Why Abstinence Without Freedom Is a Prison – Bob D.

At recognition of our group's third anniversary, the members of this group have elected to vary from our standard format of intensive study of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have invited a speaker to share his experience and knowledge with us. time I get to it introduce Bob I'm very fortunate to to have met Bob and spend a little time with him the first time I met Bob was on July 4th of last year I walked into the fifth tradition group and if you haven't been there it's a great place to go they have a website and everything and everything I walked into this meeting and and I really wanted to go this group and I and it was special treat because i got to hear a speaker that i really uh became a fan of um kind of stayed in touch a little bit with the fifth tradition group and found that he was actually doing a book study in augusta georgia this past weekend and i was able to attend that and somehow talk him into spending an evening with us here with you bob's a real inspiration he's he's one of those guys that have been around for a long long time it has done it really long and very very well and very hard not perfect but amazing person to be with and I'm not gonna say much more I'm going to turn over to Bob thanks If I could have just got all that in writing and get it notarized. My name is Bob Darrell, and I am an alcoholic. And only through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in that I've accessed through the process of the 12 steps outlined in the big book, good sponsorship and a persistent and consistent commitment to the primary purpose of helping other drunks I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substance since October 31st 1978 and for that I owe a my life but probably more importantly my freedom because abstinence without freedom drives some of us so crazy we kill ourselves. And it's not that I'm sober, it's I'm sober and free. And free from what you might ask? Free from the bondage of self that was always my problem. I stopped drinking, I just get me right on me and that's always been my problem I am I'm delighted to be here I'm I'm delighted to participate in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're new, you may not even be able to imagine how fortunate you are to be born in the United States of America in a very, very small window of 75 years where this treatment for alcoholism has existed. throughout history it's there's really never been anything for guys like me there's a a book i i have at home called the slaying of the dragon and it's the history of out of futile attempts to to treat guys like we're not going to be able to do that throughout history and the wacko stuff they used to do to us it wasn't that long ago they'd cut holes in our skulls trying to let the demons out because we looked like we were possessed by something uh it wasn't that long ago that they would put guys like me in stocks with our heads and hands through holes through these holes in the public square and people would throw their garbage in their pea pots which they kept under the bed because there was no indoor plumbing and they'd throw that on us thinking that we would be disgusted enough or shamed enough that we'd stop drinking and there were didn't really stop a guy like me that kind of thing makes me thirstier in the lifetime I think this even goes on there's places in this country to this day that still do electroshock therapy it wasn't too long ago that they would give us full frontal lobotomies. If you ever saw the movie Francis, which is an accurate account of the story of Francis Farmer, a movie star from the 20s, that they did that too. I was over in Russia in May, and this existed only a little over 20 years ago the soviets were having such a tough time with people like us alcoholism to this day is very bad over there and in a desperate move one of the things they did over there was they their scientists created a chip that they would implant into the muscle tissue in the in the middle of your back and if you drank again it detected it and released a toxic fatal poison that would kill you very painfully over about a two-and-a-half-day period. And there's guys over there walking around in AA meetings that are proud to show you the scar where after about ten months of abstinence they couldn't take it anymore, and they got one of their buddies to take a kitchen knife, cut the chip out of them so they can have a drink. I mean, some of you are sitting there thinking, oh, that's terrible, I'd never do that. oh man i'll tell you i played the game of let's bet my life i i have i've picked i've been the guy who swore to himself and meant it when i'm on paper that i'm not going to touch that crap anymore because if i touch it i'm going to prison for two years and it starts squirming in my consciousness until one day i think i bet you i can get away with that i'd have been the guy that i'd been getting the chip cut out of me in short order or i'd be taking the chance that this particular chip didn't work and i bet my life but i got that disease of alcoholism and And I didn't know it. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous the first time as a young kid, not even old enough to take a legal drink in a treatment center in 1971, I thought I just had some kind of drug and alcohol problem. I had no idea what was cleaning my clock. And I suspect that I have always had this thing, this malady of my being. And I expect I had it before I ever got high. I think I must have been like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. And I'll tell you why I believe that. Is that before I even got high, I was like, Before I ever picked up a drink, I wasn't right. There was something not quite right about me. Nothing I could put my finger on. I mean and I didn't come from a bad I didn' have an abused family I had a one My parents loved me I was burdened by a childhood of love And opportunity I mean I remember coming in To be sitting in treatment And hear these stories Of people with their horrific childhood And just sort of enviously thinking God I wish I had somebody to Hang my weirdness on my parents loved me and I but I had this thing that was that was sort of not quite right about me. I had an inability to fit with people the way other people seem to fit with people so easily. I uh had an awkwardness about me uh I covered it up So I became a pretend kind of guy. I became the guy who pretended he wasn't afraid. I became The Guy Who Pretended He Fit. I became THE GUY WHO PRETENDED HE WAS ALL RIGHT. And the more I pretended, the more this ball of squirminess, that anxiousness inside me seemed to develop. When I was almost 13 years old, I was hanging around a bunch of older kids and they were the tough kids in my neighborhood. My God, I just wanted to fit with them because they looked like nothing bothered them. Everybody respected. They were the kids that when they walked down the hall at school, the other kids got out of the way. When you're secretly pathetic and kind of wimpy and afraid all the time and you're covering it up, man, you've got to get next to these guys because maybe that will rub off. And I'm hanging out with these guys, and we pulled a burglary in the town I lived in. One of the things we stole out of this house was some bottles of whiskey. I've got to tell you, I didn't know nothing about it. I never saw my parents drunk. I didn' t – looking back, I'm not even sure if I knew it got you high. I don't even know if I new that. I don' t think I did. And I wanted to fit with these kids, and I just – well, I was in. I'm just glad they weren't about to drink bottles of cat urine or something because I'm in. You know, I want to be a part of, right? When you're coming from behind, you'll do some crazy stuff to be accepted. And so they passed around this bottle of Seagram 7. And I've got to tell you something, when the burning stopped, for the first time in my life, I was connected to something. For the first Time in my Life, I didn't have to pretend I was okay. Everything that seemed to be wrong with me just sort of fell off me. And I was free. And I got to tell you, it made me feel so good that the way I would be without that effect from that moment on was never enough again. And without even knowing it, getting lit up just sort of moved into the center of my life. And I didn't know that. I mean, because over the ensuing years, if you'd asked me what was important to you, Bob, I'd have told you school. I'd Have Told You My Family. I'd Had Told You Your Girlfriend. I'd have told you the band I was in. I'd Have Told You a Lot of Stuff. But if you would have watched me, you would have easily seen that the only time Bob seems like he's really okay is when he's half lit up. And so I just lived for it. Well, by the time I'm not even 16 years old, I'm in a lot of trouble. And I'm standing before a juvenile court judge, the same judge for the third time. This is not good, and they're talking about locking me up somewhere with a bad reputation for abuse for kids, and my mother and father are in that courtroom, and they're pleading with this judge. My mother and Father would have done anything to help me. They really love me. I am sad to tell you that years later, I broke their hearts so many times so often eventually they would have nothing to do with me but at that point they still were on my corner trying to do anything to help me and they made a deal with this judge and instead of going to this terrible reform school with a bad reputation i got to go somewhere else and live for a while now i'm at this new place and i'm the new kid on the block and if you're like me and you're the new kit on the bloc man you don't fit you know i never fit and i'm sober and i don't i can't connect with people so what when you're secretly coming from behind and you're not enough what do you do if you're like me will you target the kids that look like they have the juice the kids it looked like to have it all going going on and i saw this one group of guys and they seemed like they were they had something going on and i sided up next to the one of the guys was one of their leaders one day and i started telling him about myself and about the trouble I'm in and the gang of guys I run into and how and all the stuff we do and I'm enhancing it a little bit because when you're not enough you can't be genuine you got to make yourself it's what I'm giving him is not it's not Bob story this is Bob's story on steroids you know that's what i'm giving him cuz when you're not enough he got to do that and and he's listening to me for a while they finally says to me music to my ears he says so you like to party do you yes i do and i thought maybe he was gonna pull out a pint or something instead of pulling out a pint he says well you drink that that liquor that liquor will make you stupid now that backed me right off because i loved liquor man you know what i liked at that time is i like that 151 rum that gets you downtown now i love that fact just even thinking about 151 room gives me a nostalgic moment let me tell you something if you ever drank 151 rum there is no social drinking of 151 wrong you drink 151 rump for one reason one reason only get downtown now and i loved it lit me up man i love that stuff i'd get in a little trouble but i lovethat stuff and he's bad wrapping it. Now he's backing me off. And then he says to me, he starts talking about the trouble I'm in. He says, what if I told you that I could give you something, make you feel as good as that? Only they won't smell it on your breath. You won't stagger, you won't slur your words. Matter of fact, nobody will even know you're high and you keep a whole week supply in your shirt pocket. What would you say to that? Well, I don't even know what he's talking about, but like sign me up and and he introduced me to drugs and i gotta tell you something i'm a real alcoholic alcoholics should not do drugs oh my god it's bad every drug i pick up i do it alcoholically i just take it to the wall i'm i'm obsessively trying to reproduce the effect of a pint of 151 rump so everything i pick up i just slam it me against the wall in no time at all i'm sticking needles in my arm i would have never believed i'd have done that but i was doing it i'm shooting methamphetamine but i don't do it like people who do it i don'T DO IT LIKE DRUG ADDICTS I DO IT LIKE A POSSESSED GUY i had guys that were that were doing that were shooting meth for years tell me things like kid you you better cool it in about six or eight months i think i turned myself into some kind of paranoid schizophrenic or something i was the guy that if you left me alone in your car and you went in to get cigarettes by the time you come come back out i've dismantled your dashboard looking for microphones from the cops right because i am nuts you know i'm spinning in my head i can't i got to the point where i couldn't even have conversations with my with people because i would i would blurt something into the conversation that would have been appropriate two minutes ago i mean because i'm like a whirlwind in here and a guy comes along and he says he says try some of this and i don't know what it is and he hit me up with something man when the throwing up stopped i just went everything in me just went oh and he tipped me up with heroin but i'm a real alcoholic alcoholics should not do drugs oh it's bad i took that to the wall and methadone clinics and i doctors until i burn it all to the ground and then i came full circle back to what i started with and last last several years it was the cheapest vodka i could buy or one of my favorites was richard's wild irish rose because it all kind of came down after the facade of being the guy with the bag wore off and we used to consider ourselves heads. After all that illusion's gone, it really comes down to Bob needs to get the most amount of blot Bob out for the least amount of money. And it was often turned out to be half gallons of cheap wine or cheap vodka And in the last couple years, it's pathetic. I'm no longer the guy that's playing in the band. I'm not longer the one with all the friends. I'm now the guy who's out at the bar shooting pool with the guys and laughing and carrying on. I'm the guy dancing with the girls and carrying on. I'm that guy anymore. I'm the guy that holes up somewhere and seeks oblivion. I'm a guy who drinks and feels sorry for himself. I'm that guy who drink and sometimes when I'm all by myself, I cry. I think of the things I did to my mother and father and the women that loved me and it just, I can't even effectively drink the remorse away anymore and I'm so full of self-pity. I don't bathe anymore because the truth is once the party all the juice ran out of the party I don t really care about anything except oblivion and in that period of time in that pathetic period of times I had no place to live my parents eventually could not stand it anymore. I'd broke their hearts so many times that they would have nothing to do with me. I stole so much so often from my father that he eventually became friends with the guy who owned the pawn shop in the town we lived in from buying his own stuff back and then the guy cuts me off and my parents could, they just couldn't take it anymore, one of the worst things I did to my mother and father as I kept getting up on my feet again and I'd get their hopes up and then I'd just smash them. That is such an emotional beating to take that year after year when someone loves you as much as they love me and I'm staying on a guy's couch because I had no place to live for the last few years of my drinking and drug use. I was a homeless guy I never thought of myself as a homeless guy because I had an ability to find a couch to stay on or got bad in the wintertime. I'd check into a treatment center. Some people go to winter in Bermuda. I go into treatment. I mean, that's what I do. Even at the times when I actually was living in the park or in the bushes, I never though of myself als homeless. I thought I was an urban outdoorsman, kind of in the Jack Kerouac spirit. And we're pathetic people. Isn't it so bizarre that you can, if you're like me, you can burn your life to the ground to such a slimy state of pitiful patheticness and at the same time feel superior to everybody? You know what I mean? I remember one of the last conversations I'd had on the phone with my mother. She told me about these guys I went to high school with and they were, one of them was a doctor and one of those guys was about to become a doctor. Another guy owned an insurance agency and another guy built a house and had another kid on the way and all the great lives these guys had and you know something? I'm smarter than every one of then. And I'm sitting in the park, and I got sores that don't heal. I got tremors. I am pathetic. I'm dirty. I smell. And I're sitting in a park, and I'm sucking on a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose, and I think about those guys I went to high school with, and I thought, yeah, they might have good lives. They couldn't take it living like this. As if I was superior. Isn't that so pathetic? I'm staying on this guy's couch, and he was getting his fill of me. I'm not a good house guest because I'll pee your sofa. I don't mean to. I don' t mean to, but I pass out, and you know, I don''t know. Nature takes its course. I'll burn holes and stuff. I don't mean to, but I pass out with cigarettes. I'll steal your stash. I'll drink up all your booze. If you leave change around, it's not going to stay around. Because when that madness is on me and I need another bottle of wine, man, I intend to pay you back. And I'm sleeping on his couch, and I come to one morning, and I'm in bad shape. And that time in my drinking, I'd come to and I'd have those bad tremors. They're so embarrassing. I remember, I hope I never forget this, going into this terrible bar down on Skid Row and waiting outside for it to open. And they opened at 7 a.m. and going in there, it was all full of these old winos. And I'm in my 20s. And getting my first drink of the day and my hands are shaking. And I remember trying to take it and watching out of the corner of my eye, watching this bartender look at me shake with that look on his face and how humiliated I was. But I came to like that about every morning. And I'd sit on this guy's sofa and I'd grab myself like this and I'D rock back and forth. And I'D walk back and fourth and I would have to psych myself up because I have all this fear just on me and psych myself up so I can go back out there on the streets and try to get some of this medicine to keep the madness at bay. And I start rummaging around for money, and I got enough money to get a half gallon of Richard's Wild Irish Rose, which makes this potentially a good day. And I go down to the state store, and they're not open yet. And I don't know why, I get down there early. And you just got to pace it back and forth in front of the windows and look pathetic and hope that they'll open early. They never open early, they never open earlier. But I'm down there looking pathetic, hoping they're going to open early they don't open early and finally right on time they open that door let me in, I give that bottle of wine, now I'm coming out on the street and I'm looking for an alley to duck down to get well. Before I can get down an alley this woman cuts into me who knows my mother and father. She cuts into me and she worked for, well it doesn't matter she knew my mom and dad and she says to me, she says how's your dad? I don't know. I haven't talked to my parents in quite some time. She says to be I hear your dad's in the hospital and he might die. She said that to me. I can't even describe this thing that happened in the pit of my stomach see i love my father and i i hurt him a lot and him and i got i the idea him dying i i i can't it's driving me crazy and i get away from that woman as quickly as i could i got down some street some alley and i drank about half of that half gallon because i need a little more right away than i normally would need and i um had enough change left over for a phone call and i go to a pay phone and uh call my parents house and my mother answers the phone when she hears that here's my voice she gives me that would you want kind of thing you know and that's kind of what you get if you break the heart of somebody that loves you enough you get what do you want and she's i'm afraid she's gonna hang up on me because she they do that sometimes and i before she had a chance to do anything i said mom i her dad's in the hospital she doesn't say nothing for a little bit and then when she starts to talk he could hear the tears in her voice and she said yeah we don't know if he's gonna make it man this is messing me up and I said to her mom please I need to go talk to him I had a lot of things I wanted to say to my father. Man, I had a bunch of stuff I had to tell him how sorry I was and she says to me, she says you can't see him and I'm begging her. I said mom please I have to see him. She says I know how you are. It will hurt him to see you how you were and I am a mess. You don't have to tell me. I know I am mess. I got hair down to here and And I got a long beard. I think I was fantasizing I was eventually going to try out for ZZ Top or something. But I got an old beard, and I got the tremors, and Iím a mess. And Iím dirty, and ìIím the kind of dirty that taking a shower donít help.î But Iím begging her, and ísaid, ìMom, I promise you. I promise if you tell me which of the hospital he's in I promise you I will go see him sober I promise but she hesitantly she said she says to me she says you can't fool around with this if you even go and you're a little bit high he'll he can tell and my dad could tell my dad could tell on the other end of the phone when I'm not even that high then I'm high I don't know how he does that so she says you can't fool with it i said i promise you mom i promise y'all be sober and i went and i drank the rest of that half gallon of wine and ended up that night somehow partying with a bunch of guys and i i don't really remember what happened because i'm a blackout drinker i'm i'm a daily blackout if i can get enough alcohol i come to on that sofa the next morning and and I got those tremors and that fear is on me and that sickness, that feeling like I want to jump out of my skin and I'm sitting there and I am grabbing myself and Iam rocking back and forth and Im thinking about my dad. You know, I just got to go see my dad but I got this terror on me. It's hard to put into words and the idea of going over to that hospital and those shiny halls with all those square people And there was something about me that just, when I was sober and sick, it just cut me if people just looked at me somehow. I just, you know, they're going to be looking at me. And I don't know. I can't. I'm jammed up here. And I started having a conversation with myself. And I've got to tell you, if you're an alcoholic and you're having a conversion with yourself, you're in a lot of trouble. And the conversation's going something like this. Well, for God's sakes, Bob, you can't go over there with the tremors. That ain't going to be good for your dad. What you need, Bob? You need a half of a half a pint of vodka. They can't smell vodka. A half of half a pipe of vodka, not enough to get drunk, just enough to stop these tremors, you can eat some of those Hall's menthol eucalyptus cough drops. the guy you're staying with got some kind of aramis cologne in there you throw a little bit of that on maybe a little he's got visine in there get cleaned up take a shower put on your cleanest clothes and go see your dad made perfect sense to me good plan well i start rummaging around for money and i had i ended up i had over four dollars sometimes that sometimes i could go out with a paycheck and be broke the next day and sometimes i go out with nothing and end up with money and I sometimes I think blackouts are a blessing because sometimes I'm not sure I want to know how I got that money but I had over four dollars so I got enough money actually to get a fifth of vodka because you could buy a fifthof vodka for $3.95 at the state liquor store back in those days now I don't need a fifth of vodka I need half of half a pint But I suspect I'm going to want the rest of that fifth later. And it is more economical to buy the bigger bottles. So, I go down to the state store to get that fifth of vodka just to drink the half and a half pint to save the rest when I come back from the hospital. Well, there's something wrong with me. There's always been something wrong With me. I don't know that I got alcoholism. I don' t know that have an allergic reaction to alcohol. that every time I take a drink of alcohol, it initiates an allergic reaction that creates a phenomenon of craving in me, a yearning for more of that effect. I've always had that and never knew it most of my life, yet it drove on me. And so I start drinking to drink the half of the half a pint. the problem is every drink i've this this allergic reaction really punks guys like me out because it uses your own mind against you so you think the idea of well just one more you think that's your idea you don't have any clue that your your that your mind is now driven to satisfy a yearning inside you that you're not even aware of and so every drink I take makes me feel and believe and think clearly that one more is okay. Next thing I know, I'm better than halfway through that fifth and I'm too rummy to go see my dad and pull it off. And I'm sitting there and now I'm on a crying jag feeling sorry for myself because my dad's going to die and I'll not be able to see my Dad. But I always try to think positively. It's one of my defects. When it comes to alcoholism, it is. It keeps you from hitting the bottom. and I'm trying to think positively so I think, okay, tomorrow man, I'm going to wake up and I's not going to drink nothing, I'll go see my dad and I am sad to tell you that tomorrow came and it was exactly the same thing and I never did get to that hospital and see my Dad and if you think I didn't love my father you're out of your mind but alcoholism does that to guys like me it's no wonder that some of us have it's pretty hard getting sober because it's hard to save your own life when you secretly and unconsciously hate yourself and i created a wealth of that inside me as a matter of fact it seemed like anybody who ever loved me got their heart broke and yet i never intended any of it but it happened just the same that's what alcoholism does it's a It's a progressive illness, and it eventually kills you. But my God, it takes so long. It's like being kicked to death by rabbits. It just goes on and on and that's why so many of us try to take our own lives. We try to kill ourselves because we can't hang. I heard a story A few years ago That was I thought was the best description Of the progressive nature of alcoholism I've ever heard And a friend of mine Was telling a story about one of his Very close friends Had been diagnosed as terminally ill With stomach cancer And I know a little bit about that My mom when I was 17 years sober Was diagnosed as terminally ill and she died. And what the doctors really are saying is there's really nothing that can be done here. We'll try to keep you comfortable, but you're going home. You're being pulled out of the game. And when him and everybody else found out that the guy was terminally ill with stomach cancer, everybody was very sad. Well, about three months go by and all of a sudden And he hears that a doctor had surfaced that's going to do surgery. And he gets excited. He thinks, well, for God's sakes, finally, a doctor has come along who knows what he's doing. He's going be able to take that cancer out. And he was very pleased by that, very excited. Called over there, got the guy's, I think it was this guy's mother on the phone. He says, hey, I hear they're going to go to the hospital. They're going do surgery and take the cancer out? And he said, well then why are you going to take the surgery? And he was told that they're going to take out sections of all his internal organs to make room for the growth of the tumor so his last days on earth are not excruciatingly painful. And alcoholism is exactly like that. You may love your mother and father, but in time, alcoholism will cut them out of your life. You may have a career that you just love, And in time, alcoholism will cut your career out of your life. You may have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a husband or a wife that you love and that's stuck with you and you never want to lose. And in Time, alcoholismo will cut them out of Your life. Your morals? They go. Matter of fact, by the time most of us get sober, we look back over our lives, it's like looking down a railroad track only those aren't railroad ties those are all the lines we had drawn at one time that we would never cross and now we're on this side of them and even your children who you may love more than life itself in time alcoholism will cut them out of your life I've seen dozens and dozens and dozens of men and women who loved their kids and lost them to this disease and had them taken away. And then I've got to see the amazing redemption through steps, through God's grace and time in steps eight and nine, I've gotten to see most of those people who stick the course get their kids back. It's a wonderful thing to watch. and then when alcoholism finally has stripped you to the bone and there's nothing left then the worst thing of all happens it just lets you go on for a while in 1978 I came to I'd been sober again I ended up in this detox and they put me in a halfway house I used to end up in these institutions and about day three I'd look around, and I'd say this thing to myself, and I used to, oh, gosh, it's such disgust. I'd looked around and think, again, Bob? You did this to yourself again. And I get thrown out of this place because I can't stay sober, and not from a lack of trying. See, I don't understand what's wrong with me. but I swear to myself I'm never gonna drink and I always drink again and by this time I've tried everything I've been to some of the greatest psychiatrists on the planet my dad before he stopped trying to being willing to help me was politically connected and he got me in to see a guy had an institute in New York he sent me up there on the train that you had to be a movie star to see Ellis I mean he was like a big deal I was I was in therapy with a guy studied Dr. Silverman studied under Fritz Perls great men I had been given and diagnosed I'd been diagnosed many different diagnoses I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and given the treatment that is very effective for that but it really didn't do much for me It put me in kind of an un, sort of not right, not unright holding pattern for a while until I couldn't take it anymore and I went back to getting drunk. I'd been diagnosed as free-floating anxiety and panic disorder and given the treatment for that and nothing really helped. It was odd that I wasn't, none of this stuff seemed to really get better until I bought the whole package in AA. Which makes me suspect that even though it looked like I was clinically depressed, I was really spiritually depressed. It was the depression of a narcissistic self-involved guy that when he stops drinking just gets himself on himself. like that creature in the movie Alien that gets sticks on your face like this until it felt like I'm smothered here because I got so much of me on me that it feels like somebody's crimped the oxygen hose to my being. And what happens when you're like that? Man, after a while, I can't take being locked up here. abstinence feels like I'm doing time and I don't mean to hurt nobody but this restlessness this irritability the low-level depressions the the anxiety the worry that the awful loneliness even in AA meetings I'd go to AA meetings and with this horrible feeling like it's all of you and then there's me there was as if there was some sort of invisible yet impenetrable barrier between me and life itself and the only thing that ever ever freed me and removed that barrier at one time was about four shots of tequila and I'd get free and I could come out and play the problem is four shots to kill don't work no more I've rung all the fun and ease and comfort and freedom out of that what had once been the most immediate and effective treatment for this malady of my spirit i'd wrung it dry and now i'm now i've got something that's turned on me and i can't stop chasing it because i ain't got nothing else and i came to this morning in the park and i'd been thrown out of another place and i'm facing and two years in a state penitentiary, which I don't really care. I mean, I don' t really care about anything. And a doctor that year had said something to me sort of off the wall that probably should have been good news. I was in my 20s. And physically, even though I would deteriorate and then get back up again, physically I was In pretty good shape because when I was in jail, I'd work out, and when I Was in halfway houses, I d work out. So physically, I was pretty good shape. And this doctor said because I was young and physically fit that I could go on like I was going on for another five, maybe ten years before it killed me. And I came to in the park that morning, and I'm thinking about what that doctor said. Five years? I ain't doing five weeks more of this. And I went and I got a quart of wine, and they didn't get that quart of win that day to get drunk. I got that quart of wine for courage, and I went to a bridge because I'm going to make this crap stop five years. I am in a place where I can't imagine life with it anymore because drinking has become so pathetic, and I know it. You know, you go on in the patheticness for a few years hoping against hope that you're going to jumpstart a party that you can't jumpstart but eventually you know that you know the painful bitter truth that that's a dead horse and yet i can't live without it either because i i don't do very well sober i i don' t do well and so i went to this bridge to kill myself and I don't think there's another option. Some of you are thinking, what do you mean not another option? Bob, why don't you go to AA and work those steps? Well, in a little over 31 years, I've talked to an awful lot of alcoholics over the years. I have never met anybody yet that came to Alcoholics Anonymous in the despair and hopelessness of alcoholism that looked at those steps and went, oh yeah, that would work. I've never met anybody that did that. Nobody. I've met some albinons that said, that'll work for you, but I've ever met anybody that looked up to me and looked at these steps and thought it would work... You don't even have to discount them If you're like me, you look at it and say, well, that's nice. If I ever got my life together, I might do some of that. Hey, I Might Join a Gym Too. Who knows? But the steps don't make any sense universally until after you do them and then we all say the same thing. Oh, should have done that years ago. See, we don't know, do we? We don't now. it's the part of you that thinks you know that's killing you. It's killing you. It's killing you. I came off that drunk in Las Vegas Nevada in a hospital there and a detox and I was trying to go to California because I thought if I get to California I'd survive another winter. The northeast is tough when you're on the streets and I thought maybe if I got to California maybe they wouldn't find me maybe I'd get some phony ID or something that I wouldn't have to do the two years live on Venice Beach I'd heard people talk about Venice Beach be a hippie on Venice beach I was groomed for it and I never made it I got back to Las Vegas and I was so sick again I was back at that place again that i always get to where you i gotta get a drink down i can't keep it down and it's a bad spot that's a bed spot and i checked into this detox and i was so i was at the end of my rope which makes perfect sense when you think about it if if drinking is horrible and awful, and not drinking is horrible, and awful. And you don't even have the stones to kill yourself. What the hell's left except Alcoholics Anonymous? It really is the last house on the block. And I've ended up in that detox, and something had happened to me. It was later I realized that what had happened to me is I had enough of me kicked out of me that I could finally for the first time in seven years hear you. And I remember it was like yesterday, this guy Dick Toussaint who became my sponsor, first sponsor and other men who have passed on with many years of sobriety brought meetings in there. I never imagined that what I got in institutions was the cream of the crop. these are the men and women who believe not talk but walk the primary purpose they give of themselves and they had big lives my first sponsor had his own company and had a huge house with tennis courts up on the hill and he was connected to a whole bunch of people in the community, and he would take time out of his life. And he was making a lot of money. My God, his time was probably worth $100 an hour. And He'd take time out of His life for fun and for free and come down to that detox with very little success. But He'd come down there as the other members come down there as I've gone to those places twice a week for the last little over 31 years on the hope that every once in a while you catch a guy. You catch a guy that's been thinking about offing himself because the psychiatrist don't work no more, church don't work, you can't drink, you've switched from alcohol to drugs back to every combination you can figure and you're still you and you can'T stand it and they came and they found me. The Buddhists say when the student's ready the teachers appear, and I sat there in those meetings, and for the first time in years of being in AA meetings, I found myself listening and identifying, and something was connected. I found my self as they shared their personal experience. They weren't trying to tell me nothing about me. They were talking about themselves, and i started nodding my head, and I remember sitting there and thinking my God I'm like these people and I watched them and I saw something in them that was I couldn't get my mind around it but they were really legitimately happy and sober at the same time and that doesn't make any sense to me because abstinence feels like I'm doing time. I don't get, and these guys look, matter of fact, my sponsor was, he laughed more, and he just picking on people, and hejust had a heck of a time. He looked like he was having a better time sober than I did when I was 18, and alcohol really worked, and I dared to hope. It's pretty hard to hope when you really think you're a piece of crap. It's Pretty Hard to Hope for Anything Better When You Secretly Hate Yourself, but inside me there was a glimmer of hope, and I thought to myself, my God, is it possible that if I followed them around and did everything that they said, could what happened to them happen to me? And I was afraid. I was scared to believe it because I'm such a worthless wretch. I just, everything i'd done over the years just turned to crap on me i was a bad luck magnet and i didn't want to fail one more time but i'd failed killing myself which is the most pathetic thing you can't even kill yourself that's pathetic and so i that that there was a song out at that time that was very popular by janice joplin and there wasa line in that song that says freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose and I guess I was in that place and I got this guy to be my sponsor and I told him something I regretted later many times I said I'll do anything you tell me which is oh my god oh it's like they're just waiting oh they got volumes of stuff to tell you oh my God none of it makes any sense until after you do it and then it's oh that was good like like turn yourself like contact the courts in Pennsylvania your PO and offer to go back there and do the two years that was the craziest direction I'd ever been given but I started following these directions it didn't make sense to me when I was pretty new I one of the first meetings I ever went to one of the first few meetings i ever went to outside the detox a guy named joe cornered me after the meeting and joe says to me he says kid you you got to take step three you need to take step three i look on the wall i read step three and i said to joe i said joe um be honest with I can't take step three. He said, really? Why not? I said, well, Joe, the truth is I don't believe in God. He says, you don't have to believe in God to take step 3. I said Joe, that's what it says. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. I don�t understand God. I don �t even know if there is a God. He says to me, kid, you do not have to belief in God. If you will turn your will and your life over to this chair, and he points to a chair in the meeting room. He says, I guarantee you an instant miracle. So I thought, what the heck? Okay, Joe, I turn my will and my life over to the chair. What's the miracle? He says well, the miracle would be your life's no longer in the hands of an idiot. And I didn't even get mad. I just stood there and went yeah, that'd be right. Yeah. Because if you would have observed me the last couple years, maybe as your friends and family have observed you, now let's cut out the intentions and justification, just observed you. They would easily came to the conclusion watching me that whoever's making decisions for this guy is out to kill him and yet i am full of rationalizations and justifications and i have a defensive mind that prevents me from ever seeing the truth but i was beaten enough that i was temporarily willing to set myself aside the hardest the hardest thing because what i don't know about you but i've been obsessed with something much more than alcohol and drugs, and that's with myself. My feelings, my thoughts, what I'm right about, my judgments, my perceptions. And Alcoholics Anonymous is asking me to set all of that aside to become almost childlike, to follow the directions of a guy that when the ego returned in a couple months, I knew I was much smarter then. But what happened in that window of surrender before the ego grew back is that the directions they gave me tethered me to Alcoholics Anonymous. By the time I started getting sick again and didn't know I was getting sick, because if you're getting sick you don't know you're going to get sick. You don't even know you were getting sick. By the Time I Started Getting Sick Again i had i was a secretary of a meeting i had i'd uh i had commitments i was talking to my sponsor every day i uh i was taking meetings back into the detox i had been cleared to go you couldn't even do this today into the state prison i was taking a meeting in there um i was involved i was going to 15 20 meetings a week because i'm scared i don't i'm afraid to be alone so that when the ego started to grow back and i started to become the smart guy again the guy who knows everything you protected me from myself and you saved me from me until i could eventually work the steps of alcoholics anonymous and have the ego reduction that AA promises. And I didn't, I mean, I did a lot of 12-step work. I did some BS versions of the four-step in my first couple years. But I was four years sober before I really did the steps the way they're outlined in the book. And I got to tell you something. I suffered those first four years by periodic depression and I worried a lot with anxiety, and I went through nine jobs in four years. That speaks volumes of what was wrong with me. And then at a little over four years, I started to work those steps as they're outlined in the book. And to my amazement, when I did the fourth step, it changed my life. see when i did my first two four steps the 40 pages of everything i was ashamed of and then that the 12 one out of the 12 by 12 with the 30 some questions and writing a page about the each of the seven deadly sins when i Did those if you would have asked me coming out of the fifth step what's the exact nature your wrongs Bob I told you how the money I stole and the lies I told the girls I cheated I told all that stuff when I did the one out of the big book when you asked me the exact nature of my wrongs. You know what I told you? How wrong I'd been about my mother and father. How wrong I'd be about my father. How wrong I'd have been about some of the women I was involved with. How wrong I'd had been about my employers. How wrong I'd've been about my sister. How wrong I'd've been about some of guys I judged so harshly and I'd retaliated against. How wrong I'd haved been about everything. And I gotta tell you something if you're new and you can't stand being wrong you're going to have a hard time here because it's the thing that thinks it's right that's your enemy and I don't know about you guys but there have been times in my life I'd rather die than be wrong I remember this is so pathetic one time I ended up in an emergency room and I used to end up in emergency rooms occasionally because I'm a knucklehead and I fall down and I cut myself and I you know I wrecked car stuff like I'm in this emergency room they x-rayed me and stitched me up and I'm sitting in this waiting room well by now I've sobered up I've been in there for about a couple hours I'm sobered And they got this rack of literature in there. And it's like pamphlets on diabetes and heart disease and all that stuff. And there's a pamphlet on there, the seven warning signs of cancer. Well, I grabbed that pamphelet and I start reading through it. And one of them is unexplained continued bleeding. Well, Iím bleeding out both ends. I throw up blood sometimes when I have the dry heaves. And I thought to myself, oh my God, I got cancer. Oh my God. It's metastasized into my brain. That explains volumes of the things I do and I can't remember them. And, and oh my god, why I get so down in the, almost comatose depressed. Oh my god. I have a brain tumor. And I had this fantasy going on about how, you know, one of these days they're going to pull me out of the park or they're out of The Halfway House and they're gonna realize I got a brain tumor. They're gonna take me to the cancer ward and they are going to notify my mother and father who had thought I was a bum. And they are gonna realize, oh my God Bob, we didn't know, we thought you were a bum, you had a brain tumour. And they come running to the hospital To beg my forgiveness And they tell all my ex-girlfriends They're going to be properly ashamed of themselves We're going To come running To the hospital To beg My forgiveness And I ended up In a place like this A hospital A deep Alcoholism Hospital Later that year And I told this doctor About it And he They examined me And he says No you got a bleeding ulcer And hemorrhoids i want i wanted a second opinion right i was disappointed it was like are you are you sure doc i mean that's the kind of ego i'd have i would like to be right even though i'll be dead but i'm gonna be right now if you identify with that even a little smidgen does not give you a high mental health quotient and I thought that my life was only unmanageable when I drank oh my god matter of fact I'll tell you something maybe you never heard before if you're anything like me my life is more unmanangeable inside me mentally and emotionally when I'm sober than it ever was when I was drinking. At least when you're drinking, you have the benefit of some anesthetic, for God's sakes. But sober is when I start to go crazy. In the light of what alcohol did to me and the people who love me, the most insane thing I could ever do would be to pick up a drink of alcohol after I've sworn to myself I'll never touch that stuff again and yet abstinence with untreated alcoholism always drives guys like me out of my mind until eventually in the light of what had happened to me all those other times eventually I go back to it and if you're a chronic alcoholic of the type that the book Alcoholics Anonymous was written for, and I don't know if you are, but if you are, and you don't do what we do in AA, the question with untreated alcoholism is not if you're going to drink again. The question is when. It's an inevitability. You have an itch within you that you are going to eventually be compelled to scratch. and I think you'll scratch it one way or another in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in this altruistic movement that I've immersed myself in with a dedication to every day trying to help somebody like me has scratched that itch effectively for 31 and almost 31 and a half years and I've had no other treatment for alcoholism except Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll tell you a little story, and I'll shut up. About 20 years, or a little over 20 years ago, I guess, I was up in Northern California near the Oregon border, not too far from the coast at an AA monthly event, I had a day to do nothing, so I had this guy who wanted to show me around. So he puts me in his pickup truck, and he takes me out to this forest that was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it. This thing had trees that were 250 feet high, 25 feet around. I mean, it was like Jurassic Park or something. It was amazing. And we walked around there for a while. There was a presence in that forest. It was very cool. Then he says to me after a while, he says, come on, get in the truck. We're going to go down to the, got a little ways to drive. We're gonna get out of the ocean and look at these cliffs and rock monoliths coming out ofthe ocean, all this stuff. I said, okay, got in the trunk. We're driving, driving, we're going by these meadows and fields. And he saysto me, you see how you don't see a 250-foot tree all by itself in a field? I said yeah. He says, you know why that is? I said no, I don't. He says, well, in God's plan, God has designed those trees in such a manner that they cannot help but aspire to grow to such magnificent heights that alone they will literally outgrow their roots capacity to hold themselves up and they will eventually topple over and die on their own aspired magnificence. what must happen is they must grow up in community and they intertwine their roots beneath the floor of the forest into a net and this holds them up and allows them to grow into their nature and that is exactly what has happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous I have had one defective character that I've had all my life, I've Had It To This Day and that is there's always been something inside of me that's insatiable. There's always be something inside me that yearned and hungered and thirsted for more. There's also always been a part of me that just wanted to take bigger bites out of life to see the world, to experience it all, to have it all to feel it all and that thing inside of my just about killed me until I got to you and then i started to intertwine the very roots of my life with a sponsor in a home group and commitments in the fellowship and the men that i would sponsor and you've allowed me and fed me to grow into my nature and i if i live to be a thousand years old how could i ever pay Alcoholics Anonymous back for the life it's given me. I can't. So I try to pay it forward. When AA asks me to do something, there's no debate. It's inconvenient. Yeah? I just say yes. There's one rock concert I've wanted to see all my life. I had front row tickets because I owned a big company and we were one of the number one advertisers on most to the radio station. The guy gave me front row tickets and I had to go talk to about eight people at the Salvation Army that night and I'd have to give them away to somebody else. But at the same time, I have a life that's beyond anything I could imagine. I mean, if I told you about it, you'd probably hate me. Because I would've. I'd've said there's a newcomer and just I hate you as a matter of fact the happier and more abundant your life was the more I didn't like it but I want you to know something this life that I have today is not my fault truly it is as a result of clearing out all of Bob that I've been able to clear out and continue to clear up because my ego grows back like a bad tumor and it's continual maintenance of pushing me out of the side to serve a set of principles a purpose, our primary purpose, an ethic and ultimately a power greater than myself and when I do that you feed me thank you for my life We'd like to thank everybody who attended and we invite you back next week for our book study. Some of you might be looking for a sponsor so everyone who has taken our steps have been blessed with a spiritual awakening and has the time and willingness to work with others, please stand. Please see one of these people after our meeting. If you'd like to become a member of our group, please get with our secretary over here. Thank you. This meeting is being recorded, so if you'd Like a copy, you can get with one of us probably next week. Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we only know a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick the answers will come if your own house is in order but you obviously cannot transmit something you haven't got see to it that your relationship with him is right great events will come to pass for you and for countless others this is a great fact for us abandon yourself to God as you understand God admit your faults to him and your fellows clear away the wreckage of your past give freely of what you find and join us you should be with you in the fellowship of the spirit and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny may God bless you and keep you too then those of you who will let's close with the Lord's prayer