The Difference Between an Obsession and an Addiction – Steve B.

Hi everybody, I'm Steve Bordner. I'm an alcoholic and it's nice to be here. I want to thank the committee for asking me and for you guys showing up. I figure I'm saving you a lot of money. You know, you're not gambling right now so I don't know for every minute I speak fifty sixty dollars what are we talking about here lots of money being saved and uh i want to thank stan for his choice of the people on the diet uh i feel like we could do a version of addicted to love up here and jane's gonna have to leave but that's because she's got another commitment so uh and which is which is great i mean that's exactly the deal uh i believe that people who have too many commitments uh don't tend to be the ones that relapse and uh so when she leaves uh just everybody take notice of her and make it a big deal so we don't embarrass her you know i'll tell you one thing i learned a lot from vegas i've never been to vegas drinking uh i moved to california with two years of sobriety never been into Vegas. So the first time I ever came to Vegas, I was sober. What Vegas taught me is the difference between an obsession and an addiction. If you had seen me the first time in Vegas, you would have thought, uh-oh, he needs another program. We might need to send him to GA because it was like, whoa. And I remember I went through stages. First it was the slot machines then it was the roulette table because I had a system and obviously nobody had had a system before and then it Was the horses I figured well this is easy you can make a lead don't have to work you just play the horses this will be a good thing and and and what I found is eventually I got tired of all of it and I and I really like you know my favorite place here this is how lame I am nickel town I figure that's where all of are going to go when we die nickel town now and if you haven't been not nickel not nickel heaven no there's two nickel places here go to nickel town just walk in there and see that that's where i think really hip slick and cool alcoholics go when they die because it may be the lamest place on the face of the earth nickel town but it's the place i've had the most fun but what you would see when i got here the first weekend was it was like i know one more time on the machine and going to the atm and and and then i get home and on monday i thought wow that was a good time and on tuesday it was oh yeah i was in vegas and on wednesday i had forgotten all about it and i was never thinking about the next time i was going to go to vegas this was never the truth about alcohol you know i knew when i needed to take my next drink i knew when i was gonna take my neck strength it was gonna be that day because i'm one of those those people have never gotten one day outside of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't have the, there are Al-Anons that have worse what it was like than me. I mean, I drank enough to get in here. I had mild DTs. I guess I was doing about a half a gallon of wine a day, but I was sort of a stay-at-home drinker, so I didn't get a lot of the arrests and things. I means, had I known that felonies would have made your dating potential in AA better, I would have gotten arrested a lot more. I'm short, I'm white in jail, and I'm an hors d'oeuvre. I just really didn't want to go. No, it's true. I have a friend, many of you have probably heard him speak, and in his talk he talks about that when he was drinking, he took out his gun and he put it to his ex-wife's head and he pulled the trigger and it didn't go off and he still got the bullet and it's amazing to watch him speak especially to watch the women watch him speak because half of the group of the women are going like that and the other half are going I wish somebody loved me that much why doesn't anybody pull a trigger on my head that's true love jane's really relating i think right now we're going to let jane tell her story so it's just the weirdest thing it's you know uh alcoholics are weird we talk about grave mental disorders i was in a meeting the other day and one of the women in the meeting had talked about she had just she threatened suicide they put it on a 72-hour hold you know they do that when you threaten suicide and of course when we're alcoholics when we threaten suicide we really don't want to kill ourselves we want somebody to beg us not to it's like when ladies when we alcoholic men say i'm leaving we're just outside the door we're not going anywhere we just want you to throw your arm around our leg and beg us not to go most of us have no place else to go so this woman said in this group she said that she had been put on a 72-hour hold. So somebody later shared that when you're put on a 72 hour hold, you sane up real quick. You know, like you sober up real quickly when the police pull you over. Well, you sane up real fast real quick about 20 people laugh. This is not normal. I mean, next time you go to the PTA meeting or you go to your Bible study at church or the Boy Scouts say, you know, when I was on that 72-hours hold I say it up real quick, nobody else is going to laugh because there weren't 30 other people in the room that had been put on 72-hour hold. See, this room, if you're new, this room is full of odd and weird and strange people. And I always love newcomers that kind of, you kind of said they came in, they look so happy, they look excited. Are they going to meetings I'm going to? I mean, every meeting has its grumpy old old-timer and it's the person that's going to get you straight, you know, the sergeant of arms. I mean, I always say if you have a home group, don't change it. Because if you do, the same people are just going to follow you to the next group. They'll have different names and different little earth suits, but it'll be the same People. Because if God has a lesson for me to learn on how to get along with you, which is really all sobriety is about for me, is learning how to get along with him because I don't like the way he runs his universe. I don' t. I don''t like a lot of stuff God does. Death is not one of my favorite choices. The planet is not child safe. If your home was invented like this planet, we would take your children out of it. You know, couldn''t a loving God create a planet where the continental shelves don'' t move? That seems simple enough to me. Where there aren''t things like ebola you know but that's not my business so i have problem with god and of course i have problems with you you people irritate the snot out of me i i i basically don't like you i really don't and i mean i that that line in the 12 and 12 that says we liked a few we hated a few and we were indifferent towards the many and here's the catchphrase as long as they didn't get in our way. Because you know where you go as soon as you get in my way. As soon as there's three of you walking down this aisle whale hand in hand and I can't get around you because I need to get down here faster, you go on the other list. But people, especially in groups, irritate me. They just... I don't know how to play well with others. And I have said for a long time in AA, if I could change it from anything from Alcoholics Anonymous, I would change it to, does not play well with others anonymous. We are the children who went into kindergarten, grabbed the teacher by the neck and said, I am in charge now. Give me the cookies and the blankets and nobody gets hurt. The pre-drug addicts were in the back crushing the cookies, mixing them with other things. so take a little mini inventory shall we we have all the blankets all the cookies all the toys and we wonder why doesn't anyone like us and for those of you who didn't do that you were in the back of the classroom fantasizing you were doing it and i told that story at a camp out she mentioned the camp out for those of you who've never been to an AA camp out, oh boy. Do you have something to look forward to? AA campout, it becomes not about being spiritual, it comes about which male can build the biggest fire. You prove you're the alpha male by building the biggest fire. Whether you take out the National Forest or not makes no difference. Fire good. Bill Wilson built fire. Bigger than Dr. Bob. Akron, New York. New York, Akron. Clarence. And so ClarenCE really built the biggest fire and Bill stole it from him. So I was at a camp out and I told that story about kindergarten and a guy, this honest to God truth, this guy named Tom from Tracy, because I just, I think Tracy, not Tracy, where was it? Auburn, California. Because I ran into him because I'd been using the wrong name and he had a resentment about the story. But he said, come to my camp out. And in his big book, he had his first grade report card. And literally that first grade report card said, Tom needs to understand that this classroom only needs one teacher. See, I mean, now how does that happen? You're eight. That's an eight. That's a little boy. Walks into a classroom and says, I can take her. She's not telling me what to do. I know more than she does. I loved it last night when Dick was talking, somebody said to him, he asked somebody that was sober in AA, how does it work? And he says, well, they sit around, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and talk about their alcoholism, which is a pretty accurate description of Alcoholics Anonymous in a very reductionistic sort of way. And he said that won't work for me. Now, he'd never been, but my head understood that. That won't works for me, that won' t work for m luckily I knew nothing about you when I walked in. in. And I got sober in Columbia, South Carolina in 1979. It was much more, yes, we have Francine here. She's class of 79 too. We have a little get together every year as a little 79. We keep trying to add people. So this year it's 23. Mr. Hector E does that. It's funny too. You get those invitations and it was funny the first time we did this when we all turned 20 hector if you know hector is very formal and and i got this invitation and i didn't feel worthy of going it's like whoa which is really my problem in alcoholics anonymous it's still my problem today many of you walked into aa and felt like you were too good for us like we wanted something from you i always love i always loved newcomers that think we want something from them like that 72 Hyundai you're driving, you know, we really got our eye on that. Yeah, those clothes you've been in for three days, oh yeah, throw those in the laundry and wear those. And that attitude you've got, you know, that winning how to impress people attitude you got. Yeah, we really want something from you. So I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, let me tell you, in 1979 there was no choices. I didn't have to worry about being distracted by the 13th step in Columbia, South Carolina. Most of them were men. They were retired sergeant majors from the Second World War. They didn't care if you had feelings. They didn't have any why should you. It wasn't a lot of feelings talk and all the women were older than me and married. First dance I went to, it was Jungle Gardenia and Glenn Miller. I doubt Bob Glenn Miller got played at the dance last night. He's going to dances in AA today in LA and the girls are 30 days off Similac, it's just a different program. My sponsor says I can cross the street next week if I get sober. Go to meeting, go to jail. You know, it is just a very... had so many tattoos and piercings i thought she had to be 18. uh that's the problem my sobriety dates may 25th 1979 and the problem with staying around a long time is you come in sort of young and you end up ward cleaver you know if you look you got your eye on some girl you might want to ask out in a meeting and she comes up and goes you remind me of my father i'm shrinking the old thing i don't like god for the old thing either so i wrestle with a lot of stuff and and i'm not the well speaker you'll heal the wealth speakers later except on sunday now on sundays i i really have to tell you on sundae you have an evil speaker sunday's speaker and i guess spiritual evil spirituality is what we're going for this holiday season mickey is a cowboy fan and and uh she was very unkind to me yesterday during the redskins cowboy game and and i just simply was sitting there being quiet not saying a thing and she was just rooting for the cowboys in the most obnoxious way in that you know what's funny is i know i've spoken with mickey neither one of us can figure out which but we got to that little get together and and it was like two seconds and it it was like family again. And I don't know about you, but my whole thing has been, where do I fit? Where do I sit? Now, I just quit a job that I had for nine years because I'm going to move cross-country. I'm moving to New York in the middle of December, which may throw doubt on anything I have to say today. Somebody moving from California to Newark in December, May, April, but December may throw some doubt on the sanity and veracity of anything I say. But, you know, that hospital, I had some very nice compliments. There was one of the ladies, I worked in a lockdown psych ward, okay? I worked on a lockdown county facility. I worked where you go when there's no place else to go. I worked at the end of the line. I worked with people that would make you beg to have alcoholism. We had one kid in there, and this was some of my problems with God. we had one kid in there he had something wrong with him i can't remember the name of it but it's a genetic disease you're born with it you your brain never can tell that you're full you are always ravenously hungry and you can't eat enough these kids usually die by the time they're 18 from obesity you know now if you'reborn like that no free will involved here this is just born this way these are the cards this kid was dealt you would think that uh if you had that card dealt to you you would at least be likable it's one of the hardest people to love you could ever imagine you know brings up a lot of questions for me and and and one of the things that that child gave me who did die a couple weeks after he's in our hospital was i believe probably the most important person in the room of alcoholics anonymous is the the hardest one to love it's not the gurus and the people who help everybody and it's probably the hardest person in the room to love is probably our greatest teacher because many of you are easy for me to love that's easy i like you you you're of service you help people you you you're there you're easy but it's in that other person there that you because i honestly believe there's some people in aa the world would be better off if they were drunk see but that's not my deal that's god's deal that is business but i just believe the world be better off because they'd be unconscious because they seem to do a lot you know we've got a lot of interesting people in a sexual predators sociopaths they tell me that you know 50 percent of alcoholics are mentally ill i believe that if i'm meeting jago too so if you're coming in here thinking that you're coming in with a bunch of saints I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous today because I'm still not well I am a liar, a cheat and a thief I don't do it at the levels I used to but those levels were pretty stupid I'm not sure if I'm more spiritual or just smarter because I am not a great believer that once you take the alcohol out of me i i love what the judge says he says no alcohol no alcoholism and so this thing that's wrong with me after you take the alcohol away from me that we refer to untreated alcoholism and i and i'm okay with that in our little community it's sort of shorthand but i'll tell you what i really believe it is i tell you bill wilson on page 63 compares us to some people I think it's 63, it's around 63 I don't want any big book slumper saying now 65 But he compares us with some people He compares us with the businessman and the minister and a criminal and then an alcoholic And he says that we are an extreme example of selfishness and self-centeredness not a unique one He doesn't even say that we are the most extreme example of selfishness and self-centeredness. I think there was a non-vegetarian, non-alcoholic guy from Bavaria in Germany that probably was a lot more selfish and self centered than anybody in this room. He just says that if I don't do something about it, if I do not do something to help others, if I say something about this selfishness or self-centredness, I will eventually drink again and for me to drink is to die. That is how I am different than them. So once I give up the alcohol, I become not this not-treated alcoholism, which would be fine because I might be able to get rid of that. I become, I think, something even worse. I become something that there is no cure for, the thing I have tried to avoid being my entire life. I become a human being. I become one of them. I no longer have the magic wings. alcohol gave me wings to fly and then it took away the sky and so I get stuck with being what I've never wanted to be human subject to all the shocks that flesh is heir to because I'm not good with that stuff you know I'm not good with that stuff and I think what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me more than anything else besides a god that i don't understand a god that is a mystery a god that seems to do or allow to happen some of the most unloving things in the world and yet i believe is loving i cannot explain it to you i have seen better people than me in alcoholics anonymous died drunk i have seen people who work a program better than me die drunk i've said for a while that i dont i believe when i sat in that meeting in 1979 that first meaning that i went to and i heard this guy and i i couldn't put it all together i was a newcomer i was detoxing but i heard alcoholism and it's it's an illness and there's something you can do about it and we have these 12 steps and you call somebody before you drink and i haven't had a drink in three years and and and i and i heard the message i heard hope and i believe the guy next to me that didn't get sober who was listening to the exact same talk what he heard was blah blah blah bla bla bla blah blah that for some reason and i don't know why the miracle had happened already for me and it hadn't happened for him it wasn't his time or wasn't ever going to be his time if you're in this room and i'm making sense to you and you're new the miracle has already happened now the steps can help now the service can help now the sponsor can help but until that happens we can't help you we have no power there's nothing we can do for you we don't like to tell you that because it's scary see because we have no control over that whether you can hear us or not i buried a guy a couple years ago had every big time sponsor in los angeles in southern california every one of them hung himself in shower picasso's on the wall i watched him try to get sober he worked at least as hard as i did you know and uh i love the fact that they're smoking here because my friend marie stinner would have liked that she would have actually been smoking on the podium had she been speaking and uh you know marie used to say that when somebody goes out we always go well then we're willing we're willing and marie says yes but where does the willingness come from even that's a gift of grace really newcomers our only job is to entertain you until you get it that's the only thing we can do oh yeah there's dances and there's skis and oh yeah there's a step and there'a dance tonight and oh there's pretty girls and oh ya It's a good place to date. I know lots of guys, and listen, we lie to you in Alcoholics Anonymous. Women lie really good too. And women, I encourage you to keep telling you this lie. These women with like five years sobriety and the newcomer guy comes in and he goes, I want to take you out. And she goes, you get a year and I'll go out with you. She ain't going out with him in a year. she's gonna go out with him in a year and in a year he won't want to go out with her he'll have forgotten all about her she'll have been like 20 down the line by that time but i like that lie he comes back for six months because he's going to get a year because then she's going to go out with me anything to keep you in the meeting until god gooses you you know i tell i can't tell god goosey that's right you know that's that's what has to happen i mean i honestly believe we're all here by appointment i mean we're supposed to be here and before i forget to say this and i've been forgetting to say it for a while look once i speak today here at the matinee and actually i always you know when you speak during the day in an aaa convention i feel like a matinee you know and you come out of the movie and it's still light you don't know what the hell is that about i mean got another speaker tonight and wow it's not eight o'clock it's time for coffee and actually you're not at the convention yet either so i don't know what lee and i did here uh what this is you may be able to benefit from it uh but you can't count it as convention because the kickoff meeting's at eight o'clock so i Don't Know What We're Doing Now I don't Know what this Is we rented the room so let's fill it with something meeting i guess but according to my program we don't kick off until 8 o'clock so you you don't have to listen to a damn thing I say okay I did drink I've been accused of being the speaker that doesn't have a drunkologue again and I remember from Mickey's talk when I heard her and from many women's talks it's like halfway through I go I would have died I think most men would die halfway through a woman's drunk alone. We just couldn't have taken it. Just like we die halfway through birth. You know, if men gave birth halfway through, oh no, that's it! And, and, and... But I've got to tell you, it was bad. I lost a very good marriage. But I can sum up my drinking simply as this, that I sat in that chair and I drank. And occasionally I'd go out and take a hostage and bring them home. Didn't do well in the bars. See, because my problem, I think Bobby E. says this, my problem in the bars was what I wanted to do was be sitting on that bar stool and the doors open and this hot blonde walks in with a mink coat over her, you know, and the seize part and she sees me. She walks up to me and she goes, I got a Ferrari, I got $100,000 in the car and I want you. And we walk out the door. That's the way I wanted it to happen. I didn't want to have to take that walk across that dance floor and hear him go, no, no, no, no. Not if you were the last man on earth, earth, earth, earth. You know, that's the one thing they say, if men had to have babies a lot of things would change. I wish women had to ask men to dance. I wish you guys had to take that 10,000 mile walk across the dance floor for a while and go, no, I'm not going to dance with you and as soon as you leave I dance with your friend. And that's what I'd like to do. I've written about it. I can still comment on it, okay? I do remember I did well one time. I'm not a drug addict. I never met a drug alcohol couldn't help. If I'd known it made me more controversial to be a drug addict, I'd have done more to those. I've done pretty much every drug. The difference between me and drugs and alcohol is I never met a drugs I couldn't put down. a while on LSD. I got tired of that. I used to like to take diet pills so I could drink and smoke cigarettes and take that 10,000 mile walk. But when my hands started looking like Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, I switched to Downs. I mean, all the drugs I did, I did for my alcohol. And when they got in the way of my alcohol, the drug went. So I am to drugs what a heavy drinker is to alcohol given sufficient reason i can moderate the problem is alcohol i can't do that see i think we forget sometimes how insane i know but i have to talk sweetheart bye baby and so i love to see children i don't know why look i don' t know why people get upset with children in meetings you know that child is growing up in a sober home i come from an alcoholic home i get healed every time i see that look newcomers yeah and and none of you left the bar because it was too loud well people say the meeting that child's disturbing the meeting you're looking for something to disturb the bar fist fight girl fights mud wrestling anything you know but this is what i also like you know the cell phone announcement because i don't care actually i was going to have my buddy carl who accompanied me and thank you carl for coming with me call me on the cell phone while i share today just to be contrary i really want to do that one time be speaking and have somebody call me in the cell because listen newcomers this is this is a story this is the most loving place humanly possible on the face of the earth now you have to remember the thing about human relationships is every human relationship has the ability to heal into harm there is no perfect human relationship and i got to to remember that because I want them to be perfect. I'm going to make you all perfect and then when you're not, I get to cut you off and out of my life because basically what I want to do is be alone. I do service work because some part of me wants to do enough service work so eventually I can say, see, I've done enough, now you have to leave me alone. I don't know why I want to be alone but for some part me i just want to get away from you and i want to buy my way out of it you know doing anything to buy myself out of this but listen this is probably again like i said there's some really some interesting people in aa my home group there's a lot of folks you know and if you love everybody in your home group you may be going to enough meetings you're not on enough committee if you want to learn to love get on committee and and and if you're from las vegas do it just do me a favor uh the people in the committees and everything sometime next week thanks them you know we're real good at saying the coffee's not ready how come the chairs aren't set up blah blah blah but we're not really good about saying that you did a really good job we are the person who can find the fault but it takes me time to learn how to compliment. And the people who really did the work are not the speakers here. This is a fun thing to do. I get to talk about me for 45 minutes an hour. I've got to be careful because Francine times me, and last time I went over and she schooled me. So I'm going to be good today. But the fact of the matter is, I am done after this, but I'm going to still be here for the whole weekend. So if any of you are out there and think, well he must know something because he's a speaker which is not true uh see one of the first saturday night speakers i ever heard was normay and anybody who's been around for a while knows who norm was and it was just a great speaker but i didn't know because see i came in not thinking i was good enough i didn' t even know i could get up in the line see and that's where i wish i'd had a sponsor who told me go thank the speaker i didn'T know i could go talk to him and he died before i ever got to sit down and tell him what an impact he had on my sobriety how he was a messenger and and i can't tell you when people say that to me how how surprised and honored i am for that so so i'm going to be here there's nothing more useless at an aa convention than the speaker that's spoken it's kind of like an old girlfriend you just kind of want them to go to another convention and then you know it's like it changes because this morning lee best speaker ever heard and i might be the best speaker and then tonight whoever and then finally nicky sat sunday she finishes up best speaker i ever heard so all i'm saying is if for some reason i say something today to you or because i'm up on this podium i'm around here for the rest of the weekend please come up grab me we'll go have a cup of coffee we'll smoke a cigarette we'll do something and and if i can be of service i'm still on the clock. I'm still on the clock after I finish talking. I was talking about doing well in bars. I never did well, but one time and I didn't do drugs too much, but I did some Quaaludes. Nasty drug. Do you know in Europe they still make Quaaluds? They're doing Quaaludos in Viagra. Because you've got to remember the thing about Quaalude, it gave you an appetite for sex if you were male, but you couldn't do anything. With the Viagras, now you're capable I'm sure there are people that are killing themselves this way. But I've done a few quaaludes in Driven, and I was in a bar called the Group Therapy, and the girls' room was right here and the boys' room was like there. You know, and like I said, I do, I always want to be Rep Butler and I want to be cool and how you doing and boy, you look pretty and... And now that I've got you where I want you and now that the lights are dim and I have that certain glow on your face. Okay. I guess I was a little too bright for the first half of my talk now we're going to mood lighting now it feels like night doesn't it so I'm leaning up against the door waiting to get in the men's room and this girl comes out and And in my best drunken quaaludes, I go, That's a pretty good line, isn't it? There's some really sober women in here responding right now, I know. Al-Anon's thinking, I need to slip. She looked me in the eye and she went, we were out the door in five minutes but that was it that was my drinking you know i danced with some communists in our way in in colombia but i basically sat in that chair and you know drank and laughed because jillian had left seneca one more time on ryan's hope and cried because they missed the word on the ten thousand dollar pyramid and that was it that was and then i made that call to a a and believe me in south carolina 1979 it was a and a not aa now i honestly believe that when you call alcoholics anonymous you do not want another alcoholic on the end of the line i believe this is a myth one alcoholic talking to no you don't what you want is you want a pre-alanon you want You want a co-alcoholic that's never been near Al-Anon. That's what you want. You want to call up and go, Hi, I'm Steve. I'm alcoholic. Oh, poor baby. Poor sweetie pie fool. We will come over and rock you. I got John, retired Sergeant Major, WW2. Hello, Alcoholics Anonymous. What do you want? Well, I'd like to know when 8 o'clock beat here. Click. so you go to the meeting just to kick his butt and that's what they were they were old guys playing pinochle uh for those of you who are new it used to be you knew you were an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because there was so much smoke you couldn't see the leader the walls were nicotine yellow in every alcoholic clubhouse there's a paint you could only get from New York and a lot of pinochle playing that may be the only thing that survived but I tell you I got sober in that clubhouse and for me I walked in there and the spiritual principle of hope happened for me at my very first meeting I came in knowing I was hopeless the spiritual principle of the first step hopelessness powerlessness and I had been to therapy I had made attempts to treat this problem of drinking I honestly wanted a solution. I don't know, I don' t really believe any of us come in completely wanting to be giving up drinking. We want to give up the consequences of drinking. Bye, Jane. We won' t, we will take no notice. Give Jane a hand because she' s going to a commitment. Register some people. Just the story of my life. Halfway through my story they leave me. So, anyway, I came in here and and i just heard that it was possible not to drink and and and i i stuck around for about a week and may 25th became my sobriety date and i will tell you i have not been close to suicide suicide nothing close to a drink in 23 years i have been close to suicide i've gotten close to homicide i've been close to group aside because it says did did we become ucla what i want to be on the committee for that how did how do we get ucl la colors and it's on some other literature too i'm just it's interesting i like the dark blue but i'm become an old fart you know it's like 449 is not on now 449 it's 417 and that'll be a controversy some new newcomer is going to go up and now put page 417 in the all-time rate 449 449 good enough for me good enough you i had 449 for years well after the 50s anyway so i come in here i get sober you take away see i am an alcoholic alcohol it says in the 12 and 12 the primary cause of our problems including our alcoholism now this is a radical we're not talking about the physical allergy now which is a big part of it i will tell you i believe that one of the reasons i have stayed sober this entire time even when i didn't believe any of this stuff and in 23 years there have been times when i didn't leave any of it i just went to meetings anyway there have been times in 23 years where i didn t think any of this stuff made any difference and i went anyway there have been times in 23 years where i know it will work and i just don't know if i'm willing to do it again and there have been 23 years where there have been times in 23 years where i was a cheerleader for alcoholics anonymous i just you know in texas i think they have a saying that you go to meetings because you have to you go the meetings because you finally want to and finally you go two meetings because it's eight o'clock because i really believe that for me alcoholics anonymous started out on the wall 12 steps 12 traditions and somewhere it's got to come and live inside of me our psychiatric friends would call that internalizing it's gotta come and leave inside of me somehow for me to stay here and once that happens the program is mine and whether i agree with you it is we talked about it last night the speaker said he didn't think he had to take the steps in order there are people would disagree with it the man sober a long time almost 40 years he's internalized the program and it doesn't matter what somebody else thinks and that's a mature spiritual member of alcoholics synonymous and being able to stay in a room with someone who disagrees with me because i don't know about you Staying in a room with somebody that disagrees with me has never been an easy thing. I had to change your mind, or you had to changed my mind, but we couldn't have like... And if you can't find a room... If you have to do that in AA, you'll never find a meeting you like. One of the first Thursday night speakers I ever heard wrote The Professor and the Paradox and he said Alcoholics Anonymous was born in a riot. He said he was powerless over alcohol and we were gonna fight about everything else. That's pretty good description. That's why you have one big book expert never goes to meetings with another big book expert. You ever know that? They have like separate meetings, or one guru doesn't go with another guru because they can't get along with each other, disagree. My home group, this is my home group. We have a very moderate group. We were taking a survey. San Fernando Valley Central Office sells non-AA approved literature, probably a violation of tradition. been doing it for years god has not sent his wrath down on the san fernando valley for us doing that people have not gone out for that we sell other literature that is not conference approved somebody complained and so we took a vote here's how we took the vote selling non-conference approved literature in the san Fernando valley central office is a violation in traditions and it should stop selling non conference selling nonconference approved uh literature in the San Fernando Valley Central Office is not a violation in traditions, and it should continue. And then C, that's it, those are the only two. Not in AA, there's another one. We don't know whether selling non-conference approved literature in the central office is a violation of tradition, but we want you to keep it. That's the one my group voted for. That's kind of the way our group is. You know, it's a lot of Volvos and mommies with baby seats in it And guys that are laid off at the studio It's a very suburban meeting You just come in, get your meeting, get out, no trouble And if you want trouble, you can go to the late night Santa Monica meeting Starts 11 o'clock on Santa Monica Boulevard Now you can imagine who goes to meetings 11 o'clock at night on Santa Monica Boulevard It's not guys who are 53 with 30 years of sobriety They have black hair, a lot of black leather and they're tattooed and pierced in parts of their body I don't even touch on my own If you don't use the F word they don't think you're sober it's the only meeting i've ever gone to where one of the leaders said if anybody is dealing drugs in this meeting we will kick your butt no come on think about it have you ever been to a meeting where they had to make that announcement i don't know if you could call it aa but they stay sober and eventually they go to other meetings but i'll tell you what and then after that meeting they go to swingles which is an all-night restaurant and they sit in a free base tobacco and cappuccinos and they talk about sobriety i i don't know if i could do that forever but i tell you what when i would go home at four o'clock in the morning because i was going through a trauma and i just needed some newcomers and i i will tell you you know i'm the kind of guy that looks like i get out of a fraternity meeting and I walked into this room of very goth and I'm pretty sure they accepted me more than a fraternity meeting would accept the goth. I've been into a lot of gay meetings where I would think I was expressed as straight quicker than I think someone who was gay would have been accepted. I don't know, it's just my feeling sometimes. Who's the outcast at the meeting? But when I would leave there would be one guy with black leather and black hair and a pack of Marlboro Reds talking to another guy with black hair with a big book in between them, you know? And that's AA. That's just Alcoholics Anonymous. That's all it is. And the language and all the rest of it, you just have to find your spot, you know. I found my spot in AlcoholicsAnonymous and I'm moving and I have to find that spot again. And it's just like when I moved to California. It wasn't South Carolina. A big meeting in South Carolina was 30 people. That's a small meeting in LA. And so I'm going to have to go there and keep my mouth shut and do it their way and become one of them. But the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is I know that if, like Las Vegas, if I moved here you guys would have to accept me or die. And that's true all over the world. And I don't know any other organization where that's truth. But living here is a problem and this is the problem. I don' t like people. Here's the problem I don''t like people I don ''t like you I don't like you in groups. You do things that irritate the snot out of me. Here's just a little one. The crosswalk button. The thing you push that says walk, don't walk, right? You push it once. Once you have pushed it, the circuit is set. Pushing it more often will not make it happen any quicker. the elevator come any quicker but you insist on doing that you insist on doing this now when I'm spiritually fit I've talked to my sponsor I've worked a step I've helped a newcomer you can do that and I can walk by you and go thank God brother God bless you have a nice day when I am not spiritually fit and I drive by you and you are doing this I want to stop my car get out and bitch slap you i don't like people airplanes you know you have no i thank god every day that you no longer can take your relatives into the airport with you that aunt mimi can't clog up the halls because you're going away for two days those of us with tickets make the airport insane enough but this is what happens. You have a ticket, your ticket says 37A. You get on the airplane and you stop at the first row. I'll give you that one. Who knows? Maybe the first room of the airplane is 37A, maybe it's not 1, maybe they started with 37. All right, so I'm going to give you that one, you stop at 1, I'm a humanitarian, you can have it. But oh no, it doesn't say 37A. What a surprise, it says 1. You have 37A, walk a bit. Not you, you go to the next row thinking it's going to go 1, 37A You need to be taken out of the gene pool You need to be taken off the planet I should not have to live with that and i have a fantasy many times at a boring meeting and no meeting can be boring they're all spiritual right it says in the 12 traditions every meeting is a spiritual entity every meeting i go to one and one is equal three every meeting i go two miracles are happening and i can get used to it you remember when you were new and every meeting was like wow no matter what happened especially a fist fight one old timer and a walker and another old timer and a talker fighting over gratitude wow it was so cool now I just don't want any trouble you know the prototype newcomer made him up for a while but you know the prototype newcomer you go how are you doing he's doing good doing good doing good my sponsor told me I had a clean house and find God clean house and find god so I went home and I cleaned the house I got to clean the house clean house and I found a quarter on the back of it it said trust in God so I found God I found God so if I'm God and then I realized that God was dog swallowed backwards so I got the dog out so I've got the dugout and I looked at the dog and I took the dog look to me and it was really spiritual but then I realized I was late for work so I went to work and the boss said hey you're late and I said easy does it dude he said what I said first things first he says yeah you're fired no bummer so I want to a noon meeting I went to a new meeting and I shared I shared about that and the old-timer guys they didn't like it. But this newcomer chick, she really liked what I said and she asked me if I'd sponsor her. I figured I got 30 days of solid sobriety. So I said, let's go back to my house and read the big book. And you know what, man? I didn't even have to sleep with her. I mean, I slept with her, but I didn' t have to. You know, that's like newness. you see somebody with chips in the line hey, you're sober, I'm sober, we're sober and then after a while it's like a place you go and you just forget how I really believe the people who stay joyous around her after 30 or 40 years are the ones who just still get that same kick when they see somebody get it when they say they see the lights come on and they remember that they are the glass and not the light that they're the message and notthe messenger there's a very famous story about Chuck C who was known as a pretty good talker and Chuck was talking and he went back to that same meeting a year later and a guy took a year of cake and he said, you know, I was here a year ago and there was some guy talking and Chuck's, you know didn't pick up any seat and I don't remember a thing that man said but somebody offered me a cigarette at the break so I came back. I honestly believe it's the little stuff. You know, it's when you think of taking the newcomer to coffee with you or that first dance that one of you ladies kindly takes that newcomer guy on or it's saying come on with us because I'm not a guy that thinks if I ask, you'll include me and one of the things I found in Alcoholics Anonymous is you people, you look around, you know some of you are gifted with that spiritual gift of hospitality you know who needs to be asked there's some of us that will come in here and they're the ones that will go whether we want them to or not but, you know, the ones you're trying to sneak away from. So my problem is people, and you have learned. You know, I tell you, that psych hospital I worked at, there was just this, you Know, the people aren't very, at the cafeteria, the food's not very good. The people aren'T very happy. They're locked in. They're suicidal. They're homicidal. They have stuff that, they have voices telling them that they're Satan. I walked up to a guy one day. I said, How are you doing? He said, I'm Satan. And I was in kind of a playful mood. so I said to him are you are you Satan really he said yeah yeah yeah I said well if your Satan why are you here and he looked at me and I said well what do you mean he said well why are in a lockdown County facility if you're Satan why aren't we at the Beverly Hilton if youre Satan why don't we go to Tahiti if you are Satan I'll go to Tahit with you and just for a minute he cleared. And he went, yeah, if I'm Satan, why am I here? And then he saw the black helicopter and I lost him again. But just for a minute, I had him. But the greatest compliment, and this is a compliment from you guys, because see, they don't really think of me as a therapist. They think of my as a patient with a key. Because I'm not only the only recovering therapist on staff there, I'm also the only one who's been in one of those facilities. And we had this guy checking out and and he wasn't alcoholic or addicted he just was psychotic and schizophrenic and he cleared up and he worked with computers which is a good job for schizophrenics because you can be home by yourself don't have to interact with humans and uh and he was checking out it was really happy and everybody said why because usually people when they leave my place are not very happy and they go on why are you so happy and he points to me and he says well steve can do it anybody can do that's alcoholics anonymous not directly but that's what i learned from you i used to sing to one of the ladies in the cafeteria every day just i just come in and sing to her because she was back there and i don't know her name reminded me of a song and she said you know you're the only one who makes me come in here and smile that was you where i try to make my workplace as spiritually fit as my meeting hall, as my home. And I don't even know I'm doing it. Because see, once I know I'mdoing it, it doesn't count anymore. Once I know I do it, then I take credit for it. Once I knowI do it then I have to, then it just gets so confused I can't do it anymore. But when I'm not doing it, when all of a sudden the world's back to me saying yeah that's that part where you start doing it and it's out of this insanity that that comes and I just want to say this last thing. It's sort of the rant I've been on lately. We forget how insane alcoholism is because we swim in it all the time. When we talk about alcoholic insanity, it's like telling a fish that it swims in water. He goes, well, what do you mean water? What's water? It's that story about the fish that was looking for water because it said, heard that fish swim in water? We live in this insanity and we forget. And insanity is usually defined in Alcoholics Anonymous as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results that's an improvement for me i have to get well to get that insane because prior to that i am psychotic when it comes to ethyl alcohol there's a difference neurotic psychotic neurot and the psychotic is not knowing that two and two equals one four neurotic is two and three equals four and i don't like it worth a damn see that's that kind of insanity but the kind of sanity i have when i come in here is I can't remember the stove is hot when it comes to alcohol. I may be able to do everything else. I may run in corporations. I may meet mom and dad of the year. I may perfectly sane in every aspect of my life, but I'll pick up that drink and say, you cost me my wife, my kids, my car, my job, my self-respect, every good loving kind thing I ever had in my life. I'm going to give you one more chance. See, when I drink, it hits my stomach, paralyzes my legs, comes up my chest, flushes my face, comes out my fingers and every pore in my body goes ah. I love how quiet it gets when I tell that story. Because I woke him up, didn't I? He's in your head now. Ah, wah, wah. All I have to do is go play the slot machine and they'll bring me ah for free. Just sit there and ah will come to me. I will not have to come to it. Just play that slot, nickel slot, nickle town, nickle time, free drinks, free drink. See, because that's what it does for me. That's why I believed in the physical allergy. When I haven't believed in anything else, I believe today, because I have been restored to sanity, that if I take a drink of ethyl alcohol it will be no different today than it was 23 years ago. I bought into that and I keep buying into that. It's like strawberries. People who eat strawberries break out in hives. 23 years later they're not going, well now I won't break out in the hives, there's no Strawberries Anonymous. There's no place where people go and they go, you break out in hivs when you eat strawberries? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long have you been on strawberries? Oh, I've been off 30 years. Yeah, 30 years, yeah. Do you still want to eat strawberries? Every damn day, man. Oh my God, I just want a strawberry every day. What do you do? Go to meetings. I go to meetings, and I have a sponsor I call that when I want to eat a strawberry, I call this sponsor to talk me out of strawberries, and then I get new guys who, and you don't eat strawberries No, no, no. There's no organization called Strawberries Anonymous unless it's a female stag meeting at a CA group. You have to be duly addicted to get that one. But there is an Alcoholics Anonymous because here's the story you hear all the time. Here is the story we hear and we've stopped reacting to it. A guy goes out and we say, how'd you go out? And he says, well, I got out of treatment. I got a little money, I've got a little apartment, got a little car, got a little girl, so I thought I could drink again. And we kind of go, hmm? And we don't react as insane as that is That is clinically psychotic We should be saying, oh no You need to come right to the psych hospital Right now, you're out of your mind Because if somebody did this If we said, what happened? He'd say, well I got out of the hospital Got a little car, got a little job Got a girl, so I didn't think I had diabetes anymore I didn' t think I had cancer anymore A job would cure cancer We'd say, you're out of your mind. But somebody says a job would cure alcoholism. Yeah, we understand. Absolutely psychotically insane, and there's nothing on God's green earth that can change that in my brain when you're an alcoholic like me except for divine intervention because today I know that a drink will kill me and the steps and my sponsor and everything else is what I do so I don't get back to that place where I know a drink won't, where I believe a drink will be fine. See? If I ever drink again, I honestly believe you can give me a lie detector and before I take the drink, I'm going to go, I can do this. It'll be okay. Or it won't be too bad. I will have become insane again and will no longer have been restored to sanity. And you can't give that to anybody. You know? I don't, that, that is the mystery here. and I will tell you if you have a problem with God I have several with him right now I know everybody that wrestles with God limps that's okay some of my problems are very profound some of them are very simple I don't understand why if God had to invent two genders that after making love one had to talk and the other had to sleep I don'T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON ON HIS HEAD THEN seems like a prescription for trouble just see God up in heaven now with St. Peter watch, watch, he's going to roll over and she's going kick him in the tukus so hard don't like that Alabama's gone and Marie's gone I liked being in the middle I liked 10 years I liked 15 years I don't like getting closer to the door and pretty soon I came in here and there were grandmothers and grandfathers and I'm the grandmother or grandfather now and pretty Soon I'll be the great-grandfather and it's a strange thing staying sober and it' s a strange thing seeing people come and go and it is a strange thing seeing the meetings stay and the core groups stay there but people that you love go on and some of them don't drink and some do and it just changes and I watched Big Mike Ross struggle with that for years and I learned that I'm the one that has to adjust, because Alcoholics Anonymous is not going to adjust to me. You're going to do pretty much what you're going to do. And I get to put my two cents worth in and be a member and somebody who has an opinion, but pretty much my job is to fit in with the group. And I think the longer you stay sober, sometimes the harder that is, because people expect you to know stuff, and I don't. I'm a selfish, self-centered alcoholic. This is my fantasy sometimes at a boring meeting. Aliens come in, and they're going kill everybody in the world right but they're going to keep 10 of us alive as sort of a human zoo and they pick me to be the leader because i'm so special now do you see how self-centered that is why am i getting picked i'm not the smartest i'm Not the prettiest out of just all this group let alone the world why would they pick Me but they picked me to lead this group and then they let me take 10 of you on an island it's sort of A human zoo as soon as I say I get to take 10 of you I know you stop thinking about me and you start thinking about yourself and wonder would I take you on the island? Let me just tell you this. All the men die. I'm not taking any competition. I'm not getting voted off the island. But I'm doing you a favor because we're all going to starve to death in about 10 days because I'm not taking these women because they know how to build fire and make a lean-to, okay? But that's just it. Bob gave a talk and it's about me stuck on me all the time and the only thing I've known is God letting me break through that with being with you, being of service. It says in the big book, it says, of those who really tried, and I really believe that trying just means getting a sponsor, doing the steps, which are what expel the obsession to drink, and being of help. It's not very hard. It's really not very heart for a disease that kills so many people. It's just hard to keep doing it because I think there's some reward coming my way. And my friend Marie, after she passed away, and I was wrestling with God. I heard a tape that she made. You know, at 23 years of sobriety, Marie, her relationship broke out. She had to move back to Los Angeles. She was a circuit speaker, if you've ever heard her, one of the best I've ever hurt. She was on somebody else's couch. Her mother was dying. She went and took care of her mother every day and her mother told her she was evil and full of pus and she took careof her anyway. Her son was diagnosed with leukemia, which was wrong. Her brother was diagnosed with HIV. her sponsor Alabama died and she broke her back and was in bed for two months this all and she gained 100 pounds all in the space of one year and she laid in that bed and she said I have given my life to Alcoholics Anonymous is this the way it treats me I can in no good conscience tell anyone to keep coming back and see she made a decision at 13 to do two things stay loaded her whole life and never love anybody because loving hurt too much and of course she'd gotten sober but she was stuck in that bed at 23 years was she going to keep loving even though loving hurt too much and we made the choice to keep loving and Marie came up with a wonderful answer that saved my butt 10 years later which is the only reward for love is love and the only award for service is service that's all we get there's nothing else and I tell you, driving to the airport I saw a man and a wife and two kids and two shopping carts being stopped by the LAPD I don't know what for, vagrancy but when I looked at that I've got problems but that's such a different problem and if the LEPD didn't end there I might have stopped and offered them some money and said okay let's get them off the street for a day but that is the deal The reward for love is love, and the reward for service is service. So give it away this weekend, because you're getting a reward while you're doing it. And if you want to talk to me, I am really more than willing to sit down and spend some time. Thank you so much. It's a wonderful season. This is sort of a wonderful way for me to leave this area and go to New York, and I'm very humbled by it, and I will leave you with the story. I still think you should run this through the Hartwood Hotel, though. In Minnesota they have a room that is too big for everybody, so they run the video through the hotel into the room. So you can go to a hospitality room and see it with your group or you can watch it in your hotel room. Can you imagine some guy waking up right now turning on TV and I'm on TV saying, in room 59? Next year he said, I got sober, I was here and in room 59 this guy came on and I don't know what the hell he was talking about, scared the hell out of me. Pipe this into the hotel. Come on, we've got a captive audience here. Fill this room with newcomers. Third step. Drunk on the road, sick and hurting, hung out on the right home, runs into God. God's got something in his hand. Drunk goes, what's that? God goes, this is sobriety. Drunk go, I need that, man. I need it. How much does it cost? Because alcoholics only understand buying stuff. And then drunk goes, well, how much? I mean, God goes, well, how much you got? And the drunk goes, Well, I got about $50. And God goes OK for you. Sobriety cost you $50, and the drunk goes whoa, whoa, if I give you all $50 I won't have any gas for my car. And God says, oh, you have a car. Oh no, no, sobriety's going to cost you your car. He goes, whoa! Whoa! If I give my car, how am I going to pay for my house? You go, oh! You have a house? You have home? I thought you were in the railroad tracks with the cardboard box. No, no. No, sobrietty costs you your home. He goes, what do I want for my wife and my kids? A family. You have a family. My goodness gracious, your list is totally out of date. No, no. Sobriety costs you your family. He says, well, if I give you all that, what good is my life? And God goes, that's right. Sobrietty costs you your life. And because the drunk is at that magic moment of surrender, he is willing to give his daddy his money, his car, his house, his wife, his job, his kids, his life. And his father gives him sobriety that he has to maintain. and then he looks him deep in the eye and he says alright I give you your money back but it's not your money more, it's my money you get to spend it for me give your car back, it' s not your car, it''s my car I'm going to give you a Mercedes Benz but you scotch guard that puppy because I want people capable of throwing up in it so if you've got a car too good to throw up in you've GOT A CAR TOO GOOD FOR A SOBER ALCOHOLIC BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOUR CAR, IT'S MY CAR BUT YOU'RE GOING TO DRIVE IT FOR ME I'M GOING GIVE YOUR HOUSE BACK IT'SNOT YOUR HOUS ANYMORE, IT''S MY HOME BUT YOU GET TO LIVE IN IT FORME I'M GONNA GIVE YOU YOUR FAMILY BACK It's not your family anymore. Based on your behavior, they have a right never to talk to you ever again. But it's not your family. It's my family. You get to take care of them for me. I give you your life back and it's never your life ever again, it's my life but you get to live it for me That is the magical deal that I believe a loving creator cuts with all of us in the third step And so when this alcoholic at 23 years of sobriety doesn't understand one thing, the great gift that you have given me is people to go through it with and the face of a newcomer where I can just light one candle and forget about how dark the rest of it is. Keep coming back.