The Ego That Made Him Think He Was an Unsung Genius – Mike

We mean Michael from San Francisco. Thank you. My name is Michael, I'm an alcoholic. Was that too close? It was wonderful. I came tonight and usually at a meeting I've been planning for days what I'm going to say but I had this wonderfully clear mind and I think it's what I've been going through lately I think I've reached a state of dumbness where I can finally start absorbing things and changing and I've got one of the desire chips because I've got a desire to keep coming back too that's what you said right this is not one of those chips you stick in a drink and wait for it to melt no I picked up my seven year chip last month and since then I've been thinking about what got me to AA and what was it really like back then and why did I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and what keeps me here maybe I should talk for less than 10 minutes a couple people just left and I was thinking about it earlier that I never really planned to come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I never considered that I was alcoholic but if there had been something like Unsung Geniuses Anonymous or Sensitive Idealists Anonymous you know, something like that or Addictions Anonymous. Because I figured at the time that I came to AA that I had all kinds of addictions, and anything I did, I did to excess. But I never considered that I was alcoholic. And I was telling George on the way up here, he said, are you going to tell your story? I said, no, I can tell my story in 10 minutes. He said, why don't you try? It's a good exercise. The last time I did that, people started looking at their watches about a minute into it. I don't know how to tell my story fast, but that's obviously what got me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got sober in Santa Cruz and I met somebody who talked about himself a lot and about his drinking. And I thought that he was a real asshole. I mean, anybody who sat around, and in fact you might even know him if you've been down in Santa Cruz and heard his story, so I won't say much about him now except that. But he got me to thinking about me. I mean, I didn't start thinking about all my drinking, but I started thinking about what it was like at that moment. I was in a state of desolation most of the time and despair and I never did feel good i had no friends that i considered to be friends and if anybody was my friend i didn't know it and i'd given up my family years and years before that because they were the wrong family for somebody as as wonderful and spiritual and sensitive as me to have and they they were a real wonderful group of nice people they didn't drink they never drank My father used to keep a bottle of Southern Comfort and bourbon or whatever up in the corner of the pantry. And when guests came over, special guests, he'd say, let's get the schnapps down and we'll have a drink. But that was the only time he drank. I was the one person in the family who was an alcoholic. and so when I came to AA and I'm going to skip around a little bit it was kind of the way my life was was that I skipped around a lot and when I became to AA I had no background in alcoholism in that I had never considered that I had a problem with drinking I drank from a time that that I was 15 years old, I drank, but it was only so that I could be, well, I never quite fit with other people. So it was so that could fit with other people and be more aware than they were. It put at that special edge, gave me a special edge, that special high that would allow me to be a little bit better than other people when I was with him. I'll tell you a little bit of my story just so you can say it hurts on my story. But I think it's irrelevant to my drinking. I've heard so many people tell stories and it seems to make no difference at all with how they drank or what they drank. I drank like you did. I wound up a wino and I started out drinking what I thought was decent wines and martinis and scotch. And I grew up in a ghetto in Chicago, and I was in a gang when I was a little kid, and I wasn't a fan of the band. I was always a thief. And when my parents could afford it, we moved from the ghetto, we moved to a better neighborhood, and I Was a misfit. I didn't get along with the people there for whatever reason. Went to college, got married at 19, divorced at 22. lots of relationships in my 20s I drank well by that time I was working as an engineer in an office and I had a routine where I figured out how much I needed to drink to get through the afternoon so I would drink lunch and if I needed a drink at coffee break and then drink after work and then I switched patterns sometime after that I left Chicago and moved out to the east coast back to the land movement. And by that time, I'd gotten very spiritual. I stopped drinking and stopped using drugs. But in looking back at it, I did things that somebody who's not alcoholic probably wouldn't have done. I made brandy. I worked with a bohemian at one time who taught me how to make brandy, and I built a camper on an international chassis and took along eight gallons of the brandy that I'd made, even though I'd quit drinking. But I figured it was for other people, for medicinal purposes. And I really hated to throw away eight gallons or something like that. Eight gallons of 120-proof brandy. I mean, it was just too good. And I'll skip a bunch. I wound up in San Francisco in 1970. I weighed 106 pounds, and that was after a period of living on a commune and spending some time in ashrams and meditating and doing all kinds of wonderful things. The first thing I did when I got to San Francisco was I hunted up a connection and went out and got drunk. And what got me here, I figured was that I'd had this relationship with a woman and the relationship got real bad and she drank a beer occasionally and smoked a joint occasionally. And so I drank a bear with her to get closer and smoked to join with her to get close to her. Closer, occasionally. The last I heard she was living north of Boulder, Colorado having a wonderful time. And like I said, I wound up 106 pounds in San Francisco. And I went through more changes and moved to Santa Cruz in 74 or 75 and got sober in Santa Cruz at 75. and I was thinking that well a couple things it took me I say five years to really accept that I was alcoholic I am very stubborn sometimes and that's what I mean about I'm getting dumber as I stay in AA longer and after five years it finally dawned on me that the way I drank and the way I acted with my ego and my self-centeredness and everything that I did and how I did it, if I'm not an alcoholic, they better lock me up and throw the key away. But if I weren't an alcoholic if I could drink like any normal person drinks drinks or drank and I was thinking about it and this is like the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic but if I could drink that way I was thinkin' about it what's the sense of drinking and not having it do anything and that's why I drank so I mean if I was non- alcoholic I probably wouldn't drink because there's no sense to social drinking for me. And I had never thought about myself drinking socially or what it was like drinking socially, and now I know what a social drinker is. It's somebody who drinks and doesn't care about it. And... How long have I been talking? You don't know either. Chuck said when I came in, or somebody said when he came in talk as long as you want and George said in that case I think I'll leave. And even though I never knew why I got to Alcoholics Anonymous when I got here, I didn't know why I came. I never wanted to leave. This was the only place that people ever listened to me and thought that what I said was important or interesting. Nobody had thought that I had anything interesting to say for I don't know how many years before I came to AA. And people sometimes still think what I have to say is interesting, but not quite as often as they did seven years ago. And this is sometimes considered to be heresy in AA. I feel that I've recovered from alcoholism. It's what the big book says. It says that we come here to recover from alcoholismo. It doesn't say we come over to get cured of alcoholism, but to recover. And real briefly, because it's what everybody says, that I've recovered by listening to people who knew how they recovered and then told me, come to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps, get active, get in service, 12-step work. In fact, I remember one of the first 12-step calls I ever did was with Jerry sitting back there. I didn't know what to do in a 12-stop call. At least in my memory, Jerry, we took a big book and we crammed it down this drunk's throat. And he wasn't too interested in finding out about AA or about us or our drinking, but his wife just couldn't stand his drinking. And I remember I was probably more interested in her than I was in him. But as we left, Jerry said, well, it was a successful 12-step call. Neither one of us got drunk. And that's basically what's happened to me, that I've done all those things that work in Alcoholics Anonymous repeatedly and I haven't gotten drunk and I've gotten Michael which is a hell of a lot more than I ever had when I was trying to get me through alcohol or drugs or women or cigarettes or anything else that I ever used as a drug to get there. Thanks. Thank you.