The Me That Is in You – Bob D.

My name is Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic. Pills kicked in, didn't they? Yeah. through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in found out through Alcoholics Anonymous he's crazy about me and obviously has no taste the 12 steps good sponsorship commitments in the fellowship I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substance since Halloween 1978 and that I owe to Alcoholics Anonymous and the power and grace that I've found here and maintained here and more importantly than all those years of sobriety is that I have for the most part been free and I'm not talking just about being free from the bottle I'm talking about being free from that thing that would get on me when I'd quit drinking. I'd like to welcome anybody that's new. Glad you're here. I'm delighted you're here. This is what my sponsor would call a pocket of enthusiasm. You could feel it. I could feel the energy in the room. It's a good energy. It's our energy. It's the energy of people coming back from the dead. It's an energy that's a good deal. I want to thank members of the committee for asking me down here and Jason for picking me up. and he took me out and he asked me where I wanted to go to eat and I said, I don't care where you take me. I just want to go to a nicer place than you're taking Danny. That's all I care about because I just got to do that. They assured me it was a better place than they took Danny. I got two hecklers. You guys got in for a treat. It was great speakers Danny gives a good talk, and the two amazing Al-Anon speakers and a gal tomorrow morning I've heard. It's a really good talk. And Peggy is the love of my life. She lights me up. She's amazing. And I'm supposed to tell you a little bit about what I was like, what happened, what I'm doing now. What I was now. Now, I think I was always alcoholic, I guess. I don't know. You know, I was weird before I ever picked up a drink. You know? I just was. I didn't fit very good. I always was coming from behind. I'm always pretending to be cool like the other kids. There's just something ain't right about me. I'm overly preoccupied with what you possibly could be thinking about me or maybe you're not thinking about which would drive me really crazy so I think I was like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol and when I I didn't come from an alcoholic home there have been times in my early sobriety where I kind of wished I'd come from an alcoholic home. I wished I had someone to hang my weirdness on, you know, like I could blame somebody. I came from a household where I was loved and given tremendous opportunity and principles. But what was inside me was destined to surface. And I think I was just born with that deal. And I tell you, this will make you crazy if you're new. I think those of us that are born with alcoholism, in a sense, are given God's greatest blessing. Because without it, we would not be driven to be who we are and what we are. I tell you, I wouldn't have done anything I've had to do over the years, last 29-plus years, if it wasn't for alcoholism. But I didn't come from an alcoholic home, but I always had a hard time fitting. And when I was 12, almost 13 years old, this malady of my being, this depressed, disconnected spirit was touched for the first time by alcohol. An event that unbeknownst to me would change the whole course of my life. And basically I could just sum it up and tell you the first Time I Ever Drank it made me feel so good and so connected that the way I would be without that effect from that moment on would never ever be enough again for me. And without even realizing it, getting lit up just seemed to move right into the center of my life. It seemed like from that point on from that very moment on I just existed between opportunities to party. And man, if you're an alcoholic of my type You had those days, man. Those days when the magic was there. Those are the days when the hook set. And if you don't have those days where alcohol did that amazing thing for you, later on you would never let it do to you what it's going to do to your life. What it's doing to you later on if it didn't one time do for you what it did for you. Man, what it Did For Me was everything I needed to have done. See, I'm the guy who pretends that I'm okay. I'm the guy who really doesn't fit. I're the guy who doesn't feel like everybody looks. I am the guy who has an awkwardness about me that I can never feel connected in a group of people the way other people seem to be connected and a part of. There's a loneliness about me, that I cant put into words because I'm just not old enough to even cognizantly be aware of it. I am prone to moodiness and depression and I worry about things that normal people I don't think unless they're neurotic probably don't worry about like the you know like one day the planets gonna blow up you know I mean just big issues three million years from now well yeah but you know it's common I'm a deep Deep thinker also. All self-centered people are deep thinkers because we live up in here. And I'm almost 13 years old and I'm with a bunch of these guys and I get lit up and man, for the first time in my life, I feel like they look. For the first times in my life, I could come out and play and I don't have to pretend anymore and I am a part of. I am connected to these guys. In those early days of drinking were fantastic. I think that alcohol was probably at one time the absolute best and most immediate treatment for the spiritual malady of alcoholism I've ever found. And I'll tell you something, if it would have continued to work like that, I'd have never got sober. It wouldn't matter how many times I went to jail. I'd ha kept going after it. and i uh i was in trouble from the very start and i by the time i'm almost 16 years old i'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time and i'm in trouble and i're not even 16 yet and they're wanting to send me lock me up and send me to this place it had a bad reputation tough place and my parents who loved me and would have done anything to help me going to bat with that judge trying to save me from being sent to this bad place and through doing everything they could, and they were at the end of their rope they got me to be able to go somewhere else and live that wasn't as bad and I went to this other place to live and if you'd have asked me as I'm standing before that juvenile court judge what are you doing there Bob? I'd have told you, ah snitches is what I would have told ya I'd had told ya about a society that wants to compromise my freedom. I would have told you about a lot of stuff, but the real truth, the real reason I'm standing before this juvenile court judge for the third time is I got alcoholism. And there's something wrong with me that every time I go out to party with my friends, I just have this inability to really shut her down when you should. You know, I always go a little too far. I don't mean to, but I always... Did you ever notice, did you ever start out and you know you're in trouble drinking so okay i'm gonna have 12 12 drinks 12 i never said two that's stupid 12 12 drinks and then when you get to about 10 you realize it was 15 you know and it just as your mood the line just keeps kind of moving up i don't know what that's about but And because I got that, I'm in trouble. Well, because I can't... I go too far. I don't just get drunk. I get drunk, drunk, drunk. When I get drunk, there's some stuff that seems like a good idea that's really not a good idea. But you don't know that until the next day. It's like, oh, what was I thinking? So I'm standing before this juvenile court judge and they send me to live at this place that's not as bad and I'm at this new place. Not even there a week. You know how when you go somewhere new, there's always people that have the juice, that kind of have the influence, the cool people, the hip people. And when you always feel like you're coming from behind, you've got to get in the crosshairs who those people are and then side up to them because they've got the juice. and I'm hooked up with this guy, man, who's one of the hip guys, older kids there. And I'm talking to him one day after I'm there about a week or so and I tell him my story, I guess, the trouble I'm in, the gang of guys I run around with, what we do. He's listening to me and he's looking at me kind of funny and he says, ah, so you like to party, do you? I said, yes, I do. I was thinking he was going to pull a pint out right about then. Yes, I did. He said, well you drink that liquor That liquor will make you crazy You can't control that That's a bad deal I said, oh man I don't know I like that liquor At that time I was really into that 151 rum Because that'll get you downtown now I mean I like the 151 There's no messing around There's not There's so social drinking With 151 Rum You just Wham, man It's just Woo It's like You've been holding You've got the gas pedal to the floor And the brake at the same time and pop man i love that stuff but he said you're he said you can't control that stuff make you stupid i said i like that i like it he says listen what if i told you i could give you something make you feel maybe as good as a rum only they won't be able to smell it on your breath won't make you stagger won't makes you slur your words matter of fact nobody will even know you're high and you can 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 sign me up. I mean, I don' t even know what he' s talking about. It' s like, yeah, right? And he introduces me to drugs. But let me tell you something. If you' re new here, hear this, please. I' m an alcoholic. Alcoholics shouldn' t do drugs. It' S bad. Oh, it' s really, really bad because I do drugs alcoholically. Oh, I' s not good. Oh, man, I'm trying to duplicate the effect of 151 in whatever you've got, man. Oh, it's not good. And I just, whatever it is, I just take it to the wall. And in the next several years, I did my dance of death with that just to come back full circle to alcohol. Alcohol was real. Because I'm an alcoholic. I had some bad years with that stuff. But I'm searching for something, and I'm in trouble, and I can't stop searching for it. I love what Carl Jung said in a letter to Bill Wilson. In the early 60s, he said that he suspected from his experience with Roland Hazard and a lot of people like Roland that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol wasn't really a thirst for alchohol. it was a low level thirst of his being for unity for connectedness or a union with God there was something within me that just yearned and thirsted from that from which I came and I didn't know that it just seemed like there was something missing and I was driven all the time I don't know that it's alcoholism but I don' t know what's wrong with me, I don''t know why every time I start I burn my life to the ground. I don't know if I have an allergic reaction to alcohol that defines alcoholism. As a matter of fact, in our book, Dr. Silkworth says it is this allergic reaction that's expressed in a phenomenon of craving that differentiates us and sets us apart as a distinct entity. That's why there's a test later on in the book. You want to find out if you're alcoholic? Take the test to see if you've got the allergy. The allergy to the phenomenon of craving. And I don't know that I have that, but every single time in my whole life I have ever taken a drink, something happens to me that doesn't happen to non-alcoholics. And if you've ever watched a non- alcoholic drink, it doesn't happen to them. My sister is a non alcoholic. I dated a gal in early sobriety who wasn't an alcoholic. Have you ever watched those people drink? after about two drinks when they're starting to feel the effect inside of them. There's some kind of mechanism that goes, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa and they just shut her down. Just shut her out. Just what? Just when it's getting good, they just shot her down I mean, I've watched my sister. I just was out. I was just with my sister Wednesday night. My daughter, we were all out listening to a guy. I'm managing perform. He's pre-album release thing he's doing. And we were having a good time. And my sister had a drink. I'm watching her. I watch my sister drink like your dog will watch you eat a cheeseburger. You know what I mean? Well, I can't help it. I just do that. And my sister starts, she gets, she starts to get that buzz going. I don't want it anymore. I'm starting to feel it. Oh, geez. I tried to get her drunk a couple times. It's inconceivable hurt for her to get knee-walking crybaby drunk. She doesn't, she, matter of fact, She can't understand why anybody would ever do that. And I can't understand why anybody would go home after two. She doesn't have what I have. She drinks and gets a feeling like she's losing control. I drink and get a feeling like I'm about to get control. I never really, I don't know that I ever really got completely there. But I get so close it makes me crazy. I get this feeling like in the next drink, I'll be there. And I never get there and I come to and I'm in trouble. And alcoholism is a progressive disease and the magic of the early days of alcoholism starts to deplete over the years. And as the fun and the ease and comfort get more and more elusive and more difficult to recapture at the same time, And the price is getting ratcheted up for chasing the party. And the consequences are getting worse and worse. And I started getting arrested more often, and I started losing things, jobs and relationships and self-respect and eventually my family. That's just the nature of the game. And I didn't know that I was on this slow boat to death from alcoholism. A friend of mine says it best. Alcoholism, it'll kill you, but it takes a while. It's like being kicked to death by rabbits. By the time you're dead, you've wished you were dead for a long time. It's like, just make it stop. I mean, by the time you're dead, and I watch, I go to a detox in Vegas down on Skid Row twice a week. I see people die of alcoholism all the time. By the time they're dead everyone they ever loved and wanted their approval hates them. As my mother, when I was almost a year sober and my first time I saw my mom and dad and I was making my first approach to the amends with them my mom started she told me something and started crying what she told me is that for some time she just wished I would die and she's telling me that with tears in her eyes because my mother loved me but that's what happens with alcoholism it's a hideous disease and yet it can God's hands it can be one of his greatest blessings as this disease has progressed within me I'm trying more frantically to recapture the party to jump start that thing to get back to those good old days and it's harder and harder I'm a blackout drinker any blackout drunkers in here? it's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do You know, if you're like me, I never had anybody come up to me the next day and say, Oh, Bob, you were so helpful last night at the party. You peed in our kitchen. You threw up in my living room. You sideswiped my car. You hit on my wife. You stole my stash. You broke my lamp. You passed out my front lawn, the absolute worst one. I was sick in the morning going to get a drink to stop this, and this guy corners me and he says to me, do you know you told everybody at that place last night you beat Bruce Lee in a karate match? Oh, man. I just want to shoot myself, you know. God. And as the years went on, the funds leeching out of it. I'll tell you what, the last couple years of my drinking were horrible. I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1971. I wasn't quite old enough to have a legal drink yet. And the next ensuing seven years until I finally got sober in 1978 were the awfulest years of My Life. I don't think that, I can't imagine a worse hell on earth than desperately needing Alcoholics Anonymous and sitting in the middle of groups of people who have Alcoholics synonymous and not doing alcohol, it's synonymous. That is a tough, tough way to go. I know what it's like to sit in the middle of AA meetings with that loneliness, that funny, peculiar type of separation, the feeling that it's all of them and then there's me. That awful lonely, awkward feeling and the depression and all the stuff that would happen to me when I quit drinking. And the last couple years of my drinking, it was so awful. What would happen is I'd be sober three months or six months in a halfway house or a treatment center someplace, and I would go on a run because I'd just get so bored and depressed and lonely, sober. Abstinence always felt like I was doing time. You know, and if I go to the psychiatrist, they give me the medications, and it doesn't really help. It kind of helps for a little bit and then you're back to being you again. You know what I mean? It's bad. And I go on these runs because I can't imagine life without it. And then I start drinking and what happens is it just breaks my heart. I can'T jumpstart the party. The last couple years, I'm not going to clubs and dressing up and throwing some cologne on and trying to meet girls. and I'm not the guy playing with some bunch of guys in a jam session or in a band. I'm the guy who sits with maybe a half gallon of the cheapest vodka I can get or Richard's Wild Irish Rose, and I just seek to blot it out. I go on crying jags. I sit and drink myself into just overwhelming depression and self-pity. occasionally i go off and put my fist through a window because i just hate myself i end up in emergency rooms i i don't bathe anymore because the truth is now that the funds out of the party i don' t really care i don''t really care about anything i just try to blot it out there's a line in our book it talks about two choices it says we get to a point where we can either go on to the bitter end blotting out our intolerable condition as best we can or to help spiritual to accept spiritual help well i'm i'm telling you i'm trying the first one i really want the first one the first looks like a better deal to me but the problem with alcoholism is you can't stay whacked 24 hours a day seven days a week the worst the worst thing about alcoholism the last few years is whether you want to or not you're going to be periodically forced into abstinence by getting arrested or running out of money or just getting so physically sick you can't drink anymore as which which would happen to me often and i uh the last couple years in my drinking i often had lost everything. I slept on guys' couches. I lived in halfway houses. I lived in some abandoned buildings and some cars. I was homeless, but I never thought of myself as homeless. He always kind of asked me, where do you live? Well, staying over there. I never really lived anywhere. And even when I was actually on the streets with nowhere to even stay. I didn't think of myself as homeless. I thought of myself as an urban outdoorsman with kind of the Jack Kerouac spirit, you know, right? This is so pathetic. This is right before I got sober, right. I got hair down to about here but it's all dirty and matted because I sleep in this burnout project, you know i got this long beard it's like i think i was trying to get ready for zz top or something i don't know but i get i got sores uh because i don'T eat now i'm not against eating it's just i can only hustle so much money a day and i'm telling you i ain't drinking i ain'T eating up my drinking money it ain't gonna happen if there's a it ain'T gonna happen so i DON'T eat And so I got sores and I'm in this park and I feel horrible. And I'm trying to get on a little bit less sick, trying to suck down this cheap wine. And I remember my, I started thinking about something like a couple months prior to that. I talked to, I got ahold of my mother on the phone because I, I get these waves of guilt every once in a while. And I call them, you know, and they don't, they're not real happy to hear from me, but I call him. And my mom told me about these guys I went to high school with that I used to know. And one of them had his own insurance agency, I think, and another one was an intern and finished medical school. Another guy was going to become a lawyer. A couple of them hade kids and had bought houses and they had these great lives, right? And I kind of hate people like that. You know what I mean? But I remember, I'm sitting in the park, I'm drinking this bottle of wine, and I'm thinking to myself, Yeah, they couldn't take it living like this though. Isn't that pathetic? That I could be that awful and yet be smugly superior to these other people. This ego that I got, it seemed as the years went on, everything else in me was dying and it seemed to get stronger. it seemed to get stronger and stronger it almost killed me and it almost killed me because I'd end up in AA meetings and my ego is so out of line that I can't listen to you I can' t listen to anybody I fit the old adage you can always tell an alcoholic but you can't tell him much I'm the guy who can't, I can''t hear I can'T listen to YOU to hear anything new I can only listen to You to see how I'm already right about stuff. And so consequently, nothing gets in here. And I just sit and I judge everybody in AA and pick them apart and, you know, oh, you're this and listen to that. Oh, man, what a phony. You know, I just do that. I just set meetings like that. So nothing gets in and I'm dying and yet trying to feel smugly superior to everybody around me at the same time. I can't imagine anything more pathetic, but that's me. I'm the egomaniac with the inferiority complex. If you don't know what that means, it's not so much that you're a piece of whale crap, you're a very special piece of whale crap. And in 1977, I'm in a halfway house and I'm really trying. But by this time, I've exhausted everything there is to exhaust and it's a bad deal. Before my parents pulled the plug on me and stopped helping me, they had financed me to go to some of the absolute best psychiatrists on the planet. There was one guy I used to get on the train and go see twice a week in the beginning and then once a week who had written books. He was the founder of a huge institute and he had to be a movie star to see him but my dad had worked for the government and had some political contacts and got me in there. You couldn't get in to see them. I went to some great guys and it didn't help because I'm still me. I tried the medications and it didn't really help. I tried just about everything there was to try and now I'm in this halfway house and I'm not drinking day in and day out and week in and week out and it's bad. The loneliness and the boredom and the depression and the anxiety. I just, I can't get out of here and I live up in my head and this is not good because it spins all the time I'm continually solving problems that haven't occurred yet you know I'm the guy I don't just solve I just don't solve problems with people I solve problems with what I think people are thinking oh man it's bad I don' t know what to do I'm hanging on there. I'm not drinking and I'm not taking anything and I I'm just up to here and I say I grabbed this old timer one time and I was so bored and lonely I said you know what do you guys do for fun now that you're not drinking and he said oh it gets a big smile on his face he says oh we go to lots of meetings to me AA has good news and bad news. The good news is maybe if I went to thousands of these stupid meetings, I'll stay sober the rest of my life. And the bad news is I'm going to live a long time. I said, well, yeah, I know what you're saying. Meetings, meetings, oh, jeez. But is there anything else? You've got to do something for fun, I mean, for fun. He says, oh yeah, twice a year we have an AA dance. I've been to an AA dancing. I went in the van of losers to the AA dance and stood in the back of the room. And within three minutes, I remembered why I used to drink. Oh, man. The book says we will know a loneliness such as few do. Oh, men. So I start. What happens is that the obsession starts to come my way. But it doesn't come. It never comes initially as an obsession with alcohol. What it starts with is a yearning for freedom. What it stars with is I just want to bust out, I'm just tired of being locked up here. I'm tired of these emotions that I just can't seem to get off of me. I'm tied to the chatter of this head that just continually just never leaves me alone. living between my ears with my head is like being shackled to a hyperactive ADD kid that never shuts up. That's why newcomers before they work the steps always look tired all the time. How you doing, Bob? Hanging in there. I'm worn out. At the end of the day, I'm wore out. And so I start planning. I just want to have some fun, that's all. Isn't it weird? This thing they talk about in our book, they call it self-delusion. It's that psychotic, wishful thinking. All the reality of my life now is that alcohol has turned on me. I've wrung every drop of fun out of it. it's now pathetic and terrible and yet you get me sober six months in a halfway house with untreated alcoholism and I will start to yearn for the effect from the good old days so desperately I will imagine that I can reap it again when I can't and haven't been able to. I will start imagining that under maybe these conditions I could enjoy it again and maybe control it enough to get away with it and that's our one of the first illusions our book talks about so I plan this drunk and I don't want to hurt anybody my god I've been sober all these months I've be making my bed and cleaning those bathrooms I've being going to those AA meetings I've working this stupid job I mean I've bee a really good sport up to now I mean I don'want to hurt anybody I don''t want to burn my life to the ground I just want to have fun. Just two days, for God's sakes. I'm entitled to that, you'd think. Two days? Just a little fun, that's all. And I get this weekend pass to go meet a guy I knew from Detox who I knew was back to drinking and I went and met him. We were going to this bar he told me about that had great bands and I'm excited. And the best part of that run was a couple hours before it started. As it was every run i went on the last couple years and i go into the bar and the same thing happened only this time i got it and i'm in this bar and i'M THROWING DOWN THESE DOUBLE SHOTS YOU KNOW BECAUSE I'M I ONLY GOT A WEEKEND I GOT TO GET THERE AND I'M MAN I'M HOPE I WANT TO I WANTA JUMP START THAT THING INSIDE ME SO I CAN COME OUT AND PLAY SO I CAN BE LAUGHING AND CARRYING ON LIKE SOME OF THESE GUYS SO I COULD MAYBE BE DANCING SO I SHOOT SOME POOL WITH SOME GUYS so I can have some fun, so I get free. Only don't jump start. The only thing that jump starts inside of me is the phenomenon of craving that thing inside me that just wants one more, one more. And as I'm sitting at that bar sinking into this abyss of self-pity, feeling sorry for myself, I'm looking at the people in the bar that are having fun and I remember thinking, what's wrong with me? because i could remember when i was all about all of that and i can't get it back and it was like a moment of truth it was like a window open and i could see the truth you know we talk a lot about awakenings in alcoholics anonymous i tell you i think 90 of most spiritual awakenings is you pull your head out of your butt and just show up and see what's really going on And this is the truth. This is as good as it gets. I could drink this stuff till it kills me, but I will never ever, I got it, I'll never ever be able to get back to the way it was when I was 18 years old. What a horrible, depressing truth that is for me. And the reason is that I can't imagine life without it. Because I've got a big secret, and the big secret is I ain't good without it。 Big secret, is there something wrong with me? And God knows I've tried to figure it out. I've gone to therapists and treat. I've done everything I can. I don't know. Nobody knows what's wrong with them. I tried crazy stuff to fix me. I tried primal screaming. Oh, God. A therapist had me lay on the ground and kick my hands and feet and yell, Mommy, Daddy. I mean, oh, my God. I was hit regret. I suspected at one time that even though I came from a loving, good family, that someone must have damaged me somewhere along the line. And I thought through therapy I would uncover what that was and then like a released child's helium balloon soar into some kind of normalcy or mental health. And I could never find out what it was. I went to a hypnotherapist, got regressed back through my childhood. Never found out what it was. I do bark when the doorbell rings, by the way. That's not true. But I don't have anything that was done to me. I don'T have anything like that. I have a disease of my spirit called alcoholism. and i uh i didn't end i was the plan was is i'm going to go out drink friday night all day saturday late saturday night get back to sober up get back to the halfway house sunday so i don't lose my bed monday morning i come to in a county jail and i'm facing two years in a state penitentiary for the hit and run dui in a stolen car it was my friend's car actually he wasn't really stolen, but he passed out. And I wasn't done drinking. I need to go get some, you know, I'm just... And I don't even remember being arrested. I don'T even remember it. I remember vaguely a boom, boom, boon, boom boom, which I found out later was a series of park cars. And I come to in this county jail and I'm sick and I need a drink. And they get your You get a phone call and there's nobody to call. My parents aren't taking my collect calls anymore and my sister won't help me and I don't have any more girlfriend, I haven't had a girlfriend in a long time. I don' t have any running partners. I can't keep a running partner very long. So I signed up and I went to an AA meeting, signed up on this piece of paper and went to this AA meeting and I am not going to the AA meeting for recovery. By this time, I have given up on Alcoholics Anonymous. I liked you. You were always very, very nice to me. But I know inside of me that whatever's wrong with me is not the same thing that's wrong with you because I quit drinking and I go to your meetings and I got to tell you something. I don't feel even, I'm not even in the same zip code emotionally when I quit drinking as you guys. You guys quit drinking and you're, God, you're wonderful. Oh, I just got to listen to your endless series of miracle stories. Oh, God's just picked you out and gave you a good life and then there's me, you know? So whatever, I don't know what's wrong with me. The therapist can't tell me, but it ain't the same thing that's wrong avec you. I go to the meeting really for one reason, for cigarettes. That's all. And I go into the meeting hall, and I'm waiting there, actually standing there in this room, waiting for the do-gooders from AA to come in. And here comes this guy, Woody. I knew Woody from Aliquippa. I knew Woodie used to bring meetings into Gateway. He brought meetings into Amicus House when I was in there, a bunch of places I was in, St. Francis, St., John's. Woody was, I hated Woody. I just didn't like Woody. Woody is one of those do-gooders from AAA. First of all, he's happy and sober at the same time. That's creepy. He's got one of those books like a minister under his arm. He's always talking about God. He loves everybody. He wants to help you. He's grateful for everything. I don't even like anything. I don' t like me. I don't like anything. And here comes Woody. Ah, God. I hope if you were to come to Las Vegas and you were to watch me for a week, I hope I'm as good a member of Alcoholics Anonymous as Woody was. Woody went fishing for guys like me probably every day of his life. I hope I'm that guy. And Woody comes in and I'm embarrassed to see him. I always feel properly ashamed of myself when I relapse, you know. And I beat myself up. Isn't that bizarre that I would beat myself for not having the power that I don't have the power anyway? I'm beating myself up over something I don' t have any control of anyway. If I should have beat myself it should have been for not working the steps but I'm beaten myself up for failing at staying sober. And I always failed. And I'll tell you something, there were a couple times I really tried, I would make up my mind and mean it this time, I'm not going to drink no more. Seven or eight months later I'm drunk again. I heard a speaker when I was new say something, it was so hilarious and I got it. He said, he said, I fought the bottle, he said I quit drinking over 50 times every time I got drinking, I quit drunken, I got drunker and every he said you know this quitting drinking was killing me and I thought yeah boy boy that's right isn't that funny I've I stand here I haven't had a drink or anything in over 29 years and it's not from fighting the bottle you guys taught me to stop fighting the bottle and stuff and start fighting what was really killing me is the alcoholism I fight that every day, this inclination to be self-centered and want to play God and judge people. You know how we play God, you know, that throne of judge? I fightthat every day of my life. But I've been fighting in the right arena for 29 years. I was fighting inthe wrong arena for seven years, and I was getting pummeled to death. And I didn't understand what was happening to me. Anyway, I go to Woody's there. and I feel embarrassed to see him. And I told him, I said, he wants to help me, right? So I know Woody's rich. He's got a lot of money. He owns a big house, brand-new Cadillac, big job at the steel mill. So he says he wants To help me. So I explained it to him that I needed him to put his house up so I can get out on bail. And these people in AA are hypocrites. They tell you they want to help you until you explain it to them. and he don't want to put his house up. He wants to give me a big book and help me with some stairs or something. I don't know. It's like, I don' t want a big book. I want out on bail. So I get mad at him because he ain't doing things my way. So I told him, I said, I don''t need your help. I'll beat this. I'm going to get out of here. Back in the 70s, maybe still sometimes big today, I don't know, but the big thing in the halfway house is everybody's talking about voc rehab money. You get that government vocational rehabilitation money. Go to school, go to college, be a doctor or a lawyer. I told Woody, I'm going to get that voc rehab money, I want to be a Doctor, maybe a Lawyer. And he starts laughing at me, right? Where's the AA love really? He starts laughing and he says, kid you're not going to do any of that, you're probably going to die alcoholism kid because you haven't hit a bottom. Because you haven's surrendered. And I didn't say nothing to him, but I remember thinking you don't know anything about me with your big house. Hit a bottom? I live like an animal. There's nobody to call when I got a phone call. I'm sick inside. I'm sick when I'm sober. I're sick when I'm drinking. Haven't surrendered. Surrendered what? There's nothing left. A couple years ago, I had a girlfriend. I had good job. I had place to live. I think there was a time I might have had some self-respect. I don't know what he's talking about. I know exactly what he is talking about today. He is asking me to surrender the one thing and it's my judgment. It is the essence of the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous in step three that I would surrender my will first of all and then my life. and it is the will that is crucial. You know, there's a line in the big book. I just got this about... It's funny how they keep changing the book. Did you ever notice that? Right? I just saw this about two years ago. I didn't realize that they equate ego and self-centered. It's the same thing. It says in there, self-centered or ego-centered, as people like to call it nowadays. Like they're talking about the same things. I heard I used to hear Chuck Chamberlain talk in my first few years of sobriety oh god what an amazing, amazing man and he talked I heard him say one time that if it wasn't for the ego we wouldn't even need AA and that's what had to be that's where I was that's how it had to go and I can't give it up you can tell me I can be dying let go of your ego and I'll just look at you because I don't know what you're talking about because it is all that I have left. And I didn't know what he was talking about. I've seen the exact same thing that Woody saw when he looked at me probably thousands, I can't tell you how many times, well twice a week minimum for 29 years. Almost every week I see a guy just like me who's dying of alcoholism. I go to a detox where outside there's a tree across the street. We call it the dying tree, and it's because often the beds are full in detox and the people don't know what to do, so they lay up against that tree. And there's been a lot of guys that have died there from going into convulsions and smashing their head on the ground or their heart seizes up or whatever. I don't Know How They Die, but there's Been A Lot Of Guys That Die There. And I See Guys Like That Who Are Dying Of Alcoholism and yet see exactly what Woody saw. That in spite of that, a man who was insisting on running his own ship. And that's what I was doing. Not because I'm stupid and not because I am a self-destructive guy. I am sure it looked like I was a self destructive guy. But my self-centered fear is on me and there is some kind of weird dynamic inside of me that the worse it gets, the more desperate I am to control. So I keep moving towards what's killing me rather than moving away from it. And I don't even know I'm doing that. And I ended up going before a judge who sentenced me to two years in a state penitentiary and then was very kind, stayed the commitment, gave me a break. He told me if I could do certain things, I had to go to this treatment center and stay there for a year and get good UAs, good peer reports, et cetera, pay back the restitution. If I could do all that, I wouldn't have to do the two years and it wouldn't be a felony. Otherwise, it was a done deal. I went into this place that would be my last, it would start where I'd start my last run. And I went in to this place and I got two years in prison hanging over me. I have got to the point where I get it now that alcohol doesn't work. There's nothing in the bottle for me anymore. So I have made up my mind not to drink at a level that I'm telling you, if making up your mind enough would ensure sobriety, I should have been sober from that day. But I'm the guy that talks about in the book when it says lack of power is my dilemma. And the emotions start putting the screws to me, the loneliness, the boredom, the depression. I can't pretend I'm okay. I get tired. You know, I'm a pretender and I'm phony trying to pretend I am. How are you doing, Bob? Oh, wonderful, grateful for everything. Didn't want to crawl under a rock somewhere. And I go on my last run. I didn't know it was my last one. On that run, I try to take my own life. I'm not a suicidal guy, but you put me in a trap I can't spring and you've put me at a place where drinking is awful and not drinking is off. Suicide can start looking like a good deal to me. Now, you'd think to yourself, well, my God, I've been around AA for seven years. Why don't you do AA? But my experience, I think, is pretty common in AA. You know, I've talked to a lot of people over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I bet you Peggy's talked to her a lot more than I have. I, to this day, have not found one person yet who ever came to AA as a newcomer in the despair of alcoholism and looked at those steps and went, oh yeah, that would work. Nobody. Hey, Peggy, have you ever seen anybody like that? I'm nervous. You don't know that they work until after you do them and then everybody says the same thing. Oh, I should have done that a long time ago. so I'm on this bridge and I don't think there's a choice I can't live with it I can' t live without it and I can''t go on like this and I try to kill myself and I'm a coward I can ''t do it and I ended up in another hospital another detox right after that only this time 2,000 miles away in Las Vegas cross country running from the lawn the Buddhists say when the student is ready the teachers appear and I sat in that detox for the first time in seven years of going to meetings and I could hear you. See, I got just enough of me kicked out of me that I can hear you all the ego and judgment all that stuff was just gone and I was just like a broken little child who just it just washed over me what you said I just heard you and I'm sitting there and I sit in that meeting for the 1st time in my life and I nod my head And I'm thinking, oh my God, I don't like these people. And I got a sponsor who is today still one of my best friends. I changed, I got anew sponsor when I was about 15 years, so about 15 years ago. But the guy that was my original sponsor is still one of my most favorite people in the world. One of my very best friends, I mean the executor of his will, we were very close. He was a wonderful man. And he was big on service. He was not real big on the steps or the big book. I mean, he liked it. He thought it was a good thing. But he came from an element, you just help drunks, you just be an intergroup rep and a secretary and a GSR. He had been everything from delegate all the way down, and he just pushed me into service. He told me when I was new that I got to start doing 12-step calls. And I heard what he said, and I knew that AA had a membership problem and they needed to send guys out like me. But I told him that I wasn't really ready yet. I wanted to wait until I felt a little more ready before I tried to help anybody. And he says, listen, kid, if you wait until you feel ready to help somebody before you help somebody, you've already died of alcoholism. Just do it. And now I'm not even three months sober. I'm going into state prison. Couldn't even do that today. I've been grandfathered in there ever since. I started going into one of the halfway houses. as I started going back into the detox, I'd come out of the hospital and carry meetings in there with some of these old-timers. And little did I know that you guys were tethering me to a lifestyle and a set of actions and what would eventually become a purpose that has become primary, number one, in my life that would save me from me. I am the guy that Dr. Baer talks about in the back of the big book. In the medical view of alcoholism, there was a doctor in the 40s who came and observed us and then made a talk about us on the radio about what he thought AA was and he nailed me and I think he nails a lot of us when he said that we are people who know that they must not drink. Now some of us almost die getting to that spot. Countless vain attempts to prove we can drink like other people and fail and he says they're people who know that they must not drink and he says they throw themselves into helping others with similar problems and in that atmosphere the alcoholic will often overcome his excessive over concentration upon himself dr bear i didn't know it showed i just that's the problem it's always been the problem that's why i get thirsty and I start yearning for freedom because I stop drinking and I get my emotions, my past and the guilt and the future and the anxiety. I get me just on me and I can't get it off. And it smothers my spirit until I start to yearn just to bust out. And the only thing in my life I've ever known that frees me when I'm stuck up here and I can't take it anymore is four shots of tequila. Now, when I yearn desperately enough to get free, I can't see the reality that four shots of tequilla don't get me free no more. All I can see is the hope, the desperate, desperate hope that it might. And then these guys started get me into 12-step work when I was brand new and it started to change my life. And I am, I don't know that I, I think I would have survived my first four years of sobriety if it wouldn't have been for a lot of 12- step work. And eventually I found the solution and I started to find a way to get free from the depression and all that stuff when I started working the process in this book. But I couldn't, I didn't do that right away. I did inventories and stuff my first couple years of sobriety, but I was four years sober before I actually did this. And I got through those first four years by a lot of service in Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to 15 meetings a week, I suppose. I wanted H&I stuff all the time, 12-step. I was every committee there was. But Chamberlain one time said you get to a point where you no longer can put anything between you and you. And I'm trying to outrun my alcoholism and it's caught me and i'm a little over four years sober and i had to go back and do this or i don't think i would have stayed i probably would have drank again and i but in the first i i my story and bill's story in the book are so identical so many times i'd come back from an h and i meeting i'd go in there depressed and all messed up and i'd come out the other side of the meeting and i don'T even remember god what was i so upset about you know it's weird how it just changes you but it i did a lot of that and i can't connect the dots i don't know that what it's doing for me i don'T get it i DON'T GET THAT IT'S BUYING ME JUST AS ALCOHOL BOUGHT ME ISLANDS OF RELIEF FROM ME BUT THAT'S WHAT IT'S DOING AND I HAD AN EXPERIENCE AND I'LL TELL YOU THIS STORY AND I'll SHUT HER DOWN I was about a year and a half sober, a little over a year sober, and I'm in a bad spot. And I come home from work. I went to two meetings. I came back that night. It's almost 10 o'clock at night. And I'm sinking into this deep depression. Now, I've prayed. I've called my sponsor. And I've been to two readings and I're sinking into a deep depression and I don't know what to do. And I look at the clock and there's a meeting at 1015 up at this place called Duffy's and I thought if I could get up there, and I couldn't get off the sofa right away. If you've ever, it's hard to believe, but if you've never experienced this, I used to get so depressed at times I'd be physically debilitated where I felt like I was 1,000 pounds. Like everything is just, I couldn'T get offthe sofa. Somehow I threw a prayer and I muscled myself off that sofa and shuffled out to my car like a mope and drove up to that meeting and there was a parking space right in front of the door to the chapel. And I go in, and I'm sitting in the back of the room, but I can't hear nothing in the meeting because the big show is on the inside, right? And I'm in here pondering my life and my bleak future, and my first sober relationship had ended, and all of a sudden I'm In a World of Happy Couples. I don't know. What's that about? I mean, you know, and everybody's doing better than me, The more I think about myself and my prospects, the worse it looks. And I'm still a victim of a delusion that I can wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well, which means that I think I can think myself out of these things. If you ever try to think yourself out of a depression, it's like digging a hole, you just go deeper and deeper. That's why we don't have a chapter into thinking, it's into action. so i'm in this meeting and i can't hear anything and there's a guy uh sitting across from me he's coming off a drunk and he's in bad shape he's sitting there and he'S GRABBING HIMSELF AND HE'S ROCKING BACK AND FORTH LIKE HE WANTS TO JUMP OUT OF HIS SKIN SHAKEN AND HE CAN'T SIT VERY LONG THEN HE'S UP AND HE's PACING BACK BACK AND FORTH BEHIND ME AND THEN THERE'S A BATHROOM RIGHT THERE YOU CAN HEAR HIM GO IN there he's dry heaving and i you know i got a lot of problems here i'm trying to figure out this guy's annoying the crap out of me so the meeting's over i have not heard anything actually the meetings made me worse and i i stay after the meeting to help charlie the secretary with the chairs and the trash and everything to get the chapel back because i taught to do that in aa charlie and i are the last two guys to leave the meeting and and as we're leaving he's locking up and he's on his way to work. He works at Graveyard Shift and I look over and he looks over and the guy that's coming off the drunk is laying on the ground in a fetal position in front of my car. Now, I'm going to have to step over him to go home and try to figure out how my life a little deeper which I probably would have done except Charlie's there and he has a big mouth and if I don't help this guy he's going to tell everybody in AA what a lousy member I am. So I'm looking at Charlie and Charlie's like are you going to help this man? And I'm like oh man And it's, you know, isn't it enough that my life's crap? I've got to do this too. Doesn't anybody else step up to the plate? The guy's a mess. He's peed his pants. He stinks. He's afraid he's going to go into seizures. He has no medical insurance. And at that time in Las Vegas, if you didn't have medical insurance for the care unit or one of those hospitals, man, there was no free place like they got now. You were in trouble. So I don't know what to do with him. I mean, sometimes we'd take guys and sit with them, two guys at a shift, and give them a shot of vodka and orange juice about every hour, hour and a half, just to keep them from going over the end. And still they might flop around on the floor. I don't know what to do with the guys, so there's only one thing to do. One thing to doing is to take them to the county hospital. And I've been there before on 12-step calls, and it's horrible. They treat you – they treat these drunks like redheaded stepchildren, man. and they'll let you wait five, six hours because they have this attitude. Like we'd rather treat legitimately sick people rather than you self-induced guys that are probably going to be back here next month. So I know what's coming, and I've got this guy in my car, and I'm going to get up for work in the morning, and I're going to become a doctor. I'm not going to go to bed to be tired. I'm never going to sleep. I'm probably going be tired with a bad attitude. I'll probably lose my job, but it's a lousy job. So we're driving. drive and I get down there we sign in we're sitting in the waiting room and I could smoke back to him giving him cigarettes it's hard to believe in it you could smoke you could actually smoke in a hospital waiting and I'm giving him cans of orange juice and putting sugar in it from the coffee service because in those days sometimes we give guys orange juice in honey but all they got sugar so it's close as I can get and we're sit there and he starts to tell me about himself And he starts to tell me about the shame and the remorse that he feels from the things he did to the people who loved him, and how he can't even drink it away anymore. And then he tells me that for some time he's been thinking about killing himself, and he just doesn't have the courage to do it. Then he really gets me. He says to me, he says, I don't know why you're wasting time with me. You see, I'm not like you guys. I will always drink again. And man, I've told you, he's telling me about me. And in the wee hours of the morning, I fell in love with that guy. There was a point sitting in that waiting room, I'm telling you, I wanted him to be happy joyous and free probably more than I wanted it for me. And I just wanted him to be okay. And I don't know that I ever felt that strongly those kind of feelings before. And there's no reason for me to be in love with this guy, he can't get me a better job. He can't do anything. He's probably not even going to stay sober a year and give me some kind of credit for something. You know, this guy can't do anything for me. But I fell in love with him because he suffered from alcoholism exactly the way I suffered from it. And I realized years later in sponsoring guys that what I'd fallen in love with was I fell in love with the me that is in him. A me and a part of me that I could never love directly and I tried. I had a therapist one time that was big on love yourself. You gotta love yourself She gave me this positive affirmation that's supposed to stand in front of the mirror look myself in the eye and say God loves you God forgives you God accepts you I love me God, I love, I accept I forgive me I accept me I had to say that six times. You know, I could have said that until the planet blew up. It wouldn't have changed how I felt about myself. After about three times through, there's a little voice in my head going, bullshit, bullshit. I don't care how... It doesn't help me. But in coming to love and care about the me that is in you And in 12-step work and in the ninth step, I started to change my relationship with me. Isn't it funny that I don't make amends directly to myself? What happens is I take all of you off the hook and I start caring about you as is and accepting and loving you as isn't a funny thing happens. It comes back on me. And then all of a sudden that happens to me too. And I start in the middle of the night one night, I'll wake up and I'll go to the bathroom and I look in the mirror as I walk by and I realize I'm not perfect. Bob, you're all right. You're okay. And I was never okay. And I didn't do that. You can't think your way into that. But I acted my way into it through helping drunks and making amends and doing all the things we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. I always wanted to be free of depression. but until I took you off the hook see I couldn't stop beating me up until I stopped beating you up because once I unleashed the dogs of judgment they always come back and bite the master that's the problem in the wee hours of the morning I'd start using the same stick I'd been using on you all day on me and my relationship with I was sitting in my home group last night and I was looking around and I Was realizing and I WAS thinking to myself There's nobody I know of right now that I'm really pissed at. Some of you guys, that's not a big deal. That's a big detail for me. There's some people I don't get what they do, but I mean, I love them. I care about them. I'm not mad at them. I think some of their behavior is a little weird, but I'm mad at him. And you know what I realize is anytime I have contention with somebody, if I'm honest with myself, if I had all the emotions going on that were going on inside of them, inside of me, I'd be probably doing what they're doing. I'm just lucky. I've insulated myself from me through good sponsorship and commitments to Alcoholics Anonymous. I've not got perfect here, but what I have done is I've learned a lot about how to protect Bob from Bob. A lot about that. I drive in home in the wee hours of the morning and I feel so amazing after I let that... They took the guy in, gave him a bed and I'm crying and I am not crying because I am depressed I am crying because I don't know in any other moment in my life I ever got it that I was exactly who I was supposed to be exactly where I was suppose to be there was a rightness about my life and all of a sudden a sense of God's presence in my life and I realized that why the old timers had been hammering me, hammering to do 12-step work and service in Alcoholics Anonymous because they knew something I don't know. They knew that even the self-obsessed, self-involved, self-focused, narcissistic guy like me, if I stayed in that venue long enough, one day my head would come out of my butt and i'd actually get free and know what happened and i think that was the that was the morning that i claimed my primary purpose and i've never looked back outside of maybe a period of about two weeks when i was 19 years sober i have not had a depression since then i've been free and i know where it comes from i you know bill bill wilson says something very interesting in his story. And boy, it's right on the money from my experience. He says, unless the alcoholic can enlarge his spiritual life through two things, and it's not prayer meditation. It's not what you'd think. You'd think reading books, prayer meditation, through self sacrifice and constant work with others. Unless I enlarge my spiritual life though those things, I will never survive the certain certain. They're coming. Certain trials and low spots ahead. I have never felt closer to God than when I am trying to love you. I've never felt closer together. Sometimes with the guys I sponsor, I'll be laughing with them. And sometimes, I have a thing every October, and my sponsor is going to be there for the whole weekend this time. This year, I'm allowing the guys i sponsor to bring their sponsees so it's going to be a big kind of a lot of people and what when we all get together what you always see is that my sponsor will pick on me i'll pick on the guys i sponsor they pick onthe guys they sponsor because it's the first rule of plumbing it all runs downhill you know right and sometimes in goofing around with these guys and loving them I realize how free I am and I feel God's presence and it's I suspect objectively that my contact with God is probably at times more unconscious than conscious but it's never not been there and I want to thank you for my life