Why the Big Book Says ‘Probably’ on Page 60 – Glenn

{"transcript": "Hi, my name is Glenn. and i am an alcoholic i'm really really grateful that uh i was asked thanks janessa for that and uh i think that i may have shared here before so to get asked again is a real privilege it's an honor to speak for alcoholics anonymous anytime anywhere and And it's also a responsibility that I don't take lightly. The answer is always yes, it's just a matter of dates that I have to get figured out. I have a couple of notes that I always like to start with so I don' forget before I do it. before I do it you know I don't want to forget Quentin I pray that the Lord be with you your whole healthcare team that it would touch their hearts minds and hands as they go through this process with you that your family will be comforted And that you will all, that God will grant you the power to accept his will in this outcome. All right. So beyond that, I'd like to say thanks for all the people who showed up here. I really, really appreciate all the participants, the readers, the people here doing service. Jayden, thank you, I thank Bob, but there are probably other people behind the scenes that I don't know about and I really really appreciate you. vitals is that I have a sobriety date. If you don't have one, we all need one. So if you know close to it, just pick one. That's what I did and my sobriete date is 5-4 of 2017 which is May the 4th and so if anyone here watch star wars may the fourth be with you all right had something to do with it a little geeky about that i guess um i would really like to thank god for an opportunity you know that he's afforded me a voice and an ability uh a few things that have happened in my life that have given me the power to touch other people and in a way and i don't know other folks say that i'm worth listening to i'm just gonna believe them I'm just gonna believe him so um I have a sponsor his name is Bill T and uh he's a past delegate panel 51 here and served at the general service conference he also did some other stuff around that he's our local area archivist and he's taught me a lot of stuff about the past and he continues like we meet every week on friday we get to get together and uh you know he teaches me more things you know i've learned about uh the most of the 36 spiritual principles involved in our program. I learned about the six warranties and concept 12 that allow us to keep things in check. And I'm really grateful there's so much going on in this program, uh not in this program pardon me in this fellowship that uh keep it safe from people like me really keep it saved for me uh that i've been able to learn a few things about the traditions and the most important one is about unity that i'm not doing anything divisive here not trying to do anything that's going to separate anyone from Alcoholics Anonymous or from us coming together. You know, I don't want to say anything that makes anyone here feel a certain way like they might now want to come back and that's really important. The tradition too for me is the most important um that you know there's one ultimate authority in it now it's talking about the group conscience but uh ah seems like luke's having a problem there we go and at any rate that uh basic basically that god is the ultimate authority and thank gosh what a weight off my shoulders because i thought i had to be the ultimate authorit when i got here i had to know i believed i knew everything or or i had to have an answer and and i've learned now that uh the best answer in the world that i can have is i don't know let me get back to you and then i talk to people uh other people in this program who know more than i do and can help me find an answer and i check with more than one i really i check for more than one. So that way there's a group and it's the conscious of that group. And also I have a home group, it's called Love and Tolerance where I get to serve as a GSR at my group and I get to do some things around that, that maybe I'll talk a little bit about later. I have a big book. I have one big book really, really important. And, you know, if anyone doesn't have these things, the sobriety date, the sponsor, the big book, the home group, you can get them all right here. You can get him all right there. And if anyone has any questions, my number is right there and feel free to contact me. I'm on WhatsApp, Telegram, plenty of things other than that. you know if you're in the states go ahead and get a hold of me directly um this stuff and this this whole deal the program outside of the fellowship that in that book there's a program it consists of 12 steps and uh they sometimes seem daunting they're not pretty simple. It's read, write and talk real simple, really easy. But the problem is, when I first got here, not only did I want to know everything, because I really wanted to impress you because I'm a please like me a holic. And I can't stand to think you don't like me. I'm terribly sensitive. I get my little feelings hurt all over everything and it's really because i'm afraid you won't like me is what it comes down to and uh you know i was afraid to talk to people making amends allowed me the freedom to know that i was able to talk to other people and i got to lose my fear of them i got to lose myself fear of him through doing a few things um and also like above everything that there is a god that that through that god's mercy and grace uh i've been able to uh not only be living but to get sober and i'm only sober by the grace of god in the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous and and not necessarily in that order because it was the 12 steps that brought me to god and and i really just had to make a decision in step three that brought me uh to a god in somewhere in step nine and uh well let's get to this um i can be done with these notes i really don't like looking at notes um all right i i was uh I had lived in an alcoholic home so meaning my father was a self-pronounced alcoholic and the big book of alcoholics anonymous it says we don't like to pronounce anyone an alcoholic so he pronounced himself an alcoholic my mom we don'T like to PRONOUNCE ANYONE AN ALCOHOLIC okay She hasn't done that yet, so I'm not going to put that on her. But things were crazy in my household. There was a lot of alcohol and drug abuse. And there was verbal, physical, and sexual abuse directed at myself and many of the people in our circle of friends. And when the doctor's opinion says that an alcoholic life seemed the only normal one, I've been living that life for a long, long time. And for me, I was really, really, I was a pretty grateful and happy kid most of the time. But I got to tell you, at night when the bar closed and the headlights came across the window, you know, and they came out of the car, you hear the door slam and they're screaming at one another. And you know what's going to end up happening. That's when I started feeling like I was going to pee on myself, right? As a little kid. And so that's just the way things were around my house. There was a lot of times I tried to get myself in the middle of it, thinking that it was my fault and that if I apologized and explained that I'm very sorry for whatever I did that started all this mess, I really thought I was very powerful. I really thought I had a lot of power that I was powerful enough to cause them to do these things and it had nothing to do with me but that's the way I am I'm selfish and self-centered and anytime there's something going on with someone else I automatically think that it has something to do with me. And that's really just my crazy thinking. And alcoholism has got a lot more to do With thinking than it has to do without call. You know, alcohol was just the vehicle that allowed me to escape my thinking and when i was a kid so my pops you know and i like we did the i opened beers for him and stuff but uh really what it was is me uh looking for approval and i i would you know go and get a beer out of the fridge and scooted take a chair up against the counter and climb up there and get a spoon so I could pop open the lid. So I don't know how young I was pretty young. And it just, it turned out like, it seemed like my dad gave me a lot of approval. You know, when I took that drink and the bigger drink I took, he was really, uh, he would seem like was very proud of me and so i was a mind reader i was a mind read from a very young age i was telling myself what other people thought and believe me that's that's another that's not a true statement um so behind all that craziness that was going on in the household um they ended up getting a divorce my pops went somewhere else you know and i gotta tell you like around that house when he was there and after he left they smoked a lot of left-handed cigarettes and if you're not familiar as can you roll up and share with other folks and and uh people get a little happy from them and um Um, so when, uh, my pops, when those things would get real small, he'd put them on an alligator clip and he would sniff them up his nose. And I would see those tendrils of smoke going up his knows when I was a little kid, I would think, man, that is cool. Probably a sign things weren't going to go real well in this, this dude's life, but, uh, you know, whatever. And then because I was such an attention seeker, then when a whole bunch of people would be sitting around the house doing that, I would go out into the middle of the room and I would start sniffing in the air. You know, and everyone would laugh, right? Now here I am on center stage, right, getting all the attention. And see, the thing of it was is though I would do that until I hyperventilated and fell on the floor. You know, probably another sign things weren't going to go real well for me. And, and, uh, in fact, that proved to be the case. Um, and so my pops came to pick me up and get in and take me on a trip and, uh, he brought his friend jim trout i always thought there was something a little fishy about that guy but i'm not sure at any rate uh the we're driving along and i'm being a normal little pain in the ass right i'm like aren't we there yet how long is this gonna take right and but this then all of a sudden they lit up left-handed cigarette in the front seat and I all you could see from me is my nose and my eyes my two little hands hanging onto the front or the back of the front seat and i'm sitting there sniffing in the air and this time my pops handed it to me and uh i'm not sure really what i got out of that it made me talk a lot it made me thirsty and so the only thing they had to drink in that vehicle was some wine and you know not not real wine but it had alcohol and it was sweet and my pops liked wild irish rose boone's farm mad dog you know anything that was cheap and sweet and so they gave me enough of that and something amazing happened you see all my life i lived really a lot in my head i was constantly daydreaming so uh thinking about resentment about what other people were thinking uh you know me standing up to the bully that uh got over on me and i knuckled under right i i uh i didn't stand up to him the way i did in my daydream i was constantly thinking in my head about everything so many thoughts that i would just get lost and really because of some of the things that i went through as a kid you know i learned that i could live in a fantasy world you know where uh i was the star i had my own theme music and i didn't have to uh i was the guy that had this the good comeback right the one that you know i got the better side of the conversation when someone said something sharp to me and uh those things didn't actually happen i'd got to tell you none of it happened it just all happened up here and uh because of that i was you know people would talk to me uh they would have to repeat themselves over and over because i i was so self-centered and selfish that i was too busy listening to what was the thoughts in my head to actually listen to other people i never felt i always felt a lonely i was really lonely and no matter how many people were in the room so they gave me enough of that wine that it made me feel like i was one of the guys i was no longer a pain in the ass kid in the back seat and for the first time i could connect with another human being. Really nice. It was something I had wanted my whole life and just hadn't been able to happen and alcohol gave me that. And I wanted to go back to that first one over and over and I would keep trying and keep trying. And later on, I ended up like having a few good times around junior high school and high school when I was probably between 11 and 16. I had some good times um but that was about it you know uh it talks about in a vision for you it says that on page 151 it talks for most normal folks now i got to tell you i'm not normal uh drinking means uh conviviality and cover colorful companionship it means release from care boredom and worry it means joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good and not so for us in those last days of drinking those old joys were gone right and it goes on you know i mean that that really talks about the effect produced by alcohol um and the sensation is so elusive right in the doctor's opinion but the the reason you know it really gets into the nitty-gritty about the last days and it talks about the four horsemen the hideous four horseman terror intense fear bewilderment confusion frustration ineffectiveness is one of the definitions of frustration so i can i'm no longer effective and that really makes me angry and uh despair hopelessness right things are hopeless um and really that's kind of the area that i was living in for a long time and i'm an alcohol and guy i'm in alcohol and anything that can increase that pleasure for me that's the kind of that's the experimentation that i kept trying to find a different combination um and more about alcoholism it gives a big list of stuff and it says we can increase the list ad infinitum right so basically to infinity because there are a bunch of combinations that i kept trying uh to make things uh feel okay for me but it didn't work work. So I'll give you an idea of the way I drank. Eventually, I ended up with a gal who drank like me. She got pregnant and had another one on the way. We went to the bar with her girlfriend it was her birthday and her boyfriend had a brand new car and they uh took we get to the bar and i'm drinking like i drink so i'm having budweiser seven sevens and shots of tequila and a shot of tequilla one drink i don't know anywhere else that you can count three as one but I always did. And I'm the kind of guy I'm trying to put as much in me as quick as I can to get to the place where I feel okay. And I can't wait for the wait staff, I'm not waiting for them to get there. They take far too long. So I go up to the bar, and every time I go to the bar to get around, right? I'm like, I'll go I'll get it, right. Because I need it. I get to take a shot. Right? I need a shot for the walk. Send me please. And that you know mean that just kind of sums up my drinking and that's the way it was and uh me and this fella talked and you know his brand new car here was february and uh so you know there was snow you know on the sides of the roads but the roads were clear that day and as you know we're leaving we are talking it just kind of started just, you know, flurries a little bit. And we're like, man, he said, man, we can go take a ride for this in this car and just do some crazy stuff. And I'm like, let's get the girls home. And then then we'll go do that. Right. And now we took the girls home and got them there safe. And we left them to the guise of cigarettes, right? I needed cigarettes. And, uh, we jumped in the car and he had a habit of going real fast. And I had a habbit of sitting in the passenger seat going, woohoo. I didn't like driving crazy after i've been drinking uh i've been to jails too many times right and so we were driving crap driving crazy going all over the roads and we went over some railroad tracks that were famous in our area that you could get all four wheels in the air if you were going fast enough and uh we hit those railroad tracks at about 100 miles an hour and the car flipped on its side and smashed against a tree and i never walked again i really never walked again and that that's kind of a picture of the decisions that i make when i'm drinking and it's funny in the full word of the 12 and 12 it says that 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous when practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and allow the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole and uh that that really means a lot to me today and and i'll tell you some reasons why you know when we get a little further um i ended up at the after that accident you know um me losing my ability to walk My ability to work, my ability to do a lot of things because I always worked with my hands and my back. I never really succeeded at life. I've never had the thing you call a career. I'm the kind of guy like when I go to work I think that I work so hard that on time every day is suggestion it's a suggestion for those of you that just don't work as hard as i do but when i'm there i work so hard that me being there on time or five days a week or more you know that's kind of a suggestion and uh i have a habit of that so you know it didn't you know that's the way my life had gone up to that point and so I never really paid into social security so I wouldn't get much out so I decided to subsidize my income and so i'm the kind of guy that likes to procure items for other people. And I like being the one guy that knows where I can get everything that goes with alcohol, right? And I do it for like three reasons. One, I know I'm going to get some of whatever I pick up. Two, I think it'll make you like me. And three, and made me feel important and man did I need to feel important and so I decided I'm going to do that on a grander scale right to support my family and but I'm really not good at this right because I don't understand about not using so much of it you know that you can't make money I don't understand about not sharing with people because I think it'll make them like me and it'll makes me feel important um that kind of stuff and my house just looked like a parking lot or a gas station right people pulling in, pulling out, pulling in and pulling out. It just looked bad. I had really loud stereo and I was always drunk. And you know, I used to play this song by Ugly Kid Joe that said, won't you be my effing neighbor? Right? Nobody wanted to be my neighbor. I got to tell you, no one did but uh that's the kind of guy i was and it didn't take very long and i was in jail and uh between that and on my terrible terrible past you know i went to jail for really dumb things in the past like i didn't pay my tickets and stuff and i got pulled over one time by a cop that was the first one that put me in the youth home right when i was like 12 for stealing out of cars when i Was drunk and uh he pulled me over he he didn't give me a drunk driving because i already had seven warrants for my arrest for stuff like unpaid tickets and you know driving the wrong way on one way when i'm faced you know stuff like that and uh so this time i go to jail i got this passed and and all this other stuff and the judge is just about tired of me and i got six years uh in between state and federal prison and uh And I forgot to mention that, you know, when I was in that hospital, man, it took me like as soon as they would let me sit up in a cardiac chair, which is like a stretcher with wheelchair wheels in the middle. And it kind of sits up. I was outside smoking left-handed cigarettes and drinking. and so like the the big book talks about on page 24 uh for reasons yet obscure we have lost the power of choice and drink we are unable to pull into our consciousness with sufficient force like sufficient force not to drink the suffering humiliation of even a week or a month ago where without defense gets the first drink that's me i'm a real alcoholic and that's what i do without help it is too much for me and uh so that's the kind of stuff that i did it's just automatic and i don't have a choice it's going to happen to me and so when I went to prison, there was a program in there that if you had a problem with drugs or alcohol, you would qualify for this program. It's like a nine month in a separate unit and you get time off your sentence. And I said, time off my sentence? I have a problem I have a real problem. Now, I got to tell you, it wasn't because I wanted to get sober or clean or any of that stuff. It was because I had time off my sentence and I knew that would get me back to drink. Now there was drinking while I was in prison. You know, we had spud juice and stuff that we made but you know it wasn't like drinking out in the world and so I went through this treatment thing and you know there are people in there running it and we had three AA meetings one every three months now they didn't give me a big book it was run by psychologists and counselors that talked a lot about to me about the things that happened in my childhood and uh you know don't get me wrong they're trying to help it's a wonderful program but really uh they they kind of gave me a lot of knowledge they told me about those things in my past that set up some of the choices that i made in the future and all that's true all that is true but it got nothing to do with me being an alcoholic i'm an alcoholic because i have an allergy and obsession the obsession is the stuff that you know like when i'm not drinking i'm planning what i'm gonna drink or use uh the whole time and sometimes i'm even planning it while i'm doing it you know it's all i think about and it guarantees me that even if i'm sober for a while i'm gonna go back to that because it's what i think about all the time and then i have the allergy that uh if i put one in that's it I'm going to put more in and I tell myself I'm changing my mind I tell you know like well I'm gonna stop by and have one right I never stopped and had one never and you know I'll tell myself well well here's Charlie I guess I guess maybe I have two more and uh well you know what that had all of a sudden i'm bargaining this is all going on in my head this is what goes on my head just going crazy and uh when i'm not thinking about drinking i'm thinking about uh all this stuff all the other stuff the negative self-talk you're a piece of shit and you ought to just kill yourself that kind of stuff you know i mean that's that's like at the extreme but like other little stuff like you're so stupid you know make decisions it's so funny that there's this this committee going on in my head right i make decisions and then the committee tells me how stupid i was for doing that i'm like where were you guys when i was before I did this anyway so I give you I go through this program and I get out of there I got five years supervised release uh and you know from federal prison it's not like parole that you have from state prison and that uh parole is the supervisor releases is just like parole and you know I gotta drop I gotta go to meetings I gotta do all this stuff but I'm not really paying attention to what they're saying in meetings I'm Not Paying Attention To The Fact That I Need God In My Life I Just Think If You Know Everything Will Be Okay If I Manage Well Right And Because You Know Don't You Know Willpower Didn't Work When I Was In The Hospital and self-knowledge that they gave me in there lasted seven months with all that hanging over my head right I'm gonna go back to prison and serve out that time I got off I'm going to you know come out start that five years over I get a job when I get out because one thing I did is I took an office occupations class so I could learn how to work in a wheelchair while I was in there. And I met a really great gal at the job that I got out of there, and she's really wonderful. But she's also cute and smoked left-handed cigarettes and drank. so i made it about seven months and then one christmas eve i decided i'm going to impress her so i go out and get some really good left-handed cigarettes not like that garbage she was smoking told myself all this in my head right but uh then we're sitting there after you know christmas eve her her then husband was out of town and a cute girl with a husband out of town signed me up and uh that's kind of decisions i make and so i i was slippery and managed to stay out of jail for a while. And she and I just did a lot of damage. And, you know, eventually that damage got us both in trouble. In 2009, I'd come to Alcoholics Anonymous to your custody. and uh i worked really really hard i got a sponsor i did like eight and a half steps i know there are 12 of them but i figured they were probably suggestions for people that were real sick like y'all but i didn't probably need i'd work really hard at these ones and hey you did it uh so i uh started making coffee and opening meetings and doing some of those things that busy stuff and and pretty soon in my head started getting so big i couldn't fit a hat on it and i'm going around and i'M TELLING EVERYONE THEY LOOK AT ME I'M OPENING THIS meeting and i'm making coffee over here i'm doing this and i'M DOING THAT AND I'M ME ME ME I I YEAH SO I WENT OUT AND DRANK AND THEN NOW I GOT ANOTHER SEVEN YEARS BEFORE I MAKE IT BACK TO YOU FOLKS AND IN 2016 I HAD THREE STROKES because all that living fast living hip slick and cool and thinking I got all the answers and that stuff just didn't work me continuing to try to find a combination that will work to make this thing happen for me I can never seem to get back to that time in the back of that car with my pops and jim i could never seem to get back to that and a lot of it's because i was so selfish and self-centered i never had a real relationship with anyone i never asked them about who they were and about their family and please tell me about your dog and whatever else i didn't i didn t care It was all about me. And in this on page, you know, let me say this. My wife has been sober since 2009. She said I wasn't so bad or she would have left me but I'm not sure. know, I wasn't a real great guy. That's for sure. And when all this happened, she said to me, she says, you know, we could call Monica. Monica is a friend of ours in Alcoholics Anonymous who also was a therapist, because that was going out of my mind when i first got in that wheelchair everything was taken away from me all that stuff and i started going crazy but this stroke did the same thing to me because i had learned how to live in that wheel chair i was able to drive a car uh you know work i was able to keep house, wash dishes, cook food, all these things. And all of a sudden that stuff's all ripped away from me. And I need help to get dressed. I need help to do almost everything. I can't get out of that bed on my own. I need a lot of help i'm very fortunate you know my my my wife uh my angel you know the angel that's in my life you know she gets me uh ready and helps me help other people that i'm able to sponsor people and even over this platform i've learned so much and i've been able to sponsored people in other countries and uh do a lot of things like that but let me put myself where i was at this therapist come to our house once a week for probably two months helped me work through some of the you know me and my craziness and then eventually she said one of the most spiritual things i've ever heard don't you think it's time you should call your sponsor so i did and he did what you all do he with love said to me absolutely He was responsible when the hand of AA was when I needed it, you know. And so we went through and covered some of the stuff in the book. And when we went to page 60, all of a sudden the book started coming alive to me. And I started remembering it like never before because I think it was because I was finally willing to go to any length. I was willing to do some things. I was, uh, willing to, to go at this like the drowning. And, uh. I look at this pages and they just start popping into my memory now, you know, and page 16. And I'm convinced of those first three, A, B, C, that I was an alcoholic and I couldn't manage my own life and that probably no human power could and that God could and would if he were sought. That finally on page 62, it says, so our troubles we think are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is me. I'm an extreme example of self-will run riot, but I usually don't think so. And then it says this, two words, above everything. What? The most important thing, we must be rid of this selfishness. i gotta get rid of this selfishness or to kill me god makes that possible and there seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without his aid i had moral and philosophical convictions galore right i always held everyone around me to the standard that I couldn't reach, right? I would say you need to be honest. You need to be this. You needed to be forthright. I couldn' t be any of them. I was the least authentic person you would meet. But for me, um, I have to get past that. People allow me to make mistakes and other people i gotta allow them to make mistakes matter of fact i'm in the world to make mistakes it's my job you know god looking at me like uh what is this guy up to right well he's being a human that's what we do and that's what you know why why wouldn't i look at other people the same way god looks at me allow them to be human and i clear away some of the wreckage of my past i get to look at some of things that are blocking me from god and my sponsor uh helps me to see a few more and and he looks at me and he said to me you know i remember i said i was real sensitive right so i thought maybe he was being mean but really he wouldn't mind hurting my feelings if it would save my life and he said glenn you gotta stop pretending you gotta start pretending you see more than most the alcoholic leads double life to his fellows he presents a stage character he thinks they want to see and that's what i was doing i was running around pretending to be this guy because i thought that all these guys watching sports you know and i would watch sports center pretend like i knew what was going on right i spent it out they actually watched the game right i'm watching highlights and pretending like i know what's going on because i think that's what they want to see and that's just one instance i could give you a bunch of them, but that's just one instance. And I get to have a program that teaches me about this selfishness and I get to be in step 10 after I get myself clean, I get to stay clean. Alexa, stop. Anyway, I get to, you know, put myself to be authentic and start to keep all of that stuff that was blocking me so I don't build up another one. And it says that watch for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear and selfishness is me just trying to get my way dishonesty is me lying trying to give my way resentment i'm angry because i didn't get my way and uh fear is me i'm afraid i'm not gonna get my way you're gonna lose something i have whatever i want all that stuff is about me and my way and i need things that simple you know it says rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path what path the 12 steps usually men and women who are constitutionally to be honest with themselves You know, that's me. I couldn't see me until I could see me and I couldn t hear until I could hear. So I hope that you guys can hear something. I always like to share something a reading or something. Have time for some of the other ones but here's this one. I'm a real fan of Emmett Fox. I might give you an idea where my higher power is but and so Emmett fox around the year is great it lets me see a little piece Emmett Fox every day it's a small reading book and it talks about uh the porn spirit It's a really long thing in the book, but this is a small reading. It says, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. To be poor in Spirit does not mean in the least what we call poor spirited. spirited to be poor in spirit means to be have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise self will and what is just as important to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the wholehearted search for god it means be willing to set aside your present habits of thought your present views and prejudices your present way of life if necessary to jettison in fact anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding god so in this program it talks about uh god being the one thing that can get between me and a drink when no one else is around so i quit having higher people and i start having a higher power i'm really grateful i got to come here and hang out with you guys i'm sorry if i talked too long or kept you busy too long i'm very grateful uh may god bless you all i do love you i'm glenn i'm an alcoholic Thank you, Glenn. Thank you."}