The Phenomenon of Craving – Big Book Is Alive Workshop – Part 2 of 7 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, everybody. I'm a recovered alcoholic. My name is Mike Chase. And I'm also a recovered alcoholics. My Name is Joe. So our spiritual duty is to put newcomers hands in God's hands as quickly as possible. We found this to be the most effective by doing our part to try and make the big book come alive. As a disclaimer, we're not experts. We're just a couple of recovered alcohols who love the bigbook. However, we have made our utmost spiritual errand to become as familiar with the history and the facts as we can so that we can transmit the pure message of God to the next untreated alcoholic. In other words, if you see us look up and begin to talk, it means that we're sharing about an observation or an experience. And please feel free to, if what we do up here encourages you to investigate the history of AA, then we're certainly doing our job. If you see me look down and reading, it mean that we are reading from what we believe to be the divine solution from alcoholism. unless Joe wrote a script and then it's from that some helpful information has already been given in the form of those who are not accustomed with workshop style study we hope to educate challenge invigorate your current experience with God and to help you to come out of this as a more effective sponsor to carry the information in the book to that alcoholic you're working with tonight we hopeto cover some information in Bill's story but we'd like to thank the group for giving us spiritual consent to allow God to lead us which means we're going to go as far as we can go today. Who doesn't have a highlight? Does anybody want a highlight or underline that doesn't happen currently? Good, because we're gonna be having group participation here tonight. Whenever we're moved to study the big book, we usually go into it with a brief meditation in order to clear our mind and help connect to God for the process. So please join us in a brief two-minute meditation before we start our study here. Actually, usual is we always. how about if I just talk louder so what that means is it's going to give us about two minutes of quiet time for you to get reconnected from God if you're like me and had a crazy hectic day and it's gonna be a nice opportunity to calm and just let the craziness of the day and get a nice connection with God so we can be focused in this next hour of study are we ready take breathing, concentrate on your posture, for the guys who aren't currently involved in meditation it's going to seem like a lifetime, we'll get used to it. It's a great opportunity to just chill out for a minute I guess is another word to put it. So I'll see you guys in two minutes. You ready? All set? Good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you guys want to pray along God let me lay aside everything I think I know about the big book 12 steps AA my disease and you God for an open mind and a new experience let's get to work ready sounds good let's go So two weeks ago, we started off in the forward to the first edition, which was the introduction to the world of a program of recovery that we had stumbled on accidentally. The forward to second edition was our 16-year update. Did we succeed or did we fall flat on our face? Well, we succeeded. We started with three alcoholics, two groups, to 160,000 recovered alcoholics and like 6,000 groups in a 16- year time span when they had the big book. One recovered alcoholic working with an unrecovered alcoholic and dependence and reliance upon God were the three important factors and we were just incredibly successful in that. Forward to the third, forward to the second talk about how the general service tried to make the book more modern to the stories in the back they didn't touch the first original 164 pages last week we touched on we spent actually the whole hour talking on the doctor's opinion you know the first sort of gave the impression that these erstwhile fanatical alcoholics are out there trying to get a bunch of people sober The doctor's opinion explains why we are in such that way, because it's a malady of fatality. It's not an inconvenience, not a little problem. It's a disease that's going to kill us, and we stumbled across the solution. So if we are the ones that can bring the solution to other people, you can understand why we make a big deal out of it, why this is the most important part of my life is working with newcomers. So the doctor's Opinion touched on a few things, Joe. Yeah, the doctor'S Opinions, we got the definition of the problem. We got it from Dr. Silkworth, who was a specialist as far as alcoholism goes. He's worked with about 40,000 alcoholics like us throughout the course of his career. And he seemed to notice that there was something more going on than just what was present in the mind, that these people were obviously suffering from something within the body. So he and in fact, as he described, he says that we were not drinking to escape. We are drinking to overcome a craving beyond our mental control, which is exactly what it felt like for me. so already we've got definition of the problem we know what's wrong with us we can use this in our stories to try and relate to another alcoholic and bring them into the solution which is mentioned on the very first page in the course of Bill's third treatment he acquired certain ideas concerning possible means of recovery as part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conception to other alcoholics that was the Oxford group practice back then impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others once you get the recovery in you to stay recovered you have to bring this to other untreated alcoholics. That became the basis of his rapidly growing fellowship. Some great information there. Tonight we're going to jump into Bill's story. You want to start off with this one? I'll tee it up a little bit. By the way, Bill's Story is a classic 12-step call somebody mentioned to me. The main purpose of a 12-steps call, the main end purpose of an 12-steppes call is to give the guy some hope. Let him find out what disease he has and understand it. But when you leave them that they've got some hope that they can maybe go home and pray and wake up the next morning be excited about getting involved in this program and we learned that this book is essentially a teacher's aid tool like a textbook style in order to transmit knowledge from one person to another teacher to student what bill really does is he gives us information and then he gives us examples of that information so bill's story we're going to get to see everything in the doctor's opinion played out for the course of his drinking career and his attempts to get sober what we do is when we go through bill's store we try and identify the progression that Bill suffers from as he goes through his trials and tribulations. And they had to have an alcoholic story at the beginning of the book so that we could get that immediate relation. And in fact, Bill had no success whatsoever until he started to tell his story to other alcoholics. So we get the importance of why we need this information first and foremost. Who wants to be dictionary people tonight? Two people. I got prizes. Good. Anybody else got one more? Thanks, guys. you know when the book first came out page one was the doctor's opinion so when the alcoholic who's living in broken toe New Mexico who's been given this book by some loving person that knows that he's having a problem and here's the solution right he turns to page one and there's the doctor'S opinion factual information he can take somewhere between a few printings that sort of got slid into the forwards and if you're like me you don't really read the forwards thank goodness we've got sponsors who are awakened who know better who can start us in the forwards because if I got this book and I turned to page one and it's like war fever ran high in the New England, I would be nodding off. I'm not even a heroin addict. I'd be nodging off, putting the book off to the side, but we're awakened. So we know what the problem is. Now we're going to be able to identify with Bill's story. So it makes sense to read it this way. War fever ran higher in the new England town to which these young officers from Plattsburgh were assigned. They were flattered when the first citizens took us in their homes. Highlight, yellow. Making us feel heroic? Heroic. I can't say that word. Here was love, applause, war, moments sublime, intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last. In the midst of it, the excitement, I discovered liquor. Till his dying day, he's always going to remember that alcohol brought him that feeling of importance. I don't know when I first had that first drunk, but I always went back to that one. So this is stamped in his brain. The booze was going to be his solution. And Bill had a really rough life up to this point. His first love died tragically. He had always been wanting to be number one in everything he did, and he was a real troubled kid. So we get that for Bill, alcohol was social, engaging, and fun when he first had it. And then it goes on to say, I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement, I discovered liquor. I forgot the strong warnings and the prejudices of my people concerning drink. In time we sailed for over there. I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol. So imagine— It works on both ends of the spectrum, whether you're having a good time or also it can be there to comfort you. Alcohol was our solution, and it fixed everything within us that we were suffering from. all of a sudden we were not aware of anything that we drank for you know Bill was on this troop ship with about a thousand other guys going off to World War I and there's a good chance that Bill W is probably gonna die so he's not in the cheeriest of moods he's in this troop shift and they're passing some booze around once again he's gone to that solution we landed in England I visited Winchester Cathedral much moved, I wandered outside my attention was caught by a dog roll on an old tombstone Here lies a Hampshire grenadier who caught his death drinking cold small beer. A good soldier ne'er forgot whether he dieth by musket or by pot. Ironically, he had gone to the church with his guys and he was moved by it. But if you go into the history more, he was actually sneaking out the back door of the church to try and find a pub, which is when he happened to come across this tombstone, which I have a copy of. The second one, the original one somewhere got destroyed in 1966. They replaced it with one that's similar. The guy's name on that was Theatres. It's not truly Thatcher like Ebi-Thatcher, but it was a Thatcher type name. And Bill remembers seeing that and thinking about the Thatcher boys that he grew up with. So what a powerful message that Bill gets this. And he says that a good soldier is never forgot whether he dies by musket or by pot. If he's dying in battle, then that's all well as good as dying on a barstool. And he really embraces that. When he was writing this, he goes on to say, ominous warning which I failed to heed. And here ominous means threatening, looking back with all that hindsight. Mom went to me one day when I had become about 18 and she realized I had started drinking and she looked me straight in the face with a little finger and said, you know Uncle Rudolph's an alcoholic, you better be careful. How would you be careful? What? I was really confused about that. That was my ominous warning which I sort of failed to heed at the time. 22, in a veteran of foreign wars, I went home at last. I fancied myself a leader. For not the man in my battery giving us a special token of appreciation, my talent for leadership I imagined would place us in the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance. Bill's getting reinforced for his leadership, his number one-ism, and his ego is starting to get built. In this next page we're going to pick up on what things sort of motivated Bill. What was the core belief system that Bill W. had? I took a night law course and obtained employment as an investigator for a surety company. The drive for success was on. I proved to the world I was important. My work took me about Wall Street, and little by little, I became interested in the market. Many people lost money, but some became very rich. Why not I? I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals, I was too drunk to think or write. Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife. So this is a guy who is actually functional, successful. He's taken a law course. He's probably the party guy. You know, he's showing up drinking too much like many of us were. He hasn't really reached the stages of real hardcore alcoholism yet. But he's starting to get his important things like greed, but having people think he's fantastic you know that number one driver that he had in high school is now taking place in college. Fortune and fame yeah though my drinking was not yet continuous it disturbed my wife this is where we find out Bill's real ability to like Bill was a stockbroker but he really was a sort of manipulator they say that he was able to he was a fast talker to slow minded people so he was unable to get people to sign on to deals that really weren't all that good in the beginning We had long talks when I would steal her forebodings by telling her that, and who's had this conversation? Men of genius conceive their best projects when drunk. That the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived. Oh, Bill. Yeah, she just fell for that one. I'm not even sick of it like that. But if we're trying to point off here, see, this is also the introduction to the world of what an alcoholic is. And a lot of people assume that the alcoholic was the guy who was under the bridge, has never amounted to anything, was a drunk from day one and was going to die a drunk. We're sort of paying a different picture for the world and for those of us that were successful. We start off with people that when we set our mind to something we accomplish it a lot of us, and there's a lot OF us who don't but this is just trying to get rid of some of the stereotypes that they had at the time I'm sorry. No, no worries By the time I had completed the course I knew the law was done for me The inviting maelstrom of Wall Street had me in its grip Business and financial leaders were my heroes. Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that would one day turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut me to ribbons. My first time I got into rehab, I was 23 years old. I was a circuit bartender, and I was also a bartender. I was an distributor of stuff too, and that's when I arrived. I was invited to all the great parties. I was the toast of the town. It was fantastic. That's what made me who I was because that was what I aspired to be. It was like this really successful cocktail kind of guy. Just like the stuff that made me, that's the stuff that tore me down at the end. It all just switched on me and ripped me to shreds. Living modestly, my wife and I saved $1,000. $1.000 in the 1920s. That is a lot of money. We're talking maybe $10,000, $15,000 in today's money, perhaps maybe a little bit more. Once again, this is a guy who sets his mind to something and is capable of following through. He's not a complete slacker. That's what we're trying to go the impression here. It went into certain securities, then cheap and rather unpopular. I rightly imagined that they would someday have a great rise. I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. What was going on? You want to take that one? Yeah, absolutely. Bill thinks that there's too much speculation going on in the business area. So he's driven. And he goes to his employers and he says, why don't I do some investigation and research and find out a little bit of information about these places that we're investing in? And they said, yeah, that's not really necessary. But he says I'm going to go and do this anyway. So he was driven at this point in time. And he had a clear-cut idea of what he wanted to achieve all in the name of fortune and fame. And he was fighting a lot of standard business practices at that time. Basically, the guy with the money would go invest in four electrical companies. It would be Fred's Electric, General Electric, Westinghouse, and Bob's Electric. They'd lose money on the Fred and Bob electric, but make money on General Electric and Westinghouse. To them, that was standard operating procedure. We lose some money, we make some money. And Bill's like, hey, the money you lost there, I'd be glad to keep myself. So he just said, I'm going to follow through with my dream, which was to change the industry. So what did he do? I developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets. I discovered many more reasons later on. we gave up our positions and off we roared on a motorcycle the sidecar stuffed with a tent, blankets, a change of clothes and three huge volumes of financial reference services our friends thought a lunacy commission should be appointed, perhaps they were right, I can imagine the conversation he's having with Lois, listen Lois for the next year we're going to get on a motorcycle, we're gonna live out of a tent you're gonna sit at the tent at night I'm gonna go and talk to people and Lois is like oh fun I'm going he's going no we're going to be living in a tent she said I know we're doing no we are living in the tent and she still went I had some success in speculation so we had a little money but we once worked on a farm for a month to avoid drawing on our small capital how many people went out to the bars on vacation and said I'm only spending $400 on this vacation and how much did you end up spending on the rest of the vacation $800, $900 this is a guy who was capable to set his mind on a particular goal and stick to it. He said, I'm spending $500 on this venture and we got close to $500 to put Lois to work at a farm. Let's make some money. Which was a big thing in those days. That typically didn't happen that way around. We covered the whole eastern United States in a year. At the end of it, my reports to Wall Street procured me a position there and a use of a large expense account. So what Bill was doing, he was going to these factories in the daytime all dressed up talking to the business guys The managers, the presidents get in the dirt of what the business meant. And then later night he'd go to the bar across the street from the factory and, you know, get information on what's really going on from the faculty workers. So Bill really knew what he was doing. Plus he was able to hang out and drink. The exercise of an option brought in more money, leaving us with a profit of several thousand dollars for that year. For the next few years, fortune threw money and applause my way. I had arrived. good luck telling Bill W you're drinking too much that's what was making him successful he was working hand in hand he was basically firing all 12 cylinders drinking, conversation, manipulation this was his, he was doing great Wall Street saw the evidence of what Bill had been up to in his investigations and they said actually you're onto something here so he fortunately was able to produce that for his employment The great boom of the 20s and seething as swelling Drink was taking an important and exhilarating life part of my life. There was loud talk in the jazz places uptown. Everyone spent in thousands and chattered in millions. Scoffers could scoff and be damned. I made a host of fair-weather friends. Anyone have any of those fair-Weather friends? I'm moving this Saturday. Can some of you people help me? Good luck with your drinking buddies, right? And here we're going to get to another level of progression. Bill writes, My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row, and I became a lone wolf. See, he wasn't thirsty. The phenomenon was starting to kick in, and he had lost his control to decide if he had enough. He had lost the control whether he was going to start. He started being that guy that wasn't being invited to people's houses. He was the guy who was starting be left out on business deals because he was inappropriately behaving. Bill was a rowdy drunk. The word row in English terms means argument, which leads to fisticuffs, which Bill used to fight like that. Bill would get drunk and fight with people. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness, kept me out of those straits. I was told that if you read the book Lois Remembers, you'll find a different story. But we're not trying to discredit Bill W. in this book. that we're trying to show is that we put ourselves in positions that we shouldn't be due to alcohol. He probably just got himself in scrapes that he probably might not have so much sober. But golf permits drinking, so in 1929, I contracted golf fever. And face it, we're alcoholics. He's rich. He's the golden boy. This guy's got a lot of money. He's living in Park Avenue lifestyle. He's got limos. He's flying around in airplanes with Eddie Thatcher. That was like this guy was born. Let's go be Walter Hagen. We went at once to the country, my wife to applaud, while I started out to overtake Walter Hagen, Tiger Woods of those days. But liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter. You want to underline and highlight that one. Liquor caught up much faster then I came behind Walter Hagan. He's not being held accountable by business. He's just got a steady stream of money. He just goes to the bank whenever he needs money. Lois is just, you know She has no control over him whatsoever His ego's out of control It's like I'm going to go become the number one golfer You know The alcoholism delusion is starting to kick in Other aspects of his life Progression, withdrawal I began to be jittery in the morning Golf permitted drinking Every day and every night Same as bartending? I can imagine Any other jobs you can think of waiting at TGI Fridays? That's one of them for the record Absolutely It was fun to corral around the exclusive course, which had inspired such awe in me as a lad. I inquired the impeccable coat of tan once he's upon the well-to-do. And homeless? The local banker watched me whirl fat checks in and out of his till with amused skepticism. So imagine you know this Bill W., you know the rumor. This is the guy on the golf circuit who's a drunk, you know, and he's coming in there staggering, writing off checks, going through his money. Doesn't bother the banker at all, but he can see the writing on the wall. This guy's just lost it. okay so here's the deal Bill's got the well to do I guess the 1% lifestyle anything he wants, money's there he's living on paper millions, he's moving off the success of the stock market and I love how he says this abruptly in October 1929 we're going to start discussing his version of his first jackpot and if you guys don't know what a jackpot is a jackot is something in life that's fantastic or something that's completely horrible but your normal life goes either up or down. So this is what's going to happen. Abruptly in 1929, hell broke loose on the New York Stock Exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from the hotel bar to the brokerage office. It was at 8 o'clock. Five hours after the market closed, the ticker still clattered. You guys know what the tickers are? Those little machines that spit out tape that tell you what the stock market values are. I was staring at an inscription of tape which... Oh, sorry. I was staring at an inch of the tape, which bore the inscription XYZ minus 32. Minus 32. He's not in a good position. No. I can't say that, can I? Well played. Thank you. It had been positive 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of high finance. That disgusted me. I would not jump. The reason they were jumping is because they saw the writing on the wall. Bill was an alcoholic and delusional. You know, every time I went to go kill myself, which were a few times back in those days, you know, the drink would kick in and the phenomenon of craving kicked in and my delusions, I was going to be okay, I'll get through it, was kicking in. The sober businessmen of the day who saw that their lives were ruined, that everything they have is gone, a lot of them just saw the writing on the wall and jumped out the window. Thank God for alcoholism because I'm here today because of it. Otherwise, I might not be here. Yeah, drink was still doing a great deal for him because it precluded him from following through with some of that ideation. He says, I went back to the bar. My friends had dropped several millions since 10 o'clock. So what? So what. Tomorrow was another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back. So that's quite a jackpot. One day multi-millionaire type guy with the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Next day, well, not so good. Matter of fact, this is where Bill W has his first actual geographic. Next morning, I tell a friend in Montreal he had plenty of money left and thought I'd better go to Canada. By the following spring, we were living by our custom style. I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba. No St. Helena for me. But drinking caught up with me again. Surprise. And my generous friend had to let me go. This time we stayed broke. I love how he says, let me know. Bill has this opportunity, and again, the bottle removes it from him. Because he says that my friend had to let him go. I get a feeling he's probably pushed out the door for inappropriate behavior because I would have been pushed out the door under that circumstances. So, Bill W., man of town, lots of money, right? All of a sudden, where does he end up? We went to live on my wife's parents. What an embarrassment, you know. I found a job then lost it as a result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years or hardly draw a sober breath. So we're getting set up for what Bill's life is like, not working, drinking himself every day. Lois, who's like, oh, Bill, working to keep him drinking. My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk. I became an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places. So he was showing up at the department store almost getting her fired numerous occasions. And then he's showing up drunk, you know, at the brokerages trying to get business and develop. It's like Bill, go away. Highlight, underline Liquor ceased to be a luxury It became a necessity Right now he has to drink There is no choice involved And he's always got liquor in his system So the phenomenon of craving is always present And if he can't get it You guys who are nodders You have that dope sick that you talk about We have our own version Of dope sick It's called the DTs It's like you wake up in the morning You wake up from a deep sleep, it's like the body's screaming at you, get me some of that stuff inside here or I'm going to misbehave. Bathtub gin, which was a high proof, two bottles a day and often three got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars and I would pay my bills at the bars in Delicatessen. Sound familiar? I would get a paycheck and I Would go visit Mr. Him and then go to the bars and the electric bill was secondary. The water bill was I could always borrow water from the neighbor or car insurance, like that was not a necessity anymore. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars. There's no thought of helping Lois with the rent. There's not thought of contributing. It was just full blown alcoholism 24 seven phenomenon of craving. Gotta drink, gotta drink, gotta drink gotta drink. This went on endlessly and I began to waken very early in the morning shaking violently. A tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Ironically, nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation. That's that mental obsession we talk about. The great obsession of every alcoholic is that we can drink like other people. The great obsession of me was like I could live like other People. I could get through a few hours. But he's not waking up in the morning because he loves the taste of that bathtub gin. phenomenon of cravings waking him up from a pass out you know just boom wake up get more his mind immediately start doing whatever he had to do to get what he had together he can't see the truth from the false at this stage the the truth of the situation is that he's shaking violently and he has to neck liquor in order to eat anything but he's telling himself i still think i can control the situation and there were periods of sobriety which we're going to call abstinence uh which renewed my wife's hopes yeah nevertheless i still thought i could control the situation there are periods of sobriety which renewed my life's hope dry and she was just living in fantasy land because he was just waiting i know for myself that if my family came to town i had like behave for a weekend it was pure hell but i knew that on monday after they leave i've got a couple jugs of tequila and some other stuff waiting for me so i would just fake the flu or fake the cold it by allergies or just misery and it wasn't sobriety. Matter of fact, I got this little thing on sobrietry. The word sober means to have a perspective that is not distorted out of focus. It's characterized by reason, sanity, self-control, and the state of being emotionally balanced. To be vigilant is to be watching, especially watching your step so that each step is firm and well placed. Sobriety and vigilance is proceeding in wakeful state. It's a continual action of staying watchful and alert to danger or trouble, not in an anxious way, but in a way that is securely focused, i.e., connected to God. Abstinence. The word abstinence means self-denial, temperance, continence. These nouns refer to restraint of one's appetite or desires. Abstinence applies the willful avoidance of pleasures, especially of food and drink, thought to be harmful or self-indulgent. He wasn't sober in those moments. I wasn't sober. I was just dry. I was miserable. Get me a drink. Mom, go home. Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder. My mother-in-law died and my wife and father-in law became ill. It snowballed. The fact that he's got the allergic reaction and the unmanageability of the alcohol around it, the reality of his lifestyle being a drunk is building up. He's living on his parents' couch, you know? Not good. Then I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at a low point in 1939. I had somehow formed a group to buy. What basically happened, a bunch of guys got together and Bill was the rain man. Bill was in the deal closure. Bill could take a difficult deal when he was behaving and close the deal. They came to Bill and they said, listen, Bill, we're going to put this deal together, but if you pick up and go on one of your drunks again, you're out of the deal. As a matter of fact, we're going to write it in this contract. You get drunk and pull your shenanigans, you don't get your cut of the big money. So, the night before they're going sign this contract, Bill's hanging out with some other guys with another deal and they're passing this jug around. Bill's like, I'm not drinking. He's sitting off to the side and they'RE passing this jug around again. One of the guys looks at Bill and says, Bill, this just ain't any kind of moonshine. This is the best Apple Jack you're ever going to have. As a matter of fact, this is called Jersey Lightning. And Bill's eyes just sort of picked up, they say, and he goes, I'll take a cup of that, just a little taste. Bill wasn't there the next morning. He missed out on another financial. It wasn't because he was scared of success or completions. Phenomenon of craving kicked in for Bill W. And by the way, Apple Jack, that stuff is high-potent alcohol. So we're talking instant, you know, allergic reaction boom kick in he's off to the races then i went on a prodigious bender and that chance vanished i woke up this had to be stopped i saw i could not take so much as one drink i was through forever oh finally some knowledge you can not drink it honey before then i'd written lots of sweet promises but my wife happily observed that this time i meant business and so i did every time i promised somebody i wasn't going to drink was bigger and better than the last promise I was enabled. Well, this time it's different. This time it was different. He's lost complete control. If you were to give that guy a lie detector in the morning and say, are you going to get drunk tonight, Bill? He would pass it 100%. A couple hours later, he's getting tanked and doesn't understand where it came from. He had lost the power to choose at this point in time in all aspects of alcohol, whether it's in him or it's not in him. But he actually didn't even have to go many times where it wasn't in him, The guys on the street corner, they don't have lowest bankroll in his drinking. yeah so bill was just living in a house drinking himself every day shortly afterward i came home drunk and now i don't know what the period of time was but in the book it's one sentence so there's how that sweet promise lasted again he came home drunk right there had been no fight where had been my high resolve i simply didn't know it hadn't even come to mind someone had pushed a drink my way and i had taken it was i crazy i began to wonder for such an appalling lack of perspective seem near being just that. He's starting to slip in that and say, he's not going to call us insane at this time in the book but he's going to start alluding that our behavior is crazy and we're going to cheat a little bit I always do this with my guys, we're gonna go to page 24. See Bill's trying to figure out why it is with all his fears, with all his nods, why can't he not drink it's like don't drink between meetings why that doesn't work for an alcoholic so if we're gonna goto page 24 which is so cool about knowing the book We can pop around a little bit and give our sponsors a little information. The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable at certain times to bring into consciousness with sufficient force the memory of suffering and humiliation of a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. So Bill is fighting a losing battle, but he doesn't even know it. He just thinks it's some behavioral problem or he kept blaming it on the depression. He'd keep blaming it onto Lois' nagging and stuff like that. Luckily we can see what's going on here and it's not a pretty road that he's going down right now. So this time is going to be different. Renewing my resolve, I tried again. some time passed and confidence began to replace by cocksureness in other words ego I could laugh at the gin mills now I had what it takes one day I walked into a cafe to telephone in no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened as the whiskey rose to my head I told myself I would manage better next time but I might as well get good and drunk then and I did yeah highlight that I told oneself I would manage better next time which is the phenomenon of craving causing your brain to think crazy talk but I might as well get good and drunk then because it's probably going to be my last drunk and I did, I can relate to that so many times I had one drink and I thought I had made a decision I'm not going to drink, I'mnot going to drink, well I might have half a drink and then all of a sudden the booze is in me and it's like, I'll give you a couple shots as a matter of fact, I am not coming home tonight I always thought that was a rational state of mind decision that I made it wasn't until later on that I found that's actually the phenomenon of craving causing all rational decisions to go out the door and all I had in my mind was gotta drink, gotta drink the remorse horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable the courage to do battle was not there my brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity let's look at some of the words involved here when you're working with guys or gals and you mention these words if you don't get that little look of like yeah I relate you might want to underline or highlight these remorse, horror hopelessness unforgettable courage my brain raised uncontrollably sense of impending calamity if you honestly can't look back to pre-recovery and relate to those situations I can look at that and I can pick up on many times just sitting in those. See, the financial bottoms didn't bother Bill. The social bottoms apparently didn't bother Bill, but this is where Bill's finally just sensing that something's bad here. He's feeling it. There's no lying about it anymore. This is his first real emotional bottom that he mentions here. And the language is getting very definite around this tragic event. Usually in the book we find that the language does get a little bit flowery and specific when it's talking about something important. And it's actually leading up to his first detox, which isn't mentioned in the book, but he's going to be detoxed pretty darn soon. I hardly dared cross the street, lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck, for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. should i kill myself no not now then a mental fog settled down gin would fix that so two bottles and oblivion bill is now essentially drinking for the oblivion uh this is another level of progression where there's no mid ground and he just wants completely to check out he's drinking for that oblivion he can't live with it and he can'T live without it and hopefully you guys are able to relate to some of that drinking habit you know at the end it wasn't for fun and frolics it It was like, I just can't relate. I can't stop. My life sucked. The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms for mine endured this agony two more years. I look at Bill as though he's the ever-ready alcoholic because he just keeps drinking and drinking and drinkin'. I'm getting sober on page three. The first market crash, I would have been in the rehab, help me. This guy just doesn't get it. He just keeps drinkin.' Imagine that little rabbit chuggin' booze. sometimes I stole from my wife's slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me this was a millionaire this was self-made man full of pride and ego sneaking around like a little lech digging through that purse that hardly has any money in it stealing money to go down and get some drink he had no choice the places that alcoholism takes us but this is a man who's just swirling the drain now sometime in this time period he ends up in the detox they dry him up They sent him back. Then they let him go. Again, I swayed dizzily before an open window or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling. There were flights from city to country and back as my wife and I saw it escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish, I feared I would burst through my window, sash and all. It has stopped working. The booze is no longer giving him any relief at all. It's just, he's drinking like a machine. He doesn't get the, it's just continual agony. He's living in the remorse, the restless, the irritable discontent. He's just there. He's going to die. And how crazy is this thinking? Somehow I managed to drive my mattress to a lower floor lest I suddenly leave. He remembered those alcoholics, right? But I'm not sure. So I'm going to drag a mattress just in case I decide to, which will soften the fall. Yeah. Put the car in the garage. I did that many times. Now this is the part where we're going to do a little bit of information about what Bill's going to do. Bill had been in the rehab, you know, and now his drink is really out of control. So a doctor came with a heavy sedative. Next day found me drinking both gin and sedative, this combination soon landed me on the rocks, people feared for my sanity so did I. This isn't Bill being a drug addict This is Bill having his phenomenon of craving Being treated by heavy sedatives This isn't like, well Bill was a drug addict So I can talk about being a crack whore Which we hear a lot We're trying to pound home The power of the phenomenon of craving This is a guy who cannot not drink He falls asleep for 5 or 10 minutes wakes up and he's out circling the house trying to get more doing whatever he did this is just this is pathetic this is the only way that they can stop him from going out is to knock him out so imagine this little doctor pulls up you know he gives bill a little bill passes out a little bit lois says oh my god you know i i can finally sleep you know bill's been driving me crazy she probably gives her a couple pills and she goes upstairs and finally sleeps for the first couple days in a week, right? Dr. Pops in his little car, putt-putt-putt drives away three or four minutes later Bill's little eyes open up and he's effed up his phenomenon of craving, he's got some heavy sedatives in him but he's up and He's bouncing around, He's doing what He's gotta do to get, this guy's phenomenon of craving is so powerful that heavy seditives just sort of make Him really super loopy in the movie you can see woods bouncing into trees and stuff it's pretty pathetic, if you've ever known anybody on an ambient night walk imagine that you know i am passed out it's i've been on a four-day binge you know and all of a sudden i wake up and i'm thirsty you know it's not that i love the taste of beer let's pull the cigarettes out or i love to taste a tequila my phenomenon of craving was telling me you get me some of that stuff or you're gonna not feel good so even without thinking i'd do the same thing with bill people feared for my sanity so did i i could eat little or nothing when drinking and i was 40 pounds underweight so he's malnourished my brother-in-law is a physician and through his kindness and that of my mother i was placed in a nationally known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics so this is bill's second actual visit to a detox the second time to the towns hospital um this time he's actually paying a little bit of attention maybe this is the first time he'S ever had conversation with dr townsend according to, or Dr. Silke, according to this. Under the so-called belladonna treatment, which is like a drug cocktail, my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor, Dr. Silkworth, who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I'd been seriously ill, bodily and mentally. So what did he get from the doctor? He got the definition of the problem, what was going on in his body, this phenomenon of craving that once he puts a drink into him it offsets this physical craving which is beyond his mental control and he cannot stop. Remember we talked about the modern scientific methods they were using to treat alcoholics. The belladonna is this concoction that just knocks you out. They didn't have the stuff we have today so they would just knock us out to get us through that phenomenon of a craving phase. We learned earlier on that the heavy sedatives So they brought out the big guns with this guy. They just knocked him out, they tied, basically that hydrotherapy is they try to get you naked, tie you to a gurney and they put you in the shower and the shower was like hot cold, hot cold for 10 or 15 minutes. That was the big scientific treat for the day. Bill said it cleaned him up really good but it really didn't do anything for alcoholism. But the fact that he actually got some information Of why it was he could not stop This is the first time where somebody said Listen, there's something about alcoholics You get this phenomenon of craving that gets triggered And you're not insane Well, you're insane But this is why it's happening It's just beyond your control So he gets another dose of self-knowledge in this experience He says It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics The will is amazingly weakened When it comes to combating liquor though it often remains strong in other respects. And we saw that in the early part of Bill's story until we get into the end stage alcoholism My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained Understanding myself now, I fared hope with high hope for three or four months the goose hung high job, car, sex, drunk the 1990s syndrome, right? I know not to pick up, if I just don't go to that place I'll be fine, if i don't drink I'm going to be fine but what happens, the emotional brommer kicks in because more restless, irritable, discontent. All of a sudden that mental blank spot kicks in and he picks up and boom off to the races again. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer self-knowledge. And if off the side you want to put it big in quotations, not. Self-knowlege is great for problem drinkers, heavy drinkers but for the real alcoholic it's going to last us until we pick up that drink which is inevitable if we don't get God. Just knowing that he was an alcoholic and he couldn't touch the first drink wasn't enough to keep Bill away from it, because he goes along to say, but it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski jump. After a time, I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over To the undertaker or the asylum So Dr. Silkworth's having a conversation With Lois And the door is ajar And Bill actually hears Lois being told He's going to die, this is probably how it's going To happen, you need to prepare yourself For this And he had just been told that himself Which is one thing, but now he's told The fact, it wasn't just some doctor Filling him full of smoke This is what's really going to happen They did not need to tell me I knew and almost welcomed the idea It was a devastating blow To my pride I don't know about you guys I really didn't want to kill myself At the end of my using and drinking I didn't wanna wake up in the morning I often envisioned myself going into a 7-Eleven And being a hero And getting shot and dead I did not wanna go on I knew I could not control myself And I was swirling the drain The quality of my life was leaving me fast and for Bill had left a long time ago and he finally got information of why it was. So Bill got a dose of, this is his third detox by the way we're talking about right now in the first detox he got information which worked good until he picked up and now he's got fear which is going to keep him sober until he picks up I got this highlighted in green I who thought so well of myself and my abilities and my capacity to surmount obstacles was cornered at last ego deflation to a degree but for what there was no AA to go to, there wasn't even 90 and 90, there was not plug in the bowl they had plug in jug I guess some middle of the road therapy going on but there was no spiritual solution at this time it was just Bill you're going to drink this is how it's going to look can I get a sponsor? No this is what it's gonna look like now I was to plunge into the dark joining that endless procession of thoughts who'd gone on before i thought of my poor wife there had been much happiness after all what i would not give to make amends but that was over now you know when i'm working with guys when i get to this part i like to think of as bill w sitting in his bed you know he's just thinking of everything he's put himself through everything he's putting his loved ones through everything that lois has been going through and imagine like a chalkboard behind him you know listing every despicable self-loathing self thing that he'd done and he just wants to like start fresh and i just like wake up tomorrow and start over again and that's what we can do in alcoholics anonymous who have that same thing through the step process we get that reboot we get a whole new life we can take everything that this shame guilt remorse and through the program start fresh he didn't have that opportunity he was destined at that point to just go and drink himself to death. I got this next paragraph myself highlighted in box because this is one of Bill's first real, real first step. Want to read that one, Joe? Sure. No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Repeat that. No worlds can tell off the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morasse of self pity. It's not like life is going good and yeah, I got in trouble at the office, let's go to AA. it's like this guy wishes he was dead. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions I had met my match, I'd been overwhelmed, alcohol was my master. Alcohol was my master, I have alcohol actually I wrote I was alcohol's biatch, anything alcohol wanted me to do I did and a lot of people say well I'd rather put slave there I don't know to be a biatch is just whatever they tell you and alcohol had me doing things that I never would have done it brought me down to places when I realized for me one weekend I was on a run and I picked up the phone accidentally whoa never do that and it was one of my sponsee brothers you're drunk next thing you know my sponsor they've got the SWAT team comes in and I've been going to this meeting it's been just a lot of real good advice don't drink between meetings and you'll be fine. You've got a white chip, you don't have to drink anymore. If you feel like drinking, call me. And it wasn't working for me. And I did not want to drink. I really wanted to have what everybody had. I didn't know because they weren't throwing the book at me at this time. That's when I realized, I'm beat. I am not in control anymore. I don't want to do this but I keep doing it. And I think Bill had finally himself just realized that. He had this enormous realization where he finally, for the first time, saw alcohol as bigger than him. And in that moment, he essentially got his first step. He finally saw the truth of what it was and not the falseness of his drunken reality. So back at detox. Back in detox. He's been in rehab a few times. You can relate to this probably, right? But imagine, not even AA to go to afterwards. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me up for a bit until he picked up. Underline, Then came the insidious day of that first drink. And on Armistice Day in 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end. Up to this point, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty depressed about my alcoholic situation. There's not much hope. There's no hope. No, you're working with newcomers and stuff like that. They need a little bit of hope at this time, and perfect timing. Bill just throws it in right there. How dark it is before the dawn. In reality, that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes. So we get another definition here. We hear lots of different definitions for insanity, but where the book talks about insanity, it's referring specifically to that thought that precedes the first drink, the insidious insanity of the first drink whatever obsessive lie we tell ourselves to make it okay to take that first one which offsets the phenomenon of craving and I want to talk about the foreshadowing here you know I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call a fourth dimension take your time you didn't get sick overnight you can't get well overnight this is back when they were strictly using the power of God to get you recovered from alcohol it wasn't a slow process it was instant God got into your life and your life shifted you got into the process of helping others your life continued to shift you became a purposeful driven person for the first time in years no wonder he's having a happy joyous and free we're going to wrap up right now because our minutes time we got some really good news next week his life is going to change thanks guys