The Delusion That We Are Now Like Other People – Bob D.

My name is Bob Darrell, and I am alcoholic. And I am sober today only through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in, that I have accessed and maintained in my life through the principles in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, an ability to remain reasonably sponsorable, and a persistent, consistent effort in the primary purpose of helping other drunks. And consequently, I haven't had a drink or any medication, mind-altering substance since October 31st, 1978. And for that, I owe. And not so much for the abstinence, it's for the freedom. Because abstinENCE without freedom drives some of us so insane that we go back to drinking or we start taking medication and we kill ourselves because of a disease called alcoholism. and I am a free man today, and that's amazing. I want to welcome the new people. I'm glad you're here. The guy and the gal that came up and got the book and the candle, welcome. It's one of the few places you will get a present for burning your life to the ground recently. I don't know any other place like that. And I was so odd. They gave the girl the candle and the guy, the book, like I could just see the wheels turning and we could read this book together by candlelight. And that's not new thinking in AA. I want to thank Billy and the members of the committee for asking me to come down here and participate in this event. I know there's some new people here I want to welcome you I saw there were some people standing up that were new And they were fairly young You must look around and think Oh my god, I'm in God's waiting room I know the feeling I came to my first meeting I was very young I wasn't even old enough to take a legal drink And they sent me to a Young people's group Where the average age was about 35 or 40 Wasn't 110 hand, but I felt like I didn't fit there. But I'm the guy, when I quit drinking, I don't feel like I fit anywhere anyway, really. I just get so pushed up inside of me when I quit drinkin'. I'm locked up inside in me and I don' t know what's wrong with me, but I don't really fit anywhere. Alcoholism, untreated alcoholism is a lonely, lonely business. I don' t know why I ended up alcoholic. I didn' t come from an alcoholic home. There was alcoholism in my family tree, but not my mother and father. My mother and father were wonderful, wonderful people. They loved me. They provided me with opportunities. But there was something wrong with me, and I couldn't have told you what it was. But I didn't feel like other people looked. Even in grade school, I remember this awkwardness inside of me, this inability to connect with the other kids there the way they seemed to so easily connect with each other. And so I did what most guys like me who are anxious and afraid and don't fit anywhere do. I pretend. I become the pretend guy. I become The Guy Who Pretends He's Okay. I Become The Guy Who Pretend He Fits, Who Pretendes He's Not Afraid. And I live behind that shell, that facade that it talks about in our book in Into Action where we live the double life. And I started living the double life way before I ever picked up a drink. I was the phony guy, the pretend guy, the guy that walked around with a little bit of anxiousness that you might find out that I'm not tough, that I'M NOT COOL, that I'M NOT ALL RIGHT, that there's a squirminess inside of me that I just keep trying to stay busy enough to roll over so I don't have to really feel it or look at it. And it always seemed to be there lingering in the emotional peripheral vision of my life. And I could never seem to get free of it until I was almost 13 years old and I was with a bunch of older kids. And I just want to fit with these kids. You know, these are the kids that are in trouble all the time. But I'll tell you, they had some kind of power because when they walked down the hall, the other kids got out of the way. And man, when you're secretly scared and weak and pathetic like I am, oh my God, I want to fit with those kids. Because they had Some sort of power. And I didn't even know that even before I picked up a drink that lack of power was my dilemma. And I was a seeker of something. I didn't know what I was seeking. And I seemed to have a feeling that these kids had this thing, whatever this thing is that I don't have. And so I'm hanging around with them. But I'm always coming from behind. I can't be like them. I'm trying. I get in trouble. I'm in and out of juvenile court. I'm trying to fit with these kids. The first time I ever drank alcohol was We pulled a burglary in the neighborhood I lived in, broke into somebody's house. Somebody we actually knew and we knew they had a liquor cabinet. As a young wannabe gangster, I was astounded that these kids went right by the TV and stereo and went right to the liquor cabinet, I thought, what? But they knew where the power was. They knew where The Good Stuff was and we stole these bottles of whiskey out of that house and we're hanging out, and they're passing around a quart bottle of Seagram 7. I can still remember the label. And when you're a phony and you're coming from behind, you've got to watch people and then try to emulate and do what they do. Want to fit. And I noticed that if he took a big hit off that, the couple kids took a Big Hit off that bottle of SEAGRAM 7, they kind of got a little cheer, a little approval from the other kids. So by the time the bottle gets to me, I'm in. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to take a big hit. I'm just glad it wasn't cat urine because I'm in, you know what i'm saying and and I took a big hit off this bottle of Seagram 7 and they didn't nobody said anything about the burning and somehow I kept that down when the burning stopped something started to come over me and it was like everything I didn't like about me seemed to fall off. And for the first time in my life, it seemed like I got free. For the first Time in my Life, I could come out and play. For the First Time in My Life, I felt like those kids looked. I could be funny, and I could talk to them now with an ease that I just never had. And alcohol in the early days of my drinking was spectacular. I believe it was the most immediate and effective treatment for this secret sickness of alcoholism I've ever, ever, found. It vitalized my spirit. A guy who's depressed and lonely and anxious and worried and doesn't fit anywhere, and it brings me to the edge of completeness. It was amazing. It's amazing. And I suspect if alcohol never did that magical thing for you, why would you let it do to you later what it's going to do to you if you're not seeking what it once did for you? And I spent the rest of my life seeking what it once did for me. And I don't know that I'm in the grip of a progressive illness. Our book says over any considerable period, we get worse and ever better. And that is a frightening thought because that means we're getting worse right here, right today. And I know that that is true. I've been sober long enough now to have 12-step guys, watched them get sober. I know exactly where they were at on every level. And 15, 20 years later, they go out. And I got to tell you something. They do not pick up where they left off. The disease has progressed within them. And if what the big book says is true, and you can see evidence of this. I see it all the time because I do a lot of 12-stepped work. Or that the root, if the root of my problem really is self-centered or the book equates it to ego when it says self-centred or egocentric as people like to now call it nowadays. What happens to these guys and the reason they have such a hard time coming back is that what progresses the most is the ego. They try to come back in here and they're the I know guys. their sickness will use all their experience and information over the years that they were in AA to defeat them because they become the I know guys you try to tell them something, yeah I know I think what they're really saying is yeah shut up and I understand that one of the things that defeated me over and over again in the years I tried to get sober is that I fit the old adage, you can always tell an alcoholic you just can't tell them much, can you? And I was that guy. And I didn't know that I was on a slope that would always go downward and as the disease of alcoholism progressed within me a couple hideous things started happening. One thing is as the years went by, my ability to recapture that amazing freeing effect from alcohol became more and more elusive. And as the ease and comfort, the freedom seemed to bleed out of the effect from the alcohol, it seemed to be replaced by more and More Problems. it was like it's like when you first start partying if you're like me every time you go out to party with your buddies it's Like Spinning a Roulette Wheel and on that roulette wheel you got drag racing you got jam sessions you got a little bit of fighting you got getting laid you got uh get a little Bit of throwing up occasionally a little once in a while a hassle with the police but you got A lot of cool stuff camaraderie conviviality it's and you spin that wheel it's pretty much coming up. Party, party, party party, and then as the disease progresses it's like some hideous force sneaks in and starts changing the things on the wheel and starts putting up things like wet pants Let me tell you something diaper rash might be cute when you're two years old. When you're 22 years old it's not cute blackouts oh i started having i was a regular blackout drinker and you're a blackout oh see tough going through life if you're blackout Drinker tough going to look through life when other people know more about you than you do and i never did anything good in a black out no one ever came up to me the next day and said oh bob you were so helpful last night You peed in our living room You threw up in our kitchen You hit on my wife You stole my stash You passed out my front lawn You sideswiped my car The worst one I remember I hope I never forget this I was sick Got the shakes on my way To that state liquor store I think Al-Anon's passed that law They can't open till 10 a.m. That is cruel and i'm on my way to that state liquor store i need a drink bad my god i'm in bad shape some guy cuts into me says do you know you told everybody last night you beat bruce lee in a karate match i just i want to die it was like oh geez and and you and if you're like me i'm entering into a stage where now i'm drinking over the consequences of my drinking that is like a perpetual motion machine, and it's fueling the progression of the illness of alcoholism. I'm on a train I can't get off, and I don't know what's wrong with me. My mother worked for mental health. My father was very politically connected. I remember as a kid governors used to call the house for him and because of their influence uh they got me into seeing some i some therapists that were i mean world-class people that like the one guy you had to be like a movie star to get in therapy with this guy and i saw some of the greatest therapists psychiatrists i was put on various medications because what every time i try to get sober i kind to go insane. I mean, and it's not the running down the street with your hair on fire insane. It's a vaguer. It's more insidious insanity. One of the things that happens to me every time I quit drinking is I don't feel really truly comfortable anywhere. You know, I got this feeling like wherever I'm at that's not where I need to be. Now, I don' t know where I need to be, it's just not here. i i get sober and i just after a short while i just start noticing how stupid people are you know what i mean i mean I go to the i drive in traffic with stupid people they're either retarded and they're driving really slow or they're maniacs and they' re driving really fast But they're stupid people in traffic. I go to work, no matter what job I have. Stupid people at work. Go to the grocery store. Stand in that line. Watch the other items people buy. Stupid people buying stupid items in the grocery story. I end up being sent to AA meetings. Oh my God, they got the stupid people grouped right here. I mean, right in Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh my God, it seemed to me like everybody that spoke was quoting lines out of Hallmark cards from recovery bookstores. I felt like I was being stoned to death with refrigerator magnets from recovery stores. Like, one day at a time, first things first. If no one said they love you today, I do. Shut up. Stop. I don't love you. I don'y even like you. I don''t even like me. But I would like to know where you live and when you won't be home. Everybody in AA is grateful for everything. Oh, just, oh, God. I remember sitting in a halfway house. I had burnt my life to the ground again. I'm so pathetic, and I'm sitting in there. I'm a young kid, and i've already used up. I feel like I'm 80 years old, and And I'm in my 20s and I'm sitting there and I just, I feel like I want to, I wish I was dead. And I have to, in the midst of all of that, I have to sit there and listen to these people from Alcoholics Anonymous bring meetings in there and rub my face in how wonderful their life is. I remember sitting there thinking, I've gone to hell. I have gone to hell. This is what hell is. and i didn't know that uh what was killing me i i'd been trying so many things and i i didn'T think see i DIDN'T think aa had anything for me because i sat in meetings for years and i listened to you and i watched you you guys were great i mean you really were you stopped drinking you were great I mean, I kind of hated you for it, but you really were great. There was another part of me that was very envious of that. But I know that I am not really like you. I know I'm in trouble from drinking. Yeah, I get it. I understand. I've had to be physically detoxed. I get the tremors and I've even had hallucinations coming off alcohol. I get It. But I know that whatever's wrong with me is not really the same thing that's wrong with you. Because when I stop drinking, I ain't like you. I stop drinkin', abstinence feels like I'm doin' time. I'm depressed. I stop drinknin' and I just get my emotions and my very life just on me. Like that creature in the movie Alien that attaches itself to your face. How you doing, Bob? Oh, I'm just hanging in there. It feels like somebody's smothering me here. Isn't it funny every time I take a drink again after six or eight months or six or seven weeks of abstinence, I take that first shot of whiskey and it's like, somebody turned the oxygen back on in the room. because abstinence, smother. In abstinance, I feel like I'm smothering and I actually am. I'm Smothering myself in my very being with myself. One of the greatest descriptions of Alcoholics Anonymous I have ever read anywhere was coined by a non-alcoholic doctor in the mid 40s, Dr. Bill Baer. And Bill was asked to, by the AMA, to come to AA and check us out. He was asked to read some of our literature and then make a presentation of what he thought we were. Because back in the 40s, AA was starting to get a lot of notoriety. We had Jack Alexander. We had Liberty Magazine. We were starting to come on the radar for things like the Lasker Award. The National Council was giving us a lot OF notoriety, the thing that Marty Mann was gotten behind and people like Jelinek. And we were starting TO get some notoriety So Dr. Baer came to us, and I don't know how – I'm amazed that he could have been so insightful to us being a non-alcoholic, but he nailed me and possibly you. He said in his thing that – and a piece of it's reproduced in the back of the big book in a thing called The Medical View of Alcoholism. The piece that's reproduced, Bill says, that these AA members, they're not a temperance movement. They're not crusaders. And there's a phase some of us go through. But for the most part, we're not Crusaders. And you don't stay that way. You can't stay That Way and stay sober. Or you'll end up with a little cult somewhere. You'll be the David Koresh of AA. He said, we'RE not CrusaderS. We're not at temperance. room but he said what we are is people who know that we must not drink man some of us about died getting to that point where your innermost self you know man I can't drink I must not I'm dying here and isn't it it's such a dilemma because when by the time you get to the point if you're like me where you know, I can't drink. At the same time, you can't stay away from it either, can you? And he says that these people who finally know that they must not drink, they throw themselves into helping others with similar problems. And in that atmosphere of a mope like me devoting my life to helping other mopes like me, Bear says that the alcoholic will often overcome his excessive concentration upon himself. My God, how did he know that? He knew that just going to a few meetings. I was probably five years sober going to two meetings a day before I understood that. That that's what the problem is. The problem is this obsessive over-concentration with myself. I wake up in the morning in a default position. That's why I pray immediately. My default position in the morning is me, pretty much me. It's always been that way. I look back at my childhood, the only thing I remember with any clarity is me. I can't tell you about my parents or what they struggled with or what bothered them unless it had to do with me. I was the center of the universe before I ever picked up a drink. And alcohol just seemed to fuel that fire. And so I'm in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous because I keep ending up here. But I'm trying all these therapies, all these... I've been hypnotized. I primal screamed. Rational motive therapy did quite a bit of that. Gestalt, all kinds of stuff, and none of it ever seemed to bother. I've been diagnosed as clinically depressed. I understand. I worked in the field for a while. My symptoms, the things I got going on with me sort of match the diagnosis, but I'm not clinically depressed, I was diagnosed as free-floating anxiety and panic disorder, given the appropriate treatment medication for that disorder, and it was a misdiagnosis. What I have is more insidious than a mental illness. It's a spiritual malady. The great news that Alcoholics Anonymous has for a guy like me is in our book when it says that when the spiritual malty is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. I am the guy who doctors, two psychiatrists, pretty prominent guys, had told me on two different occasions that I would probably never quite be right and I would probably have to take medication all my life and I stand here before you and I've had nothing except the spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous in a little over 34 years and I'm free but the struggle towards the light is not an easy struggle for self-centered people like myself it was so fun You know, alcoholism is so baffling because, you know, I started, I didn't get this right away. You know I'm like most of us I guess, I don't want to be an alcoholic. I'd rather be anything other than an alcoholic, I'd better be a drug addict, I would rather be a mental health case, I would better be just about anything than an alcohol but I have alcoholism. and i i started to realize after about five or six treatment centers i started to be intellectually blungeoned into an to into the knowledge that i got that thing you people talk about that when i start drinking i can't stop no you know for i for i had that for a long time but i had a lot of hope that maybe that was a temporary condition or this time it'll be different But I started getting it. Every time I pick up a drink, I can't stop. And I thought that that knowledge coupled with a sincere desire to never drink again, I thought I was out of the woods. And I got to tell you, the most horrific years of my drinking was after I had the knowledge. see knowledge isn't power it never was and it never will be how could it be if there's one who has all power how could there be power in knowledge i think see my delusion is i think if i know better i can do better well i think what hell is is knowing better and still doing worse you know i i've done that a lot i've got any of my sobriety i know i shouldn't do this but And so I started getting to that place where, as a lot of us do Where I would swear to myself with everything in me And I'd mean it I'm never ever touching any of that again And weeks or months later I'd be back at it again And I cursed myself for being so weak and pathetic And I'd end up back in Alcoholics Anonymous where in roomfuls of people who just seem so easily to stay sober and you quit drinking and look, you're so happy. And then there's me. And I didn't understand that this disease for all practical purposes really begins where the bottle ends. you know if if you're anything like me by the time you've gotten to aa there's probably been some people who have gotten in your face to talk to you about you you know you might maybe your mother and father have had conversations with you aboutyou maybe your wife or your husband or your girlfriend or boyfriend has had conversationswithyouaboutyou Maybe your therapist or your counselor has had conversations with you about you. Maybe your priest or your minister. Maybe your drug dealer has had some talks to you about you. Maybe your bartender. If you get really bad, strangers on the street will start talking to you and they all kind of say the same thing. They all use different words but basically what they're saying to me is they're saying, Bob, Bob you are so screwed up Bob. And if you catch me on a demoralized day when my defense, when I'm not on the muscle and my defense mechanisms are down, I'll probably agree with you. I'll prolly go, yeah, I know. And then they'll say, do you know why you're so screwed up? And I'll say I don't know. By this time I've been to so many therapists, I don' t know what's wrong with me. And they tell you. They say, well, the reason you're so screwed-up is you keep getting screwed-upped. If you didn't get so screwed upped, you wouldn't be so screwed upp. And I'm pretty screwed-upps, so I think, OK, I'm not going to get screwed up. And when I don't get screwed up, I get so screwed up, I've got to go get screwed up. And somebody's saying, you're really screwed up and I go, yeah, I know. You know why? Because I get screwed up. I don' t understand because I think the problem is alcohol. The problem is alcoholism. If the problem was alcohol, you just need a one-step program recovery. Step one, don't drink. but I got this hideous thing that starts happening to me. And, you know, as the disease progressed, one of the, my ego got, you know as my self-esteem got eaten away until I loathed myself. At the same time, my Ego got bigger and bigger. I became the judgmental guy. I became, I heard a guy say this, I thought it was wonderful, it's perfect. He said we're the only people on earth that could lay in the gutter and look down on others. That's really true. I had a psychiatrist in Pittsburgh one time nail me. Brilliant man who's worked probably 50 years with us in different institutions. And Abe got me one day, and he said, the reason guys like you are going to die, he said that you're so ego-dominant that you have an inability to listen to anybody in order to hear anything new. You can only listen to see how you are already right. And that was very uncomfortable to me, because I'm that guy. I'll sit in meetings and just pick you apart. Unless you say something I agree with, then you're brilliant. And no information, nothing new gets in. I am stuck in my own self and my own perception. And if you're like that, you're a closed system, which means nothing new gets in. If nothing new gets in, nothing changes. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. And I felt that way. I felt stuck the last couple years. I'm trying not to drink. I'm doing everything I can to not drink and I keep drinking. In 1978, I tried to take my own life. I'll tell you how it led up to this. That prior year I had I ended up in an emergency room one time and I do that I end up in emergency rooms sometimes I hurt myself and they had they gave me a couple stitches and they're they'd x-rayed me and I have to sit there and wait for the x-rays results to come back so I've been in this hospital a couple hours so I'm kind of sobered up some while I'm sitting in there And I'm sitting in the waiting room and there's a rack of medical pamphlets of heart disease and diabetes, all that kind of stuff. And there's one of them said seven warning signs of cancer. And I got my attention and I grabbed that pamphlet and I started reading it. And one of the warning signs a cancer was continued unexplained bleeding. I remember reading that thinking, oh, man, I throw up. I get the dry heaps sometimes. I got blood coming out. In fact, sometimes I'm bleeding out both ends. I thought, oh my God, I got cancer. I got cancer. And I thought oh, it's metastasized into my brain. That's why I do weird things and can't remember them. That's Why I fly off the handle at people sometimes. That's why I sink into myself, into these deep abysses sometimes. It's a brain tumor pressing on my brain. It explained volumes of my life. I thought, oh my God, that's the deal. And I walked around for some time with this fantasy, I've got a brain tumour. I can imagine when they finally found out, they'd take me to a cancer ward somewhere, diagnosed me as having a brain tumor and they'd have to notify my mother and father who wouldn't have anything to do with me because they thought I was a bum. My mother and father would instantly realize how wrong they were. They'd come running to the hospital and of course all my ex-girlfriends would be notified and they would be properly ashamed of themselves and come running into the hospital to beg my forgiveness. It was such a great fantasy. ended up in a treatment center hospital talking to this doctor i said she's talking to me about alcoholism i said doc doc doc i know what it looks like i got a brain tumor he says has that been verified i said yes it has by the smartest guy i know and he said so he got excited gave me this whole series of tests he comes back to me later he says you don't have a brain tumor you don'T have cancer at all you have a hemorrhoid and an ulcer and I wanted a second opinion right it was like it was like oh no doc my ego was so sick that I'd rather be dying of a terminal illness and have everybody wrong about me and me right than to be free. I'll tell you if you identify with that at all you do not have a high mental health quotient so in 19 this doctor gave me this full physical and one of the things he said to me he says you have alcoholism it's funny how most of us have been unwilling to believe we were real even when the evidence is overwhelming i don't want to be an alcoholic and he said but he said you keep drinking it's going to kill you but you're young enough i was in my 20s he said you're old you're not young enough it might take five more years and that later that year i came to in a park and i got the tremors are back and i hate myself and there is no relief in the bottle anymore My drinking in the last couple years was pathetic. I would drink and I'd feel sorry for myself. I'd drink and go on crying jags. I'd drinking and just be overcome with depression. I'd drank and sometimes if I was, you were kind to me and you let me sleep on your couch at three o'clock in the morning, I'd be on your telephone calling people I went to grade school with and ex-girlfriends and just drunk. I remember my mom told me one time, I called them at 4 o'clock in the morning or some godly hour and was crying into the phone about how it was so messed up because they raised me wrong. I remember the loneliness. And, you know, I drink and I don't bathe anymore when I drink because the truth is once all the fun has run out of the party, Once there is no magical effect, I don't really care about anything. I drink for one reason and one reason only, just to blot me out. I'm an oblivion drinker at the end. And this is not a party. This is pathetic. This is prophetic. And I'm in a trap that I can't spring. Drinking has now become horrible. And not drinking is pretty horrible. it's like doing time. It's depressing. And I am stuck here because both alternatives are horrid to me. And, I started thinking about the five years the doctor told me about. He said you can drink yourself. You're going to die if you keep drinking. You'll drink yourself to death but it's going to take five years. I remember sitting there thinking five years? I can't do five more years of this. I can't do five more weeks of this, and I made the decision to kill myself, and there was a relief in the decision. I remember when I made the decision, it was like, oh, there was a resolve in my life, and I went to this bridge to kill myself, and I'm standing on this bridge with trying to get up enough courage to kill myself, and this terror gripped me. And it's not, I'm not afraid of dying. It's not that at all. What I'm terrified of all of a sudden is that with my luck and my track record, I might not die. I might end up paralyzed from the neck down, stuck in some charity ward, can't even get a drink, laying there listening to my head tell me what a piece of crap i am for 50 years as members of aa parade their newcomers through the room and i get to hear them say things like well this is what happens to you when you don't find god and work our wonderful 12 steps and i'm paralyzed i can't even give them the one finger salute you know i'm And that terrified me. I'm not afraid of dying. If I'd have known for sure that that was high enough and that I'd been dead, you'd have a different speaker here today. I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of living. And what do you do when drinking is horrible and not drinking is horrible and you can't even kill yourself. Our book says we got to a place where there was nothing left but to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. Clancy says you get to a place, there's no friendly direction. Not even in the bottle. See, I could have put up with all of it if I could've got an hour of relief every evening. I could have put up with. In my alcoholic, being homeless, living on the streets, being pathetic, being all alone in exchange for an hour of the magical effect that I'd gotten when I first started drinking, it would have been worth it to me. But I can't even... At the end of my drinking, it's horrible because you can't even get the effect anymore. It's like paying high rent on a house that's already burnt down. I'm paying all the dues, and I'm not getting any ease and comfort anymore. And I didn't know that that would be my last run after that failed suicide attempt. And I ended up ‑‑ I was running from the law, and I ended UP in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a detox. And men and women from a group of ‑‑ a group in Alcoholics Anonymous that was probably the most service-oriented group in the state at that time, brought meetings into that hospital. And the Buddhists say when the student's ready, the teachers appear. And I sat in there and for the first time in years of being exposed to you, I could hear you. I could never hear you before because there's too much of me between me and you. I couldn't stop judging you. I could never listen to you. Nothing would get in. I'd just sit in those joints, and those AA speakers would be there, and I'd be looking at them going, is that a toupee? She's interesting. Are those real? I mean, you know, I'djust be picking, pick, pick. Oh, you're a sunbeam for Jesus, are you? And I'djust pick you apart, pick youapart. Because my disease, I tell you something. I believe that the survival mechanism of my ego is stronger than mine. And because my ego doesn't care if it kills me as long as after I'm dead, everybody thinks I was right. And so I couldn't get help. And in 1978, I sat in those meetings and I had just enough, just enough of me kicked out of me that I could hear you. and your experience washed over me. And I did. I sat there like guys sit in meetings that I go to. I've tried to emulate what those people do. For over 34 years, I've taken two meetings a week into a place like that. I sat here, and I just found myself nodding my head, thinking to myself, I'm like them. I didn't know if that was good news or bad news, but I thought I'm liked them. And I'd been watching them. They came in there twice a week, and I remember watching the guy who was to become my sponsor and some other guys out in the hall outside where they had the meeting, and they were laughing and carrying on. And I remember thinking to myself, my God, these guys look like they're having a better time sober than I had when alcohol really worked. and I dared to dare to hope because I don't I'm not a hope guy because I don't feel like I'm worthy of nothing but I dared to hope that maybe maybe if I followed them around and did everything that they did maybe what happened to them could happen to me and I asked this gentleman named Dick I said would you if you'll sponsor me I'll do anything that you ask me to do and I had to throw that in there because I had such a feeling of unworthiness you know I just like I'm a piece of crap nobody's gonna sponsor a guy like me and he agreed to sponsor me and when I said to him I'll do anything you ask it that they ask they have a lot of stuff they want you to do I thought it was a rhetorical statement it's not they they they have bunches of stuff They want you do and the miracle was not that I said that the miracle is when they put my feet to the fire, I took the actions that were very uncomfortable and frightening to me, even when it put me at risk. One of the early actions that people in AA had me do was to turn myself into the courts in Pennsylvania, offered to go back there and do the two years at my own expense, which I thought was bizarre. The amazing thing was I did In our book, it talks about God and it says if we can do two things, if we can lay aside prejudice and all that is, it's everything I think I know. I've watched very religious people die of alcoholism, clergy members who prayed more in one day than most of us will pray in a week because they couldn't let go of their ideas and come to this relationship with God as a child who knows nothing. See, the ego is the part of you that thinks it knows everything, right? And they're asking me to lay aside everything I know, just all my prejudice, and then to express even a willingness. And I think I started, they had me pray I get down on my knees and pray when I was new. I didn't even believe in God. I said to this guy, I said, I don't believe in God. I feel like a hypocrite. And he says, ah, you've been a hypocrit all your life. What's the difference? Just do it. And I started doing it. And boy, when it says in our book that God does not make hard terms with those who seek him. In my unworthiness from the moment I started to act as if God existed, he started to appear in my life and you know if you're like me i'm a doubter i just i the first first 20 miracles i could write off but eventually it's like wow something's working here something's work in here and i started to uh know that there was something in my life and the problem is I'm blocked from that and so I started taking this journey after I was sober a few years because I knew I wasn't I didn't have what some of the people in AA talked about when they talked about conscious contact I had by this time a tremendous faith in God but I couldn't actualize it and I was scared because I had seen people with tremendous faith drink again and so i thought i got to take this to some other level but i seem to be blocked from god when i go inside myself and try to meditate i can't do it it's too i'm too crazy you put me alone in a room just to be quiet and about 40 nut cases show up chattering in my head And so somehow something's got to change. And I heard a guy say that the problem was I had to unblock myself from God, and I started this process and stepped forward. I don't know of anything that creates greater ego reduction in an egomaniac than the fourth step as it's outlined in the big book you know they trick you into this thing they tell you to list all the resentments all the all the stupid people put them all down list all the people that if there was any justice in the universe would owe you an amends put them all down all the wrong people all the people that need some kind of justice put them all down there put down what they did build your case got your perpetrators. Put down the heinous crimes, the cause of all this. Put down what was hurt, affected, threatened, injured, interfered with. And then the book asked me to do something that's not easy for a self-centered, judgmental guy who wants to be right all the time to do. And that's to look at these from an entirely different angle. And I had my case built against all these people as if I was a prosecuting attorney, and now they're asking me to get up and cross the courtroom and sit on the defense table and start having an internal conversation about what it must have looked like, this interaction between me and them from their eyes. And I started to see how harshly I judged my mother and father when I started looking at it through their eyes, I was horrified. What a tough, tough kid I was. I was so full of myself and I had no consideration for anybody except me. I broke my mother's heart, my father's heart over and over and over and again until they eventually just to secure their own sanity had to cut me physically out of their life but you know something and they could never cut me out of their heart. So my dad slept 15 hours a day, and my mother saw a therapist and took medication. They became recluses in their own house. And they had once had a tremendous social network, and they were part of all kinds of civic organizations and clubs, and the last several years they just stayed at home because they just, they were so tired of the questions about me. and they became a recluse in their own house. I started to see how wrong I was about the bosses that I had when I started looking at it from their side of the street. The book says we must realize how the person who had harmed us was perhaps like us, spiritually sick. And when I began to see the things that were driving the people that had hurt me, I started realizing that that's in me too. That I struggle with those things and I started to see all the times where driven by the same stuff where I had stepped on the toes of people. You know, one of the things that was so apparent to me, I had this tremendously long eight-step list and honest to God, there was not one person on there I set out to hurt intentionally, but I hurt them just the same. And I started to take these people off the hook, and I started to see how wrong I was in every single case. What an amazing ego reduction, to list every judgment you've ever had and then come out the back side of it and realize you were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Ego hates that. If you're new here and you can't stand being wrong, I'm telling you, you're going to have a hard time here. Because that's what we do here to get free I started to be able to make amends to all those people there's still some I've never found I can stand up here and tell you that I have every one and I've checked every one that I've been able to find I've made amends to I'm very excited in May I'm going back to a small little conference in the town that I did most of my damage in And I've made many visits back there. And every time I go back there, I find somebody. And some of those people are hard to find. Some of them, I don't know. I just haven't been able to find a few of them. And I'm excited to go back there and find a lot of them and find the few. Maybe. I'm going to take my checkbook and when I give a talk at that conference I'm just going to tell them if I owe you, start the line over here. And who knows? Maybe if God chooses, I will find some of the people I've never been able to find. There's a few. And they are like stones in my shoe. I never forget about them. I have a yearning to find them and make it right. The book says some people we may never find. i had to go write a letter about three years ago when i was back there because i found a gravesite of a guy that i'd hurt very badly and i was able to do that and that was not my first gravesite amends but it was a nice one i got free of that and i i i got some i got a closure about that it's funny when you even people that have passed away when you do that your perception and memory of them changes. It goes from bitter and remorseful to sweet because really, isn't it all about changing my spirit? I have to get right with me and with you and with God. I have do anything that reduces the separation between me and you and me and God. My life depends on it. i'll say one well i'll tell you one more little thing and i i seem to have the lot the last 10 years or 15 years to work with a lot of old-timers and alcoholics anonymous who have relapsed or who are 20 25 years sober and they're thinking about committing suicide drinking or getting on some kind of medication because of untreated alcoholism and untreated alcoholism never looks like untreated alcoholism it's the great shift changer it looks like situations it looks like my health it looks like the job it looks like the relationship it looks like a whole bunch of stuff but we have a litmus test in step 10 in the 12 by 12 it says when we are disturbed at all no matter what the cause something's wrong with me and i am very far some of these guys i can i can help and some i can't some of them i've watched relapse themselves to death i've had a few friends commit suicide but every once in a while a guy that's 23 or 25 years sober that was about to kill himself comes back from the edge of the abyss and he comes back with experience that can change other people's lives. What is it about us that we tell ourselves after a couple decades here that we're out of the woods? The book says the delusion that we are now like other people or presently maybe has to be smashed. That is an insidious thing in me and I know because when I was 19 years sober in the middle of the best life I've ever had with more material success than I could have ever, ever imagined, I sunk into an abyss of self-involvement. I started getting depressed again. And I couldn't understand it because I had everything in my life. I had three very expensive paid Ford cars, two motorcycles, a big house. I had every thing I could ever want. And I'm just, I'm dying in here. It didn't make any sense. I ran out of things to buy. I mean, it was a... And a guy in AA nailed me one time. I was telling him how I felt and he said, he said eh, he said you know, you still go to some meetings and you have the bragging rights of sponsoring a bunch of guys and you run your mouth in AA a lot. He said, but I don't think your primary purpose is helping others. He says, I think your primarily purpose is you. They say the truth will set you free, but I'll tell you it'll ruin your day first. It was like, whew, whey, because he was right. My whole life, I'm doing enough AA to have the bragging rights of doing AA. But the truth is, my focus and my concern and my primary purpose is me. And my sex life and my relationships and my finances and my toys and what you think of me and my prestige, my AA resume that I could hold over people and tell you everything I've done in AA. It had become all about me, and I was dying. Because the spirit gets sick one way. it as I fill up with myself. Here's the problem about a chronic spiritual malady. I am like the back of a toilet. You can flush it and it empties out, and then I just start to fill up with me again. That's why yesterday's self-reduction and surrender doesn't seem to have much angst today. When it says in our book, every day is the day we must carry a vision of God's will into all of our activities. Thy will not mine be done. That's not just talk. Every day I got to start my life with my primary purpose. And that's really what step 11 is designed to do, is to realign me with that purpose so that I can be useful and help God's kids. I love my life in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a home group that I am so proud to be a member of. We are on fire helping people. We take meetings into halfway houses and the detox a couple times a week. We are a fellowship in action behind a common primary purpose, and it's beautiful. and it's beautiful. And I hope you all have the same thing in your life, and if you don't, roll up your sleeves and get busy, because God will show you how to create the fellowship you crave. Thanks for listening.