August 13, 2025 • 49 mins
The Powerful Journey of Addiction and Recovery by Gary K: Keynote at Sober Fest 2024
In this deeply personal and educational talk, Gary K shares his harrowing journey through addiction, highlighting the devastating effects of various substances such as alcohol, marijuana, opium, and crack cocaine. As the keynote speaker at Sober Fest 2024, he recounts his numerous attempts to get sober, including stints in detox centers, jail, and even unconventional therapies. With striking anecdotes from his life, including his time on Broadway and near-death experiences, he emphasizes the gravity of addiction as a progressive, chronic brain disease rather than a moral failing.
The talk transitions into an educational component on the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction, explaining how dopamine and other neurotransmitters play a crucial role. Gary also outlines the steps and spiritual practices that aided his recovery, offering hope and practical advice for those struggling and their loved ones. This video is a must-watch for anyone seeking to understand addiction and the road to recovery.
Learn more about Gary's work or book him for your next Recovery Event at garykrecovery.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm so grateful to be here, gratefulto be alive and sober with some
amount of dignity and integrity anda clear head and a loving heart.
Oh, dear God, may the meditationsof my heart and the words from
my mouth be pleasing to you.
So, I travel a lot this month,going to several cities.
(00:30):
And over the next few months, uh, anumber of states to carry the message.
And I'll travel anywhere becausetoday the stakes are high.
Addiction and alcoholism havebecome a global pandemic.
It is a plague on planet earth.
It is America's numberone public health crisis.
(00:54):
At this very moment, millionsare still sick and suffering.
and don't know about thespiritual solution to our disease.
They don't know aboutthe rooms of recovery.
Every year in the United States now, over250, 000 20 something year old men and
(01:15):
women are dying from fentanyl overdose.
That number, 250, 000, is doublethe number of all American military
casualties since World War II.
That's happening every year.
wiping out a generation.
And today I hope to answer two questions.
This is my mission.
(01:37):
Why can't we stop?
What is the solution?
My hope is to bring education toloved ones and family members to
understand that this is not a choice.
This is a progressive,chronic, fatal brain disease.
(01:58):
Not a choice, not a moral failing.
So that hopefully familiesand loved ones And our friends
and colleagues who are normies
can stop being angry and bitter andmove toward compassion and love and
so that we addicts can stop hatingourselves for the egregious behaviors
(02:21):
that we lived in for so long and, uh,and move toward compassion and love.
So first I'm going to tell alittle bit about my story so
you know why I'm sitting here.
Uh,
I was addicted to alcohol, marijuana,opium, hash, morphine, ketamine,
(02:41):
Percocet, Percodon, Vicodin, Restoril,LSD, Quaaludes, Black Beauties.
Whippets.
Whippet good.
IV heroin and crack cocaine.
I went to 47 detoxes, 11 tripsto jail, caught two felonies,
(03:01):
seven suicide attempts.
Gestalt therapy, Jungian therapy, Freudiantherapy, psychodynamics, electroshock
therapy, two Anthony Robbins firewalks.
Ayahuasca, puke and purge, and I spentone Christmas in Sub-Zero temperature
(03:22):
on a in a sweat lodge on the TaosPueblo, tripping on peyote, trying
to get sober with six naked, greasy,sweaty, ugly, old Indian shaman.
I still have nightmares about that,, even after doing EMDR trauma therapy.
(03:42):
Can't get that out of my head.
I'm from Akron, Ohio.
That's where my disease began.
In fact, the first time I wasever arrested was two blocks
from from Dr. Bob's house.
And I'm very proud of that.
I didn't know Dr. Bob at the time.
(04:04):
I wish I had.
I started drink when I was 12.
First of all, I'm adopted.
And I just met my birth familyin the last three or four years.
Uh, in my book, Walk the Talk withStep 12, I mentioned that my birth
name was William Joseph Weaver.
(04:25):
Which makes me Bill WI thought that waskind of a corny joke and I put it in
the book and I got a call one night fromthis guy who said he was my twin brother.
Turns out it was true and he had the samebirth name and we had a heroin addict
for a mother who was popping out babiesand selling us for five grand a piece.
(04:47):
And he found me.
Uh, he ha I am an Episcopal priest.
Now there's life beyondyour wildest dreams.
Nothing this crack whore ever thoughtI'd be doing was being a priest.
And he's a Baptist minister.
We both teach the steps.
I teach it in treatment.
He teaches it in theGeorgia prison system.
And we both got clean and sober onthe same month of the same year.
(05:12):
That crazy twin thing, you know?
And there are six otherbrothers and sisters.
We're all addicts.
We're all alcoholics.
Both birth parents died.
This is a genetic illness.
If you have certainsymptoms, I had them all.
So my adopted family, Bruce and MaryEvelyn, they met during, uh, before World
(05:33):
War II, when they were in high school.
They, uh, they were married 69 years.
They died, uh, Within one month fromeach other, I never heard them fight,
never raised their voice to each other.
They didn't drink, they didn'tsmoke, they wouldn't say shit
if they had a mouthful of it.
They were the kindest people,
and never touched alcohol.
Bruce lined up the convertible automobilesfor the Football Hall of Fame parade
(05:57):
just south of Akron every year.
And one year, the Board of Trustees ofthe Football Hall of Fame gave him a
whiskey decanter made out of porcelainthat looked like the football hall of fame
and inside that bottle was 80 year old jimbeam whiskey i was eight years old when
it arrived bruce never drank but he lovedfootball so he built a shadow box in his
(06:20):
den and he put that bottle in it With atrack light shining on it, like it was a
shrine to the Virgin Mary or something.
And, uh, I remember the day it arrived,they were a very strict family.
Pentecostal.
My grandfather was a Pentecostal minister.
And alcohol, very bad.
(06:41):
And at eight years old,I wanted to find out why.
So every time I was alone, I'd gointo the den, I'd pick that bottle
up and shake it, listen to it.
The cork in the bottle was thefootball, which is the roof
of the football hall of fame.
If you've ever seen it, it's agiant football makes the roof.
That was the cork in the bottle.
Well, I was 12.
I had a growth spurt one weekend.
(07:02):
They were going to take me to arelatives farm and leave me for the
weekend while they went on a trip.
And I said, I'm notgoing, I'm staying home.
And Bruce talked to Mary Evelynand he said, you know what?
You're a good kid.
And you can certainly takecare of yourself for a weekend.
We're going to let you stay home.
If you touch that bottle, I'mgoing to whip your ass till it
(07:23):
looks like peppermint candy.
Oh, I swear, dad.
No, I wouldn't do that.
Soon as the car disappeared, I ran intothe den, grabbed that bottle, took it
into the kitchen, filled up a tea kettle,got a head of steam going very carefully.
Peeled the seal off that bottle.
I saw that on I love Lucy
(07:44):
And it worked and I had my first drinkInstantly the wall went down that
separated me from every other human being
and I felt courageous I felt like asuperhero over the course of the weekend.
I drank that entire bottle Ispent most of the weekend running
(08:08):
around outside at night naked.
Yeah, I don't know why that is.
Every time I drank, I took my clothes off.
If I smoked crack, I tore them off.
Aren't you glad I'm sober?
I think there's a line in the bigbook that says a 65 year old fat naked
(08:28):
crack whore is an unlovely creature.
That was me.
So, uh, the game was on.
The allergy kicked in right awayand I started drinking every day.
Liquor from our Italian neighbors.
They had casks full of wine and grappaand I would take dish dishwashing
liquid bottles and rinse them out andgo over to their house, steal the booze,
(08:51):
hide it in my bedroom, lay down in myroom and drink all night long, somehow
managed to get up and go to school.
When I was 16 years old, I got my licenseand the next morning I drank a bottle
of grappa, had my first blackout, killedtwo people in an automobile accident.
(09:12):
Over the course of my high school days.
By the time I was a senior,I had totaled 11 automobiles.
Had killed two people, maimed fourothers who never fully recovered, and
blew a kid's hand off with a shotgun.
And got arrested a bunch oftimes for walking around downtown
Akron without clothes on.
(09:34):
Yeah, that was a real problem for me.
Now I get paid to keep my clothes on.
So my father came to me one day andhe said, I wanted to be an actor.
And he said, your mother and I havetalked and we think you should go
to acting school in New York cityso that you won't have to drive.
That'd be a solution to yourproblem because you're going to
(09:54):
kill somebody else or kill yourself.
And I thought, well, this is a good idea.
So when I was 17 years old,I was handed 5, 000 in cash.
And I took the Amtrak fromAkron to New York City.
My first morning in NewYork, I was walking around.
I saw this business called Abra Kadabra.
They sold costumes and partysupplies and magic tricks.
(10:17):
And there was a nightclubI wanted to get into.
And you had to either be veryfamous, mad sexy, or a freak.
Now I was 17 years old.
I trained to be a dancer,to be a tap dancer.
And I was ripped and buff, 17 yearsold, love being naked in public.
(10:37):
I went out and I bought this big strawfarmer hat at abracadabra, a six foot
long red ostrich feather boa, this wasthe 1970s, and a pair of extremely short,
very thin, Gold LeMay Daisy Duke shorts.
I took off all my clothes, put on thisbig straw hat, the red boa, the little
(10:59):
LeMay shorts, and I made a beelinefor Studio 54, which, uh, was a very
Famous nightclub at the time.
Red carpet, lots of celebrities,limos parked down the block.
The doorman decided who couldcome in, and he sees this half
naked 17 year old dressed likea freak, and he goes, This kid!
(11:20):
Like it said in Bill'sstory, I had arrived.
That night I met cocaine.
Had sex with a lot of celebrities.
And, uh, I took all my clothesoff and danced naked on the
dance floor at Studio 54.
Now, as a matter of fact, I'm in adocumentary that's on Netflix right now.
(11:41):
called Studio 54.
If you watch it, look for a tall,skinny kid in red hot pants with a
woman wearing a leopard skin sarong.
That's me shaking my ass when I was 17.
And, uh,
so I worked there for a while while I wentto the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
So I would get hammered all nightand the American Academy classes
(12:04):
didn't start till 2 p. m. And Iwas a teenager, so no problem.
I could get plenty of sleep, be outall night doing drugs and alcohol.
I couldn't hang on tomoney to save my life.
And somebody said, you know, youshould become a male prostitute.
I said, that sounds like a good idea.
So I did that and I was strippingto clubs all over New York.
Now I'm doing lots of drugs in additionto drinking and lost a moral a day.
(12:31):
After about two years ofthat, I saw an advertisement.
They were looking for a woman.
What they called replacementswing dancers for a Broadway show.
They wanted tall, young athletic maleswho were trained dancers, who would be
willing to dance in their jock strap.
in a locker room scene, um, playinga Texas Aggie football player
(12:53):
in the Broadway musical, TheBest Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Well, I thought, I'm awhore and I dance naked.
So this is a no brainer.
So I auditioned.
That was my first Broadway show.
I did 39 Broadway musicalsaltogether, traveled all over
the world, made crazy money.
I was meaner than a snakeand just absolutely crazy.
(13:15):
Very difficult to work with.
Super prima donna.
I'll speed ahead.
You know, that, that professionreally allowed for drugs and alcohol.
I had people on staff.
I had a manager and a dresser and aguy named Brad who I paid full time and
benefits to follow me around and make sureI made it back to the theater on time.
(13:36):
And I used to hide from him.
That's how crazy I was.
And I was paying him to keep trackof me because I didn't want him to
see the twisted things I was doing.
And, uh,
I remember we were at a bar somewhere inWisconsin and they were Trashing the bar
and they had a tabletop Pac Man machine.
I put that in the back of my tour busso I could put lines of cocaine on it.
(14:00):
And they had cup holders, fourof them that held 40 ounces.
So I put bottles of unblended Scotchin that with big bendy straws I got
from a truck stop and I would turn themachine on and do my lines of cocaine.
I never played Pac Man, butI loved hearing Waka, Waka.
When I, when I was doing the cocaine.
Funny thing about triggers.
(14:21):
A few years ago, I was the keynotespeaker at the California State
Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And, uh, I was checking into the hoteland I heard, Waka, Instantly, I got
bubble guts and diarrhea and wentup to my room and puked for an hour.
Because my body, my brain, this disease,thought I was about to get high.
(14:43):
Just by hearing that Pac Manmachine, the phenomena of triggers
which occur in the midbrain.
Fascinating thing.
So everything got really crazy.
I'm going to speed ahead.
My last Broadway adventure, I washired to play Daddy Warbucks and Annie.
I'm telling this story for Mike.
Um, and thank you for bringingme here and Robert and Heidi.
(15:06):
And it's just such anhonor to be with you guys.
So I was hired to playDaddy Warbucks and Annie.
And, uh, that's the tall, bald guy.
And before we opened on Broadway, we hadto play six cities outside of New York.
That's to get your timing down andmake sure the show goes smooth.
(15:28):
It's kind of like a working rehearsal.
And we were in Albany, NewYork at the State Theater.
Which holds about 4, 000 people andthis particular performance was 1,
000 a ticket for an AIDS benefit.
And that night the governor of NewYork would be there, the mayor of
New York City, lots of celebritiesand the New York Press Corps, The New
(15:50):
York Times, The Daily News, The Post.
Uh, Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Frank Richfrom the Times, New York Magazine,
they were all gonna be in the audience.
And we had 65 adult actors, 30 pieceorchestra, conductor, the tech staff, the
administrative staff, 20 little orphangirls, their mothers, their teachers,
(16:12):
their chaperones, Annie the dog, Annie thedog's under, Sandy the dog's understudy.
The dog trainers, 18 massive trucksfull of equipment was a big deal.
My days consisted of the following, wakeup in the morning, knock back a scotch,
smoke a joint, pop a Valium, go to thebathroom, knock back another scotch,
(16:36):
pop another Valium, smoke another joint,get in bed, smoke a little crack, stay
in bed, Four o'clock in the afternoon,dresser shows up, slaps me, gets me into
the bathroom, gets me in the shower.
Off I go to the theater.
I manage to do my show.
I lay off drugs andalcohol till intermission.
I do a little bit of cokeand one Jack Daniels and eat.
(16:57):
Then at night I'm out in thenightclubs with coke hookers and booze.
Coke hookers and booze.
Coke hookers and booze.
Then before going to bed, I would eatcopious amounts of eggs, pancakes,
and orange juice to soak up the booze.
Then I would inject heroin, and thiswas your grandfather's heroin, not
this stuff that's going around today.
(17:17):
It was real.
My last Broadway adventure, I washired to play Daddy Warbucks and Annie.
I'm telling this story for Mike.
Um, and thank you for bringingme here and Robert and Heidi.
And it's just such anhonor to be with you guys.
So I was hired to play Daddy Warbucksand Annie, and that's the tall, bald guy.
(17:40):
And before we opened on Broadway, we hadto play six cities outside of New York.
That's to get your timing down andmake sure the show goes smooth.
It's kind of like a working rehearsal.
And we were in Albany, NewYork at the State Theater.
Which holds about 4, 000 people, andthis particular performance was 1,
(18:01):
000 a ticket for an AIDS benefit.
And that night, the governor of NewYork would be there, the mayor of
New York City, lots of celebrities,and the New York Press Corps, the New
York Times, the Daily News, the Post.
Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Frank Richfrom the Times, New York Magazine, they
were all going to be in the audience.
(18:21):
And we had 65 adult actors, 30 pieceorchestra, conductor, the tech staff,
the administrative staff, 20 littleorphan girls, their mothers, their
teachers, their chaperones, Annie the dog,Annie the dog's under, Sandy the dog's
understudy, The dog trainers, 18 massivetrucks full of equipment was a big deal.
(18:46):
My days consisted of the following.
Wake up in the morning, knock back ascotch, smoke a joint, pop a Valium,
go to the bathroom, knock backanother scotch, pop another Valium,
smoke another joint, get in bed,smoke a little crack, stay in bed.
Four o'clock in the afternoon, dressershows up, slaps me, gets me into
(19:06):
the bathroom, gets me in the shower.
Off I go to the theater.
I manage to do my show.
I lay off drugs andalcohol till intermission.
I do a little bit of cokeand one Jack Daniels and eat.
Then at night, I'm out in the nightclubswith coke hookers and booze, coke hookers
and booze, coke hookers and booze.
Then before going to bed, I would eatcopious amounts of eggs, pancakes,
(19:29):
and orange juice to soak up the booze.
Then I would inject Uh, heroin.
And this was your grandfather's heroin,not this stuff that's going around today.
It was real heroin.
inject heroin into my jugularto put myself to sleep.
And when you do that kind of heroin,it opiates your digestive tract,
(19:49):
as many of you know, and whateverfood you've eaten gets trapped down
there and it builds up pressure.
And at some point you open your mouth toyawn or say hello and you ninja vomit.
Like, I could knock your glassesoff from here with a stream of puke.
And, uh, so, now it's the show.
Audience is full.
Celebrities, men in tuxes, women informals, the orchestra's playing.
(20:11):
I've just told Anniethat I'm gonna adopt her.
I'm itching.
I'm seeing spots and I'm sweating a lot.
I don't feel good at all.
I'm supposed to waltz with Annie.
The Warbucks set disappears.
The stage is flooded with dry ice.
A twinkle drop appears withthe night sky and the moon.
It's beautiful.
Costs about a quarter million dollars.
(20:31):
It's beautiful.
Every night when that thing wenton, the audience would go, Ah!
So the orchestra starts playing.
It's French horns and violins.
and the cellos.
And I tell Annie I'm going toadopt her and I put her little nine
year old feet on my big feet andI start showing her how to waltz.
And we start waltzing around thestage as I'm singing a ballad called
(20:53):
Something Was Missing My Brain.
I'm choreographed at the end of thesong to pick up the little girl,
hold her in front of me, And hitthe last note of the song, no, what,
(21:14):
and I vomited right in Annie'sface point, blank range.
She screamed the audience,screamed it, made the papers.
I kept puking.
I dropped her on the floor.
I started laughing like it was thefunniest thing I'd ever seen because
I was very inappropriate and selfish.
(21:34):
They brought the curtain down,announced there would now
be a 45 minute intermission.
The producer came out,punched me in the face.
I punched him.
He punched me.
I picked up a chair,started beating him with it.
Then the police arrived andI spent a few months in jail.
That was the end of my Broadway career,
needless to say.
(21:54):
So I went back to my apartment in TimesSquare and I tried to sell drugs to make
a living, which I didn't do well at all.
I was so paranoid.
It was in Times Square.
I was so paranoid about it.
that I would army crawl around theapartment because I didn't want the ninja
police to see me through the window and Ispent a lot of time hiding under my bed.
(22:17):
I didn't wear clothes.
I would go out at night and mug people.
Um, I got arrested a couple of times,uh, breaking and entering armed robbery,
breaking and entering occupied dwelling.
I used to mug people, beat them in thehead, take their stuff and pawn it.
Pawning just abouteverything that I owned.
It got really ugly.
(22:39):
One night I decided, and I looked likeI'd been in a concentration camp, I
looked like a combination between MelGibson, Gary Busey, Nick Nolte, and
Charles Manson all on a very bad day.
I made a decision to murder a drug dealer.
I was, I carried a gun all the time,and I met him in a park in Forest Hills,
(22:59):
Queens in the middle of the night.
I whipped the gun out, stuck in his face,pulled the trigger, and the gun jammed.
Then his friends began to beat me.
I had a broken sternum, four brokenribs, two stab wounds right up here.
They grabbed my hair, cut it.
They took a knife and cut me acrossthis nostril and this eyelid.
(23:20):
They stuffed my mouth with crack pipes,beat me in the face with a baseball bat.
That's when I lost consciousness.
When I woke up, I was profusely bleeding.
And they had defecatedon me from head to toe.
And if that hasn't happenedto you, that's a yet.
That's still waiting for all of us.
You don't have to do it.
I did it for you.
(23:43):
I crawled out to the street.
By the grace of God, acab driver stopped for me.
That man was in NarcoticsAnonymous and tried to 12 step me.
Uh, he helped me pick glass outof my mouth for about an hour.
Had some rags he tore off andhelped stop some of the bleeding.
Wrapped me up in a blanket.
I convinced him to takeme back to my apartment.
(24:05):
I had no keys.
I had to break in through the bathroomwindow and I crawled to the kitchen.
I was starving.
I opened the refrigerator.
There was nothing in therebut a carton of milk.
I impulsively grabbed it, downed it.
It had been spoiled for a very long time.
I began to vomit.
The sink filled up with amberliquid, which was Jack Daniels, with
little white lumps of curdled milk.
And in my psychotic state,I thought those little white
(24:27):
lumps of milk was crack cocaine.
So naturally, I stuck my face inthe sink and lapped up my puke, spit
out those little lumps, dried themoff, stuffed them in a broken crack
pipe, and tried to smoke my puke.
And when that didn't work,I was done with this life.
I had a mason jar with about 200Vicodin in it in the hall closet,
and one more bottle of Jack Daniels.
(24:48):
I guzzled that Jack, Itook all the Vicodin.
Well, you could see it ifmy sleeves were unbuttoned.
I took a big knife, And I cut mywrists under my arms and my elbows so
I would bleed out as fast as possible.
And I laid down on the floorin a pool of blood, hoping to
die, to leave this dense plane.
And suddenly I had a moment of clarity.
(25:11):
It was like a voice inside myhead said, you don't want death.
You want more life anddon't know how to get it.
I'm going to show you.
And suddenly my mind was floodedwith thoughts about an actor I had
worked with named Richard Springle.
He played Colonel Pickering to myHenry Higgins in the world tour.
of My Fair Lady, the Broadway show.
He was always very kind to me.
(25:32):
I'd never been to his house.
Hadn't spoken to him on thephone in three or four years.
And suddenly I rememberedhis phone number.
I crawled to my landline.
I called.
He answered.
I said, Colonel, I'm dying.
Help.
And then I passed out.
He called Information 411.
Asked for Bruce Kimball in Akron, Ohio.
He knew my father.
Got my address.
(25:52):
Turns out he lived directlyacross Times Square from me.
Is it odd or is it God?
He made a beeline across Times Square.
Doorman didn't want to let him in.
He screamed at him to call an ambulance,punched the doorman, went into the
building, broke my front door apart,found me covered with feces and
blood, blue, not breathing, carriedme into the elevator, out of the
(26:16):
building, and into a waiting ambulance.
I regained consciousness about twoweeks later, strapped onto a gurney in a
psych ward, In a facility in New Jersey.
And I knew that I had hit my bottom.
Because I was in New Jersey.
Laughter.
(26:36):
I love to laugh.
I'm so done with suffering.
That began the first of19 trips to treatment.
I got high every timeI walked out the door.
That was over a period of four years.
And in treatment, here comes solution.
I met two men, Mel and Edgar.
Edgar's father was one of the first87 members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(26:58):
Thank you so much.
He was a calligrapher.
He created those red and black signs thatsay, think, think, think, live, live.
That was Edgar's father's calligraphythat we're still using today.
Edgar did his steps with Bill Wand a man named Hank Parkhurst, who
helped get the big book published.
He was Bill's first fancy in New York,and he wrote two of the chapters in the
(27:21):
big book to wives and to the employer.
And Edgar did his stepswith Bill and Hank.
The other gentleman's name was Mel Barger,Mel B. He wrote five of the books that
are listed in the front of the big book.
Uh, Pass It On, A. A. Comes of Age,Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers.
He edited As Bill Sees It.
He was A. A. 's officialhistorian and archivist and the
(27:44):
editor of the international A.
A. Grapevine magazine.
He was also Bill W. 's travelingcompanion and gave the eulogy
at Lois Wilson's funeral.
And Mel and Edgar were great pals.
And, uh, Mel was in New York at thetime writing a book on Ebby Thatcher.
In any event, I got to know thesemen over a period of four years.
(28:04):
And my last time in treatment, theyshowed up and they had me discharged.
They rode the train back to New York.
They took my keys, strip searchedme, had me pack a bag, convinced
me to sign paperwork making FatherEdgar, he was a retired Episcopal
priest, uh, and he became my guardian.
(28:25):
And I was 35 years old, been onBroadway, traveled around the
world, And they treated me likea five year old on a mommy leash.
They said, whatever's happeningin New York when the sun goes down
is none of your damn business.
You're not allowed outside alone withoutadult supervision, is what they told me.
We did the steps quickly and often,as they were designed to be done,
(28:48):
in the explicit, uh, specific,clear cut directions that are found
in the first 164 pages of of abook called Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, today that book is on theLibrary of Congress's list of the top
50 books, the most transformed Americansociety in the 20th century, making
(29:08):
it one of the most important documentsever written in American history.
That's according to theLibrary of Congress.
The big book is now translatedinto 72 languages and is
available in 194 countries.
Amazing.
And has transformed the livesof tens of millions of people.
(29:30):
So I did what Edgar and Mel told me to do.
I went to six to eight meetings a day.
I got my first bond C when I had 30 days.
That's how it was done in theold days when we had a 50 to 75
percent permanent sobriety rate asopposed to 3 to 5 percent today.
It was done quickly and often.
The fourth step was a simple checklist.
(29:52):
A drunken monkey coulddo it in 20 minutes.
It didn't take weeks and weeks and weeks.
You didn't write a novel.
It wasn't like that.
My favorite quote from Dr. Bob,he said, The 12 steps are not
spiritual philosophies to bestudied, understood, and then taken.
They are survival actions to be carriedout immediately to provide instant
(30:14):
hope and relief and save our lives.
They are a tourniquet tostop the bleeding now.
It is battlefield triage.
I totaled 11 automobiles.
I terrorized my family.
I lost my Broadway career.
I lost my sanity, my legal freedom, mybank account, my physical health, all
of my friends, two marriages, all ofthat because of my active addiction.
(30:41):
I just thought I'm a bad person.
My family thought I was a bad person.
Because they thought this was a choice.
I thought it was a choice.
The most life changing moment waswhen Mel and Edgar sat down, and we
read The Doctor's Opinion, in thebig book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(31:03):
I was so fascinated by that, I went toschool again, and studied neurobiology,
because I wanted to understand Whythe steps worked for people who
didn't believe in God and I wantedto know more about brain mechanics
And what exactly happened to me?
Do we still have time?
How much time do I have?
You good?
You sure?
(31:25):
My grandpa was a preacher and I'dcall him sometime on Sunday and
say how to go today at the serviceHe'd say preached him down to two
So that might happen, you know,those are the two you need to reach
So, um, I studied neurobiology.
(31:46):
I really wanted to understandthe addicted brain.
Excuse me.
So, this is my mission.
To educate people about this.
Through the lens of 2024 neuroscience.
And I'll tell you what.
(32:07):
Bill W. That book had to be guidedby the hand of some divine power.
Cause Bill was a nightschool lawyer, dropout.
He invented insider trading.
He was a very sketchy guy.
But he was brilliant.
He didn't know aboutneuroscience, but he nailed it.
He observed every single detail.
(32:29):
He even describes, I think it'son page 22, at certain times we
are unable to pull forth into ourconsciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the humiliation anddegradation of a week or a month ago.
We are without defenseagainst the first drink.
He is describing the A phenomenacalled amygdala hijack.
(32:50):
You can google it, look it up.
Addiction, amygdala, A M YG D A L A, amygdala hijack.
So, we addicts and alcoholics,we've got a number of defects.
You know, I even hatecalling them defects now.
Cause for me, all ofthose, oh bless your heart.
Thank you.
I'll even, I'll even give youthe whole priest blessing.
There you go.
(33:15):
I could, I could do both.
I could bless this and asperge everyone.
Okay.
Give me one second to open this.
Oh, thank you, God.
(33:36):
All right.
So I hate calling them defectsnow, really, because Those defects
have turned into my assets.
They're the greatest giftsI've ever been given.
Because I've Thank you,God, for keeping me humble.
Next, my teeth will fall out.
(34:01):
That happened one time on stage playingBill W. One tooth fell out and it bounced.
Everybody watched it and thenit went into the orchestra pit.
In the next scene, some guy says,Mr. Wilson, I found your tooth!
Anyway, um,
To be a disease, there mustbe a defect in an organ.
(34:23):
And that defect produces symptoms.
For instance, you blow your pancreasout, it's not producing insulin.
You now have a disease called diabetes.
Or diabetes.
As some people like to say.
For a hundred years,medicine chased the symptoms.
Dizziness, dry mouth, blindness,neuropathy, all kinds of things.
(34:45):
They chased the symptoms and everybodydied from diabetes in childhood.
Now, we chase the defect.
You solve the defect,you solve the disease.
So we replace theinsulin, symptoms go away.
Ski down a mountain, 200 miles an hour,slam into a pine tree, shatter your
femur, femur rips through the skin.
(35:08):
Now you have a disease because the femuris an organ that produces blood cells.
So now you got a disease.
Everybody that has that conditionis going to have the same symptoms.
Weakness, radiating pain,bleeding, infection.
So you disinfect, you knit thebone, you put a cast on it.
(35:28):
You sew up the skin, you stay off ofit, and in time, the defect heals, and
now you no longer have a broken femur.
And anybody that has that broken femurhas the same disease, same symptoms.
So we call this a disease.
Why do we call it a disease?
We have a bunch of defects.
Number one, we havefaulty neurotransmitters.
(35:50):
Number two, we addicts and alcoholicsdo not produce a sufficient
quantity and quality of medication.
of dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter neededby the brain so that we can have a sense
of well being and be present in life.
Every time we take an action thatleads to survival, we get dopamine.
(36:15):
The dopamine passes through the VT.That's called the ventral tegmenta.
That's the pleasure track.
It sorts out the neurotransmitters.
And if it says, wow, lot of dopamine,it sends a signal to the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is memoryassociated with survival.
It sends a signal to the hippocampusand says, Hey, hippocampus, this is
(36:38):
a lot of dopamine, remember this,and repeat this action always.
Now there's a neuropathwayin the brain for life.
There's an area called the amygdala,A M Y G D A L A. The amygdala
does not have language attached.
It doesn't think.
So it doesn't know you have a job, orkids, or that there are consequences.
(37:01):
It doesn't know about morality.
It doesn't know that if Gary smokescrack, Gary will end up being chained
to a bed, naked, wearing a clownmask in the middle of Times Square.
It doesn't know that.
There's consequence.
Because it doesn't think.
It doesn't have language.
It compels us to takeaction that keeps us alive.
(37:22):
First thing it does, it makes us breathe.
It makes us drink water, sleep, eat food,have sex so the species can survive, and
protect ourselves in fight or flight.
Question for everybody.
Can you hold your breath until you die?
You're correct.
That's the amygdala doing its job.
(37:44):
You don't choose to breathe,you're going to breathe.
If I jumped up and jumped on Damien, ourwonderful juggler, with my big fat ass,
and I'm sitting on your chest, and Iput a plastic bag on your head and duct
tape your neck, what are you going to doto get that plastic bag off your head?
You'll do whatever you have to do, right?
You'd kill me if you had to,because you need to survive.
(38:09):
When you do, you get dopamine.
So the hippocampus says, repeatthis and we keep breathing.
Same thing happens with drinkingwater, sleeping, eating food, having
sex, and protecting ourselves.
It promotes survival.
Now, crazy defect.
When Gary took his first drink, therewas an abnormal flood of dopamine.
(38:31):
That happened because thenucleus accumbens, which
produces the dopamine, went in.
is faulty and the alcohol triggersan overproduction of dopamine.
Our brains have beenstarved for this dopamine.
Kind of getting off thesubject a little bit.
Is anybody here, when you were a kid, didyou feel like you didn't get the memo?
(38:55):
Like you didn't know how todo life and everybody else
seemed to know how to do life?
That happened to me.
That was a lack of neurotransmitters.
Chemistry in the brain.
Lack of dopamine,epinephrine, and serotonin.
So now I've got this flood of dopamine.
It rips through the ventral tegmenta, theventral tegmenta says to the hippocampus
(39:16):
and the parietal frontal lobe and thebasal ganglia, gets all those bad boys
involved and says, Oh my God, There'sa tsunami of dopamine, this is better
than sex, filet mignon, water, sleeping,or protecting ourselves, or breathing.
This is life itself.
And a neuropathway is carvedinto the brain for life that
(39:39):
says alcohol equals survival.
The drug equals survival.
That is not a choice.
That is carved into the brain now.
Now I'm living my life.
I'm not a psychopath.
I have a conscience.
I love my mother.
I say something awful to her.
I can see that she's hurt.
(40:01):
Now I feel guilt, and I feel shame,and I feel remorse, and I feel fear.
Guilt, shame, remorse, resentment,anger, fear all produce cortisol,
which is a stress hormone.
It floods the amygdala.
The amygdala's in pain.
It rears its head.
It swells up in size.
It gives it the ability tooverride rational thought.
(40:25):
That's what allows a good and moralperson to kill if they're attacked.
It overrides the rational mind.
It's called a megdala hijack.
The amygdala disconnectscommunication with the cortex.
When that happens, thecortex fails to process.
(40:49):
All thoughts of not usingare trapped in the cortex.
All thoughts of consequenceare trapped in the cortex.
All thoughts about my sobriety,about my kids, about my job.
are trapped in the cortex.
I can't go in and think those thoughts.
And the amygdala that doesn'tthink goes to the bar.
Calls the dope boy.
(41:10):
Then I get high.
I come down.
I can't believe it's happened again.
I feel more guilt, moreshame, more remorse.
Again, my brain is flooded with cortisol.
It sends out the signal, get thedrug, get the drug, get the drug.
It demands relief and thego to is now the drug.
More important than air, food, or water.
So I go get the drug, I have no choice.
(41:32):
That's what Bill was describingwhen he said, at certain times we
are unable to pull forth into ourconsciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the humiliation anddegradation of a week or a month ago.
We are without defenseagainst the first drink.
Then of course once I put it in my body.
The allergy kicks in if it's alcohol.
(41:52):
I don't have enough liverenzymes to convert the alcohol
quickly into a carbohydrate.
As it's converting it from ethanolto acetaldehyde to diacetic acid, it
gets stuck at the level of acetone.
That creates the phenomenon of craving.
Now, the brain detects this toxic acetone.
It says, here's another,bbbbllllllllllll, another defect.
(42:15):
We need more, You Acetone to get ridof the acetone that's already there
and that demands a second drink.
Now I got even more acetone,that demands a third drink.
The more I drink, the harder I crave.
If it's a drug, it's called hyperalgesia.
It's in the brain.
It makes pain more acute than it should beand as the drug leaves the neuroreceptor,
(42:35):
it causes acute emotional pain andthe amygdala now is in pain again.
It demands relief.
It says, get the drug and I haveto do another hit and another hit
and another hit and another hit.
And I can't stop.
And of course it makes a mess of my life.
And I feel guilt, shame, remorse,resentment, anger, and fear.
Which produces more cortisol.
(42:56):
Which inflames the amygdala.
Here comes the mental obsession.
Get the drug, get the drug, get the drug.
Amygdala hijack.
The cortex fails toprocess, it goes to sleep.
I can't access thoughts ofnot using and I go use again.
And around and around and around we go.
One night I went to a merchant'scigar bar in New York City and I
(43:19):
was drinking heavily and I met thisbatshit crazy woman named Marcia.
God bless her, she died a long time ago.
Um, from this disease,we got really hammered.
I said, let's go to my Times Squareapartment and get really twisted.
I've got some saline bags with morphine,my own IV drip machine, lots of crack.
She says, great.
Here we go.
We went, we did a lot of twistedthings, so we thought we should get
(43:42):
married, and, uh, she moved in Thenext day we had a knockdown drag out.
It was ugly.
I left the apartment.
I got more high, more drunkthan I ever had in my life.
I end up in jail.
When that happened, my hippocampus,it's job is to keep me alive.
It's working with the amygdala.
(44:03):
The hippocampus remembers conditions ofour life that help us stay high and drunk.
It also is the part of the brain thatlearns How to tell if food is rotten,
where to get the food, how to cook thefood, how to eat the food, what food's
good to eat, what food isn't good to eat.
It learns all that information.
(44:24):
It's working to keep us alive.
Now it's learned information abouthow to keep Gary drunken high.
Emotional disturbancegets me drunken high.
Because it causes amygdala hijack,which causes the mental obsession,
which causes the cortex to go to sleep.
So, I got more drunk and highthat night than I ever had before.
(44:46):
I ended up in jail.
My hippocampus now has a formula.
Marsha plus Gary equals fight, equalsdrugs and alcohol, equals survival.
Now, Marsha's not a sexpartner, not a girlfriend.
She is a delivery system for the drug.
This is a phenomenon of triggers.
(45:08):
Wow.
And this is why we can't stop.
Why can't they stop?
Frothy emotional appeal, ourloved ones begging us to stop
because they could, and we can't.
And that happens whether I win thelottery or my house burns to the ground.
Whether it's a nice day or a shitty day.
(45:28):
My brain is flooded with cortisol.
All my old resentments keepthe cortisol in my brain.
All my lack of forgivenesskeeps the cortisol in the brain.
24 7, I'm walking around with abrain saturated with stress hormones.
It doesn't take much for my brain tosay, I know a solution, get the drug.
(45:49):
Get the drug, get the drug, get the drug!
It gets louder and louder and louder.
And the amygdala disconnectsfrom the cortex, and I can't
stop myself from picking up.
So, what is the solution?
Well, number one, we gotta reducethe cortisol in the midbrain.
Steps four through nine give us relief.
(46:09):
They are comfort for us.
They give us relief from guilt, shame,remorse, resentment, anger, and fear,
thereby reducing cortisol levels.
Therapy also helps reducecar uh, cortisol levels.
Four through nine.
Then in step ten, we practice nolonger causing pain and suffering
(46:30):
for ourselves or other people.
I defy you to work step ten everyday and stay the same person.
You will change and grow.
If we stay the same person wewere, that person got high.
A change must occur.
An entire psychic change ifthere's any hope of our recovery.
(46:51):
Steps four through nine give us relief.
Now, here's the fascinating thing to me.
I wanted to know why I had friendswho were of other cultures, other
faiths, lack of faith, atheists, andthey got sober using the 12 steps.
As it turns out, When you take spiritualaction, helping other people, step
(47:15):
12, service, dramatically alters howthe neurons interact in the cortex.
They have a party.
Did you ever get goose bumps?
The hair stand up in the back ofyour neck when you pray and meditate?
Or you do kind things for otherpeople, or you talk about truth.
The neurons are going crazy inthe cortex, and we can choose
(47:36):
to create this condition.
When we do that, our thinking leavesour midbrain, where our addiction
lives, and it moves to the cortex,which is our spiritual center.
When we're kind, when we're loving,when we do unselfish things,
the neurons go nuts and theystart producing more glutamate.
That's another defect we addictshave, and alcoholics, We don't
(47:58):
produce enough glutamate, which isneeded to calm the amygdala and the
impulses that are happening there.
So by simply praying and meditating,being kind, doing service, No
matter what your belief is or yourlack of belief, if you take those
actions, you change brain function.
And it allows us to sustain recovery.
(48:20):
And our midbrain calms down and we'renow living out of the front of our brain.
The big book tells us many times a daywe remind ourselves we are no longer
running the show saying thy will be done.
These thoughts of God consciousness,these God thoughts must go
with us constantly, it says.
And we practice step 10, that'staking out the trash every day.
(48:43):
to keep the vessel clean afterwe've taken the time to clean it
out with steps four through nine.
We got to keep it clean.
That's daily housekeepingas Dr Bob calls it.
Trust God.
Clean house help others.
It's that simple.
Thanks God.
I just I'll never be able to repay afor for the gifts that I've been given.
(49:05):
And I'm so grateful tobe here with you all.
If anybody's interested tolearn more about this, come
and grab one of my flyers.
Go on my website.
I have some of these talks.
You could share with your lovedones about the neuroscience.
It helps them enormously tounderstand that we're not
bad people, that we were ill.
And that recovery is possible.
(49:27):
So, I think I'm done talking.
God bless you all.
Thank you for allowing me to be here.
Thank you.
I'm so grateful to be here, gratefulto be alive and sober with some
amount of dignity and integrity anda clear head and a loving heart.
Oh, dear God, may the meditationsof my heart and the words from
my mouth be pleasing to you.
So, I travel a lot this month,going to several cities.
(00:30):
And over the next few months, uh, anumber of states to carry the message.
And I'll travel anywhere becausetoday the stakes are high.
Addiction and alcoholism havebecome a global pandemic.
It is a plague on planet earth.
It is America's numberone public health crisis.
(00:54):
At this very moment, millionsare still sick and suffering.
and don't know about thespiritual solution to our disease.
They don't know aboutthe rooms of recovery.
Every year in the United States now, over250, 000 20 something year old men and
(01:15):
women are dying from fentanyl overdose.
That number, 250, 000, is doublethe number of all American military
casualties since World War II.
That's happening every year.
wiping out a generation.
And today I hope to answer two questions.
This is my mission.
(01:37):
Why can't we stop?
What is the solution?
My hope is to bring education toloved ones and family members to
understand that this is not a choice.
This is a progressive,chronic, fatal brain disease.
(01:58):
Not a choice, not a moral failing.
So that hopefully familiesand loved ones And our friends
and colleagues who are normies
can stop being angry and bitter andmove toward compassion and love and
so that we addicts can stop hatingourselves for the egregious behaviors
(02:21):
that we lived in for so long and, uh,and move toward compassion and love.
So first I'm going to tell alittle bit about my story so
you know why I'm sitting here.
Uh,
I was addicted to alcohol, marijuana,opium, hash, morphine, ketamine,
(02:41):
Percocet, Percodon, Vicodin, Restoril,LSD, Quaaludes, Black Beauties.
Whippets.
Whippet good.
IV heroin and crack cocaine.
I went to 47 detoxes, 11 tripsto jail, caught two felonies,
(03:01):
seven suicide attempts.
Gestalt therapy, Jungian therapy, Freudiantherapy, psychodynamics, electroshock
therapy, two Anthony Robbins firewalks.
Ayahuasca, puke and purge, and I spentone Christmas in Sub-Zero temperature
(03:22):
on a in a sweat lodge on the TaosPueblo, tripping on peyote, trying
to get sober with six naked, greasy,sweaty, ugly, old Indian shaman.
I still have nightmares about that,, even after doing EMDR trauma therapy.
(03:42):
Can't get that out of my head.
I'm from Akron, Ohio.
That's where my disease began.
In fact, the first time I wasever arrested was two blocks
from from Dr. Bob's house.
And I'm very proud of that.
I didn't know Dr. Bob at the time.
(04:04):
I wish I had.
I started drink when I was 12.
First of all, I'm adopted.
And I just met my birth familyin the last three or four years.
Uh, in my book, Walk the Talk withStep 12, I mentioned that my birth
name was William Joseph Weaver.
(04:25):
Which makes me Bill WI thought that waskind of a corny joke and I put it in
the book and I got a call one night fromthis guy who said he was my twin brother.
Turns out it was true and he had the samebirth name and we had a heroin addict
for a mother who was popping out babiesand selling us for five grand a piece.
(04:47):
And he found me.
Uh, he ha I am an Episcopal priest.
Now there's life beyondyour wildest dreams.
Nothing this crack whore ever thoughtI'd be doing was being a priest.
And he's a Baptist minister.
We both teach the steps.
I teach it in treatment.
He teaches it in theGeorgia prison system.
And we both got clean and sober onthe same month of the same year.
(05:12):
That crazy twin thing, you know?
And there are six otherbrothers and sisters.
We're all addicts.
We're all alcoholics.
Both birth parents died.
This is a genetic illness.
If you have certainsymptoms, I had them all.
So my adopted family, Bruce and MaryEvelyn, they met during, uh, before World
(05:33):
War II, when they were in high school.
They, uh, they were married 69 years.
They died, uh, Within one month fromeach other, I never heard them fight,
never raised their voice to each other.
They didn't drink, they didn'tsmoke, they wouldn't say shit
if they had a mouthful of it.
They were the kindest people,
and never touched alcohol.
Bruce lined up the convertible automobilesfor the Football Hall of Fame parade
(05:57):
just south of Akron every year.
And one year, the Board of Trustees ofthe Football Hall of Fame gave him a
whiskey decanter made out of porcelainthat looked like the football hall of fame
and inside that bottle was 80 year old jimbeam whiskey i was eight years old when
it arrived bruce never drank but he lovedfootball so he built a shadow box in his
(06:20):
den and he put that bottle in it With atrack light shining on it, like it was a
shrine to the Virgin Mary or something.
And, uh, I remember the day it arrived,they were a very strict family.
Pentecostal.
My grandfather was a Pentecostal minister.
And alcohol, very bad.
(06:41):
And at eight years old,I wanted to find out why.
So every time I was alone, I'd gointo the den, I'd pick that bottle
up and shake it, listen to it.
The cork in the bottle was thefootball, which is the roof
of the football hall of fame.
If you've ever seen it, it's agiant football makes the roof.
That was the cork in the bottle.
Well, I was 12.
I had a growth spurt one weekend.
(07:02):
They were going to take me to arelatives farm and leave me for the
weekend while they went on a trip.
And I said, I'm notgoing, I'm staying home.
And Bruce talked to Mary Evelynand he said, you know what?
You're a good kid.
And you can certainly takecare of yourself for a weekend.
We're going to let you stay home.
If you touch that bottle, I'mgoing to whip your ass till it
(07:23):
looks like peppermint candy.
Oh, I swear, dad.
No, I wouldn't do that.
Soon as the car disappeared, I ran intothe den, grabbed that bottle, took it
into the kitchen, filled up a tea kettle,got a head of steam going very carefully.
Peeled the seal off that bottle.
I saw that on I love Lucy
(07:44):
And it worked and I had my first drinkInstantly the wall went down that
separated me from every other human being
and I felt courageous I felt like asuperhero over the course of the weekend.
I drank that entire bottle Ispent most of the weekend running
(08:08):
around outside at night naked.
Yeah, I don't know why that is.
Every time I drank, I took my clothes off.
If I smoked crack, I tore them off.
Aren't you glad I'm sober?
I think there's a line in the bigbook that says a 65 year old fat naked
(08:28):
crack whore is an unlovely creature.
That was me.
So, uh, the game was on.
The allergy kicked in right awayand I started drinking every day.
Liquor from our Italian neighbors.
They had casks full of wine and grappaand I would take dish dishwashing
liquid bottles and rinse them out andgo over to their house, steal the booze,
(08:51):
hide it in my bedroom, lay down in myroom and drink all night long, somehow
managed to get up and go to school.
When I was 16 years old, I got my licenseand the next morning I drank a bottle
of grappa, had my first blackout, killedtwo people in an automobile accident.
(09:12):
Over the course of my high school days.
By the time I was a senior,I had totaled 11 automobiles.
Had killed two people, maimed fourothers who never fully recovered, and
blew a kid's hand off with a shotgun.
And got arrested a bunch oftimes for walking around downtown
Akron without clothes on.
(09:34):
Yeah, that was a real problem for me.
Now I get paid to keep my clothes on.
So my father came to me one day andhe said, I wanted to be an actor.
And he said, your mother and I havetalked and we think you should go
to acting school in New York cityso that you won't have to drive.
That'd be a solution to yourproblem because you're going to
(09:54):
kill somebody else or kill yourself.
And I thought, well, this is a good idea.
So when I was 17 years old,I was handed 5, 000 in cash.
And I took the Amtrak fromAkron to New York City.
My first morning in NewYork, I was walking around.
I saw this business called Abra Kadabra.
They sold costumes and partysupplies and magic tricks.
(10:17):
And there was a nightclubI wanted to get into.
And you had to either be veryfamous, mad sexy, or a freak.
Now I was 17 years old.
I trained to be a dancer,to be a tap dancer.
And I was ripped and buff, 17 yearsold, love being naked in public.
(10:37):
I went out and I bought this big strawfarmer hat at abracadabra, a six foot
long red ostrich feather boa, this wasthe 1970s, and a pair of extremely short,
very thin, Gold LeMay Daisy Duke shorts.
I took off all my clothes, put on thisbig straw hat, the red boa, the little
(10:59):
LeMay shorts, and I made a beelinefor Studio 54, which, uh, was a very
Famous nightclub at the time.
Red carpet, lots of celebrities,limos parked down the block.
The doorman decided who couldcome in, and he sees this half
naked 17 year old dressed likea freak, and he goes, This kid!
(11:20):
Like it said in Bill'sstory, I had arrived.
That night I met cocaine.
Had sex with a lot of celebrities.
And, uh, I took all my clothesoff and danced naked on the
dance floor at Studio 54.
Now, as a matter of fact, I'm in adocumentary that's on Netflix right now.
(11:41):
called Studio 54.
If you watch it, look for a tall,skinny kid in red hot pants with a
woman wearing a leopard skin sarong.
That's me shaking my ass when I was 17.
And, uh,
so I worked there for a while while I wentto the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
So I would get hammered all nightand the American Academy classes
(12:04):
didn't start till 2 p. m. And Iwas a teenager, so no problem.
I could get plenty of sleep, be outall night doing drugs and alcohol.
I couldn't hang on tomoney to save my life.
And somebody said, you know, youshould become a male prostitute.
I said, that sounds like a good idea.
So I did that and I was strippingto clubs all over New York.
Now I'm doing lots of drugs in additionto drinking and lost a moral a day.
(12:31):
After about two years ofthat, I saw an advertisement.
They were looking for a woman.
What they called replacementswing dancers for a Broadway show.
They wanted tall, young athletic maleswho were trained dancers, who would be
willing to dance in their jock strap.
in a locker room scene, um, playinga Texas Aggie football player
(12:53):
in the Broadway musical, TheBest Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Well, I thought, I'm awhore and I dance naked.
So this is a no brainer.
So I auditioned.
That was my first Broadway show.
I did 39 Broadway musicalsaltogether, traveled all over
the world, made crazy money.
I was meaner than a snakeand just absolutely crazy.
(13:15):
Very difficult to work with.
Super prima donna.
I'll speed ahead.
You know, that, that professionreally allowed for drugs and alcohol.
I had people on staff.
I had a manager and a dresser and aguy named Brad who I paid full time and
benefits to follow me around and make sureI made it back to the theater on time.
(13:36):
And I used to hide from him.
That's how crazy I was.
And I was paying him to keep trackof me because I didn't want him to
see the twisted things I was doing.
And, uh,
I remember we were at a bar somewhere inWisconsin and they were Trashing the bar
and they had a tabletop Pac Man machine.
I put that in the back of my tour busso I could put lines of cocaine on it.
(14:00):
And they had cup holders, fourof them that held 40 ounces.
So I put bottles of unblended Scotchin that with big bendy straws I got
from a truck stop and I would turn themachine on and do my lines of cocaine.
I never played Pac Man, butI loved hearing Waka, Waka.
When I, when I was doing the cocaine.
Funny thing about triggers.
(14:21):
A few years ago, I was the keynotespeaker at the California State
Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And, uh, I was checking into the hoteland I heard, Waka, Instantly, I got
bubble guts and diarrhea and wentup to my room and puked for an hour.
Because my body, my brain, this disease,thought I was about to get high.
(14:43):
Just by hearing that Pac Manmachine, the phenomena of triggers
which occur in the midbrain.
Fascinating thing.
So everything got really crazy.
I'm going to speed ahead.
My last Broadway adventure, I washired to play Daddy Warbucks and Annie.
I'm telling this story for Mike.
Um, and thank you for bringingme here and Robert and Heidi.
(15:06):
And it's just such anhonor to be with you guys.
So I was hired to playDaddy Warbucks and Annie.
And, uh, that's the tall, bald guy.
And before we opened on Broadway, we hadto play six cities outside of New York.
That's to get your timing down andmake sure the show goes smooth.
(15:28):
It's kind of like a working rehearsal.
And we were in Albany, NewYork at the State Theater.
Which holds about 4, 000 people andthis particular performance was 1,
000 a ticket for an AIDS benefit.
And that night the governor of NewYork would be there, the mayor of
New York City, lots of celebritiesand the New York Press Corps, The New
(15:50):
York Times, The Daily News, The Post.
Uh, Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Frank Richfrom the Times, New York Magazine,
they were all gonna be in the audience.
And we had 65 adult actors, 30 pieceorchestra, conductor, the tech staff, the
administrative staff, 20 little orphangirls, their mothers, their teachers,
(16:12):
their chaperones, Annie the dog, Annie thedog's under, Sandy the dog's understudy.
The dog trainers, 18 massive trucksfull of equipment was a big deal.
My days consisted of the following, wakeup in the morning, knock back a scotch,
smoke a joint, pop a Valium, go to thebathroom, knock back another scotch,
(16:36):
pop another Valium, smoke another joint,get in bed, smoke a little crack, stay
in bed, Four o'clock in the afternoon,dresser shows up, slaps me, gets me into
the bathroom, gets me in the shower.
Off I go to the theater.
I manage to do my show.
I lay off drugs andalcohol till intermission.
I do a little bit of cokeand one Jack Daniels and eat.
(16:57):
Then at night I'm out in thenightclubs with coke hookers and booze.
Coke hookers and booze.
Coke hookers and booze.
Then before going to bed, I would eatcopious amounts of eggs, pancakes,
and orange juice to soak up the booze.
Then I would inject heroin, and thiswas your grandfather's heroin, not
this stuff that's going around today.
(17:17):
It was real.
My last Broadway adventure, I washired to play Daddy Warbucks and Annie.
I'm telling this story for Mike.
Um, and thank you for bringingme here and Robert and Heidi.
And it's just such anhonor to be with you guys.
So I was hired to play Daddy Warbucksand Annie, and that's the tall, bald guy.
(17:40):
And before we opened on Broadway, we hadto play six cities outside of New York.
That's to get your timing down andmake sure the show goes smooth.
It's kind of like a working rehearsal.
And we were in Albany, NewYork at the State Theater.
Which holds about 4, 000 people, andthis particular performance was 1,
(18:01):
000 a ticket for an AIDS benefit.
And that night, the governor of NewYork would be there, the mayor of
New York City, lots of celebrities,and the New York Press Corps, the New
York Times, the Daily News, the Post.
Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Frank Richfrom the Times, New York Magazine, they
were all going to be in the audience.
(18:21):
And we had 65 adult actors, 30 pieceorchestra, conductor, the tech staff,
the administrative staff, 20 littleorphan girls, their mothers, their
teachers, their chaperones, Annie the dog,Annie the dog's under, Sandy the dog's
understudy, The dog trainers, 18 massivetrucks full of equipment was a big deal.
(18:46):
My days consisted of the following.
Wake up in the morning, knock back ascotch, smoke a joint, pop a Valium,
go to the bathroom, knock backanother scotch, pop another Valium,
smoke another joint, get in bed,smoke a little crack, stay in bed.
Four o'clock in the afternoon, dressershows up, slaps me, gets me into
(19:06):
the bathroom, gets me in the shower.
Off I go to the theater.
I manage to do my show.
I lay off drugs andalcohol till intermission.
I do a little bit of cokeand one Jack Daniels and eat.
Then at night, I'm out in the nightclubswith coke hookers and booze, coke hookers
and booze, coke hookers and booze.
Then before going to bed, I would eatcopious amounts of eggs, pancakes,
(19:29):
and orange juice to soak up the booze.
Then I would inject Uh, heroin.
And this was your grandfather's heroin,not this stuff that's going around today.
It was real heroin.
inject heroin into my jugularto put myself to sleep.
And when you do that kind of heroin,it opiates your digestive tract,
(19:49):
as many of you know, and whateverfood you've eaten gets trapped down
there and it builds up pressure.
And at some point you open your mouth toyawn or say hello and you ninja vomit.
Like, I could knock your glassesoff from here with a stream of puke.
And, uh, so, now it's the show.
Audience is full.
Celebrities, men in tuxes, women informals, the orchestra's playing.
(20:11):
I've just told Anniethat I'm gonna adopt her.
I'm itching.
I'm seeing spots and I'm sweating a lot.
I don't feel good at all.
I'm supposed to waltz with Annie.
The Warbucks set disappears.
The stage is flooded with dry ice.
A twinkle drop appears withthe night sky and the moon.
It's beautiful.
Costs about a quarter million dollars.
(20:31):
It's beautiful.
Every night when that thing wenton, the audience would go, Ah!
So the orchestra starts playing.
It's French horns and violins.
and the cellos.
And I tell Annie I'm going toadopt her and I put her little nine
year old feet on my big feet andI start showing her how to waltz.
And we start waltzing around thestage as I'm singing a ballad called
(20:53):
Something Was Missing My Brain.
I'm choreographed at the end of thesong to pick up the little girl,
hold her in front of me, And hitthe last note of the song, no, what,
(21:14):
and I vomited right in Annie'sface point, blank range.
She screamed the audience,screamed it, made the papers.
I kept puking.
I dropped her on the floor.
I started laughing like it was thefunniest thing I'd ever seen because
I was very inappropriate and selfish.
(21:34):
They brought the curtain down,announced there would now
be a 45 minute intermission.
The producer came out,punched me in the face.
I punched him.
He punched me.
I picked up a chair,started beating him with it.
Then the police arrived andI spent a few months in jail.
That was the end of my Broadway career,
needless to say.
(21:54):
So I went back to my apartment in TimesSquare and I tried to sell drugs to make
a living, which I didn't do well at all.
I was so paranoid.
It was in Times Square.
I was so paranoid about it.
that I would army crawl around theapartment because I didn't want the ninja
police to see me through the window and Ispent a lot of time hiding under my bed.
(22:17):
I didn't wear clothes.
I would go out at night and mug people.
Um, I got arrested a couple of times,uh, breaking and entering armed robbery,
breaking and entering occupied dwelling.
I used to mug people, beat them in thehead, take their stuff and pawn it.
Pawning just abouteverything that I owned.
It got really ugly.
(22:39):
One night I decided, and I looked likeI'd been in a concentration camp, I
looked like a combination between MelGibson, Gary Busey, Nick Nolte, and
Charles Manson all on a very bad day.
I made a decision to murder a drug dealer.
I was, I carried a gun all the time,and I met him in a park in Forest Hills,
(22:59):
Queens in the middle of the night.
I whipped the gun out, stuck in his face,pulled the trigger, and the gun jammed.
Then his friends began to beat me.
I had a broken sternum, four brokenribs, two stab wounds right up here.
They grabbed my hair, cut it.
They took a knife and cut me acrossthis nostril and this eyelid.
(23:20):
They stuffed my mouth with crack pipes,beat me in the face with a baseball bat.
That's when I lost consciousness.
When I woke up, I was profusely bleeding.
And they had defecatedon me from head to toe.
And if that hasn't happenedto you, that's a yet.
That's still waiting for all of us.
You don't have to do it.
I did it for you.
(23:43):
I crawled out to the street.
By the grace of God, acab driver stopped for me.
That man was in NarcoticsAnonymous and tried to 12 step me.
Uh, he helped me pick glass outof my mouth for about an hour.
Had some rags he tore off andhelped stop some of the bleeding.
Wrapped me up in a blanket.
I convinced him to takeme back to my apartment.
(24:05):
I had no keys.
I had to break in through the bathroomwindow and I crawled to the kitchen.
I was starving.
I opened the refrigerator.
There was nothing in therebut a carton of milk.
I impulsively grabbed it, downed it.
It had been spoiled for a very long time.
I began to vomit.
The sink filled up with amberliquid, which was Jack Daniels, with
little white lumps of curdled milk.
And in my psychotic state,I thought those little white
(24:27):
lumps of milk was crack cocaine.
So naturally, I stuck my face inthe sink and lapped up my puke, spit
out those little lumps, dried themoff, stuffed them in a broken crack
pipe, and tried to smoke my puke.
And when that didn't work,I was done with this life.
I had a mason jar with about 200Vicodin in it in the hall closet,
and one more bottle of Jack Daniels.
(24:48):
I guzzled that Jack, Itook all the Vicodin.
Well, you could see it ifmy sleeves were unbuttoned.
I took a big knife, And I cut mywrists under my arms and my elbows so
I would bleed out as fast as possible.
And I laid down on the floorin a pool of blood, hoping to
die, to leave this dense plane.
And suddenly I had a moment of clarity.
(25:11):
It was like a voice inside myhead said, you don't want death.
You want more life anddon't know how to get it.
I'm going to show you.
And suddenly my mind was floodedwith thoughts about an actor I had
worked with named Richard Springle.
He played Colonel Pickering to myHenry Higgins in the world tour.
of My Fair Lady, the Broadway show.
He was always very kind to me.
(25:32):
I'd never been to his house.
Hadn't spoken to him on thephone in three or four years.
And suddenly I rememberedhis phone number.
I crawled to my landline.
I called.
He answered.
I said, Colonel, I'm dying.
Help.
And then I passed out.
He called Information 411.
Asked for Bruce Kimball in Akron, Ohio.
He knew my father.
Got my address.
(25:52):
Turns out he lived directlyacross Times Square from me.
Is it odd or is it God?
He made a beeline across Times Square.
Doorman didn't want to let him in.
He screamed at him to call an ambulance,punched the doorman, went into the
building, broke my front door apart,found me covered with feces and
blood, blue, not breathing, carriedme into the elevator, out of the
(26:16):
building, and into a waiting ambulance.
I regained consciousness about twoweeks later, strapped onto a gurney in a
psych ward, In a facility in New Jersey.
And I knew that I had hit my bottom.
Because I was in New Jersey.
Laughter.
(26:36):
I love to laugh.
I'm so done with suffering.
That began the first of19 trips to treatment.
I got high every timeI walked out the door.
That was over a period of four years.
And in treatment, here comes solution.
I met two men, Mel and Edgar.
Edgar's father was one of the first87 members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(26:58):
Thank you so much.
He was a calligrapher.
He created those red and black signs thatsay, think, think, think, live, live.
That was Edgar's father's calligraphythat we're still using today.
Edgar did his steps with Bill Wand a man named Hank Parkhurst, who
helped get the big book published.
He was Bill's first fancy in New York,and he wrote two of the chapters in the
(27:21):
big book to wives and to the employer.
And Edgar did his stepswith Bill and Hank.
The other gentleman's name was Mel Barger,Mel B. He wrote five of the books that
are listed in the front of the big book.
Uh, Pass It On, A. A. Comes of Age,Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers.
He edited As Bill Sees It.
He was A. A. 's officialhistorian and archivist and the
(27:44):
editor of the international A.
A. Grapevine magazine.
He was also Bill W. 's travelingcompanion and gave the eulogy
at Lois Wilson's funeral.
And Mel and Edgar were great pals.
And, uh, Mel was in New York at thetime writing a book on Ebby Thatcher.
In any event, I got to know thesemen over a period of four years.
(28:04):
And my last time in treatment, theyshowed up and they had me discharged.
They rode the train back to New York.
They took my keys, strip searchedme, had me pack a bag, convinced
me to sign paperwork making FatherEdgar, he was a retired Episcopal
priest, uh, and he became my guardian.
(28:25):
And I was 35 years old, been onBroadway, traveled around the
world, And they treated me likea five year old on a mommy leash.
They said, whatever's happeningin New York when the sun goes down
is none of your damn business.
You're not allowed outside alone withoutadult supervision, is what they told me.
We did the steps quickly and often,as they were designed to be done,
(28:48):
in the explicit, uh, specific,clear cut directions that are found
in the first 164 pages of of abook called Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, today that book is on theLibrary of Congress's list of the top
50 books, the most transformed Americansociety in the 20th century, making
(29:08):
it one of the most important documentsever written in American history.
That's according to theLibrary of Congress.
The big book is now translatedinto 72 languages and is
available in 194 countries.
Amazing.
And has transformed the livesof tens of millions of people.
(29:30):
So I did what Edgar and Mel told me to do.
I went to six to eight meetings a day.
I got my first bond C when I had 30 days.
That's how it was done in theold days when we had a 50 to 75
percent permanent sobriety rate asopposed to 3 to 5 percent today.
It was done quickly and often.
The fourth step was a simple checklist.
(29:52):
A drunken monkey coulddo it in 20 minutes.
It didn't take weeks and weeks and weeks.
You didn't write a novel.
It wasn't like that.
My favorite quote from Dr. Bob,he said, The 12 steps are not
spiritual philosophies to bestudied, understood, and then taken.
They are survival actions to be carriedout immediately to provide instant
(30:14):
hope and relief and save our lives.
They are a tourniquet tostop the bleeding now.
It is battlefield triage.
I totaled 11 automobiles.
I terrorized my family.
I lost my Broadway career.
I lost my sanity, my legal freedom, mybank account, my physical health, all
of my friends, two marriages, all ofthat because of my active addiction.
(30:41):
I just thought I'm a bad person.
My family thought I was a bad person.
Because they thought this was a choice.
I thought it was a choice.
The most life changing moment waswhen Mel and Edgar sat down, and we
read The Doctor's Opinion, in thebig book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(31:03):
I was so fascinated by that, I went toschool again, and studied neurobiology,
because I wanted to understand Whythe steps worked for people who
didn't believe in God and I wantedto know more about brain mechanics
And what exactly happened to me?
Do we still have time?
How much time do I have?
You good?
You sure?
(31:25):
My grandpa was a preacher and I'dcall him sometime on Sunday and
say how to go today at the serviceHe'd say preached him down to two
So that might happen, you know,those are the two you need to reach
So, um, I studied neurobiology.
(31:46):
I really wanted to understandthe addicted brain.
Excuse me.
So, this is my mission.
To educate people about this.
Through the lens of 2024 neuroscience.
And I'll tell you what.
(32:07):
Bill W. That book had to be guidedby the hand of some divine power.
Cause Bill was a nightschool lawyer, dropout.
He invented insider trading.
He was a very sketchy guy.
But he was brilliant.
He didn't know aboutneuroscience, but he nailed it.
He observed every single detail.
(32:29):
He even describes, I think it'son page 22, at certain times we
are unable to pull forth into ourconsciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the humiliation anddegradation of a week or a month ago.
We are without defenseagainst the first drink.
He is describing the A phenomenacalled amygdala hijack.
(32:50):
You can google it, look it up.
Addiction, amygdala, A M YG D A L A, amygdala hijack.
So, we addicts and alcoholics,we've got a number of defects.
You know, I even hatecalling them defects now.
Cause for me, all ofthose, oh bless your heart.
Thank you.
I'll even, I'll even give youthe whole priest blessing.
There you go.
(33:15):
I could, I could do both.
I could bless this and asperge everyone.
Okay.
Give me one second to open this.
Oh, thank you, God.
(33:36):
All right.
So I hate calling them defectsnow, really, because Those defects
have turned into my assets.
They're the greatest giftsI've ever been given.
Because I've Thank you,God, for keeping me humble.
Next, my teeth will fall out.
(34:01):
That happened one time on stage playingBill W. One tooth fell out and it bounced.
Everybody watched it and thenit went into the orchestra pit.
In the next scene, some guy says,Mr. Wilson, I found your tooth!
Anyway, um,
To be a disease, there mustbe a defect in an organ.
(34:23):
And that defect produces symptoms.
For instance, you blow your pancreasout, it's not producing insulin.
You now have a disease called diabetes.
Or diabetes.
As some people like to say.
For a hundred years,medicine chased the symptoms.
Dizziness, dry mouth, blindness,neuropathy, all kinds of things.
(34:45):
They chased the symptoms and everybodydied from diabetes in childhood.
Now, we chase the defect.
You solve the defect,you solve the disease.
So we replace theinsulin, symptoms go away.
Ski down a mountain, 200 miles an hour,slam into a pine tree, shatter your
femur, femur rips through the skin.
(35:08):
Now you have a disease because the femuris an organ that produces blood cells.
So now you got a disease.
Everybody that has that conditionis going to have the same symptoms.
Weakness, radiating pain,bleeding, infection.
So you disinfect, you knit thebone, you put a cast on it.
(35:28):
You sew up the skin, you stay off ofit, and in time, the defect heals, and
now you no longer have a broken femur.
And anybody that has that broken femurhas the same disease, same symptoms.
So we call this a disease.
Why do we call it a disease?
We have a bunch of defects.
Number one, we havefaulty neurotransmitters.
(35:50):
Number two, we addicts and alcoholicsdo not produce a sufficient
quantity and quality of medication.
of dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter neededby the brain so that we can have a sense
of well being and be present in life.
Every time we take an action thatleads to survival, we get dopamine.
(36:15):
The dopamine passes through the VT.That's called the ventral tegmenta.
That's the pleasure track.
It sorts out the neurotransmitters.
And if it says, wow, lot of dopamine,it sends a signal to the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is memoryassociated with survival.
It sends a signal to the hippocampusand says, Hey, hippocampus, this is
(36:38):
a lot of dopamine, remember this,and repeat this action always.
Now there's a neuropathwayin the brain for life.
There's an area called the amygdala,A M Y G D A L A. The amygdala
does not have language attached.
It doesn't think.
So it doesn't know you have a job, orkids, or that there are consequences.
(37:01):
It doesn't know about morality.
It doesn't know that if Gary smokescrack, Gary will end up being chained
to a bed, naked, wearing a clownmask in the middle of Times Square.
It doesn't know that.
There's consequence.
Because it doesn't think.
It doesn't have language.
It compels us to takeaction that keeps us alive.
(37:22):
First thing it does, it makes us breathe.
It makes us drink water, sleep, eat food,have sex so the species can survive, and
protect ourselves in fight or flight.
Question for everybody.
Can you hold your breath until you die?
You're correct.
That's the amygdala doing its job.
(37:44):
You don't choose to breathe,you're going to breathe.
If I jumped up and jumped on Damien, ourwonderful juggler, with my big fat ass,
and I'm sitting on your chest, and Iput a plastic bag on your head and duct
tape your neck, what are you going to doto get that plastic bag off your head?
You'll do whatever you have to do, right?
You'd kill me if you had to,because you need to survive.
(38:09):
When you do, you get dopamine.
So the hippocampus says, repeatthis and we keep breathing.
Same thing happens with drinkingwater, sleeping, eating food, having
sex, and protecting ourselves.
It promotes survival.
Now, crazy defect.
When Gary took his first drink, therewas an abnormal flood of dopamine.
(38:31):
That happened because thenucleus accumbens, which
produces the dopamine, went in.
is faulty and the alcohol triggersan overproduction of dopamine.
Our brains have beenstarved for this dopamine.
Kind of getting off thesubject a little bit.
Is anybody here, when you were a kid, didyou feel like you didn't get the memo?
(38:55):
Like you didn't know how todo life and everybody else
seemed to know how to do life?
That happened to me.
That was a lack of neurotransmitters.
Chemistry in the brain.
Lack of dopamine,epinephrine, and serotonin.
So now I've got this flood of dopamine.
It rips through the ventral tegmenta, theventral tegmenta says to the hippocampus
(39:16):
and the parietal frontal lobe and thebasal ganglia, gets all those bad boys
involved and says, Oh my God, There'sa tsunami of dopamine, this is better
than sex, filet mignon, water, sleeping,or protecting ourselves, or breathing.
This is life itself.
And a neuropathway is carvedinto the brain for life that
(39:39):
says alcohol equals survival.
The drug equals survival.
That is not a choice.
That is carved into the brain now.
Now I'm living my life.
I'm not a psychopath.
I have a conscience.
I love my mother.
I say something awful to her.
I can see that she's hurt.
(40:01):
Now I feel guilt, and I feel shame,and I feel remorse, and I feel fear.
Guilt, shame, remorse, resentment,anger, fear all produce cortisol,
which is a stress hormone.
It floods the amygdala.
The amygdala's in pain.
It rears its head.
It swells up in size.
It gives it the ability tooverride rational thought.
(40:25):
That's what allows a good and moralperson to kill if they're attacked.
It overrides the rational mind.
It's called a megdala hijack.
The amygdala disconnectscommunication with the cortex.
When that happens, thecortex fails to process.
(40:49):
All thoughts of not usingare trapped in the cortex.
All thoughts of consequenceare trapped in the cortex.
All thoughts about my sobriety,about my kids, about my job.
are trapped in the cortex.
I can't go in and think those thoughts.
And the amygdala that doesn'tthink goes to the bar.
Calls the dope boy.
(41:10):
Then I get high.
I come down.
I can't believe it's happened again.
I feel more guilt, moreshame, more remorse.
Again, my brain is flooded with cortisol.
It sends out the signal, get thedrug, get the drug, get the drug.
It demands relief and thego to is now the drug.
More important than air, food, or water.
So I go get the drug, I have no choice.
(41:32):
That's what Bill was describingwhen he said, at certain times we
are unable to pull forth into ourconsciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the humiliation anddegradation of a week or a month ago.
We are without defenseagainst the first drink.
Then of course once I put it in my body.
The allergy kicks in if it's alcohol.
(41:52):
I don't have enough liverenzymes to convert the alcohol
quickly into a carbohydrate.
As it's converting it from ethanolto acetaldehyde to diacetic acid, it
gets stuck at the level of acetone.
That creates the phenomenon of craving.
Now, the brain detects this toxic acetone.
It says, here's another,bbbbllllllllllll, another defect.
(42:15):
We need more, You Acetone to get ridof the acetone that's already there
and that demands a second drink.
Now I got even more acetone,that demands a third drink.
The more I drink, the harder I crave.
If it's a drug, it's called hyperalgesia.
It's in the brain.
It makes pain more acute than it should beand as the drug leaves the neuroreceptor,
(42:35):
it causes acute emotional pain andthe amygdala now is in pain again.
It demands relief.
It says, get the drug and I haveto do another hit and another hit
and another hit and another hit.
And I can't stop.
And of course it makes a mess of my life.
And I feel guilt, shame, remorse,resentment, anger, and fear.
Which produces more cortisol.
(42:56):
Which inflames the amygdala.
Here comes the mental obsession.
Get the drug, get the drug, get the drug.
Amygdala hijack.
The cortex fails toprocess, it goes to sleep.
I can't access thoughts ofnot using and I go use again.
And around and around and around we go.
One night I went to a merchant'scigar bar in New York City and I
(43:19):
was drinking heavily and I met thisbatshit crazy woman named Marcia.
God bless her, she died a long time ago.
Um, from this disease,we got really hammered.
I said, let's go to my Times Squareapartment and get really twisted.
I've got some saline bags with morphine,my own IV drip machine, lots of crack.
She says, great.
Here we go.
We went, we did a lot of twistedthings, so we thought we should get
(43:42):
married, and, uh, she moved in Thenext day we had a knockdown drag out.
It was ugly.
I left the apartment.
I got more high, more drunkthan I ever had in my life.
I end up in jail.
When that happened, my hippocampus,it's job is to keep me alive.
It's working with the amygdala.
(44:03):
The hippocampus remembers conditions ofour life that help us stay high and drunk.
It also is the part of the brain thatlearns How to tell if food is rotten,
where to get the food, how to cook thefood, how to eat the food, what food's
good to eat, what food isn't good to eat.
It learns all that information.
(44:24):
It's working to keep us alive.
Now it's learned information abouthow to keep Gary drunken high.
Emotional disturbancegets me drunken high.
Because it causes amygdala hijack,which causes the mental obsession,
which causes the cortex to go to sleep.
So, I got more drunk and highthat night than I ever had before.
(44:46):
I ended up in jail.
My hippocampus now has a formula.
Marsha plus Gary equals fight, equalsdrugs and alcohol, equals survival.
Now, Marsha's not a sexpartner, not a girlfriend.
She is a delivery system for the drug.
This is a phenomenon of triggers.
(45:08):
Wow.
And this is why we can't stop.
Why can't they stop?
Frothy emotional appeal, ourloved ones begging us to stop
because they could, and we can't.
And that happens whether I win thelottery or my house burns to the ground.
Whether it's a nice day or a shitty day.
(45:28):
My brain is flooded with cortisol.
All my old resentments keepthe cortisol in my brain.
All my lack of forgivenesskeeps the cortisol in the brain.
24 7, I'm walking around with abrain saturated with stress hormones.
It doesn't take much for my brain tosay, I know a solution, get the drug.
(45:49):
Get the drug, get the drug, get the drug!
It gets louder and louder and louder.
And the amygdala disconnectsfrom the cortex, and I can't
stop myself from picking up.
So, what is the solution?
Well, number one, we gotta reducethe cortisol in the midbrain.
Steps four through nine give us relief.
(46:09):
They are comfort for us.
They give us relief from guilt, shame,remorse, resentment, anger, and fear,
thereby reducing cortisol levels.
Therapy also helps reducecar uh, cortisol levels.
Four through nine.
Then in step ten, we practice nolonger causing pain and suffering
(46:30):
for ourselves or other people.
I defy you to work step ten everyday and stay the same person.
You will change and grow.
If we stay the same person wewere, that person got high.
A change must occur.
An entire psychic change ifthere's any hope of our recovery.
(46:51):
Steps four through nine give us relief.
Now, here's the fascinating thing to me.
I wanted to know why I had friendswho were of other cultures, other
faiths, lack of faith, atheists, andthey got sober using the 12 steps.
As it turns out, When you take spiritualaction, helping other people, step
(47:15):
12, service, dramatically alters howthe neurons interact in the cortex.
They have a party.
Did you ever get goose bumps?
The hair stand up in the back ofyour neck when you pray and meditate?
Or you do kind things for otherpeople, or you talk about truth.
The neurons are going crazy inthe cortex, and we can choose
(47:36):
to create this condition.
When we do that, our thinking leavesour midbrain, where our addiction
lives, and it moves to the cortex,which is our spiritual center.
When we're kind, when we're loving,when we do unselfish things,
the neurons go nuts and theystart producing more glutamate.
That's another defect we addictshave, and alcoholics, We don't
(47:58):
produce enough glutamate, which isneeded to calm the amygdala and the
impulses that are happening there.
So by simply praying and meditating,being kind, doing service, No
matter what your belief is or yourlack of belief, if you take those
actions, you change brain function.
And it allows us to sustain recovery.
(48:20):
And our midbrain calms down and we'renow living out of the front of our brain.
The big book tells us many times a daywe remind ourselves we are no longer
running the show saying thy will be done.
These thoughts of God consciousness,these God thoughts must go
with us constantly, it says.
And we practice step 10, that'staking out the trash every day.
(48:43):
to keep the vessel clean afterwe've taken the time to clean it
out with steps four through nine.
We got to keep it clean.
That's daily housekeepingas Dr Bob calls it.
Trust God.
Clean house help others.
It's that simple.
Thanks God.
I just I'll never be able to repay afor for the gifts that I've been given.
(49:05):
And I'm so grateful tobe here with you all.
If anybody's interested tolearn more about this, come
and grab one of my flyers.
Go on my website.
I have some of these talks.
You could share with your lovedones about the neuroscience.
It helps them enormously tounderstand that we're not
bad people, that we were ill.
And that recovery is possible.
(49:27):
So, I think I'm done talking.
God bless you all.
Thank you for allowing me to be here.
Thank you.
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