Step 1 and the Failure of Intellectualism – Bob D.

My name's Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic. Can you hear me? Well, I don't know if that's good news or bad news. Anyway, I'm delighted to be here. I got on a while ago and I was hearing, I was very, very moved and very touched. I was hearing a talk by my sponsor who's recently passed, Clancy, that he gave at my old home group. And I was sitting in the front row when he gave that talk. And I Was One of the Guys, he didn't mention my name, but I Was one of the guys he was making fun of in the meeting because that was one of his long suits. and it was a very nostalgic and very warm, good but sad experience listening to that talk because it was a great talk as all his talks were great because he had an ability to see right into the crux of alcoholism and describe it in a way that guys like me could hear it. And he is missed I'm supposed to talk about Al likes to give people subjects Al likes to play let's stump the guy you know I mean one time he gave me a subject of how this one of the concepts related to one ofthe traditions especially if you were not sober or something that was a crazy it just didn't even make any sense but pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization was something that i i've experienced drunk and sober and i know a lot of times people consider this something that happens to you at the end of your drinking it's the bottom we hit and uh I don't know that it's just sober. I think this place where you can't stand yourself, this place of pitiful and incomprehensible or a baffled lot, demoralization, as if everything that was ever good about you has evaporated and you just can't stay. You can't defend yourself. I think that happens to some of us sober. I just spent about three to four hours with a guy I've known for 34 years who is at a place of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization with over 33 years of sobriety, and he hasn't taken a drink. But bottoms are not always a result of drinking. often hitting bottoms and hitting these horrible places as a result of self-will run riot. The book says that we are extreme examples of it, though we usually don't think so. But I got to talk about my experience a little bit. uh my alcoholism is very defended and the only chance of me ever changing is i have to all my defense mechanisms have to be crushed i like that line in the book that talks about that we were crushed by these self-imposed crises we cannot postpone and you can't evade and then we had to fearlessly face the proposition that god is either everything or else he is nothing either is or isn't i think this this state that guys like me have to get to is that some people refer to it as a state of desperation but one in one place in the book it talks it refers to it as the jumping off place the place where you wish for the end and I think that it has to I've had to get to that place and how did I get there well you can't manufacture it I think there's been a lot of treatment centers, especially back in the 70s when treatment was pretty much nonprofit and it was all about trying to really help drunks and trying to facilitate a bottom so they could eventually get them to work the steps. And so there was a lot of treatment centers back in the 70s. I was in a bunch of them that tried to create this state of consciousness of where you're broken, this broken state, this surrendered state, this pitiful and incomprehensible, the jumping off place. And they would do it through academic educational means. and they'd show you Father Martin movies where he'd explain the disease of alcoholism and hopefully you'll get your how powerless you really are and how you can't manage your own life you'd have doctors come in and talk about how we're doomed because of the acetate in the brain and how when an alcoholic of our type picks up a drink he can't stop and he's condemned to destroy himself and they would do all of this trying to get me to a place that is inside me. And step one, in the book, in chapter three, it says something that's very pertinent to me. It says that we learned, we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. This is not an intellectual exercise. This is not something that can be achieved in any academic fashion. It is painfully experiential. And how does that happen? How do you fully concede to your innermost self that you're an alcoholic if you're like me and you don't have any innermOST self, you're just all up here. You're all in your head. You're just a thinker because that's, this is the control center where I can defend myself against life. This is where I go to run the scenarios. It's like the bridge of the starship enterprise. You know, I put stuff up on the screens and I got, I got a whole bunch of little people in there running around. One of them is like Spock. He wants to be very logical and alcoholism is not logical. I have another guy up there who's like Bones. He's very emotional. And then I have a guy named Kurt who runs the whole show, but every time things get bad, it always seems like a good idea to this one member of the crew that kind of hangs out in the background and he just says to Kurt and Bones and Spock, he said, it's all good. Let's have a drink. That's all great. Let's go. Let's drink. Because there was a time when alcohol could defend me and protect me from these horrible feelings of desperation. And I wanted to defend myself from the painful spot that I must get to in order to transform my life, in order for me to be able to do what I want to do. In order to approach God, because I have to be crushed. and i can't duplicate that it had it's something that happened to me and it happened to be as a result of seven years almost a little less but almost seven years of relapsing seven years of living the progression of the disease seven years frequently swearing to myself i'll never drink again seven years of trying through therapy and medication in combinations of drugs and alcohol to fit to fix one of two ends of this untenable situation if i could fix the drinking end of the equation then i could get back to one the way i drank when i was 17 18 19 years old man when the party was on and alcohol set me free and alcohol could take up off me any problems, no matter how horrific they were. It would just shed them off of me and I could get free. If I could have found a way to roll it back to those days, I tell you, I would have been good to go. But I failed and I tried and I tell ya, I tried. I think all my drug use over the years was just trying to do that. Our book says by every form of self-deception and experimentation, we try to prove ourselves exceptions to the rule. Therefore, not alcoholic. Or at least, therefore, not an alcoholic like you stupid people in AA. Like a special kind of alcoholic. because I'm a little that's why I like psychiatrists because I didn't think people in AA could help me because they were stupid and uneducated I need people guys my depth and complexity needs someone with multiple doctorate degrees to even even begin to grasp the intricacies of me and I know that because I pondered myself a lot and I'm a ponderer and I tried all that stuff I tried therapy I tried everything and every time I would try something that in the beginning looks like it might work and I would get hope maybe a new medication or just briefly give me a period of hope like oh I think this is going to be okay I think I'm going to do alright now I remember going to a gestalt weekend where they wouldn't let you sleep. We were talking about our feelings all weekend. I'll tell you about the second day in there without any sleep. Changed my life for about two weeks. And I'd get the hope, and then the hopes would be dashed. And all the excitement and hope that I ever had was always followed by disillusionment and depressing, horribly depressing failure and hopelessness. And I kept trying and I kept tried and a couple things happened to me is one as a result of all of that and all the trying to fix the way i am sober and failing and of all the years of trying to get high part of the equation and failing because once alcoholism is a is a book our 12 by 12 calls it a rapacious creditor because after it bleeds you dry of everything worthwhile, you know, it's your family and your jobs and your self-respect. When everything is gone of any value, then it does the worst thing of all. It pulls the plug on the effect. And in late stage alcoholism, guys like me, we drink futilely. we drink pathetically. We drink desperately, trying to jumpstart a feeling in a party that you just can't catch. And I remember the days of, I'd be sober for a couple months and just up to here with being sober. And so I was like, I need to feel better for God's sakes. And And I'd set it all up to go party for a weekend or something like that. And I be excited to do it. And then the disillusionment as I started, I'm throwing that whiskey in me and it's not sinking into a depression. And now the one thing, the only thing I'd ever found that allowed me to come out and play and feel like I fit and enjoy some sort of intimacy with people and my running buddies and these are my guys and i love you bro and all that stuff that went in that in that a magical effect from alcohol at the end of my last couple years of my drinking i couldn't get that but i tried my god i tried and then i i knew when it's it's killing me And I, and I get it. I mean, I get what's happening to me. And I get that I must not drink this stuff. I get that. I, I mean for God sakes, the last couple years I was living like an animal on the streets. I mean the only time I'm not outdoors or on the street is when I'm in a halfway house or the Hope Rescue Mission or Salvation Army. Nobody will have nothing to do with me. All my protectors and enablers have been burnt out. And it's just me. And I don't, I can't do this. There were guys I went to high school with that had homes and successful businesses and families and these guys had the IQ of an orange for God sakes. I'm smarter than all of them. And they're doing really well. And I'm dying here on the streets, and I don't know what's wrong with me. And it's alcoholism. And so I was in this halfway house up in Pennsylvania. And I was sober several months, and I was excited to go on a run. And I, a couple of things happened to me. You know, I'm still a victim. I'm not an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. And that's my downfall. That is my, the source of my demise is I grab hope. I have hope. Hope that somehow, someday, some way, maybe this time, I'll enjoy my drinking like I did in the old days. I'll get a little bit of time where I'm free and I'll control it enough to you know keep the damage down to something reasonable I suppose. And I got this weekend pass and I was so excited to get relief. I was excited to get free, to come out and play and maybe meet a girl or have some blabs with some guys. Because sobriety feels like I'm doing time. And I was at that point after a couple months where I just say, I know I should stay sober but I can't do this much more. And then I went on this drunk and walking into this bar with this buddy of mine who had been in detox with me told me about this amazing bar and it was amazing. It was In my heyday, this would have been my favorite kind of bar. We walk in there and I'm anxious and excited to get lit up. And I go up to the bar. Since I only got a weekend pass, I got two doubles of 100 proof Southern Comfort. Because if you only got weekend pass you got to get downtown now. And I got 2 doubles, Southern Comforter, 100 proof beer back. And I throw that first one down. you know how that is after you've been sober several months at first drink sort of tastes like hope and I throw that first drink down and it just boom and then all that comes out of it is is this urgency to throw that second one down and I'm waiting I'm for that thing to happen you know that thing that happens once one or two drinks in where all of a sudden yet it's just relax a little bit your shoulders come down you start to hear the music that way you can come out and play where you're you're getting free and i throw that second one down i'm waiting for that to happen i got the bartender setting me up with another pair of doubles and i'm sipping on that beer and i turn around in that bar still when i'm looking out over that bar and i don't know I'm not one with. I'm becoming one more apart from. I'm getting lit up. I'm sinking into a horrible depression, a feeling of loneliness. Wilson refers to it as a state of anxious apartness. I remember looking at the people in the bar. They were having fun. Oh my God, they were having fun. They were laughing and guys were hitting on girls and people were in the booths making out and dancing it was amazing but it's breaking my heart because I can't get there and instead of being able to come out and play I seem to be sinking deeper within myself deeper into the loneliness and the depressive nature that I seem to have and I don't know what's wrong with me And I'm looking at everybody having fun. And it was as if a window opened and I could see a bitter, bitter, unpalatable truth. The truth was, Bob, for the last couple years, it's always been like this. Remember? Remember how many times you've gone out to drink hoping to have fun again? and it's always a depression, and it is always pitying yourself. And it's always lonely. And my God, Bob, you can't even really drink away the shame anymore and the remorse. It hangs in the air. You can't get free. And this depressing, lonely, pathetic drinking is as good as it's ever gonna to get for you and the knowledge in that messed me up and I think the knowledge of that coupled with the knowledge that I failed to make myself okay sober so I don't have to return to this madness put me in a state of hopelessness I think for the first time in almost seven years i became an alcoholic of the hopeless variety and and i used to hear people talk about that and they and i would think what was that must mean that you lose hope to get back on your feet lose hope they get that you're going to get her back you lose help that you get that good job or get that job back lose hope that you are going to be off the streets or whatever. But it has nothing to do with the material world. It has to do with the alcoholic world, the world where alcohol at one time did something to my spirit that made life really good, independent of what was actually happening. See, the effect produced by alcohol in the early days of my drinking just it ruined me i didn't know that i thought it lit me up i thought it was amazing but it ruined me because it brought me to a place of glory and a place of freedom that from that effect through my whole life i would compare what stuff felt like to what that felt like compare what that new relationship feels like what it feels like to be with her to what it felt like in the days when when splitting a bottle of rum with my buddies would set me free i'd compare what it feel like to have this great job with what it fell like to drink a pint of jack daniels when jack daniel's would just change the world and everything, everything would pale into hopelessness against that, because nothing, if you're an alcoholic, and alcohol did for you what it did for me, you'll never find anything until you get deep into Alcoholics Anonymous. You won't find anything in the material realm that will ever even come close to that. That's why guys like me are so disillusioned, and I grab things out of life and I acquire things out of life. And from the moment I get them, the shine wears off of them. So I'm miserable and dissatisfied sober and I'm miserable and dissatisfied drinking. And my Clancy used to say that you get to a place where there's no friendly direction. I think that is the essence of being an alcoholic of the hopeless variety and and the no friendly direction includes the bottle and the bag and any medicaid it's like you get it you get a bitter bitter truth that it's done it's all you can drink you can drink till it kills you you can overdose on drugs and alcohol together you can you can do all of that but you'll never ever ever get free again and that put me into a depressive hopelessness that was hard to shake and i and and that monday morning instead of being back in my bed in the recovery house i came to a jail cell in pennsylvania and i didn't remember being arrested and i i was there for a hit and run dui driving under the influence in a stolen car and in my own defense it wasn't really stolen i borrowed my buddy's car after he passed out then took out a whole line of parked cars but i don't remember i don' t know and i'm i'm in that jail cell and there's nobody to nobody will call on to call nobody will answer my my calls nobody will help me and i i had no hole and i didn't even care sort of i just i wanted to get out of there because i needed my my nerves were shot and i wanted a drink to calm my nerves but i didn' t i don''t even care anymore you know and and I uh not too long after that through a series of circumstances I I got sentenced by a judge and then the commitment was stayed and I ended up in my the treatment center that springboarded into my uh eventually getting sober And I was in that place and I was really trying, really, really trying not to drink because I get it. The party's over and yet abstinence is so difficult for me that it will drive me crazy. So crazy, my emotions and the way that I don't ... The loneliness and depression of abstinence will drive me so crazy that I'll start to imagine stuff. I'll started to imagine ... I know it's turned on me and I can't get high right anymore but I'll starting to imagine that maybe there's a way or I start to think of what it would be like to drink against how i feel sober and start you know start thinking things like well it's bound to be better than this and i start maneuvering inside me towards the place of picking up a drink is okay i'll take it i'll takerun at it i'l take a shot at it and i you know what happened i picked up the drink and i can't stop because i I'm an alcoholic. You know, I picked up a drink under the illusion that maybe I can just get high for one night and nobody will know. Oh, Jesus. That phenomenon of craving is so strong in me. If I took a drink today, everyone in Las Vegas is going to know I'm messed up within two, three days. Because that phenomenon of – I don't just drink and hide it. I can't hide it? First of all, you get me drunk. and i'm so bright i have to go have conversations with everybody you know what i mean because i they all need straightening out because i realized how they what's wrong with them i i have i try to counsel everybody from police to oh it's just horrible i can't keep my mouth shut i love there's an old ron white the comedian ron White not the AA guy there's an old Ron White story where he gets pulled over by a cop and he's really really drunk and they said the cop gave me the right to remain silent he just didn't give me the ability i thought oh my god i get that um so i get thrown out of this place because i can't hide it i pick up a drink i'm i'm out man i'm because i can't stop and i'm on the streets and i don't know how long i'm in the streets but i guess it was long enough to you know i'm not eating and i don't know how many days i didn't eat i'm just drinking that cheap wine at richard's wild irish rose not eating and so i'm starting my gums are starting to bleed again because i got you know vitamin thing and i i got sores again and i'm shaking i shake i come to in that park man and I'm just in bad shape. How could a guy as young as I was in my 20s be so decrepit and so burnt out? But I was. I come to one morning, and I'm sitting, you know, this is the way I've come to a lot in the last couple of years. I grab myself like this, and I rock back and forth because i feel like i'm gonna jump out of my skin my nerves are shot and i tremble and i grab myself to try to keep steady or something i don't know and i rock back and forth and i'm i'm a mess and i i'd had a physical that prior year in a treatment center from complete physical everything blood work they did scans on they did everything and the doctor who did the complete physical told me something he uh my all my hopes of having a brain tumor were dashed he said you don't have a brain you don't know anything wrong with except alcoholism but if you keep drinking it's going to kill you but you're a young kid in your 20s physically it might take five more years and that morning in that park i thought about that five more ears and i I just can't do this. And I can't do this anymore. I can do five more days of this and the anguish and the hopelessness was so severe that death, killing myself looked like maybe a new escape. Like maybe a new drink, a new way to blot Bob out because that's it late stage alcoholism if you're like me that's all i don't drink for a party i drink to blot me out i drink for oblivion and maybe death is a maybe is the ultimate oblivion maybe it's really what i've been seeking and in the decision to kill myself i actually felt a little better i felt like i'm gonna get this over with there it's funny to say this today because I was just talking to a guy with 30 some years that was going to stick a pistol in his mouth but it's funny to say that the idea of killing yourself could be hopeful but it really kind of was and I went to this bridge looking standing on the side of this bridge looking down at these railroad tracks I don't know it seemed like they were 100 feet I think they were less below me And I'm perched there getting ready to make it all stop, just to make it all stopped, try to go into the ultimate oblivion. And I froze up with a terror that struck me and I often thought, where did this terror come from? And I think it was brought about by the great reality deep down within me. i think it was brought to me and into my consciousness by god but regardless it had a transformational effect on me and the terror was not dying i'm not afraid of dying i'm looking down on those railroad tracks and i'm terrified that they may this may not be high enough what if i leap off this bridge and all that happens to me is i'm paralyzed from the neck down and I'm laying in some charity ward where nobody will come and see me because nobody wants anything to do with Bob by now. And I can't blame them. And i'm going to lay there and nobody will bring me a drink and i'm gonna lay there sober for maybe 50 years paralyzed and my mind will do what my mind does to me when I'm sober and alone with me which is painful it'll just start replaying all the failures and the remorseful situations and the shame it'll jut grind me day in and day out week in and week out year in and year out and there's no hope now because I can't even get up to kill myself and i can't even get a drink nothing and that that fear of that of dying and trying to kill himself and not dying just broke me i i mean it broke me i remember i started sobbing and i'll tell you something i have known states of pitifulness before I've known pathetic I've known we're just being so baffled by what has happened to me and what I've done that I can't even believe it but I never knew anything more pathetic than I felt that moment on that bridge that not only have I ruined my life and I've broken the hearts of everyone who ever dared to care about me and i can't even get relief from that anymore because drinking is is now horrible and depressing and pathetic and sobriety feels like i'm doing time and it's depressing and lonely also and i am in a trap i can spring in to top it all off i can t even kill myself it was so pathetic and I sobbing I stumbled off that bridge tried to put myself together and I ended up through a bizarre series of circumstances I was running from the law because I had two years hanging over me in Pennsylvania and I was trying to get to California I ended UP in Las Vegas Didn't mean to go to Las Vegas. Matter of fact, if you would have said to me at a treatment center in Pennsylvania, hey Bob, we think there's a chance maybe you might get sober one day. Could you make a list of 100 cities that that might occur in? Las Vegas would not have been on that list. But we are brought together by divine appointment. I ended up in a detox in Las Vegas, Nevada, 1978. And I was so broken. You know, I love there's a line in the book that describes pitiful and incomprehensible in a different way. And it talks about guys like me before you ever come to believe in God. And I wasn't atheist when I got here. Before you ever believe in god, before you never believe in AA, before he ever believed in a sponsor, before we believe in any of it, It says you'll come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of your life as you've been living it. And man, I believed in that. If you have tried to drink and failed and tried to drinking failed and try to get sober and failed and tried and get sobered and failed, you know some futility. If you've done every medication and therapy you can possibly do to change the way you are sober so you don't have to go back to the madness and you failed. You know futility, and you know hopelessness. And then it says if you come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of your life as you've been living it, then you're at a place, Bob, where there's nothing left. No more ideas. No more hope. no more girlfriend or family member that's going to bail me out or fix me up or prop me up there's no amount of money there's nothing there's nothing left except to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools that people have been laying at my feet for almost seven years and I, because I'm a smart guy and i'm smarter than all you i jump over the kit of spiritual tools to get what i need because bob knows best and then in that detox i i knew something it was funny there was something that trans transformed in me and i and i didn't do it it wasn't an academic thing it didn't come from any kind of knowledge or any because i really understood something in the book it did none of that what i knew was so pertinent and so transformational i knew you know because i was always i you know one of the things that happened to me when i was a kid i took some i took an iq test to go to school early and i found out i had an i q 148 and then i was later you know accepted at ivy league college he's amazing every university i applied to took me wanted me so i was pompous and arrogant and i had a feeling of smug intellectual superiority right i was the i know guy you can't tell me anything because you're an idiot i think i'm smarter than everybody else but in in that detox in 1978 i wasn't the i no guy anymore i didn't know everything. But I knew one thing, just one that man did I know it? I know it. I knew it in my innermost self. I knew that I didn't know. I didn t know. And I couldn't trust my own thinking and all of a sudden what you had looked, had to look, looked a little better than what I had because you guys, I used to discount you and make you funny and stuff but truth was you had found some way to become happy sober and I could not. And I didn't But I listened to this man share his story, and he talked in his story about on his last run trying to commit suicide. And it was so – I'm sitting there, and I'm enthralled because I was just there. I just tried to jump off a freaking bridge. And I know what it feels like to be at that place of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, that place where there's no hope, that place where there is nothing left, what the book calls the jumping off place because you are in a spot where you can't live with it and you can' t live without it. And you failed and you failed. And this guy is talking about his suicide attempt and how he felt and how How he failed at saying sober and how he kept going back to it and how he felt sober and everything. And I just sit in there and throw up. I'm just sitting there nodding my head going, oh, my God. I'm like that. I'm not like this guy. I didn't know what that meant. But I never, I could never listen to you before. I suppose that could have happened many times in treatment centers, but I couldn't hear you. i'm too full of me but i had just enough of me i suppose in this state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization kicked out of me that i can actually hear you and his experience washed over me and i i remember thinking not only am i like this guy but and in that in one sense I'm not because he laughed a lot he had a great life he was very successful life worked for him life's killing me and I thought to myself something evidently something has happened to him and he says it's AA they always say it's AAA but I never believed them and now in a hopeless condition of mind and body I have just a little bit of hope and I dared do something that's hard for a guy who doesn't have any self esteem, who secretly loathes himself there's no more entitlement in me how can you ask for help when you feel like you're a worthless piece of crap and you don't deserve any help how can he asked for help but I I went up to him and I was I wanted to ask him to sponsor me that I was afraid I so I said time I said would you sponsor me if you will I'll do anything you asked me to do and i almost started crying i was so desperate and he lit up and he led up like i guess maybe like i light up sometimes i hope i light as well as he did when a guy asked me for help because he knew something i didn't know he knew having me in his life would make his life better And he started me on a journey. And I didn't know what had happened to me. And probably a couple weeks after I got out of detox, I heard Chuck Chamberlain talk for the first time. And Chuck was, I'll tell you, when you're brand new, like just brand new. A lot of what Chuck said just, I mean, I don't get it. I don't it's like it's so what this guy why he is that funny little weird laugh this guy's creepy all this god stuff but he said one thing that I got and then years later I got I started to really get Chuck and Chuck was unbelievable he was Clancy's sponsor and Chuck said in that talk He said, I was surrendered by the bottle. And then he said something that I didn't, I heard it, but I didn'T hear it. I remembered it later when I would hit other states of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization sober. He said I was surrounded by the bottom. And then in time I was surrenderd sober by life itself. self. And I was. And I don't know how many times here's the problem with these states of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, the desperation and the willingness and the things of such transformational value that come out of that hopelessness, they don't last. because you start to feel better and and the great psychiatrist harry tebow who worked with bill wilson is quoted often in a literature talks about the how we must have ego reduction and depth and i think that's that's kind of what happened to me after that failed suicide was the icing on the cake of ego reduction and depth. But fortunately, because what Thiebaud talked about is so true, he said that he talked about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego. It grows back. And because it grows back, we have the second and third and continuum states of hopelessness that we reach sober as a result of my very, very best efforts to serve self and to rest satisfaction and happiness out in this world with good intentions. Sorry, I missed that. Could you say it again? And with good intentions and with my best efforts. and so what happens to guys like me is i go from the guy who doesn't know anything who just willing to do whatever my sponsor says to the guy who just wants to do the minimum amount because i still want the bragging rights of a surrendered guy and yet be in charge of my own recovery You know, one of the delusions that kept me from getting sober was the idea that somehow, someday, some way I'll control and enjoy my drinking. And then in sobriety, this transforms subtly into that somehow someday I'll patrol and enjoy sobriete in my life. That I can manage well with good intentions. and i heard a guy say say something in 1980 i think it was or 70 probably 79 in a meeting he said i've never had a problem in my life that has hurt me as much as my solutions to my life and that has really been true for me and so in states of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization we surrender and then we get it back and we surrender we take it back and it's because of the chronic nature of this disease i i hear i hear people say things every once in a while that scare the crap out of me because if if what they're saying is true which i don't think it is i think they're delusional but even if it was true then whatever is wrong with them is very very different from what's wrong with me because they talk about well i did the work and the steps now i just live in 10 11 and 12 and i'm just free all the time and been relieved of the bondage of self you know when people say that they're no longer selfish or self-centered and they've been permanently relieved ofthe bondage yourself i always want to look for like lobotomy scars you know what i mean right i just i always want to look to see how did you do that because i can be the most surrendered i can be so surrendered that you know that i should have a tent and a tambourine and two days later i know what's wrong with everybody two days leader the self-righteousness comes back two days later i'm i'm the i know guy again only now i'm the i-know-guy in sobriety armed with information from the big book that i can use it as a weapon to grandize myself and puff myself up into that state that wilson talks about that state of smug superiority and there's no worse smug superiority than smug spiritual superiority because isn't what chamberlain say isn't it really true that there's one problem and it contains all problems and that's conscious and unconscious separation and our book says that the root of that is selfishness and self-centeredness when the ego returns I got too much of me between me and you when the eagle returns I got to much of need between me and God I believe in God I just think he's got my job or I think he's too busy to notice and besides I know how to do this it's a horrible position to be in to return to that and here's the here's what's happened in my life many times and it's not and i don't consider myself a stupid guy but i'll tell you sometimes it seems like i get stuck on stupid because when i return to the driver's seat of my life and i'm in control again and I'm maneuvering, I don't know that I'm doing it sometimes. Because my ego, the way it talks to me, it explains it. It makes it make sense. Bob, you're not playing God? No, I'm not. Bob, you're just trying to run the show. Oh, no, Bob, You're just trying to make it good for everybody. Yes, I am. And I don't even know that I'm in the driver's seat. I don'T even know That I'M PLAYING GOD AGAIN. And you know what happens? Of course you do. You've been there. Run on that for a while. Run on That for a While. And you'll know some You'll know consequences from that As you push people away As you become, as you know, the book says we know loneliness such as few do. It's the loneliness of the person that puts himself above everybody else. And I have alcoholism. And I'm so grateful to be part of a three legacy program recovery and every legacy is vital to me i'll tell you me and god alone i mean well you know what happens with me and God alone i'll go through deep meditation God will start to sound like the voice in my head you know you know me and G-d alone will come up with some crazy ideas you know one of my favorite examples of that was when about the time i got sober there's a guy in the news and jim jones and jим jones i i think he was an alcoholic at least he had be he professed to be a drug addict and an alcoholic with a lot of problems and he had a conversion experience he got saved happens a lot people get that happened a lot of people and out of that conversion experience he got a calling to become a minister and serve god wilson had one of those he had it calling in in town's hospital and he jim jones if you go to oakland california this day there's still people up there that remember jones remember the good he did he created he had this church that was it bridged it bridget all kinds of diversity it was like an amazing church and there was a feeling of love in his congregation that a lot of those people had never experienced like that before he did a lot of good but he had the mind of a chronic alcoholic and as his spiritual experience evaporated and the ego slowly and incrementally returned he didn't know and he had no one to check his inspiration from god against and the most spiritual people in the world have something talk to someone because they know if you're really enlightened if you really truly are enlightened then you know something you know the deviousness of the monkey mind you know how it can convince you of crap that's not true but jones didn't have a sponsor because you you know if he had a sponsor at the very least his sponsor said jim the kool-aid's a bad idea and instead thousands and thousands of his congregation died that day and i i think and this sounds crazy but i think that jim jones had all those people kill themselves and had his people kill the ones that wouldn't drink the kool-aid And I think he believed he was doing God's will. Insane? Alcoholism, unsurrendered and untreated, drives guys like me slowly and incrementally insane. and if it wasn't for the grace of god as he as he expresses himself in this consciousness of alcoholics anonymous and that's why i go to meetings i gotta hear god talk through you that's Why I do service because i got to get me up off of me so i can hear god speak and that is why i do the 12 steps to keep to reduce me so I can make amends to clear up the separation between me and you, and when I am good with you, it seems at that same time I'm good with God. And how amazing Alcoholics Anonymous is that we grow closer to God by making things right with his kids and growing closer to them. there was a poem in the grapevine 30 some years ago and it said something kind of sums it up it says i i uh i sought myself and i could not see i sought my god he eluded me and so I sought my brother and I found all three how often you hear people in Alcoholics Anonymous talk about the nearness of the presence of God and they discovered that in surrendered altruistic service of God's kids because for me to get close to God is you got to get me out of the way and when I spent the whole morning today concerned with someone other than me and I felt free all morning I wasn't thinking about it I just was free because when you're free you don't think about it you're just free and I felt assuredness As I was saying to this guy, you've got to trust God here. As I Was Saying It, I knew in my heart of hearts that it was right because God is trustworthy. If I can get out of the way, I get to find that out. Anyway, I think I've about run out of time. if there's anyone here that's new if there is anyone here that got sober during the COVID and you haven't been to a live meeting do you know that 10 years from now you'll be a legend people will go he got sober during the COVID and stayed sober oh my god it'll be like people will look at you like we look at the people that got sober back in the 40s and had to walk. He walked barefoot through 10 feet of snow to get to a meeting five miles away every day and made the coffee three hours before the meeting. He'll start looking at you like that. But as Nietzsche said, those things that all but destroy you can surely make you strong. And in the weakness we seek God. In the weakness we find God and in the weakness we lose the idea that we are God thanks for listening