i said well i don't remember any of it then i didn't it was a blank man zero zippo maybe two incidents in 15 years when i told her that she got this great smile on her face she said well i'm not going to tell you how i got this smile on my face and i thought i thought it was a self-serving smile i thought the smile was oh i finally found one that when i write a paper on this sucker i'll get the recognition i've deserved all these years i didn't know the smile was saying if you have the courage to stick this process out with me i'm going to introduce you to somebody you've never met you and i will have the privilege of being present when that happens and i'm going to introduce you to a child that lives inside of you and that child will love you and you can love the child so we begin the process by this time 17 years sober i don't eat red meat the reason i don't eat red meat is because my wife who died i know this is great right after you've had your dinner here but you know when the book says to me god will constantly disclose more and more will be revealed to us it means that we cannot close our minds or shut our ears or that these halls should be excluded from the information that's available in the world out there about what's good for you and what's bad for you and i'm convinced that most of us do not take good care of ourselves only because we don't know how we don't know how i didn't know how i had no idea how but taylor got sick she refused any treatment any toxic treatment she told the doctors if the treatment would kill her she was not interested this is 13 years ago which put us in a position seeking treatment in other countries and from the off the wall holistic people you know about 6 000 years ago or 5 000 years ago whatever the hell it was in china it was like this you think this is Marina's son the last time he had loves tell him oh this was stratégically wrong he was in yoga rada he used to have an interesting situation i don't know why i'm on this but the the doctor the village doctor got paid a regular fee from everybody in the village you paid him like weekly a little fee and if you got sick you stopped paying him until you were well again gets any money today unless i'm you know dead see unless i'm ill except the holistic freaks anyhow so we went seeking other treatment and she and i were both big meat eaters every night of the week and heavy smokers and the first two things they wanted eliminated out of her life immediately was red meat and cigarettes so about a month after she passed away i was sitting there one night and i was eating a steak and i looked at it and i said no i can't really live without this and uh that was about 13 years ago that was the last of the red meat then i gave up coffee about six months later only because my throat closed one morning trying to swallow it i do that a lot i use up my lifetime supply you know in a short time i probably was supposed to have two cups a day for 95 years but unfortunately i drank all that up by the time i was 30 so my body said no more so so that was the end of coffee of course i didn't give up caffeine just coffee i turned to diet colas i thought everybody drank 18 cans of tab a day i thought everyone woke up went in got a can of tab out of the refrigerator had a cigarette sat down you know read the 24-hour day book i thought tab tasted good with rice krispies milk and sugar i didn't know i was after the caffeine that does that's right that's where you're at tastes wonderful then a short while after that i was about nine years ago i was researching the coffee and i was like oh my god i'm going to die i'm going to die i'm going to die over here and i was on a really bad diet and i was watching a story on suicide and adolescent suicide i was in suicide prevention in los angeles and i'm sitting in this room with all these guys that were then working and running suicide prevention i sit down in this little boardroom meeting room whip out my marlboro and my brand new super electronic butane flamethrower whatever it was kill yourself with good tools light up take a drag look around there's not one ash tray in the room and he says oh my god he's out here going to die Any serious smokers knows that when you're in a room with 12 other people and there are no ashtrays you are in unfriendly company Some guy says oh wait I'll get you one jumps up runs out of the outer office almost Remodels the outer office looking for an ashtray right opens drawers slams drawers doors bangs crashes comes back in with his platter You can put a fish on right Sets it down in front of me and I sit there and try to be nonchalant With this platter in front of me The then head of suicide prevention says to me We have an official opinion on cigarette smoking if you're interested The child from down here who I had not yet met Said yeah, what is it? Because children hate smoke both smoke at a child watch him and go nuts You can't stand it because the body's pure ain't no see so I see yeah, what is it? He looks at me so well now all the scientific proof is in and that it is a fact No longer a theory that cigarette smoking Of and by itself will take your life We view it to be covert suicide a little tiny gun with a little tiny bullet Delighted I asked you know it's time now. I know why I didn't ask questions of anyone I Would like to tell you that I walked out the door and ever lived on a cigarette not sure I smoked for six more months Worst six months of my life Every time I let the cigarette the goddamn I could hear the gun go off. You know Yeah, I'm not sometimes I look around see if anybody else in hurry, you know So I get up cigarettes right Then I discover some interesting facts cigarette tobacco in the United States of America's cured in sugar. Oh Now I've lost my major source of sugar My body wants sugar I Begin to eat sugar like the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street eats cookies, man. I want serious sugar. No lightweight bullshit I'm talking Tablespoons straight from the sugar bowl if necessary, you know So I begin to treat sugar like I treat drugs, you know, no problem I'd be sitting in this little condominium I had in Montecito at 10 minutes 11 at night on the couch in front of the fireplace TV on Comfortable slippers saying to myself. There's no ice cream in the house Say, but that's not a problem because I'm not hooked on ice cream. I Can have a glass of water like the guy next door and go to bed. It's not an issue. I'm okay Five minutes to 11. I'm out the door on a dead run I'm in the car hundred miles an hour down Santa Ynez Road To 31 flavors in the village broadside to a stop in front of the joint Run through the door just about the time the guys coming from the other side with the keys by my court court of pralines and cream I Gonna eat sugar eat sugar. Don't screw around a Jar of butterscotch topping in a jar of dry roasted cashews And I would make a sundae I Was in one more wonderful relationship at the time and it worked wonderful because I was hypoglycemic and I'd have three minutes of alertness Followed by a coma, you know Way if you're hypoglycemic eating sugar, I don't care what step you're working You don't go ahead and matter mr Don't matter you know well what problem eat a much sugar it seems to put weight on And unfortunately for me it all just seemed to go to one spot I just kept buying bigger pants, you know, because I could get them fastened fine about one pair And some boys in me. Thank God my next day. I can get them passing bottom and the next day It was not faster this voice said to me. You can eat anything you want Ok, are the sugar you的? you want you can have all the pastries you want you can have all the candy you want all the ice cream you want you can have anything you want but these are the biggest pants you're ever going to own as long as you live so if you want to spend every winter wearing hawaiian shirts out so no one will know you can't get your pants fastened go ahead so someone turned me on to eating red apples as a means of when i wanted sugar eat a red apple probably the first three months i must have eaten 30 of them a day sometimes clean the system out uh sugar well by now friends of mine are saying you're looking better you got to start exercising we want you to run come running with us so i go out and start trying to run with these guys they watch me run for a few days they say look you got a serious problem here but we can help you first thing you got to do is get your feet going straight if we can get your feet going straight in front of you you can run further and faster with less effort so we want you to go see this doctor in long beach he's a sports medicine podiatrist and he's the best in the world and he's a marathon runner himself i lived in santa monica california which is 35 miles from long beach i won't drive me 35 miles to a doctor it's too far it's just too far i don't care if he's the best in the world now i'll drive you 35 miles if you call me up and said you got to go to this guy in long beach he's the only doctor you can see i'll pick you up and take you some people will say that's spiritual don't kid yourself for one second okay so i go to this crack nut screwball in century city who makes me a pair of orthotics i go out and run three miles and my back goes out and i'm bent over like this now my friends say to me you got to go see these guys in pasadena california they're the best sports medicine chiropractors in the world they work with the olympic team pasadena is 35 miles from santa monica you're the best in the world you're the best in the world you're the best in the world you're the best in the world you're the best in the world you're the best in Santa Monica. I also will not go to Pasadena. So I go to a guy in a marina who smokes cigarettes and is 50 pounds overweight. He doesn't know what running means. By the time he's done with me, I'm down here. Finally, out of urging from my friends in absolute desperation, I drive myself to Pasadena. He's right, I'm right. Three days later, I feel great. I'm erect, standing straight. They fixed me. Now they say, go see the guy in Long Beach. So, I go see the guy in Long Beach and I'm sitting in this room in this chair where your feet are straight out in front of you and into the room walks the nicest, sweetest, gentlest man I've ever met. What a delight this guy is. He says, hi, I'm Dr. So-and-so and walks up and picks my right foot up immediately. He says to me, looks at it, turns it a dozen different ways. He says, I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. I'm Dr. So-and-so. He says, what happened to your foot when you were a kid? He says, well, it's practically a clubbed foot. It lays on its side. I said, well, maybe I was born that way. He says, no, this is not from birth. This is a structural change in the mechanism of the bones in the foot that happened after you were born. Suddenly, I feel real, by now I've been in therapy a couple of years, and so I feel something suddenly sick, real sick, sick at my stomach and mad. And I don't know who I'm mad at and I don't know why I'm sick, but I know I feel terrible, terrible. And I drive home after he finishes with his cast and all that, and I get home to Santa Monica, and I'm like, just, oh, I don't know. I feel so terrible. The phone rings. It's my mother. God's timing is impeccable. She has just come from her foot doctor, and she's complaining he didn't cut her toenail straight. So I said to my mother, look, as long as we're on the subject of feet, what happened to mine? For any of you who begin this process to go back, see? Dig through this stuff and get it out of your life so you can go on down the road. Let me alert you, dealing with a co-alcoholic can be tough, man, tough. Because they don't know you were there, a lot of them, you know. They just, the pain was so great for them, they just had to block everything out. Finally, after a little pushing, my mother says to me, well, look, when you were small, you had very high arches, and we had to buy very expensive special shoes for your feet. And about three more times or so, she repeated how expensive these shoes were. And she hangs up. Now, I'm nuts. I'm over the edge. I don't know why, I'm just nuts. I'm nuts. I'm sick. I'm angry. I'm sad. I don't know what's wrong. I'm nuts. I stay up all night. I pace. I walk. I'm a mover when I'm over the line. Next day, I walk into my therapist's office in the morning. She says, hi, how are you? And I go, I no longer say fine. I tell her what's going on. She says, well, let's see what we can find out. So we go back, and we finally find out that I'm not a therapist. I'm a therapist. I'm a doctor. I'm 90 years old. I've driven a car. I've worked for 10 to 20 years. And that's where I came from. And I'm living here. I'm waiting for my mother. And I come back from New York. And my mother passed. I come back from New York, and I'm in the back of my car, and she says, hey, I've been sick for 20 years, and I'm the only one we're talking to. And I'm in there waiting. And she says, hey, what's going on? She says, well, I went to see a doctor last night. She said, well, I'm just a professional. And she said, you see, I'm afraid to tell you, and I don't know what's going to happen next. And I said, I will find out. And she says, and I went. And I said, well, I'm going to see a doctor. and I'm explaining to my mother the reason I'm crying is because the shoe on my right foot is so tight it hurts so bad that the pain is so great that it's making me cry and my mother says to me oh your father will hear and he'll get angry well the light bulb finally went on by this point I'm probably 19 and a half years sober been two and a half years in therapy and the light went on I finally understood that if you can't buy shoes for me to fit well I know the next day I went to the doctor again and I asked him I said could this foot be caused by wearing a shoe that was designed for a high arch that was too small he said absolutely that's probably what did it that's probably what did it so now I understood why I felt like I wasn't enough and something was wrong with me and women you know have a tendency to get angry with men and say oh we're not in touch with our feelings guess why why why why why you know guess why you know why most of us don't cry because the first time we cried we were told to stop crying and we couldn't stop crying we were told if we didn't stop crying we would be given something to cry for and then we still couldn't stop crying because we didn't understand and we got slugged right in the side of the head at which point we learned don't cry don't cry and that starts the stuffing of feelings and you stuff them and you keep them down and you don't let them up until you don't know who the hell you are so here's the thing so here I am now it's a few more years later by the way when I was married to Taylor and when she died I was so out of touch with my feelings I was an absolute spiritual giant when her death transpired I was heavy in a goldsmith I was into four to six hours of structured meditation a day I was just like I mean I just walked through that like God right all the people around me in the program in Southern California were like their mouths were open that I could watch someone that I cared so much about die and walk through it like nothing had happened but just say God took her home of course I could do that I wasn't in touch with my feelings I had no idea what the hell I felt right I used to listen to people at meetings talk about having their feelings hurt 17 years sober I didn't know what you meant I didn't know what it meant to have my feelings hurt they were so goddamn buried you couldn't hurt them I wouldn't allow it three years later in therapy it came time to grieve it came time to look at the fact that someone who had genuinely honestly loved me and had been supportive of me and cared about me had died and would not be around at least in human form and the pain of that grief was so great I spent days locked up in my apartment sitting in a corner just with my knees tucked in my chest just crying and beating on the floor because it was the worst pain I've ever had ever felt in my whole life but at least I felt it and at least suddenly the whole relationship and her time our time had some meaning and it had some significance and it had some energy to it so wind all this up I'm making everybody uncomfortable 24 years sober 50 years old almost 51 best shape I've been in in my life I have never been as healthy as I am today despite rumors in Southern California that I've had a heart attack and I'm in serious health wishful thinking on the part of some smokers and meat eaters die so they don't have to deal with it and look at it smoking is just another way to stuff feelings it's a cloud protects you from your feelings it's a defense it's a major defense I always use it as a defense they say that if you make love with a person that the moments after the first few precious moments after are the single most intimate time that you'll ever experience the tenderness and beauty of those moments after I always lit a cigarette sat up in bed turned my back on the person closing them out took the cigarettes took one lit it took a drag and now turned around now it doesn't matter I don't have to feel that you don't have to be important you don't have to be special I don't have to feel that I'll have a cigarette instead so at 50 years of age 51 years of age 24 years sober I think that there's an immense amount of people that I know there's an immense amount of information available to us in the world and that we should avail ourselves of it I think it is now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you eat and how you eat will affect your mental health and I think that if we ignore that we're playing Russian roulette with our lives in recovery you know if you're going to eat then why not eat good I mean you know and yet you get other people say oh he doesn't talk about recovery anymore he's a son of a bitch he talks about nutrition and he talks about therapy and he talks about exercise absolutely absolutely you know why because when I came here and sat down in my very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous you know what my mind said to me this is the end of the road and you know what I believed it I believed this was the end of the road and I behaved accordingly and I put just about that much energy into life I figured this is where if you were so unlucky that you couldn't drink and use anymore and you weren't lucky enough to be dead you stayed here you know and one day you'd be lucky enough to die and then you could go alright that was it I didn't understand this was the first day of an incredible adventure this is not the end here this is the beginning here this is the absolute beginning and we can't you know guys you can't stop because I all never took paying attention to any of this crap because I didn't understand any of it I didn't know about it so I had to go out and talk to people that knew about it I had to talk to people who believed that exercise and mental health are important that you can actually I swear to God you'd be better off three nights a week in a gym burning your ass off doing something running bicycling aerobics swimming I don't care what because it takes that negative energy out man you burn it out in a constructive way I believe that what you eat is how you think I know because I'm not strict you know I mean I will not be rigid so if I get stuck somewhere and can't get what I normally eat I'll eat something else and invariably I will wake up with anxiety the next morning it has nothing to do with my life it only has to do with what I ate I'm not scared well Jesus I can work 164 steps but if I keep eating the same crap that's creating anxiety I'm still going to be anxiety ridden and I'm going to be walking around guess who I'm going to be beating up me me what's wrong with me what's how come I'm not enough I'm not doing the program right I'm not this I'm not that I believe it's real important I believe all this stuff is important and I think we should pay attention to it and I'll tell you what's going to change you know what's going to change the young people are going to change it you know why they're going to change it because they're cursed they're cursed you know why they're cursed they come in here with too much information they've got too much information they gathered it when they were out there and they don't understand we had a couple of guys about 3 years ago come in in North Hollywood just in the general LA area these guys were interesting guys ok they had been vegetarian since they were very young because they were raised that way by their family they had traveled the whole world seeking God all they ever wanted was a spiritual connection with God they had spent years in India walking the rivers spending time with the yogis they had been in the Himalayas they had watched the changing of the high lamas they had been with the Tibetan monks in the mountains they had been walking barefoot in the snow in the winter with Edgar Cayce's people and the spiritualists in Virginia West Virginia they had been all over seeking searching looking reading praying talking to people and the only thing that kept them from assimilating everything that was happening was the heroin that they were using ok we went to Alcoholics Anonymous we handed them a bottle of alcohol we handed them a book said here read this as if they hadn't read a few books with some significance this is the first time in my life in my recovery I ever watched two people read a book with this kind of reaction oh God that's good this is great I'll be so look at this these steps are incredible the steps are marvelous man these are principles that were being taught by the Essene prophets two thousand years before us two thousand years before Jesus ever walked the earth this is incredible I can understand the logic of the order of these this is divine this is beautiful what a gift from God wow when was the last time you got that reaction out of a newcomer you gave the book to right about three months later clean and sober went through the steps like a supersonic jet one of them walks into a big renowned club house in the valley there sitting by the door is one of the door stops thirty three years sober with his cup of coffee and his pile of cookies and his nicotine stained fingers smoking his cigarette this kid looks at him and says what the fuck this is a newcomer alright this guy looks at him and says what do you mean he says what are you doing for Christ's sake he says God has given you another chance at life you have been blessed you have been risen from the goddamn dead you've been given an opportunity to live you've been put on a path of life and you're sitting here in this goddamn chair killing yourself what are you doing you know what the answer was when you're sober as long as I am you'll understand I sure hope I don't understand I'm sure this stuff makes you uncomfortable it makes you mad and I'm controversial and there's a lot of places they don't let me talk I probably wouldn't either you know if I was still sitting out there smoking man doing nothing putting my feet on the floor you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know And the doctor said to him, you've got cancer. Get your affairs in order. That's over. I go to a meeting. He's a very gentle man, and yet in some ways he's harder than I am. He'll say at a meeting, at a podium, if you're sober as long as he is and you're smoking cigarettes, there's something wrong with you. It's a program. But anyway, Fred came home after talking to the doctors, and he thought about it for a while, and he decided not. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. It wasn't over. He wasn't done. It wasn't his time. And screw it, you know? So he did what treatment that they prescribed for him that intuitively felt right to him, and he began to really pay attention to his eating, and he began to really pay attention to his exercise, and he hurled himself into running and into bicycling and into swimming and into doing everything that he could. Fred was on a big island in Hawaii. He was 24 years sober, 62 years of age. Cancer was in remission. He was on the big island because he was participating in the Ironman. Those of you that don't know what it is, it's a little event that requires you to do in one day, swim 2 1⁄2 miles in the ocean, bicycle 112, and run 26. Fred finished in 15 hours. I'm so proud of him, man, you know? You know what recovery's all about? That's what recovery's all about. God bless you.