The Medical Degree That Could Not Stop the Disease of Dependency – Doyle S.

I'm Doyle Smith and I am a recovering alcoholic. Hi everybody, it's real good for me to be here today. When I was called and asked if I would participate in this area, I told Joe with a lot of ego and enthusiasm, sure. And then I began to think a lot, a little bit, and sort of let my alcoholic thinking get things rolling in my head. And I said, Oh my God, what have I said? There's people up there that I've been listening to for a long time that taught me so much about this book, and I know they've got a lot of things that they haven't taught me yet. have accepted something so I thought about that and I went and I didn't go to my sponsor but I because I knew what he would say because he had told me before and that is when you're asked to do something in AA do it but what I was going to do was call Joe back and say hey I would like I'd be glad to get you somebody but Joe didn't call down there and say Doyle, get me somebody so I had to look reality in the eye and with that I have gotten a little more comfortable about being here it was in 1977 I was first exposed to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous us. Always in my studies and when I read things, I would take my pen and make little notes as I went along. I'm not real sure why, but I can remember the first big book I had. I was at work, and I had this friend that was my old drinking buddy, and for some reason, and something happened to him. I hadn't seen him in six or eight months, and he came by one morning, and it was an anesthesiologist, and he looked nice, and I thought he was fixing to go somewhere because I hadn'T seen him in quite a while, and he looks a lot better than he used to look. He and I used to settle world problems on Sunday mornings down in the swamps in Jackson, Mississippi. and I'd missed my friend but he showed up and he looked neat and he had a little book in his hand and I said oh buddy where you heading you all dressed up look like you're fixing to go preaching and he said well sort of says I brought you something and that book had a cover on it and he gave it to me and went on his way and I went into my office and opened it up and it says Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought to myself, do you suppose that dude thinks I'm an alcoholic? See, I didn't know he'd been going to Alcoholics Anonymous for the past six or eight months. I thrummed through it and looked at it and it didn't have any graphs and it doesn't have a name. It didn't even have any pictures. I didn' t think much to it. Later on, I did pull that book out and start looking at it and I can remember when I got to chapter two and it says, there is a solution. I put a question mark behind it. I think that tells you where I was getting. This chapter to me is sort of an introduction of things to come in the big book. It, uh, I can give you about a two minute or less than two minutes simplification of it is it It really tells me that I've got to identify my problem before I can find the solution. And then it gives me some direction toward the solution, and as we go through it from time to time, we will see things that make the rest of the book more significant to me. one thing that i took a look at and and you know i i had to look at a lot of things and i share some feelings that i look it tells us in here in the first part of this chapter that there's a lot of us and they refer to us as arid americans I think we can that at that point in time that's where this was it was in America I think you can put it average people now because hey what are we today this is international it's averaging uh people and it tells us that we come from all walks of life and I think that's why we're talking about being first thing I heard average man I said And, you know, at one time I'd look at that average American and I wasn't average. There was something wrong. I was way down. The next time I looked at that averaged American, then I'm kind of a little, I ain't quite like all those others. I'm different. So I had trouble with being average. And I had travel. But I think what he's telling us there that mainly had to do with a lot of people, ordinary, every day from all walks of life. Also, it tells us that they came from all sorts of occupations as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. And they didn't spell out my occupation—I was a physician. It didn't say in there anything about physicians. I will share with you a little experience that I have had in regards to being average with all walks of life. I've had the opportunity to work with or sit with a lot of health care people in the past eight or nine years, and I've also had the chance to sit with non-health care people. Some of them would be bankers, backhoe operators, electricians, housewives, and some wouldn't have any occupation at all. Somewhere down the line they would get to where they could share with each other. It wasn't too long ago that I was sitting in a group of health care people, most of whom were physicians. There was a couple of nurses, a dentist or two, and we started out that gathering by wanting to know if anybody had any problems, if anybody wanted to discuss anything. And everybody was laid back. Everybody was happy, it looked like. Nobody had too much to share. And I learned something. Even though we're all physicians, which it gives a little common tie like the different walks of life and different politicians and things have differences, I found out that those of us in the healthcare field have an awful lot differences, even though we may have a little common tie. And to get things started in the discussion and get some feelings started I asked an internist sitting next to me how he felt about child psychiatry sitting across from us and did he feel like that that guy was a real doctor? And he said, no. Then I asked that child's psychiatrist how he felt about this fellow sitting on my left if he was being, how do you feel that he feels about that surgeon over here referring to him as a guest passer? And I could begin to see some changes going on. So I asked this family doctor over here, how did you feel about your patients because they've been to see a specialist that you referred them to referring to you as just a family doctor. I have never seen so much anger exerted in one group in all my life, and they were so laid back, and there was deep-seated feelings there. And do you know what? I found out a little later that there was a solution to all of that. And I'll try to get into that as we go along. So if we think we're all just totally real comfortable with each other, we need to take a look. I had to take a look at a lot of those areas myself. There's another thing that I want to share with you in regards to that group that regardless of how much anger we had toward each other, that we all had a common peril and nobody there was for a Fourth of July picnic. That we all were suffering from the disease of dependency to mood altering substances and most of it there could relate to alcohol. This chapter tells us and tells me that that commonality or that common peril can be a powerful cement to bind us, but that's not the thing that keeps us bound. And it goes on to describe the common peril or the problem if you will. And the illness that we just heard talked about and what does it illness do to us? The loss of control of the drinking. And it engulfs the lives of the not only their sufferer but all whom the sufferer comes in contact I said and listen yesterday how far-reaching from a family dynamic standpoint this disease is and that's what I think he's telling us here now it It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentments, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employees, warped lives of blameless children, said wives and parents, and you can go on it on with the list. Excuse me, what they're doing here to me is identifying this problem. And I can relate to what they are talking about. This book was written for me. And when I first started, I kind of spotted around in studying this book and there was something about it that was sort of more dramatic in reading the stories first. And what I was trying to do was find somebody in there that had a problem like mine because everybody else's was a lot worse than mine and I couldn't identify with a lot of that so if I can't identify where there was problems I must not be one of them well what I wasn't looking at was the solution that they all had to their problems and if i didn't have their problem how would i how could i be interested in their solution it's that denial mechanism and this is all points out in this chapter just an attitude to help me get an attitude as to how to look at the other areas you see as we go further on In the study of the book, it's got agnostics. It's got a chapter to the wives' problems, and on and on. But there's something else this book points out to me, and that is for those of us who have found the solution to the dream problem, have got a little something more to offer than most people to the suffering alcoholic. And I use this in my work all the time. And when they start making certain denials like I made and stuff, I said, hey, wait just a minute. It's okay. I've been there. I know where you are. and it always kind of gets a little see that's something I don't know whether I earned it or maybe a little bit of it I earned but it was a gift that was given to me that I could sit there and talk to that individual and share to let him know that hey, I do understand. And I can remember the experience when I was on the other side and somebody told me they understood and I thought he was blowing smoke because nobody understood as far as I was concerned. But I didn't turn it loose. I kind of hung on to it. It was done in such a fashion that it was sincere and I felt like and that's what this chapter tells me that recovering from alcoholism is a gift that I have. There's a lot of shame, this book, this chapter points out. Feeling of the loss of self-worth also tells us that after we have gotten involved in the program and we can get out of ourselves by getting active and thinking about others is a great relief. But if you're an early alcoholic, I mean an alcoholic and trying to get early into recovery you may be asking yourself the question, what do I have to do? I asked my sponsor early on what I had to do. He said, whatever it takes. That didn't excite me too much. And this business of people understanding us i've heard it time and time again from different families friends and all these people that are we described it describes as being hurt statements that i'll share with you that comes right out of this chapter i can take it or leave it why can't he why don't you drink like a gentleman or quit that fellow can't handle his liquor why don'T you try beer or wine instead of the hard stuff that don't work either I tried that his willpower must be weak i had thought i had demonstrated to myself all my life that if there's anything i really had going for me in my life was willpower i i didn't have the silver spoon and i didn' t have a lot of things but if i wanted it and i wanted bad enough i felt like i could get it and i never saw anything i couldn't whip now I may lose the first round but I'll be back and most of the time I accomplish those things that I set out to do so I felt like it I could quit and I said that myself to a lot of people it's okay, I'm doing alright I quit when I get ready man, I'd been ready a long time but I couldn't tell anybody that you see what it was Well, and I got drunk together a lot of times. And that began to lead, as this story tells or this chapter tells me, to some hopelessness. That lack of control. This chapter also goes on and tells me about the different types of drinking people. And that is those who drink on social, as we have heard. In other words, the one who will take the cold beer on a Fourth of July picnic, a little wine with turkey dinner on thanksgiving eggnog on christmas morning as i relate and think in terms of that what i classify as a social drinker then they might they call him moderate i believe in this area i always felt like those people just didn't know how to drink the reason they didn't drink more than that they also don't mention here another group of people in this world that i had to take a good look at and it was from some gentleman that i Had worked with uh that he he was he was helping me stay sober uh because he was having a terrible time getting sober but it was on his second birthday of his sobriety. And he came to me and he says, I got something I got to share with you. And I said, what is it? He says, I've been sober two years today. So that means I'm two years old. And what does two-year-olds, where do they live? He said, they live with their parents. And that's what I'm doing. My father's dead, but I'm living with my mother. She's 72 years old. And that is where I live because it's okay because I'm just two years old today. So he says, I got up this morning and I went charging into the kitchen where my mother was fixing us breakfast. And I said, Mother, guess what? I'm two years sober today. And she said, she looked me in the eye and said, What's so great about that? I'm 72 years sober old today And the point I'm trying to make is that there are people that don't drink, as strange as it may seem. Now he goes on and he starts talking about, he didn't put it down yet, and he didn'T spell my name out. Well, he did spell it out, but he misspelled it a little bit. Anyway, the real alcoholic. And he goes on through and he describes Daryl Smith just perfect. I mean, I didn't know that those people way back there, when I was only 10, 12, 13 years old, somewhere in that neighborhood, knew about me like that to write a book about me for my future. But that's what they've done. They identified me. They talked about the things that drink did to me. They talk about the destruction, the yo-yo up and down personality that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the people that I hurt, the antisocial behavior as a result of it, the changing of the personality, the destruction of all areas of life, my life and others. They talk about—and not exactly the way I'm saying it, but a need for survival through the drink and to what extent that we will go through to be sure that that supply is out there. And they talk about how I used to get up in the morning early and start looking for that bottle that I hid somewhere because, you see, I was one of those that had a measurer at my house. I had one bottle for measuring purposes and another hit out for my own survival purposes. And if I didn't drink a little bit out of that measuring bottle, she'd know about those other places. So it was a real tough job and that type of thing. But they didn't mention this, though, in this chapter. and I don't guess they made motorhomes in those days, but those hiding places. Every stop to think about how many hiding places is in a 25-foot motorhome. It was the greatest thing that had happened to me. Kept it for about four or five years. My children used it on a few occasions when I could go out and get the oil changed. What I was doing was getting the empties out and fix it for them. Kept for about 4 years. Well, it put 49,000 miles on him, but it rendered a great service. See, that's described in how we hide this stuff in this book here. And all the ups and the downs and the lies and not being able to understand what's happening. And I sure picked up on that a while ago when I heard that they didn't tell me that in medical school and they didn t teach me that. And it goes on and describes how desperate we can get, how hopeless. I had long been hopeless. I heard it said one time in an AA meeting that they thought you had to come from a religious background, a Christian home or something of that nature before you could qualify to be an alcoholic. Well, I came from that area and I guess that increased the shame and the guilt in my life And I couldn't quit, and that describes it in here, the loss of control, total, and hopelessness. Now, that was what was getting devastating. It was sort of like if you would lend me your mind's eye for just a moment as I can look back and try to describe some feelings that I had the desperation and frustration was if this is the last train going to where I got to be and I'm running late and the train's pulling out and it's going slow and I feel like I can catch it but the faster I run the faster the train gets and there I keep running and struggling as it disappears and gets smaller and smaller and is leaving me. Excuse me. That's the feeling I had. I had fear of dying. Now, I don't know, not too many get to this, I guess. But that went away. And it was replaced by another of fear, and with that became a little hope. And that fear was that I'm going to live. I'm gonna live some more. I've got another one of these days to go through. You're talking about one day at a time, the living hell. And I couldn't find a solution. And I was one of these kind that I couldn t make it in AA. I tried. Now, I knew that as I would take my vodka before I got to the meeting and one right after that if I said on the back row nobody know it headed and I went that route for a while and everybody knew I now know but they tolerated me and as we move along and I look at this area another area of this chapter they get into what they call the solution and there is a solution bottom line is identify your problem and spirituality is the solution that is something that was i never knew what spirituality was i thought i knew what religiosity was but i didn't know what spirituality was. And I had a lot of trouble with that. I saw the first step—and this is over in another one of the chapters, but this is really what spirituality is to me and that was the it was obvious that I was powerless over alcohol that I had no problem with but I'm unmanaged my unmanageability of my life here I am powerless and I'm Unmanageable man that don't leave me anything to hang on to I mean that's like a dog chasing his tail I ain't getting anywhere but I didn't read far enough and I looked and finally after a long period of time I found out that if that second step and I would look at the third step and really get honest and get comfortable with that second step but I did not have to manage I had a manager and it went on and on and as I I went through all of these steps, and I tried to work as best I could. And finally one day, I got down and was looking at that last step. You know, this chapter also tells us that as we become alcoholics, we're the last ones to figure it out. And it also tells Us in this chapter that as We are in recovery story, and our spirituality develops. We're the last ones to figure out that it's happened. Everybody else has seen this personality change all along. I don't know why we can't see in ourselves what other people can see, but that's how it was. And I looked at that twelfth step. I'll have to tell you this little story because this is where I was. It may be very inappropriate, but I have been known to do things like that before. The story is that there was a very elderly gentleman up in his nineties who had long lost his mate and the organic brain syndrome had set into his being. He was in a nursing home where people cared for him. There was a flickering of things in his life that he could remember back, and then he'd lose it, but then he remembered other things. And without him being without a mate for some time, he found out from somewhere that two doors down the street was a brothel. And it didn't pay much attention, but he thought about it again. And so finally one morning he decided he'd go visit the brothel, and he got down there and he asked for the lady, the madam. And she came out and with a sort of a chuckle under her breath says, what can I do for you, pops? He says, I'd like to use your services. So she went back in to discuss with some of the employees of the institution and came back and sort of laughed and said, well, pops, we think you've already had it. He says I have, how much I owe you? Now, as I would go over those steps and I would get down to where it says, having had a spiritual awakening, and I can remember thinking, I have with a question mark. When did it happen? See, I had found my solution and didn't know it through you people. And now I read that and I say having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps And when I say having had a spiritual awakening, I still use the I have, but I use an exclamation point. It's positive. And that is what has made my life what it is today. There is a solution and it gives us us. But another thing that this chapter tells me is that it is sort of an introduction of things to come, which you're going to hear about later on today or tonight or tomorrow I guess in other chapters. And I had to get comfortable with this before I could get an attitude that was proper for me to get out of those other chapters what I was supposed to get. And it's real simple. But I had a terrible time with it, and there are a lot of people sitting around in this building today that cared enough and loved enough and tolerated enough for me to not only begin to identify my problem but help me find my solution. Thank you very much. Thank you.