The Treatment for the Disease of Loneliness – Bob D.

well God let him rip my name is Bob Darrell I'm an alcoholic and I'm sober today only through the grace and power of God in the program people and principles alcoholics synonymous I'd like to thank the committee for the all the work they put into this convention about a great weekend I got here and got a fruit basket when I got Here and I've been driving all day and I hadn't stopped to eat and it was a I got it to the room and Tori I'm still picking the cellophane out of my teeth you know blood sugar was so low it was a great thing to have that here i'd like to thank wes for asking me to come down here and share i've known wes for a while and uh wes is uh one of the doers in alcoholics anonymous he's involved in everything behind the scenes he sponsors a lot of guys he opens his home up people in aa he's possibly one of the most humble, honest, thought-worthy people in Alcoholics Anonymous in the desert and you people don't really appreciate him. I'd also like to thank Harold because I was told Harold pays people that mention his name from the podium. I really want to welcome anybody that's real new. I don't need to be a comedian. You had Jimmy Caesar last night. Don't look at me. That was a great show. If you're new, I want to welcome you. I'm real glad you're here. I'm just curious, how many people are here within their first year of sobriety? Wow. I'm glad you were here. Thanks. Good night. I didn't do that to embarrass you. I just wanted to know how many people here, this is their first year of sobriety, so I know who I'm talking to. I think I'm an alcoholic from the word go. I think that I was an alcoholic before I ever took a drink. I was kind of like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. I'll tell you a little story about me. And when I was about this little kid, maybe three or four years old, I was living in Pennsylvania with my parents. And I didn't come from an alcoholic home. I came from almost an Ozzie and Harriet kind of family. I always knew I was loved. My parents treated me very well. They doted on me. They gave me anything that was in their power to give me. They always told me they loved me. And I could know intellectually that they did. But there was something about me that I couldn't feel it. and i remember as a little kid one sunday afternoon going with them to this farmer's market out in the country and it's where all the farmers bring their produce and everything and it's a sunday afternoons and on the way there my mom my dad and mom are talking and i'm hearing my dad telling my mom about this horseradish that he's gonna get and it really it's real hot and it won all these awards and he's bragging on this horseraidish about how powerful it is and he's going to go in there and get this farmer to grind it up for him and get a couple jars of it. And they get some on the way home. I'm hearing him brag on it all day, I want some. And I ask him for some, and he told me, he says, no, Rob, you can't have any, you're too young, it's powerful, you wouldn't like it. And I'm one of those kind of people by nature that if you tell me I can't have something, I just really want it. I may not even have wanted it until you tell my I can have it, and then I've just got to have it. and I bid my time and waited until my parents weren't around, and I snuck in the refrigerator, and I got that jar of horseradish. Got a big spoon. I remember sitting on the floor of the kitchen, sticking that spoon in there and putting that in my mouth. I think I saw God. I'm not sure. There was snot pouring out of my nose. Tears were running down my face. I spewed horseraddish all over that kitchen. I was miserable and sick and awful. And that was an awful lot of years ago, and I have not once sat with a big spoon in a jar of horseradish, didn't have to go to no rehab, watch no Father Martin movies, get no sponsor, go to goddamn meetings, work no steps. But I also got to tell you something else, that if that horseraddish would have made me feel and did for me what alcohol did for my life, me, I'd have spent the rest of my life making myself sick with that stuff every chance I could get. And that's because I'm an alcoholic. I was born with what the book calls a spiritual malady. There was something missing inside of me. And I tell you, I didn't understand it for a long time. In my first probably ten years or so of sobriety, one of the preoccupations we would have in Denny's is we'd sit around and ponder the big philosophical questions of why are we alcoholic and how come they're not alcoholic and you know all that. You know how you do that all. Eventually it doesn't matter anymore and I did that for years and wondering how come my mom and dad aren't alcoholic? How come my sister to this day has one, one and a half margaritas and says stuff like that's all. That's it. I don't want any more. how come i've heard fifth steps in alcoholic times how come people that come from homes where they have alcoholic parents that were tortured and beaten and sexually molested turned out to be alcoholics and their brothers and sisters who went through the same thing didn't to this day can have one or two social drinks how come People came from really nice homes like me my sister's not an alcoholic and I am what's the deal and a few years ago a bunch of us in a couple the guys I sponsor, and a couple other people. I went to see this movie. It was called Just Cause. And it was with Sean Connery. And there's a scene in the movie where Sean Conlery is in this prison and he's interviewing this wacko serial killer. This guy is so nuts they got him handcuffed to a table. He's crazy. And he's ranting and raving and he says Sean Connory yeah they had doctors in here examining my brain in blood chemistry trying to figure out why i do what i do they had psychiatrists in here probing around about my childhood seeing if somebody made me the way i am why do i do the things i do and he starts this manacle laugh and he says he says what they'll never understand is some people are just born with a hunger and i'm sitting in that in that movie and with a bunch of guys in a we just kind to turn and look at each other. Wow. Some people are just born with a hunger. And I, for as far back as I can remember, there was like, there were something missing inside of me. There was something I hungered for, and I didn't even know what it was until I found alcohol. And when I found alcohol, I found the thing that did for me what I desperately needed to have done for me. For the first time in my life, I found something that made me feel the way you look. And it was incredible. And I could never get enough. And that's part of alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease of chronic malcontent. We're people that are insatiable by nature. I have never once in my whole drinking career ever... People tell me I drank too much. I never even drank enough. I never once, it was in a bar, and the bartender would come along and say, you want another one? I'd say, no, you know, this is just right. This is just, no thank you, this is juste, I've never been there. I don't know what it's like to be at that spot. I don' t know what its like to b e in that spot in any other area of my life. I've neve r been to a point in my drunk or sober or I've ever really honestly inside myself if I thought about it was satisfied with my relationship with God, my own personal growth, my friendships, my character defects, how much money I have, how much love I have in my life. I've never got to... There's always a part of me... And it's not that at times I don't feel whole. And it is not like Wes says, I have never had it so good. That is absolutely true. I have not had it yet. I have ever had it. But there is always this thing inside of me that would like a little more. And I think that is what it is like to have alcoholism. Once I take alcohol out of the picture. I was under an illusion for a lot of years in Alcoholics Anonymous that maybe I would finally, maybe after 10 years, and then I got to 10 years and it wasn't 10 years. maybe it's 15 years, I get the 15 years maybe it is 20 that someday in AA I was going to do the real four step not like those other ones or I was gonna have the surrender the surrender after it was done I kind of glow in the dark you know that kind of and I would get to a point where I would feel absolutely whole once and for all never be malcontent again never feel like there is something missing and I've come to understand in Alcoholics Anonymous that that doesn't happen to guys like me. It may happen to some people here but it doesn't happen to me. I was back at Stepping Stones, the place that Bill lived for most of his sobriety that wrote a lot of the AA literature and I was doing the tour and I got real friendly with Paul who's the archivist back there and Paul told me a story that blew my mind. Paul said when Bill was sober about 20 years now I'm going to try this I may get this a little wrong because I'm passing on something that was passed on to me. But what I heard Paul say, that when Bill was sober about 20 years, he was having a conversation with his spiritual advisor at the time, which is Father Ed Dowling. This was after Bill came through all the depressions and everything. And Bill is saying to Ed, he's saying, Ed, you know, my life's never been better, but there's something still missing and it drives me sometimes. And I still don't feel like I work with enough newcomers. And I Still Don't Feel That My Relationship With God Is Good Enough. I Still don't Feel Like I Can Love Good Enough I Still Feel That There's Still Something Missing And I Don't Know What It Is And Father Ed Dowling Looked At Him And He Says, Bill, He Says You Gotta Understand That Every Once In A While God Gives His Greatest Blessing To Some Of His Kids And it's what we in the clergy call divine dissatisfaction. And it is a blessing because it drives you, pushes you, shoves you and drags you screaming into being more than what you are. And I am an alcoholic of the divine dissatisfaction type. And I'm in love with that today. I am glad I'm that way. I would not want to be the kind of person that could say with any area of my life, this is enough. Enough growth. Enough love. Enough A's. Enough newcomers. Enough... I am hungry. And I'm still hungry today. I'm hungry for more. And in the hands of Alcoholics Anonymous and God, that's not such a bad deal. I started drinking when I was 12 years old and I'm the guy they talk about in the big book. I was an alcoholic from the first drink. Dr. Silkworth says that we are people who have a physiological allergy to alcohol. But unlike allergies, say if you're allergic to strawberries and you break out in hives, Silkworth said we don't break out into hives. We break out what he calls a phenomenon of craving. And I sat, I was a relapser and alcoholic synonymous in the early 70s. and I was in and out of meetings of AA and I sat in rooms and listened sometimes because I was desperate trying to get some kind of answer. Didn't work the steps, I just listened but I sat here and I'd heard people talk about this phenomenon of craving and I would look at my life and my drinking and I couldn't see that I was a victim of a craving. I mean, I get drunk, I mean yeah but so do the guys, everybody I drink with drinks like that. I mean it's, you know Silkworth says we cannot, after a while, we cannot differentiate the true from the false. Our alcoholic life seems the only normal one, and it seemed normal to me. And the funny thing about a craving is that you don't realize you have it until it's interrupted. That's why there's a test in chapter three. It says if you don't think you're an alcoholic, try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and then stop abruptly. Well, I mean, I might try that test, but after one or two drinks, I'm going to become real clear to me that this is not a good test day. I mean, this is not the day to take the test. I mean, it's a valid test, but I'm not going to take it right now. And I could never complete a test like that. It would just be ridiculous. So I had to go back into my life and see when my drinking was interrupted. And it was very rare because I was one of those kind of alcoholics. I protected that at great lengths. I was the kind of guy that, in high school, before I even thought I had a drinking problem, if you would have invited me over to your house on a Sunday afternoon to watch football and there's two or three of us sitting there and you have a six-pack of beer and that's all you have and I'm going to be there all day and you said, do you want to have a beer? No. No thanks. I won't do that to myself. Now, I don't know about phenomenon of craving or any of that stuff. I just intuitively knew not to do that. You had a stack of cases about this high. I'm there. I'm with you. And I did that all my life. I protected myself. I always made sure there was a supply or I always had a game plan. When I was drinking, when I'm finishing up, halfway through one bottle, I'm thinking about the next. I was always that way. And I'm sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one day and I'm listening to a woman share her experience and I have learned everything I know about me from listening to you. I have a seemingly inability at times to learn anything real about myself from direct examination. Because when I try to look inside myself to see what's wrong or what's going on, I can't see it because what I'm looking for, I'm working with. And all I come up... I'm so full of rationalizations and justifications and defense mechanisms that it's very difficult for me to do that. But in Alcoholics Anonymous, the beauty of AA for me has always been that no one in AA has ever tried to tell me what I was. Because I defend myself against that. It's my nature. So in AA, you tell me about yourself and you're not talking about me and I'm sitting there identifying. And I'm going, wow, I'm like that. And I listen to this woman talk about her drinking career and about the phenomenon of craving and a light went on and I remembered all of a sudden an instance that happened to me when I was 18 years old. Now, when I Was 18 years Old, there was no way I was an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, I went from 18 to early 20s, maybe 21, 22. I was in my better living through chemistry phase of alcoholism. I was the hippie and the long hair and all that stuff. So there's no way in my mind I'm an alcoholic. And this gal that I'm dating, her family wanted to meet me. So they invited me over to her parents' house for dinner. It was going to be a long ordeal all night. I don't like stuff like that. But I'm trying to be good guy and I went. And they had a bottle of wine with dinner. And I drink quickly. I don't know why. Evaporation is probably a childhood issue or something. I don' t know. But I drink with a sense of urgency, and I drink quickly, and because I drink quickly, I get two glasses out of that bottle of wine. They're still drinking their first glass and talking. I'm done the second glass, and i'm sitting there getting a little uncomfortable. The bottle's empty, and I don't know anything about alcoholism. Phenomenal craving, just to get a little antsy. I finally blurted out, I said, boy, that was good wine. Do you have any more? He said, no, nope, sorry. And they went back to talking. I'm sitting there, and i'm getting a little more uptight. And I don' t know what's going on. I'm getting kind of antsy and squirrely, and my head's going faster and faster. And I finally blurred it out. I said... I like beer. Well, that's not... Bob, we don't have any beer. And they went back to talking about Vietnam and all this other kind of stuff. And I'm sitting there, and my head is going nuts. And they're yammering on about this insignificant stuff. And part of me is getting angry because they're just talking this nonsense. And another part of m feels guilty for being mad at them because they are so nice to me. And I am just going nuts! And I finally excuse myself from the table and I go to the bathroom and I lock the door and like a crazed animal I went through all the cabinets in there I found this bottle of cough medicine. It was like 35% alcohol with codeine and terpenhydrate. I remember taking the top off of that, taking a big hit off of it. It was just like, whew, there's hope. I remember chugging that bottle of coffee and putting the cough medicine down and all of a sudden everything in my mind got real focused. All the voices had a singleness of purpose and it was to get out of there. And I went back out to the dinner table, and I had this story about this thing that I forgot to take care of, and I was very gracious about it. I'm so sorry I have to leave. I really wanted to stay all night, etc., etc. We must do this again. I got in my car, and I drove like a gentleman 20, 25 miles an hour to the end of their street, and then I drove 90 miles an hours like a crazed maniac over to a guy's house who had a bar in the basement because I had two glasses of wine. Now, I was the only alcoholic at that dinner table. Those other people had been alcoholics. We'd all been in that damn bathroom looking through those cabinets. But something happens to me that does not happen to people who don't have alcoholism. And it never will happen to them. And that's what... Silkworth says that this phenomenon of craving differentiates us and sets us apart as an entity. My sister will never have it. Nobody else will ever have it." And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1978 and I knew I was an alcoholic. I knew that I had that phenomenon of craving. But I secretly suspected that surely everybody that drinks must get that more feeling. They've got to get that. Silkware says they don't. Silkware say's they never experience that. And I didn't realize that that was true. I thought that they just, for some reason, the guys that I used to drink with that we'd go to the bar and then they would go home just seemed to be able to control themselves more than I could. And it's not a matter of control for them at all. And I was about four and a half years sober and I'm dating a gal that's not an alcoholic and I finally saw through watching a non-alcoholic drink, I saw the difference. And it brought it home to me. And this gal and I would go out to dinner and she'd order a drink, I swear to God it would take her a half hour to drink one drink. I mean, she would sip and then talk for ten minutes. I'd sit there and I'd just watch the ice melt. You know? That's like alcohol abuse, you know? She'd order another drink and I never, the whole time I dated this gal, never saw her finish two whole drinks. I saw her finished one and a half, one and two thirds, one and a quarter. She'd always after the second drink push it aside and say the most unbelievable thing you've ever heard. She'd say I don't want any more I'm starting to feel it. It would be easier for me as an alcoholic to have sex and after two strokes say I do not want any of that I am starting to fell it than it would be to do that with two drinks of alcohol. And I started to realize that I really am bodily and mentally different from those people. See, my friend who's not an alcoholic was not trying to prove a point to me. We're all capable of that. We've all done that. We've always been able to do that. We've also gone out to a bar with our folks or our lover or our boss who's been on our back about our drinking and to show them we can have two and walk away. Can't do it a lot. We can do it little bit. My friend wasn't trying to approve nothing to me When she took two drinks, she gets a feeling like she's losing control. I take two drinks. I get a feeling like I'm getting control. Alcohol does something for me that it doesn't do for her. And it doesn' t do it for my mom when she was alive. It doesn' T do it for my sister. But it does it for me. And that' s why I' m an alcoholic. That coupled with the spiritual malady, the physical allergy and the spiritual Malady is a disease that Chuck used to talk about. It's a trap we cannot spring. And I, in the early 1970s, I started getting in a lot of trouble with alcoholism and I started hitting the institutions. And in the institutions, I started being introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. And my life was a mess. And I'm one of those kind of guys that you take alcohol out of my life and you put me in an AA meeting surrounded by happy, enthusiastic people and I don't like happy, enthusiastic people when I'm sober. I mean, I don' t even like people when I' m sober and everybody in AA is glad to see me. You don' T even know me. I mean and if you did you wouldn' T let me know where you lived because I didn' T know what you were. you were like a cross between the Salvation Army and Amway. I mean, some kind of... It's a bizarre deal here. And I would sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of newcomers over the years and I sat in meetings and came to the same conclusion that so many new people come to an AA. Yes, my life is a mess. I am in a lot of trouble here I don't have the courage to kill myself I'm stuck I know alcohol has something to do with it because I keep getting arrested and it involves alcohol but I am not like you people in AA because I stop drinking and I don' t feel like you look and it seemed to me that everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous came to AA they quit drinking and they were grateful for everything. They quit drinking, and they loved everybody. They quit drinking in their life just soared into some kind of success emotionally and mentally and materially and I quit drinking. And I felt like a fish out of water. I quit drinking and abstinence felt like I was doing time. I love W.C. Fields. He says, I was sober one time it was the most boring 45 minutes of my life. I'm one of those alcoholics that for all practical purposes, my alcoholism starts where the bottle in the bag ends. And it's the insanity that is brought on to me by the emptiness and desolation of my own abstinence that drives me so insane that I will eventually pick up something I have sworn to myself I will never touch again, that I know with every fabric of my being will destroy me and I will pick it up anyway. And I'll pick it no one is going to destroy me And I'll pick it up because I'll be so overwhelmed by the way I feel in this state of abstinence that I will feel that if I don't do something to change the way I feel right now, I am going to lose my mind. And some of my insanity is that I would pick up a drink knowing what's going to happen to me. I picked up a drink when I was on paper. And to pick up a Drink means I'm going to be violated. I pickedup a Drink when Iwas living in a halfway house in winter with no other place to go and there's snow on the ground and to pickup a drink means I'm out in the snow once again and I may freeze to death and I would pickupa drink. I would holdout as long as I could. I would not pickupadrink day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, Screw this. And it never seemed to get any better. And I come to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and it's all you happy people and all you do is point out in stark relief everything I'm not. And in AA, I always had this awful, sick, sick, lonely feeling like it was all of you and then there was me. Separate and different and apart from. And I know what it's like to sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and die of untreated alcoholism. And sit in meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous, the one place on the face of the earth where I should feel the most connected and the most a part of. And sit there and feel like I'm dying of loneliness. At least once a year I hear about a guy or somebody I've met in AA that commits suicide. it's not an unusual story talks about it twice in the book about making the supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight a lot of alcoholics commit suicide and I was at the verge of that many times and I'd be willing to bet that right ten seconds before they finally did themselves in if you would grab them and ask them why they're doing this what is killing you They would never say alcoholism. Most of them would say I'm dying of loneliness because this is a disease of loneliness. The book says that we get to a point where we know a loneliness such as few do and it's that sickness that happens to guys like me once alcohol stops being a treatment for alcoholism See, alcohol for a lot of years was the answer. Alcohol for a long time for a whole lot of year did what Alcoholics Anonymous does I remember walking into bars in my early days of drinking locked up inside myself frustrated with life I can't talk to anybody it's one of those get away from me attitudes lonely not fitting anywhere like I'm going to go out of my mind like there's a scream in me that wants to come out and never stop have five shots of Jack Daniels and I can come out and play five shots of Jack Daniels and I can look around the bar and kind of love people. Five shots of Jack Danieels and I could open up, I can tell you about me. I can listen to you and be concerned about you. Five shots of Jack Daneels was a treatment for my alcoholism. But alcoholism is a disease of diminishing returns. In the beginning when I first started drinking it was all this incredible good feeling and a lot of fun, little bit of dues. And as time went on, the teeter-totter shifted. And at the end, there's no more fun in it. There's no mehr relief. There's nomore feeling like I'm a part of and my life is such a mess and I'm buried in such crap I can't dig my way out. And at he end of my drinking, I'm not the guy... Alcoholism... Alcohol is no longer a treatment for alcoholism. At the end of me drinking, I'm no longer the guy that's in some skid row bar drinking and laughing and talking to the girls and shooting pool. I'm the guy sitting over in the corner drinking all by himself, drinking himself into oblivion, sometimes crying because I feel so stuck and so awful and so ashamed of myself. Looking out at the people in the bar that are having fun and carrying on and laughing and wondering what's wrong with me? Why can't I get that anymore? And inside me it just would break my heart because I would hunger with everything in me for the effects of alcohol that they're obviously still getting that I just can't get anymore. And by the end of my drinking, that's what happened. Alcohol stopped being an effective treatment for alcoholism. But yet, I couldn't stop because I would stop drinking and the emptiness and desolation of abstinence was so overwhelming that I was in that vicious cycle where I would drink in loneliness and despair and self-pity and I would get sober in frustration and loneliness and separateness until I couldn't stand abstinence anymore and I'd pick up a drink and go until I could not stand that anymore or I ran out of money or I was arrested to enter back into abstinance and it's no wonder guys like me start thinking I'm going to kill myself I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't fit here I drink and hope to find camaraderie and go down to the park or go with the guys passing bottles of wine around or going to some Skid Row bar hoping to find that sense of camaraderie and connectedness I'd found once in places like that and I don't find it there anymore. And I live in abject loneliness. And at the end of my drinking, when I started thinking about offing myself, it wasn't because of the shame and the guilt and the things I did to my family and I did some horrible things to my family. I adjust to that. I adjust to the homelessness, and I adjust to doing time in jail and getting my nose broke, and i adjust to selling blood and prostituting myself in gay bars for four or five dollars so I can get a half gallon of wine. I adjust to having wet pants. I adjust to all that. What brought me to the point of desperation that I wanted to commit suicide, didn't have the courage to do it and ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous the last time was that I had nowhere to go. Alcohol stopped working. I couldn't live. It talks about it in the book. It says we get to a point where we can't imagine life with it and we can imagine life without it. We will know a loneliness such as few do will be at the jumping off place and will wish for the end. And in 1978, that's what brought me into AlcoholicsAnonymous. I've been around AA for a long, long time. Many years, probably seven years. In and out of institutions, in and out of AMEs. The year before, the year, probably eight months prior to my last drunk. My second to last drunk, I busted out of a halfway house with another guy, went on this tear. While he's passed out in his trailer, I borrowed his car and his wallet to get some more beer. got arrested for a felony hit-and-run DUI in a stolen car spent three and a half months in jail because homeless people can't make bail went before a judge he sentenced me to two years in the state penitentiary and gave me a break he says we're going to stay the commitment the parole probation and parole office said you can go into this place called the Ark house on the north side of pittsburgh you can stay there for one year and you get a job make the restitution pay the court costs get good uas good po report do everything you're supposed to do you come back right in front of me on this state a year from now and if you're everything's square you won't have to do the two years but if you cannot carry out any of those conditions it's automatic you're done. So I go, here I am. I'm desperate. I go into this place called the Ark House and I'll tell you if sincerity and determination was enough to overcome alcoholism, I'd have got sober years before I did. But see, lack of power is my dilemma. And I went into that place and I wanted to stay sober with everything in me. Winter's coming on. There's snow on the ground. I have nowhere else to go. I pick up a drink. Until the police find me and put me in prison for two years, I'm going to be living in the snow. And I don't want to do that. I've done that. I've walked all night long in those cities back east when you're homeless because you can't sit down. Because you sit down, you fall asleep. So I'm in this place and I'm hanging on by my fingernails. And the emptiness and desolation of my alcoholism is getting so intense. It's coming. A drink is coming at me. I can see it. and I'm putting it off one day at a time how many you know my great fear is that AA had good news and bad news the good news is if I went to many ten meetings a day I might stay sober the rest of my life and the bad news I'm going to live a long time and I am hanging all by my fingernails and I did something I had never done before after a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in this Skid Row halfway house or whatever it is I grab an old timer in AA and I says, I need to talk to somebody. Please, I need help. The guy sits down with me after the meeting and I start telling him about everything. I tell him about the two years in prison. Telling him about how I tried to tell him how I felt. I couldn't put it into words. I just said, you know, I don't know what's wrong with me. I go these emotional swings that one minute I feel great. The next minute I'm almost suicidally depressed and nobody even does anything to me. It just happens. It's just, I'm crazy. I've got all these weird thoughts in my head. They won't stop. I just think the most bizarre stuff you wouldn't imagine. All these little voices in my mind. For a guy like me, you take alcohol out of my life and it's living with my mind is like driving in a van cross-country full of eight-year-olds that have overdosed on sugar and none of them like you. And I get all these... And it's all fear stuff. It's all, Bob, what if? Bob, What makes you think? Bob, blah, blah. I'm telling him about how ashamed of myself I feel for the things I did to my mom and dad who loved me very much. And I'm tell him about my inability to stay sober. I've been in and out of this thing for several years and I just can't, I'm at my wits end. And he says, I need help. And he gives me his phone number and he says Bob, he points to the thing on the wall with the 12 steps and he said if you'll do those these problems will take care of themselves and he gets up and he moves over goes over to the coffee thing and i'm sitting there and i'M THINKING TO MYSELF MAN I'VE SEEN THESE STEPS BEFORE I BETTER REALLY READ THEM THIS TIME AND I'M SITTING THERE AND I'm READING THEM AND AFTER REALLY REading THEM AND GETTING THROUGH THEM HE COMES BACK AND SITS DOWN IT OCCURS TO ME THAT THIS GUY HAS NOT HEARD anything I have just told him. There is nothing in these 12 steps that corresponds to one of the problems I just told you about. Nothing. You stretch your imagination very far, there's nothing here that has anything to do with that stuff. I need a set of steps like step one, make Bob's police record disappear. Step two, make his parents realize how wrong they'd been about him. Step three, give him a thousand dollars. Step four, get him a job. Step five, bring her back properly ashamed of herself. Step six, just make him feel like the people in AA look. I always thought if my life was like yours, I could do what you do. I would not drink too, but my case is different. You don't understand how I feel. You don't understand there's something else wrong with me drinking is not just the deal with me there's nothing else wrong I don't know and I've been to therapy I got I spent my parents when they're kind of my teens in early 20s until they cut me off spent a fortune sending me to some of the best psychiatrists in the country I I thought well geez I I came from a nice family but you know so I somebody must have damaged me somewhere because I felt damaged you know I just there's got, and I went through hypnotherapy because I couldn't come up with anything. And they took me back and I figured, because I thought there must be some instance in my childhood where mom wouldn't, maybe she didn't let me have a pony or something, you know? And it just scarred me. I'd go back in my childhood under therapy and we'd deal with that and I'd just like a kid's toy balloon that's let loose. Iíd soar into mental health. And I spent years doing that and there's nothing back there. Alcoholism has nothing to do with any of that. this spiritual malady I have has nothing to do with any of that stuff and this guy is telling me about these steps man that's not it that can't be it and so I never finished I never tried them see one of my problems that I face as an alcoholic, I go on a run alcohol strips me down to the bone it takes everything away from me it rips out my self respect that when there's nothing left, I come back into Alcoholics Anonymous and the first thing I get back is my damn opinion. And it is my opinion and my judgment that kept me from doing this stuff. Because I've got to think about it. And it talks about that in the book. One of the funniest lines in AA. It spends all these pages talking about alcoholism, the fatal malady. And then it says, to be doomed to an alcoholic death I got an alcoholic death over here or to live by spiritual principles are not always easy alternatives to face it's like you go you go into a cancer ward people die in a cancer you say if you'll do these spiritual principles you can live a normal happy life they would be on their knees begging you to tell them. I go into a Skid Row Detox where people are dying of alcoholism twice a week, and you present these spiritual principles to them. You ask them if they want to come out and go to a step workshop or some meetings or do AA, get a sponsor, and it's almost like they say, well, tell me about that alcoholic death again. What kind of spiritual principles? I'm busy now, you know. that's alcoholism it's the only disease I know of that if you have it it uses your own mind against you and the sad part about that is if you're like I am when I'm afraid and I'm empty and I don't feel very good about myself the first place I always retreat to is my head I go up into the control room and I put the stuff on the screen that's threatening and I plan scenarios and what I'll say to that person and then what they'll say to me. I'd be better off going, I'd better off getting Charles Manson as a spiritual advisor than going up here. So here I am in this skid row halfway house. I'm presented with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm given a phone number and this guy is willing to take me through these steps and I turned around and walked away from him. It was almost like if you were to go down to wherever you live, whatever town you live in and there's a homeless section where people live on the streets and you were walking down through this homeless section and some old man with matted down greasy dirty hair and dirty clothes crawls out from under a bush and he asks you for a quarter and you give him a quarter and he says, you know, I like you. I'm going to give you ten million dollars and he reaches inside his third inner coat and pulls out this grubby check he's obviously stolen from somewhere and he writes out this check for ten million dollars and he gives it to you if you're like I am by nature you're going to walk away and when he's not looking I mean you know you're gonna tear it up you're throwing it away he's a bomb ten million dollars except the check's good and in 1978 I got so desperate and so stuck in my own alcoholism that I came to Alcoholics Anonymous the last time on the end of my last run and I came here willing to cash the check I came here in a state of desperation where I was willing to take some actions that made absolutely no sense to me and if you're new Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't make sense if you get sober like most of us get sober, you get sober with a lot of problems. And it makes more sense to attack the problems. If I get the problems squared away and my life in order, hey, then I could go to AA. Then I could work those steps. Then, I could help people. And I got to tell you, if you wait to do that approach, you will die of alcoholism. And in 1978, coming out of a detox center, a guy grabbed me after a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and he told me, he made me a promise that I'll never forget. He says I promise you that if you put as much time and energy into AlcoholicsAnonymous as you used to put in to trying to stay loaded and run the universe, that all these unresolved problems will take care of themselves. And that was my day of commitment. And when he said that to me inside myself I just threw up my hands. I said okay. if I do nothing the rest of my life except play hearts in the back of the Thai club with a bunch of old men, if my life never gets any better, if I just don't have to go back, if I don't need to go to school, if I only have to sober up one more time, maybe it ain't such a bad deal. Maybe it's not such a bad deal." And I, you know, the Buddhists say when the students ready, the teachers appear. And I fell into the hands of some members of a group called the Floating Big Book group of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's my home group today and I fell into their hands because they were the people who did all the hospital and institution meetings in Las Vegas and they were the people that devoted the most, that gave the most important thing that they have their time to guys like me and I joined that home group and I got a sponsor and I started, I was encouraged to start forming certain habits in my life that would eventually change my life and they were things that didn't make any sense, like praying. I didn't believe in God. As a matter of fact, I was raised a Catholic. I kind of was under the impression that if there is a God, I am probably in a lot of trouble. I mean, I remember they taught me about a God that existed to judge me, right? And he could see in the dark what's not a good deal for a guy like me. That's a bad, bad thing. He could read my mind and I'm always thinking stuff i'm not supposed to be thinking the nines used to say robert you got to be pure of thought word and deed and they'd say that x-rated movies it just started going through my head oh i don't think that stuff oh i'm gonna go to hell oh it's gonna burn me it's gotta be awful so i come to a conclusion a little kid there's no god i come into alcoholics anonymous and people tell me to pray and i was lucky enough to get desperate enough to do something that made no sense to me. And I started getting down on my knees and as it was told to me, they said, we know you don't believe in God. We want you to ask whoever or whatever is running the universe for the help you need to get through this day sober. And then thank that power at the end of the day for that day of sobriety. And i just started doing it. I didn't believe it. i didn't think it would work. But there's a line in our book. It says before we ever come to believe in god, we first come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we'd been living it. And I didn't believe in God, and I don't even know if I believed in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I believed en that. I believed în the hopelessnes and futilty of my life as I'd been livin' it. And I came here with a desperation. And I started to do these very simple actions, and I joined this big book group, and we started studying the book, and I started putting the steps into my life. And I didn't even know I was putting the step in my life until I was sober a couple of years. My sponsor got on this kick. He had me reading page 60 through 63 of the big book over and over and over and I'd read it. It's the part that talks about the actor who wants to run the whole show is forever trying to arrange the lights, the scenery. Talks about selfishness, self-centeredness is the root of our problem and I would read that, go to meetings and look around and I could see that there were people in my home group that were doing that. It became real clear to me there was some real control freaks in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I knew why my sponsor had me read that so I could enlighten them. And it's a tough, lonely business when you know the truth in AA and you've got that sense of urgency to tell people. Oddly enough, there's a line in the 12x12 that says that we will be quick to see our defects of character in others before we can see them in ourselves. And I could see that you were selfish and self-centered. I could say that you are selfish and selfish. I could not see that You were like the actor who wants to run the whole show. But I couldn't see that it was me because from the inside of me, looking out, I'm not trying to control nothing. I'm just trying to make things nice. because I got an excuse and a rationalization and a justification for everything I've ever did, every attitude I've never had. And even if I don't, give me a minute, I'll come up with one. And I can't see that I'm that way by direct examination. And my sponsor tricked me one day. I was having a bad day. I'm having one of those kind of days where I'm at work and I'm a cashier and the customers are annoying me. everybody wants help I get off work I'm the secretary of this meeting I have to get some styrofoam cups I go to the grocery store I get the nine items or less line there's a woman there with 13 items and I'm on a mission from God and I don't do nothing but in my mind I'm strangling her you know I get out in traffic and I hurry into the meeting because I got a new guy that's going to meet me there and I'm going to fix him and people are driving I'm trying to run this one woman off the road she's driving below the speed limit and I get to the meeting I sit my newcomer right in that chair I get the literature set up I'll get the perfect chairman and co-chairman to do this discussion the perfect two guys that are going to give my newcomor the message of alcoholics I can picture him getting his one year cake mentioning my name the meeting starts so I ask for a topic some guy starts talking about shooting heroin somebody else yells out you can't talk about that this is a meeting of alcoholics somebody jumps in to defend the new guy that's talking about drugs somebody else defends the other guy it's like the meeting from hell if you've ever been to a meeting to this day I hate meetings like that It wasn't even an AA meeting. I don't know what it was. It was just a bizarre... I'm sitting there, I'm getting mad. My newcomer's not getting the message. It occurs to me I'm the only one in Alcoholics Anonymous that cares about these people. The meeting's over. I throw the literature in the briefcase. I storm out of the meeting, make some snide remark to an old-timer, go home, and like Pavlov's dog, I've been conditioned to call my sponsor. I call him and he says read page 60 through 63 of the big book I start reading it for the first time in my life it's not Joe and it's nicht Bill there I am, the actor who wants to run the whole show is forever trying to arrange the lights, the scenery and for the first time of my life I saw a glimpse of what my problem has always been there's a line in there that says First of all, we had to quit playing God. And my sponsor used to say that to me all the time and I didn't know what he was talking about. I would go to him with lists of people that are out of line in AA, you know? I mean, she's cheating on her husband and he's 13-stepping and he, you now, all this stuff. Oh, this guy's an egomaniac and this guy is a materialist. You know, I'd have all these lists. And my sponsored kept saying, he says, you've got to quit paying God. I'm not playing God. I'm reporting accurate information here. I'm playing God, I don't know what you're talking about playing God and I couldn't see it that I'm sitting on a throne of judgment as if it is my job to take everybody to know what's wrong with everybody and judge everybody else and I got to tell you something over the years I've come to the conclusion if there's one thing that will ever take me out of Alcoholics Anonymous it'll be my judgment and I have watched people judge their way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous without ever leaving the rooms I have caught myself doing it many times and it's a hideous spiritual sickness and it is so subtle it starts out with sitting in a meeting don't call on her she is going to talk about that god damn relationship again oh no, not him he sounds like a Hallmark Cardinal recovery bookstore don't call on him by the end of the meeting they haven't called on you and you know you're the only one that knows the truth and what happens is very slowly without ever leaving the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous I start judging my way right out I start, they're not what kind of program is he working unlike me and I think the ISM is that I separate myself and I do it with my judgment I play God and that's the sickness of alcoholism if there's anything that will separate me from you and take me out of here it'll be that I've watched guys do that over the years and it's a sad thing. And they leave, they eventually start backing off on the meetings and to them, they don't see what's happening. Just as like when I get caught up, if I don't go talk to my sponsor, I don' t see that I'm doing that. It appears to me that I' m getting better and you're getting worse. It appears that I am outgrowing you. And the sickness about that is that I'M the guy that's leaving. and I can't see it. And I've watched a lot of people drink. I go to a meeting, Skid Row Detox meeting. I do it twice a week. It's one of the best things in alcoholics that God's ever put in my path. And there's not a week that goes by I don't see someone in that meeting that's drank with over 10 years of sobriety. And I'm not talking about people who never really got it here. I'm talking about People. I've watch people who were circuit speakers. They drink and they end up in Skid Row Detox in Las Vegas because Las Vegas is like a magnet. If you drink and you're from Cincinnati or you're from wherever, you end up in Las Vega. And I watched some of them judge their way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous and the only thing that keeps me here and keeps me effective is not it's not the it's not the book it's not my sponsor it's my willingness to show up and stick my hand out to a new guy on a daily basis and offer myself and my time to someone else to take them through the process which took me, which I was taken through and help them to get connected to Alcoholics Anonymous. I sponsor a lot of guys and I tell you from the heart, I don't give any of them a chance until they get to one point. I don' t care how good of a job they've done on step four and five and step eight and nine, until they start sponsoring other people and start taking other people through the deal and start caring about other people, I don't give to me, sobriety is precarious. And it's the Hindus say that the student doesn't learn the lesson until he becomes a teacher. And I'll tell you something, I've done a lot of inventories for myself and I've gotten more out of listening to other guys' fifth steps than I've got out of doing my own. And Alcoholics Anonymous is based on a spiritual principle that we must give what we want to get. There's a movement that's come into AA the last 15 years or so from treatment centers that try to make Alcoholics Anonymous into a self-help program. To me, in my way of thinking and the way I was taught it is not, was not, and never will be a self help program. It is a program of self abandonment. I love what Tom said last night about working on your character defects. You want to see somebody between 5 and 10 years they get sick in Alcoholics, they decide they're going to work on themselves. And a lot of people leave AA. They decide, I need more sophisticated answers. They go to therapy or they'll join a church. If you're sober a while here and you feel a little bit of emptiness and you think something's wrong and you're going and you know you're not going to You think maybe you need more advanced answers? You need to work on yourself more. I will give you a two-week experiment that may change your life. Spend the next week doing nothing except thinking about, doing for, and working on you. If you survive that week, spend an entire week doing Nothing Except Living to help other people. And if you have the same spiritual malady that I have, at the end of that second week, you will realize at a gut level what the path that guys like us must walk. There's a line on page 20 in the big book, it says my very life as an ex-problem drinker depends upon my constant thought of others, their needs and how I can work for them. Constant? I can't do constant. Who'd they write that for? Al-Anon's? Constant? I do an hour or so a day. That's pretty good for a guy like me. A guy who's basically goes through life worrying I get up in the morning and the first thing I do is kind of think about me. Think about my day, my life, my job. Now the great cry of the alcoholic is, well, all this AA stuff's good, but what about me? And an alcoholic synonymous sometimes I think, well what about you? What about the guys I sponsor? I've set certain disciplines in my life with people that call me and meetings I'm committed to and newcomers I work with that I create islands in my life on a regular basis where I'm forced by the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous to put myself in a situation for short periods of time I'm not thinking about me and I'm thinking about you and that is the treatment of alcoholism I'm going to share one story and I am going to quit when I was three years sober i've been saying the third step prayer every day for three years and i'm bitching to my sponsor i says when does this relieve me of the bondage of self thing going to happen because i i can say that third step prayer in the morning and five minutes later i'm in my head worrying about the whole day you know just obsessed with myself and but my problems and my job and my feelings and me me me me, my sponsor says, well, when I ever meet an alcoholic that no longer has a problem with self-centeredness, I'll buy him a drink. Well, I mean, that's cute, but what's that mean? I couldn't get it that what he's trying to tell me is that there is no permanent once and for all solution to an ongoing problem. That it is my nature to be self-centred. That I have a daily reprieve based on certain spiritual actions I take in my life. And I didn't get it for a long time. And one night I'm at this one night, I'm in home and I'm sitting on the sofa. I'd been to two meetings that day. It's about 930 at night and I am sitting there and I pondering my life. And the more I think about my life and my job and my stuff, the worse it gets. I'm one of those kind of guys you give me 20 minutes just to think about me and it's like I start sinking into this abyss and the more i think about it to realize that job i told him in the meeting how great it was i just when i thought about it i realized how they were taking advantage of me and i get started realizing other people are getting paid more and my life's going nowhere and yeah one day i'll just be poor sitting in a rocking chair all by myself old and decrepit and sick eating Alpo. I'm sinking into this abyss, this depression. And people in AA, my sponsor and other members of Alcoholics Amish conditioned me that when I'm in trouble and I knew I was in trouble, I'm getting so depressed to ask God for help, call somebody or go to a meeting. And I asked God for hope and I looked at the clock and there's a meeting in about 15 or 20 minutes only a couple blocks from my house between the shows group meets at 1015. and I'm sitting on the sofa, and I don't know if you've ever been in a depression that is so immobilizing you're paralyzed. I can't even get up. And I'm praying to get up, and I finally muscled myself off the sofa like a robot. I go and I get in the car, still up in here, just self-obsessed. The world is so far away. I drive to the meeting. I sit in the back of the meeting I can hear nothing because I'm in here so much. What you're saying in the meeting, it can't reach me. It's like Muzak in a doctor's office. I'm so up in here, so self-obsessed. And sitting across from me in the back of the room is this guy who I had seen around the Thai club in Vegas and he'd been sober, I guess, for a while and he must have gone out on a drunk and he's really sick. And he's sitting in the Back and he rocks. He's grabbing himself like this and he is rocking back and forth like he's going to fly apart. And then he gets up and he paces back and forth. And then he goes into the bathroom and you can hear him in there dry heaving. And he's like really annoying. I mean, he's just I mean I'm trying to figure my life out here, you know? I mean I got problems. And this guy is just a pain in the butt. The meeting's over. I haven't heard nothing. I'm conditioned to do service so I'm staying. Charlie's the secretary. I'M helping this guy Charlie set the church chairs back up and do all that stuff before we leave. Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the meeting. We're standing on the front door of the chapel. He's locking it up. My car is parked right there, and the guy that was sitting in the back of the meeting is curled up in a fetal position, laying in front of my car, and I'm going to have to step over him to get in my car to go home and think. But Charlie is standing there, and if I do that, he's going to tell everybody what a rotten member of Alcoholics Anonymous I am. He'll get back to my home group and my sponsor. And I'm there, oh man. And Charlie, he works the graveyard shift. He's on his way to work. He can't help the guy. So I go over and I start to, what's wrong? He says, I'm going to go into DTs. I'm afraid of my convulsions. I want to die. And he's crying. And what a, he's wet his pants. I mean, he is just a mess. I think, I says, get in the car. At that time in Las Vegas, there's no detox. There's only the county hospital, and you can only take them down there. And I used to go on 12-step calls down there all the time. They had a couple beds they had reserved under this Hill-Burton Act of Congress for indigent people with alcoholism. But they made you wait like six or eight hours to get a guy in there. I mean, it was torture. And I don't want to go. I'm driving down there, I'm in my head, I'm just bitching, you know. How come I've got to do this stuff? All my problems. I'm the only one in Alcoholics and Alcoholics that does any service around here. You know, I've just certainly got to get up for work in a couple hours. Boy, where's the miracle that everybody else is getting, you now? I get into the waiting room, and they make us wait and wait and Wait. And I'm getting this guy orange juice, and I'm putting sugar in it from a coffee thing there. and I'm giving him cigarettes and he's talking to me and he is telling me about how ashamed of himself he is for the things he has done to his mom and his dad and I felt exactly like that when I came to AA and he was telling me how he had been a chronic relapse or an alcoholic synonymous for several years and he felt so hopeless because why should he even bother to get sober because he knows he is going to drink again and that is exactly the way I felt in 1978 when I got sober and he told me about wanting to commit suicide but being afraid that he would screw it up and being afraid to do that and I felt exactly like that and something inside of him reached out and grabbed a hold of something inside of me and they finally admitted him into the hospital after several hours and I'm driving home and I am bawling like a baby because I finally understood it that God will relieve me of the bondage of self with people like that over and over and over and at that moment driving home from that hospital I felt more whole more complete more perfect about my life and about me than I've ever felt in my whole life except for maybe five or ten minutes when I was 12 years old and I just had about this much whiskey. See, alcohol relieved me of the bondage of self. Five shots of whiskey in a bar no matter how locked up I was inside of me and I could come out and play. I could be free. And you do the same thing. Just to the extent that I show up and make myself available to you and to the new guys and do the actions that are against my thinking, that are against what a selfish self-centered person who likes to just be wrapped up in themselves would like to do and put me aside and abandon me and leave my life alone and show up and try to help god's kids and direct proportion to that god takes care of me and showers me with a greatness and abundance my life has never been better i i think there's something here in alcoholics times it just defies logic. While I'm leaving my life alone, and I'm going out, and I'm trying to help God's kids, God comes in and does things for me that I could not do for myself. And if you're new, I want to welcome you. And I hope with everything in me that you will hang around here long enough to make a connection through a set of seemingly useless actions to a power source that will transform your life. See, AA for guys like us has good news and bad news. The good news is that Alcoholics Anonymous is an effective treatment for the inside emptiness of alcoholism. The bad news is it doesn't work as fast as five shots of tequila. Thank you.