The Allergic Reaction That Uses Your Own Mind Against You – Bob

We're going to get going here. We've got a couple of preliminaries to cover. Hello, hello. Welcome to the Conscious Contact speaking group. My name is Ron. I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to welcome everybody here. Hopefully we'll have some fun today. We've Got a nice delicious lunch for you guys around 1230. We're gonna do two sessions. Two like one-hour sessions while we smoke break in between each one. We'll do lunch. We'll come back and do a couple more sessions. what else do I got to cover here pretty much that's about it no absolutely no smoking on the church property there is a bucket right across that street please just put the butts into that and the bathroom is down the left down there if you've got to go please try not to be too disruptive we're gonna get going down Adrian and Bob here and enjoy yourself Good morning. My name is Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic. Morning everybody, my name is Adrian Clark, I'm an alcoholic We're going to do about half hour, half hour break half hour lunch about probably an hour about 12-something, 1220, 1230. I'm just curious. Let's open with a prayer. That's a good idea, always a good idea. Amen. I'm curious who's here. How many people are here in their first year? of absolute abstinence free from everything welcome welcome glad you're here how about in your first 30 days wow glad you were here anybody in there tired of us and your last 30 days you know you just left to hear with us i wouldn't admit it you'd be gang 12 stepped here i think How many people have ever been through a day like this of going through the steps? How many feel pretty comfortable with where they're at with the steps. many people would like to grow along those lines that's a comfortable as you thought how many people here have adopted the set of spiritual principles is a way to live from the twelve traditions to reduce your selfishness even more okay well what we're going to try to do i don't at least i i'm not i really shouldn't speak for adrian i'm going to share my experience uh this and try to stay away from the academic side of this there's uh the problem with the academic side is the ego loves knowledge because it grandizes itself into smug superiority with knowledge. But Alcoholics Anonymous is not an academic endeavor. As my grant sponsor Chuck Chamberlain used to say, it's an inside job. It's experiential. In step one, in chapter three, it talks about it differently than you see in the rooms on the walls. It said we learned we had to fully, which fully is like a lot, fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. Here's the problem I had. That's one of the reasons I relapsed for years. I could intellectually admit that I was alcoholic. The evidence was overwhelming. far before I could really, truly inside myself connect the dots and believe it. And it was exemplified by my actions because my words and the chatter in my head was conversations that sounded like I'm really an alcoholic and then watch my feet and I don't act powerless. I'm unsponsorable. It's like thank you for the information. Right? i'm that guy and so consequently uh with a full knowledge intellectually of my condition i continue to drink again and when you really truly don't believe in your innermost self that you have this terminal fatal illness you don't have to put all your chips in the pot here because it's not a matter of life and death a can become an especially can become like a self-help thing where you you do drive-bys through AA to enhance yourself because but it's still a very selfish endeavor right and Alcoholics Anonymous is not a selfish endeavor it's an endeavor towards self-reduction surrender and service so I had a hard time fully conceding to my innermost self that I was an alcoholic I was delusional about a lot of aspects of this disease one of the things that Dr. Silkworth talks about is paramount and I really had to get this not just intellectually but really get it and the only way I get stuff like this is by failure my life in a sense is built on failure and being wrong about a lot of crap isn't that odd that your life would be built an amazing life could be built on being wrong but it makes perfect sense because otherwise there'd be a step that said and when we were right promptly admitted it i've never known anybody grow by being right but i've changed the world that i live in by being wrong and one of the things that i that was so hard for me to to get because i didn't want to get it when it says in chapter three that most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. I didn't want to do that. I'm an alcoholic sort of. Or even after five, six treatment centers where I've been intellectually bludgeoned into a knowledge that I'm alcoholic, even then I'm alcoholic but I'm a special kind of alcoholic. My case is different. I don't have to do what you people do. I Don't have To Be Sponsored. I Don'T Have To Be Accountable. I don't have to seek God. I don'T HAVE TO HUMBLE MYSELF CONTINUALLY WITH THESE HUMBLING ACTIONS WE DO IN A.A., THE AMENDS, HUMPLING ACTIVITIES. DEVOTING YOUR LIFE TO HELPING OTHERS EVEN WHEN IT'S INCONVENIENT. TOUGH STUFF IF YOU'RE SELF-INVOLVED. SO FIRST OF ALL, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT WAS TO BE AN ALCOHOLIC. And then a thing happens sometimes when the truth about my condition presented in Alcoholics Anonymous actually does a head-on collision with my condition. And what that means is year after year of trying to control and enjoy my drinking and failing, I started to understand a few things about myself. That this thing that Silkworth talks about, that defines us, that it really was true for me. And yet it's odd, I went for years and years and couldn't see it, that I have this allergic reaction to alcohol. And he said that this allergy, unlike a lot of allergies, doesn't manifest itself in hives or a breakout in the runny nose or any of that stuff, it manifests itself in a phenomenon of craving. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that every single time I've drank alcohol, regardless of what I fancied my real problem was, my real problems are my emotions, my real problemas are my mental illness, my real troubles are heroin, my real trouble is speed, my real problema is coke, whatever I fancy my real probem is, if I drink alcohol, a consistency occurs as the effect of the alcohol starts to hit me and I get that feeling I break out this irresistible yearning for more I've always had that and yet I could never see it because of the way that this disease will use your own mind against you there's a test in the big book actually in the last couple years I think it's a good test I started recommending I was afraid to recommend it for decades here because I don't know what if they get hurt the test is if you don't think you're an alcoholic you think we're full of crap okay let's let's find out I think you're better off knowing let's go to the nearest bar room let's try to some control drinking let's drink and then stop abruptly well on paper that looks like a good test unless you have the same kind of mind I have because if I'm gonna go okay I'm going to go down here to this bar and I'm I'm going to go in there, and I'm going to see if I've got this phenomenal craving. I don't think I do. I mean, I get in trouble for God's sakes. I know that. But I'm just going to have two drinks since it's only two doubles. Two double drinks, two doubles, and then I've gotta shut her down and I gotta go home. I can't smoke nothing, take nothing, nothing. Can't switch to beer, nothing, two drinks, that's it. Well, if you're like me, when you start into that second drink, it'll start to become very apparent that this is a bad test day. Because there'd be some girl on the bar, a member of the opposite sex that you'd look at and go, oh my God, that could be my soulmate. I can't leave now. Or that game is on. I didn't know that game was on. I can's't leave while that game's on. Or Joe just walked in. Joe's got some good stuff to smoke. I've got to have a drink with Joe. It's a bad test day. Tomorrow would be a better test day, and I don't understand that when I initiate alcohol into my system, it creates a craving that uses my own mind against me. And here's the sad part. I think the next drink's my idea. I don'T know what's happening to me. it looks to me like it's my idea and I am being punked out by an allergic reaction to alcohol time and time and again and I can't see the cause of effect because of my ability to justify everything I yearn and crave for so I can't but I started to see it I start to see it the only way guys like they can see it is you try and you fail and you try and you fail. And I started to understand, did I have that thing that you guys in AA talk about? I didn't think I had it, but I haven't. I can't pick up the first drink. For me to pick up a drink is like having sex with a gorilla. I ain't done until the gorilla's done. It's a bad deal. I cannot take the first drink. And I think the knowledge of that is going to save me because my ego always believed that it would find power and knowledge and information. And so puffed up with the real knowledge that I must, must not take the first drink or anything, any other substance that does that thing for me because if it does that things for me it's going to do that thing to me. So puffed up with that and coupled with I've really hurt myself a lot and I get it, I get and a sincere determined intention of never picking it up I think I'm out of the woods And in actuality, I entered into the worst, most horrific years of my life. The years of swearing to myself time and time again and meaning it. I'm never going to touch that stuff. And I go back to it again. And I don't think it's, it can't be alcoholism. I must have some kind of mental illness or something. And if you go to a psychiatrist looking for a diagnosis, a funny thing happens. You get one. go to a hair you could go to a barber shop you're probably going to get a haircut I mean it's just like that and it's so I get these multiple diagnoses and multiple treatments and medications and everything the problem is I may get a little bit of relief from that stuff initially but I'm always back to being me again and here's the real problem granted I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol but what I don't see is I have this abnormal reaction to abstinence that abstinance slowly and incrementally drives me insane and Silkworth starts to talk about it in the doctor's opinion when he describes guys like me when we quit drinking when he says that we become restless irritable and discontented and we all kind of know what that is sort of, you know that restlessness there's probably people sitting here today that you can't imagine sitting here all day matter of fact I mean you just can't imagine it it's like every 20 minutes you're looking at your watch it's Like when's the man going to stop you know because you get this There's this feeling that would have come over me, like wherever I am. I kind of need to be somewhere else. Where is that, Bob? I don't know, but it's not here. I'm irritable. I don' t know I'm irritable, but I'm on the muscle with people all the time. You can't talk to me. People walk on eggshells around me because I'm an asshole, right? Because I'm uptight all the times. I'm on the defensive all the time. I'm judgmental. I don't think I'm irritable. I think I just see how stupid people are clearly. That's what it looks like to me. And because I'm restless, I need to straighten them out and tell them what's wrong with them, which puts you in the position... And some of you probably have noticed this or felt this at times. Do you ever get that sense that everybody's going to be happier after you leave. And I'm always the guy that's leaving. So I'm restless, I'm irritable and I'm chronically malcontent. I've got a hole inside my being that nothing, nothing will fill up. Nothing. And it's not from a lack of trying. There's not enough sex, there's not enough money there's not enough prestige there's not enough self-grandizement there's not enough getting enough people to think i'm wonderful because first of all if you're an egomaniac with an inferiority complex which means it's not so much your piece of whale crap you're very special piece of whalecrap if i get you to really love me or adore me i immediately lose respect for you Do you know what I'm saying? You're stupid. You know what I mean? It's like in a real life, I get hooked up with these girls that adore me. And the minute I realize they adore me, it's like, ooh. God, I don't want to be with them. I need some, I need a girlfriend that has taste. You know what I mean, right? You know what I was saying, right? That's a funny dynamic, really. It's kind of, it's a bad deal, really. so I'm restless, irritable and I'm chronically malcontent yet I'm desperate it's a vacancy driven disease the book says we're driven by 100 forms of fear fear of this whatever thing I've targeted I'm not going to get it or I'm going to lose it fear of what you think of me fear of my past catching up with me remorse and guilt and shame or forms of fear the apprehension I wake up with in the morning sometimes don't understand why, what are you afraid of Bob? I don't know everything, nothing I heard a guy in AA describe it, he said it's a feeling of impending doom sometimes nothing would even happen to me, I'd just wake up with that apprehension you know like when you like that you got to stay on high alert all day long do you ever notice if you go out the door in the morning afraid that crap's going to happen you become like a magnet for crap to happen it's a funny dynamic do you every go do you work on a job and suspect that somebody there doesn't like you you don't say nothing but you go to work just thinking that every day you go to worksuspecting someone doesn't like you every day eventually they're not going to like you it's a it's a weird interaction and so I'm all of these things and it's my what's the truth is my very chi my very spirit my very being is getting sicker and sicker and you know so I watch I've watched guys with 15 years of sobriety 20 years 10 years 12 years blow their brains out because they've spent a decade trying to stuff everything into that hole they could stuff and they're still them and what do you do when you have everything you've ever wanted and the shine has worn off all of it and you can't stand yourself and all of a sudden everything you are is right there and you don't know what's going on and you just can't drink there's no relief in the bottle That's why I think a lot of us start thinking about killing ourselves. Sober. I've had so many people I've known over the years, and most of the people I know that they kill themselves, they don't do it when they're down and out. They do it after they have everything they want. Out here but not in here. And if we don't know anything, we should know this from our own experience is that no matter how good you get it out here, if there ain't no good in here, it's no good. That's why the delusion, the third delusion in the big book is so right on the money that we're victims of this delusion that we could wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if we only manage well. The reason it's a delusion for God's sakes nobody's ever tried harder to make themselves happy and satisfied as we have. Nobody's ever worked harder, spent more money more obsessive focus and energy on making ourselves happy and satisfied because I'm obsessed with me no one could ever be more into that than I was and the end result is in 1978 I'm trying to take my own life as a result of years of my very, very best best, best efforts so I drink and I get sick I stop drinking and I get sick and I think that's the difference between me a chronic alcoholic that Dr. Silkworth talks about and the problem hard drinker or you could say the acute alcoholic the acute alcoholic has a terrible drug and alcohol problem terrible, terrible, life threatening but their problem ends where the bag in the bottle ends and they get sober and they're fine I grew up with guys like that I had a buddy I used to run with we got busted together we did drugs together, we drank together if you looked at him and you looked AT me you might even someday think he's worse than I am Yet he fell in love. This girl didn't want him partying anymore, and he just did the most amazing thing you've ever seen. He just stopped. He didn't go crazy when he stopped. He didn'T instantaneously realize what was wrong with everyone. He didn' t suffer from depression and extreme bouts of anxiety when he stopped. After an adjustment period, detox adjustment period he returned to normal living became very successful not me I'm not that guy I have chronic alcoholism and so the problem that I face is not the bag in the bottle it's what drives me so insane I go back to it I have a sobriety problem and if I don't fix that end of the equation the other end of the equation is automatic that I will eventually pick up a drink and then there's no circumventing the cause and effect of the physical allergy you could be sober 50 years and pick up a drink and it waits for you and actually I saw a guy with 45 years sober pick up a drink he was dead within 6 months so I am in a trap, as my grant sponsor used to say, I'm in a trap I can't spring. Abstinence is unbearable and drunkenness has turned on me and I don't understand why. Why can't I get high like I got high when I was 20 years old for God's sakes? I see other people doing it. Other people are getting lit up man, they're partying like I used a party why can't I do that but you know there's never been it there's never been an instance of an alcoholic who crosses over that line that's ever being able to get back on the other side of it the progressive nature this disease is an indomitable and the book says something very interesting it says over any considerable period even while I'm in this room and sober little over 38 years the disease it's almost like it's in another dimension it's progressing and getting stronger just hoping waiting patiently for an opportunity i pick up that drip and you know how you know that watch stay sober long enough to watch people get sober and go out after 10 years they they don't pick up where they left off if they did they'd have a chance but the problem is is the disease has progressed, and it's upped the ante. And so it demands, it's more insatiable now. What you used to be able to do to stay sober your first ten years is nothing now. The disease is stronger. You're bringing a knife to a gunfight here. And that's why I've watched guys who drink after double-digit sobriety, and then they relapse themselves in and out of AA until they kill themselves. And they don't understand what's happening because they think they're doing AA because they're dealing with AA and they're not doing what got them the first 10 years. But the disease doesn't care. And you know what I think progresses? The core, the root. The root of our sickness is what grows and festers and gets bigger and that's this ego. If you've ever tried to work with someone who drinks after 15 or 20 years, they're the I know people. You know, you can't talk to them. You know you try to say, yeah I know, I know. Well intellectually they do but intellectual knowledge is shallow and meaningless. It's not innermost self stuff. They know intellectually, they have memories of being sober for 10 years for God's sakes. They can quote the big book. I've seen some of the most amazing big book technicians drink again Oh that and they're hilarious But they'll stagger into a meeting and just start reciting chapter 5 while they're drunk. I mean, they're just it's like It's a joy. It really is it's a joke they're hard they're hard to surrender because the ego is more and more defended and more and more justified and it's tough it's a tough tough thing and i am i have what those people who drink again after many many years i have what they have so if i do what they do i'll probably get what they get alcoholism is a funny thing you know the book talks in the progressiveness of the book it talks about we have these periods usually brief where we get an illusion we're gaining control well i think that's in our sobriety where where you're all of a sudden you're 10 years sober and now you're not going to the meetings you used to go to and you don't have a sponsor. You've got one in name only because you've got to have one to have bragging rights to have a sponsor, but you don' t talk to him because you're at the helm of your ship. You might call him up every once in a while after you go through something to tell him what you did because he might need that knowledge someday. But you're unsponsorable. You're unsurrendered. You don't have commitments anymore. You' re not helping others. You''re helping yourself. You're helping yourself because the selfishness and self-centeredness has come back like gangbusters, like gang busters. And the problem is you don't know it, do you? I've gotten really, really sick in my abstinence where I was obsessed with my money, my gratification, me, me. Me, me and I to the extent that I well. it's not that I would actually lie I just would take a little creative license with the truth on occasion because the truth might upset you you might judge me if I told you the whole story and you know what I discovered all the guys I sponsor it's all like this inevitably we don't lie because we're liars, we lie because we're scared and we don'T know we're scared I'm afraid of what you're going to think of me. I'm worried about what you'll say to me. I'm scared that you're afraid you're gonna reject me. I'm gonna, I'm a friend. You're gonna leave me. I'm not afraid you can have it. We're gonna have a confrontation. I have a problem here. I get scared and I lie. But fear is really the motivator for all that stuff. So I get sober and I'm up against me. And that's the problem. And I came in here a wannabe atheist. I'm not really an atheist. I've known some real atheists. You have to be very passionate religious about your atheism to be a good atheist. I am just a guy who's ambivalent and scared of God, and I never liked authority figures anyway. You know, and besides, if there is a God, he's got my job. You know what I'm saying? Because if somebody's going to be God here, hey, hey. Right. I'm the smartest guy on the planet. It should be me. And I was actually fortunate in that because when this thing broke me and I tried to take my own life and I was at that state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I was like a child who I knew one thing. I knew then. I used to know a lot, but when I got sober in 78, I knew One Thing. I knew I didn't know. I knew it. I knew that I'd been wrong about everything. I didn'T trust my own judgments anymore, my own perceptions. I'd BEEN SO WRONG and I'd been relapsing for over a half dozen years and I just tried to kill myself as a result of my best efforts to fix me right I knew I didn't know and that from the place of knowing you don't know boy the whole world opens up to you God's available even if you could even come in here not sure that there's a God and if you can get small enough God will come into your life if you can get small enough the problem with this loneliness and this depression and this anxiety that I am disconnected from life itself because there's too much of me between me and life I'm disconnected from you that's why alcoholism is such a lonely business because there is too much OF ME between me AND YOU and there is TOO MUCH OF ME BETWEEN ME AND GOD when I tried to kill myself in 1978 it didn't feel like alcoholism it felt like I was dying of loneliness because I don't know what the hell is wrong with me but I I don' t belong anywhere I don''t fit anywhere drunk and I don'T fit anywhere sober and I DON' T KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME BUT I CAN'T GO ON LIKE THIS AND THERE IS NO MORE RELIEF IN THE BAG AND THE BOTTLE it doesn't set me free anymore and I didn't if you would have asked me I could have told you do you feel free Bob I'd go no but I didn' t know what I was hostage to the bondage of self I didn''t know that alcohol freed me from the bondages of self at one time alcohol is the most effective and immediate treatment for the spiritual malady of alcoholism i've ever ever known but when it turns on you it never turns back and that's the that's the worst thing of all i'll sell my soul i'll burn my life to the ground i'll break the hearts of everyone that ever cared about me or loved me in the pursuit of a party and then when there's nothing left of me then alcoholism does the worst thing of all it pulls the plug and now i can't even get free from drinking it anymore and i know what it's like to drink in depression and loneliness go on crying jags feel sorry for yourself and yearn obsessively with the good old days and wondering why I can't jumpstart them. But once you cross that line, you can't cross back over. So I come to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978 and I came here broken and surrendered by the bottle which is a temporary window of ego reduction at depth. The problem with that is it doesn't last. The ego grows back like a bad tumor, you know what I'm saying? It's just, oh, it's hideous and as it grows back if you're like me you won't know that it's grown back because it's smart. You don't pick up little quotes from the book. It'll pick up the little things in AA, you You know, like, how come you didn't make your commitment the other night? Easy does it. Easy does It. Easy does IT. You got to stop chasing those new girls. Hey, you're not supposed to be the arbiter of my sex conduct. Right? You know what I mean? The ego's quick, isn't it? It's quicker than I am. It grabs that stuff, man. Oh, yeah. Isn't it... I think it's pathetic that I'm so sick inside that I'll use the very principles of a program that saves my life to self-grandize and self-gratify me. But there is no end to the hypocrisy of alcoholism. So I had to come here and start taking some actions of self-reduction in order to find God. and that's really what this book is about its main object is to give me a set of actions that don't even look like they're God seeking actions they look like they're humbling embarrassing actions they look likes they're inconvenient actions and yet they're designed to make me small enough to find you and to find God and somewhere even find myself and that's not so bad take me off the hook everybody my name is Adrian I'm an alcoholic I've been sober from February 18th 1935 just checking to see if you were still awake I look pretty good for my age though right I see a lot of highlighters on the tables fluorescent highlighters I'm just hoping you're not huffing them by the end of this talk we'll sound better if you do oh my god and you know I'm thinking I'm listening to what Bob's saying and I'm looking at the highlighters it's bringing me back all my experiences and stuff And I think from about the second year of my sobriety until about the 10th year of my sobrietty, I would have called myself a AA technician, you know. Damn did I sound good at meetings, you know. I had all the information from all the best speakers and, you know, listening to their tips and going to these conferences. And, you know, it was something that I had to go through. It's a very valuable part of my journey. it really wasn't I'm glad I went through that I'm glad I stayed alive and came through it you know I think information it's powerful but it's only potentially powerful you know it's what I kind of do with it and I think you know the longer I've been doing this I think the less information I actually need to do you know I mean I think the more power that's come into my life you know the less I can and need I mean I had 20 different worksheets for each step I mean it was like a sponsor I mean you did not want me sponsoring you you were gonna be working out spiritually so you were we were doing everything we could in our bar to find out if you were alcoholic or not and if you weren't that'd be sitting across the chair looking at you like that you know I mean it was just crazy so it was and thank God I've loosened up a little bit you You know, what I do now with people is just sit down and read the book as it says, word for word. The whole book, share my experience, get them to share their experience. And I think that's, you know, I don't even think I take notes anymore. Maybe occasionally I do. You know Bob kicked us off with a first step here today. You know this is the most important stuff right here. I mean we're not going anywhere without the first step. We're really not. And, you know, experiences are coming to me as Bob was talking. You know, I had breakfast with a guy yesterday who he just celebrated a year. But he had 11th, you now. I used to sponsor this guy and he got sober when he was young. And he spent over a decade in Alcoholics Anonymous doing what a lot of people do. But not really making that inner, conceding to our innermost selves like it talks about in the first step here. He spent over a decade in Alcoholics Anonymous and he never truly believed that himself. And I think a lot of people do that. I hear it all the time at meetings. One of the things that scares me most at meetings, and sometimes I approach these people after they share this, you know, I've been around here six years or I've Been Around Here Eight Years or I'Ve Been Around Here Ten Years, and I'm not really sure if I'm an alcoholic or not. and they may not be in a lot of them a lot of them may not beat but a lot of them are and what that tells me is if you are you haven't really took in this first step it you haven t really conceded to yourself your hopelessness and your powerlessness that you can't do this job by yourself and I mean if you're an alcoholic who's not sure of your alcoholic or not I mean eventually you're going to take the test if you're an alcoholic who's not sure if they're alcoholic or not and hasn't really started on a spiritual journey through this work here you're just on vacation from the booze you really are it could be a 20-year vacation it could be a 10-year vacations it could a six month vacation for me it generally wasn't long i mean i'm a relapser and you know what i can't even call it a relapse i think a relap is when someone comes in here probably gets well and stops doing the things that got them well and in fact I never came in here and got well I came in here and sat at the back and I judged everybody and I criticized everybody and and I didn't know I didn' know what alcoholism was I didn''t know what an alcoholic was how can you be controlled by an illness I would say I was controlled by alcoholism for 14-15 years in that cycle every day that vicious cycle where I don't get sick when I drink my progressions took me I get really sick I mean it's sloppy it's it's terrible it's horrible for me it's terrible for everybody around me and when I'm not drinking the depressions and the sadness and that crush and loneliness and that gets me really sick as well I mean how can you be in something like that and not actually know what it is not actually know what and I watched this kid for over a decade like this and I try to work with him and he done step work and he had commitments and he got everything and and he came to me before he went back drinking again and he says you know man the obsession is on me and i know what that language means the obsession's on me it's like a hungry stray cat that jumps up onto your lap right and then it jumps onto your shoulder and it won't go away until it gets fed and when you're in that part of it right there i mean that's hard you can work with anybody you can do whatever you can tell them to go to me but when that's wiggled its way back in again it's hard to shake that off again and then he did and he went back drinking again because he never believed he was alcoholic and i'd done it many many times the difference between me and him was that he had over a decade in here i could never get that time together but i never believed that i was truly an alcoholic sitting in these seats and he went he drank again and you know nearly lost the job and you knew all the manifestations and the consequences of the illness that came along with it you know he pretty much done it all and i said what happened and he said man the first night i went into your bar he said i had 100 bucks in my pocket it went like that and he said I started to listen to you in my head and other people that I'd known on Alcoholics Anonymous and parts of the big book while he's standing drinking in the bar realizing wow I actually do have that physical allergy that Silkworth's talking about. I got it and he says it proved to me that I had it. He said after that hundred bucks was going bang ATM and the ATM was cleaned out within a few months and this guy had a decent job salary everything it was gone you know and he's back with us and you know I'm glad he's but he's struggling he's struggling to get back that's one of the things I talk to two guys about when I'm doing the first step with them is that you know if I was playing football out in the street today and I'm talking real football not that stuff you play over here with an egg you know you actually play up with a ball you know three Three hundred and fifty pound men wearing tight pants, real football. And you know, Bob comes slagging in and tackles me and breaks my leg, and I'm like, ah! And you ship me up on a stretcher and bring me to the local hospital, and they put me up on the x-ray machine, and you see that I've cracked my fibula, and it's actually done that playing football, and its pretty sore, and then they put a cast on it or whatever and put pins and plates and everything in there. See, if you brought me into the local bar here today at almost 16 years of sobriety and I sat down at the bar and ordered my drink, which would probably be a couple of beers and then I'd be on the shorts like right away after that. I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't. And I think that's part of the powerless feature of alcoholism that I don' t know what' s going to hap pen when I pick up a drink. I really do' n't. The only thing that I know is that there's going to be another drink. Why? Because I have this thing inside of me. I have it at 10 years sober, I have at 5 years sober. It's just a daily reprieve that if I put that alcohol in my body that something's going happen within me that doesn't happen to my fellow out there on the street. It doesn't happened to my sister. It doesn' t happen to any of my sisters. That there's something happens in my body, there's an excitement that happens in my bod,y that my mind can't shut off. Silkworth talks about it, alcoholics drink essentially because they like the elusive effect produced by alcohol you know my mind's not powerful enough to shut it off it doesn't matter if my mom's landing in the hospital sick my girlfriend's getting ready to have my baby I gotta be at work the next day and I could never understand that part of my alcoholism I could ever understand why my boss would drop me off on a Friday and he'd say Adrian I've paid you already to come in tomorrow I need you here, you better come in I'm depending on you. And I'm, no problem. And I go into the bar and I have two drinks because I'm only going in for two and it's midnight and I'm looking at the little red digits behind the bar on the clock and going, you know what? I'll be out of here by four and I'll been in the shower by five and I'd be waiting on my lift by six and you know happens there. I mean, you're laughing for identification, right? But if I done that today in the local bar here and went in there and put that alcohol in my body you bring me over to the hospital and put me up on an x-ray machine they got some groovy machines now that can see into everything you can't detect that in me but it's still there and that's why the 12th step and working with others is so important in this fellowship, it really is, I need to hear that that's my connection to the first step right there knowing that that's possible and that that still happens to me And I've been through periods in here, too, through spirituality and different things where we start to think I'm maybe above this or beyond this. You know, I feel so blessed to be sitting in here this morning with you guys. I just feel blessed to have been sober the length of time that I have, guys, because I'm surprised any of us stay sober. I really am. You know? I've done everything despite myself not to. I really haven't. And, you know, I think when alcoholism really got me by the throat, you know I was looking away long before I stopped drinking. You know I had suicidal ideation many, many years. And I remember actually coming to that jumping off place that it's talking about in here where I couldn't, I just couldn't imagine life without drinking. And I'm running out of time and I remember just sobbing one night as I'm like putting the pills down my throat, laying on my house, trying to end it all. I really wanted the end of it all, I'm sobbing and that's a lonely place to be guys where the drink doesn't work anymore and you've just burnt your life to the ground like it talks about, you know your problems pile up on you and they become astonishingly difficult to solve you can't solve the relationship problems anymore you can'T solve the work problems I mean you go drinking on a Thursday and you know you're coming out of it on a Monday you got problems Tuesday You know, you've got problems with your employers. You've got problem with your debt collectors, your parents, your family, everybody. And that's where my life was in a cycle for over a decade. And I can't do it anymore and I'm running out of time. And I found myself pushing these pills down my throat and looking back on that dark period of my life that was probably the lowest place that alcoholism ever brought me and I still did not want to stop. Didn't want to do it. I mean, you're burning your life to the ground. You're trying to take your own life and you still don't want to stop. What is that all about? I mean, that's a vicious thing, isn't it? And I remember coming out of that psych ward and that obsession happening to me. The day that I got out of the psych ward, walking back into the bar where that whole drunken bout started four or five days earlier, where the whole session had started, and walking back in to that bar and taking the wrist bracelet off and thinking, you know, at least the thought of suicide is not on me anymore. Doing okay. you know, crumpling it up and throwing it into the ice tray and I'll have a Dublin, off you go again. And everybody's worried about you, everybody's concerned about you. I remember lying on a priest's floor, little Irish priest, Father Friel, and he hit me right between the eyes. He said, how much do you drink? And I shaved it down quite a bit. And he said, what, how often do you drank that? He says, well, you're an alcoholic, son, you need to go to recovery. And I remember hearing those words recovery and going, oh my God, not those Jesus freaks. Because that's what I had built up in my head. You know? And I found about another four or five years to drink that way. And I'm a guy that just wouldn't lie down. And I'd come to the meetings and I'd sit at the back and, you know, I'd hear them talk about God. And I've been like, oh my God, here we go again here. You know, because I just had a screwed perception of life. You know. It tells me, you Know, I'm going to roll it on because I know Bob really covered the first step here. And I just wanted to kind of show a little bit about my alcoholism. I mean, what do you do? You get this thing. I mean we're laughing. we're identifying I mean what do you do you got this thing um you hear them talk on Alcoholics Anonymous and I can't put the pieces together I really just can't pull it together that I'm alcoholic but I know one thing every time I go back drinking again what they say in AA is so true a head full of AA and a belly full of beer is a tough place to be that affects your drinking in a way that it's just never the same again the party is well over but I just still gotta put the alcohol in my body to take that feeling away and my last drink just proved my whole alcoholism the whole cycle to me what my life looked like up until that point was I was showing up for work Tuesday or Wednesday that's when my work week started I'd went through every job that I had before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous my brother-in-law give me a job so he headed his company and I would not come in Monday Tuesday I'd come in Wednesday I'd start fighting with him I'd offer him off the job to fight you know my other brother-and-law got me a job in the company that he worked for the first day I showed up I thought you what this is not for me just turned and walked right back out the door again i mean i'm just going through everybody and everything and i show up in alcoholics anonymous guys and i'm i'm in a night and people are trying to help me and what would happen in my drinking sessions is all i could think about was alcoholics synonymous and a voice inside of me telling me you need to go back there you got to go backwards and that voice became louder until the point guys in my last my last drunk just summed the whole thing up for me it wasn't my worst by a long shot but again I'd started my work week on Wednesday went and picked up my two days pay and I got a phone call from my friend Freddy and he said you uh you going out for a drink and I said no I'm off it I'm not drinking anymore and that had became such a joke you know the guys that I would work with on the job would have bets on me you know you know lay odds to see what day I would break when I would promise everybody that it wasn't drinking. And he planted the seed in my head, he was going out drinking that night and I swore off it. I had my whole weekend planned out, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm going to do this, I'll play a football match tomorrow you know. I have my whole week and planned out and that thought just boom. Maybe you should call around and see your friend before he goes out. Maybe he should bring some money with him anyway. And I called around to his house and I sat in his house with him and he walked out of his kitchen and he handed me a beer and i said no i'm off it i'm done with it and he took the beer back off me and he walk that into the kitchen and he came back in with a glass of vodka and said here and i thought well you know what are we vodka can't harm harm me and off i went guys again and i come out of that you know it was a weekend to black i mean i'm the kind of guy when i'm drinking guys i get three hangovers in the same day you know right you do too right i mean you know you get your 4 a.m hangover you know and then you get to read am hang over at the after hours and then i mean that's what my life had became and i remember coming out of a blackout at the end of that drink and you know i'm gonna i'm in a fight outside this club and this dude's nose is just like plastered all over his face and his girlfriend's screaming and she's scraping the face of me and I don't know what happened. I don' t know, but I know I'm in that place again. I'm a friend. He dragged me away and he brought me to this after hours on the other side of Belfast. And my whole energy and my thinking and everything started to change on the way to that after hours. And we walked into that after hours and we stood at the bar and we got two drinks and I just sobered up guys. And what sobered me up was I got hit in the head with a bottle I don't know what direction it came from I don' t even know if it was meant for me I mean this was a shady after hours guys I mean there was no windows in the place It was a cinder block building With iron doors You know I mean it was You know you didn't pay and you're waiting You know It was just you know These are the places that I ended up drinking And I got cracked on the head with that bottle that night And the drink that I was drinking I put it on the bar after I finished it and that's the last drink I ever had something come over I'm a guy that you know like most of us started drinking for fun at the beginning of my drinking one night awake running around the fields of Ireland drinking bottles of cider having fun with the girls and I ended up a daily drinker you know I mean I just couldn't I put it down I mean i really couldn't and I come from a society of people that are daily drinkers i mean i come from the north of ireland belfast i mean drinking is just you know you're probably wondering why i'm why i am in this country when i quit drinking they didn't trust me anymore and shipped me out here you know he sent me to america i mean you know i was i was home a while back and i was walking down the road that i grew up on past the hospital that i spent many times in the psych ward part of it the the emergency room the you know I'm a hospital guy when i drink i mean i just gotta visit the hospital at four o'clock in the morning whether it's for a tetanus injection staples you know for a nurse that i met i gotta be a nerd you know what i mean and uh we're walking past the hospital and my nephew brought something to my attention that i had never realized before because it made perfect sense to me he goes don't you think it's crazy that we have a bar in our hospital the Royal Victoria Hospital has a bar right by the psych ward and I just started laughing and he goes what are you laughing at I said oh that makes perfect sense to me you know so I kind of come I come from this culture of drinkers and uh you know I think some kind of love or something came from the universe or the multi universes or whatever that night but I did not want to drink anymore and the guy that was with me i had told him that many times and you know it was a joke he didn't he's my best friend he didn t even want to listen to me anymore nobody did my dad didn't my mom didn't everybody was just sick of me and and i knew and said myself that night that i was serious about what i was thinking and what i was saying some kind of power or greatness came from somewhere and i don't realize what's going on at the time i really don't but i started to plan in my head already what i was going to do i'm going to go back to that alcoholics and i was serious about it i couldn't you know it's really hard to put into words what happened and i went home that night and i went into a little bedroom that i would stand a little eight by four closet at the front of my mother's house with a little soccer bed clothes that i'm living in at 26 years of age an absolute winner you know the rest of the family have moved on you know they're uh you You know, my sisters were hitting grand slams, doing great things in the world. My brothers immigrated to America and I'm stuck right underneath my mom and dad's feet and their hearts broke with me. You know my, I think many things have brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous but the tears from my mother and father are definitely the things that were in the forefront of my mind when I made the decision to come back to Alcoholic Anonymous and not just that, that night what happened to me guys, something happened, my mind's eye was just like a reedle kept spinning and spinning and spinning of all the people that I'd hurt in my life. All the people that I had ripped off. I mean, if you hung out with me for long enough, you would have lost respect for me. You know? And I got down on my knees that night. And I don't know why because I've never been a super religious person. I really haven't. But at the back of my mind and in the back of all my cunningness and craftiness, I've always been afraid not to believe in God. Just in case there is one like, you know? I mean... You know, you want cover all bases and i get on you know i get on my knees that night and i you know i said if there's a god there you know i really need you to help me right now i really need you to come to me and i had this feeling that come over me that everything was going to be okay and i remember looking at myself in the mirror that morning and i was just i mean i'm tore up my face physically and my eyes are yellow and red and you know i'm like i'm 26 and how did i get to this place and the next day you know I recuperated and got my game together and you know didn't say anything to anybody and that monday night you know i got a phone call i gota phone call from a friend that i actually just spent some time with in ireland there two weeks ago and uh you know there was talk in his office that he'd worked in that my name was being mentioned of what happened at that club that night you know some people would get really badly hurt and stuff and he said what happened dude what did you do and i said i don't know i don t want to know i'll take the repercussions of whatever happened. I'll pay the price for it, but it's never happening again. And I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous that night. So when you get the Alcoholics Anonymous, I mean, alright, we'll have our story and everything, but what do you do? You know, this second step, and I'm going to start it off here, and then I'm gonna give it back to Bob. You know this second step, it's something that's confused me. I mean we admitted we were partless over alcohol that our lives have become unmanageable. Alright, I got the first part of that done when it came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't have the second part done, really didn't. I think it probably took me five years in Alcoholics Anonymous making mistake after mistake, running my life the way I wanted to run it before I even had an idea what the second part of the first step was talking about. I had to really get in touch with my own madness. Five years in AA going, oh boy, what's going on here? Why do I want to kill myself again for? I mean, I'm going to meetings. I've done four steps. I've made amends. I'm sponsoring guys. But what do I want to kill myself again for? And I think for my first five years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I hadn't got a clue about the second step. And it just shows you how powerful God really is. I mean I don't have a clue about what's going on in the second steps. I got connected to a little bit of power that they're talking about in here. I mean i have to find a power, right? I mean what's that look like? See, I am still running on my own beliefs. I'm still running on my own prejudices. I've gotten everything that I thought that I could ever want that was going to make me better and fix that hole. In Alcoholics Anonymous, at five years sober, I've moved back to America. I've been married. That's over. I have a daughter. Living in a nice place. I'm making six figures a year, and I want to kill myself. And I think a lot of people get confused and think the second step's a very complicated thing, but I think it's the most easiest step in the whole process. So easy that I think it's probably the only step that I didn't take. It just happened. It just happens. And I don't know how it happened or when it happened, but all the second steps really asking me to do is to change my mind. That's the easy part. The hard part is it's asking me to change it about everything. But the beauty behind that is I don't have to change it all at once. In fact, I don' t really have to do much. Once I got that first step done and made that connection, and I don''t even think I made that connexion. It just happened in the first step. There was smoke coming out of my heels and I wanted to do Alcoholics Anonymous. Really wanted to do it. And taking the actions in AlcoholicsAnonymous kept me here long enough until I really started to feel the nip of the ringer of what it's talking about in the second part of that first step, my unmanageable life. Because secretly at five years sober I wanted the end of it all. Secretly at five years sober I thought yous were all full of it. Even the speakers and stuff that I was listening to they were talking about how happy they were. People in my home group were talking about how happy they were and I'm like there's no way. That's impossible. Because see when I'm sick everybody else looks like they're full of it. You know? And I'm thinking about medication and it's talking about there's basically two doors here. You know, to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. I have such a powerful ego that's so ground in it's always looking for a third door. It's always looking for the third door, whether it be medication, whether it be professional health, anything but go deeper and find this power. And as five-year sober guys, you know, I'm at a crossroads. And I've made it long enough in here to know that, okay, I'm alcoholic and stuff, and I found out different things. You know, and I was a technician from, like I said, from two years to five years, but I'm not finding the power through the mechanics of this program. I'm that finding it. That will never, information will never get me the power that I need here. There's only one thing that will ever give me the power that they're talking about here, and that is action. Action to do the two most difficult things that I have to do in my life. They've always been the most difficult, and still are at times difficult for me. One is make commitments and long-term commitments. And the other is nurture long-time relationships. I don't seem to be good at either of them. And if you look at people in Alcoholics Anonymous, even if they're not sitting talking about God and talking about the great experiences and stuff that they've had, if they are showing up for their home group early, putting out the chairs, doing all that stuff, you know people that really annoy you people that do lots of service you know you know you're you know I do it like you're sitting there and some girl you know sitting in a little flowery dress talking about her spiritual experiences and how much services but she doesn't mean that just hurts me you know why because they've got power in their life they've kept power and anybody that's been around here for a long time has power in the left you know that's been able to get up and go to work every morning i mean that's success right there for a guy like me to waking up on my bed every morning and be able to get up out of bed and look forward to the day that's the power they're talking about here because i was never able to do that i really wasn't and um i'm gonna let bob take over from there are we going for a break I'm Bob Nowkolek. The Irish sent us Adrian, but we sent them crack cocaine and McDonald's. Let's take an 11-minute, 14-second break. Please remember that we can't smoke anywhere on the church property There's a can across the street Take a little break and meet you back in here There is a donation basket Bucket in the back on the table We will pass the baskets I've got to do that ahead of time Thank you.