Bob D. - AA Speaker - A Shining Example of Recovery from Alcoholism - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Bob Darryl, and I am alcoholic through
the grace of a very loving God that I didn't
believe in, found out through the Steps, was crazy about
me and has no taste the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics
Anonymous as outlined in this book and the process within
good Sponsorship Commitments and Alcoholics Anonymous and Bushels and Newcomers.

(00:24):
I have not had a drink or any mind or
emotion altering substance since October thirty one, nineteen seventy eight,
and for that I owe Alcoholics Anonymous in my life.
It's good to be here. I wanted to thank, aren't
it for his talk? It's I after all day today.

(00:48):
I tell you, I can't wait to hear what I'm
going to say. I'm almost tired of the sound of
my own voice. So it'll be interested to see what
comes out. God willing, if he shows up, it's going
to be good. I didn't come from alcoholic family. My

(01:13):
family was pretty normal. There was a lot of love
in our household. But I suspect that there was something
wrong with me before I ever picked up a drink,
because way before I could ever ever drink, I didn't
really feel like other people looked. There was a lot

(01:34):
of love in our family, but I was so wrapped
up in myself that I couldn't feel it. I could
see it, and I could understand it intellectually that it
was there, but I couldn't feel it. I was that
disconnected from life and the people around me, even as
a young kid, and nobody did that to me. I

(01:56):
just was born with an inclination towards self involvement. I
was born a thinker. There's a lot of thinkers in AA.
If you're we don't live life, we ponder it. And
I was a ponderer and a thinker and a day
dreamer far before I ever picked up a drink. I

(02:20):
was a restless, irritable, and discontent little kid. I was
always I was always the kid that was always looking
for the next thing. Never could appreciate this thing. It's
always what's the next thing, the next thing that's gonna
excite me. And I didn't know that I suffered. I

(02:41):
didn't know that I had something wrong with me. When
Doctor Silkworth, in the Doctor's Opinion says something that really
applies to me through my whole life. He says, to us,
our alcoholic life seems the only normal one, so whatever
is wrong with me, I had to it, and I
just think it's just normal, it's the way it is.

(03:05):
But I didn't feel like other people looked. And when
I was twelve years old, almost thirteen years old, this
disease of alcoholism within me was touched for the first
time by alcohol, an event that I was not aware
of really consciously, but an event that would change my life,

(03:25):
and my life would never be the same after that.
And basically, really what happened. I was hanging around with
a bunch of older kids, and I just want their approval.
I want to fit, I want their acceptance. And we
pulled a little burglary in the neighborhood and broke into
some house. And one of the things we stole was
a bunch of bottles of whiskey. And I didn't know

(03:47):
nothing about it. I'd never seen anybody drunk. I didn't
even know that it got you high. But I'm watching
these kids pass around this whiskey bottle. And when you're
always secretly coming from behind, when you always secretly don't
feel like other people look and you're constantly trying to
pretend that you're like others. You gotta watch them close.

(04:13):
And what I observed is that the bigger hit you
took off this bottle, the more attention you got from
the other guys. So by the time it gets to me,
I'm in, I'm in. I don't know. I'm just glad
it wasn't cat You're in. Because I'm in, I'm gonna
drink whatever that is. I'm gonna take a big hit
off of it. And I took a big hit off
that bottle, and it, oh man, about burn me up.

(04:37):
But when the burden stopped, I started to feel so
good that the way I would be without that feeling
from that moment on would never be enough again for me.
And without ever realizing it, I just started to live
for the opportunity to get lit up. As a matter

(05:00):
of fact, it seemed like from that moment on, my
life was just I just existed between opportunities to party,
and it really was the most important thing in my life. Now,
if you had asked me that, I wouldn't have admitted that.
I couldn't have been I don't even think I could
have admitted that to myself. But if you would have
watched me, what you would have seen is a kind

(05:21):
of a depressive mope who just kind of shuffles along
and then gets lit up and comes alive. And then
just shuffles along like a mope, and then the lick
gets lit up and comes alive. And that was you
could see. If you would have watched me objectively, you'd
think that's the most That's the only time I ever
see this guy happy is when he's lit up, when

(05:42):
he's drunk. But there's something wrong with me. And because
there's something wrong with me, by the time I'm fifteen,
almost sixteen years old, I'm standing before a juvenile court
judge for the third time an before that judge. Because
every time I go out to party with my friends,

(06:05):
I can't seem to shut it down when you should.
I always go a little too far. I always get
a little too whacked. And when I get really I
don't just get drunk. I get drunk drunk. I get
and when I get drunk drunk, there's some very bizarre
things that seem like a good idea to me. You know,

(06:29):
I don't. I don't, And then the next day it's like,
what was I thinking? And I don't know that I
have alcoholism. I don't know that I have that one
thing that defines alcoholism. And we live in a day
and age where a lot of people come into alcoholics
anonymous as I did that, And we use so many

(06:51):
other drugs in addition to drink, and we're not sure
what we are. We don't we're not sure what twelve
step program we should. We just know we're root up.
But I'll tell you how you can tell if you
have alcoholism. Alcoholism is defined by one characteristic that differentiates
us and sets us apart as a distinct entity, as

(07:15):
doctor Solkworth says, and that is an allergic reaction to alcohol.
But the allergic reaction is subtle, it's hard to see it.
But the allergic, non normal reaction I have to alcohol
is that somewhere about the second drink, as I'm starting

(07:36):
to feel the effect, the allergic reaction is I break
out with a yearning for more of that feeling, and
consequently I can never really ever get enough. I have never,
in all my years of drinking, never once sat in
a bar or a party passing something around or drinking

(07:59):
it a barred have the after an hour, have the
bartender come over and say, Bob, would you like another drink.
I have never once had the experience of sitting there
and thinking to myself, honestly, nah, this is just right.
Never once, never once. It's always one more, one more,

(08:20):
one more, one more. And if you have that, if
you can't get enough, you were always gonna drink too much.
And so I would burn my life to the ground
every time I went out. I didn't mean to. I
don't know that I have alcoholism. But I'm standing before
this juvenile court judge and I'm not even sixteen years
old yet, and I am in a lot of trouble.

(08:43):
And my parents, who loved me and would have done
anything to help me, are trying to work out a
deal with this judge so they don't send me this
pretty bad place to be locked up. And instead they
made a compromise and I had to go somewhere else
live for a while. And I go to this other
place and I don't know why I'm there. I just

(09:05):
know I'm in trouble. And I'm not even there a
week and I meet this older kid, about seventeen and
a half, hip kid, one of the hip guys, and
I'm telling him my story about how I'm always in
trouble and how much I like to drink with my
friends and everything. And he's listening to me, and he
says to me, he says, so, so you like to party,

(09:28):
do you? And I said, yes, I do. He says,
will you drink that liquor that'll make you stupid? Oh?
I don't know, man, I like that liquor. At that
time in my life, I was drinking that one fifty
one rum that'll get you downtown. Now, I mean, I
like that stuff. I just light me up. And he says, well,
that stuff will make you stupid. You're always in trouble. Yeah,

(09:50):
I know, but I like that, he says. Listen to me.
He says, what if I told you that I could
give you something that would make you feel as good
as that. They won't be able to smell it on
your breath, you won't slur your words, you won't even stagger.
As a matter of fact, no one will even know
you're high, and you'll be able to fit a whole

(10:11):
week's supply in your shirt pocket. What would you say
to that. I don't even know what he's talking about,
but I'm just like, sign me up, right, Because the
idea of not partying is not even on the horizon.
I mean, no, no, that's not it's not It's like, oh,
I can party over here not get in as much trouble. Oh,
that's signed me up for that. And he introduced me

(10:33):
to drugs. But I got to tell you something. I'm
a real alcoholic. Real alcoholics should not do drugs wear pigs.
Oh man, it was bad because every drug I ever tried,
I tried it alcoholically. I mean, I just took it
to the wall. I'm trying to duplicate an effect I'd
found in one fifty one rum with drugs, and oh

(10:57):
it's bad. And no time at all. I'm doing amphetamines,
but I'm not doing in just doing amphetamines like a
drug addict would do amphetamines. I'm doing amphetamines to guys
that had been doing it for ten years or telling me,
hey kid, you better cool it right And no time
at all. I think I turned myself into a paranoid

(11:19):
schizophrenic or something. I became the guy. If you left
me alone in your car to go in and get
a pack of cigarettes. By the time you come out,
I've taken your dashboard apart looking for microphones from the
FBI right, because I think I think everybody's looking for me.
You know, I just nuts. I couldn't put two sentences together.

(11:40):
My head had spin with all I'd be in a
group of people that are all talking, my head spinning,
I blurret something out. It was always inappropriate, and then
I go, oh, you know, I saw it. People are
having less and less to do with me. And a
guy came along and he said, man, you're pretty screwed up.
And I said, brun you know or whatever he says.
He says, try some of this, and he hit me

(12:03):
up with something, and I'll tell you when the throwing
up stopped, Man, I can think straight, and everything in
me went oo. And he introduced me to heroin. But
I'm a real alcoholic. I'm telling you, we alcoholics should
not do drugs. It's bad. It's bad, it's bad. And
I took it to the wall and I got so

(12:24):
whacked on that stuff, and then I started hitting doctors
for pills and smoking all the around, and then eventually
to come full circle back to alcohol after I've burnt
all of that out, and I suspect that I did
drugs for the same reason that doctor Bob did drugs.

(12:45):
Do you know that Doctor Bob actually, in frequency of use,
did more drugs than alcohol. If you read his story,
he did high powered sedatives every single day of his
life for seventeen years. He did not drink every single day.
But Doctor Bob was exactly like me. He had the

(13:07):
phenomenon of craving. He had the allergic reaction that only
occurs in alcoholics. And the medications bought him at least
a little bit of release and freedom from the emotions
that drove him back to drinking. It bought him little
periods of abstinence where he could didn't have to burn

(13:28):
his life to the ground with alcohol. But every single
time Doctor Bob drank, he got whacked. I mean, the
day that Bill Wilson tried to talk to him, Bill
couldn't talk to him because he was taking a nap
under the dining room table. I mean, you gotta love
a guy like that. I mean, you know, because I'm
that guy. I'm the napper. I'm the guy that goes

(13:49):
out to some club or some party and if I
don't have some kind of stimulants in about two hours,
I'm the guy to sleep in the booth somewhere or
laying on the floor in the corner taking a nap,
because when I start drinking, I can't stop. Now, non
alcoholics don't drink like that. My sister is a non alcoholic.

(14:10):
I've watched my sister drink. I mean, I've watched my
sister drink like a cat will watch a guy eat
a tuna fish sandwich. I mean, I've watched my sister drink.
And the funniest thing happens when she drinks, and you can,
I look in the look her in the eyes, and
I try to see the effect hit her, you know.
And about after about two drinks, she goes and she

(14:35):
shuts it right down, and she gets a feeling that
she's starting to lose control, and it's inconceivable to her
to keep on drinking, to get so drunk. But I'm
a different person than my sister. When I start to drink,
my reaction to alcohol is not whoa. When I get

(14:57):
to the same place, it's like, oh yeah, come on, man,
come on, and it lights me up and I can't
get enough. And I don't get a feeling like I'm
losing control. I get a feeling like I'm getting control.
I get a feeling like every vacancy and incompleteness within

(15:19):
me starts to firm up. In the early days of drinking,
there's a I tell you something. I think alcohol was
the most immediate and most effective treatment for the disease
of alcoholism I have ever found. It was dynamic. You
could take a guy like me, who's half asked, depressed

(15:42):
all the time, who doesn't fit with people. I don't
know how to mix with people sober and I could
go to a party, or I could go to a
bar and have three or four drinks, and man, I
could come out and play. I could talk to people
about seven drinks and I lovebody, remember that feeling. I

(16:02):
love you, man, Red, I just get that glow on you.
You just It'd be with those that gang of guys
I hang around.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
With me, and I'd get so connected to them, these
are my guys.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
And then I'd sober up and I'd be back to
being me again, the guy who doesn't fit anywhere, the
guy who suffers from this funny kind of loneliness that
I can't put into words, the kind of loneliness that
you feel even when you're in a crowd of people
that like you, the kind of loneliness you feel with

(16:37):
your family and you know they love you, But what's
wrong with me? Why don't Why aren't Why don't I
feel a part of them the way they seem to
be a part of each other? What's wrong with me?
And so I drink and in the early days, the
magic is the effect of alcohol is stupendous. I could

(17:00):
be funny when I drank. I'm not really funny, but
when I'm drunk, I'm funny. It lights me up. I
can I can be deep and philosophical. I can remember
middle of the night getting to that point where you think, oh,
this is what buddhas saw. You know, you just get
to Oh, yeah, you just see the big I can

(17:20):
see the big picture now, you know. Oh. I'd say
things that blow my mind. I think, wow, that's heavy,
you know. And I could dance when I was drunk.
I can't dance. When I was drunk, I could dance.
I could. I could play the guitar and sing, and
better than I could ever play the guitar and sing,

(17:41):
I could do everything better. It almost like alcohol immersed
me in that zone where everything just clicks. I couldn't
miss I'd sell if it wasn't for alcohol, i'd probably
be celibate. To this day. I don't think I would
have ever gotten a girlfriend or hooked up with anybody.

(18:03):
I'm just too insecure. I'm just too afraid of rejection.
I would have never risked. I'll tell you a little story.
I was in about the seventh or eighth grade, somewhere
in seventh grade, junior high school, eighth grade maybe, and
I went to a dance because there was a girl
in my class that I had a crush on, and

(18:24):
some guy I know it showed me a couple of
dance steps. So I'm going to this dance. I'm gonna
ask her to dance. And I'm standing over against the
wall in this gymnasium just just terrified. Now i don't
know that i'm terrified, but I'm just really uncomfortable. And
I'm trying to psych myself up to ask her to dance.
And I'm watching her dance with her girlfriend, and.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
I'm okay, I'm gonna ask her, all right, all right,
next song, next song, next song. The next song had come,
and I'd be oh, man, I can't next song.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
And I did that for about a half hour. Finally
I screwed up enough courage walked over and asked her
to dance, and she said no. And I gotta walk
back across that twelve mile gymnasium, and everybody's looking at me.
You can feel him. I can't. I don't want to
look at him, but I can feel them looking at me.
And did you ever Sometimes I get clairvoyant, like I can.

(19:19):
I think I know what people are thinking, right, you
know what I mean? And I go back over to
my wall, and every time somebody looks in my direction,
it feels like to me, they're thinking, oh, that poor,
pathetic loser. And I stood over there for a little
while till I couldn't take it anymore and bolted out
of there, went home and moped, like you're supposed to.

(19:43):
I'm gonna tell you something. I'd have never ever done
that again, except later on that year. I was at
a dance under the power of one fifty one rum
and Coca Cola, and I gotta tell you I was smooth.
I could ask girls to dance and they's with a
confidence and a suave fair and they would and they

(20:05):
would say yes. And if they said Noah, is she
missing the opportunity of a lifetime here right now. That's power.
That's power in a couple glasses of whiskey to change
the whole planet. That's power to change my whole reality

(20:29):
from a devastating, empty, vacant, desolate life to a connectedness
that is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It's
no wonder in the early days, when the hook is set,
it's no wonder that that becomes the most important thing

(20:50):
in our lives. And if you're sitting here and alcohol
has never done that for you, then how is it
ever gonna get a chance to do to you what
it will do later? And I've got a chance to
do something to me later because it had done that
for me at one time, and I'll do anything to

(21:12):
duplicate that effect, because it was the only real, substantial
treatment for this malady of my spirit that I had
ever found. It was the only time in my life
I felt I felt like you looked doctor Silkworth when
he says it to us, our alcoholic life seems the
only normal one. It's the only time I feel normal

(21:37):
is when I'm drunk. Now I don't look normal because
I fall down and I stagger, and I'm in trouble,
but I feel normal when I'm lit up. In the
there's an old story and they mentioned it in The
Big Book that when they refer to Bill Wilson refers
to the alcoholic as a real doctor Jacqueline mister Hyde.

(21:57):
And if you've ever read Doctor Jacqueline mister Hyde in
the original version by Robert Lewis Stevenson, I identify with
Doctor Jekyl a lot. Unlike the Hollywood version where Doctor
Jekyll was a kind altruistic scientist. In the book, he
was a self obsessed, judgmental guy who didn't fit very

(22:21):
well and couldn't get along with anybody. So he was
a recluse and a loner, and he stayed in his laboratory.
He couldn't even really connect with the woman who was
he was engaged to be married with. He had absolute
inability to connect with other people. And he finds this
elixir and he creates this thing, and he drinks it

(22:43):
and for the first time in his life he can
come out and play. But he does some horrible, tragic, terrible,
terrible brutal things while mister Hyde, as some of us
did when we were drunk. And then there's a point
in there where, after all the damage he's done and

(23:04):
all the shame he's brought onto his family, he says
something that I thought was amazing. He said, even in
the face of all of that, I still liked myself
better as mister Hyde than I ever liked myself as
Doctor Jekyl. And that was my reality. In the face

(23:25):
of the trips to jail, in the face of what
I've done to my mother and father, in the face
of what I did to my sister, in the face
of what the jobs I've ruined and the relationships I broke,
in the face of all the shame and remorse and
guilt I've experienced through my drinking, I still liked myself

(23:45):
better when I was drunk than I ever liked myself
when I was sober. And that was my big secret,
because I can't tell anybody that, because that's crazy. In
the light of the destruction that I'm creating in my life,
that is crazy. I may be crazy, but I'm not

(24:06):
so crazy that I don't know that that's crazy. I mean,
I know that that's crazy thinking. So that's my big secret.
My big secret is it's the only time I ever
really feel complete. But Alcoholism is a progressive disease. The
book says, over any considerable period, it gets worse, never better.

(24:30):
And that's really true. I have never heard of one case,
never one case of a real alcoholic that's once alcohol
turns on you and stops lighting you up and starts
doing something to you. I don't know anyone that's ever
been able to roll it back to the good old days.

(24:52):
Most of us die trying to chase something we can't
recapture because inside me, I don't want to believe this
party's over. I don't want to believe that this effect
I can't get it anymore. Maybe it was just the
last time. Maybe if I would have if I would

(25:12):
have had a full stomach, Maybe if I wouldn't drink
that rum, maybe i'd drink some natural wine. But the
party can't be over. I gotta get some more drugs.
I gotta mix some drugs in here. I'll mix some
drugs in here. Maybe the part I can jump start
the party that way. But I don't want to believe
the party's over, because what am I going to do
if it is? See, I'm nothing without it, I'm nothing,

(25:39):
and I hate that about myself. I've always hated that
about myself, and alcohol made me something, and without it,
I'm nothing. I don't fit anywhere. I suffer from low
level depressions, loneliness, bouts of anxiety, sometimes anxiety almost to

(26:01):
the point of paralysis, or I can't get off the sofa.
I'm so overwhelmed with fear and worry, and so I drink,
and I drink because I don't know what else to do.
But as this disease progresses, it starts to turn on me,
and it's, you know, they all the fun and the

(26:21):
ease and the comfort start being leeched out of it.
And now I'm drinking and it's it's turned bad on me.
And now I'm starting to experience more trips to jail.
I'm and I liked a lot of things that Arner
talked about identified the wet pants, Oh yeah, the waking
up with You know, if you're two years old, diaper

(26:44):
rash is cute. You're twenty years old, it's not cute.
How do you explain that to your new girlfriend? Right,
it's a bad deal. I was a blackout blackout drinkers
in here, anybody that everybody? Oh yeah, oh yeah, my people? Right,

(27:07):
I'll tell you, it's hard going through life when other
people know more about you than you do. That's a
bad deal. And you know, if you're like me, no
one ever came up to me the next day and said, oh, Bob,
you were so helpful at the party last night. Now
I'd hear things like you peede in our kitchen, you

(27:34):
stole my stash, you hit on my wife, you broke
my lamp, you sideswipe my car, you passed out on
the front lawn. The worst one. I was on my
way to get a drink in the morning. I used
to be shaken in the morning. I need a drink bad.
And I run into this guy and he says to me,
he says, do you know you told everybody last night
at the party that you beat Bruce Lee in a

(27:54):
karate match. I just want to crawl under a rock
some you know. I just so what happens as the
disease progresses. Now I'm drinking over my drinking. I have
to drink to blot out the drink what I did
when I was drinking, which causes more bizarre behavior, which

(28:17):
causes more feelings of shame and remorse, which fuels the
fires of my alcoholism. And this is like a per
perpetual motion machine. This seems to be no end to it,
except maybe oblivion or death. In nineteen nineteen seventy one,

(28:39):
I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as
a young kid. I wasn't even old enough to take
a legal drink as of yet, and I was in
an institution for the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction
and they sent me to this AA meeting. I didn't
want to go. I thought it was I think it
was stupid. A A oh god. I mean one of

(29:01):
my Joe Am says, something that's funny is a music.
If there's any musicians in here, you'll you'll get this,
he said. I really identify with this. He said when
he ended up in Alcoholics Onymis, he felt like he
had joined the Salvation Army Band.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
You know, for a musician that's like the bottom of
the food chain. I'll tell you this Salvation Army Band.
Oh no, oh, that's.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
My AA feels. It's it's and the people in AA
are weird. When you're sitting there and you're a young kid,
you got untreated alcoholism, and you don't know what the
heck's going on. And you still got hope, hope that
you can jump start the party. I hope that you're
gonna have some good days left. But I'm just in
a fox hole right now because things are bad. I'm
here healing up. But it's gonna be good again. I

(29:51):
know it. I know it's gonna be good. But it's
a progressive disease and it never is, never is. And
so I get sober for a while until I just
can't take it anymore, and I drink again, and I started,
I started hitting worse and worse bottoms. And in this

(30:12):
progressive disease of alcoholism, it's some funny things that happen.
It gets worse and worse, and all the things you
tell yourself, I'd never do that, Oh yeah you did,
Yeah you did, And then you did it again, right,
And there's a period of time whereas the disease progresses,
it gets it's more degenerate and more the bakery, and

(30:35):
it gets worse and worse, and then the worst thing
of all happens. It gets the same, and then it's
the same, and you come to and you're sick, and
you're shaken, and you hate yourself and you wished you
were dead, and you got to try to put up
enough money together to get a bottle of that cheap
wine or that cheap vodka to blot it out one

(30:59):
more time. You go back to drinking, and it ain't
no fun. And now I'm in that stage of alcoholism
where I drink and I feel sorry for myself. I drink,
and sometimes quietly when no one's around, I sob uncontrollably
because I hate my life and I hate what I've become,
and I can't stand me, and I can't drink away

(31:20):
the remorse and the feelings of shame of what I've
done to the love people that love me. I don't
bathe anymore because I don't care. There's no more fun
left in it. I drink and it's pathetic. I drink,
and I'm depressed and miserable, and yet I stop drinking

(31:43):
periodically as I go into a treatment center, I get
arrested and I sober up, and I'm not stupid. I
understand that this stuff's killing me. I get it. I understand,
so I swear to myself and mean it all right,
are going to touch that stuff again? Let you see,

(32:05):
the real problem of alcoholism starts where the bottle ends,
and that is what is so baffling to me. I
go to meetings of alcoholics anonymous, and I start to
I really don't want to drink anymore. But in short
order I start coming to the conclusion that whatever is

(32:27):
wrong with me is not obviously the same thing that's
wrong with you. Because I stop drinking, and I got
the depression, the anxiety. I don't fit anywhere. It's awful,
abstinence feels like I'm doing time. It's bad. And I
sit in the middle of alcohol exnonymous, in the middle

(32:48):
of rooms that of people who stop drinking, and you're wonderful.
I mean, you're grateful for everything. For God's sakes, how
do you do that? I don't don't even like anything.
You know, you love everybody, You get along with everybody,
You have these miracle stories. Your life just keeps getting
better and better. You know. I remember, I remember sitting

(33:10):
in losing everything, and I'm sitting in this homeless place
for homeless guys, right, and these members of AA would
bring a meeting in here, and it seemed like they
were just coming in. It's you go in there and
you stand against the wall, and it's oh, it's all
of them, and then there's me, Oh, oh, we're having
fun here. Oh it's terrible. A to me. AA has

(33:35):
good news and bad news. The good news is that
maybe if I want to thousands of these stupid meetings
non stop, i'd probably stay sober the rest of my life.
And the bad news I'm gonna live a long time.

(33:56):
You see, I'm exactly the guy that talks about in
a vision for you. I can't imagine life without alcohol. Really,
I can't imagine life without it, or at least with something.
I can kind of imagine life maybe without alcohol if
I had enough of drugs. Maybe, but I can't imagine

(34:18):
life without without alcohol and at least some kind of substance. Something.
Give me something, would you? I tried. I thought one
time I was sober for about seven or eight months,
and I thought, well, I I was in this halfway house,
and I know I can't drink. I know what's killing me.
I know, I know, I know, but God, there's gotta

(34:39):
be something I can do. And I thought, you know,
marijuana is organic. You know, I've never punched a cop
stoned on pot. I might giggle at him, but I've
never punched a cop. I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll try marijuana. That's good. I'll just try that. And

(35:00):
I oh, and of course I drank again, because I'm
feeding something that should be starved and I'm not feeding
something that needs to be fed and all. And I
made it. I made it about a couple months like
that and had I got so thirsty that I had
to drink again and burn my life to the ground

(35:22):
one more time. I remember one time that I haven't
talked about this in a while. I went to a
meeting stoned on pot, I mean really like paranoid wackos
stoned on pot, trying to look normal, and they grabbed
me and make me share the meeting. And I'm standing
up here the podium and I can't They're all looking

(35:44):
at me. I can't look. I can't look. They're all
looking at me. And I'm reading chapter five. Rarely have
you seen a person fail has thoughly followed our path?
Didn't you just read that line? No, don't look up, No,
they're gonna know. Oh. It took me in at four
hours to read chapter five. And I just I showed him.
I stole the money out of the basket and went
out and bought a dozen donuts and slammed them right

(36:05):
as soon as the meeting was over. By the time
I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in nineteen seventy eight, I'd
been to all the psychiatrists. I tried all the medications.
I tried hypnosis, self hypnosis, I tried. I did primal screaming.

(36:26):
I did crazy stuff where you lay on the ground
and kick your hands and feet and scream mommy, daddy.
I mean I tried. I tried. I'm telling you. You
think I'm making that up. Well, that used to be
a viable therapy in this stage years ago. I tried
some weird stuff. Oh man, I've tried anything, and no

(36:46):
matter what I tried, I'm still me. And I'm the
guy who yearns for the effect of alcohol, and I
can't quit drinking, and I keep going back to it
over and over again. And nineteen nineteen seventy eight, I

(37:10):
went on what was to be my last drunk. I
didn't know that it was to be my last drunk.
And on that drunk, I tried to take my own life.
And I didn't try to take my own life for
anything that you would think a person would kill themselves over.
It wasn't for the shame and the guilt, and I

(37:31):
had a wealth of that. But I have an ability
to roll with that. You know, I'll just stuff that
I can roll with that, I'll push through that. Why
I'm standing on a bridge trying to get up enough
courage to kill myself is that I can't. I understand
something about me I don't want to understand as that

(37:53):
there's no relief in the bottle in the bag for
me anymore, none, And I got nowhere else to go.
There's a part in a vision for you. It says, well, well,
someday we'll get to a place where we can't imagine
life with it anymore, because all the funds wrung out
of it and it's turned on you and it's awful.

(38:14):
And I can't imagine life without it either, because abstinence
is depressive and lonely, and it feels like I just can't.
I can only do short periods of time abstinate. It says.
When you get to that place, you'll be at the
jumping off place. It says, you'll know a loneliness such
as few do, and you'll wish for the end. And

(38:37):
I'm on a bridge wishing for the end, not for
one reason, and one reason only, I have lost all hope. See,
I've tried all the therapy, I've tried religion, I've tried medications,
I've tried everything to change me into the kind of
person that's gonna be okay enough sober that I don't

(38:58):
have to be compelled to go back to that. And
I can't change me. That's the one inescapable fact as
I can't change me, and yet at the same time
I can't. There's no fun in alcohol anymore. I can't
imagine life with it, and I can't imagine life without it.

(39:19):
So I'm trying to kill myself. But I'm a coward,
and I've always been a coward. I can you know.
I used to run with gangs of guys and I'd
get locked up and be on those cell blocks. And
I can put up a pretty good front out here.
But my big secret, behind the macho, behind the machismo,

(39:41):
behind all the bluster, is that I'm a scared, scared
little kid inside. And I've always been that way, and
I hate that about myself. I hate that about myself,
but it is a truth that is me. And so
when it came time to jump off this bridge I
couldn't do, and I fell apart and started sobbing, and

(40:03):
I smashed my hand up, cursing myself, slamming it on
this piece of metal in that bridge, and cursing myself
for being a coward. And little did I know that
that would be my last drunk. Little did I know
that all of that, very shortly my life was going

(40:24):
to be was going to change so dramatically that if
I live to be a thousand years old, I could
never repay what has happened to me. I could never repay.
But I didn't know that. I felt like my life
was over. And I ended up twenty five hundred miles away,
all the way across the continent of the United States

(40:47):
in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a hospital detox sick. I
hadn't eaten anything in about ten days, drinking that cheap
wine and cheap vodka. I'm in bad shape. And the
Buddhists say, when the students ready, the teachers appear, and
members of Alcoholics Anonymous brought meetings into that hospital, as

(41:10):
I bring meetings into detoxes, and I've done that for
over twenty eight years. Twice a week. I do what
Bill Wilson, did I go look for drunks, not because
they're drunks, but because I am, and that is that
is my vehicle for freedom. And members of AA who

(41:33):
they were the real doers, they were the givers. They
were the guys who understood their primary purpose, brought meetings
into there. And I sat there and for the first time,
in all those years of attending AA meetings, for the
first time, I had just enough of me beaten out
of me that I could hear you. And I sat there,

(41:54):
and as you shared your experience, I found myself nodding
my head and thinking to myself, my God, I'm like that,
I feel like that, I think like that, I drank
like that. I'm like these people. I had never, in
all my attending of meetings of Alcoholic Exnonymous, ever connected.
I was too defended. I'm too busy picking you apart

(42:16):
and making and putting you down. In my mind, I
could never connect with you. But now there's enough of
me and my ego beat out of me that I
can actually connect with you. And I'm sitting there and
I'm nodding my head and I'm man, I'm like this,
and a little little inkling, little kernel of hope came
to me. And what the hope was is that I

(42:39):
watched these guys, and I watched it. They used to
come in there once or twice a week, and I've
been watching them. I was in that place for thirty
some days. I was watching these guys. And these guys
were legitimately sincerely happy and sober at the same time,
which is incomprehensible to me. And I could see that

(43:02):
something had changed in them, and they had successful lives,
and they laughed a lot. And I watched some of
them kidding around with each other and telling jokes and
goofing on each other, and I realized, Man, these guys
are having a better time sober than I had back
in the good days when I were drinking worked, And
I thought, maybe if that could happen to them, maybe

(43:30):
if I followed them around and did everything that they did,
could that happen to me? To me, the piece of
crap that I am, could that happen to me? And

(43:51):
I thought to myself, what the hell do I got
to lose? And that that line went through my head
a lot of times. Janis Joplin used to sing a
song called Bobby McGee and there's a line in there
that says freedom is just another word for nothing left
to lose. Seeing I finally didn't have to defend myself

(44:12):
against you. I didn't have to tell myself how I'm
not like you. I didn't have to pick you apart.
I didn't have to come up with excuses why I
don't need to do what you do. I don't have
to do anything except join you. And I joined you,
and I've got a sponsor and a home group and
started following these guys around, and my life started to change.

(44:35):
And I had an experience in the hospital before I
got out. I've been to several of the AA meetings
and I was scared to death. And I don't talk
about this too much. A woman in the hospital was

(44:59):
a member of AAA named Judy, and she was one
of the counselors there. And Judy had knew my record,
and she knew that I'd been in a whole bunch
of treatment centers, and she knew that I'd been in
and out of AA meetings for years. And Judy said
to me one day, she said, so, what's different this time?
And I didn't know what to say to or, so

(45:20):
I said to her. I said, well, I just took
the third step. I don't even know what the third
step is, but it's a nice aa sounding thing to say,
you know, I did right, And she and it and
it was a good thing to say, because she lit up.
She got excited. She said, oh really, Oh that's great.
You mean you said that prayer on page sixty three

(45:41):
with someone? And I I almost said yes, but I
was afraid she was going to ask me who I
said it with and what it said, so I said no, no,
I just did it my way. And all of a sudden,
her whole face changed. She looked at me into such
a way I wanted to look to see like I
had spilled something on me or something. She gave me
it's that kind of weird look, you know, and just

(46:02):
shaking her head and walks off down the hall. And
about a day or so later, I'm in this. I'm
sitting on this hospital bed and I'm terrified because I
know the truth. I know that I'm gonna leave this
hospital and I'm gonna drink again, and I don't want
to drink no more, but I can't do anything else.

(46:25):
When that obsession comes on me. I'm toast and I
can't fight it. I can put it off for a
little while. And I don't know if I'm gonna drink
the day I get out, or two weeks later or
six months later. But I am facing a reality that
it is an eventuality. See for alcoholics of my type,

(46:47):
with untreated alcoholism, without a spiritual experience, the question is
not if you're gonna drink again. The question is when
it's an inevitability. It's a level of powerlessness that I
never imagine. You mean to tell me that when I
really make up my mind and I've been through the

(47:08):
classes and I got the education and I'm determined never
to drink, I'm going to drink again. You bet you.
You know why. I know that because I did that
time and time and time again. And I'm scared and terrified.
And there was a big book that they gave everybody
in there. Insurance company paid for it. I think we
paid about one thousand dollars for it. Was some real

(47:31):
weird deal. We could have bought it in an AA
meeting for three dollars. And I had this big book
and I remembered, I remember that Judy had said asked me.
It said something about page sixty three of the book.
So I opened the book to page sixty three, and
in the middle of the page is this prayer. But
it's in this kind of archaic language with THEE and thou,

(47:56):
and it's kind of a little weird. And I'm reading this
and I'm not getting anything out of it. In the
middle of the prayer is a line that says, relieve
me of the bondage of self. And I read that
line and I threw that book across that room and
I fell down off of that bed onto my knees

(48:16):
and I started sobbing, and from deep down inside of me,
I said something I couldn't believe. I said, I said, God,
please help me. And I don't even believe in God.
And I guess in a sense, I had been surrendered
by the bottle. And I didn't know that, but something

(48:40):
happened to me. It was like a change of attitude.
I wasn't really aware of it, but all of a sudden,
I got a sponsor. I started when I got out
of that hospital. I went to a halfway house. I
started going to fifteen meetings a week. I started calling
people up. I started trying to be transparent with the
people at A I started asking their advice. I started

(49:01):
praying every morning and every night. And I don't even
believe in God, they dude say, they tell me to
do things. It didn't make any sense, like go on
twelve step calls. Well, I remember telling this guy, he said,
you need to go start going on twelve step calls. Well,
I understand what you're saying, but I don't really feel
like I'm ready yet. He said to me, He says, listen, kid,

(49:23):
if you wait until you feel ready before you try
to help somebody, you'll probably have already died of alcoholism
because you don't ever feel ready or whole enough to
do that. You just do that, and it the actions.
What happens is those actions will take you towards completeness.
And so I started. I made a commitment to start

(49:45):
taking meetings into a couple institutions every week. When I'd
go out on twelve step calls with some of the
old timers, and something started to happen to me. I
started to have moments where I didn't even realize that,
moments when I would be temporarily free or I'd feel
better and I don't even know that, but they fade

(50:09):
so quickly, and somewhere inside of me, I'm looking for
some kind of permanent fix, and I'm getting these little
brief reprisals from the bondage yourself. And I don't know
that that's what's happening. But I still haven't worked the
Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous out of the book yet. I
didn't do that till I was four years sober. And

(50:30):
I survived my first four years of sobriety by a
lot of service work and a lot of twelve step
calls and working with a lot of newcomers. And Arner
was quoted that part out of working with others, where
it says nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking
with other like intensive work with other alcoholics. It works

(50:53):
where all other activities fail. It works when calling your
sponsor fails. It worked when going to a meeting fails.
It works when praying fails because you're too jammed up
to connect with anything. It works when reading the book
fails because you can't read the book because it's so
noisy in here, you can't even see, you don't even
know what you're reading. It works where all other activities fail.

(51:18):
And the old timers were hammering me to go on
twelve step calls and reach out, go to meetings. They
told me, go to meetings and look for the new
people and find them and go up to them and
make them feel welcome and start talking to them. Give
them whatever you got. I don't have anything. We'll give
them that. Do you believe AA will work? Well? I

(51:38):
hope it will. You got some hope? Give them hope? Good?
You know where the bathroom is in the meeting hall? Yeah,
that's right over there. Oh good, tell them where that is.
I don't help. And I don't know why they want
me to go on twelve step calls. I mean it
almost At one point I suspected it was some kind
of multi level pyramids skis or something, you know, to

(52:01):
increase the membership of AA. You know, why do you
want me to go on these twelve step calls? And
one day I'm sober about a year and a half,
and I'm sinking into a deep depression. I'm the Bill
Wilson type of alcoholic. Now I've been misdiagnosed by competent psychiatrists,

(52:24):
misdiagnosed on a couple occasions. One time I was diagnosed
as clinically depressed. But I'm not clinically depressed, but it
looks like it. What I really am is spiritually depressed.
It's the depression of the obsessively overly self involved. What
happens to me is I just get me and my
emotions just on me, like that creature in the movie

(52:47):
Alien that attaches itself to your face. How you doing,
bob in there? And what happens. It feels like the
air has been sucked out of my out of the planet.
I can't even breathe right. I start feeling like my
spirit is suffocating, and I stay that way long enough,

(53:10):
and I'll start thirsting for freedom. And Unfortunately, the only
thing in my whole life I've ever known that would
bust me out of me like that was about four
or five drinks. And if that obsession comes on me,
the reality that it has turned on me and doesn't

(53:33):
work will not enter into my mind because I won't
be able to see past the need for the medicine,
the yearning, the hope that maybe I know, now that
I'm sober a while, maybe it'll work again. And they're
throwing me on these twelve step calls, and I've come
home this one this one day, I'd been to two

(53:56):
meetings to stay. I prayed. I called my sponsor, and
I'm sitting on the sofa and I'm sinking into this
deep depression. I just got it on me, and I'm
just so locked up inside of me, pondering my life.
And the more I look at my life and my
future and where it's going, the bleaker it looks. I

(54:18):
have never pondered my life and did it joyously. It's
never been that way for me. The more I look
at me, the bleaker it looks. The more I look
at my job, the more I realize, well, this is
going nowhere, you know. The more I look at my
love life the real the more I realize, well, I'm
gonna probably always be alone. You know. It's just a

(54:38):
it's just it's that way. It's that depressive way to
look at yourself, and it's on me, and I can't
get it off, and I'm getting scared, and I I
don't know how long I can stay depressed until I
want to drink again. I don't know. And I didn't
know what to do. And I looked at the clock
and it was almost ten o'clock at night, and I

(55:02):
said a little prayer. I said, God, please help me.
And I remember that there was a meeting at a
quarter after ten, not too far from my apartment, in
a group called Between the Shows group it was. It
met at a little chapel up on the Las Vegas Strip,
and I thought if I could just get off this sofa.
But it was hard to get off the sofa. I

(55:23):
was so depressed. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds.
If you can imagine that depression actually debilitates me. It
has a physical element to it, like you know, it's terrible.
So I finally muscle my way off that sofa and
I shuffle out to my car like a mope. Get
in that car, drive down to the meeting. There's a

(55:43):
parking space right in front of the door to the meeting,
to the chapel. I go in and I'm sitting in
the back of the room. But I can't hear anything
in the meeting because I can't get out of here.
What's going on in the meetings like music and a
doctor's office. It's so remote, because when you're sick of spirit,

(56:03):
everything's backwards. Spiritually, healthy people the voices in their head,
the chatter the conversations are distant, like music and the
doctor's off. You don't even pay any attention to it,
because what your real focus is on is right here,
right now. But sick people, it's reversed what's going on

(56:24):
in reality. I'm disconnected from and the only thing I'm
focused on is up here, and that's exactly what's going
on with me. And I can't hear anything in the meeting.
I'm sitting there. I don't know what it is about
me when I'm depressed. I want to draw conclusions about
my life, and they are depressing conclusions. And do you

(56:46):
ever notice if you've ever been a depressive, depressed sober,
it changes your whole consciousness, your whole perception. It's almost
like you took a mind oldering drug or something, because
when it's like that, it looks like it's always been
that way and it always will be that way. You know,
there's a hopelessness about it. I called my sponsor up

(57:08):
one time in an earlier about of depression. I said, oh, duck,
I just feel terrible, and he says, well, how long
have you felt that way? Oh? I have always felt
this way? And he said, no, you do. You are fine,
Friday night at the home group, you are laughing and
carrying all with the guys. Well, I must have been

(57:29):
in denial. But now that's funny here. But when you're
in the middle of that, it looks that way, it
looks it's forever, add infinitum. But sitting across from me
in this meeting is a guy who's coming off a
drunk and he's in bad shape, and he's grabbing himself

(57:52):
like he wants to jump out of his skin, and
he's rocking back and forth like he's just having a
like his nerves are going. And then he gets up.
He can't sit still, and he's pacing like a caged
animal behind me, back and forth, back and forth. And
then the bathrooms there he can hear me, goes in
the bathroom and he's in there throwing up and dry heaving,

(58:13):
and you know, I am trying to figure my life out.
This guy is annoying that crap out on me, you know,
But I just don't say anything. I just pushed through
it and just think about me like I'm supposed to.
The meeting's over doesn't help me one bit. As matter
of fact, I feel worse. So I don't know what

(58:33):
to do. So I stay after and I help this guy, Charlie,
who's the secretary of the meeting. I help him set
the chairs back up for the chapel and clean, excuse me,
clean the trash out. And Charlie and I are the
last two guys to leave the meeting. And Charlie's on
his way to work. He works the swing shift that
he has to be at work at midnight, and it's
about about eleven thirties, kind of hurrying to get to work,

(58:56):
and we're standing on the front porch of the chapel
and I look over and the guy who was coming
off the drunk is laying on the ground in a
fetal position in front of my car. Now I will
have to step over him to go home and ponder
my life more deeply. But Charlie's standing there, and Charlie
says to me, you're gonna help this guy. And I'm

(59:18):
looking at this guy. I don't want to help him,
and I'm looking at Charlie. And Charlie's got a big mouth.
If I don't help this guy, he's gonna tell everybody
in AA what a lousy member I am, you know.
And I got crap and I go over and I
start talking to the guy and he's paid, he's pants
and he smells, and I got to put him in

(59:38):
my car, and oh, I don't want to do this.
And I asked him, I said, so, do you have
any medical insurance? And he says, no, I don't have any.
I don't have anything. You have any money, you know,
I don't have anything. And it's a time in Las
Vegas when they had no detoks unless you had money
or insurance. If you didn't have money or medical insurance,
you were and you needed detox, you were a lot

(01:00:00):
of trouble. Now they've since opened one. The only places
they had were these fancy detoxes that but you had
to have medical insurance to go there. And in those
old days, if we got a twelve step call like
this and a guy was in danger of going into seizures,
we had two options. And the one option was to
get a bunch of guys together and sit with the

(01:00:20):
guy round the clock, give him a shot of vodka
and orange juice about every hour, just enough so he
doesn't go into convulsions. But I can't do that. It's
it's almost midnight. I got to get up for work
in the morning. The only there's one other option, and
that's to go to the county hospital. And the county
hospital got county money and because of that they would

(01:00:41):
take a certain amount of engineent poor homeless guys. But
they didn't like it. And I'd been down there before
on twelve step calls, and they treat you like a
redheaded step child. I'll tell you, they just treat you
like you, just like they don't like you. And you know,
sometimes they'd make you sit five six like their attitude is,

(01:01:01):
we'd rather treat some legitimate sick people rather these self
induced guys that are probably going to be back here
in a month anyway. So I'm on my way down there,
and I got this guy in my car, and I'm
not real happy about any of this. I am thinking
to myself, isn't it enough that my life is crap?

(01:01:22):
I gotta do this too? Doesn't anybody else step up
to the plate and AA except me? You know? And
then keyword here is me, right, But I don't say
any that. We get down to the hospital and I
sign in and I'm sitting there and giving him cigarettes

(01:01:43):
you could smoke back those days in hospital waiting rooms.
And I'm getting I'm getting him cans of orange juice,
and I'm giving him to him, and he starts to
tell me about himself. And he starts to tell me
about the shame and the guilt that he couldn't even
drink away any more, or for the things he did
to his mother and father, and it is some of

(01:02:05):
the women that tried to love him. He told me
that for some time he'd been thinking about killing himself,
but he just didn't have the courage. And then he
really got me, he said, he said, I don't know
why you're wasting time with me. I'm not like you
people in AA. You see, I always drink again. And

(01:02:25):
he's telling me about me. And in the wee hours
of the morning, sitting in this waiting room of an
emergency room in a hospital, I fell in love with
this guy. I don't know why he can't help me.
He can't get me a better job. He's not even
gonna stay sober a year probably and give me some

(01:02:45):
kind of credit for something. There's nothing this guy can
do for me except that he suffered from alcoholism exactly
like I suffered from alcoholism. And at that moment, I
wanted a good life for him, and I wanted him
to get better, probably more than I wanted it for myself.

(01:03:09):
And I was years later in sponsoring guys that I
realized and started to connect the dots to what had
happened that night and what would happen repeatedly and alcoholics
anonymous as I went on twelve step calls and tried
to help alcoholics. You see what I fell in love
with that night was the me that is in him,

(01:03:33):
a me that I absolutely could not love directly, and
I tried. I had a great therapist one time. She
was real big on love yourself, and she gave me
these exercises. She told me, I want you to stand
in front of the mirror. I want you to look
yourself in the eye, and I want you to say,
God loves me, God forgives me, God accepts me. I

(01:03:56):
love me, I forgive me, I accept me. God lo
my bullshit. I couldn't I could. You know. I could
have stood there till the planet blew up, and it
wouldn't have changed how I felt about myself. But making
amends and helping guys just like me started to change

(01:04:18):
the way I felt about myself. I guess without realizing
that I was attacking the problem from the flank, a
problem that I could never attack head on. I did
self esteem training, I did a lot of stuff trying
to change the way I felt about myself. And it
wasn't until I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I started

(01:04:38):
to heal my relationships with people through the amends and
devote my life to this purpose that my life started
to change in here where it really matters. And they
admitted that guide to that hospital. They gave him a bed,
and I'm driving home in the wee hours of the
morning and the sun's starting to come up, and I'm crying.
And I'm not crying because I'm depressed. I'm crying because

(01:05:02):
I don't know that any time in my life I
ever felt more complete, more right about what's going on. Everything.
There was a rightness about everything in my life. All
of a sudden, I had a sense of useful purpose.
It was like everything in me started to make sense
in the light of what had just happened with this guy.

(01:05:28):
And I started to realize that this is why the
old timers have been hammering me to go on twelve
step calls, because they knew something about me. That I
didn't know. They knew that even this self obsessed, narcissistic,
self involved, self focused, self absorbed person that I was,

(01:05:49):
that if I stayed in that venue long enough, one day,
something would happen. And what happened that night was I
got relieved of the bondage of self. And I think
I'd been relieved briefly of it before on a couple occasions,
but this night, I knew it, and I knew that

(01:06:11):
this is my primary, first and foremost purpose in being alive.
This is the good juice here. This is what I
live for. This is what lights me up like alcohol
used to light me up and give me a sense
of wholeness. It's this one of the guys I sponsor,

(01:06:32):
he says, he talks about twelve step work, and he says, oh, yeah,
that's the good dope. And I've never found anything else
that'll do that for me. And I'll tell you something.
I went through most of my life as a kid
and into my adult years with a feeling and a

(01:06:54):
sense that I'm missing something. And there were guys I
went to high school with and worked with it. See,
it seemed like everything they touched turned to gold, like
they had extreme luck or something. Everything they did just
worked out. They had great relationships with people. They whatever

(01:07:16):
job they had, they just went to the top. They
were productive, they laughed a lot, they were happy, they
were connected to something, and they're doing They always were
doing very well in life. And some of these guys
were real stupid, and it didn't seem fair. I mean,
it just didn't seem fair. I was much more intelligent
and aware than these guys. I knew the truth about life.

(01:07:38):
And these guys were happy at a level I was
never capable of. And their life clicked and it worked
because they knew something I didn't know. They knew that
they weren't alive for any other reason except to love
other people. I existed to try to serve, even fix myself,

(01:08:04):
and my life works today. For the alcoholics, Anonymous is
the first thing that ever gave me a reason and
a knowledge of why I'm here. I don't wonder anymore
what I'm gonna when I'm gonna be when I grow up.
I don't wonder any more who I am. I don't
wonder any more what my life's about. I know absolutely

(01:08:27):
why I'm here. I know why I've been saved from
an alcoholic death. So I can help people that are
just like me. I can't help everybody, but I'm real
good with people that are sick like I'm sick. And
if you don't identify with me, and a lot of
people in AA don't, I want you to know that

(01:08:47):
there's going to be another speaker coming along that you
will identify with. Because we got a rench for every
nut here. I'm telling you, we got a wrench. And
in the light of my primary purpose, all of a sudden,
everything in my life makes sense. It has usefulness. Even
the worst defects of character become useful for the guy

(01:09:10):
that comes in the door next week that's sick like
I am, that suffers from some of the things I
suffer from. See, my experience becomes useful to him, and
I can help him where nobody else can, because he
is me. There's a line in our book that says,

(01:09:31):
the alcoholic, properly armed with information about himself, can help
another alcoholic when nobody else can't. When the psychiatrists can't,
the ministers can't, the doctors can't, the family members, they
really can't. Matter of fact, there's a whole program for
people who've been trying, but I can help. I can

(01:09:53):
help another alcoholic. And in our book in Working with Others,
it talks about the angle of approach. It says that
we try to place ourself in the position of the
new man and approach him the way we would like
to be approached if the tables were turned. You see,

(01:10:14):
every single one of us that have suffered from alcoholism
and have recovered has an innate ability given to us
by God to go within yourself and go back to
the place when you felt exactly like that person felt.
And only you, because of your experience, can pull out

(01:10:35):
of yourself exactly what to say and what to do
for this guy, because it's the exact same thing that
somebody could say or do for you. And as a
result of this, we start to get a sense of
community and one of the great promises of alcoholics Anonymous,
it says that God will show you how to create

(01:10:58):
the fellowship. I have always craved a fellowship. The loneliness
of alcoholism is always within me. I've craved to be
a part of I've craved to belong and I never
knew how, and so I discounted it over the years,
and I would tell people I don't need anybody but

(01:11:20):
inside me. I was dying of loneliness and alcoholics. Anonymous,
through this primary purpose, has showed me how to create
this fellowship I crave. I have a very full life today.
It's full of people that are like me. It's full
of useful purpose. When I wake up in the morning
and and I address my creator in the eleventh step,

(01:11:44):
I address him knowing exactly what I'm going to do
this day, and why I'm going to do it, and
why I'm alive. I'll tell you a quick little story
and I'll shut up. Fifteen years ago, seventeen years ago,
maybe I was up in northern California and I was
talking at an AA event a little bit like this,

(01:12:04):
and it was Sunday afternoon. We had I had about
four or five hours to kill before i'd get on
a plane. And this guy is taking me around, showing
me stuff, and he takes me to this place where
they had the There was a forest that had these
trees that were twenty five thirty feet in diameter, unbelievable.
Some of these trees were hundreds and hundreds of feet high.

(01:12:25):
I walked around that forest feeling like I was in
Jurassic Park. It was amazing. I mean it was just
it was incredible. And after about twenty minutes, we get
in this guy's truck and we're going he's going to
show me some other stuff. And we're driving along and
we're going past these fields and meadows and he says
to me, he says, do you notice how you won't

(01:12:47):
see a three hundred foot tree all by itself out
in the field. I said yeah. He said, do you
know why that is? I said, no, why is that?
He said, well, it is their nature to aspire to
grow to such magnificent heights that what happens is when

(01:13:09):
they grow up alone, they literally will outgrow their roots
capacity to support themselves, and they'll literally eventually top over
on their own aspired magnificence. They can't grow into their nature.
He said, what must happen is that they must grow
up in community, and they literally intertwine their roots into

(01:13:31):
a net below the floor of the forest and literally
feed and support each other. And that allows them, in
God's plan, to grow into their nature. And I thought, oh,
my god, how like my life that is. You see,
I've always had one inherent, deadly defective character, and that

(01:13:52):
defect is I'm never satisfied. The defect is I've always
wanted to take bigger bites out of life. I've always
wanted to feel more and experience more and be more.
And I've never ever been satisfied like that. And alone,
i'mto myself. That defect all but killed me. And then

(01:14:13):
I came to you, and I got a sponsor and
a home group, and I started sponsoring guys and I
intertwined the very foundation of my life with yours, and
you have allowed me to grow into my nature, a
nature I could not change because it is of me.
And if I live to be a thousand years old,

(01:14:35):
I will never repay Alcoholics Anonymous for what it has
done for me. Thank you for my life.

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Bob D. - AA Speaker - A Shining Example of Recovery from Alcoholism

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Bob D. - AA Speaker - A Shining Example of Recovery from Alcoholism