The Allergic Reaction That Only Occurs in Alcoholics – Bob

My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. Through the grace of a very loving God that I didn't believe in, found out through the steps, was crazy about me and has no taste. The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as they are outlined in this book and the process within. Good sponsorship, commitments in AlcoholicsAnonymous and bushels of newcomers. I have not had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering substance since October 31st, 1978. And for that, I owe Alcoholics Anonymous my life. It's good to be here. I wanted to thank Arnett for his talk. After all day today, I tell you, I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say. I'm almost tired of the sound of my own voice. So it'll be interesting to see what comes out. God willing, if he shows up, it's going to be good. I didn't come from an alcoholic family. My family was pretty normal. There was a lot of love in our household. But I suspect that there was something wrong with me before I ever picked up a drink. Because way before I could ever, ever drink, I didn't really feel like other people looked. There was a lot of love in our family, but I was so wrapped up in myself that I couldn't feel it. I could see it and I could understand it intellectually that it was there, but I couldn'T feel it.- I was that disconnected from life and the people around me, even as a young kid. And nobody did that to me. I just was born with an inclination towards self-involvement. I was born a thinker. There's a lot of thinkers in AA. We don't live life, we ponder it. and I was a ponderer and a thinker and a daydreamer far before I ever picked up a drink I was restless, irritable and discontent little kid I was always the kid that was always looking for the next thing. Never could appreciate this thing it's always what's the next things? The next thing that's going to excite me. And I didn't know that I I suffered. I didn't know that I had something wrong with me when Dr. Silkworth, in the doctor's opinion, says something that really applies to me through my whole life. He says, to us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. So whatever is wrong with you, I adjust to it and I just think, well, it's just normal. It's the way it is. But I didn'T feel like other people looked. And when I was 12 years old, almost 13 years old This disease of alcoholism within me Was touched for the first time by alcohol An event that I was not aware of Really consciously But an event that would change my life And my life would never be the same after that And basically really what happened I was hanging around with a bunch of older kids And I just want their approval I want a fit. I want their acceptance. And we pulled a little burglary in the neighborhood and broke into some house. And one of the things we stole was a bunch of bottles of whiskey. And I didn't know nothing about it. I'd never seen anybody drunk. I didn't even know that it got you high, but I'm watching these kids pass around this whiskey bottle and when you're always secretly coming from behind, when you always secretly don't feel like other people look and you're constantly trying to pretend that you're like others, you've got to watch them close. close. And what I observed is that the bigger hit you took off this bottle, the more attention you got from the other guys. So by the time it gets to me, I'm in. I'm just glad it wasn't cat urine because I'm going to drink whatever that is. I am going to take a big hit off of it. And I took a big head off that bottle and it, oh man, about burned me up. But when 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 be enough again for me. And without ever realizing it, I just started to live for the opportunity to get lit up. As a matter of fact, it seemed like from that moment on, my life was just, I just existed between opportunities to party. And it really was the most important thing in my life. Now if you had asked me that, I wouldn't have admitted that. I don't even think I could have admittedthat to myself. But if you would have watched me, what you would Have seen is kind of a depressive mope who just kind of shuffles along and then gets lit up and comes alive and then just shuffles along like a mope and then gets lit up and comes alive. And that was, if you were to watch me objectively, you'd think, that's the only time I ever see this guy happy is when he's lit up, when he'S drunk. But there's something wrong with me. And because there's Something wrong with Me by the time I'm 15, almost 16 years old, I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time and I'm standing before that judge because every time I go out to party with my friends I can't seem to shut it down when you should I always go a little too far I always get a little two-whacked and when I get really dry don't just get drunk I get drunk drunk I getting when I I get drunk, drunk, there's some very bizarre things that seem like a good idea to me. You know, and then the next day it's like, what was I thinking? And I don't know that I have alcoholism. I don' t know that i have that one thing that defines alcoholism and we live in a day and age where a lot of people come into Alcoholics Anonymous as I did and we We use so many other drugs in addition to drinking. We're not sure what we are. We're just know we're screwed up. But I'll tell you how you can tell if you have alcoholism. Alcoholism is defined by one characteristic that differentiates us and sets us apart as a distinct entity, as Dr. Silkworth says. says, and that is an allergic reaction to alcohol. But the allergic reaction is subtle. It's hard to see it. But what the allergic non-normal reaction I have to alcohol is that somewhere about the second drink, as I'm starting to feel the effect, the allergic to reaction is I break out with a a yearning for more of that feeling. And consequently, I can never really ever get enough. I have never in all my years of drinking, never once sat in a bar or a party, passing something around or drinking at a bar and after an hour have the bartender come over and say, Bob, would you like another drink? I have Never once had the experience of sitting And I'm sitting there and thinking to myself, honestly, no, this is just right. Never once, never once. It's always one more, one more. One more, one more And if you have that, if you can't get enough, you were always going to drink too much. And so I would burn my life to the ground every time I went out. I didn't mean to. I don't know that I have alcoholism, but I'm standing before this juvenile court judge and I'm not even 16 years old yet and I am in a lot of trouble and my parents who loved me and would have done anything to help me are trying to work out a deal with this judge so they don't send me this pretty bad place to be locked up and instead they made a compromise and I had to go somewhere else and live for a while and I go to this other place and I don't know why I'm there I just know I'm in trouble. And I'm not even there a week. And I meet this older kid, about 17 and a half hip kid, one of the hip guys. And i'm telling him my story about how i'm always in trouble and how much I like to drink with my friends and everything. And he's listening to me and he says to me says so so you like to party do you? And I said yes I do. He says well well, you drink that liquor. That'll make you stupid. Oh, I don't know, man. I like that liquor. At that time in my life, I was drinking that 151 rum. That'd get you downtown now. I mean, I like this stuff. That just light me up. And he says, well, that stuff will make you stupid because you're always in trouble. Yeah, I know, but I like that. He says, listen to me. He says, what if I told you that I could give you something that would make you feel as as good as that, they won't be able to smell it on your breath. You won't slur your words. You won'T even stagger. As a matter of fact, no one will even know you're high and you'll be able fit a whole week supply in your shirt pocket. What would you say to that? I don't even know what he's talking about, but I'm just like, sign me up. Right? The idea of not partying is not even on the horizon. I mean, no, that's not, it's not. It's like, Like, oh, I can party over here and not get in as much trouble? Oh, sign me up for that. And he introduced me to drugs. But I've got to tell you something. I'm a real alcoholic. Real alcoholics should not do drugs. We're pigs. Oh man, it was bad because every drug I ever tried, I tried it alcoholically. I mean, I just took it to the wall. I'm trying to duplicate an effect I'd found in 151 rum with drugs Oh, it's bad. In no time at all, I'm doing amphetamines. But I'm not just doing amzetamines like a drug addict would do amphetamine. I'm going amphetamenes to guys that have been doing it for 10 years are telling me, hey kid, you better cool it. right and in no time at all i i think i turned myself into a paranoid schizophrenic or something i became the guy if you left me alone in your car to go in and get a pack of cigarettes by the time you come out i've taken your dashboard apart looking for microphones from the fbi right because i think everybody's looking for me you know i'm just nuts i couldn't put two sentences together My head would spin with all, I'd be in a group of people that are all talking, my head spinning and I'd blurt something out. It was always inappropriate. And then I go, oh, you know, so people are having less and less to do with me. And a guy came along and he said, man, you're pretty screwed up. up and i said you know whatever he says he says try some of this and he hit me up with something and i'll tell you when the throwing up stopped man i could think straight and everything in me went and he introduced me to heroin but i'm a real alcoholic i'm telling you we alcoholics should not do drugs. It's bad, it's bad. And I took it to the wall and I got so whacked on that stuff. And then I started hitting doctors for pills and smoking all around. And then eventually to come full circle back to alcohol after I've burnt all of that out. And i suspect that i did drugs for for the same reason that Dr. Bob did drugs. Do you know that Dr., Bob actually, in frequency of use, did more drugs than alcohol? If you read his story, he did high-powered sedatives every single day of his life for 17 years. He did not drink every single night. But Dr. Bobby was exactly like me. He had the phenomenon of craving. He had the allergic reaction that only occurs in alcoholics. And the medications bought him at least a little bit of release and freedom from the emotions that drove him back to drinking. It bought him little periods of abstinence where he didn't have to burn his life to the ground with alcohol. But every single time Dr. Bob drank, he got whacked. I mean, the day that Bill Wilson tried to talk to him, Bill couldn't talk to Him because he was taking a nap under the dining room table. I mean you've got to love a guy like that. I mean because I'm that guy. I'm the napper. I'm not the guy who goes out to some club or some party and if I don't have some kind of stimulants in about two hours I'm going to sleep in the booth somewhere or laying on the floor in the corner taking a lap because when I start drinking I can't stop. now non-alcoholics don't drink like that my sister's a non- alcoholic I've watched my sister drink I mean I've watching my sister drink like a cat will watch a guy eat a tuna fish sandwich I mean of watch my sister drank and the funniest thing happens when she drinks it you can I look in the eye look her in the eyes and try to see the effect hitter you know and about after about about two drinks, she goes, whoa. And she shuts it right down. And she gets a feeling that she's starting to lose control. And it's inconceivable to her to keep on drinking to get so drunk. But I'm a different person than my sister. When I start to drink, my reaction to alcohol is not whoa. When When I get to the same place, it's like, oh yeah. Come on man, come on. And it lights me up and I can't get enough. And I don't get a feeling like I'm losing control. I get a feelin' like I am getting control. I geta feelin', like every vacancy and incompleteness within me starts to firm up. In the early days of drinking, there is a... I tell you something, I think alcohol was the most immediate and most effective treatment for the disease of alcoholism I have ever found. It was dynamic. You could take a guy like me who's half-assed depressed all the time, who doesn't fit with people. I don't know how to mix with people sober. And I could go to a party or I could Go to a bar and have three or four drinks and man I could come out and play I could talk to people about seven drinks and I loved everybody you remember that feeling I love you man you just get that glow on you it'd be with those that gang of guys I hang around with man I get so connected to them these are my guys and then I'd sober up and I'd be back to being me again the guy who doesn't fit anywhere where the guy who suffers from this funny kind of loneliness that I can't put into words, the kind of loneliness that you feel even when you're in a crowd of people that like you, the kind OF loneliness you feel with your family and you know they love you, but what's wrong with me? Why don't I feel a part of them the way they seem to be a partof each other? what's wrong with me and so i drink and in the early days the magic is the effect of alcohol is stupendous i it made me i could be funny when i drank i'm not really funny but when i'm drunk i'm funny it lights me up i can i can be deep and philosophical i can remember middle of the night just get to that point where you think oh this is what buddha saw you know just get that oh yeah you just see the big see the bigger picture now you know oh i'd say things that blow my mind i think wow that's heavy you know and i could dance when i was drunk i can't dance but when i was drunk I could dance i could i could play the guitar and sing and better than i could ever play the guitar and sing, I could do everything better. It almost like alcohol immersed me in that zone where everything just clicks. And I couldn't miss. I'll tell you, if it wasn't for alcohol, I'd probably be celibate to this day. I don't think I would have ever gotten a girlfriend or hooked up with anybody. I'm just too insecure. I am just too afraid greater rejection. I would have never risked it. I'll tell you a little story. I was in about the seventh or eighth grade somewhere, I think seventh grade, junior high school, eighth grade maybe. And I went to a dance because there was a girl in my class that I had a crush on. And some guy I know showed me a couple of dance steps. So I'm going to this dance. I'm And I'm standing over against the wall in this gymnasium just terrified. Now, I don't know that I'm terrified, but I'm just really uncomfortable. And I am trying to psych myself up to ask her to dance. And I're watching her dance with her girlfriend and I'm, okay, I'm going to ask her. All right, all right. Next song, next song, the next song would come and I'd be, oh man, I can't next song. And I did that for about a half hour. finally I screwed up enough courage walked over and asked her to dance and she said no and I got to walk back across that 12 mile gymnasium and everybody's looking at me you can feel them I can't, I don't want to look at them but I can feel him looking at my face and did you ever sometimes I get clairvoyant like I think I know what people are thinking right? you know what I mean? and I go back over to my wall and every time somebody looks in my direction it feels like to me they're thinking oh that poor pathetic loser and I stood over there for a little while till I couldn't take it anymore and bolted out of there went home and moped like you're supposed to I'm going to tell you something I'd have never ever done that again except later on that year I was at a dance under the power of 151 rum and coca-cola and I gotta tell you, I was smooth and I could ask girls to dance with a confidence and a suave fare and they would say yes and if they said no is she missing the opportunity of a lifetime here? Now that's power That's power in a couple glasses of whiskey to change the whole planet it. That's power to change my whole reality from a devastating, empty, vacant, desolate life to a connectedness that is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It's no wonder in the early days when the hook is set, it's no Wonder that that becomes the most important thing in our our lives. And if you're sitting here and alcohol has never done that for you, then how is it ever going to get a chance to do to you what it will do later? And I got a chance to do something to me later because it had done that for me at one time and I'll do anything to duplicate that effect because it was the only real substantial treatment for this malady of my spirit that I had ever found. It was the Only Time in My Life I felt like you looked. Dr. Silkworth, when he says to us our alcoholic life seems the only normal one, it's the only time I feel normal is when I'm drunk. Now, I don't look normal because I fall down and I stagger and I'm in trouble, but I feel normal when I'm lit up. And there's an old story, they mention it in the big book where Bill Wilson refers to the alcoholic as a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And if you've ever read Dr.JekyllandMrHyde in the original version by Robert Louis Stevenson I identify with Dr. Jeckyll a lot. unlike the hollywood version where dr jekyll was a kind altruistic scientist in the book he was a self-obsessed judgmental guy who didn't fit very well and couldn't get along with anybody so he was recluse and a loner and he stayed in his laboratory he couldn't even really connect with the woman who was he was engaged to be married with he had an absolute inability to connect with other people and he finds this elixir and he creates this thing and he drinks it and for the first time in his life he can come out and play but he does some horrible, tragic terrible, terrible, brutal things while Mr. Hyde as some of us did when we were drunk and then there's a point in there where after all the damage he's done and all the shame he's brought onto his family he says something that I thought was amazing he said even in the face of all of that I still liked myself better as Mr. Hyde than I ever liked myself as Dr. Jekyll and that was my reality in the case of the trips to jail in the place of what I've done to my mother and father in the face of what I did to my sister, in the case of the jobs I've ruined and the relationships I broke, in the place of all the shame and remorse and guilt I've experienced through my drinking, I still liked myself better when I was drunk than I ever liked myself when I sober. And that was my big secret. Because I can't tell anybody that because that's crazy I'm crazy in the light of the destruction that I'm creating in my life. That is crazy. I may be crazy, but I'm not so crazy that I don't know that that's crazy. I mean, I know that's that's a crazy thinking. So that's my big secret. My big secret is it's the only time I ever really feel complete. But alcoholism is a progressive disease. The book says over any considerable period, it gets worse, never better. And that's really true. I have never heard of one case, never one case of a real alcoholic that once alcohol turns on you and stops lighting you up and starts doing something to you, I don't know anyone that's ever been able to roll it back to the good old days. Most of us die trying to chase something we can't recapture. Because inside me, I don't want to believe this party's over. I don'T WANT TO BELIEVE THAT THIS EFFECT, I CAN'T GET IT ANYMORE. Maybe it was just the last time. Maybe if I would have had a full stomach. Maybe if i wouldn't drink that rum, maybe i'd drink some natural wine. But the party can't be over. I've got to get some more drugs. I've Got to mix some drugs in here. I'll mix some Drugs in here Maybe the part I can jump start the party that way But I don't want to believe the party's over Because what am I going to do if it is? See I'm nothing without it I'm Nothing And I hate that about myself I've always hated that about Myself And alcohol made me something And without it I'm nothing. I don't fit anywhere. I suffer from low-level depressions, loneliness, bouts of anxiety, sometimes anxiety almost to the point of paralysis where I can't get off the sofa. I'm so overwhelmed with fear and worry. And so I drink. And I drink because I don' t know else to do. But as this disease progresses, it starts to turn on me and all the fun and the ease and the comfort start being leeched out of it. And now I'm drinking and it's turned bad on me. And I'm starting to experience more trips to jail and I liked a lot of things that Arner talked about identified, the wet pants, oh yeah, the waking up with... You You know, if you're two years old, diaper rash is cute. You're 20 years old. It's not cute. How do you explain that to your new girlfriend? Right? It's a bad deal. I was a blackout drinker. Any blackout trinkers in here? Anybody there? Oh, yeah. Oh, my people. people. I'll tell you, it's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do. That's a bad deal. And you know, if you're like me, no one ever came up to me the next day and said, oh Bob, you were so helpful at the party last night. No, I'd hear things like, you peed in our kitchen. You stole my stash. You hit on my wife. You broke my lamp. You sideswiped my car. You passed out on the front lawn. The worst one. I was on my way to get a drink in the morning. I used to be shaken in the moring. I needed a drink bad and I run into this guy and he says to me, he says, do you know you told everybody last night at the party that that you beat Bruce Lee in a karate match? I just want to crawl under a rock somewhere, you know. So what happens as the disease progresses, now I'm drinking over my drinking. I have to drink to blot out what I did when I was drinking, which causes more bizarre behavior, which causes mere feelings of shame and remorse, which fuels the fires of my alcoholism. And this is like a perpetual motion machine that seems to be no end to it except maybe oblivion or death. In 1971, I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a young kid, I wasn't even old enough to take a legal drink as of yet. And I was in an institution for the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction and they sent me to this AA meeting. I didn't want to go. I thought it was stupid. AA, oh God. Oh, I mean... Joe M says something that's funny. If there's any musicians in here, you'll get this. He said, I really identify with this. He said when he ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous, he felt like he had joined the Salvation Army band. band. For a musician, that's like the bottom of the food chain. I'll tell you, the Salvation Army Band. Oh no. That's the way AA feels. And the people in AA are weird when you're sitting there and you're a young kid and you've got untreated alcoholism and you don't know what the heck's going on. And you still got hope. Hope that you can jumpstart the party. Hope I hope that you're going to have some good days left, but I'm just in a foxhole right now because things are bad. I'm here healing up, but it's going to be good again. I know it's gonna be good, but It's a progressive disease and it never is, never is. And so I get sober for a while until I just can't take it anymore and I drink again. And I started hitting worse and worse bottoms. And in this progressive disease of alcoholism, some funny things that happen. It gets worse and worst. And all the things you tell yourself, I'd never do that. Oh yeah, you did. Yeah, you didn't. Then you did it again. And there's a period of time where as the disease progresses, it's more degenerate and more debauchery and it gets worse. and worse and then the worst thing of all happens it gets the same and then it's the same. And you come to and you're sick and you are shaken and you hate yourself and you wished you were dead and you got to try to put up enough money together to get a bottle of that cheap wine or that cheap vodka to blot it out one more time and you go back to drinking and it ain't no fun. And now I'm in that stage of alcoholism where I drink and I feel sorry for myself. I drink, and sometimes quietly when no one's around, I sob uncontrollably because I hate my life and I hate what I've become, and I can't stand me, and i can't drink away the remorse and the feelings of shame of what I have done to the people that love me. I don't bathe anymore because I don't care I can't there's no more fun left in it I drink and it's pathetic I drink and I'm depressed and miserable and yet I stopped drinking periodically as I go into a treatment center right I get arrested and I sober up and I I'm not stupid I understand that this stuff's killing me i get it i understand so i swear to myself and mean it all right i'm never going to touch that stuff again but you see the real problem of alcoholism starts where the bottle ends and that is what is so baffling to me i go to meetings of alcoholic synonymous and I start to, I really don't want to drink anymore. But in short order, I start coming to the conclusion that whatever is wrong with me is not obviously the same thing that's wrong with you. Because I stopped drinking and I got the depression, the anxiety, I don't fit anywhere. It's awful. Abstinence feels like I'm doing time. It's bad. And I sit in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous I'm in the middle of rooms of people who stopped drinking. And you're wonderful. I mean, you're grateful for everything, for God's sakes. How do you do that? I don't even like anything. You know, you love everybody. You get along with everybody. You have these miracle stories. Your life just keeps getting better and better. I remember sitting, losing everything, and I'm sitting in this homeless place for homeless guys, right? And these members of AA would bring a meeting in here, and it seemed like they were just coming in. You go in there and you stand against the wall, and it's, oh, it's all of them, and then there's me. Oh, we're having fun here. Oh, it' s terrible. To me, AA has good news and bad news. The good news is that maybe if I went to thousands of these stupid meetings nonstop, I'd probably stay sober the rest of my life and the bad news I'm gonna live a long time you see I'm exactly the guy it talks about in a vision for you I can't imagine life without alcohol really I can imagine life without it or at least with something I could kind of imagine life maybe without alcohol if I had enough drugs, maybe. But I can't imagine life without alcohol and at least some kind of substance. Something, give me something, would you? One time I was sober for about seven or eight months and I thought, well, I was in this halfway house and I know I canít drink. I know itís killing me. I know, I know. But God, thereís got to be something I can do. And I thought, you know, marijuana is organic. You know, I've never punched a cop stoned on pot. I might giggle at him, but I've never punched the cop. I thought yeah, yeah, I'll try marijuana. That's good. I'll just try that and I all and of course I drank again because I'm feeding something that should be starved and I'm not feeding something that needs to be fed and I made it about a couple months like that and I got so thirsty that I had to drink again and burn my life to the ground one more time I remember one time but I haven't talked about this in a while I went to a meeting stoned on pot I mean really like paranoid wacko stoned-on-pot trying to look normal and they grab me and make me chair the meeting and I'm standing up here at the podium and I can't they're all looking at me I can not look I can' t look they are all looking at me and I am reading chapter 5 rarely have we seen a person fail Mr. Lee followed our path didn't you just read that line no don't look up no did you read they are going to know it took me four hours to read chapter 5 and I just I showed them I stole the money out of the basket and went out and bought a dozen donuts and slammed them right as soon as the meeting was over. By the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978, I'd been to all the psychiatrists. I tried all the medications. I tried hypnosis, self-hypnosis. I did primal screaming. I did crazy stuff where you lay on the ground and kick your hands and feet and scream, Mommy, Daddy. I mean, I try, I'm telling you, you think I'm making that up. Well, that used to be a viable therapy in the States years ago. I tried some weird stuff. Oh man, I've tried anything. And no matter what I tried, I am still me. And I am the guy who yearns for the effect of alcohol. And I can't quit drinking. And I keep going back to it over and over again. 1978, I went on what was to be my last drunk. I didn't know that it was to me my last drink. And on that drunk, I tried to take my own life. And I didn' t try to take m y own life for anything that you would think a person would kill themselves over. It wasn't for the shame and the guilt, and I had a wealth of that. But I have an ability to roll with that. You know, I'll just stuff that. I can roll with it. I'll push through that. Why I'm standing on a bridge trying to get up enough courage to kill myself is that I understand something about me I don't want to understand. Is that there's no relief in the bottle and the bag for me anymore. none. And I got nowhere else to go. There's a part in, in a vision for you. It says, well, well, someday we'll get to a place where we can't imagine life with it anymore because all the funds wrung out of it and it's turned on you and it'S awful. AndI can't image life without it either because abstinence is depressive and lonely and it feels like I just can't, I can only do short periods of time abstinent. It says when you get to that place, you'll be at the jumping-off place. It say's you'll know a loneliness such as few do and you'll wish for the end. And I'm on a bridge wishing for the end. Not for one reason or one reason only, I have lost all hope. See I've tried all the therapy, I've tried religion, I tried medications, I I've tried everything to change me into the kind of person that's going to be okay enough, sober, that I don't have to be compelled to go back to that. And I can't change me. That's the one inescapable fact, is I can' t change me and yet at the same time, there's no fun in alcohol anymore. I can imagine life with it and I can image life without it, So I'm trying to kill myself. But I am a coward and I've always been a coward. I can, you know, I used to run with gangs of guys and I'd get locked up and be on those cell blocks and I can put up a pretty good front out here. But my big secret behind the macho, behind the muchísimo, behind all the bluster is that I'm a scared, scared little kid inside and I have always been that way. And I hate that about myself. I hate that about myself. But it is a truth that is me. And so when it came time to jump off this bridge I couldn't do it and I fell apart and started sobbing and I smashed my hand up cursing myself slamming it on this piece of metal in that bridge and cursing myself for being a coward and little did I know that that would be my last drunk, little did I know that very shortly my life was going to change so dramatically that if I live to be a thousand years old, I could never repay what has happened to me. I could NEVER repay. But I didn't know that. I felt like my life was over and I ended up 2,500 miles away all the way across the continent of the United United States and in Las Vegas Nevada in a hospital detox sick I hadn't eaten anything in about 10 days drinking that cheap wine and cheap vodka I'm in bad shape and the Buddhists say when the students ready the teachers appear and members of Alcoholics Anonymous brought meetings into that hospital as I bring meetings into detoxes and I've done that for over 28 years twice a week I do what Bill Wilson did I go look for drunks not because they're drunks but because I am and that is that is my vehicle for freedom and members of AA who they were the real doers they were the givers they were were the guys who understood their primary purpose, brought meetings into there. And I sat there and for the first time in all those years of attending AA meetings, for the first time, I had just enough of me beaten out of me that I could hear you. And I sat there and as you shared your experience, I found myself nodding my head and thinking to myself, my God, I'm like that. I feel like that, I think like that I drank like that I'm like these people I had never in all my attending of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous ever connected I was too defended I'm too busy picking you apart and making and put putting you down in my mind I could never connect with you but now there's enough of me and my ego beat out of me that I can actually connect with and I'm sitting there and I've nodded my head and i'm man i'm like this and a little little inkling little kernel of hope came to me and what the hope was is that i watched these guys and i watched they used to come in there once or twice a week and i've been watching them i was in that place for 30 some days i was watching these guysand these guys were legitimately sincerely happy and sober at the the same time which is incomprehensible to me and i could see that something had changed in them and they had successful lives and they laughed a lot and i watched some of them kidding around with each other telling jokes and goofing on each other and i i realized man these guys are having a better time sober than i had back in the good days when i would drink and worked and i thought maybe if that could happen to them, maybe if I followed them around and did everything that they did, could that happen to me? No. To me? The piece of crap that I am? Could that happen to me?" And I thought to myself, what the hell do I got to lose and that that line went through my head a lot of times Janis Joplin used to sing a song called Bobby McGee and there's a line in there it says freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose see and I finally didn't have to defend myself against you I didn't to tell myself how I'm not like you I didn't have to pick you apart I didn' t have to come up with excuses why I don't need to do what you do. I don't have to do anything except join you. And I joined you. And I got a sponsor and a home group and started following these guys around, and my life started to change. I had an experience in the hospital before I got out. I've been to several of the AA meetings, and I was scared to death. And I don't talk about this too much. A woman in the hospital was a member of AA named Judy, and she was one of the counselors there. And Judy knew my record, and she knew that I'd been in a whole bunch of treatment centers. And she knewthat I'd be in and out of AA meetings for years. years. And Judy said to me one day, she said, so what's different this time? And I didn't know what to say to her. So I said to her, I said, well, I just took the third step. I don't even know what the third Step is, but it's a nice AA sounding thing to say, you know, right? And she lit and it was a good thing to see because she lit up. She got excited. She said, oh, really? Oh, that's great. You mean you said that prayer on page 63 with someone? And I almost said yes, but I was afraid she was going to ask me who I said it with and what it said. So I said, no, no. I just did it my way. And all of a sudden her whole face changed. She looked at me in such a way. I wanted to look and see like I had spilled something on me or something. She gave me that kind of weird look, you know, and just shaking her head and walks off down the hall. And about a day or so later, I'm sitting on this hospital bed and I'm terrified because I know the truth. I know that I'm going to leave this hospital and I am going to drink again and I don't want to drink no more but I can't do anything else. When that obsession comes on me, I am toast and I can't fight it. I can put it off for a little while and I don't know if I'm going to drink the day I get out or two weeks later or six months later but I am facing a reality that it is an eventuality. See, for alcoholics of my type with untreated alcoholism without a spiritual experience the question is not if you're going to drinking again. The question is when. It's an inevitability. It's a level of powerlessness that I never imagined. You mean to tell me that when I really make up my mind and I've been through the classes and I got the education and I'm determined never to drink, I'm going to drink again? You betcha. You know why I know that? Because I did that time and time and times again. And I'm scared and terrified. There was a big book that they gave everybody in there. Insurance company paid for it. I think we paid about $1,000 for it. It was some real weird deal. We could have bought it at an AA meeting for $3. And I had this big book and I remembered that Judy had asked me, said something about page 63 of the book. So I opened the book to page 63 and in the middle of the page is this prayer, but it's in this kind of archaic language with thee and thou and it's kind of a little weird and I'm reading this and I am not getting anything out of it and in the middle of the prayer is a line that says relieve me of the bondage of self and I read that line and I threw that book across that room and I fell down off of that bed onto my knees and I started sobbing and from deep down inside of me I said something I couldn't believe I said I said, God, please help me. And I don't even believe in God. And I guess in a sense, I had been surrendered by the bottle. And I didn't know that. But something happened to me. It was like a change of attitude. I wasn't really aware of it. But all of a sudden, I got a sponsor. When I got out of that hospital, I went to a halfway house. I started going to 15 meetings a week. I started calling people up. I started trying to be transparent with the people at AA. I started asking their advice. I started praying every morning and every night, and I don't even believe in God. They would tell me to do things that didn't make any sense, like go on 12-step calls. Well, I remember telling this guy, he said, you need to start going on 12 step calls. Well, I understand what you're saying, but I don' t really feel like I'm ready yet. He said to me, He says, listen kid, if you wait until you feel ready before you try to help somebody, you'll probably have already died of alcoholism. Because you don't ever feel ready or whole enough to do that. You just do that and the actions, what happens is those actions will take you towards completeness. And so I started, I made a commitment to start taking meetings into a couple institutions every week when I'd go out on 12-step calls with some of the old-timers. And something started to happen to me. I started to have moments where I didn't even realize it, moments when I would be temporarily free or I'd feel better. And I don't even know that, but they fade so quickly. And somewhere inside of me, I'm looking for some kind of permanent fix. and I'm getting these little brief reprisals from the bondage of self. And I don't know that that's what's happening. But I still haven't worked the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous out of the book yet. I didn't do that until I was four years sober. And I survived my first four years of sobriety by a lot of service work and a lot OF 12-step calls and working with a lot Of newcomers. And Arner was quoted that part out of working with others where it says, nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking like intensive work with other alcoholics. It works for all other activities fail. It works when calling your sponsor fails. It works wenn going to a meeting fails. It works wen praying fails because you're too jammed up to connect with anything. anything. It works when reading the book fails because you can't read the book because it's so noisy in here, you don't even know what you're reading. It works where all other activities fail. And the old timers were hammering me to go on 12-step calls and reach out. Go to meetings, they told me, go to meetings and look for the new people and find them and go up to them and make them feel welcome and start start talking to them. Give them whatever you got. I don't have anything. Well, give them that. Do you believe AA will work? Well, I hope it will. You got some hope. Give them hope. Good. You know where the bathroom is in the meeting hall? Yeah, it's right over there. Oh, good. Tell them where that is. That'll help. And I don' t know why they want me to go on 12-step calls. I mean, at one point, I suspected it was some kind multi-level pyramid scheme or something to increase the membership of AA. Why do you want me to go on these 12-step calls? One day, I'm sober about a year and a half, and I'm sinking into a deep depression. I'm the Bill Wilson type of alcoholic. Now, I've been misdiagnosed by My competent psychiatrist misdiagnosed on a couple occasions. One time I was diagnosed as clinically depressed, but I'm not clinically depressed. But it looks like it. What I really am is spiritually depressed. It's the depression of the obsessively overly self-involved. What happens to me is I just get me and my emotions just on me like that creature in the movie Alien that attaches itself to your face. how you doing Bob and what happens it feels like the air has been sucked out of out of the planet I can't even breathe right I start feeling like my spirit is suffocating and I stay that way long enough and I'll start thirsting for freedom freedom. And unfortunately, the only thing in my whole life I've ever known that would bust me out of me like that was about four or five drinks. And if that obsession comes on me, the reality that it has turned on me and doesn't work will not enter into my mind because I won't be able to see past the need for the medicine, the yearning the hope that maybe I know now that I'm sober a while maybe it'll work again and they're throwing me on these 12 step calls and I come home this one this one day, I'd been to two meetings this day I prayed, I called my sponsor and I'm sitting on the sofa and I've sinking into this deep depression I just got it on me and I'm just so locked up inside of me pondering my life. And the more I look at my life and my future and where it's going, the bleaker it looks. I have never pondered my life and did it joyously. It's never been that way for me. The more I looked at me, the bleak it looks, the more i look at job, the more realize this is going nowhere. You know, The more I look at my love life, the more I realize, well, I'm going to probably always be alone. It's that way. It's a depressive way to look at yourself. And it's on me and I can't get it off and I'm getting scared. I don't know how long I can stay depressed until I want to drink again. I don' t know. And I didn't know what to do. And I looked at the clock and it was almost 10 o'clock at night and I said a little prayer. I said, God, please help me. And I remember that there was a meeting at a quarter after 10, not too far from my apartment at a group called the Between the Shows group. It met at a little chapel up on the Las Vegas Strip and I thought if I could just get off this sofa but it was hard to get off the sofa. I was so depressed I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. If you can imagine that depression actually debilitates me. It has a physical element to it. Like, you know, it's terrible. So I finally muscle my way off that sofa and I shuffle out to my car like a mope. Get in that car, drive down to the meeting. There's a parking space right in front of the door to the chapel. I go in and I'm sitting in the back of the room. But I can't hear anything in the meeting because I can'T get out of here. What's going on in the meetings? Like music in a doctor's office. It's so remote. Because when you're sick of spirit, everything's backwards. Spiritually healthy people, the voices in their head that chatter, the conversations are distant like music in a doctor's office. You don't even pay any attention to it because what your real focus is on is right here, right now. But sick people, it's reversed. First, what's going on in reality, I'm disconnected from. And the only thing I'm focused on is up here. And that's exactly what's gone on with me. And I can't hear anything in the meeting. I just sit, I don't know what it is about me when I'm depressed. I want to draw conclusions about my life. And they are depressing conclusions. conclusions. And then do you ever notice if you've ever been a depressive, depressed, sober, it changes your whole consciousness, your whole perception. It's almost like you took a mind altering drug or something because when it's like that, it looks like it's always been that way and it always will be that way. You know, there's a hopelessness about it. I called my sponsor up one time in an earlier bout of depression i said oh dick i just feel terrible and he says well how long have you felt that way oh i have always felt this way and he's he said no you do you were fine friday night at the home group you're laughing carrying on with the guys well i must have been in denial. That's funny here, but when you're in the middle of that, it looks that way. It looks it's forever ad infinitum. But sitting across from me in this meeting is a guy who's coming off a drunk and he's in bad shape. And he's grabbing himself like he wants to jump out of of his skin and he's rocking back and forth like, like he's just having a, like his nerves are going crazy. And then he gets up, he can't sit still. And he's pacing like a caged animal behind me back and fourth, back and four. And in the bathrooms there, you can hear him. He goes in the bathroom and he is in there throwing up and dry heaving. And I, you know, I am trying to figure my life out. This guy's annoying the crap out of me. You know what? But I don't say, I just don't say anything. I just push through it and just think about me like I'm supposed to. The meeting's over. Doesn't help me one bit. Matter of fact, I feel worse. So I don't know what to do. So I stay after and I help this guy, Charlie, who's the secretary of the meeting. I help him set the chairs back up for the chapel and clean the trash out. And Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the meeting and Charlie's on his way to work. He works a swing shift. He has to be at work at midnight, and it's about 11.30. He's kind of hurrying to get to work, and we're standing on the front porch of the chapel, and I look over, and the guy who was coming off the drunk is laying on the ground in a fetal position in front of my car. Now, I will have to step over him to go home and ponder my life more deeply. But Charlie's standing there, and Charlie says to me, you're going to help this guy, and I'm looking at this guy. I don't want to help him. And I'm looking at Charlie, and Charlie's got a big mouth. If I don' t help this guy, he's going to tell everybody in AA what a lousy member I am. And I go, crap. And I start talking to the guy, and he's peed his pants, and it smells, and I've got to put him in my car, and oh, I don''t want to do this. And I ask him, I say, so do you have any medical insurance? And he says, no, I dont have anything. Do you have money? No, I do not have anything." And it's a time in Las Vegas when they had no detox unless you had money or insurance. If you didn't have money or medical insurance and you needed detox, you were in a lot of trouble. Now, they've since opened one. The only places they had were these fancy detoxes, but you had to have medical insurance to go there. In those old days, if we got a 12-step call like this and a guy was in danger of going into seizures, seizures, we had two options. And the one option was to get a bunch of guys together and sit with the guy around the clock, give him a shot of vodka and orange juice about every hour, just enough so he doesn't go into convulsions. But I can't do that. It's almost midnight. I got to get up for work in the morning. There's one other option, and that's to go to the county hospital. And the county Hospital got county money. And because of that, they would take a certain amount of of ingenious, poor homeless guys. But they didn't like it. And I'd been down there before on 12-step calls and they'd treat you like a red-headed stepchild. I'll tell you, they'd just treat you like they don't like you. And sometimes they'd make you sit five, six hours. Like their attitude is we'd rather treat some legitimate sick people rather than these self-induced guys that are probably going to be back here in a month anyway. So I'm on my way down there and I got this guy in my car and I'm not real happy about any of this. I am thinking to myself, isn't it enough that my life is crap? I gotta do this too. Doesn't anybody else step up to the plate except me? You know, and then key word here is me, right? But I don't say any of that. We get down to the hospital and I sign in and I am sitting there and giving him cigarettes. He could smoke back those days in hospital waiting rooms. And I'm getting him cans of orange juice and I'm giving them to him. And he starts to tell me about himself. And he start to tell about the shame and the guilt that he couldn't even drink away anymore for the things he did to his mother and father and some of the women that tried to love him. He told me that for some time he'd been thinking about killing himself, but he just didn't have the courage and then he really got me he said he said I don't know why you're wasting time with me I'm not like you people in AA you see I always drink again and he's telling me about me and in the wee hours of the morning sitting in this waiting room of an emergency room at a hospital I fell fell in love with this guy. I don't know why. He can't help me. He can't get me a better job. He's not even going to stay sober a year, probably and give me some kind of credit for something. There's nothing this guy can do for me, except that he suffered from alcoholism exactly like I suffered from alcohol. And at that moment, I wanted a good life for him. And I wanted him him to get better, probably more than I wanted it for myself. And it was years later in sponsoring guys that I realized and started to connect the dots to what had happened that night and what would happen repeatedly in Alcoholics Anonymous as I went on 12-step calls and tried to help alcoholics you see what I fell in love with that night was the me that is in him a me that I absolutely could not love directly and I tried I had a great therapist one time she was real big on love yourself and she gave me these exercises she told me I want you to stand in front of the mirror I want I want you to look yourself in the eye, and I want you to say, God loves me. God forgives me. God accepts me. I love me. I forgive me.I accept me. God loves... Bullshit. You know, I could have stood there until the planet blew up, and it wouldn't have changed how I felt about myself. But making amends and helping guys just like me started to change the way I felt about myself I guess without realizing it I was attacking the problem from the flank a problem that I could never attack head on I did self-esteem training I did a lot of stuff trying to change the way i felt about my and it wasn't until I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I started to heal my relationships with people through the amends and devote my life to this purpose that my life started to change in here where it really matters. And they admitted that guy to that hospital. They gave him a bed and I'm driving home in the wee hours of the morning and the sun's starting to come up and I'm crying. And I'm not crying because I'm depressed. I'm praying because I don't know that any time in my life, I ever felt more complete, more right about what's going on. and everything, there was a rightness about everything in my life. All of a sudden I had a sense of useful purpose. It was like everything in me started to make sense in the light of what had just happened with this guy. And I started to realize that this is why the old timers have been hammering me to go on 12-step calls because they knew something about me that I didn't know. They knew that even this self-obsessed, narcissistic, self-involved, self-focused, self absorbed person that I was, that if I stayed in that venue long enough, one day something would happen. And what happened that night was I got relieved of the bondage of self. And I think I'd been relieved briefly of it before on a couple occasions, but this night I knew it and I knew that this is my primary first and foremost purpose in being alive this is the good juice here this is what I live for this is what lights me up like alcohol used to light me up and give me a sense of wholeness it's this one of the guys I sponsor he says he talks about 12-step up work and he says, oh yeah, that's the good dope. And I've never found anything else that'll do that for me. And i'll tell you something, I went through most of my life as a kid and into my adult years with a feeling in a sense that I'm missing something. And there were guys guys I went to high school with and worked with, it seemed like everything they touched turned to gold. Like they had extreme luck or something. Everything they did just worked out. They had great relationships with people. Whatever job they had, they just went to the top. They were productive. They laughed a lot. They Were happy. They Were connected to something. And they always were doing very well in life. And some of these guys were We're real stupid. And it didn't seem fair. I mean, it just didn't seem fair to me. I was much more intelligent and aware than these guys. I knew the truth about life. And these guys were happy at a level I was never capable of. And their life clicked and it worked because they knew something I didn't know. They knew that they weren't alive for any other reason except to love other people. I existed to try to serve and fix myself. And my life works today. Alcoholics Anonymous is the first thing that ever gave me a reason and a knowledge of why I'm here. I don't wonder anymore what I'm going to be when I grow up. I don'T wonder anymore who I am. I DON'T wonder any more what my life's about. I know absolutely why I'm here. I know why I've been saved from an alcoholic death So I can help people that are just like me. I can't help everybody but I'm real good with people that sick like I'm sick and If you're if you don't identify with me and a lot of people in a don't I want you to know that there's going to be another speaker coming along that you will identify with because we got a wrench for every nut here i'm telling you we got it reg and in the light of my primary purpose all of a sudden everything in my life makes sense it has usefulness even the worst defects of character become useful for the guy that comes in the door next week that's sick like i am that suffers from some of the things i suffer from see my experience becomes useful to him and I can help him where nobody else can because he is me there's a line in our book it says the alcoholic properly armed with information about himself can help another alcoholic when nobody else came when the psychiatrist can't the The ministers can't, the doctors can't the family members, they really can't. Matter of fact, there's a whole program for people who've been trying. But I can help another alcoholic and in our book and working with others it talks about the angle of approach. It says that we try to place ourselves in the position of the new man and approach him the way we would like to be approached if the tables were turned. You see, every single one of us that have suffered from alcoholism and have recovered has an innate ability given to us by God to go within yourself and go back to the place when you felt exactly like that person felt. And only you, because of your experience, experience, can pull out of yourself exactly what to say and what to do for this guy. Because it's the exact same thing that somebody could say or do for you. And as a result of this, we start to get a sense of community. And one of the great promises of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says that that God will show you how to create the fellowship you crave. I have always craved a fellowship. The loneliness of alcoholism was always within me I've craved to be a part of. I've craving to belong, and I never knew how. And so I discounted it over the years, and I would tell people, I don't need anybody. But inside me, I was dying of loneliness. and Alcoholics Anonymous through this primary purpose has showed me how to create this fellowship I crave. I have a very full life today, it's full of people that are like me, it is full of useful purpose. When I wake up in the morning and I address my creator in the 11th step, I address him knowing exactly what I'm going to do this day and why I'm gonna do it and why I am alive. I'll tell you a quick little story and I'll shut up. 15 years ago, 17 years ago maybe, I was up in Northern California and I was talking at an AA event a little bit like this and it was Sunday afternoon. We had, I had about four or five hours to kill before I had to get on a plane and this guy is taking me around showing me stuff and he takes me to this place There was a forest that had these trees that were 25, 30 feet in diameter. Unbelievable. Some of these trees were hundreds and hundreds of feet high. I walked around that forest feeling like I was in Jurassic Park. It was amazing. I mean, it was just incredible. And after about 20 minutes, we get in this guy's truck and he's going to show me some other stuff. And we're driving along and we're going past these fields and meadows. And he says to me, he says, do you notice how you won't see a 300-foot tree all by itself out in the field? I said, yeah. He said, do You know why that is? I said no, why is that? He said well it is their nature to aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that what happens is when they grow up alone, they literally will outgrow their roots capacity to support themselves. And they'll literally eventually topple over on their own aspired magnificence. They can't grow into their nature. He said what must happen is that they must grow up in community. And they literally intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest and literally feed and support each other. and that allows them in God's plan to grow into their nature. And I thought, oh my God, how like my life that is. You see, I've always had one inherent deadly defect of character and that defect is I'm never satisfied. The defect is, I have always wanted to take bigger bites out of life. I have also always wanted more. I have almost always wanted the feel more and experience more and be more and I've never ever been satisfied like that and alone unto myself that defect all but killed me and then I came to you and I got a sponsor in a home group and I started sponsoring guys and I intertwined the very foundation of my life with yours and you have allowed me to grow into my nature a nature I could not change because it is of me And if I live to be a thousand years old, I will never repay Alcoholics Anonymous for what it has done for me. Thank you for my life.