Stopping the Performance to Find Actual Willingness – Bob D.

Okay, our speaker tonight is Bob D from Las Vegas and we'd like to welcome him and time is all yours My name is Bob and I am alcoholic Through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in and later found out it's crazy about me and has no taste the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous process of awakening and outlined in that book good sponsorship commitments in the fellowship and bushels of newcomers I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substance since Halloween 1978 and for that I owe my life and my freedom because a sobriety without freedom from within is not worth very much I know what it's like to be an abstinence and feel like you're doing time. I'm delighted to be here. This is the fourth talk I've given in two days, so I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say. And everyone's been different, and this will be different. I have no idea what's going to come out of me. God's goingto spin something out ofme. I'd like to welcome the newcomers. Glad you're here. I know that some of you don't want to be here I know that some of you won't be with us in a year but maybe there's one or two of you that are sitting on the edge and maybe you'll hear something tonight or see something in the walk demeanor of some of the people here that might change something in you maybe it will light a fire And you'll think to yourself, maybe if I went after this thing called recovery like I went after a drink when I really needed a drink, maybe this could happen to me. A guy reminded me before the meeting of something I often talk about, that I am really here to talk to two people. And I don't know who you are, but I know you're here. You're always here. The first person I'm here to talk too is the man or woman that for reasons you can't understand you just can't seem to get a foothold here. You swear to yourself time and time again, that's it man, I burnt my life to the ground for the last time. I'm never going to touch that stuff again and seven or eight months later you're back at it. And everybody that's ever grown up around you has got good lives and then there's you. I am here to talk to you because I am you. For over seven years of my life I was a relapser in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll tell you something, the worst, most horrific, most painful, self-loathing years of my life were after I went to my first AA meeting. I tell you, if there's a hell on earth for the alcoholic, it can't be any worse than sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous needing the answer that's here and not getting it. With that awful feeling of untreated alcoholism in rooms full of people, and it's all of them, and then there's you. And then the other person I'm here to talk to is the man or woman that's leaving AA, and you don't even know you're leaving. And you're leading either by one of two roads, and the one road is maybe you're gradually, incrementally compromising your involvement in your own recovery. What you absolutely believed was necessary to year sober, you're doing about half of that now. Almost as if you must secretly think that you got half as much alcoholism as you had when you were new. And the man and woman who's leaving Alcoholics Anonymous and doesn't know they're leaving and they're doing it one judgment at a time. You don't even think you're leaving. You just think that you've kind of outgrown the people here. They've gotten real sick and you've kind of risen above them. And maybe you're going to get more involved in your church or join a gym or whatever. I've been going to a detox in Las Vegas. There's some people in this room that have been to this detox. It's on Skid Row. I've been going there twice a week since they opened which was about 22 years ago and I'll tell you something there's not a week that goes by I don't see a man or woman from a different state that drank after 10 years of sobriety and they end up in Las Vegas on the streets and no matter how well they did in their recovery I've seen guys that had retired in their IRA three and four million dollars And their homeless broke on the streets in Las Vegas within six months of their relapse. And it's always the same thing. It's always a lack of primary purpose and they forgot where they came from. I have a disease of alcoholism that is so hideous, it almost killed me. and I didn't know what was going on. I didn' t have a clue. I'll tell you something, I've had this disease for I think all my life. I think I had it before I ever picked up a drink because I was weird as a little kid. I was wired before I even picked up the drink. There was something that wasn' t quite right about me. I didn''t feel like other people look. I lived in a world where everybody looked so put together and they just fit with everybody, and then there's me. Right? And I don't know why I can't, I don'T feel like other people look, but what I end up being is I endup being a pretend kind of guy. I'm the guy that puts on the good front and secretly inside myself. I don' t know what' s wrong with me. And when I was 12, almost 13 years old, this, what I've come to understand this malady of my being this thing I've came to understand is alcoholism got touched for the first time by alcohol an event that would literally change the course of my life and I was with a bunch of older kids they were 15, 16 one kid was 14 and they were the tough kids in the neighborhood these were the kids that were in and out of juvie all the time these werethe kids that everybody when they walked down the hall at school everybody got out of the way and when you're secretly weak and pathetic man if i can fit with these kids i might feel like they look and they looked like nothing bothered them and i was pretending all the time because everything bothered me and i Was hanging around with them and one day we pulled a burglary and we broke into a house in the neighborhood. And one of the things we stole was some bottles of whiskey. Now, my parents weren't alcoholic. I came from a good family. I didn't know nothing about whiskey. I knew it was for adults. I don't even think at almost 13 years old, I don'T EVEN THINK I REALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT IT GOT YOU HIGH. I DON'T EVENTHINK I PUT THAT TOGETHER. I'D NEVER SEEN ANYBODY DRUNK. I DIDN'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT. BUT THEY'RE PASSING AROUND THIS COURT BOTTLE OF SIGRAM 7. AND WHEN YOU'RE When you're kind of a phony kind of person and you're always coming from behind, you watch people because you've got to do what they do in order to feel like to fit with them. And I'm watching them, and what I see is the bottle's going around. The kids that took a real big hit off of it got a lot of attention from the other kids. So by the time it gets to me, I'm in. Doesn't matter what it is, I'M IN. I'm going to take a big hit. I'm just glad it wasn't cat urine because I'm IN. You know what I'm saying? Right, I want their approval, IMIN. And it gets to me, and I took a big hit off this bottle of Z-Grip 7, man. I thought it was going to burn my insides out. Oh, my God, it was horrible. And somehow I kept it down. I think it was I was so afraid of what they would think if I threw it up. And somehowI kept it dow. I want you to know, when the burning stopped, I started to feel so good that the way I would be without that feeling from that moment on would never ever be enough again for me. And it seemed like, unbeknownst to me, without me ever realizing it, getting lit up, just moved right into the center of my life, It seemed like from that moment on, I just existed between opportunities to get lit up. Now, you could ask me at different times in the following years what was the most important thing. Oh, nothing's more important than school or this girlfriend or that job or my family. But if you'd have watched my feet, you would have seen that nothing was more important to me than getting high. It was the only time I came out and played. it was the only time I was free. But I got alcoholism. I don't know I got alcoholism, but every time I go out to drink, I'm the guy that they talk about in that book. I don' t know it, but I got that allergic reaction to alcohol. And every time I drink,I break out in that phenomenon of craving. But every time I go out to drink, I got an inability to shut her down when you should. I always go a little too far. I don't just get drunk. I get drunk, drunk, drank. And when I'm drunk, drunk, there's some stuff that seems like a good idea. That's not a good idea. I'm telling you, it's not a good idea. And I don t know that I have alcoholism that the defining characteristic and it doesn matter how you know treatment centers screwed me up with this concept of drug of choice like like it was like a test drug of choice people ask what's your drug of Choice I guess I think what do you got and they never asked me the right question and the right question is what happens to you when you drink alcohol, Bob. What happens to you when you have about two or three drinks and you start to feel it? Do you break out in an irresistible yearning for more of a feeling? Or do you have three or four drinks and just sort of say, oh this is good now, thank you. Or do You just need to keep on going? That that allergic reaction, alcohol, you know that never occurs in non-alcoholics? never my sister is not an alcoholic I've watched my sister drink on numerous occasions I've watched my brother drink like a dog will watch a guy eat a hamburger I mean I've watched my Sister drink and she'll have about two or three drinks and she just shuts her right down in her normal non-alcoholic wiring as the effect of the alcohol starts to hit her inside her it goes whoa whoa whoa and she gets a feeling like she's losing control as an alcoholic i get that feeling starts to hurt me and i go oh yeah come on and i get a feeling like I'm about to get control. I never really get control, but I get close enough that drives me crazy. I don't really drink and get there. I drink and gets so close to it, I can almost touch it. I drink sometimes with a sense of urgency, a feeling on the next one, the next one, and so as a consequence of this phenomenon of craving, by the time I'm 15 years old, I'm not even 16, not quite 16 yet, I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time. And if you'd have asked me why I was there, I'd have told you snitches and bad cops and an unfair society that tries to keep intelligent people like me who see the truth down. You know, I would have told all kinds of stuff. But the real reason I'm in front of this juvenile court judge for the third time is I got alcoholism, but I couldn't see it. And my parents who loved me and would have done anything to help me in later years, I beat that out of them. I hurt them so many times, but at that time they'd have done everything to help them. Anything to help us. And they went to bat with that judge because they were going to lock me up someplace with a bad reputation. And instead I had to go live somewhere else for a while. And I'm at this new joint, and I'm not even there a week. And I find the guys, the people that are kind of the hip people. When I go somewhere new, you've got to look for the people with the juice. You know what I'm saying? The guys that have a little leverage. You've got get it kind of side up to them because they've got what's going on. They've got the action. And I met this guy, and he's a little older than I am. He's one of the hit guys. And I talk to him. I tell him my story about the gang of guys I run around with and all the stuff we do. And after he listened to me for a while, he said, So you like to party, do you? And I said, yes, I do. I was hoping he'd pull out a pint right about then. And he says, well, you drink that liquor. That liquor make you stupid. You can't control that. I said oh man, I like that liquor at that time. I was into that 151 rum because that gets you downtown now, man. I mean, I just light me up, man, right now. I love that stuff. And he said to me, he says but you're always in trouble with that stuff He says, what if I told you I could give you something to make you feel that good? They won't be able to smell it on your breath. You won't stagger or slur your words. Matter of fact, nobody will even know you're high. And you could keep a whole week's supply in your shirt pocket. What would you say to that? I don't even know what he's talking about, but it's like, sign me up. And he introduced me to drugs. And I've got to tell you something. I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholics should not do drugs. It's bad. Oh, man. Because I do drugs alcoholically. I mean, every drug I pick up, I'm trying to reproduce an effect of a pint of 151. I get whacked on everything I pick it up, man. In no time at all, I'm shooting speed. But I don't shoot speed like people shoot speed. I got guys doing it seven, eight years saying, kid, you better cool it. In no Time at All, I turned myself into some kind of paranoid schizophrenic or something. I became the guy that if you left me alone in your living room When you came back, I've dismantled your stereo and telephone looking for microphones from the FBI, right? I am nuts, man. I can't even talk to people anymore. I'd be standing around a bunch of guys in a conversation. I'd blurt something into the conversation that would have been appropriate two minutes ago, right, and I'm like wacko, and a guy comes along, and he says, Man, you're pretty screwed up, and I think I said something like blah, blah, or something. I don't know. and he says try some of this and he hit me up with something and when the throwing up stopped the spinning in my head stopped and everything chilled out and I could think straight introduced me to heroin but I'm an alcoholic I'm telling you alcoholics should not do drugs and I just took that to the wall and oh man and my dance of death with drugs was several years and I came full circle back to alcohol and i think i went down that road i suspect not because i'm a drug addict i'm not i got the physical allergy to alcoholism i got alcoholism but i think I did drugs just like one of our founders dr. Bob who did actually more had more frequency with drug use than he ever had with alcohol according to his own story did high-powered sedatives barbiturates every day of his life for 17 years. And it bought because every time he drank, he'd get so much trouble. But he drank exactly like I drank and he had the disease of alcoholism. Every time he drank, He just whacked himself. For God's sakes, the day Bill Wilson tried to call on him, he was taking a nap under the dining room table. I mean, you got to like a guy like that, you know? I was a nap taker. I haven't talked about this. I think I've only talked about this one other time. I was in a band for a while before I got sober. And the band leader was this woman who played keyboards and sang. And she owned all the equipment except for my guitar. You know, I had my own guitar. And her job became finding me diet pills before the gig because if she didn't, We'd play these bars where the band could drink for free. So by the second set, I'm taking a nap in a booth, right? Because you can't put me around free booze. I mean, you can'T do that to a guy like me. Because every time I picked up a drink, that thing came over me and I just, one more, one more. One more,one more. I have never sat in a bar or a party somewhere, drinking, passing a bottle of wine around or throwing down drinks, and after an hour of drinking, had someone say to me, Bob, would you like another one? I have never had the experience of sitting there and honestly thinking to myself, no, this is just right. No, I'm good here. Never once. It's always one more, one more. So after several years of drug abuse or whatever, I came back to alcohol. I started hitting treatment centers before. I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before I could take a legal drink. I was just a kid. And they sent me to this AA meeting, and I didn't want to be there. I mean, I went through this. I'm like 20 years old, 19 or 20 years older. I went into this meeting, and the people there were like 35, 40, 50 years old. Their life is over, for God's sakes. I mean, 20 years old? I'm an alcoholic synonymous? It was horrible to me to come to AA. One of the best descriptions of what it feels like to coming to AA was coined by a dear friend of mine who passed away this last year, Joe McQueenie from the original Joe and Charlie. And Joe was a musician, and Joe said, I get this, Joe said ending up in AA felt like he joined the Salvation Army band oh yeah and you're got the triangle you know or so yeah right it's like you know you sit in meetings and you realize where you are Alcoholics Anonymous you think so it's come to this has it Alcoholics synonymous. But I'm still a victim of a delusion that it talks about in chapter three in the book, the idea that someday, some way, I can control and enjoy this thing. What I see, I'm still under a delution that there's still some party left, that it's really fun, even though reality is that I'm in a game of diminishing returns. In our book, it talks about alcoholism being a progressive illness over any considerable period, it gets worse, never better. And what that means is something that you may suspect and you don't want to look at. And that is as the years go on, the fun and the ease and comfort and the party is getting less and less, and the problems are getting more and more and More. Until if you're like me, the last couple years, it's pathetic. Here's the reality of my drinking the last two or three years. I'd get out of a halfway house or a treatment center and I'd be excited because I'm going to go get lit up with some guys only I don't get litup no more. Within no time at all, I've holed up somewhere with a half gallon of wine or a half galon of vodka seeking oblivion. I'm not laughing and carrying on. I'm not shooting pool with the guys, I'm not playing in a band, I're not dancing, making out with girls I'm holed up somewhere trying to blot me out I don't bathe anymore because I don' care about nothing I go on crying jags because half the time I'm overcome with self pity and depression I start getting drunk and I start remembering the things I did to my mother and father this is not a party this is pathetic and yet isn't it strange that that is my reality and yet you put me absent at six months in a halfway house and I will start imagining that I can get high like I got high when I was 18 years old again in the face of not what you're telling me in the case of my personal reality that it hasn't been a party like that for years but I don't want to believe that They call it, in our book they call it self-delusion. What it is, it's a psychotic, wishful thinking. You see, I yearn and need the party to be there so desperately that I will ignore my own re-experience because I need to believe and hope that it'll still work for me like it worked for me when I was 18 years old. And you know, there's a time in my life is if you're an alcoholic, I assume in your life, in the years where the hook was set, where drinking was fantastic. A guy like me who doesn't fit anywhere, who doesn'T know how to mix with people, locked up in my head, prone to depression and feelings that are very uncomfortable, could have four or five drinks and I could come out and play. Seven or eight drinks, I loved everybody. Remember that being with a gang, you hang out. I love you, man. You know, I just get connected to people. I could dance when I was drinking. I can't dance. I Could Dance When I'm Drinking. I Can Shoot Pool Better Than I Could Shoot Pool. I Couldn't Be Funny. I couldn't be deep. Remember deep? Three o'clock in the morning, wine and reefer cracking the secrets of the universe. I'd say shit blow my mind. I think, I remember one night telling this guy, this is what Buddha saw. You know, just get that deal going. It's spiritual, man. It's spiritually. You feel like you're plugged into something. You see, I believe that if alcohol had never done that for me, For God's sakes, I would later never let it do to me what it was going to do to me if it hadn't done that for me at one time. And I'm desperately seeking an effect. That's the pathetic thing about alcoholism. Guys go to their death. They'll drink their lives away. They'll drinking drug themselves into oblivion and they'll eventually die of alcoholism, chasing something they cannot catch. But their need to believe they can catch it is so desperate that they won't give it up. And to die of alcohol, I see guys die of alcoholism. I got to tell you, it takes a long time. It's a tedious process. Dying of alcoholism is like being kicked to death by rabbits. I mean, by the time it kills you you've wished you were dead for a long time, I mean by the time it killed you, everyone you've ever loved hates you, you've wished you're dead for awhile now, oh it just goes on and on, one of the worst things about the progression of alcoholism is it gets worse and worse and then it gets so bad you don't think it can get any worse and it gets even worse after that and then the worst thing of all it gets the same and then it's the same you come to and you're pathetic and you hate yourself and you don't know what you did and the terror is on you and you frantically try to fix it with some sort of medicine that doesn't fix it anymore until you come to again and it's the same day after day after day in 1977 1977, I was in a treatment center. I was halfway house. And I was sober for... You know, it's funny how perception is a funny thing. I used to say almost a year. But I've kind of tried to figure out the timeline. I think it was more like three or four months that seemed like a year because abstinence in me, when I stop getting high, I feel like I'm doing time. I mean, you know, I suffer from low-level depressions, this loneliness that I don't understand because i can be surrounded by people who i know intellectually care about me but i don't fit anywhere i'm restless i'm irritable i'm discontent uh and i think i was really sober probably three or four months but i was sober as long as i could take it to me in those days AA had good news and bad news. The good news, well, maybe if I went to thousands of these stupid meetings, I'll stay sober the rest of my life. And the bad news is I'm going to live a long time, man, a long time because I can't imagine life without something because I've got a secret. You know what my secret is? When I'm not high, I ain't nothing. I ain' t nothing. and I'm afraid you're going to find out how badly I don't fit and how I really feel and some of the stuff that goes through my head I ain't no good when I'm straight I just ain't no good and so I'm in this place and I've been sober these several months and I just up to here right before I went out I went to this old timer and I said to him for God's sakes What do you guys do for fun now that you're not drinking? He looks at me, gets a big smile on his face. He says, oh, we go to a lot of meetings. I think, oh. You got anything else? He says twice a year we have an AA dance. You ever been to an AA with untreated alcoholism? You'll remember why you used to drink quick. With no loneliness such as few do. I mean, oh man, you guys, they took me in a van full of losers like myself to an AA dance one night. I remember standing up against the wall just remembering why I used to drink, you know, oh man. I hated that feeling, that awkward, lonely, I don't fit feeling. I hated it. And so I don' t know what to do, so I plan a run. And I get a weekend pass out of this joint I'm living in. And I hook up with a guy by phone that I had been in detox with that was back to drinking. And he called me, he said, man, you've got to come down. I found a great rock and roll bar with amazing bands, incredible women. He says, I got some tie stick, man. You've got it. Come down. And I'll tell you, I'm ready. I'm over ready. I remember thinking to myself, yeah, I've been a really good sport up to now. Yeah, man., I don't want to hurt nobody. I don't want to burn my life to the ground, but for God's sakes, just a day or two of a little bit of relief seemed a reasonable proposition to me. See, I think I could control and enjoy it. I think i can jumpstart the party in the face of the reality that I can't and I thinkI can do that and get away with it. Like kind of go out for a weekend, do a drive-by, get high and come back, that kind of thing. I don't have a clue what a grip alcoholism has on me and I never did make it back I remember going to the bar though I was excited the best part of the run was the hour or two before it started just as it was the last couple years and I get to this bar he's talking about and I'm ordering these double shots 100 proof because if you only got a weekend you got to get downtown now man and I order these double shorts because I want to jumpstart the party, man. I want it to get lit up. Only it ain't getting lit up The only thing that's getting lit up is this clawing in the center of my stomach for one more one more, one more and after about three double shots I'm sitting there and I'm starting to get a little rummy and these waves of self-pity are starting to come over me as I look at the guys that are laughing and carrying on and dancing with the girls and shooting pool and having fun. And I remember sitting there as the depression is sinking into me, looking at them and thinking to myself, what's wrong with me? Because I could remember when I got lit up like that. And it was like a window opened up. And i think every once in a while, no matter how strong your self-delusion is, every once In a while a window will open and you'll be able to see the truth. You know, in Alcoholics Anonymous we talk about spiritual awakenings. I think 90% of spiritual awakeners is just pulling your head out of your butt and getting what's really going on. I mean, I think that's 90%. And what happened is I saw the truth, I saw this is it. This self-pitying, depressive, lonely drinking is as good as it gets. it was a horrible horrible feeling remember ever see that movie as good as it gets a scene where jack nicholson's going through the waiting room of a psychiatrist's office and everybody's in there waiting to see the psychiatrist and they're all mopes they're all really depressed they all look like they're doing terrible and he stops and he gets their attention he says what if this is as goodasitgets and they all go oh no and that i know exactly how they felt. When I'm sitting in that bar, I get the truth that this is it. And that's unbearable for me. And I didn't know that what I had become was I finally became an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. I used to hear people talk about that in AA. I never knew what they meant. I thought they were talking about hope of ever having a big house or hope of every having a good marriage. you what i'd lost hope in is i lost hope that alcohol would ever fit work again like it used to work i lost all hope that under any circumstances i would ever be able to control and enjoy my drinking again and i knew that i could drink myself to death but i would never enjoy it again, that this is the reality of my life. And what a horrible, horrible thing that was. And I never made it back to that halfway house. I ended up in a county jail facing two years in a state penitentiary for a hit-and-run DUI in a stolen car. It was not really stolen. I borrowed the guy's car. He was passed out. And they gave me a phone call, like they do. And I'll tell you, it was a horrible moment when they give you a phone call and there's nobody to call. Nobody. I don't know how that happens to a guy who had a mother and father that would have done anything for me. How it happens to a guy that had a little sister that I was her hero. How it happens to a guy that had some great running partners and some great relationships with women. how a guy like me could systematically and effectively burn every one of those to the ground until there's no one to call. And so I signed up on a piece of paper to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've got to tell you something, I did not sign up to go this AA meeting for recovery. I had come to a conclusion along the way that AA could not help me. and I came to that conclusion because for several years I was in and out of these meetings and I watched you and I listened to you and I knew something I knew that whatever was wrong with me is not really the same thing that's wrong with you because I watched you and you stopped drinking and you were grateful for everything you were happy you loved everybody your lives just soared I stopped drinking and it's hard to shake the depression. I stopped drinking and I don't fit anywhere. And I don' t know what's wrong with me. I've been to the psychiatrists. I've done the medications. Nothing seems to help. The problem is, I'm still me. And what that means to be still me is the guy that doesn't fit anymore. The guy that when I stop drinking my spirit gets sick and depressed. and now when I drink it's still sick and depressed I feel like I'm in a trap I can't spring but I didn't go to this AA meeting for recovery I went for cigarettes that's it and I'm in the hall waiting for the do-gooders from AA, they always show up at institutions every institution I was ever in had an AA meeting there and I am waiting for the do gooders and a guy I know named Woody and Woody used to bring meetings into the halfway house I just busted out of. He brought meetings into The Detox I was in. He brought me into the recovery program I was on the year before. Woody was one of those fanatical, try-to-always-help-other, big-book-carrying, step-talking, grateful-for-everything guys, the kind of guy that just creeps you out. You know what I'm saying? He's weird, man. First of all, he's always glad to see me, and I don't know why. I don't think he's gay, but you never know. I don'T KNOW WHY THIS GUY'S GLAD TO SEE ME. And he's happy and sober at the same time, for God's sakes. How do you do that? What's that about? And I'm not like Woody, but Woody's got a lot of money. Woody drives a brand new Cadillac. Woody lives in a big house with a wife and three kids. Woody's got the, he's a boss at the steel mill. He's a big shot. And so Woody comes in there and he's talking about how he's there to help and everything. These people in AA say they want to help you. So I explained it to him how I needed him to put his house up so I could get out on bail. And I've got to tell you, these people in AAA are hypocrites. They say they'll want to Help You until you explain it to them. And he don't want to put His house up. He wants to give me a book and help me with some stairs or some kind of crap. I don't know big book. I want out of here. and he won't help me the way I want him to help me. Isn't it pathetic that a guy could burn his life to the ground, ask for help and then start instructing the people who want to help him? There's something really sick about that, isn't there? So I got mad at him. He wouldn't bail me out. He wouldn'T help me get out. So I get mad. I get pissed at him I just said, I don't need your help. I'm going to get out of here. I'm gonna beat this thing. I'm going to get out of here. I'm gonna get a good halfway house. I'm Gonna get that voc rehab money back in that time voc rehab Money was big go to college on voc rehab Money, I said I'm get some voc rehab Money, i might be a doctor I might be lawyer And what he starts laughing at me He starts laughing. He says kid You're not gonna do any of that. You're gonna stay sober Kid He said you're probably gonna die of alcoholism Kid because you haven't hit a bottom You haven't surrendered and I didn't say nothing to him but I thought why would you say that to me having hit a bottom you don't know nothing about me Woody you and your Cadillac and your big house haven't surrendered surrendered what there's nothing left of me a couple years ago I had a good job I had girlfriend I had Harley Davidson I don't got nothing anymore a couple of years ago I even had some self-respect I don't even have that anymore. I hate myself. Surrender what? I never knew what he was talking about. I do today. What he was talking about, giving up the one thing. There'll be people in this room that will die of alcoholism because you can't give up the one thing and it's not anything you'd think and there are people in this room that had given up the one thing and took it back, and you won't be with us down the road because you brought back the one thing. And what that one thing is my opinion and my judgment. See, what Woody saw when he looked at me is the same thing I see every week in our detox and every Wednesday night in the county jail. Woody looked at a guy who was dying of alcoholism who had literally burnt his life to the ground and yet in spite of that reality a guy that was insisting on being at the helm of his own ship in spite of that painful reality I fit the old adage you can always tell an alcoholic but you can't tell him much right I go out on a run, alcoholism will burn my life to the ground, I get back an A the first thing I get is my opinion isn't it? I'm the weird guy I can be checking into a detox begging for a bed oh help me, I don't know anything I really screwed my life up two weeks later I know what's wrong with everybody I got judgments going on at everybody in AA I can't hear nothing I got too much of me between me and you William James who's mentioned in our book was a remarkable brilliant, brilliant guy William James talked about guys like me he said that one of the reasons we don't get better and we die, is that our egos are so sick that we have an absolute inability to observe or listen in order to hear anything new. We can only listen to see how we're already right. And consequently, I'd sit in those meetings and nothing would get through to me. If you agreed with me, you're brilliant and everybody else was an idiot. And the problem with that is I'm a whacked newcomer. the only people that agree with me are the guys that are going to be drunk within 30 days anyway. And I'm at the helm of my own ship. I went before a judge who sentenced me to two years, stayed the commitment, cut me a break. They put me in a place called the Ark House on the north side of Pittsburgh. It was the only place it would take me. I'd been in every treatment center in that part of the state. And he said if I could stay a year, good UAs, good PO report, make the restitution, reduce it down to a misdemeanor and a time served. If not, it was two years in a felony. And I go into this place with a determination not to drink. But lack of power is my dilemma. If making up your mind and really meaning at this time was enough to overcome alcoholism, that would have been my sobriety date. There's crazy stuff that has come into AA out of treatment centers. Stuff like, just don't drink no matter what. Oh, I drink no mater what. I know what it's like to be on paper and drink when I have everything to lose. I know it's what it is like to swear to myself and mean it with everything in me. I'm never going to touch that stuff again. And four or five months later, I'm back at it. and I hate myself for being that way you do that for a half dozen years you start really hating yourself so naturally I drink again and I end up out on the streets living in an abandoned, burnt out building in the projects on the north side of Pittsburgh drinking Richard's Wild Irish Rose and one day I go to a bridge with a bottle of Richard's wild Irish rose to take my own life and I'm not at the bridge because of the guilt or the shame of the things I did to my family and I had a wealth of that I'm at this bridge because I can't go on like this anymore you see, I know the truth now drinking is awful it's terrible and not drinking is awfull and I am not a suicidal guy but you put me in a trap I can't spring and drinking is aweful and not drinkig is awefull and the medications and all the drugs don't work and they don't make it any better, there seems like nowhere to go. Suicide can start looking like a good deal to a guy like me. But I was a coward and I couldn't do it. And sometime later I ended up in a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, a little over 29 years ago. The Buddhists say when the student's ready, the teachers appear. and I sat in that meeting after I got out of the detox and they let me go to the AA meetings there. I sat at those meetings and for the first time in seven years, I could hear you. I could never hear you You see, there's too much of me between me and you I can't hear you because I get this little voice in my head that's critiquing everything you say I'd sit in the meetings and some gal would say oh, what is she trying to do? Trolling for a husband. Some guy would say, look, how is he full of himself? And everybody, I'd just tear everybody apart. Tear everybody apart and nothing gets in when you're like that. This time I had just enough of me beaten out of me that I sat there and for the first time I could hear you. And I sat there and I found myself secretly nodding my head as people shared their own honest experience about themselves and thought to myself, my God, i'm like that i'm like those people i felt like that I drank like that. I failed like that and out of that came a little bit of hope because these guys were doing very well and there were gentlemen used to come in there that became my sponsor a man named Dick who's one of my best friends to this day and I asked him to be my sponsor and I told him I said I'll do anything you ask me to do and I started going to a lot of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and the people in AA. It's funny, I think, you know, for seven years I was around AA but I had this demeanor kind of leave me alone. You know, it's hard to try to look cool and recover. It is hard to look cool and get help at the same time because you got to get the help and look like you don't need it at the same time. That's a hard thing to pull off, I'm telling you. It's hard to kind of slouch right and look like you're cool and all put together. I don't need anybody and get help at the same time. It is a tough deal, I am telling you and you know what happens to guys like me? The people in AA respected that. They left me alone. They could tell by my body language. They just, okay, good, good luck kid. The minute I reached out for help, I'm telling you they were all over me, and they've been all over me ever since. Inviting me to potlucks and meetings around town and going on 12-step calls. A guy got me involved in the prisons when I was going out to the state prison. I wasn't even three months sober. They encouraged me to go back into the institution or the hospital I just came out of. They started walking me through the amends process, and I had a lot of tremendous amount of wreckage I lived like an animal on those streets. I had to face the courts and face two years in a state penitentiary, and a guy named A walked me right through it, and it was okay. I wouldn't have believed it. It was the first time in my life I ever trusted someone enough to do something that scared me to death. And I did it, and I was okay, and I started to trust these people a little bit. And I tell you, it's been over 29 years. I've never been given advice or any part of this program that's done anything except increase the value of my life. There's nothing here that will hurt you except you. And I started getting into these steps and doing service in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I got sober at a time in AA in the late 70s it wasn't until the mid-80s that people started talking about getting back into the steps in the big book. It was a time in Alcoholics Anonymous where everybody's trying to go to 12 by 12 study groups and figure out how to work the steps, and it was making everybody crazy. And I did the same thing. I did my first inventory like a lot of people did back in those days. You'd write 40 pages of everything, all their guilt and shame, and then you'd share it with somebody until their eyes glazed over and, you know, and then really feel depressed. And then I did the one out of the 12 by 12 with the set right in about the seven deadly sins and the 30 some questions and nothing happened. When I was four years sober, I was finally able to do the inventory out of the big book. And I tell you, nothing I've ever done has changed my life more dramatically than that. I've never been the same since then. But what kept me physically sober the first four years was a tremendous amount of service in AA and a lot of 12-step work. When Bill says in the beginning of working with others that nothing will so much ensure immunity drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics, it works where all other activities fail. He's not kidding. You can screw up a lot OF stuff in AA if you continue to work with newcomers and do 12-step work and do hospitals and institutions, you will survive yourself here until you can eventually put the steps in your life and start to get comfortable. And that's what I did. I went to 15, 20 meetings a week. I was on every committee. I went up to two hospital institution meetings every week, almost as if I was trying to outrun my alcoholism. But Chuck Chamberlain says something that's very dear to me. He says, if you're to be alcoholic, you eventually get to a place where you can't put anything between you and you. And now everything that you're running with or running from are bringing into your life to try to gratify or change you. The shine is worn off of it. And there you are. I did four years sober. There I was. But I was lucky. I'd been exposed to a Joe and Charlie workshop, and I'd been to a big book study for four years and I could finally start to go back through the steps. But the hardest thing was for me to push my ego aside and admit to everybody I'd told I'd done it that I hadn't really done it. Not the way it talks about in AA. And I went through that process. But 12-step work saved my life. I'll tell you a little story and I'll end with this. when I was about a year and a half sober I came home from a meeting, it was actually my second meeting that day. I had also prayed that day, I'd also talked to my sponsor that day and I came home and I sunk into a deep depression. I am the Bill Wilson type of alcoholic I'm easily prone to depression. I was even diagnosed, misdiagnosed one time by a nice psychiatrist as being clinically depressed and I wasn't really clinically depressed, I was spiritually depressed. It's the depression of the obsessively overly self-involved. I just get my life and my past and all the guilt, my future and all The Fear just on me like that creature, an alien that attaches itself to your face and it's just like this. And I start to feel like my very spirit is being smothered. I got too much of me on me. And i'm sinking into this abyss as I focused on my emotions, focused on my life and my past and my bleak appearing future. And i'M not doing very good and it'S really very painful. I don't know if you could imagine ever getting so depressed that you can't get off a sofa, but that used to happen to me. I'd feel like I weigh 1,000 pounds. And I'm not clinically depressed. And the reason I know that is that I took the treatment for clinical depression. It didn't help me. It was only when I started to apply the treatment for spiritual depression that I got better as I started work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. but I'm sitting on this sofa and I'm scared because I'm in this abyss and I can't get out and I am still a victim of a delusion that I can wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world if I manage well which means I think I can think my way out of this abysse and if you've ever been a depressive you know you can't think your way out matter of fact it's like trying to dig your way out of a hole you just go deeper and the more you ponder it the bigger it gets And I'm scared. I look at the clock, and it's about 10 o'clock, almost 10 o', and there's a meeting at 1015 at a chapel up on the strip called the Between the Shows group, a place called Duffy's. And I asked God, I said a little prayer, God help me, and I thought to myself, if I could get to that meeting, maybe I'd hear something that would snap me out of this. So somehow I muscled myself off that sofa and I shuffled out to that car like a mope and got in that car, drove to the meeting, parked it. There's a parking space right in front of the deal. I went in. I'm sitting in the back of the room, but I can't hear nothing in the meeting. I am so narcissistically self-involved that what's going on in the meaning is like music in a doctor's office because the big show is on the inside, right? And I didn't know that that's what happens to sick people. You know what healthy people are like? Healthy people are very present, right here, right now, right here. Very awake, very present. They're chattering their heads like music in the doctor's office. Sick people reverse that. They're very present up here and what's going on in reality is like music inthe doctor'soffice, right? So because I'm like that I can't hear anything in the meeting because I am so removed from it. And I'm in themeeting pondering my life trying to figure out if I'm ever going to have a good life. And I look around the meeting and everybody, when you're like that, everybody's doing better than you are. Did you ever notice that? It's just, it's a hideous thing. And across the room from me is a guy who's coming off a drunk and he's in bad, bad shape. He can't sit still. He's grabbing himself and rocking back and forth like he wants to jump out of his skin. Can't sit very long. Then he gets up. He's pacing back and forth behind me like a caged animal. There's a bathroom there. It periodically goes in that bathroom, and he's dry-heaving in there. And I'll tell you, I'm trying to work on myself here, and this guy's annoying the crap out of me. I've really got some problems I'm tying to figure out. The meeting's over. The meeting is over. I'm actually doing worse as a result of being in that meeting. I don't know what else to do, so I stay after, and I'm helping the guy, Charlie, the secretary with the chairs and the trash. And Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the meeting. And we're standing on the front porch of the front door of the chapel and Charlie's locking up and he's on his way to work at one of the casinos for the graveyard shift and we look over and the guy that's coming off the drunk is laying on the ground in front of my car in a fetal position. Now I will have to step over him to go home and ponder my life more deeply, which I probably would have done except Charlie's here and Charlie's got a big mouth and if I do that I know he will tell everybody in AA what a lousy AA member I am so Charlie's saying to me you're going to help this guy and I'm looking at this guy and I think ah crap and I go over to this guy and he's peed his pants and he has no medical insurance inconsiderate and at that time if you didn't have medical insurance to get into the care unit there was nowhere to go there was one other possibility and this guy was afraid he was going to go into seizures and atthat time there was a county hospital on east or west charleston and if you took a guy there after they'd make him wait usually four or five hours but eventually they'd take him because they got government money and they had to take a certain amount of these injured patients. But they hated it. They'd treat you like a redheaded stepchild, I'm telling you. They make you wait four or five hours sometimes. They had this attitude like they'd rather deal with legitimately sick people than these self-induced guys that are going to probably be back here in a month. So I know what's coming. I got this guy in my car. I know I'm there going to be there all night. I go to go to work for the morning. I'm going to be tired. I'm going to have a bad attitude. I might lose my job. That's a lousy job anyway, you know? I'm thinking to myself, isn't it enough in my life's crap I have to do this? Doesn't anybody else step up to the plate except me, for God's sakes? I don't say none of that. I'm just driving. We get down there. We sign in. We go in the emergency room, waiting room. We're sitting in there waiting. And this guy starts to tell me about himself. He starts to tell me the shame and the guilt that he can't even drink away anymore for the things he did to his family and the people who loved him. He told me that for some time he'd been trying to kill himself, and he just doesn't have the courage to do it. And then he really hooked me. He said, you know, I don't know why you're wasting time with me. See, I'm not like you people in AA. See, I always drink again. Even if I swear I won't, I always do. And he's talking about me. And somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, I fell in love with that guy. I don't know why it wouldn't make any sense. He couldn't do anything for me. He can't get me a better job. He's probably not even going to stay sober a year and give me some sort of credit for something. This guy can't do nothing for me except that he suffered from alcoholism exactly like I suffered from alcoolism, and I fell in love with him. And it was years later that I realized that what I had fallen in love avec was I fell en love avec le moi qui est dans lui, un aspect and a part of my being that I could never love directly. And I know, I tried. I had a therapist that was really big on learning to love yourself. She gave me these positive affirmations. She told me, stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say six times, God loves me, God forgives me, God accepts me, I love me, i forgive me i accept oh what a bunch of bullshit i just i could have stood there and said that till the planet blew up and it wouldn't have changed how i felt about myself but somewhere in the amends process is i did the things i didn't believe would work and face the things I didn't believe I could face and make right the things I didn't believe I could make right and help the people I didn' t believe I could help that were really I was helping myself the me that was in them my very relationship not only with you started to change but with God and with myself they eventually checked that guy in in the wee hours of the morning they gave him to bed in that hospital. And I'm driving home after spending many hours with him and I'm driving home and I am crying. And, I am not crying because I am depressed, I'm crying because I don't know at any time in my life I ever felt more complete, more right about myself and more right of my life. I felt the presence of a God that I had been praying to for a year and a half that had been hypothetical move into my life. And I guess he moved into my life because there was enough of me out of the way. And I got it. I got finally why the old timers had been hammering on me to go help other people, to do 12 step work, to go into the prisons and the hospitals. And i didn't know why they were doing it. I'd do it, but I'd argue a little bit with him. I remember telling this one guy, I said, I know what you're saying, me help others, but don't you think we really should work on me a little more? And he says, you've been working on you all these years. Let's stop that. Let's cut that out. And what they encouraged me to do was really live a life of action that was the action of self-abandonment. I really knew everything in me thought that I needed to work more on me, but I would set me aside and I'd go help these guys. And I guess God works the best in a vacuum. And in my absence, he could show up in my life. and i knew that that early morning as the sun's coming up and i'm driving home i knew why i was alive and the old i knew Why the old timers kept hammering on me because they knew that even the narcissistically self-obsessed self-absorbed self-focused and self-involved guy that I was If I stayed in that venue long enough, one day something would happen. And I'd make that connection. One of the guys I sponsor when he talks about 12-step work, he says, That's the good dope. I drank alcohol because I wanted to feel good. And I wanted To have a good and comfortable life. I do Alcoholics Anonymous for the same reason. I don't think a guy comes to a meeting averaging at least once a day for 29 years because I'm a good guy. I come here because this is the best deal I've ever got. And I hope I never forget that. I think I, as well as most of us, are in danger of getting seduced right out of my own program recovery by the fruits of it. it's easy if you're new and you don't know if you are going to jail or if you have a job or if anybody is going to talk to you and your emotions are all screwed up it's easier to really think you are an alcoholic and act like one what do you do when you are 15 years sober and you got a half a million dollars in the bank and own a couple of houses and have everything you want are you still able to act just like you have alcoholism just like you did when you were new and you had nothing. One of the things that seems to happen easily to guys like me is that we get seduced by the fruits of our own recovery into a false sense of okayness, almost as if I feel really good, my life's really good. I don't really feel like there's a problem. But alcoholism is always right below the radar in my life. It's always there. in step 11 in our book there's a line in there that i read it read it and read it and when i was about 18 years sober i finally got it and i'd read this line up probably 100 times and didn't know what they were talking about and one day i'm reading it and it says we must constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show and i'm thinking to myself well Why would they say constantly? It was like a light when I think, well, because I'm constantly trying to run the show. How do I play God? The book says, first of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. How do i play God by climbing up on the throne of judgment and knowing what's wrong with you and taking your inventory and trying to give you a little guidance in your life. I don't know. I don' t know what's good for you. I don''t know what' s good for me. And I think the great strength in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we share our honest experience with this process of recovery. And it doesn' t fit everybody. I know that there's a lot of people in AA that don't identify with me. But that's okay. Next week, there'll be somebody else here you will identify with. We got a wrench for every nut in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm telling you. But I'm real good for guys that are sick like I'm sick. And I get, as a result of my involvement in AA and sponsoring guys, I get the greatest privilege to be present at the greatest show on earth I get a ringside seat to watch men and women who have burnt their life to the ground, who will never see their kids again. I get to see them get their kids back. I getto see guys that were homeless buy their first house. I gettoseeguysthatcameoutofmentalhospitals thatwere so medicated and so whacked emotionally and mentally, you knew they'd never be okay. And three years later, they're sponsoring four or five guys and they haven't taken anything in four or five years and they're free and the light's on and you say, my God, what happened to him? And I guess that's the way I see the hand of God. I see Him work through Alcoholics Anonymous. I think we live in the greatest age of miracles ever. We see things in AA every day that Hollywood would make a mini-series about, for God's sakes. And we didn't just take it for granted. How many times have you seen her in a meeting somewhere and say, I remember Joe, remember he used to live in the bushes? Did you know he bought a house? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, ja, ja. Next. Tell that to a reporter somewhere. He lived in the bush and bought a home. They want to make a little story about it, right? we just go where's the coffee you know you get callous to the own miracle in your life and one of my mentors told me years ago he said that he said he always takes a moment in the morning and I do this now to try to realize and really get inside me this tremendous gift that I've received and then aspire for that day to be a good example of that gift. Some days I'm a real good example. Some days, I just don't drink. But no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. I had a friend years ago, he used to go to me, he'd stand up in front of me and he'd say, can I see the hands of everybody having a really good day and about half the room raised their hand. And he'd say, can I see the hands of the people that aren't really having that great a day? And about another half of the room raised their hands. He'd say see the ones that you guys that aren' t having the greatest day did you see the one's that were? He said they're going to be raising the hands for you next week because everything changes. And you taught me how to live a life on principle rather than emotions and thoughts. I lived my life on my feelings and it all but destroyed me I came to you and you taught me how to live on spiritual principles there's a line in our book that says spiritual principles will solve all our problems that's really been true true in my life 17, 18 years ago I was up in Northern California and I was at an AA event kind of like this I suppose and I had half a day off to sightsee and a guy took me to a forest where they had trees that were 250 feet high. I'd never seen anything like it. Some of those trees are 25, 30 feet in diameter. After looking at this forest for about 20 minutes, we get in his truck and we're going down to see some rocks down on the ocean up near the Oregon border. We're going by these meadows and fields and he says to me, he says, you notice how you don't see one of those 250 foot trees all by itself in a field? I said, yeah. He said, you know why that is? I said no, I don't. He says, well, in God's plan those trees aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that alone they will literally outgrow their roots capacity to support themselves and they will literally topple over on there and die on their own aspired magnificence. He sad, in God's plan what must happen is that they must grow up in community and they literally will intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest and support and hold each other up and that allows them to grow into their nature. And when he said that I've thought to myself and I've taught a hundred times since then that that is exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous has done in my life. I have had one basic defect of character that all but killed me, and what that defect was is I've always thirsted and hungered for more. I've also been the guy that wanted to take bigger bites out of life. I've wanted to see the world and feel everything there is to feel. I want it all. And alone, that yearning within me just about destroyed me and I came to you and I got a sponsor and more importantly I became sponsorable I got an idea I got home group I started sponsoring guys and I literally intertwined the roots and foundation of my life with yours and you've allowed me to grow into my nature and if I live to be a thousand years old I could never repay you for the life you've given me Thank you for my life.