The Difference Between Clinical and Spiritual Depression – Bob D.

Thank you, Mark. My name is Bob and I am alcoholic, and only through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in, that I found out through AA is absolutely crazy about me, which means he has questionable taste, that I've accessed that grace through the process in this book, and I've maintained it through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and a consistent and persistent effort to take actions in the primary purpose, which is helping other alcoholics. I'm delighted to be here. This is one of those groups that my sponsor would refer to as a pocket of enthusiasm for the traditions, the steps, the big book, the concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm always delighted that you guys have a speaker on one of the concepts and one of the traditions. Do you know that there are groups in Alcoholics Anonymous around the world that don't even know the concepts exist and that don'T even know the long form of the tradition exists? And this is not one of those groups, and that's a good thing. If we are to survive and if your children's children's children get up one day and they decide they're going to kill themselves because there's nowhere to go as some of us found as we were thinking of often ourselves years ago, and thank God there was Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to welcome all the new people. If you're within your first 90 days, I'm really glad you're here. This is an exceptional, wonderful time of the year to get sober because in about five or six weeks, hordes of people will be coming into Alcoholics Anonymous, and you will be old-timers then, and you will be able to just try not to look down in your nose at them, okay? But you'll be able help them, and you'll say things like, yeah, I remember when I was new. So... And maybe you'll be the only person in the room that's the freshness of the sense of failure and the awkwardness of coming into Alcoholics Anonymous will be fresh enough within you that you may be the only one in the world that could let that new person know that he's not alone, that there's somebody there that knows how they feel. I am supposed to tell you in a general way what I used to be like what happened and what I'm like today I believe with everything in me from what I've learned of the disease of alcoholism that I had it before I ever picked up a drink there was something wasn't quite right about me i must have been like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol and i i look back at my childhood and i wish i could tell you i could blame it on my parents i had wonderful parents i there was i there's a lot of love in our family there was never any abuse it was a guy had a great childhood i've often sat in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous or sat with guys I sponsor listening to horrific fifth steps of beatings and abuse and just sort of sometimes just thought, God, I'm almost envious listening to that because then I could have somebody to hang my weirdness on. Right? But there's nobody to hang it on. It I just seemed to be born with a yearning and a thirst that I didn't even know I had. It was almost like a vacuum inside me, an incompleteness that drove on me. It drove on before I ever picked up my first drink. When I was about 12, I was almost 13 years old. I was hanging around with a bunch of older kids, tough kids, in trouble all the time kids. but they were the kids that when they walked down the hall at junior high school, other kids got out of their way. And when you're secretly weak and pathetic, man, I want to be a part of those guys. Hoping if I could fit with them, I'll feel like they look. And we pulled a burglary in the town I lived in. And one of the things we stole out of this house was some bottles of whiskey. Now, I got to tell you, looking back, I don't even think at almost 13 years old, I don'T even think I knew it got you high. I had never seen my parents drunk. I knew it was for adults, but I didn't really know anything about it except I want to belong with these kids and whatever they're into, I'm in. Count me in because I want a fit. I want their acceptance and we stole these this whiskey and i they were passing around this remember the labels today this bottle of seagram seven with the big seven on the label and and i'm noticing that the kids that took the big hit off the bottle got a lot of attention from the other kids so by the time the bottle gets to me i'm going to take a big hit i'm just no matter what it is i'm glad it wasn't cat urine or something because i'm in and i took a big head off this bottle and I've got to tell you, the burning just about ripped my insides out. And somehow, I guess because I was so afraid of what they would think of me, somehow I didn't throw it back up. I kept it down. When the burning stopped, my whole world started to change. A little while after the burning stop, for the first time in my life, I didn' t have to pretend like I was a part of. I really felt a connectedness to those guys for the first time in my life I didn't I lost and shed all that feeling like I'm coming from behind and I started to feel like a part of and for a lonely kid who grows up pretending he's okay to finally be okay oh my god it's unbelievable. And unbeknownst to me, getting lit up just kind of moved into the center of my life. I didn't know that, but it seemed like from then on, I just sort of existed between opportunities to party. It became the most important thing in my life, even though I would have told you it wasn't. Over the following years, if you'd asked me what was important, oh, I'd have told your school, I'd had told you my girlfriend, I told you the band I was in, I had told your parents, Parents, I'd have told you college. I'd had told you the job. I'd told you a lot of stuff. But if you'd have watched me, you'd seen the only time Bob looks like he's really free, like he is really okay is when he's about half lit up. Well, there's something wrong with me from the very beginning. I'm not a... I'm a get-in-trouble drinker. And I don't mean to be. But by the time I'm just 15, almost 16 years old, I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time. And it's the same judge. And this is not good. And they're talking about putting me away someplace with a bad history of abuse for kids. And I'm scared and I'm in this courtroom. and my parents are in there because my parents loved me and would have done anything to help me. I'm sad to tell you, years later, I broke their heart finally enough they'd have nothing to do with me. But at that time, they'd had done anything to help us out. They'd have done everything to help we. And if you'd asked me why I was in that courtroom, I'd have probably given you a lot of excuses. I'd Have Probably Told You About Snitches. I'd Had Told You about a society that wants to curtail real human freedom. I told you about cops, they're always picking on people like me. But the real reason I'm in that courtroom is this thing's wrong with me and I don't understand what it is, but I'm always in trouble. And what this thing is, it's called alcoholism. I have a physiological allergic reaction to alcohol that I don't know that I got and I didn't know it for I had it for years and didn't know I had but what that thing is is every time I drink alcohol something happens to me that doesn't happen to the other guys except for the one guy he died of alcoholism when he was about 23. But what happens to me that doesn't happen to these other guys is, and some of them get drunk, but I don't just, I just don't get drunk. Getting drunk ain't enough. I get drunk drunk. I'm the guy who's looking for a drink while I can't walk to the drink because I'm so drunk. I'm that guy, right? And because of an allergic reaction to alcohol, every time I go out to drink, I get in trouble. And even if it's only a little trouble like inside myself because I don't remember how I got home and it makes you feel a little shaky or I did something that I find out about the next day that I'm embarrassed about. And I got this thing inside me that I could not identify but every single time I ever picked up a drink of alcohol somewhere where maybe between the halfway through the first drink and maybe the beginning of the second drink, a feeling starts to come over me. We all know that feeling. It's that warm kind of, yeah, feeling. And I have an allergic reaction to that feeling It doesn't happen in non-alcoholics. It only happens in guys like me. and what that allergic reaction is is it lights up something inside me that just goes oh yeah come on and I can't get enough every drink I've ever taken in my whole life has made me feel like I gotta have more of this feeling and I don't know that I don' t know that I'm the guy that there's something wrong with if you really want to see your alcoholism, look at it in contrast. If you've ever sat with a non-alcoholic and watched them drink, it'll make you crazy. My sister is not an alcoholic. I've watched my sister drink. I watch my sister drinking like you will watch your cat, or like your cat will watch you eat a tuna fish sandwich. I watch her. And I just with her and my daughter, not too long ago, we go out about once a week to dinner together, and my sister will order a drink, and it takes her a half hour to drink it. I mean, you can see it evaporate right before your eyes. That's alcohol abuse, you know what I'm saying? And when my sister gets about halfway into a second drink, she'll push it aside because in her non-alcoholic wiring, if she starts to feel the effect of the drug alcohol she gets it that she's losing control and she just goes whoa you know it's inconceivable to my sister to get knee walk and cry baby drunk it's in conceive the idea of drink till you puke she thinks that's crazy uh my sister drinks and after about two drinks she gets a little bit of buzz and she gets the feeling like she's going to lose control and she stops when i get to the exact same place my sister gets to i get a feeling like i'm about to get control of the whole universe and i can't stop matter of fact i'm the guy that if i'm conscious i ain't done drinking i remember one time a bunch of us went up spring break bunch of went up to boston to go to a party we're at this party and we're doing shooters and drinking at a keg of beer we're smoking a little reefer and guy came through the party with a whole thing of capsules. Now, looking back, I didn't even ask them what they were. I just said, thank you. Took a bunch up. They turned out to be animal tranquilizer. Well, some of you may have had this experience in about an hour. I'm laying on the floor and I can't get up and I'm wide awake, but I can'T get up. I'M laying on THE FLOOR. So I'M LAYING THERE TRYING TO TALK PEOPLE INTO BRINGING ME DRINKS, RIGHT? BECAUSE OF AN ALLERGIC REACTION TO ALCOHOL. because if i'm still conscious i ain't done partying well so i'm standing before this juvenile court judge for the third time and i'm in a lot of trouble and my parents made a deal with this judge and i had to go somewhere else and live for a while instead of the bad place and i met this new place and I'm not even there don't think a week and I've already targeted the hip kids because you know how it is when you secretly feel like you're not enough and you don't fit very well and you're just kind of squirmy with people and you don't really feel like other people look and you have this inability to to connect in groups the way other people seem to be what do you do is you gravitate to what looks like the top of the food chain and try to fit with them because when you're really coming that far from behind just to be normal ain't enough we are the kind of people that feel like we'd have to get a pluses just to feel almost equal to the kids that get c's so i've i've targeted this kit this group of guys that look like they're the really hip kids in the school a little older older guys and i'm i'm siding up to one of this one of the guys one day is one ofthe leaders and i'm start talking to him, and I'm telling him my story. And I'm fabricating it a little bit. You know how it is, you know? It's just when you're secretly not enough, you can't tell him the way you really are because it ain't enough for me. It ain't going to be enough for him either. So you got to make, you give him the Bob, the really super hip version of Bob on steroids Bob kind of, right? You know, so I'm doing that, and he's listening to me. And when I get done, he says a couple things to me that really took me back. First, he said, so you like to party, do you? And that kind of lit me up. I said, yes, I do. Kind of hoping he might have a pint or something somewhere around, bottle of wine, something, because I was a little overdue to get lit up. And instead, he didn't say that. He said, well, you drink that liquor. That liquor will make you stupid. Now, he really backed me off with that, because i loved like i was really into that 151 rum oh man that'd get you downtown now oh oh there ain't no there ain'T no social drinking a 151 room i'm telling you you drink that for one reason one reason only get there they get me there and i love that stuff and he's bad rapping and i don't like that i'm backing away from it and he says to me he says well you're always in trouble. Yeah, I am. You know, people in my family are starting to use that A word with me. I'm not even 16 years old yet. Alcoholic. I got an uncle who's an alcoholic. I hate him. I'm hell-bent if I'm going to be like my uncle. And he says, you're always in trouble. I said, yeah, I know. I have bad luck. I am unlucky. He said, what if I told you i could give you something to make you feel as good as that 151 rum only they won't be able to smell it on your breath you won't stagger you won'T slur your words matter of fact nobody will even know you're high and you could keep a whole week supply in your shirt pocket what would you say to that i don't even know what he's talking about but it's like sign me up and he introduced me to drugs and i got to tell you something i am a real alcoholic alcoholics should not do drugs It's bad, because I do drugs alcoholically. I'm trying to reproduce the effect of a pint of 151 rum with everything I pick up. So everything I pickup, I do it alcoholically, I slam it and me against the wall. My dance of death with drugs didn't last very long. I eventually came back to alcohol, but in those years, it was just crazy. Within just a few months, I'm doing amphetamines. amphetamines, shooting meth. But I don't do it like drug addicts do it. I do it like an alcoholic. I got guys that have been doing it for years saying things to me like, hey kid, you better cool it. Within six to eight months, I've turned myself into some sort of paranoid schizophrenic or something. I became the guy, if you left me alone in your car, you went in to get a pack of cigarettes. By the time you came out, I'm taking your dashboard apart looking for microphones from the police, right? Because I'm nuts. A guy comes along and he says, man, you're screwed up. And I said, blah, blah. He says, try some of this. And he hit me up with something when the throwing up stopped. I could think straight. My head just went, and introduced me to heroin. But I'm a real alcoholic. Alcoholics shouldn't do drugs. and eventually it was full circle back to alcohol in the last many years it was cheapest vodka I could buy a lot of Richards Wild Irish Rose little bit of Thunderbird once in a while it really all came down to the most let's blot Bob out for the least amount of money and that's what it became kind of like alcohol all became like a necessity bill says in his story it's it's not a luxury anymore it's a necessity because i ain't no good i i i don't do very well here and the more i longer i drank the worse i did on the natch and and i i'm in the grip of a progressive illness and i don' t know it and what that really means is as the years go on my ability to find the magic that ease and comfort the fun that i'd once had is more and more elusive and there was a tremendous amount of fun at one time in drinking i mean what a magical thing alcohol was if you had alcoholism now it didn't wasn't magical to non-alcoholics it's only magical to us but you can take a guy like me who, who is awkward, painfully awkward and lonely around people. Who doesn't seem to fit very good. That just seems, I just seem to have my emotions and anxieties kind of on me all the time and I can't get them off. And I can walk into a bar where I can talk to anybody. I can walk into dance. I walk into party and I'm alone and have three or four drinks and I come out play. i have three or four drinks i can shoot pool better than i can ever shoot pool i am loose i am right in that zone man i'm i'm all i'm the guy five or six drinks i could play the guitar and sing better than I could ever play the guitar in some five or six drinks I can talk to girls sober I can't talk to girls I remember having experiences gotta be half lit up talking to some girl i have a crush on it'd be like an out-of-body experience i i would hear myself say words and i don't know where they're coming from but i'm thinking oh my god this could work where's that coming from it's mad it's like i'm i'm channeling somebody with suave or something you know where's it coming from i mean wow wow i could be funny when i'm drunk sober i'm a mope I'm a mope, so drunk, I'm funny. I've cracked me up, I're funny. I can be deep, philosophical. I can uncover secrets to the universe. I remember telling a bunch of guys who were smoking reefer and drinking wine, we were having this deep conversation. It was just majestic. I remember saying to the one guy, this is what Buddha saw. See that? See the big picture. And then I get sober, and I'm back to being me again. And my big secret is I never really liked that much. But I'm in a grip of a progressive illness, so over the years, my ability to get that majestic, magical effect is getting more and more elusive. And it's harder to catch that party after a while. And I'm starting to get desperate trying to jumpstart something that ain't jumpstarting. Or if I get it, I get it for just a little window and then go into this something pitiful and pathetic. I started getting in a lot of trouble. I started being arrested a lot. Not for anything significant. Nothing macho. Even though I fancied myself a gangster at one time, I was really a public nuisance. i mean i i was a blackout drinker i had lots of matter of fact the last couple years it was almost every day i would have a black out and you don't notice all of them unless you got in trouble did something very bizarre but you can have blackouts that are sort of nondescript because you just don't know how where your car is you don' t remember getting home you're i don' remember laying down on the front yard here I am though I mean you know little things like that look good or who are you and what gender are you I mean I am not gay. What are you? You know what it's really bad? When you come to next to it and you look in its eyes and you see that look that lets you know that you are its it. It's really bad when you've made Jabba the Hutt feel bad about himself. I never did anything good in a blackout. Nobody ever came up to me the next day and said, oh Bob, you were so helpful at the party last night. You peed in our kitchen. You broke my lamp, you threw up in my living room, you sideswipe my car, you pass out my front lawn the absolute most horrific I hope I never forget this, I was hung over and I was sick and I tremors and I'm going to try to get well and the guy corners me he says, you know you told everybody last night you beat Bruce Lee in a karate match I want to shoot myself and i don't know what's wrong with me and i i start going to alcoholics anonymous and i start ending up in a a lot because every it seems like every institution or halfway house or detox or county jail anywhere i end up it's like they i get end up in aa meetings and it's funny how you don't think you're an alcoholic but every time you drink you kind of end up where all the alcoholics are at you know what I mean that's a weird dynamic and and I I started getting a little desperate and I started going to meetings and listening you know because I at first when I first came to AA this you were oh my god you were so alcoholics anonymous my my friend Joe used to say before he died a couple years ago he used to have the best line he used to say when he ended up in AA he said he felt like he joined the Salvation Army band I thought You know that feeling, you're in AA, and you're thinking, oh, it's come to this, has it? Oh, jeez. But then I started getting a little desperate, and I started going to AA, and I decided to go to AA. And I started listening because I'm burning my life to the ground, and I can't stop it. And I don't mean to go so far. And then I try to get sober, and I mean to stay sober, but I can not stay sober. and i'm in i'm that guy talks about in the beginning of chapter four that if when you honestly want to you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take on both those guys and so and and the sad part is as the disease progressed it's become pathetic it's not it's you can justify it if you can get a half hour or an hour of fun and then a bunch of trouble in some kind of alcoholic, that kind of makes sense. But there's not even the hour of fun anymore. And I drink and I'm pathetic and I feel sorry for myself and it's just awful. So I'm starting to listen in meetings. And here's what happened to me very quickly and I don't fit with people but I'm an observer. And i'm the guy who hangs in the back of the room and listens and watches people. That's a survival mechanism I learned on the streets because when you get in strange groups of people, you've got to check them out quick, man, so you know how to react. And I was watching you. It became very apparent to me and it didn't take much time that whatever's wrong with me is not the same thing that's wrong with you. And you were my evidence because I watched you, and I saw what happened to you when you got sober. You quit drinking. Man, you were magnificent. You stepped out in life easy. You had a lot of fun. Everything you touched seemed to click and work, and you had great relationships with people, and you laughed a lot. You see, when I quit drinking, I'm none of that. When I quit drinking I struggle with a lot of depression when I quit drinking I got I got these I got these fears that just don't they're crazy stupid fears but they're on me I mean weird stuff like I get imagining that I have terminal diseases and then doing deathbed speeches in my head and you know I mean great I mean just crazy stuff I can walk into a room of people and if somebody doesn't say hi to me i just start it just it just goes it's just you know people like that never he doesn't like you never did like you you know or us if i i walk into an alcoholic synonymous meeting stand in the back of the room and and glance in somebody's direction and they glance in my direction and a minute later they're talking to each other laughing i know what they're laughing about. And so I know whatever's wrong with me is not wrong with you, because it's not the same thing that's wrong with you. And I started seeking help before my father stopped helping me. He was very politically connected and he got me in to see some of the absolute top psychiatrists in the country, guys like Albert Ellis. He had to be a movie star back in those days to see Albert Ellis, and he'd written so many books and had his own institute up in New York, and I used to take a train and go up to New York City and was in therapy with Dr. Silverman, who was a contemporary of Fritz Perls, another person who studied under Harris and some of the originators of transactional analysis. I went to therapy with psychiatrists that diagnosed me as being clinically depressed and gave me the treatment for clinical depression, and I wanted it. And I was diligent with what they told me, and I did not have clinical depression. Even though I understood why they thought now, why they thought I did. But I know it wasn't. It was a misdiagnosis, and here's how I know, and It's very obvious that the treatment that worked for clinical depression didn't work for me. It wasn't until I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I applied the treatment for spiritual depression that I started to get free. And so I guess the proof is in the pudding, isn't it? And I didn't know what was wrong with me, But I started to get really kind of desperate. And the last couple years, two to three years of my drinking were very pathetic. My parents eventually stopped helping me. And within no time at all of them not helping me, I ended up on the streets. I ended Up the guy that you see living in the park. I ended UP that guy. And my last couple of years was like that. And I was in and out of Hope Rescue Missions and Salvation Armies and halfway houses and treatment centers and different places. When I drank, I was pathetic. I drank and went on crying jags and I'd sit in the park with a bottle of wine all by myself and I would either get angry or I'd get tearful and I just feel full of self-pity and there's a loneliness. There's a loneliness about alcoholism that's hard to even put into words. It's the kind of loneliness that makes you desperate. It's a kind of lonliness if you're kind enough to let me sleep on your couch at four o'clock in the morning, I'm calling up ex-girlfriends because, you know, they want to hear from you at four O'Clock in the Morning drunk. Or I'm call an alcoholic synonymous or I'm called suicide prevention just because I want somebody to talk to and now i'm in a stage of alcoholism that's really awful i don't bathe anymore because the truth is once the fun ran out of the party i don'T REALLY CARE REALLY i'M NOT THE BIG SHOT GUY WITH THE MOTORCYCLE AND THE BAND ANYMORE I'M THE I'M The Pathetic Guy I'M the guy that at one time years before I'd have made fun of. I'm that guy. I don't know what's wrong with me. And if you're like me, by the time you get to AA, there's probably been a lot of people over the years talking to you about you. Maybe your mother and father have talked to you About You. maybe your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend on many occasions talk to you about you maybe your minister maybe your priest or clergy or your po or your counselor your therapist or your doctor you get real bad maybe your drug dealer's been talking to you about you yeah real bad uh maybe your bartender's been Maybe strangers on the street are starting to cut into you and say, hey, hey. And they all say the same thing, kind of. They use different words, but it's pretty much all the same. They're all pretty much saying, Bob, Bob. Bob, you're really screwed up. And you catch me on a bad day when I'm demoralized in my defense and I'm not full of bluster, I'm liable to go, yeah, I know. And they'll say, you know why you're screwed up? No. And I've been to all the therapists. I don't know. Well, they tell you. They say, You know you're screwing up because you keep getting screwed up. If you didn't get so screwed up, you wouldn't be so screwedup. And I'm pretty screwed up so I think, Okay, I'm going to stop getting screwedup and I make up my mind and I stop getting screwedup And when I'm not getting screwed up, I get so screwed up. I got to go get screwed up and I don't understand because I don' t get it that alcoholism becomes more difficult when you put the bottle behind you. I don''t understand that I'm because I never read this book. See, I think keep tying alcoholism to a drinking problem because that's the symptom that brings me to my knees but every time i get sober there's something wrong with me and i don't know that it's alcoholism i think it's some sort of mental illness or something and so i never did aa and i sought all of that but i'm the guy that talks about in here that when i get sobre i'm a prey of misery and depression. I have feelings of uselessness and full of fear. I'm restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontent. I've no real use to anybody. I can't make a living. I just can't fit in a job right. I am always the guy that is awkward there, the guy who doesn't really fit when I'm sober. And so what happens to me is that I enter into a state of abstinence and I've sworn to myself again, but this time I really mean it. I'm never going to touch that stuff again. And then all these emotions and these feelings and this loneliness and the low level depression, and all this stuff just goes right below the horizon and just kind of gnaws at me. And if you're like me, you put up a big bravado. Maybe you got a really good high-powered job to show everybody, but you know how that is. The shine of it starts to wear off after a while. You get that girlfriend because you think it's going to make a difference, and the shine of being with her starts to ware off after awhile. You get the motorcycle, the new guitar. You know Wow, that is a shine that starts to wear off after a while. And I don't know what's wrong with me, but one of my great teachers was a guy named Chuck Chamberlain and Chuck said one time, he said if you'd be alcoholic, sober you will eventually get to a place where you can no longer put anything between you and you. And there you are. And there we go. There you are, and I would always eventually get to that place where I would all the frantic things I've acquired that are going to make a difference don't make a different. And there I am. And what happens to me is that I just get worn out. I get tired. Iget tired of being up in here.I get tired of spinning about things. I Get tired of having conversations with people that aren't even in the room. I get tired of it all. I get tried of feeling depressed. I get tied of being anxious and spinning worrying about stuff. And what happens to me is that I start to yearn for freedom. And I don't want to drink, not initially. I don' t want to hurt anybody. I'm on paper. I don''t want to go to prison for God's sakes. I just want to get free. I just wanna bust out. even if it's only for a day I just want to get free and right behind that is a memory that goes down into my cells and it's the memory of an effect that I'd once found when I was a kid and taken three or four drinks and how it would set me free and it''s odd this insanity this mental blank spot that it talks about in the book the silkworth says that we cannot differentiate the true from the false that when i'm at this place and the untreated alcoholism has as is has peaked and i'm about ready to drink again i can't see the reality I can't see the truth at that point. And what's the truth? The truth is, Bob, the last five, six, seven times you tried this, it wasn't a party anymore. It hasn't been a party for three or four years. It's pathetic now, Bob. Don't you remember? No, I don't. I can'T see anything except the hope of finding a party where a party doesn't exist anymore. And I try it one more time. And the problem is I, when I start, I can't stop. If you're an alcoholic of my type and you pick up a drink and you have the physical allergy to alcohol, picking up a drinks like having sex with a gorilla, you ain't done till the gorilla's done. You can tell yourself all you want, me and the gorilla are just going to have a dance. No, you're not. There's going to be blood, sweat, and tears before this party's over. The last couple of years, I didn't try much anymore. There was a time in my drinking I'd burn my life to the ground, I'd get physically sober, and I'd go after the girlfriend and the big job and all that stuff. But if you do that a half dozen times and it's always the same, you know what happens? It's like, what's the point? Why am I going to bust my ass over here building this business up or working here to become a boss or do all that stuff when I know what's going to happen. I'm going to burn it all to the ground again. Our book says that we are alcoholics of the hopeless variety. And there is a hopelessness in alcoholism, but it's a peculiar kind of thing. I think the real hopelessness isn't from the fact that i can't build myself a big abundant life because i don't really care that much about that that's just all props what the real hopelessness comes from is when you really get it beyond a shadow of a doubt that once and for all that the party's over that you can drink this stuff and smoke stuff until you can do that until it kills you and you can blot you out periodically in the process but you'll never have fun and ease and comfort in a party like you did at one time and when you get that it's no wonder some of us start thinking about offing ourselves see i'm the guy talks about in our book i can't not only i get the end couldn't i imagine life with it anymore i couldn't it was so awful and i can'T imagine life without it because abstinence feels like I'm doing time and I was at what it calls the jumping off place that says we'll wish for the end and in 1978 um I tried to take my own life I came to one morning in the park I'd been thrown out of a this place I was sent put in by the courts in lieu of two years in prison which means that two years of prison now are coming and I come to in the park and my drinking's pathetic and I know it I know that it's never going to be any better and I get to I come through that morning and I put together enough change to get a quart of Richard's Wild Irish Rose and I didn't get the quart of wine to get drunk that day I got it for courage and I went to a bridge because a doctor had told me that i was young enough i was in my 20s and and i worked out a lot every time i was in jail or every time it's in a halfway house i pump iron i do all that stuff so physically i was told that i was healthy enough and young enough that i could go on like i was going on for another five years maybe ten before it actually killed me and i came to that morning thinking about five more years of this no sir i'd rather be dead and glad to do it and glad to do it. And so I went to this bridge and something saved my life that day, something that I secretly loathed and hated about myself. I kept it secret all my life when I tried to and what that was is that I've always been afraid. I've used to cover it up with violence. I would fight guys that I knew were going to beat me to a pulp But I'd rather have the beating than even have to admit to myself how afraid I really am. I'd Rather Take the Beating. And that fear that has always been a part of me saved my life that day. A more legitimately courageous person, knowing what I knew, would have killed himself and been glad to do it. But I couldn't do it, and I ended up through a bizarre series of circumstances. circumstances. I ended up 2,000 miles away in about a week or so. I was hitchhiking trying to get to Las Vegas or trying to get to California and I endedup in Las Vegas. I ended up in a detox there. Iwas very very sick they had me with IVs for a number of days. Because I don't eat. I ain't against eating. I'm just not going to eat up my drinking money. And so I got sores that don't heal and I'm dehydrated. I looked like I weighed about 200 pounds. I actually was 150 pounds. You could put fingerprints on me by touching me, and it would stay. I was a mess. And they got me physically cleaned up, and they let me go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, by this time, I had been, I'd probably been to 150 to 200 AA meetings. Never got nothing out of it. the buddhists say that when the student's ready the teachers appear and i remember going into those meetings not thinking that was going to do anything for me and in my demoralized hopeless state i sat there and for the first time in years of attending a meetings i could finally hear you you see i didn't know it but i had just enough of me kicked out of me that i could finally hear you. The problem is I've always had too much of me between me and you, just like I had too Much of me and God. I'd beg God not to ever let me drink again, and I'd get drunk. I got too much a me between Me and You, and too much me between and me and me God. And I had enough of me kicked out just briefly that I could hear you in this in the six or seven years, I was in and out of institutions. I was in and Out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't hear... I fit the old adage, you can always tell an alcoholic, you just can't tell them much. I am the great know-it-all that feels like crap. I'm the egomaniac with the inferiority complex, which means I'm the most worthless piece of human garbage on the planet, but I'm smarter than all of you. It's a funny kind of dynamic, right? It's a weird kind. And so I can't hear you because I can'T stop judging you because a smart guy knows what's wrong with people. And I just sit there and pick you apart, pick you up. Pick you apart. And Iím dying. Andím dying. In 1978, I had enough ego kicked out of me that I could finally hear you. And I started to connect. I started to identify. You never tried to tell me anything about me. You were talking about yourselves and I sat there and listened and I thought, oh my God, I'm like that. I'm like these people. And I sat there and I started to understand that I had this thing called alcoholism. This thing that you guys were talking about is identified with everything you said i got a sponsor which is absolutely meaningless unless you're sponsorable there's a lot i know a lot of people in aa shoot themselves in the foot on a regular basis and they'll always point to oh he's my sponsor you know that no he's not they're their own sponsor the this ego this thing that kept me out of here clamors to take me out of here it's the one thing that'll kill me in our book it equates ego to self when it says self-centered dash or egocentric as people like to call it nowadays there was a psychiatrist that he spent most of his life working with alcoholics and he said something very interesting he said the reason that most of us don't get any better even though we may not we may stop drinking but we don't getting any better is that our egos are so sick that we have an inability to listen in order to hear anything new I can only listen to see how I'm already right and that's me I would sit in meetings and if you said something I agreed with you were brilliant and if you didn't, you were an idiot. Now the problem is the only people I agree with are other people that are just as sick as I am that are probably going to be drunk in about three weeks anyway. But if you have an ego like mine, it's pathetic but it's so deadly because my ego doesn't really care about anything except being right. It doesn't even care if it kills me, as long as after I'm dead everybody realizes how right I was. It's awful. Nothing gets in. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. 1978 had this little window and just like Harry Tebow talks about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego it later grew back and I became but I had this little window where in my where I was teachable and sponsorable and thank God for great men in my life at that time that pushed me into taking actions and making commitments and doing things that if I'd have been in my right mind I'd never done but they took advantage of my weakness and it saved my life because later when the ego came back I was already entrenched in service and Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-step calls and running with a pack of guys. I had commitments, I had all that stuff, and it literally saved me from myself. But the ego is a subtle thing. It's, you know, I was watching TV one Sunday morning in a hotel room at a conference getting ready to go down to the meeting, and I was flipping through the channels and this preacher was on. And I listened to those guys. Some of the stuff they say I really like now that I've worked the steps, I didn't used to like it at all. But now some of it I like. Some but I still don't understand. I don't know. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. I just don't get it. And he says, guy said something really got my attention. He said the greatest trick the devil ever did was to convince people he didn't exist. man that's it fits my ego exactly i have never been egocentric playing god judging everybody and in the middle of it thought it was ego it's not ego those people really are screwed up i'm right it's not ego and it clamors it clamores you know the conversation some of you have it's been talking to you during this meeting i'll say something and you'll go well that guy's sure full of himself it clambers it clamours because the ego is in the right and wrong business the spirit is in the love business the ego is what creates the separation between me and you and me and God the ego is what will if I ever leave Alcoholics Anonymous you can bet I will do it on a road of judgments I'll leave AA one person at a time and as I back away from you I will back more deeply into me. There's a line in our book that I've really come to respect a lot. It says that we found that spiritual principles could solve all our problems. One of the reasons that AA is so powerful, it's not because our personalities. It's because of our principles and we put these principles ahead of my own personality you see as an alcoholic I've come I'm convinced I work with a lot of guys and I think that those of us that have chronic alcoholism we are compelled to serve something and you're either going to serve yourself and your own gratification and your own security and your old emotions and your judgments or you're gonna serve a set of principles an ethic and a purpose like our primary purpose helping others a purpose greater than yourself but you're going to serve something i don't think you have a choice and i seem to be caught between these two clamoring things the one clamors at me the other doesn't clamor it's just there and i i have certain things in place in my life i have commitments in alcoholics anonymous i have a routine page 86 and 87 in the morning i go down to the detox twice a week i go to a men's halfway house every other wednesday in the county jail every other wednesday i would have a sponsor that that doesn't really respect my feelings But he loves me enough to tell me what I need to hear. And I have given him that permission to hurt my feelings. My friends won't tell me the truth because they love me. My sponsor will, even if it means I'm going to be mad at him and I'm gonna get my feelings hurt. He'll tell me that. He'll give me the proof. My God, I always needed somebody like that in my life. I can find dozens of people that are gonna put their arms around me. I can finds dozens of peole that are going to pat me on the back and tell me, oh Bob, they're wrong. don't let it get you down. But I got one guy that says, no, you're wrong. Go make amends to them. Right? And I need that guy in my life because I will destroy myself and I will do it in good intentions. Alcoholics Anonymous is unlike any other place. It protects me from me. You know, in AA, I've gone through stages where the ego has resorted itself. And the ego will take the big book. It'll take the traditions. It'll takethe steps to self-grandize itself. And you know what that's like. You go to meetings and they don't have a clue. You feel yourself puffing up. They don't even understand. I better explain to them how they're out of line with the traditions, right? Oh my God. I have to tell him how he's done the fourth step wrong. And it will take the very thing that saved my life and uses it to separate me from other people. Because what happens is I'll even take AA and use it to climb back up onto that throne of judgment and play God. The book says we, first of all, we had to quit playing God i it's hard to recognize playing you're playing god when you're playing god isn't it it is for me that's why i got my sponsor i used to go to my i used to go my sponsor guy works stealing and the guy the guy that guy in the so-and-so in the meeting he drinks four cups of coffee doesn't put any money in the basket now it's all my she's looking for a husband in the meetings and he's a 13th stepper and on and on My sponsor would always say, you've got to quit playing God. And I'd think, I'm not playing God, I'm reporting accurate information here. And I was playing God You can measure my distance from God and you can measure my distance from the decision in step three by the amount of opinions and judgments in my life. And that is the problem is that it never goes away. alcoholism is a chronic illness and i have i have a spiritual condition that must be maintained and the reason is that i have an absolutely absorbed in myself and without alcoholics anonymous and people like you and good sponsorship and commitments and the fellowship I will destroy myself from within and guys like me and people like you I presume we get drunk before we ever got drunk you can be in the rooms of AA moving towards a drink and not know it what you really think is you've outgrown some of the people here and I don't even know it and it's insidious It's always there clamoring at me. I'll tell you a little story and I'll stop. About 18 years ago, I was up in Northern California and I was out there for a monthly intergroup event in a place called Eureka. And I had a day off and this guy wanted to show me around. I'd never been up there before. He took me in his truck into this forest that had these trees that were 250 feet high, 25 feet in diameter. Unbelievable place. It was primordial. It was like going back to prehistoric times. And we stayed there for a while and you could feel it was a very peculiar thing. The forest was like an entity. You could feel a presence there. It was very amazing. And we got in his truck. He says, come on, we want to go see some other stuff. And we're driving down to the ocean to see some monolith rocks and some other things. And we're going by these fields and meadows. And he says, do you notice how you don't see a 250 foot tree all by itself in a field? And I said, yeah. He said, do you know why that is? I said no, I don't. He said well, God's designed these trees in such a manner that they cannot help but aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that alone they will literally outgrow their roots capacity to support them and hold themselves up and they will eventually topple over and die on their own aspired magnificence. He says what must happen in God's plan is that they must grow up in community and they literally will intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest and this will feed them and hold them up and it allows them to grow into their nature. And Alcoholics Anonymous, unbeknownst to me when I got here, did and started to do just that when you told me to get a sponsor and to do 12-step work and to have commitments and start to develop a relationship with a power greater than myself that i was afraid to believe in and make amends and join you and sponsor people that i didn't know i was literally intertwining the very roots of my life with yours and you've allowed me to grow into my nature. I've had one defect of character all my life. I have it to this day and that is that there's always been something about me that is thirsted and hungered for more. I've always been the guy that's wanted to take bigger bites out of life. I can't turn it off. And alone, that almost killed me. And I came to you and in your hands and the hands of the power behind the curtain here you've allowed me to have an amazing life and it's not my fault everything I do is grounded in Alcoholics Anonymous I'm an everyday member I hope if you were to come to Las Vegas and you were to hang out with me for a few days that I would more than what I say I hope I would look like someone who's dedicated to our principles and our way of life. Thank you for listening. Thank you.