Bob D. - AA Speaker - Admitted we were Powerless, and Came to Believe NEW 2013 - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Is there anyone here that are from the Ghana nation.
All right, my name is Christine Franks. I'm a descendant
of the you and people of New South Wales South Coast,
and before we start our meeting, I would like everyone
to acknowledge and honor the Ghaner people whose land we

(00:28):
are meeting on today.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Thank you, good morning. My name is Bob Darren. I
am alcoholic and only through the grace of a God
that I was afraid to believe in that I've accessed
and maintained in my life through the process in this book,

(00:49):
good sponsorship and ability to remain sponsorable in a persistent
and consistent effort in this altruistic movement of our primary
purpose to help others. I haven't had a drink or
any mind or motion older in substance since October thirty one,
nineteen seventy eight, and that is the most important day

(01:09):
of my life, the day that I stopped dying. I'm
delighted to be here. I want to thank George and
all the members of the committee for all their hard work.
I've been on a lot of committees over the years.
It's really a labor of love and they've put a
lot of energy into putting this weekend together, and I
want to thank them for that. I'm curious before we start,

(01:33):
I'd like to open with a prayer, if you'd indulge
me with a moment of silence. Lord helped me to
set aside everything I think I know about you, everything
I think I know about myself, everything I think I
know about others, and everything I think I know about

(01:57):
this programmer recovery, all for a new experience in you, Lord,
a new experience in myself, a new experience in other people,
and a much needed new experience in this program or recovery. Amen.
Who's here? That's what I'm curious about. How many people

(02:20):
here are in their first year of absolute abstinence. Don't
be embarrassed. A great Oh, I'm really glad you guys
are here. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. Anybody here in their first
thirty days, Oh, welcome, welcome, all right, cool, very cool.

(02:47):
But in their last thirty days. I always want to
check catch you on the way out. The people that
are new, I hope you hear something here that will
drive you to get with your sponsor. There's nothing going
to occur this weekend. It's going to change your life.

(03:07):
But there may be some things that occur this weekend
that will lift a veil and you will see a
path that you didn't see before. Maybe you'll a fire
will be put under you to drive you to do
this thing that changes lives. One of the things that

(03:33):
prayer we opened with has been an important part of
my recovery for about thirty years now. I suppose I
got it. It's an extrapolation of a prayer I got
from a guy in Colorado who has been dead for
a few years. It was a dear friend named Don Pritz.
And the reason it's so it's such a great prayer

(03:53):
for me is that my ego is that part of
me that thinks it knows stuff right that blocks out
learning anything new. It's that thing, that little party that
feel the smug part, the part that you can't tell
anything to, the part that already knows, the part that

(04:14):
only can listen to see how people are wrong. That part,
and that is the enemy. The Buddhists often teach by story,
and one of their stories that depicts what they believe
is enlightenment. When you get to the point where you

(04:36):
know the most important thing you'd ever know is a
story about an old Chinese farmer who exists on this
meager piece of land with his son, and they're very,
very poor, and they don't own the land. A lord
owns the land and allows them to live there and

(04:56):
work hard in the field, and they have to tie
most of their crop to the lord. They get to
make a meager living. They don't own the house, they
don't own the tools that they toil the fields with.
They own only one thing it's their whole estate, and
that is a horse. And they're very proud to own

(05:17):
this horse. One day, the horse runs off and they
virtually have lost everything they owned, and all their friends
and neighbors and families come over to console them, to
tell them how horrible this is. And this little old
wise Chinese farmer just looks at them, and as they're

(05:38):
telling him how terrible this is, he's lost everything, and
he shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't know if
it's terrible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, and
they look at him like he's out of his mind.
A couple days later, the horse returns and it runs
right into the corral as the sun stands there holding

(06:00):
the gate with a leading a whole herd of wild horses,
and all of a sudden, this guy is the richest
man in the valley. He's hit the freaking horse lottery.
I mean, like, oh my god. And now his friends
and neighbors and family come over to celebrate, to tell
him how wonderful this is, and he he says, I

(06:22):
don't know if it's wonderful. Maybe it is, and maybe
it isn't. And they think this guy must be smoking
some You just hit the horse lottery. You don't even
think it's good, and he just goes, I don't know,
maybe it is, maybe it isn't. About a week later,
his only son is trying to break one of the
wild horses and he's thrown and he's crippled up pretty good,

(06:45):
and his leg is all mangled up and broken badly,
and he can't walk and he can't work, and of
course his loved ones and his friends and his family
come over to console him, to tell him how horrible
this is. It is only son has been mangled up
pretty badly, and he looks at them and he just
shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't know if it's bad.

(07:08):
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't, and they look
at him like he's crazy. This is your only son
and he's been crippled up and he's got a terribly
badly broken leg, and you don't even think that's bad.
And he says, I don't know. Maybe it is, and
maybe it isn't. A week later, the Chinese army came

(07:29):
through the valley and they would force all the young
men to go and fight in a battle where none
of them could survive, and they couldn't take the sun
because of his leg. See, the old man knew the
most important thing he would ever ever know what true
enlightenment is is that he doesn't know. It is the
ego that supposes. It is the ego that assumes. It

(07:53):
is the ego that judges. It is the ego that
is my enemy. And the worst thing I can carry
into today's recovery is the stuff that has come from yesterday,
because it limits me here. And I think sometimes some
of us puff ourselves up with how many years we

(08:16):
have or our accomplishments in AA, and it really blocks
us from having a legitimately new experience today in today's
own dead guy, I want to talk some and I
know there's a lot of new people here, so this
is very important. I want to talk some about what

(08:39):
step one has been in my experience. I'm not an
academic guy, even though we will talk about some things
in the book, but I've discovered over the years that
the most important thing that we have to give each
other is our experience, not our opinions, not our beliefs,
but our actual experience. You can argue with my opinions

(09:03):
because you may not be your opinions, but you can't
argue with my experience. It may not be your experience,
but it's my experience. I mean, it's just it is
what it is, and that you're going to get a
lot of that today. And the great thing in Alcoholics
Anonymous is that we connect with each other through the
genuineness of our experience that and I know everybody in

(09:24):
this room has had that experience sitting in a room
and someone is opening up and talking genuinely about themselves,
maybe some things that are hard to talk about, and
you're sitting there and something is happening between you and
that person. There's a resonating thing inside of you. Some
of you may have also had the experience of sitting

(09:46):
in a meeting and listening to a man or a
woman share something that intellectually you know you've never heard that,
and yet it is. It hits you with such a rightness,
as if you always knew it and you never heard
it before. And that has always been the power of alcoholics, Anonymous.

(10:09):
It's not in what we know, it's in our experience.
I was baffled by step one. I think Step one
is the hardest thing we ever do. It is so
difficult it kills most alcoholics because they can't do it.
When it says in the beginning of chapter three that
most of us have been unwilling to admit we were

(10:32):
real alcoholics, Oh my god, that is such a universal thing.
I bet you there's people in this room that sitting
here today know, beyond the shadow of doubt you're an alcoholic.
Yet you can look back in your life to a
point that you can see now you were alcoholic that
ten years ago, but you didn't know it, did you.
You would have bet anything you were an alcoholic back then.

(10:55):
We don't want to be alcoholic. I'd rather be I'd
rather be a mental health case. I'd rather be a
drug addict. I'd rather be anything but not in I
don't know what is it about it? I mean about
alcoholic who don't want to be alcoholics. But I am,
and I didn't know it, and very slowly, over years

(11:19):
of failure trying to control and enjoy my drinking, I
started to get it down in here. In chapter three,
it talks about step one differently than than it does
on the than it does here. Here it says we
admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had

(11:43):
become unmanageable. I could do that and not mean it
and think I meant it. You know, I could you
get me in a treatment center. I'm in a bunch
of people looking to me in a group. I'll admit
just about anything. I don't want to. I don't want
any problems here, you know. I don't want conflict. I
don't want I don't want the counselor jumping me after

(12:06):
the meeting. Yeah, I'm alcoholic, but that doesn't mean that
in my innermost self that I believe it. And that's
what it says. In chapter three. It says we've learned,
which implies that this is a little bit of a
process and an evolution, a learning that we learned that

(12:27):
we had to fully concede, fully concede. That's like complete,
fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.
This is the first step in recovery. There is a
place in every single one of us, I believe, where

(12:48):
you know stuff. It's not chatter up here. There's no
conversation in your head debating about it. You just know it,
like you know you need your next breath. And that's
where this stuff has to occur. My grand sponsor was
a a guy named Chuck Chamberlain, and he is to
say that this is an inside job and because of

(13:13):
because of this place that we have to do this
in here, and the reason it has to happen in here.
I think it exemplifies the great failure of intellectual approaches
to the treatment of alcoholism. Treatment centers will try in
thirty days to give you the equivalent of a doctorate

(13:34):
degree in alcoholism. I've watched. I watched. We have a big,
very fancy treatment center in the US called betty Ford.
And I would sit in meetings and people who just
got out of betty Ford, they're sober about six weeks,
would come to meetings and announce that they had they

(13:56):
just graduated from betty Ford, and they had new information
here as if they said it as if they'd graduated
from Harvard or Oxford or something. You know, I'm going
to say, it's a detox. It's not some kind of

(14:17):
but you get. They come out of there with a
head full of information. And how often that's a setup
And how often those people drink again? Because it has
to happen in here? Well, how do you do that?

(14:43):
I think there's a thing that happens that it involves
God's grace, whether you're kind, whether you believe in God
or not, there's something inside of us that has to happen,
and you can't manufacture it. It's a coming together of
our own bitter experience coupled with the experience of others

(15:04):
and the information in this book, where all of a
sudden stuff moves from up here down into here, down
into the heart where you start to get stuff. One
of the great contributors to alcoholics anonymous, and I don't
think any of us would be here without him, was
a man by the name of William G. Silkworth, and

(15:26):
doctor Silkworth was a psychiatrist who had devoted his life
to us, and he wasn't an alcoholic, and he was
a remarkable man, and he made inroads in it. He
had insights and intuitive insights into this disease that were

(15:47):
remarkable that decades later had been proven absolutely scientifically accurate
by research. But he just came to these conclusions from
our observation over and over and over again of us,
and on on. In the Big Book, on page x

(16:08):
x V I I I, Silkworth starts to talk about
these things that he's come to know. And this is
important information for me if I'm going to understand at
a gut level what it is to be powerless over alcohol.
In the first full paragraph on that page, Silky says,

(16:28):
we believe and suggested a few years ago that the
action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation
of an allergy. That the phenomenon of craving is limited
to this class. What class chronic alcoholics limited to this

(16:50):
class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. Well,
there's a whole bunch of stuff in those those couple lines.
The first thing he says that is meaningful to me
is he's talking about a type of alcoholic, a chronic alcoholic.
I am a chronic alcoholic. I have come to believe

(17:12):
over the years through observation that there is also acute alcoholics.
And it's a world of difference between the two positions.
Yet when the acute alcoholic drinks and the chronic alcoholic drinks,
we appear to be the same. If a chronic alcoholic

(17:32):
that has been drinking and an acute alcoholic that's been
drinking will end up in the office of a therapist
or a doctor or a clergy member, that both of
them will be easily diagnosed as alcoholic. But there is
a very major difference between the two, and it is
important to know which one you are, because the whole

(17:54):
course of your life depends upon knowing that, and your
whole recovery is differ different. The recovery of a chronic
alcoholic is different than the recovery of an acute alcoholic.
On page twenty and twenty one of the book, it
talks about the two differences. It talks about the first

(18:15):
on the very very bottom of page twenty It talks
about what could be considered an acute alcoholic. They call
him the hard drinker. I've heard other I've heard therapists,
I've heard doctors refer to it that are sober and
aas as the problem drinker. And it says, we have
a certain type of hard drinker. Now listen to the

(18:35):
symptomology of this guy. He may have the habit badly
enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. This is
not good. First of all, he's drinking habitually to the
point of mental and physical impairment. Most people would diagnose

(18:55):
this guy as an alcoholic. It says, it may cause
him to die a few years before his time. It's
shaving the more longer he drinks, it's shaving years off
his life. This is horrid. This is a life threatening disease.
And then here's the difference between him as an acute

(19:19):
alcoholic and me as a chronic alcoholic. And I bet
your every chronic alcoholic in here has known people like this.
Maybe you grew up with people like this, maybe you
went to church with people like this, or worked with
people like this. It says, if a sufficiently strong reason
ill health, the doctor says, hey, you got some liver

(19:42):
problems and some pancreas problems. You keep drinking, You're gonna
die a horrible death. Falling in love. Oh you meet
that perfect person and they don't want to put up
with your drinking, and they give you an ultimatum and
you just say okay, and you stop. Change of environment,
warning of a doctor, warning of a judge, warning of

(20:03):
a boss. These things become operative. This person, this person
who look is drinking horridly, can also stop or moderate,
although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may

(20:23):
even need medical attention. If he's been drinking every day,
he could even need detoxed. He might even have a
little bit of tremors when he stops drinking. But within
him is the ability to do. It's one of two things,
and there's two types of acute alcoholics. There's the type

(20:44):
that can stop, and there's the type that can stop
and moderate. I met you. I've had the experience at
least eight times where I'll be somewhere, maybe I'll be
on a plane sitting next to someone, or I'll be
in a restaurant. When I had my core operation, I
used to put on a lot of social events and
I'd meet people and they'd find out I was in

(21:05):
AA and they'd say, oh, I used to be an alcoholic. Really,
Oh yeah, When I was in the navy. Oh my god,
I was in the brig. I was. It was terrible.
But I see you're drinking a beer. Oh, I learned
my lesson. I just have a couple once in a while.
He don't have what I did. If I could do that,
I'm telling you, I'd be doing it. I'm not sober

(21:32):
because it's a moral issue here. You know, you kidding
me or you? I grew up with guy. I grew
up with a guy. He was the first time guy
I ever knew. I never never even knew what DTS were.
And he had first guy every had DTS in high school.
Ended up in a mental hospital in high school from

(21:52):
drinking because he'd oh, he just he couldn't stop once
he started, and he he and in a lot of trouble.
He got a DUI, he had his license taken away
from him, lost jobs, and then he fell in love
and this girl he fell in love with us just said,

(22:14):
you know, I'm not going to have it, and he
thought to himself, man, I don't want to lose her.
And he put the plug in the jug. And thirty
some years later, he's still sober, and he's happy, and
he's comfortable, and what happens to him when he quits
drinking is his problem is solved. But the chronic alcoholic,

(22:41):
like I am, when I quit drinking, my problem in
a vague way. I can't put my finger on it.
Right below the surface where I can't really see it,
my problem starts and it's baffling to me. I'm not
that guy. I would I used to want to be

(23:01):
that guy because I had sight seeing guys that could
make up their mind to quit drinking. And they did
and they were fine. There's people in AA like that
that are sober thirty years with the benefit of step
none and they're happy, joyous and free. I mean they're
they're their alcoholism ended when they quit drinking, and they
come to AA because it's it's it's it fills the

(23:22):
social gap that used to be filled by going to
the pubs. The AA to them is like the sober
Elks or something. You know. It's like you know, it's
it's a social support group and that's all they need
and there as long as they don't pick up the
first drink, their alcoholism is over. But mine is it. See,

(23:46):
I'm the guy. I'm not like them. They're they're kind
of cool people. When they quit drinking, they're nice people, friendly, able,
kind I'm I'd like to be that way. But when
I quit drinking, I just I really see how stupid
people are, you know, I just see it. I just

(24:08):
see the idiots. I mean, it's a gift. It's a gift.
What can I say? I just see how stupid everybody is.
I'm restless, so Forth says the bottom of the page.
He says, when we get sober, we're restless, We're irritable,
and we're discontented. What does that look like? What's this?

(24:32):
What do they mean by restless? Every chronic alcoholic whoever's
quit drinking knows what that means. That vague, undefinable feeling
that wherever you are it's not really where you need
to be. Now, I don't know where I need to be.
It's just not here. You know. Did you ever watch

(24:53):
a dog circle a living room looking for its spot
to lay down. I'm a dog that can't find its spot,
you know. I'm just there's an aimlessness. I spend my
whole life running from one thing to another, as if
this is the thing, and it's not the thing, and
this she's the one, and she's not the one. That's
the job, and it's not the job, and I can't

(25:15):
get settled anywhere. Really, I'm restless. The next symptomology that
so Coer says to and these are the things that
make me so sick sober. It drives me back to drinking. Restless.
And the second thing is irritable and people rub me
the wrong way. See, I don't know that. See what

(25:37):
it looks like to me is now that my mind's
clearing because I ain't drinking, I can just see, Oh
my god, you are really messed up. Oh my god.
You know, when I was drinking, this was a nice
place to work. But now, oh my god, they're doing

(25:59):
it wrong. They're they're idiots. And it's it's that it's
my ego puffing up. I don't know that. What I
really am is I'm an ego maniac with an inferiority complex.

(26:20):
And that what that means. It's not so much I'm
a piece of whale crap. I'm a very special piece
of whale crap. I don't I loathe myself. I have
no self esteem, and yet at the same time think
I'm better and smarter than everybody else that's crazy. It's
almost a contradiction. But I've always been that way. When

(26:43):
I get sober and and so constantly, consequently I get
angst up because life just seems to irritate me, and
and because people are doing it wrong, I don't. I
can't forgive them until they're properly ashe shamed of themselves.

(27:03):
So I keep score, because nobody's really properly ashamed of themselves.
So I keep score, and until I feel like I'm
gonna blow up, until it's so I'm overwhelmed with all
these judgments and these conflicts inside of me, until I'm
just about insane. My sponsor says it best. He says

(27:24):
it's He says he gets sober time and time again.
And after a while it was like some hideous force
put a spring in the pit of his stomach, and
life just started tighten it up every day a little
bit more, a little bit more. And the kids don't
why are they making so much noise? And you know,
and the tax Look how much taxes are I'm paying.

(27:45):
And the boss he's such an idiot, And the traffic
has gotten worse, and oh my god, it's raining all
week and just until you feel like your gonna head's
gonna blow up. So I'm restless and I'm irritable, and
then the last thing goes deep down within me and

(28:06):
discontented alcoholism is a disease of chronic malcontent, and it's
independent of reality. Do you know that the same feelings
of dissatisfaction and disillusionment occur in the alcoholics living in
ten million dollar homes just as much as in a

(28:27):
couple hundred dollars a month flats, because it's a misinterpreted yearning.
Carl Jung, the great psychiatrist who was influential indirectly, he
didn't realize it in the forming of alcoholicsnonymous. He's the

(28:47):
psychiatrist that talks about in our Big Book when it
talks about the guy who went to Switzerland, the rich businessman.
He went to see Carl Jung, and he spent a
year in treatment with young His name was Roland Hazard.
And Roland drank again and Carl told him the truth.
Carl said, oh, you're a I didn't I was hoping
you weren't a real chronic alcoholic. But you're a chronic alcoholic.

(29:11):
And there is no help anywhere on this planet. For
you and your only hope is to make some kind
of spiritual conversion, to have some kind of connection, and
he thought he could find it in church. And Young said,
going to church may be nice, but it hardly will
provide the vital spiritual experience you need. And Roland felt

(29:36):
like the doors of hell were closed on him. And
Young continued to work with alcoholics. He was fascinated by them,
and in a letter in the early sixties to Bill Wilson,
our co founder, Young said something to Bill that is
so right on to me. He said, after working with
Roland and countless other alcoholics, he said, I came to

(29:58):
the conclusion that but the alcoholics thirst for alcohol is
not really a thirst for alcohol. He says, I believe
it is a thirst of the alcoholics being for unity,
for connectedness, or, if you're more religiously minded, a union
with God. That something deep within me yearns for a homecoming,

(30:26):
yearns to connect to that from which I came. But
Young also says that this is a misinterpreted yearning, and
so consequently the unaided in our culture and society, this
misinterpreted yearning will take guys like me down constant roads

(30:47):
to perdition. To hell. And yet I'm driven by the
yearning and never knew it and never once was conscious
of it. I have never been on my way to
to obtain any kind of self gratification that later I'm
going to regret, whether it's going to a bar, a
liquor store, a drug dealer's house, going to have sex

(31:10):
with someone I really don't even want to have lunch with,
I mean any or go spend money I really can't
afford to spend or do anything self self sething where
I'm clamoring for some kind of relief and gratification on
my way to the drug dealer's house or the bar
or the pub. I never once have stopped and thought
to myself, this is a misinterpreted yearning for God. Never

(31:40):
it never comes on the radar for me. And yet
when I read that, I thought, my god, I think
that's it. I think that's it. So Soki says with this,
I always returned to drink thinking this chronic malcontent. And

(32:02):
if you're like me, this vacancy drives me, unconsciously drives me.
I don't know that it's driving me, but it's all
It's like I always got my antennae out I always
got my radar turned on looking for stuff that might

(32:23):
make me feel better. If I'm in a relationship, immediately
I start noticing better people. If I have a good job,
I automatically see better jobs. I acquire things because I'm
an acquire I think I've been driven by some sort
of delusion that I can fill my vacancies by acquisition.

(32:48):
If I bring enough of the right stuff and people
into my life, surely then my vacancies will be fulfilled.
And I spend my whole life going oh yeah, oh yeah,
oh ComUE, Oh no, no, I'm not oh oh yeah,

(33:16):
oh wrong again, you know, And there's a tremendous depression
that settles in after every time. It's just this depression
because I don't I don't realize I was. I was
over ten years sober, and I'm talking to a guy
I'm sponsoring, and he said something and the light went

(33:37):
on and I realized what where. What the malcontent was
is that I get sober and I'm vacant, and I
get I get the job. I get that job. I
mean the job to own a boat, buy a house,
and have a Harley Davison kind of money job. I
mean the job and I'm not even at the job

(34:00):
six weeks and it just sort of just starts to
look bad. You know, It's just it's just the the
shine wears off of it so quickly. For me, I
get the girl that I remember. There's this girl. I
was infatuated with her for such a long time. I
finally hooked up. She fell in love with me, which
is is not good because if you loved me, you're

(34:20):
automatically blow my standards. I mean, I want someone who
has taste. But when she it's when she's I finally
had what I wanted, and the shine just started wearing
off on it. And this guy said something to me,
and the light went on and he's And what I
realized is, unconsciously, now, I was never conscious of this,

(34:43):
but on an emotional level, unconsciously, I would compare what
it feels like to have that job to what it
felt like to drink four shots at tequila, and the
job sucks. I'd compare what it feels like to be
loved by her to what it felt like to drink

(35:03):
a pine of whiskey. And I don't like her anymore. Now.
Nothing's changed with a job, nothing's changed with her. The
problem is within me. See alcohol spoils us, it ruins us. Really,
those of his normal drinkers never understand this because they

(35:26):
never have had the spiritual experience from drinking that we had.
They just get drunk. But it does something more for
me than it does for them. And if you've ever
watched a non alcoholic drink, it's a baffling thing to watch.
My sister is not an alcoholic. I've sat my sister

(35:47):
and I are very close. We have dinner together quite often,
and my sister will have a drink or two. I
don't think she's ever I think she might have been
drunk once in her life and doesn't ever want to
do that again. But my sister, well, first of all,
it takes her a half hour to drink one drink.

(36:08):
I mean, the ice is melding. It's like, this is
alcohol abuse, if you know what I'm talking about. This
is like, I mean, it's evaporating right before my eyes.
She's just she forgets her drink, is there. I have
to remind I remind her, oh do I hey, I
paid for that. She'll order a second drink in the

(36:33):
second half hour of the evening and drink about two
thirds of it and then leave it on the table.
And if I ask her about it, I say, aren't
you going to finish that? You know what She'll say,
She'll say, the weirdest thing you are, She'll say, no,
I'm starting to feel it. Yeah, I mean, you're quitting now,
You're five minutes from heaven. What do you quit now for?

(36:57):
But my sister, when she fils the effect of alcohol,
when that feeling starts to come over her, she likes
a little bit of that feeling, just a little bit.
But she gets this sense, and it's really a sane sense,
that if she drinks more, she's gonna lose control. And
so she goes, WHOA, But there's something wrong with me

(37:23):
that I get to the same point where my sister
gets to where she's starting to feel the effect of
alcohol and gets a sense that if she goes further,
she's going to get drunk and lose control. I don't
get that. I get a feeling like I'm about to
get control. I get a feeling like, oh my god,
come on, come on, come on. And I don't have

(37:49):
the same reason. I don't have the same relationship. So
when my sister and my parents and the women that
I lived with and tried to love me. When they
would see me build my life back up again and sober,
and then tear it down one more time, they were baffled.
Why I would do that? They would they were baffled.

(38:11):
Why when I start to drink, I just can't get
a little high. I have to get whacked. Why I
have to go so far? Why have you ever been?
If you ever drank with a non alcoholic, they'll say
things to you. Don't you think it's time to stop?
Don't you think you've had enough? Is anybody in here?

(38:32):
Have you ever had enough? I mean, you ever sat
in a bar and I thought, oh this is good?
I mean, it's never. I'm a chronic alcoholic. It's one more,
one more now, I may stop to prove a point.
Or if I'm with you and you're on my back
about my drink, and I'll show you, I'll quit, and
then I'll sneak out somewhere later on. But I am

(38:54):
a different relationship to alcohol than these people. And so
what happens to me as I quit drinking? And it
just starts to wear on me? This restless, this that
I can't really put my figure on. I remember this

(39:15):
in the irritability and discontent. I had a counselor one time,
because I get depressed after I'm sober for a little while,
I just sink into these depressions because my life pales
what I yearned for. And what's so depressing is I'm
not back to where I was when I was eighteen
years old and getting an eigeh like that. That's depressing.

(39:38):
And this counselor said to me one time, he said,
because I looked like I was depressed. He later sent
me to a psychiatrist. Fer meant to get medication, and
he said to me, he says, Bob, what's wrong. And
I remember sitting there and I thought, I don't know.
I don't know. I'd like to tell Oh, yeah, I

(40:00):
really would like to know. By this time, I'd been
to a dozen psychiatrists probably, I've been in and out
of treatment centers. I'd talked to so many people. I
don't know. It's not that there's anything wrong, and that's
the baffling part. It's just that nothing is right. It's

(40:22):
just that there's something terribly missing here and I don't
know what it is, and I do today. It's the
uplifting spiritual effect of alcohol was what was missing. I'd
have given anything in my periods of abstinence if I
could have drank and got the effect that I'd gotten

(40:42):
when I was eighteen years old, I'd given anything. So
what happened? Silk Or says it best. He says, we
succumbed to the desire again, as so many of us do.
We pick up a drink hoping, and the phenomenon of
craving develops. We pass through the well known stages with

(41:02):
spree to end up somewhere swearing to myself again, I
ain't ever gonna do this again, just to start the
whole cycle of progressive, restless, irritable discontent until it's backed
me into a corner, until I pick up a drink.

(41:23):
I'm bob Darrel. I'm an alcoholic welcome back. So I'm
in this trap that I cannot spring and I can't
get out of it. I yearn obsessively for the effect
of alcohol, and I can't obtain the effect. And when

(41:47):
I start to, when I seek it, all I get
is a phenomenon of craving. I'm compelled by a physiological
reaction to alcohol to burn my life to the ground.
Every time I start drinking, and I have a mental
obsession and a yearning inside me to go back to it.
And I returned to it like a moth to a flame,

(42:09):
time and time again, and there seems to be no
way to change that. And and I think, I mean,
when you think of it objectively, I mean, I mean,
we're the market. We If alcoholics and family members of

(42:33):
alcoholics who are tortured by alcoholism would stop reading self
help books, the self help industry would implode. I mean,
where the guy where the people who buy that stuff? Where?
I mean the pharmaceutical companies would go out of business
if we if we all got lit up spiritually and
didn't need what they were selling. We are the people.

(42:57):
We've tried everything not out and we're just those kind
of people. I mean, we're so so if I speak
for myself, I'm so desperate and wrapped up and making
me feel better and making me okay that I'll try
anything that comes up, anything looks like it had I
get hope that this is going to make a difference.

(43:18):
Count me in, Sign me up. I'm there. I've tried
some crazy things. I primal screamed. I went to a
primal therapist. I mean I embarrassed to tell you. At
one point I was laying on the floor of the
therapist's office, kicking my hands and feet and screaming at
the top of my lungs. Mommy, Daddy. I mean, it's

(43:40):
hard for me even to tell you I did that.
I was hypnotized. I I did a lot of work
with Gastalt therapists and transcend UH transactional analysis, and I
spent I was in therapy with Albert Ellis, the founder
of Rational Motive Therapy and City for quite some time

(44:03):
Doctor Silverman whose Silverman UH studied with Fritz Pearls and
and Alan Watts. I mean Silverman was an amazing, brilliant, brilliant,
top of the food chain kind of guy with therapy
but no human power. You know, isn't it odd that
we seek? We seek so much, we seek to be different.

(44:26):
We seek through relief, and momentarily, if you're like me,
momentarily I would find things that would seem to create
sort of sort of an epiphany or a thing like ah, oh,
this is it, this is it, and then it just
it would just wear off, and and I'd always be
back to being me again, and that's the bad and

(44:50):
that's the bad news. I'm back to being me again.
And the bottom of page twenty five he talks about
the dilemma. It says, if you are as seriously alcoholic
as we were, we believe there is no middle of

(45:10):
the road's solution. Maybe you've had the same experience when
you come to AA. It just seemed like extreme fanatics,
don't they. There's people in AA. I mean they want
you to They talk about things like absolute abstinence. What
do they mean by that? I mean not everything. I

(45:34):
need something. It's you know, God's either everything or he's nothing.
Why need to be like that? Can't you just kind
of be in the middle somewhere? There is no middle
of the road's solution. We were in a position where
life was becoming impossible. Curious how many people in this room,

(45:59):
if you've never tried to kill yourself, at least have
had those moments where you wished you were dead or
you thought about it. Anyboddy right, life was becoming impossible.
And if we have passed into the region from which
there is no return through human aid, we had but
two alternatives. One was to go on to the bitter end.

(46:24):
Blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best
we could, and the other to accept spiritual help. I'm
a funny kind of guy. I just I could sit.
I remember being in a treatment center and listening to
a speaker in AA tell their story, and I was

(46:47):
starting to identify. I was starting to feel like a connection.
I'm sitting there and I'm kind of nodding my head.
I'm thinking, wow, man, I might have drank with this guy.
He's cool, he's pretty got me. And then he taught.
He talked about coming into a and finding God in
the minute. He said that it was like this door closed,

(47:10):
and I thought, I remember sitting there, going, oh, what
have they done to him? He's a freaking sunbeam for Jesus,
Oh my god. Oh I felt sorry for him. I mean,
I was saying, and I'm dying and he's a free man,

(47:30):
and I'm feeling sorry for him. Right, So it was
hard for guys like me to accept spiritual help. I
have a lot of prejudices about God from my childhood,
and that's not uncommon. I think Alcoholic Anonymous is full
of people that have been emotionally sometimes physically abused by

(47:55):
well intentioned people under the flag of some religion. There
may be people in this room that were sexually abused
by members of the cloth. It's unfortunate. So what do
we do as we throw the baby out with the
bath water. But I'm always like that. You know, when

(48:17):
I get a resentment towards someone, it's just the next thing.
I know. I resent everybody in their family. Now I've
never met half their family, but if they're connected, they're related.
I don't like you either. I'll resent their friends. I
can have a best friend and my best friend will
say to me, oh, I really like so and so. No,
I don't like him, you know, I mean I will

(48:39):
not eventually. I won't like everybody in your religion. I
won't like people that live out. I could even go,
I start hating your country, uh, your race, your whatever,
it's it's I I resent by association. And so I
had a hard time with God. This accepting spirit help

(49:00):
with that. And you know what's really going on is
this tremendous fear that I have of God. Now I
don't I'm not aware of it, but I have this
tremendous fear. And I'm the kind of guy by nature
that if I just suspect that you might not like me,

(49:22):
I'm gonna not like you first, do you know what
I mean? I bet you you've had to I'm not
I'm sure I'm not the only ones had that experience.
Did you ever? Go? You go? You're the new person
in an AA group and someone that doesn't say hi
to you, and you just one of those kind of people,

(49:42):
you know, I mean it just starts. It's just you know,
and and and maybe they're having a bad day and
it's nothing to do with me, but I will build
a case against them. And I did the same thing
with God because I some very well intentioned people trying
to because I was a problem kid, trying to get

(50:03):
and help me to straighten out, told me some things
about God that just were horrific to me. They told
me about a god who who could see in the dark.
Oh that's bad. I do my best work in the dark.
That's I mean, that's not good. I mean he could
see in the dark, Oh god, Oh my god, he

(50:27):
could read my mind? Oh my god. He judged me
for my thoughts. That's hard. I got two movies, one
sex and one's violence. I mean, you know, I drive
down the road going I'll kill him, I'll do her,
I'll kill you know. I mean like I'm going to
hell and I'm not doing nothing except thinking, you know,

(50:50):
I'm just oh he just I felt so stained, I
felt so flawed. I remember God who grew up a cat.
I remember, I tell you a funny little start. We
had this time of the year where the whole class
would go to confession and some of you. If you
don't know what that is, to talk to one of

(51:10):
the Catholics, I'll tell you. It's a you go and
you're supposed to clean yourself, clean the slate so you
can go the next day to receive communion. And if
you really want to piss God off, go get communion
with sin. I mean, it's a bad deal. So the
whole whole class would go in. We'd go in these
booths and we clean the slate. Now you gotta go

(51:33):
until the next morning without thinking nothing. I couldn't get
out of the box and I'm thinking stuff, you know
what I mean, And I'd go. I just I'd go
in that line with all those other little kids, and
I just feel like a lightning bolt was gonna hit
me because I was receiving communion, and I was stained,

(51:57):
and I just started to know that I'm never gonna
be as you're up here. And it's a better proposition
that there's not a God because I feel so I rejected. Now,
I don't understand that I am the rejector and the rejectee.
I'm imagining that God's rejecting me, so I'm rejecting him.

(52:20):
But really all the separation occurs within me based on
my prejudices and my fears. So accept spiritual help. No,
I can't do it. So what's the other alternative? It says,
to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the

(52:43):
consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could. And
I tried that. I think I wanted to drink. I
became the last few years I drank for oblivion. I
drank to just blot me out. I just I wanted
to drink myself to death. But it's a long and

(53:09):
tedious process, and it's very brutal, and it takes so
long that some of us we start thinking about killing
ourselves because we can't hang. Drinking yourself to death's like
being kicked to death by rabbits. It just goes on
and on, and by the time it finally does kill you,

(53:31):
you've wished you were dead for a long time. By
the time it finally kills you, all the people that
you love so much and you wanted their approval so
much hate you. I know people. I run into a
kid on the street. He's not a kid anymore. It's
about thirty eight years old. I guess his dad and

(53:52):
I were in Detox together in nineteen seventy eight. His father.
All his dad could talk about was his son. He
loved his son, but over the next couple of years
he never stayed sober, and he then the violence and
the pathetic stuff, and he eventually drank himself to death.
Thirty some years later, you mentioned this guy's and you

(54:16):
mentioned to the kid the dad's name, and he'll go
off on a rant about that asshole. I hate him.
Thirty years later, he still hates his father. His father
loved him. But that's what alcoholism does to us. You know.
It's a brutal disease because it strips the worst thing
about alcoholism is that it gradually strips away everything of

(54:41):
value in your life, and then it lets you linger
on in the sameness of it day after day for
a while. I heard this story many years ago, and
it was what a great description of the progressive nature
of alcoholism. This friend of mine was talking about one
of his his best friends had been diagnosed is terminally

(55:03):
ill with stomach cancer, and everybody was very sad. And
I know what that's like. My mother was diagnosed as
terminally ill and the doctors pretty much are just saying
to you, look, there's nothing we can do. Put your
house in order. And about three months later, my buddy
hears that there's they're gonna have surgery on his friend,

(55:26):
and he got excited. He thought, oh my god, they're
they're gonna do surgery, They're gonna cut the cancer out.
He got very hopeful. Finally they found a surgeon who
knows what he's doing, and he calls over there and
the guy's mom answers the phone. He says, hey, I
hear that they're gonna do surgery and take the cancer out.
And this guy's mom says, well, you know not. Actually

(55:47):
they're gonna do the surgery, but they're not gonna take
the cancer out. And he says, what do you mean
They're gonna do surgery and not take the cancer out.
And he says, what are they doing the surgery for.
He said, well, they're gonna cut out sections of his
stomach and intestines and pieces of his liver and internal
organs to make room for the growth of the tumors,
so as last days on earth are not excruciatingly painful.

(56:08):
And alcoholism is very much like that. If your parents
get in the way of the progression of the disease,
this disease will cut them out of your life. If
your career gets in the way of alcoholism, alcoholism will
cut your career out of your life. If your self respect,

(56:30):
or self esteem, or principles or morals get in the way,
alcoholism will cut them out of your life. How many
of us cross those lines? At one time we said
I'd never do that, And then you look back and
you've done it a few times. Even your children, who
you may love more than anything in the world and time,

(56:51):
alcoholism will cut them out of your life. I've seen
countless men and women who have lost their rights to
even see their kids through the courts. They've been taken
away from them, and they live in the shame of
that and the remorse. And I've also seen those same
men and women. If they're willing to roll up their
sleeves and do all the work, they get their kids

(57:13):
back and they have sweet relationships with them as a
result of Step eight and nine. Alcoholism will take away
from the alcoholic more than any human being should ever
ever have to lose, And alcoholics anonymous will give you
more than any human being ever has a right to have.

(57:35):
It's almost the mirror image of the of the of
the debacle. It's a beautiful thing, but some of us
choose to go on to the bitter end, blotting out
the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we can,
and some of us do it, and we're sober. What

(57:56):
do you do if you draw what happens to guys
like me? If I am absolutely convinced that I can't drink,
and I draw a hard line in the sand, and
I reinforce it by going to an AA meeting every day,
I am not gonna drink, well, I will be forced

(58:18):
to try other means to blot out my intolerable situation
as best I can. Maybe sex, maybe pornography, maybe shopping,
maybe gambling, maybe eating, maybe medications. But I will have
to do something to blot out my intolerable situation. Because

(58:43):
alcoholism demands treatment. That's the problem. It demands it. And
I'm going to treat it one way or the other.
It is an itch I must scratch one way or
the other. And why would we choose all these this

(59:04):
bitter and And I know some people. I know people
who have stayed physically sober in the rooms of alcohol
exnomus for decades and refused to buy the whole package
here because of belligerent denial or ego or various reasons.

(59:24):
And they are bitter, bitter people. They're angry, bitter people
who battle with depression. Some of them are eventually forced
into into drinking again or committing suicide or getting on
medication because alcoholism demands treatment. One of the guys I

(59:47):
sponsored today, he's got thirty almost thirty five years, and
he's he's a delight to sponsor. His name is his
name is jar and Jared loves me to tell the story.
I met Jerry when he was twenty three years sober.
When he was twenty three years sober, with the benefit
of step none, he has made the decision that he's

(01:00:10):
he can't he's tired. He's going to kill himself. He's
totally alone. Nobody in his family will now have anything
to do with him. He's built cases against every one
of them, and he's right and they're wrong. You know
how that is right? There's nobody in alcoholics anonymous that
he has afraid. He has no friends. He's got a

(01:00:31):
pension that supports him because he had been a navy
chief from the who's in the US Navy, and he
has money coming in for that, So because he couldn't
hold a job. If he didn't have that, he'd been
homeless because he's too angry to hold a job. He
can't get along with people because he's right about everything,

(01:00:53):
and he's been that way so long. Now he can't
take it anymore, and he's made the decision to kill himself. Well,
when he made the decision to commit suicide, he got
a little relief, and then right behind the relief, the
obsession to drink returned. Because he figured, if I'm gonna die,

(01:01:15):
I should have a little anesthetic right before I cross over.
You know what I mean? It makes perfect sense to me.
I mean, if I'm going to kill myself, it might
hurt something. I might you know I need a little anesthetic.
Makes perfect sense. Well, the idea of him drinking is hard.
Is hard to him because he doesn't mind that he's
going to be dead. He just doesn't want everybody in
a to realize he no longer had twenty three years

(01:01:37):
you know. So even the egos sometimes can be used
by God to help us. So it pushed him into
and coming and getting me asking me to sponsor him.
And I said, I'd be glad to work with you.
And I got to watch a man that was dying

(01:01:59):
of this disease. I got to watch the lights come
on with him. I got to watch him push himself
aside and all the people he thought were wrong and
he was right to push that all aside, and watch
him go make amends to all those people. And I
watched people start to love him again. I watched the restoration.

(01:02:22):
He is a member of He's almost thirty five years sober,
over thirty four years sober now, and he's a member
of my home group. In when he was twenty three
years sober, nobody in AA would have anything to do
with him. They were tired of him. They call him
sweet Jerry. You got to stand in line to hug
this guy. I mean, he's so, he's like everybody loves Jerry.

(01:02:47):
How did that happen? Alcoholics Anonymous changed him and he
was going on and he was bitter, and he was
going to the end. I know why some of us
commit suicide sober because we can't wait till the end
anymore or too bitter, so we accelerated. We push ourselves

(01:03:11):
to the end. So I have this I am in
this trap. I can't spring. There is no way to
change the phenomenon of craving. I've watched a man with

(01:03:32):
that it had had forty five years sober drinking. He
went back to drinking, and that phenomenon of craving we
just waited for him. You can't be sober long enough
to overcome that. You can't be emotionally well enough, spiritually
well enough. It is in your cells. So the only
thing that Alcoholics Anonymous can offer a guy like me

(01:03:54):
is to change my spiritual nature, my very being. So
alcohol is no longer on the radar for me. It
no longer has the hook, so that I can easily,
as it says in our ten Step promises, just automatically
recoil from it is from a hot flame when somebody

(01:04:15):
there's a transformation that must occur in my very being
that will take a guy like me that if you
offer me a drink and and I'm able to use
enough willpower to refuse it, I'll refuse it with its
still with the yearning like, oh my god, I'm sure
like to have had that. And then years later, after

(01:04:38):
the steps having to walking into a suite on a
cruise ship and there's a complimentary bottle of one hundred
dollars champagne there, and I pick it up as if
it was cat urine and carry it to the guy
who works there, and said, do you find somebody that
might like this? And there's no hook. There is no

(01:05:01):
power in that. That's not that's come on. There's no
power because the power in the alcohol is tied to
the need for the medicine, need for relief. But if
you already got the relief, if your spirit is already okay,
then there's nothing there. And I've had the experience of

(01:05:25):
being sober many many years and doing some things that
were compromising my spirit, and all of a sudden, bottles
started talking to me again. That happens, So what's the
problem on page forty five, it says something that's very interesting.

(01:05:48):
It says, lack of power. That was our dilemma. We
had to find a power by which we could live,
and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously,
But where and how are we to find that power? Well,
that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object

(01:06:10):
is to enable you to find a power greater than
yourself which will solve your problem. The power to live.
It's more. It's much much more than the power to
resist to drink. As a matter of fact, we don't
even get that. Really. I think that that's what I

(01:06:33):
thought AA was going to give. It was going to
make me strong enough that I could resist temptation. But
it's not that at all. There is no temptation. The
problem has been removed. It's a major transformation in here.
And when I was when I was new, Now this

(01:06:55):
is after relapsing time and time and time again, and
I fought the bottle with everything in me. I mean
there were times when I meant it, when I said
to myself, I'm never touching that again. And I heard
the speaker when I was new, and he said he said, yeah,
he said, you know, I quit drinking seriously over fifty times.

(01:07:17):
He said. Every time I quit drinking, I got drunk er.
In hell, he said, I think that quitting drinking was
killing me. And I started. I almost fell out of
my chair. I thought, that's exactly right. If I quit drink,
I really quit drinking. And every time I quit drinking,
it's almost as if it's the willful resistance of alcohol

(01:07:40):
gives it torque. It almost like it gives it power
and more energy. And some of the worst drunks I've
ever been on have been after after months and months
of suppressed, willful abstinence. I'm not gonna drink. I'm not
gonna drink. I'm not gonna drink them. It's like a slingshot.

(01:08:01):
I'm not gonna drink. I'm not gonna drink. I'm not
gonna drink. I'm not gonna drink. And by the time
you eventually run out of power, you got so much
torque on that supper. I went on going the worst
drunk I ever went on, and you know, end up though,
just end up somewhere just despicable. So will power. Really

(01:08:22):
it doesn't work. Something has to happen to us, something
has to happen. Something has to happen to you that
will make the tenth Step promises come true. That you
could have alcohol in your home and it would mean
no more to you than the furniture. That you could

(01:08:42):
work around it every day and it wouldn't call to
you at all. I worked around alcohol for twenty five
years in my sobriety. I had alcohol in my home
for on and off for twenty years. I suppose in
some form or other. Sometimes it for just different. I
don't sounds bizarre, but I actually had a for investment.

(01:09:06):
I created a wine cellar, and I actually made a
lot of money buying wines and holding them for three
years and selling them. I had a wine cellar in
my house which I would forget was there when I
have a meeting every Tuesday night in my house in
the living room, and newcomers knew it was there. They
knew it was there, they could see it through the

(01:09:26):
wall and then you know, in the room where the
meeting was up until I sold it. I saw I
had a collection of these seventy five and one hundred
year old cognacs. There was eight bottles in this set,
and they were all hand painted by the artist Erte,
and I bought them many years ago for investment, and

(01:09:47):
I just recently sold them this last year. And I
never knew they were there. I forgot they were in
a display case, just you know, like a lot of
I have a whole bunch of artwork and knick knacks
and stuff in my house. It's just there. It's just stuff.
I never even I forget they're there. New guys would
come into the meeting and go bowling. It's you'd hear

(01:10:12):
nikol because it has power to them, but see, it
doesn't have power to us. And in that meeting there's
there's a ton of people sober over twenty years, I
have meetings. People come to that meeting that's sober. We
have guys over fifty years sober come there and they

(01:10:32):
don't even know. They don't know it's there either. It's
straight there, out in the open, but they don't even
see it. It's just it's they see it anymore than
they see the vases and the other knick knacks and stuff.
It doesn't mean anything to that. That has to happen otherwise,
what are we gonna do. We're gonna hide ourselves away
somewhere where there's no temptation. It's kind of pointless, isn't it?

(01:10:56):
With them in a world full of alcohol, The problem
is no alcohol. The problem is the alcoholism. If I
treat the alcoholism, the alcohol is not a problem. If
I don't treat the alcoholism, I got a problem. So
lack of power, the power to live, I don't. And

(01:11:17):
it's more than that, because I don't know how sober.
I don't know how to free myself. I get sober,
I get stuck up in me and my emotions. I
get locked up up in here and I don't I
don't have the power to come out and play. You've
ever been at a social event sober, and get that

(01:11:38):
loneliness that comes over you. Man, You're sitting in the
corner and it's all of them, and then there's you,
and there's you. Can't will yourself to fit. Something has
to happen to me so I can come out and
play with these people. And I can't manufacture that. Lack
of power really is my dilemma. I'm depressive, alcoholic. I've

(01:12:01):
been diagnosed as clinically depressed. I don't have the power
to free myself from depression. I don't have the power
to disconnect myself from this insanity, this mind that waits
for me. Well, I wake up in the morning afraid.
I wake up in the morning having conversations with people

(01:12:22):
I will see later that day. I drive in my
car having conversations with people that aren't in the car.
I don't have the power to free myself with a fear.
I don't have the power to overcome the loneliness or
the power to change my interaction with people so I
can have relationships and intimacies like I see others have

(01:12:45):
so easily. On page fifty two, it really talks about
what it's like to get sober without power, what it's
like to have Basically, what I've come to believe is
think of his untreated alcoholism. Right square in the middle
of the page, and the third line in the middle

(01:13:06):
paragraph it says, we were having trouble with personal relationships.
Now that's probably not the case in Adelaide, but where
I come from, it's a big deal. If you go
to a discussion meeting and half the time the problem
is some relationship with somebody. I couldn't control my emotional nature.

(01:13:33):
I'm a nutcase. I go on this emotional rollercoaster. I'm
a prey to misery and depression. Depression is symptomatic of
not drinking and not working the steps. It says it
time and time again in our literature. Bill Wilson was

(01:13:53):
the greatest example. We couldn't make a living. What is
it about guys like me? I can work hard, work
like hell. I've also pat me on back. I say
you're a hard worker, and then eventually I'm the guy
they're letting go. They say things to me like you're
a hard worker, but you're not a team player. What

(01:14:14):
does that mean? You know what it means? They never
did like you today, and I don't even see it.
I don't know what I'm doing here, Why I don't fit,
why they don't like me. Had a feeling of uselessness
all my life, Like, what's life about? What's the meaning

(01:14:39):
of all this? What am I going to be when
I grow up? If I ever grow up? What's it
all about? Useless? We were full of fear, we were unhappy,
and we couldn't seem to be a real help to
other people. That's a pretty good description of me. When

(01:15:01):
I get sober, now, I may I may hide it
and keep it in the shade the best of my ability.
But that's me. I ain't right when I quit drinking,
and something's got to change. So lack of power the
power to live. So there's a The promise here is

(01:15:26):
that this book has a process in it that when
I implement the process, I will acquire power. And here's
here's a point. This is a point where we lose
a lot of people in AA because they misinterpret what
they hear in the meetings. You know, if you go
to a bunch of meetings, you eventually start hearing this
message that God changed these people's lives. You go, okay,

(01:15:51):
and what some of us at that point, we've we
eventually surrendered to the God idea and we think we've
arrived somewhere. That's that's the beginning of the road. That's
not the end of the road. That's the beginning of
the road. Step two is the beginning of the road.
It's not the end of the road. And we lose
people at this point because they never go through the

(01:16:12):
rest of the steps. They think, okay, me and God
now we're good. We're good, and they'll often go join
a church or something, which there's nothing wrong with church.
There's nothing wrong with going to the gym, there's nothing
wrong with any of that stuff, But none of it
has ever been a substitute for alcoholics. Anonymous. It's a
good addition, but it's not a substitute. I've had the

(01:16:41):
because the problem is not lack of religion. It's not
even lack of faith. It looks like it doesn't. You
go to meetings, you think the problem is I don't
have faith. I don't believe. It's not that there have
been men and women with tremendous faith in God drinking
themselves to death over the years. Tremendous I had. I

(01:17:01):
had the occasion to sponsor over the years, four different occasions,
four different members of the Cloth clergy. Two of them
drank themselves to death. I remember I wasn't sober that long.
And there was this priest, frank He was a good guy.
He's not a crazy, he's not a deviant priest. He's
a good guy. But he had alcoholism, and he had

(01:17:24):
a bad case of alcoholism. And I was one of
a bunch of guys that got tried to work with
Franken And he called me up one day and he
was he was drinking again, and he was full of
self pity. He's sobbing uncontrollably into the phone because he

(01:17:44):
felt so lost and so decrepit, and he can't understand why.
Here he is a man of the cloth who's devoted
his whole life to his church and to God, a
man who who praise more in one day than most
AA members will pray in a week, who reads more

(01:18:05):
spiritual literature in one day than most of us will
pray in a week. Why he would ask God to
keep him sober and he's drinking again. And in AA
there's drug dealers and prostitutes and robbers, and I mean,
the dregs of the earth are God's keeping them sober?
And he must have felt like cheated or something like
what's wrong with me? I mean, I'm a priest for

(01:18:26):
God's sakes, you know. And I thought the same thing.
I thought, Oh my God, I'm sober through God's grace.
I knew that. And if that's true, I would think
that this guy, this priest, would have a leg up
on a bum like me. But lack of faith was
not his problem. It was lack of power. I live

(01:18:49):
in the desert in Las Vegas, and if you were
to come and visit me. In this time of year,
which is the peak of our summer, there are days
when it'll get one hundred and fifteen degrees fahrenheit. I
don't know what that translates out into centigrade, but I
think it's something like, oh my god, it's hot. I mean,

(01:19:13):
it's really hot. And on one of those days, I
could take you in my car, drive you forty five
minutes outside of town to one of the largest lakes
and bodies of fresh water in the western the United States,
Lake Meat. It's a huge lake, hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of miles of shoreline, and take you to that lake.

(01:19:33):
Drive you up right up to the edge of the lake.
Let you get out of the car, jump in the lake,
swim in the lake, drink the water until you have
absolute faith that that water exists. Put you back in
my car, drive you out into the middle of the desert,
give you a nine step set of directions on how

(01:19:53):
to get back to that lake, and let you out
in the middle of that desert. If you don't follow
the directions on how to get back to that water,
you will die of thirst in the desert. With absolute
faith that the water exists. If you don't find a
way to get to the water, you will die of

(01:20:15):
thirst in the desert, just as painfully and brutally as
the man who never even believed that the lake existed
or never saw the lake. And that's the problem. There
have been alcoholics for thousands of years with faith in God,
dying knowing that God's the answer, but they can't actualize

(01:20:37):
it in their own life. I know I'm not the
only one that's ever, ever, and ever ended up in
a jail cell in a moment of just horrid desperation,
begged to God that I'm not even sure exists, with
tears in my eyes, not to let me drink again.
And I drank the day I got out. I bet

(01:20:59):
you there's people in this room that have begged God
not to let him drink again, and drink again. There's
probably people in this room that have been saved or
born again and then drank again. Because the problem is
not lack of faith, it's lack of power. I have
to actualize and make a connection with God. We talk
about something in alcoholics anonymous that I don't know that

(01:21:21):
it's unique, but sometimes it appears. What we're talking about
is different than what I hear out there. A lot
we talk about this thing called conscious contact, and there's
a very big difference between conscious contact and faith. All
of you that drove here today, when you leave, you

(01:21:44):
will get in your cars and you will go out
on the road, and you'll go out there with faith
that there are traffic laws and there are police to
enforce them, and possibly that faith will inhibit your driving patterns,
and you will drive accordingly to what you believe. That's
a good thing. You get a cop in your rear

(01:22:05):
view mirror with his lights flashing, you've got conscious contact.
And one is experiential in the now right here, and
the other was just of the mind. The problem with
faith of just in the mind in moments of severe turmoil,

(01:22:26):
it's elusive. I must seek, at best intermittent conscious contact.
And the reason I say it's intermittent is I've never
known anyone who legitimately can can can make, can make

(01:22:50):
a conscious contact with God and hold it. It seems
to come and go like the waves on the shore.
There are days there there days when I've just walked
out of a fifth step listen to some guy's fifth step,
or I've just came off a twelve step call, or
I just walked out of the detox meeting where I
am man, I'm plugged in, I feel the presence of God.

(01:23:12):
I am very hooked in. I mean I should have
a tent and a tambourine. I am plugged in. And
then there are other days where I'm on my knees
in the morning, I'm just I don't believe and feel
like there's anything. But I say that I'm praying anyway,
just hoping it's gonna turn around and the wave will

(01:23:33):
come back in again. And you know, I think the
important thing is the actions that I take, regardless of
how I feel, regardless because if you take the first
couple letters off the word spiritual, you end up with
the word ritual. And I take the actions of someone

(01:23:54):
who who's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous on the days
I feel plugged in, and I take them on the
days of desolation when I feel alone and I have
no contact with God. And what happens is its cycles.
Some days I feel very connected. In other days all
I feel is me, and it's just it always cycles,

(01:24:17):
and the important thing is to stay centered in the solution.
There's a thing that started about twenty five years thirty
years ago in Alcoholics Anonymous, and there's a type of
meeting called their problem solving meetings, which for a fellowship

(01:24:39):
based on the principle that we can't manage our own life.
Is a little bizarre to me, but what'll I know?
And these meetings they always start out with does anybody
have a problem, And they'll be some new person who

(01:25:01):
does not want to be sponsored, who wants to use
all of alcoholic exnonoymous for feedback so they can remain
at the helm of their ship and choose what they
want to do from what they hear in the meeting.
They want to remain self directed. They'll throw a problem
out on the table until they hear what they want
to hear. Right. And as if you could get advice

(01:25:22):
from the meeting, well, if you've ever tried that, it's horrible.
You can't get it. Trying to get advice at it
from an AA group is like trying to take a
drink of water from a fire hose. I mean, it's
just over because everybody in the meeting will start sharing
at you. I mean they'll just you'll just what happens
about halfway through the meeting. You can't send anymore. You're

(01:25:45):
just getting advice is coming at you like missiles. Man,
You'll bolt out of the meeting, leave the meeting spinning
on your problem. No human power. See, the solution is

(01:26:07):
never found within the problem. No matter how obsessively you
stare at your problems, you will not find the solution there.
The solution is independent of the problem. And what is
it about us? I think this delusion. I think that
if I stare obsessively enough, or worry enough obsessively about

(01:26:31):
a problem, that I'll find the answer. I've never that's
never been true for me. The answer usually comes out
of left field. My grand sponsor used to say, there's
one problem and it includes and encompasses all problems. And
there's one solution and it encompasses all solutions. And what

(01:26:51):
is the problem. It's conscious or unconscious separation from God,
God's kids. It's a loneeness of alcoholism. And what is
the solution. The solution is to make the connection, is
to clear away the things in me that stand between

(01:27:14):
me and God and me and you see, I always
had too much of me between me and you. That's
why alcoholism is such a lonely business. It's a very
lonely business. And I have too much of me between
me and God. And so I must seek this power,

(01:27:36):
and I will seek it through self reduction. And the
first bit of self reduction, it added the book asked
me to do is on the following page. And it's
a very simple little exercise, and yet it's not easy.
In the middle of page forty six, it talks about
two things that if I can do these two things,

(01:27:58):
I've done step two. Not only have I done step two,
I'm on the road to get results, to have transformation
in my life. The first thing it says in the
middle paragraph, the third line down, it says, first, we
found that as soon as we were able to lay
aside prejudice. Well, that sounds simple enough, except that most

(01:28:24):
of our prejudice exist within us on an unconscious level.
I don't think they're prejudiced. That's not a prejudice. That's
really the way it is. I feel this stuff. It
exists within me on an emotional, unconscious level. It's a sense.
It's a positioning towards life. Father Martin used to say

(01:28:50):
that when emotion and intellect or in conflict with each other,
emotion always wins because it's persistent and it wears you down.
So I have these prejudices that exist within me. Sometimes
they're very old ideas, so old I can't even bring
them up sometimes, and yet they affect me. I'll tell

(01:29:13):
you a couple of them, now, some of you. Some
of them might come from events that occurred in your childhood,
maybe where some priests beat you up or and you
just threw out everything. But it might just be like
what's so common in so many of us there seems
to be I won't say it's universal, but it's so common.

(01:29:35):
It's almost is this prejudice or this old idea that
drives guys like me, and yet I'm not conscious of it.
And what it is is that on my worst day,
sober and I'm sober, and I should know better. When
you did the thing that you're really really ashamed of,

(01:29:56):
the thing that you just kind of loathe yourself for
and you didn't mean it, but you did it, and
it's horrible and it haunts you. And I don't know
what that thing was. Maybe you had sex with your
inner marriage or a relationship and you cheated on the person,
or maybe in a moment of just tremendous fear and anxiety.
Maybe you struck out at your kids and they didn't

(01:30:18):
deserve it, and you remember the look on their face
and you just scared them to death. Or may be
maybe mistreated your dog, Or maybe you did something at
work involving money and you were so afraid of when

(01:30:41):
they confronted you that you let someone else take the blame.
Maybe you had sex with someone you don't even want
anybody to know. You you have lunch with but at those
moments when you hate yourself, the feeling or the sense
that now Gods can't possibly be there for me. I'm

(01:31:04):
too flawed, I'm too stained. That is an old prejudice
that so many of us have in common. And the
problem with the prejudice is that it occurs within us.
It doesn't come from God. God loves me no matter
what the problem with that prejudice is that when I'm

(01:31:24):
in trouble and the moments I need to turn to
God the most, because of the prejudice, I turn away
from God because I can't go there. It's too good,
it's look at me. It's a horrid prejudice. I was over,
been over to Florence, Italy, a couple of times. Scott's

(01:31:45):
going over there in a couple of weeks, and a
couple I'm someone else there is if you ever go
over there. There's a museum right behind the Domo in
the center of town called the Opry. It's a smaller museum.
It's not one of the ones that are more how
did like the Uze, the one where the David is.
This is a smaller, little deal. I went in there

(01:32:06):
to find a statue that a friend of mine told
me about. And it's a statue by the Renaissance sculptor Donatello,
and it's called the Magdalena and it's a statue of
Mary Magdalen. And I searched. I got into the museum
and I'm searching, almost frantically for this statue I'd heard

(01:32:29):
so much about. I really wanted to see it. And
I walked into this room on one of the upper
levels and I turned my head and it was there.
And the moment I saw it, I knew it was
what I was looking for. And it was life size,
and it was a depiction of Mary Magdalen. Unlike anything
I've ever seen. This was not a depiction of Mary

(01:32:53):
Magdalen as a beautiful woman with long flowing red hair
and a robe. And this was a woman who was
clothed in dirty, tattered and torn rags, a woman who
had evidence of much physical beatings, a woman who had

(01:33:15):
had signs of malnutrition, a woman who walked with a
contenance of shame, a woman who apparently has been turning
nickel and dime tricks on the back alleys of the
Middle East for years. And in her shame and remorse

(01:33:36):
and self loathing, she stood there and her head was
cocked to the side. And in the midst of this
demeanor of shame and remorse, there was an inquisitiveness, in
a look of disbelief. And she held her hands like this,
as if she wanted to pray, but she was afraid to,

(01:34:00):
as if she didn't deserve to. And she was looking up.
And I looked across at what she was looking at,
and there was a crucifix on the other wall, and
she was looking up into maybe into the sky, as
if she was saying this could be for me. And
I just stood there and I started weeping, and I

(01:34:24):
started crying because I was looking into my soul. I
was looking into the unworthiness and the disbelief and the
fear of rejection if I ever turned to God, he
can't possibly help someone like me, not after all the

(01:34:45):
things I've done, not after all the people I've heard
that loved me. And I think that that is a
prejudice that we all come here with. It is one
of the great old ideas that I am delighted to
have been proven wrong. As a matter of fact, over

(01:35:08):
the years, I've developed a new idea that based on
my experience, just on what has actually happened to me
and happened to the guys I sponsor, that I think
God loves us the most at the times when we're
the most decrepit. I imagine sometimes that there have been times,

(01:35:31):
drunk and sober, when I've done things that the God
that loves me as much as he loves me must
have weeped that I would do that to myself, or
I would do that to one of his kids. That
I think he loves me the most, then, because maybe
that's when I need it the most. I didn't come here,

(01:36:00):
came here an atheist. What I really was was a
guy who with a lot of resentments towards the religion
of my childhood in a lot of fear. And the
book says, can you lay aside your prejudice? It doesn't
say I have to get rid of them. The priests
that drank himself to death couldn't lay aside his judgments

(01:36:23):
and his ideas and his opinions because he thought they
were the right kind. He was entrenched in them. Now
they very well, some of them very well, may have
been of right. But the book's not asking you to
throw them away. It says, lay them aside and work
the rest of this process and make a conscious contact,

(01:36:45):
have an awakening of your spirit. And then let's revisit them.
And as you revisit them, you may find some of
them were really good, some of them were stupid. But
revisit them awake, with your spirit awake and alive to
see if they're real. And then the second thing, if

(01:37:09):
I can, if I can just do that, if I
can become childlike, to lay aside all my old ideas,
all my prejudices, all my opinions and judgments about God
and the universe and everything. Just become childlike, as if
I don't know anything. And then the second thing, it says,

(01:37:29):
and express even a willingness to believe, and a power
greater than myself. The book promises me, if I can
do those two things, I will commence to get results,
even though it was impossible for any of us to
fully define or comprehend that power, which is God. You

(01:37:49):
don't have to understand God. You don't have to comprehend God.
I know why you'd like to, same reason i'd like to.
It's the same reason I want to figure my boss out,
because if I can figure him out, I'll have some angles.
You know what I mean. I mean I understand knowledge
that you think knowledge is power. If I can comprehend God,
maybe I can get a little bigger piece of the

(01:38:10):
pie here. You know, I understand that the book says,
don't try, just do. Don't think, do express express a willingness.
Now this is talking about actions. Express a willingness. Start

(01:38:32):
acting as if where we're asking you to enter into
what a scientist might call a working hypothesis. We're we're
presenting you with an idea. And if you're like me,
you don't believe in God, I'm afraid of God. I'm
not willing to I'm not willing to chance the rejection
because it's if this is the last house on the block,

(01:38:52):
and I go try to knock on that door, and
I'm thrown cast aside. I don't know where to go,
so I ain't going here, and you're telling me you
don't believe in God. It's perfectly all right. But when
we want you to spob we want you to start
acting as if this power exists. They said, we want

(01:39:12):
you to physically get down on your knees every morning
and ask whatever this thing is that's running the universe
for help. And I remember saying that guy, well, I
did it this morning, but I don't think I should
do it. I don't really believe in God. I feel
like a hypocrite. He says, You've been a hypocrite all
your life. What's the difference. Just do it? And I
started doing. I just started getting on my knees, and

(01:39:34):
they started every time something else comes up, ask God
for help. Felt stupid to me. Started doing it, and
from the moment I started to turn my consciousness towards
something I don't even believe in, I started to get results.
It was amazing. Coincidences, little coincidences. I bet you there's

(01:39:57):
people in this room had these are having these experiences
to this day where you'll be all jacked up about
something you don't even understand what's going on. You just
feel horrible. You feel like you're gonna have a nervous breakdown,
and you don't know what to do. And you go
to some meeting and there's a stranger there talking about
exactly what's going on with you in a way that

(01:40:19):
you can hear it and see it through his eyes.
And now you get it. Now you know what to do.
Who had that guy talked about that at that moment
when you were needed in that meeting? My phone group,
my home group had a phone list, and I would
be sitting in my apartment and I'm a depressive. I'm

(01:40:41):
one of those kind of guys. I shouldn't be in
early sobriety prior to working the steps. You shouldn't leave
me unattended for very long. I just I'm not good.
I just think you leave me alone for five minutes.
I think, and I don't when I ponder myself, I
don't spiral upward. I spiral down word Oh, and I'd

(01:41:03):
be sinking into a depression in the phone and ring.
There'll be some guy in my home group who doesn't
know me that well, I'm not his sponsor. Who can't
get a hold of his sponsor needed to talk to
somebody and called me at the moment when I needed
to be pulled out of myself. Who had him call?
Who had him call at that moment? And I started

(01:41:25):
to understand and realize, after time and time and incident
after incident, there was something working here. Now, this is
not the endgame. This is just the beginning of rudimentary faith.
I must move further into conscious contact through the rest
of the steps, but it's a beginning. I was over.

(01:41:48):
I think this is the way most of us come
to believe. I'm a stubborn kind of guy. I can't
believe in God because you tell me, Tom, I got
to wish I was wired that way. I would to
save myself years of grief. But I am a skeptic.
You got to prove it to me, and God did.

(01:42:11):
One of my favorite lines, it's very touching to me.
In the book, it says God does not make hard
terms with those who seek him. From the moment I
just even turned my attention a little bit in his direction.
He came the rest of the way. I mean, he
did ninety percent of it. I just did a little

(01:42:31):
tiny thing here, and he started to prove himself to
me time and time and time again. Many years ago,
I go over to England about once a year to
do some stuff like this. I sponsored some guys in London,
and I enjoy going over there, not in the winter
so much bitness summer. And the first time I ever

(01:42:54):
went over there, I was walking around Westminster, down around
Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace and the streets down there
and Westminster all have gas streetlights, and I noticed something
as I walked through Hyde Park that some of the
poles where the gas light was on the top had

(01:43:17):
these little boxes on the side of the poles, and
they'd been welded shut and they'd painted over. But at
one time you could see that that had been like
a door that would open on the side of the pole.
And what it had been many years ago before they
had the technology of the electric starters and the computerized
thing that turns the gas on, is that there was

(01:43:37):
a little door there and a man would come along
at twilight and he'd open that little door and he'd
reach in with a key and he'd turn the gas on,
and then he'd reach up with a flame on the
end of this long poon, he'd light the street light.
And at twilight, when the guys are going through the streets,
lighting the street light, you could climb up to the
roof of the highest building in London look out of

(01:43:59):
the city. He won't see where the guy is, but
you'll see where he'd been. And I could sit in
a meeting of alcoholics anonymous as a result of these actions,
and I couldn't see where God was, but I could
see where he'd been. I mean, the coincidences were mounting
up and those of us. If you're fortunate enough to

(01:44:23):
be sponsoring people and doing service in alcoholicsnonoymous, then that
is an up close and personal view of the hand
of God, because you'll sponsor guys and you'll see it
so clearly in him, where it's harder to see it
in yourself. You know, the reason I think that it's
hard to see the hand of God in our own

(01:44:44):
lives is because God works very slowly. I mean he's old.
I mean he's very old. Like trying to watch the
hand of God in your life is like trying to
stand in front of the mirror and watch your hair grow.
I mean it's not that it's not growing, it's just
so slow. But in other people you'll see him and
you see him a week later, and oh my god,
you notice the difference. He was shake, couldn't hold a

(01:45:08):
cup of coffee last week. He was in the dead
eyes And look at his eyes now. Is that him
laughing with those guys? Is that him with people he sponsors?
Oh my god, he got his kids back. And you
start to see it. It's miraculous to what we see here.

(01:45:30):
And how else are you going to come to believe
except like that. I heard my sponsor tell a story
thirty some years ago, back in nineteen eighty, and I've
never heard it put better. Why we take these actions
in alcoholics anonymous, these actions that we don't believe in,

(01:45:53):
and we do them, and it changes our lives. He
said that when you hit a bottom with drinking, it's
very much like being shipwrecked at sea, and there you
are out in the middle of the ocean, hundreds if
not thousands of miles from land, and you're all alone,
and you're in a bad spot, and you're tread and
water and you're getting tired. And when you're getting to

(01:46:19):
the point where you're starting to wonder if you can
even go on anymore. Here come these two goofy looking
idiots in an invisible boat and they're pretending like they're
on top of the water, rowing across, and there are
on top of the water. You don't know how they're there,
and they're just rowing up to you, and they're saying,
my name's Bill, my name's Bob. We're from Alcoholics Anonymous.

(01:46:40):
We have God and these wonderful twelve steps that will
solve all your problems.

Speaker 3 (01:46:44):
And you look at them and you go, you got nothing.
Get you're getting getting away from me. You guys are wackled.
Get out, and they row off.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
And about that time, when you can't stay up anymore,
over the horizon comes this big chrome ocean liner. It
says Treatment center on the side, and they got therapists
and doctors and nurses and vocational rehabilitation specialists and members
of the opposite sex and medications and guys with doctorate degrees.

(01:47:20):
And you know, you suspect that a person of your
depth and complexity must surely need all of this. And
you get on board and it's amazing. I mean, you're
getting in groups and you're cracking the secrets of everything
that's wrong with you, and you're getting all this information
and this knowledge, and this is fantastic. Twenty eight days

(01:47:44):
later over the side and there you are tread and
water as the ocean liner goes off to sea. And
there you are tread and water, and you're getting tired
and you don't know if you can make it, and
you start going under and you're desperately trying to stay
afloat and not drowned. And when you're about ready to
go down for the last time, here come those two

(01:48:07):
assholes in that invisible boat. My name's Bill, my name's Bob.
We're from Alcoholicxnonymous. We have God and these beautiful twelve
steps solve all your problems. And you go, oh, you
got it, get it. We got nothing here, but you're
too weak to resist and they pull you on board,
and there you are. You're sitting on top of the water.

(01:48:28):
You don't even know how you're sitting there, as some
of us at eight and ten and twelve months sober,
sitting at a meeting of AA, realizing you're sober longer
than you've ever been sober since you first had a drink,
And you don't know how this is happening to you?
And you go, what do I do? And they go, oh,
row row?

Speaker 4 (01:48:46):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:48:47):
We just go like this, and a funny thing happens.
The more you row that boat, the more substantial it becomes,
and it starts to appear before your very eyes as
a result of your rowing it. And maybe ten years later,
you get so comfortable in that boat you stop rowing
it and it starts to disappear. Alcoholics Anonymous will always

(01:49:13):
be an action program. And the sad part about that
is it's an action program for people who don't like
to do action. We're thinkers. Basically, I just like to think.
You don't you have a thinking man's program. We don't
even That's why we don't have a chapter in the book.
We have a chapter into action. Not into thinking or

(01:49:34):
into pondering or figuring or but into action. And if
I can take these actions as a way of life,
the power starts to materialize in my life. But there's
more work to do, because this is not the end.
I'm gonna on page fifty five, I'm gonna touch on

(01:49:58):
this and we'll break for lunch. These two paragraphs in
the middle of the page are beautiful. They are They
are a very precise description of where you're going to
find the power, how you're going to find the power,
and when you're going to find the power. I mean,
this is a descript This is telling you what's going

(01:50:21):
to happen to you as a result of steps four
through nine. It's remarkable. Now, this is coming right out
of the section on all the prejudices and all the
doubts and all our resistance to God. This is in
the chapter We Agnostics, and it starts with the second
paragraph says, actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down

(01:50:46):
in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea
of God, deep down within you, deep down within me
is got nah? I don't think so. I used to
hear the old timers say stuff like that. They'd say
that they would listen to the still small voice of

(01:51:07):
God within them. My grand sponsor was speaking at our
inner group one time, and I got in the line
to thank him, and a man a couple people ahead
of me in the line asked Chuck a question. He said,
he said, where how do you find God? And Chuck
pointed right in his chest and he said, he's not lost,

(01:51:27):
He's right in there. How could something so good and
so powerful be in something that I know to be
so bad and so weak. There was a woman named Diantha.
Diantha was very spiritual and she had done she'd work

(01:51:48):
these steps, and she was very cool. She had a
tremendous relationship with God. She was a knitter. She would
sit and knit and it was sort of like some
kind of meditation things she'd knit in the me, you know,
and me and some idiot that I got sober with.
We learned that if you said the F word in
the meeting, she'd speed up her knitting a little bit.

(01:52:08):
So we were we were determined to make sparks fly
off her knitting needles and all because we're idiots. And
one day in a meeting, and I always like listen
when she would share. I'd always listen to her because
she had she something was talking through her. And one
day she said she said, she talked about how much

(01:52:30):
she just liked to sit alone with her and God
and commune with God. And the way she said it,
it sounded kind of cool, and I'd, you know, I'd
done meditation and stuff. And as a kid, in the
years I was drinking and doing drugs and I thought, Yeah,
that's the deal. I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna
be quiet, no TV, no stereo, and I'm just gonna

(01:52:53):
commune quietly with God. And I went home, and I
sat down to commune with God, and I discovered that
when it gets quiet out here, it gets very noisy
in here. And in about thirty seconds, I felt like
I was having an anxiety attack, and I had to

(01:53:14):
go turn the TV on because I can't be alone. Well,
so what's that about? Is it that there's something wrong
with me that's not wrong with these other people in
AA that go inside themselves and connect with God. I
go inside myself. I connect with a pack of crazy people.

(01:53:34):
I don't find God. I find legion. I mean, I
find like demons and stuff in me. What is it? Well,
the next line in the book tells you exactly why
you can't connect with God yet you haven't worked this
program of self reduction. It says that it may be obscured.
That means that the God is within me, but he's

(01:53:56):
blocked from me. He's obscured by three things. The first
thing is calamity. Bill talks in his story about worldly clamors.
He makes the connection in town hospital with God, and
then it's immediately pushed aside by worldly clamors. This chattering

(01:54:19):
incessantly in my head, these non stop conversations I have
with myself and other people in between my ears. I mean,
if God really was withinside me, even if he had
a megaphone, I don't know that I would hear him
over the clamor inside me. It just talks to me

(01:54:40):
all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:54:41):
It's just there's It just says stuff to me all
the time, just negative stuff. You know that headache is
really a brain tumor bob, you know, it just it's just,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):
It's this crazy stuff. Don't listen to them. They oh,
he didn't look at he didn't say hi to you.
He never did. Like he's talking crap about don't you know?
You know it just don't listen to your sponsor. He's old,
he said, don't date her. But what does he know?
He's old?

Speaker 1 (01:55:07):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:55:08):
It just says crap to me all the time. It
never stops. It wants me to quit jobs, it wants
me to tell people off. It just just chatters to
me all the time. I was a few years ago,
I was talking to a woman who's very scholarly about
spiritual She reads a lot of spiritual stuff, everything from

(01:55:29):
Buddhism to the Bible. And she's also a linguist, and
she had read the Bible, the Old Testament, in the
original language that it was written in, and she said,
you'd be surprised if you read it. He said, most
churches have twisted it. She said, if you read it
in the original language, it's very different. She said, in

(01:55:50):
Genesis and the part about the Garden of Eden, when
you get to the part where it talks about the serpent,
she said, if you were to translate the original word
literally into the English, it would not be the word
for serpent. The word that they actually used was the
word that described the sound that the serpent made. It

(01:56:13):
was the hiss and the slither. You don't see it,
but you can hear it in the tall grass. It
just is chattering at you all the time. It never
goes away. It's just there. And on a good spiritual
hair day, what happens is exactly what it says in

(01:56:36):
Step ten. I am placed in a position of neutrality,
safe and protected not just from alcohol but even from me.
And at those moments, the hiss and the slither become distant,
like music in a doctor's office. It's there, but you
don't even hear it anymore, do you, because it doesn't

(01:56:57):
have your attention, And yet you get me spiritually sick,
and it just smears itself across the windshield of my car,
and I can hear and see nothing else, because all
of a sudden life becomes, and my sponsor becomes, and
the people in the meeting become music in the doctor's office.

(01:57:19):
Because now this thing is right here, I'm in the
bondage of it, or it says in our third step,
the bondage of self. So the first thing that obscures
me is calamity. The second thing that obscues me is

(01:57:39):
pomp that I fill up with myself to the point
where I fit the old adage you can always tell
an alcoholic, you just can't tell him much, you know.
I'm the guy become the I know everything guy, the
guy that that goes to meetings and only can hear
what's wrong with you and can't hear what's right with you.

(01:57:59):
I'm that guy again. I'm full of myself like a
glass of water filled to the top. There's no room
for anything else, and then the last thing, and I'll
talk about this and we'll break worship of other things.
Isn't it odd that I have been a worshiper of
other things all my life and never knew it because
I didn't know what it meant. And I was about

(01:58:22):
a little over a year sober, and I had I
was ending my first sober relationship. Now, I got to
tell you something. I sponsor a lot of guys who
have problems with relationships. I don't think there is a
human being on the planet more self obsessed than an
alcoholic ending a relationship. I mean, oh my god. You

(01:58:44):
can go up to a guy like that and say,
I just came from the doctor. I have terminal cancer,
two weeks to live. You'll go you know what else?
She said? You know, I just so I'm in the
grip of that, and it's I'm in here. I'm dying
emotionally and spiritually. And I go to a meeting hoping

(01:59:06):
to hear something it'll snap me out of it. And
I can't hear nothing because I'm so sick, and sing
to myself that what's going on in the meetings like
music in the doctor's office. But I end up at
a coffee shop with an old timer that was from
out of town after the meeting, and I was telling
him I had him hostage in this booth and I
start telling him about the relationship for about thirty minutes

(01:59:29):
till his eyes have glazed over, and he very polite
man listen to me. And then when I was done,
he said some things that rocked me. He said, have
you ever thought about the First Commandment? A minute? He
said that. I bristled with a little bit of old prejudice.
I said, I'm not really into that. I'm just into
AA and he laughed. He said, yeah, I know. He said,

(01:59:49):
you and I are very much alike. He said, Guys
like us have a hard time with without shout not,
don't we? And I thought, He said the Ten Commandments
were original written as statements of spiritual cause and effect,
and by some well meaning people. As they were translated
into he says, I think it was the Greeks that
put an authoritarian spin on him. He said, in the

(02:00:12):
as it exists in the English today, it says I
am the Lord thy God, Thou shalt not put false
gods before me? He said. He said, you know that
I know that God loves me no matter what. I
can put anything I want between me and God, and
God will still love me. He said. The problem is
when you put something between you and God, you block

(02:00:34):
the light. He said, when you worship something, it doesn't
mean to bow down to it. It simply means to
obsessively turn your consciousness towards. He said, you want to
know what you worship, make a pie graph of everything
you've been thinking about today, and the thing that would
own the pie graph would be obviously the thing you

(02:00:57):
keep obsessively turning your consciousness towards. When he said that,
I pictured the top piagraph with the little sliver for
aa little silver work, and the rest of the pie
was this relationship. And I knew why I was in
such desolation, fear, and depression. I knew why it felt

(02:01:17):
like someone had stepped on the oxygen hose to my
very soul because I'd blocked the light. I put this
relationship right here between me and life itself, and I
was smothering myself with it. Cut off from you, cut

(02:01:39):
off from God, and cut off from me, and so
alcoholics Anonymous, we're going to start getting after lunch. We're
going to get into this process of reducing this stuff
so that I can can

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Bob D. - AA Speaker - Admitted we were Powerless, and Came to Believe NEW 2013

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