The Emptiness of Untreated Alcoholism – Bob D.

I shared some pleasantries last night and I do like the way Bob got even with Al and on sort of there, not one little step but I think he'll probably tell you about that. You know they're tremendous people. They're dedicated and their hearts were all in the right place. Even with all the problems they had getting here, they're still willing to share with us. And you know especially up in the room this afternoon listening to Bob talking to a couple of us there about sponsorship and how he sponsors I know that he works the program it's close and dear to my heart you know if I wasn't able to pick up a big book I'd really appreciate having somebody around like Bob that could be my big book you know so without any more for me would you help me welcome Bob Well, I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say. My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. And I'm sober today only through the grace and power of God and the program and the people and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd like to thank Cecil and the committee for asking me to come up here and share with you the gift of my life which I really received from you. and it's always a privilege and an honor to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to welcome the Al-Anons. I know there's quite a few of you here. I can feel you. It's little pockets of people that aren't thinking about themselves. It's thinking about the people around them. I'd like to welcome anybody that's reasonably new. I'm real glad you're here. As a matter of fact, if you got to Alcoholics Anonymous like I got to AlcoholicsAnonymous, I'm probably more glad you'RE here than you are. And I've got to tell you, I'M not a recruiter for AA. To be honest with you, I think we're overcrowded. But if you're new and you suffer from the same lonely, sick disease that I suffered from called alcoholism, with everything in me, I want you to have the same way out that I found in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's really what we have here is a way out of the trap. Tell you a little story about me. When I was about three, maybe four years old, I was living in Pennsylvania with my folks. Sunday afternoon went with my mom and dad to a farmers market out in the country outside of town on the way there my dad's telling my mom about this one farmer that's gonna be there that makes this special type of horseradish hotter and more potent than any other horseraddish it's won all these awards and my dad likes stuff like that hot spicy and potent and We're going in there and he gets a couple jars of this stuff and I'm hearing him talk, brag on this stuff all day. So I wanted some. I asked him for some and he looked down at me. He said, no, Rob, he said, this is too powerful. It's too strong. It's only for grownups and you can't have any. Well, I'm the kind of guy that I may not really want it. You tell me I can't do it. I can have it. Then I got to have it, I just, I'm that way, you know, I guess. So, I bid my time and I waited until my folks were visiting with the neighbors. I snuck in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, got out that jar of horseradish, got a big spoon, sat on the floor of that kitchen, got that lid off, stuck that big spoon in there, stuck it in my mouth. This was before LSD. i think i saw god i'm not sure but snot's pouring out of my nose and my eyes are watering and i spewed horseradish all over that kitchen i threw the jar up against the wall i got so sick i just was so sick it was unbelievable i gotta tell you that was a lot of years ago and I haven't once since then sat on the kitchen floor with a jar of horseradish and a big spoon. I didn't have to go to no treatment center, go to none of those things. Go to no goddamn meetings, get a sponsor, work no steps. But, and I got to tell you, if that horseraddish would have done for me what alcohol did for me, I'd have spent the rest of my life making myself sick with horseradish every chance I could get because I'm an alcoholic and I think I was born with alcohol alcoholism the big book says that guys like me were bodily and mentally different from our fellows and there was always something missing for me even as a little kid now I didn't come and I didn' t come from an alcoholic home my parents were just nice people they always had they always loved me. Looking back, I could see how they were always demonstrating that love, but there was something about me that couldn't feel it. There was something about me, that just didn't fit and I don't know what it was and there was something missing inside of me and I didn't know it was missing and I think that I was born with alcoholism and I was like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. When I was about 12 years old, I took my first drink and I found the thing that did for me what I secretly hungered to have done. And I think if you have the same disease that I got, alcohol was probably the most effective and immediate treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism I've ever found. and I have hundreds of stories and situations in my life just as you do where alcohol was a treatment for that disease I remember one time I was probably in about 9th or 10th grade somewhere around there and I went to this party all these high school kids were there there were some couple kids there in my grade most of the kids were a little older than I was and I remember walking into this house and I just got sick inside walking in there. And it was like over here, there's a bunch of couples dancing in this room. And over here in this room, there are a bunch couples making out on the couches. And over in the kitchen, there is a whole bunch of guys and a couple gals stand around and they're laughing and they are having a heck of a time. And I got this sick apart from feeling like it was all of them having a good time and then there was me and that's a painful painful lonely spot to be in and i kind of slunk around that party all by myself and i made it over to this one corner and in this corner was a card table and on that card table was was a case of soda a bottle of 151 rum and a bucket ice and some glasses and i got myself a big glass and I poured in about half full of 151 rum and Coca-Cola and 15 minutes later I felt like they looked. 15 minutes later I'm dancing I'm telling jokes 15 minutes later I am connected I am a part of I can talk to anybody in there about anything and at that point in my life alcohol relieved me of the bondage of self because I walked into that party and I was so wrapped up inside myself, so disconnected and alienated and so isolated and after just a little bit, this much 151 rum and I could come out and play and I think I've hungered for that all my life. I just wanted to feel like you look. I just want to get out of here and be here with you the way you seem to be there with each other. But there was something wrong with me, and I could never on my own do that until I found alcohol. And alcohol is an incredible thing. But there's another aspect to this disease that's deadly. Dr. Silkworth talks about it in The Doctor's Opinion. He says that guys like me have a physical allergy to alcohol. And unlike a lot of allergies, say if you're allergic to strawberries and eat strawberries, you break out in hives. When I drink alcohol, I break out what Silkworth calls the phenomenon of craving. And I had that looking back with the sight that I have today. I can tell you I hadthat phenomenon of craving the first time I ever took a drink. I had it all through my drinking. I never didn't have it. It was always there. I have never once in my life been in a bar, and the bartender would come around and say, do you want another drink? And I'd say, well, you know, no, I don't think so. This is just right. This is... This is not right. This is this right. Yeah, I'm okay here. I've never been there. I know people that are there. I've Never Been There. When I took a drink of alcohol, it set something. It was like creating a black hole inside of me that I could never fill. And I never stopped drinking on my own. I stopped when I ran out of money, when I passed out, when I got cut off, when I get locked up. I stopped a lot of reasons like that. Or when somebody's on my back or when I just did something so embarrassing I gotta slink away because I'm humiliated. Or when someone's there on my case about my drinking. But I have never once in my whole life ever said I've had enough. Really this is just right. Never been there. and I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to my first meeting in an institution as a young kid. I was about 20 years old, and I started hearing people talk about this phenomenon of craving, and I looked into myself, and I tried to see if I had this phenomenon craving, and I didn't have it. I couldn't see it. I'd seen Days of Wine and Roses and Lost Weekend, and when I take a drink, I don't claw the walls to get another drink. I don't have a craving. I mean, I get drunk. I get in trouble. Yes, of course. Everybody I hang out with does. But I don' t have a craving. And the problem with the craving is you don't realize you have it until it's interrupted. That's why there's a test in the big book in chapter 3. It says if you don't think you're an alcoholic... Now, I don''t recommend this test. I think it would kill some of us. But it says try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. And I didn't do that. What happened to me? I was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't think I have this phenomenon of craving, and I'm listening to some woman share her experience. And the great miracle of Alcoholic Anonymous for a guy like me who seems to be incapable of being told anything about himself by someone else is that in AA, no one ever tried to tell me about me. No one ever sat me down in the chair like probation officers did and my folks and employers and all kinds of people and say to me, you're this, Bob, and you've got a problem with this. Nobody ever did that in AA. In AA, I go to a meeting, and people are talking about themselves. And I'm the kind of guy, when you're talking about yourself and you're not trying to tell me anything, my defense mechanisms come down, and I start to identify. So I'm sitting in a meeting of alcoholics and honest, and I'm listening to a woman talk about her experience with this phenomenon of craving and it set off some things in me and all of a sudden I could remember an experience I had when I was about 18 years old. Now, when I'm 18 years old, there was no way I thought I was an alcoholic. I was in my hippie stage, better living through chemistry type of deal at that point in my life. It's not that I didn't drink. I did so much other stuff it's like when the sun and the moon are in the sky at the same time it's hard to see the moon you know and I had all this other stuff going on and so I there's no way in my mind that I was an alcoholic and I was dating this gal and she invited me over to her folks house for dinner to meet her family and I never liked stuff like that but I'm trying to be a good guy I went to do the right thing I went there for dinner I'm going to be stuck there the whole evening they had a bottle of wine with dinner and I always drank quickly I don't know if evaporation is a childhood issue or something but I drank quickly and because I drank quickly, I got two glasses out of that bottle of wine. I finished two glasses they're still sipping on their first glass and I'm sitting there. I don' t know anything about phenomenon of craving. I d' n't know anything alcoholism. I'm getting a little nervous and I finally blurted it out. I said, boy that sure was good wine. Do you have any more? They said no thanks. No, Bob, we don't. We're sorry. Went back to talking. And now I'm sitting there and I'm getting really a little uncomfortable. I don't know what's going on with me. My head's getting busier and busier. You know how you talk to yourself? All these conversations are going on and all this stuff in my head and I get a little antsy and I finally blurt it out. You know, I sure like beer. They were real nice. They said, we're sorry, but that's great, Bob. We don't have any beer. A couple minutes later, I told them about how I've enjoyed, like I've learned to enjoy a nice cocktail with dinner. And they said, Bob, we don't have anything. We're really sorry. Next time you come over, we'll get you a six-pack of beer, whatever you want. And they went back to talking about Vietnam and sports and all this stuff. And I got two glasses of wine in me. I'm stuck there for the rest of the evening. And I'm going out of my mind. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I am having these debates in my head. It is like I am going crazy. There's a part of me that wants to yell at them to shut up this nonsense they're talking about. Then there's another part of me that's beating me up for even thinking that because they're such nice people and I'm just screwing myself into the ground with this insanity. I just, I excused myself from the table. I went to the bathroom and locked the door and like a crazed animal I went through all the cabinets and cupboards in there until I found a bottle of cough medicine. It was 35% alcohol with codeine and terpenhydrate. I took the lid off that cough medicine. I took a big hit, and there was hope. And I remember sitting on the edge of that bathtub, chugging that bottle of cough medicine, and I was like, all of a sudden, I got real focused, and I could think. And I sat there, and I came up with a plan, and I went back out to that dinner table, and I said, I was very apologetic, and I said I forgot to take care of this very important thing, and I'm so sorry, I must leave. We must do this again. They were very nice about it. I went out and I got in my car and I drove like a gentleman 20-25 miles an hour down to the corner and then I drove like a maniac 90 miles an hours through a suburban area to get to a friend of mine's house who had a bar in the basement because I had two glasses of wine. Now I was the only alcoholic at that dinner table if those other people had been alcoholics we'd all be in that goddamn bathroom looking through those cabinets. But something happens to me when I drink that doesn't happen to normal people. And I've got to tell you, I think I was probably sober for over four years before I really understood what Silkworth says, that this phenomenon of craving differentiates us and sets us apart as a class. I think i secretly suspected that everyone who drank, When you took a drink, you got that feeling like, oh, more. I've got to have more of that. But I suspected that for some reason I didn't understand that the people who normally didn't get in trouble drinking could control that and then there were guys like me who couldn't control it. And Silkworth says that's not the case at all. He says those other people, those normal people never experienced that. And I didn'T realize that was true until I was sober about four years. And I'll tell you what was going on. I was dating a gal who wasn't an alcoholic, and we'd go out to dinner, and she'd order a drink, and I swear to God it would take her a half hour to drink one drink. I mean, she would stir it, sip, talk for ten minutes. The ice would melt. I mean that's alcohol abuse, you know what I mean? She'd order a second drink quite often. I never saw her finish two drinks. She'd order the second drink, she'd drink a half of it, two-thirds of it and she'd do the most bizarre thing you've ever seen. She'd push it aside and she's say, I don't want any more, I'm starting to feel it. It would be easier for me as an alcoholic to have sex and after two strokes say, I don' t want anymore of that, I'm staring to feel i. Then it would be to do that with alcohol. And I started to understand that normal people get a different reaction from alcohol than I do. See, I am capable, as I think and suspect most of us are capable, of only having two drinks to prove a point. If you're with your mate and they're on your back about your drinking, I'll have two and show them. It takes the power of the will, but we can do that occasionally. If we're out to lunch with our boss and he's been on our back about our drinking, we can have two to show him. But my friend wasn't trying to prove a point. When she took two drinks, she got a feeling like she was losing control. I take two drinks. I get a feeling that I'm losing control of my life. I get feeling like I'm getting control. And that's what sets me apart, this thing that happens to me once I take a drink. now if that was the whole deal to alcoholism then AA would only need a one step program of recovery step one, don't drink except that guys like me when I enter into a state of abstinence is really when my alcoholism starts for all practical purposes my alcoholismo starts where the bottle ends and it's in the emptiness of abstinence that guys like me die and go insane. And I'll tell you how insane I go. After three or four treatment centers, after I get to a point where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that to pick up a drink is to destroy myself and I will get so insane in a state of abstinence that I will pick up something I know is going to destroy me. and I'll pick it up because I can't stand to do anything else. What happens to me when I stop drinking is that an emptiness starts to come into my life, that it becomes unbearable. And sobriety starts to feel like I'm doing time. In the years that I was in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, I came to a lot of meetings, and I sat in meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous And I know what it's like to sit in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous dying of untreated alcoholism. Dying from untreated alcoholicism. Sitting in a room, looking around, and it would seem to me that all of you guys got this. All of you guy were happy, joyous, and free. All of your guys were enjoying life. You all had a sparkle in your eye. You had great relationships with people. you were becoming successful, and then there was me. And I felt separate and apart from, and I remember sitting in meetings and looking around and not seeing anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous that looked the way I felt and feeling so totally alone that I came to the conclusion that whatever is wrong with me can't possibly be the same thing that's wrong with you. And it wasn't that I denied having a problem with alcohol. I mean, sure, I have a problem with alcohol I've got the DUIs and all that other stuff and the detox centers and oh yes, I've had a problem with alcohol, of course But I am not like you because I stop drinking and I go to some of your meetings and I don't fit See, I identify with W.C. Fields W. C. Fields says I was sober one time It was the most boring 45 minutes of my life see i that's that and i get that i understand that because when i stop drinking i'm the loneliness is awful it's awful and what happens to me it's not that i'm an alcoholic it's not that I want to go back to drinking it's just I just hunger for the release and the freedom from me that I'd once found in the bottle. I just hunger for that thing, that magic that used to happen to me when I was 18 years and 20 years old where I would have five or six double shots of whiskey and I could talk to anybody about anything. Where I would be able to talk where I had five or 6 double shots of whiskey and I can come out and play. And what happens is that I would always start to weigh that in my mind against what it feels like here, not drinking. And eventually I'd have to drink. I just have to drinking. It would build up in me until I get to a point that if I don't do something to relieve this emptiness and change the way I feel, I'm going to lose my mind. And I would pick up a drink and the phenomenon of craving kicks in and I trash my life one more time to end up in an institution to swear to myself, my God, I am never going to do that again. And the further I get away from the last drink, the hazier and vaguer the memory of the pain coming off that run becomes and the sharper and the more acute the emptiness of untreated alcoholism becomes until the scales start to tip one more time and it looks like it's a good idea and it's necessary for me to change the way I feel. And I pick up a drink to trash my life one more time. I went through that cycle for seven years. Seven years. And I know why some of us commit suicide. Because at the end of my drinking, I thought about suicide a lot. I felt so stuck. Tell you what happened to me in 1977. On my second-to-last drunk I was with a guy that I was in a halfway house with, and we both went out again. I had no place to stay. I'd been homeless for a couple years, and he told me I could stay on the couch in his trailer. He had this little shabby trailer in this trailer park down in Pittsburgh. I'm staying on this couch. We're drinking, and one night about four or five days after we got on this run, we came back to his place one night and he passed out and I'm still awake and if I'm still awake I'm not done drinking and he left his car keys in his wallet on the counter so I decided to make a little loan made a little loan borrowed his car keys went out to get some beer and I got arrested for hit and run DUI driving under the influence in a stolen car. I tried to tell them I borrowed it but they had no sense of humor. I went before a judge and because I'm homeless and I have no address and no money and no job and I'm just one of those bums on the street no one would do my bail so I stayed in jail for several months until it came time to go to court and I went before this judge and he stood me up in front of him and he looked at me and he said I've gone over your record through the probation and parole department. He says, I don't know what to do with you. He says so I'm going to sentence you to two years in the state prison. And he did something very unusual. He says I'm gonna stay the commitment. I've signed the papers. You're already committed to the prison. He said but I'm wanna give you one shot. He said there's only one place in this whole part of the country that'll take you. You've been through all the rest. And he said it's called the Ark House And the Ark House wasn't even a treatment center, really. It was like a shelter for homeless Skid Row winos. They housed about 200, 250 guys right off the streets. And he said to me, he says, if you go into this place and you stay there for a year and you don't drink and you get a good PO report and you could get the good UAs and you make the restitution and the court costs and you keep your neck clean, you come back in front of me on this date approximately a year from now and you may not have to do the two years, but if you cannot fulfill any of those requirements, it's a done deal. The paper is already signed. So I left that courtroom with a determination not to drink for two reasons. One is I didn't want to go do two years in prison. I'd been in jail. I don't jail well. Some people jail well, I don' t like it. I got scars to this day from being in jail, from beefs I've gotten in with people in there. And besides, winter's coming on. I almost froze to death on the streets of Pittsburgh the winter before. When you're homeless, it's a tough deal. If you can't find a rehab to winter in, I mean, you're in trouble because you can'T even sit down at night. You have to walk. No matter how sick and tired you are, you've got to walk all night long because if you sit down, you'RE going to fall asleep. And if it'S five degrees out and you fall asleep, you'Re dead. So you've got to walk all night long looking for doorways and all that kind of stuff. I was terrified of that. I had friends that froze to death in the snow. And so I'm in this place called the Ark House, and I want to stay sober with everything in me. And if you're new, I've got tell you that if determination or enthusiasm were enough to not pick up a drink, I'd have got sober at that point and never drank again. But I'm the guy they talk about in the big book. Lack of power is my dilemma. There comes a time where the most serious desire not to drink is of absolutely no avail for a guy like me. Lack of power is my dilemma. And I'm in this place for several months, and I'm getting ready to drink. Now by this time, I'd been in and out of institutions. I'd be drunk and sober in and about for over six years. And I know what's coming. I've been here before. I'm starting to get really restless, irritable, discontent. I'm antsy. I'm on the muscle all the time. I'm starting to get that lonely feeling. I'm staring to fantasize about what it used to be like when I could drink and I didn't feel so alone and I'm real scared because I don't want to drink and after an in-house meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in this place I'm living, I grabbed an old timer after this meeting. This guy was sober a long time, a year, year and a half at least and I grabbed this guy And I said, I did something that I had never done before. I got vulnerable with another human being. I said I need to talk to somebody. I need some help. And he sat down with me and I started to tell him everything that was going on with me. I started telling him about the two years in prison. I told him about all my failures at trying to stay sober. I told them about, I had these mental problems that I didn't understand but I was crazy. I'm the kind of guy, you take alcohol out of my life and living with my head is like driving cross-country in a van full of eight-year-olds that have overdosed on sugar and none of them like you. It's like all these little conversations. Bob, why don't we do this? Why don't you do that? Oh, it's just... I got emotional problems. I don't know if I need a therapist or what, but I'm The Kind of Guy that could be sitting in the TV room in the place. And I feel like one minute, like I got this thing beat, like I could conquer the world. Like I feel just great. And two minutes later, I am almost suicidally depressed and no one has even said nothing to me. I just go through these mood changes that are just crazy. And i don't know what's wrong with me. i can't work. I can get a job and i got lots of jobs. I just can't keep a job. I get around people sober and I don't fit. I get on the muscle. All my life, people, I try to go to workplaces and I'm always hearing stuff like, well, you're a hard worker, Bob, but there's something wrong with your attitude. Or, Bob we really like your work but you're just not a team player. Or, Bob, I don' t know what's wrong but you got everybody walking on eggshells around you at the factory. And I don''t mean to be that way but you take alcohol out of my life and I don't fit around people and I get up tight I don' t mean to get uptight I just don' T know how to be any different and so I get on the muscle around people and I feel lonely and everybody else seems to work well and I eventually lose the job I got all this shame and guilt going on inside of me I came from a great family and I'll tell you something my family was nothing but on my side and I broke my mother and father's heart so many times that towards the last few years they couldn't even talk to me anymore it was too painful after I got sober my mother told me that she used to pray sometimes that I would just die and then she'd feel guilty for praying that but she didn't know what else to do that she just she just hung she just yearned for the day when it would be over when the phone would ring she wouldn't think it's the coroner or just jump and get that terror inside her and I did so many things to my folks and so many people that cared about me and I told this guy all about this and when I'm done I said to him, I said, I'm afraid I'm going to drink and I don't want to drink. I can't drink. Please tell me to do something. What can I do? And on the wall in the room, in the meeting room were this thing with the 12 steps and he points to this and he says, Bob these 12 steps will change all that they will handle all your problems now I've been around alcoholic psalmists for several years and I've kind of seen those steps on the wall never really paid that much attention to them I thought to myself well I better really read them this time and I sat there and I'm reading them you know and after reading them I look at this guy and I realize this guy hasn't heard anything I've told him at all I mean nothing there is nothing in those steps that even remotely corresponds to any of the things I just told him about. There's no, there's not even a vague connection. I mean, I need a set of steps like step one, make Bob's police record disappear. Step two, bring her back properly ashamed of herself. Step three, make my family realize how wrong they'd been about me. Step four, make him feel better. Step five, quiet his head down so he can sleep like most people sleep. Instead, we got step three, which is one of my personal favorites. Turn your will and your life over to the care of God. I was raised with a lot of religious upbringing and I gotta be fair to the Catholics. I think what they taught me in school and what I heard are probably not the same thing. I think I had a propensity to hear the negative because what I read I heard about a God that existed to judge me. And he had all these rules of things you're not supposed to do. And even if you're good enough not to do them, if you just think about doing them, you're screwed. I mean, you know? And I'm always thinking stuff I'm not supposed to think. The nuns used to say, you must be pure of thought, word, and deed. And I'd see that in X-rated movies and start going through my head, you know? And I don't want to think that stuff. I'm trying to be good. I'm just a little kid, you know, and jeez. So I come to the conclusion that if there's a God, I am probably in a lot of trouble. I can never be good enough. God, he can read my mind, and he can see in the dark, which is not good for me. That's a bad deal for a guy like me. I remember one time this one nun, I guess she sensed that I was having a problem with God. She had been telling us about hell, and I guess my face kind of got depressed looking. She came up to me after class, and she said to me, you know, God loves you so much. He's created a place for people who just seem to get out of line like you're always out of line, Robert. She says it's called purgatory. And purgatorio, if you'd never heard of it, it's kind of like hell. They burn you and torture you. And it's awful, but purgatory only lasts for a couple hundred million years, maybe. I don't know, right? So there's a lot of hope in purgatori. You know, when I got to be about 12, and I don' t want to offend anybody, but I gotto be about twelve or thirteen years old, I discovered masturbation, andI could picture a meter in heaven just clicking off the millions of years, right. And I haven't even done anything yet, I'm just practicing. So, I'm sitting in this halfway house looking at these steps. Turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I would rather turn it over to our narcotics agent. I mean... And my personal favorite, making direct amends. Now, that was good for you guys. I mean, you guys... I mean I'm sure you did some things you regretted. You probably got drunk too much one night you said something you shouldn't have said to your wife or you might have padded your expense account at work and you need to pay that back and that's fine amends is great for you guys i lived on the streets like an animal i was the kind of guy that if i met you and you felt sorry for me and told me i could sleep on your couch when you went to work i robbed you i mean it was nothing personal you know just what i did and i i want i could just picture myself i remember one time, oh I could just picture myself I had these amends that terrified me. I could picture myself going up to the head of this outlaw motorcycle gang that had gone to prison as a result of me diming him out to the police to save my own butt and saying, well Cheech I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm sorry you had to do the ten years. Shake I might as well just stick a gun to my head and I gotta tell you if you're new my greatest problem is that I go on a run and alcohol takes everything away from me I get sober, end up in alcohol, it's anonymous and the first thing I get back is my damn opinion and it's my opinion and my judgment that made me walk away from that guy and say to myself, those steps are nice for people like you, but they don't apply to my particular set of problems. So I never tried them. And I had been just handed the solution to everything that's ever been wrong with me. But my opinion told me that it wouldn't work for a guy like me. It was like walking down to a... It was similar like if you were to walk down to some skid row part of town where all the homeless guys live and you'd see some little old man crawl out of the bushes who's obviously been living in those bushes for years, who's never bathed and he'd ask you for a cigarette or a dollar and you feel sorry for him and you give him a buck and he says, you know, I really like you. I'm going to give you 10 million dollars. And he reaches into his inner third coat and pulls out a greasy, grimy check he's obviously stolen from somebody somewhere along the line. And he writes you out this check for $10 million and he gives it to you. If you're like I am, you walk away and when you're out of sight, you tear it up and you throw it away because you know. I mean, he's a bum. It's worth nothing except that the check's good. He's one of those guys like Howard Hughes. and I kept tearing up the check and it kept being offered to me and I got to tell you what happened to me in 1978 I left that halfway house on a drunk and I was running from the law and I ended up in Las Vegas, Nevada hitchhiking cross country with another guy homeless, broke, destitute and sick they stuck me in the county hospital in a detox and the buddhists say when the student's ready the teachers appear and I was done and I started to cash that check and I started to do some things in Alcoholics Anonymous that were against my better judgment that were against what I thought I needed and I started to do them because I got to the point that you hear people talk about in AA that I never understood what they meant the point of surrender where I was beaten up so much that I was willing to do something someone else suggested even if it didn't make sense to me and it was awkward and difficult and I got a sponsor and I started to follow his directions and I Got A Home Group and I want to tell you what brought me to the point Of Surrender and I think it's what brings a lot of us to that point. It wasn't the homelessness, it wasn't the fear of getting caught and doing the two years in prison, it wasn't the shame and the guilt for the things I'd done to my folks and the people that cared about me. It wasn' t any of that stuff. I mean, that's all just part of the cost of doing business on the streets. You just adjust to it. Dr. Silkworth says that our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. After a while, we can't even differentiate the true from the false. And it's not that you come out of a nice home and go live in a cardboard box the next day. We go down slow. And each step of the way, we just adjust to it. And we just adapt to it again and again. And the first time I ever dragged and passed out and wet the bed, it was awful. It was the most humiliating moment in my life. Three years later, it's like, again? you just adjust to it. You just adjust. None of that stuff is what brought me to my knees and brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978 willing to buy this whole package. What brought me into Alcoholic Anonymous is a line that it talks about in the vision for you. It says that we will get to a place where we won't be able to live with alcohol or without it. We will be at the jumping off place. We will know a loneliness such as few do and will wish for the end. And at the end of my drinking, alcohol had stopped being an effective treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism. At the end OF my drinking I wasn't the guy that was in some skid row bar down around the pool table laughing and talking to the guys and shoot and pull and dancing with the girls. At the END I was the guy who was sitting at the E-end of the bar all by himself drinking himself into oblivion, crying sometimes and hoping nobody sees him cry because he feels so awful. Looking out at the people that are carrying on and having a good time and wondering what's wrong with me? Because I could remember the glory days. I could remember the days when alcohol did for me what it is obviously and apparently still doing for them. And I hungered with every ounce of my being for the effects that they were still getting. But once the party's over, it's just over. And it had been over for several years and I could never recapture those great moments of the past. And i came into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978. I got to tell you the truth. I didn't really want to get sober. I'll tell you what I wanted with everything in me. I wanted to be able to drink like I drank when I was 18 and 20 years old. That's what I wanted. I wanted to have the release and freedom from the bondage of self that alcohol gave me. I wanted to have the ability to come out and play like I did when alcohol worked. But once it stops working it just stops working. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. When I was new in sobriety, a guy who was trying to help me out, he knew I was homeless. He gave me a couple boxes of clothes and he gave me a box of paperback books. And I'm reading one of these books one night, and I read this account in this book that blew my mind. It told me more about what had happened to me in this disease than anything I've ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the account was an account of these scientists who were doing experiments on the human brain, and they found in the human brains was a little part called a pleasure center. And they did these experiments with these laboratory rats. They'd take these rats and they'd put two tiny wire filaments into that pleasure center of the brain and they would pass a mild undetectable electric charge through those wires to stimulate that part of the brain and the rat would get loaded. So what they did is they hooked the juice up to a pedal in the rat's cage and the cat would get it. And the rat could learn he could hit that pedal and get loaded so the rat wouldn't lay on the goddamn pedal. I mean he doesn't eat, he doesn' t drink water, he doesn''t sleep. He hits that pedal until he dies. usually a dehydration. Now, I can understand that, but what really blew my mind is after the rat's been hitting that pedal for a while, the scientists had come along and they'd turned the juice off, and this time the rat would hit the pedal and nothing would happen. And he'd hit it again and nothing could happen, and again and again. And he would finally realize that the party's over. And in every case, instead of being able to go back to just being a rat, in everycase the rat would curl up in a ball and lay on the floor of the cage to die. Because without the juice, there's just nothing to live for. And in 1978, when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I felt like that rat. I didn't really want to get sober. I wanted with everything in me to somebody to turn the juice back on. I just wanted to be able to feel as alive and vital as I did when I was about half lit when I Was 18 years old. But I knew the truth and the truth was the party was over. And I couldn't seem to live without it. and I kept going back to it even though it didn't work. And this drove me into a point where I got my sponsor in home group, and my sponsor is real in my home group. It's a big book study group, and they do a lot of service in AA, and they're real grounded in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. They don't believe in anything else. I mean, if you go to my group and you talk about reparenting your inner child, you're going to get a lot flack in that meeting. You know, they believe in the steps as they're outlined in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's about it. That's all. And they believe I'm doing a lot of service and working with a lot newcomers because our group believes in a principle that my sobriety is absolutely worthless to me unless I'm diligent about trying to give it away to somebody else. And my sponsor got me on a kick with the third step for a long time. He had me read page 60 through 63 and I would read that and I couldn't get it. I could see how you guys were selfish and self-centered and trying to run the show, but not me. I mean, that's, you know, you. And I finally started to see, after a series of circumstances happened in my life, I saw the light went on and I finally saw that that was the problem. That the reason that sober, I don't fit anymore, I don' t fit in this world is because self-focused, self-absorbed people like me don't live in this world. I live in THIS one. And because I'm inwardly focused and self-centered, it's no wonder that I look out at a world that seems so distant and so far away. And the magic of alcohol is that alcohol relieved me of the bondage of self. Alcohol turned the scope right around and all of a sudden instead of me in here deep inside of me I was out here with you and I was connected and a part of and my sponsor I got together with him and I got down on my knees and I did a third step prayer a little while later I'm complaining to him I said when's this relieve me of the bondage of self thing going to happen because I get down on my knee every morning since I did that third step with you and I say that third step prayer and ten minutes later I'm in my head figuring out the whole day when I go to work what they're going to say to me, what I'll say to them, then what they'll say to me and then what I will say. I got it all going on in here. I get tremendous anxiety as a result of this. I said, when is this going to relieve me of the bondage of self thing that's going to happen? My sponsor looks at me and he says, whenever I see an alcoholic who no longer has a problem with self-centeredness I'll buy him a drink. He's a wise guy and he's trying to tell me that there's no permanent solution to an ongoing problem but I don't get it. And I'll tell you what happened to me. One night I'm sitting at home. I came from an earlier meeting. It's about 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night and I'm setting up and I was sitting on my sofa on my first couple years of sobriety and I am just sitting there pondering my life and the more I ponder my life the more depressed I become and that job that I just told them at the meeting I thought was so great the more i thought about it I realized how they were taking advantage of me and they are sinking into this abyss of depression. This was before Prozac, or I might have run out and got some of that. Sponsor wouldn't have let me take it anyway. I'm getting into this abyss of depression, and I don't know what to do. And I've been trained in Alcoholics Anonymous when anything's wrong, you ask God for help, call somebody, or go to a meeting. So I asked God for help, andI looked at the clock, and there was a 10-15 meeting about three blocks from my apartment. I got in the car, ran up there, sat in the back of the room in the meeting. Couldn't hear nothing in the meeting. I'm so wrapped up in myself that what's going on, the people are sharing in the meetings like that music in a doctor's office. You know, you just kind of tune it out. Like the big shows on the inside, right? I'm sitting here thinking, figuring, scheming, pondering my life and I'm so wrapped-up in myself. In the back of the room sitting across from me is a guy who obviously has just come off a drunk. And I'd seen him around AA before and he's really sick. And he's sitting back there and he is grabbing himself and he Is rocking back and forth like he Is going to fly apart. And then he gets up and he paces back and fourth behind him. And then He goes into the bathroom and you can hear Him in there dry heaving. I mean, He is really annoying. You know, I am trying to figure my life out and I got all this stuff, interferences going on, right? The meeting is over. I haven't heard nothing. I stay afterwards because I have been trained to do that. I stay afterwards to help this guy. Charlie is the secretary, set the meeting up for the church, set the room up forthe church in the morning and do the ashtrays and everything. I'm the last guy to leave and Charlie and I are standing on the front porch of the church and locking up and I look down and my car is parked right near the entrance and here's this guy that's in the back of the meeting curled up in a fetal position laying in front of my car and I'm going to have to step over him to get in my car to go home and think. Right? but I can't do that because Charlie's standing there and if I do that Charlie's going to tell everybody what a bad member of Alcoholics Anonymous I am so I go over to this guy and I start talking to him I said uh what he's and he's he wants to commit suicide he's sick and he's afraid of going through the DTs again convulsions and at this time in Las Vegas there's no detox it'll take you if you don't have money or insurance there's only one way to go and I'd been there dozens and dozens of times. I hated it. It was the county hospital and they would make you wait with a new guy sometimes eight, ten hours because they would that you were a charity deal to them so they took you after they had no more business. In a big city at a county hospital they're all so you're going to be there till four in the morning maybe five in the evening and I knew it was coming and I'm driving this guy down to the hospital. I'm pissed off. I think how come I got to do all this stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous? Where's all these old-timers that talk about all this altruistic stuff all the time. Where are they right now? You know, and I'm on my way down to the hospital. I'm sitting in the waiting room with this guy and we're sitting in there for hours. And he's telling me about how shamed of himself he is, how he can't stay sober. And I remembered sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous and feeling like I was the only one that was, something was wrong with me because you people could stay sober and I couldn't. And He told me about the things he'd done to his family and how he hated himself for that and i'd done this i'd felt the exact same way and he told me about all the shame he had inside of him and how he just how he did he felt so hopeless and now he'd been thinking about killing himself because he didn't think he could ever be sober and he couldn't drink right anymore and i've been exactly where he was at and i sat there for several hours with this guy talking about myself and listening to him give any more juice and cigarettes and they finally admitted him into the detox part there, the detox ward. And I remember driving home that night in the middle of the early hours of the morning and I'm crying. And I'm crying because I finally realized that God relieves me of the bondage of self over and over and again through you. It's not a quick, it's not an instant fix. It's once and done for. And I drove home from that place that night and I am driving home and I got to tell you, I don't think in my whole life I ever felt more whole, more complete more connected to God's universe and more right about myself than I did at that moment and I finally got it and I finaly got it the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous what relieves me of the bondage of self here and does for me what alcohol used to do for me is not when I try to fix me it's not when I do anything about me it's all about what I do for you. And if you're new here and you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you remain a taker I got to tell you all you're going to get here is alcoholism because that's all we got. But if you come here and become a giver you will find the same secret that I found in here. The Al-Anon speaker this afternoon, Vinoy she made a great statement she said that she was talking about the Lord's Prayer, Our Father and at the end Thine is the Kingdom. And she talked about being a princess and acting like one. And I think for Al-Anon that is right. But for the alcoholic, for guys like me, I claim my royal right as one of God's kids not by acting like one of the God's Kids but by treating you like one? I think alcoholism is a love disorder. I had it backwards all my life. I was under the illusion for years, even into sobriety, that if I just had the right stuff, if I had the Right Friends, if I Had the Right Person to Love Me, I would be whole and complete. And the problem with most of us is that we've had that experience. We've had theRightPerson love us many times, sometimes. And it doesn't change anything because the hole doesn't go away. The emptiness of alcoholism is not relieved by anything, anybody doing anything for me. It's only relieved when I'm thinking about you. It's only ever relieved when I'm caring about you, and I belong to a group that has bestowed on me some of the greatest blessings. They're real entrenched in service and Alcoholics Anonymous. They do ten hospital and institution meetings every week, and right now I have the pleasure to secretary and put on three of those meetings every week. Every Monday evening at a men's skid row halfway house every Tuesday at noon at a Skid Row Detox and every Thursday at noon at the same detox. And it is one of the greatest blessings I've ever received in Alcoholics Anonymous. And all these things that I do in AA, the steps and the restitution and the making amends and doing the inventory the way it's outlined in the big book of AlcoholicsAnonymous and all those things. Sometimes for years you do it and you work with newcomers and you sponsor guys and there are times when you, I wonder, oh, I feel all right. Why am I doing all this? And I think sometimes it's like I'm forging a weapon that I may only have to use once or twice or three times in my whole sobriety, but if I don't forge that weapon the way it's outlined in that big book Alcoholics Anonymous, when that time comes, I am dead. And I'll tell you about something that happened to me when I had one of the times that if I had done anything less in AlcoholicsAnonymous than what I did, I'd tell you I would be a dead man today. In my 11th year of sobriety, I was married to a gal I met in Alcoholics Anonymous. We'd been together for six years. We had a baby that at the time was a year and a half and we'd had some marriage problems the last year of our marriage and I've been taught in Alcoholic Anonymous to look at myself and I realized that a lot of it was my fault. I was so afraid of the responsibilities of marriage that I became a workaholic under the guise that I'm building up so I have to take care of them And between working in this business 80 hours a week, I had an opportunity to take over this business and all the guys I sponsor and the committees in AA and the commitments I have. The truth was I wasn't there that much. And we started to go to some marriage counseling and we went for a little while and my wife came to me one day and she says, I don't want to go into marriage counseling anymore. I want out. And I was devastated. And I went to my sponsor and he told me just give her whatever she asked for and she was really good about it. And we got a divorce, you can do it in Las Vegas quick, got a divorced on a Thursday and the next day, Friday, my wife and my daughter moved in with my best friend, a guy that I sponsored. And I found out that everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous except me knew that they'd been sleeping together the whole last year of my marriage. And he was the guy that when my sponsor was out of town I'd go have breakfast with and talk about my fears and my marriage problems. He was my confidant. Now I've been around, alcohol examiners by this time over 10 years, and I had never had a justifiable resentment until then. And it was so justifiable to me, I could walk into a meeting and intuitively know who to talk to that's going to agree with me. And they would pat me on the back, and they'd say, oh Bob, what they did to you? Oh. The problem with that is, is that I started getting sicker. and there came a point where my very life was on the line and I remember one day the pain was relentless it was the first thing I thought about in the morning it was before I went to bed at night and people in AA would say things to me well just don't think about it what? don't you mean don't thing about it I can't think of anything else just turn it over just turn it off. How do you stop thinking about something you can't stop thinking about? It's like flypaper thinking. You know, you can't shake it. And I'm driving up. I had a little sports car at the time that was high performance sports car. I'm driving up the highway about 120 miles an hour one night and I can't take it. I want out. And i know i can't drink. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm just going to turn the wheel right to this bridge abutment right up here. And as I'm thinking that, all of a sudden all the faces of the guys I sponsor start flashing through my mind. And I started thinking about the old timers and alcoholics and anonymous that when I was new gave me their time and their attention and gave me rides from the halfway house to meetings and gave Me their old clothes, their hand-me-downs because they knew I didn't have anything. And they used to buy Me lunch and give Me the most precious thing that one individual can ever give another person, that's their time. And I couldn't kill myself because I couldn't be a bad example to you. If it would have been just me, I probably would have done it. If it wouldn't have been for all the guys that I'd become close to in Alcoholics Anonymous and the sponsorship and all the boys and girls and all of the guys that I sponsored, I probably wouldn't await it. The pain was relentless. And I was talking to a guy that I sponsor and he told me what to do. It was so obvious. I went back through the steps of the big book AlcoholicsAnonymous and i had to do what it talks about in in the section on resentments where it says this was our course and i've come to believe that i work with the guys i sponsor i think this is the most important part of the whole fourth step it's where i get the 180 degree turn in thinking it says THIS WAS OUR COURSE WE MUST REALIZE HOW THE PERSON WHO HAD HARMED US WAS PERHAPS LIKE US SPIRITUALLY SICK AND I HAD TO DO THE THING THAT WAS THE HARDEST FOR A SELF-CENTERED guy like me to do. I had to put myself in their shoes and see where they were coming from. And I'll tell you what I found when I did that. I found myself standing in the shoes of a gal that didn't have the skills that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous, that didn't have the connection with AA that I had. And she was married to a person that was really the center of her life. And he really wasn't there that much. And And he was so wrapped up in his business and his AA commitments. And I started to sense her desolation and her loneliness. And then I could, I started be able to ask myself the final questions. Where were you at fault? Where was I selfish, dishonest, resentful, afraid? Where was i to blame? And I became free. And all of a sudden I could see the truth. And I could see through all the crap and see what was really going on. And I realized I owed her tremendous amends. And that was close to ten years ago. And I've got to tell you, her and I and him, we have a great relationship. My daughter is now, she's the love of my life. They got married and him and I take her to ball games where she's playing ball. And we sit there and we make more noise than just the two of us than the rest of the cheering section combined. I mean, we're just maniacs. And I tell you something, she's the best mother my daughter could possibly have. And he's an incredible stepfather. If I had to pick a stepfather out of all the people I know, really, I would pick him. And I don't say that because that's not podium talk, that's the truth. He's an incredibly good father. He's a wonderful guy for my daughter. And I almost missed all that. I was almost ready to kill me and I'd have killed the wrong guy. and if you're new i encourage you with everything in me to work this process in this book because you don't you may be sitting here in this meeting tonight and you may feel okay not thinking about drinking you may think to yourself well i don't if i ever things ever really get bad i might work those steps and i got to tell you from my experience by the time most of us get to that point it's too late i am one of those people that have to buy the whole package of alcohol One of the things that I've observed as a result of going to those Skid Row detoxes twice a week is that there is not a week that goes by that I don't meet someone down there that has drank after at least 10 years of sobriety. And I listened to them and some of those people at one time had had incredible programs of recovery. Some of those people at one time had sponsored a lot of people that went to a lotof meetings that were vibrant members of Alcoholics Anonymous. But what it says in the book, I think, is true, that we cannot rest on our laurels. What we have is a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And I watched a friend of mine with 18 1⁄2 years take a drink. And I've got to tell you that the day he took a drink, his life couldn't have been more perfect. He had a brand new Corvette, a brand-new Eldorado, a huge house, his own insurance agency with all these agents working for him. He probably made a quarter of a million dollars a year, had a beautiful wife, an incredible marriage, a baby on the way. Eighteen and a half years sober, I said to him, I said, on the day you drank, was there something bugging you? And he said, he says, Bob, there was nothing wrong. My life has never been better. He says, I was at a Rotary luncheon. I go to them every week and they serve cocktails there. It's no big deal. I've been there every week. And he said, the waitress came around with a tray full of cocktails and she put one down in front of me by mistake and I drank it. And this is two and a half years later and I don't think he's got more than six months in the last two and half years. He can't get back. And you know, my friend, he was going to meetings but the one thing that he wasn't, he hadn't worked, he hadn'T sponsored anyone in probably six years He hadn't went on a 12-step call or reached out or spent any long-term time with a newcomer in years. His life was great, but it was all about him. And I think if you have the same spiritual malady that I have, no matter how wonderful my life becomes, if it's all about me, it ain't worth a damn. And I believe what it says on page 20 of the big book. It says that my very life as an ex-problem drinker depend upon my constant thought of others, their needs, and how we can work for them. Remember when I first read that, I thought, constant? Who'd they write that for? Al-Anon's? Constant thought of Others? But I'm connected with enough guys that I sponsor and enough service in Alcoholics Anonymous that what I get every single day of my life is I get an island where I'm actually out of myself, concerned honestly with someone else's welfare and I'm not thinking about me and at those moments I am restored see I think God and me alone will drink I've seen it happen dozens and dozens of times one time one day God would just say to me Bob you're doing so good you can have a light beer just saying but when I have one hand with my sponsor and one hand reaching out to a new guy, I can't pick up a drink. I was telling a guy earlier today this story. I was up in Montana for a convention several years ago and Sunday after the convention I had a few hours and they took me up into the mountains and there was this lake up there and this lake was so crystal clear you could see all the way to the bottom of it. You could see the stones on the bottom. It was a beautiful lake. And I stood there for a long time and I watched this lake and I watching at one end there was a stream with water pouring in and on the other end was a stream with water pouring out and because there was water coming in and there was water going out that lake could never get stagnant and I think I'm a lot like that. If I cut one of those off I have to have the old timers that are giving me information and I have to have somebody I'm giving it away to and if I don't do that I'll become like the same thing that would happen to that lake if you were to shut off one of these things it would back up and become stagnant and I'm going to tell you a little story and I'll close with this it's a story of the last 19 years of my life it's Sunday afternoon there's a guy sitting in his easy chair he's got the day off he's reading the newspaper he's Got a six-year-old daughter and she comes up she says daddy please play with me he just he really just he loves his daughter but he just wants to read the paper and he says not now sweetheart she says Daddy please play with me and he doesn't know what to do and he looks in the paper and there's an ad for an airlines. It's a full-page map of the world showing where the planes fly, and he gets an idea. He tears it out of the newspaper. He tears het up into little pieces. He grabs a roll of scotch tape, and he says, Sweetheart, here's a puzzle. It's map oftheworld. Take it in your room. If you can tape it together, bring it back, and I'll play with you for the rest of the day. He figures he's off the hook. She's six years old. She doesn't have a shot. Ten minutes later, she brings it back and it's taped together perfectly, and he said, My God, sweetheart, how did you do that? She says, it was easy, Daddy. On the back was a picture of a man, and when I put the man together, the world just kind of fell into place. If you're new, I beg of you with everything in me to come to Alcoholics Anonymous, find a sponsor who's entrenched in that big book, and buy this whole package. And if you do that, you'll observe the most incredible miracle that you've ever seen, a world that you never really fit in unless you were half-lit, a world it seemed to be at odds with you and so hostile and alien will become the most Incredible Place You've Ever Been. Thank you. Thank you very much.