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Source: Bob D – What Are We Doing Here In Alc (2013) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bob-d-what-are-we-doing-here-in-alc-2013-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:51:39
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There's actually fear of sex. My name is Bob D. and I am an alcoholic. And I'm sober today 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 Twelve Steps and the Big Book, good sponsorship and a consistent and persistent commitment to the primary purpose of helping other drunks. And because of that, I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion, altering substance since October 31st, 1978.
And that's a miracle. I didn't know what I was talking about until I got here. And not that I ever really know, but I was looking at the topic and at first I was a little stumped. I thought, why would they – what am I supposed to talk – what's this about? Then the wisdom of the committee sort of hit me, that of all the speakers here, that they would pick me to talk about why we are here, that I could actually insightfully speak for the whole fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and do it very well, I suppose.
And then I came to my senses, I better not do that. But why am I here? How did I get here? And how do I stay here? I think that's a – I don't know, the two questions probably, how do I stay here now that I'm here, is probably the most important question. I want you to know something, that I went to great lengths not to come here, not to end up in AA. I did not want to be an alcoholic. I would rather be a mental health case than an alcoholic.
I'd rather be a drug addict. At least there were rock stars that were drug addicts. I mean, there's a little panache in that. I'd rather be just about anything than an alcoholic. And it talks about that in our book when it says that across the board, most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. And yet, I don't want to be this person that I am, and after several treatment centers, because I am just not easily convinced of something I don't want to be convinced of.
I eventually was intellectually bludgeoned into an acceptance of, oh my God, I've got that thing they're talking about. You know, when I start, I can't stop. And how do you learn that if you're like me and you don't want that to be true? You learn it by failure, by trying one more time and failing, and one more time and failing to control and enjoy my drinking. As the book refers to as our illusion that we pursue to the gates of insanity or death.
Boy, I didn't want to be an alcoholic. And then I was intellectually bludgeoned. I got it, okay. After several treatment centers, all right, and many failures at trying to keep this thing in line, I realized I'm the guy who can't take the first drink, or anything else that will light me up like that, sets me off like that. I can't take the first drink, no matter what. For me, as an alcoholic, to take a drink of alcohol is like having sex with a gorilla.
You ain't done till the gorilla's done. You can tell yourself all night long, me and the gorilla are just going to have a dance. No, you're not. No, no, no. It's going to be bad. And I get that. And with that knowledge, I kind of think I've arrived somewhere. I kind of feel like I'm out of the woods. There's a great line, it talks in the book about self-knowledge. And I've always secretly been deluded to thinking that knowledge is power.
That if I know, I'll change. If I get it. If information, knowledge, but knowledge is not power, there is one who has all power, and if there's one who has all power, there ain't no power in knowledge. There's an illusion sometimes that there is. And I sure had the illusion. I thought I was out of the woods. I thought, oh my God, I get it. And now, I'm just really seriously, not like a couple times I kind of said to myself, I was never going to touch it again, but this time, really seriously, I'm not going to pick up that first drink and I think I'm out of the woods and I'm good to go.
And then something started happening to me that was hideous. Something that I couldn't get my mind around.
[00:04:59]
Something I didn't know what was wrong with me,
[00:05:02]
that I would swear to myself that I'm never going to touch that stuff again and eight, ten months later, I'm back at it. And it didn't make any sense to me. I mean, because I don't consider myself stupid and I don't consider myself weak-willed. My God, I've had some exhibitions of willpower that when you look at them objectively were staggering. I mean, I think we do some things that normal people just couldn't have the willpower to do.
I mean, how many of us will drink, will go to an after-hours club, drink until 5 a.m. and then have to be at work at 7 a.m. and be at work because you've got to have the paycheck to keep the medicine flowing? I mean, go to a PTA meeting. Ask how many people would sign up for that and puke and it's a regular way of life. You're not going to get a lot of takers for this. I mean, they may try it for a day or two, but they can't hang with this kind of stuff.
I mean, we persist. We persist to the gates of insanity or death. It's just I couldn't seem to persist when it came to staying sober for some reason. I couldn't understand. I'd eventually get to that place where I'd just be so worn out emotionally in this abstinence thing. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'd be this awful kind of loneliness that would just seem to seep into me after a while and all the shine would eventually wear off of how I'm going to do this and I'm going to go to college and I'm going to turn over a new leaf and I'm going to still be me and that ain't no good because I'm the guy that don't fit anywhere when I'm sober.
I've got something wrong with me and I can't tell you what it is. And by the time guys like me get to that place, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, by the time most of you have gotten to Alcoholics Anonymous, I assume if you're like me, there has been some people getting in your face to talk to you about you. I mean, maybe your mother and father have been talking to you about you. Maybe your minister or priest has had a talk with you about you.
Maybe your psychiatrist or psychologist or doctor has talked to you about you. Maybe your boss, maybe your PO, maybe your wife or your husband or your boyfriend or your girlfriend, maybe even tragically your kids have come and talked to you about you. If you get really bad, maybe your drug dealer has been even talking to you about you. You know, if you get really bad, maybe strangers on the street are stopping you and talking to you about you.
And they all say the same thing. I mean, it's different words. But it's all the same really. It's Bob. Bob, you are so screwed up. And you catch me on a low day when I'm not defended, I'll probably hang my head and go, yeah, I know. And then they hit you with it. They use different words. They always say the same thing though. Do you know why you're screwed up? No, I don't know, I don't know. Well, you're screwed up because you keep getting screwed up.
If you'd stop getting screwed up, you wouldn't be so screwed up. And I'm pretty screwed up, so I think, okay, I ain't going to get screwed up. And when I don't get screwed up, I get so screwed up, I've got to go get screwed up. And then I end up somewhere and somebody's saying, do you know you're screwed up? And I go, yeah, I know. And they say, do you know why you're screwed up? Because I keep getting screwed up.
I don't know if this makes any sense to me, because I can't see past alcohol being an answer. I can't connect the dots to that's the problem. I don't understand what's happening to me. I don't understand that I have so much more than an alcohol problem here. I have a condition of mind and spirit and emotion that when I stop drinking, I'm everything that it talks about in that book. I am restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontent.
I don't fit anywhere. And I go from depression and anxiety to the point of, it's just overwhelming, to the point where I go drink again at times over it. I can't hold a job anywhere. And I'm a hard worker. But I don't know what's wrong with me.
[00:10:00]
I'll get a good job and I'm not very, and with seemingly good people and I'm not there very long before they're idiots. And I must be some kind of carrier or something, I don't know. But every place I ever worked, they end up being idiots. And I can't seem to hook up with anybody and I don't know what's wrong with me. I sought help a lot. I sought help a lot of in the psychiatric field. My mother was a therapist.
My mother worked for mental health and mental retardation. And she was a brilliant lady. Between her and my dad, who was very politically connected, got me in to see some amazing psychiatrists. I mean, very, very cool people. I still carry around stuff that I learned from some of them that has served me. It just never seemed to do anything for the thing that was really wrong with me. Even though I carry some of that around today and it's very useful, but it never seemed to touch what was wrong with me.
I made some efforts at church. I know the people in church say I'm forgiven, but I sit there and I don't really feel it. You know, I don't fit there very well. I'm drinking, then I want to lead them all in hymns. I try a lot of stuff and nothing seems to work. And I really, I came to believe in something that it talks about in the book. And I think the only way a guy like me could ever, ever get there is to exhaust everything that could possibly show up on the radar to fix yourself.
I mean exhaust it. And then it says in our book, it says we came to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we'd been living it. And I came to believe that before I ever believed that AA had anything for me. Before I ever believed that there was a God that could help a guy like me. Before I ever believed in anything, I believed in that from seven years of relapsing, from seven years of trying desperately to do one of two things and failing painfully in both arenas.
And the one was to try to jumpstart the party. To get back to the good old days when the magic was in the medicine. And I can't get it back. And I can't control and enjoy it. And I failed and failed and failed. And the other thing is to control and enjoy my abstinence. Because I understood something. I knew this. I knew that if I could get myself in such a state that I was okay, sober, and I didn't feel like I was doing time, and I didn't feel like I was the guy who doesn't fit anywhere, if I could do something to change me into the guy that was okay, sober, that I'd probably be able to stay sober and have a normal life.
But I couldn't do it. And I tried everything, everything there was and exhausted everything. And in 1978, I came to a park on the north side of Pittsburgh. I'd been thrown out of a place called the Ark House, which is pretty hard to get thrown out of actually. You have to actually be drunk and obnoxious in the place to get thrown out. It's the bottom of the food chain for retreatment in that part of the country at that time.
And I'm in the park, and I've got two years prison coming at me quick here. It's just a matter of time until they pick me up. There's nobody in my life to turn to. My parents won't have anything to do with me. And I feel so horrible. I feel horrible when I'm drinking, and I feel horrible when I'm sober. And, I mean, the sober is a little bit better for a while, you know, but really it ends up feeling like I'm doing time.
And I am stuck, and I don't know what's wrong with me. And this doctor had given me a complete physical workup in a detox that past year. And he came to me after this workup, and they did everything from kidney, the dye and the kidney scan to liver panels, everything. And he said,
[00:15:02]
20s that young enough and bounce back enough easily that I could probably physically go on like I was going on for another five years or more before it killed me I remember sitting in the park thinking five more years of this oh my god I couldn't imagine five more days of this I can't I am stuck in the trap that it talks about in a vision for you where we eventually get to a place we can't imagine life with it anymore because it's it's I've exhausted it there is no party here it's my drinking's become pathetic drink and I cry and I saw I feel sorry for myself and full of self-pity and loneliness and I get sober and that ain't much better I can't imagine life with it and I can't imagine life without it and the book says we'll be at the jumping-off place will wish for the end and and so I I got up and I went to a got some tried to get some wine for fortification and courage and went to a bridge because I'm just going to make this stop I'm and I was very I was very blessed that day that my fear not not my fear of dying I'm not afraid of dying at this point what I'm afraid of is on that bridge is that maybe I won't die maybe with my luck and my track record I'm gonna end up paralyzed from the neck down in some charity ward for 50 years as members of a parade their newcomers through the hospital room and I get to hear him say things like this is what happens to you when you don't find God and work our beautiful 12 steps and I'm paralyzed I can't even give them the one finger salute you know I'm just stuck there listening to my head tell me what a piece of crap I am for another 50 years and that terrifies me I'm not afraid of dying if I knew if there would have been a guarantee that I stepped off that bridge I'd be just like that I think I had done it but I'm afraid of screwing it up and I think most of us aren't afraid of dying really I mean not really I mean you could threaten us to keep doing this it's gonna kill you yeah by Wednesday you want to scare me you want to terrify me you're gonna feel like you're feeling for another five years you want to scare the crap out of me and you know we try to drink I think a lot of us trade especially if you get into the phase of alcoholism the last phase where you become the chronic oblivion drinker as I was at the end where I just drink for oblivion there's no more party here I drink my idea of a of a successful day is to come to drink quickly till I pass out come to drink quickly do I pass and just keep doing that that's that's my that's how I roll this is not a party this is pathetic and I've tried to drink myself to death as a lot of us did you can't it takes too long it's like being kicked to death by rabbits it just goes on and on and on no wonder some of us are trying to kill ourselves it's like stop and so I I come into alcoholics synonymous the last time and I I was after this failed suicide attempt and I think I understood something in an unconscious level that I couldn't have put into words and and out of this I had some hope in a a the first and I think every one of us has to do two things to seems like from talking to people one is we have to make that connection of identification where you're sitting somewhere and maybe you're being 12-stepped by a couple old-timers or maybe you're sitting in a meeting in a detox or the county jail or just newcomers in your home group and and some guys sharing and you have that experience of sitting there as as I did in the detox the last time where you sit there and you find yourself nodding your head thinking oh my god I'm like that and you start out of the lonely abyss that is alcoholism it's like it's like a thin thread that connects to something and I I started to identify with these people and then the other thing and this
[00:20:06]
was what it says in that part of the book in there is a solution it's not only we have to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of my life as I've been living it it says we had seen that it really worked in others and I was sitting in this hospice detox and a man that would become my sponsor and other members of Alcoholics Anonymous brought meetings in there twice a week as I do to a detox in Las Vegas twice a week now for three decades or more and they would bring their meetings in there and they would just fish just fish hoping to get a nibble from a guy like me and I watched him you never know you you're the only example of the big book people ever ever see and I I think that it is my job to try to fit myself to be a maximum service here so that I can be a light of attraction not so I'll be better or rise above but I will be more useful and these guys were useful and they were useful because AA worked in their lives I watched them they laughed a lot some of the stuff I don't know what's funny about it but they laughed a lot and they goofed on each other as they were coming in in the meetings they'd stand outside the meeting hall and in the meeting before it started maybe go joking with each other and carrying on picking on each other and I noticed I'm a I'm a noticer I noticed that they were dressed very well and and they were out in the parking lot there was a couple new Cadillacs from these guys and they were doing pretty well and then I listened to their stories and they they'd been homeless guys at one time they'd been bums they'd been guys who'd lost everything but probably more important than anything as I watched them and I watched the laughter I started to realize something I started to realize that these guys really appear to be having a better time sober than I had when alcohol really worked and man I wanted that and I dared dared to hope that if I asked these guys for help and did everything that they told me to do and followed them around and threw myself obsessively into this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous that just maybe maybe what happened for them could happen to me and I guess inside myself I got to that place of commitment you know I was a relapser seven years it taught it tells my story in one sentence in in in working with and how it works it says those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program and I didn't know it nobody ever told me that I was part of that group you know I get sober I so my friend Bob talks about it he I don't want to change I don't want to surrender completely this simple program I want some relief I want relief and so I'm a relief junkie I'm an ease and comfort junkie I get sober and I just start targeting things that look like they're gonna make me feel better that looked like they're gonna give me some relief and it'll be a go that girl or that job or a motorcycle or guitar getting that band all you know I just start targeting stuff and if you're like me it's it's always the same thing you know you bring this stuff into your life with an excitement because this is the deal man this is look at it this is the deal this is the nicest girl I've ever had been with in my life this is the best job I've ever had in my life and then in no time at all the shine wears off of it and it really isn't it odd that I end up hating things and people that I thought we're gonna make it different because when it lets me down I just don't walk away and go into something else I kind of resent it now it aggravates me I'll go around talking bad about that company that didn't light me up the way I thought it was what am I doing I'm just secretly unconsciously on an emotional level comparing what it feels like to have that job in that steel mill to what it felt like to do four shots at tequila when four shots at tequila was fantastic now I don't like that job matter of fact I'm pissed at the job or I'll compare what it feels like to be in this relationship to what
[00:25:01]
it felt like to drink a pint of 151 rum now now I'm at now she's aggravating me right I don't even know I'm doing that there's so much of alcoholism that occurs in this in this in this on this dark area that I'm not awake to and sometimes sometimes we in hindsight just by watching the cause and effect and in opening your eyes and working with others and you see it in them and then you start to connect the dots to you and you go oh my god I can see what was going on now with me I work with a lot of new people I've learned more about me working with them than I could ever learn about me through years of intensive self-examination I've always been able to see me better in you than I could ever see me in me and I've and not from a lack of looking I I don't know about you guys when I'm in a bad spot sober I'll just sit down and think I'm a thinker I'm a thinker I just I'm a ponderer I just I just get mentally just finger than all the little nuances in my life and the emotions and and trying to figure out and examine what the problem is and I can never see with any clarity what the problem is because what I'm looking for I'm looking with and I can't see that I don't know what's wrong with me and after this failed suicide attempt I the book says you see that it worked in others and came to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we've been living it says there's there's not there's nothing left now is there Bob there's nothing left there's nothing left you've tried it all haven't you you primal screamed you've been hypnotized you've been medicated you've been churched you've been dunked you've been sprinkled you've been even repair you've done everything that's come up on the radar and you're still you you change towns you found wonderful people to love you you've been given opportunities and you're still you aren't you there's nothing left except to pick up the simple kid of spiritual tools that you guys were laying at my feet you had been laying them at my feet for years and I jump over them on my way to get what inside me I think I need because I'm the guy not looking for a change I'm looking for relief and Chuck Chamberlain used I checked when I heard Chuck say this it just about knocked me off my chair he said if you be alcoholic and he was talking about when we get sober and all the things we do if you're alcoholic eventually you'll get to a point where you can no longer put anything between you and you and there you are and that is really pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization I'm stuck being me it is what it is to be in the bondage of self and I'm shackled to my own obsessive focus on myself and I can't change it I can't wish it away I mean I I don't suspect I'm much different than a lot of us you know you come here and after as we're not quick to see things we don't want to see but eventually you kind of the veil lifts and you go oh my god I'm self-centered now the whole world's known that right I'm a little kid my mother used to say to me Rob you're fully yourself just I don't know what she's talking about it's like I'm sober a little while it's like oh my god I'm self-centered well glad I know that it's not gonna be that way anymore oh I can't change me and not from a lack of trying my god if I could change me if any human power could change me I'd have been changed I'd have been changed but I'm stuck I'm stuck in me and I can't get out of me and I don't know what's wrong with me there was a time there was a time when five shots at tequila would get me out of me it would relieve me of the bondage of self it It would relieve me of the bondage of self. It would set me free.
God, what an amazing, amazing spiritual effect alcohol had on me at one time.
[00:30:05]
I mean, I understand now why some of the great monks would drink wine and feel close to God. I mean, I get that. You know, you never get lit up and you just feel like you're just one with the universe. I remember one night saying to a bunch of guys, we were smoking reefer and drinking wine. It was about three in the morning. I said, we're talking about this deep stuff, deep, deep stuff. I said, this is what Buddha saw.
You know what I mean? It's like, I feel spiritual. I'm like, me and God are like, as a matter of fact, I am God, actually. But a humble, benevolent version. Boy, if alcohol would have continued to do that, I'd have never got sober. I wouldn't have cared. I'd go to jail periodically. Little price to pay. For that effect, little price to pay. But it stopped working. And in 1978, I'm at that jumping off place and I get this guy to sponsor me.
And I said something to him. Do you ever have the experience in AA of saying words and you don't really know that you meant them? And then after you say them and you're thinking about what you just said, you kind of like to take it back. And I said to this guy, I'll do anything you ask me to do. Well, he said that the old timers in AA, oh, they got like lists of stuff. They're just waiting to lay on you.
It's all kinds of stuff. I had to go, oh, a meeting habit, a God habit. I don't even believe in God. They got me on my knees, praying in the morning and at night, which seemed like I felt like a hypocrite. Shouldn't I wait until I believe in God first? And they said, I feel like a hypocrite. You've been a hypocrite all your life. What's the difference? Just do this. They wanted me to start doing 12-step work when I was new.
I thought, this isn't good. I'm not ready yet. I told this guy, I said, don't you think I should work on me for a while? He said, work on you? You've done quite enough of that. Stop it. And I couldn't argue with that. I mean, I had worked a lot on me. I mean, I am all I think about. I just plaster me on the windshield of my own car as I'm driving through life, as I'm wrecking into things, because I can't see past me when I'm wrecking the car.
But all I look at is me and my emotions and my future and my past and all I'm ever trying to do. As a victim of this delusion that I can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if I only manage well, I've been working on me. Trust me, I've been working on me. I've worn myself out working on me. And AA doesn't make sense. It's like they're asking me to leave all that stuff alone. We're going to kind of give it to God. You're right.
And we're going to go and make these amends and you're going to start paying these people back and contact the courts and you're going to make it right to your parents, which was hopeless. It's not going to work and I just do it. And they had me taking these crazy actions and a lot of 12-step work. Bob says something, I heard him say this years ago, and it is so right on the money that Alcoholics Anonymous in and of itself, the book, the steps, the meetings, none of it really changes us.
But our actions seem to keep us in the zip code where change can occur. And a lot of it has to do with making things right with you. And as I make things right with you, what happens is I start inadvertently becoming right with myself. And I never expected that cause and effect. I wanted to make it right with me and still think you're a bunch of jerks and not have to pay you back. But as I made it right with you, I started to get right with me.
And then as I did that and made that the focus of my life plus this dedication to the primary purpose, every single day they had me doing something. Every single day, some kind of service or 12-step work.
[00:35:01]
And what would happen is that long periods of time would go by where I realized that I hadn't really been giving my life the proper attention that it needed. And in my absence, it seemed to get better, which is kind of offensive, actually. And I didn't know that you guys were pulling me away from the problem, which is me. And allowing, because in my absence, I'm out of the way. Now, because I'm doing all this 12-step work, there's no longer too much of me between me and God.
And God's starting to work in my life. None of this makes any sense if you're new. And why would a guy like me do any of this? And why would I continue to do it? And that's the big piece of business in my life, is not to change the game plan. Not to delude myself. I have this ego that clamors at me. And it wants me to diminish my involvement in this thing that has saved my life and given me the only good life I've ever had.
It just clamors. It's seductive. It's seductive. And I don't want to be the guy that's 40 years sober or 32 and a half years sober and looks back at those years and realizes that I'm half as much involved in the actions of recovery as I was when I was five years sober. Because then I'm really making a statement to myself and the rest of the world that, for the most part, except for this little thing I do, I've kind of gotten over this thing.
I haven't. I haven't. I've got two guys right now in my life that at one time were stellar members of AA and then with close to 20 years of sobriety, they returned to drinking. And they didn't stop being stellar members of AA overnight. It was an incremental compromise. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And how's that happening? The same way it happens in me, I suppose, is that the clamoring of self. As I start moving AA out, I start moving me in.
And then the primary purpose is not helping you or helping other alcoholics and doing God's will. The primary purpose becomes me. It becomes me again. And that's such a seductive road. Because as I move into me in a life of self-serving, there's a lot of excitement in that. Especially when you're getting your own way. I mean, it's very cool. But there's no difference in that road. I changed the road signs and think I'm on a different road.
I've been on this road before. Just because I snuck out and changed the road signs doesn't mean it's not the same road. It's the same road. It's the same bumps. It's the same everything. It's the same going off into the distance and leaving everything that had been home. I walked in here a few minutes before the meeting started and I started looking around. And I got this amazing feeling. There's a lot of people in this room that I really love.
There's a lot of people in this room that I've looked up to over the years. There's a lot of people in this room that have said things that have become a part of my life. There's people in this room, sponsees and gransponsees, that at times, and they don't even know it, they've relieved me of the bondage of self and God's work through them. And I was sitting here and I was looking around and there's an awful lot of people in here I know.
And I was the guy that was dying of loneliness. I was the guy that just absolutely, when alcohol stopped working and being a social lubricant for me, absolutely could not connect with anybody. And when I stood on that bridge in 1978, if you would have asked me at that moment, as I'm trying to get up enough courage to jump, what's killing me, I don't believe I would have said alcoholism. I think I would have said I felt like I was dying of loneliness.
[00:40:00]
Because I'm so lonely drunk and I'm so lonely sober and I feel lost here. And no matter what I do, I can't seem to make any kind of connections with anybody anywhere. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't know that it was a spiritual malady called alcoholism. I didn't know that when I get sober, my spirit just seems to get even more withdrawn and disconnected from life. When I get sober, what happens is my very spirit gets depressed.
Because it's like it's being smothered by me. I put my whole life and my emotions and my future and my past into this giant pillow. And when I quit drinking, I just hold it on my face. And I start smothering myself with myself. That's why we all have this common experience. You do abstinence without recovery and change for about 10 months, and you take a drink, what's the first thing we all do? We all go…
Oh, somebody turned the air back on. That's just my spirit starting to get unencumbered by me. See, I get me on me. I can't get me off of me. I can't will it off. I can't distract it off for very long. When I stop drinking, it's like that creature in that movie Alien that attaches itself to your face. It's just like I'm right here on me, and I can't get me off of me. And there was a time when four or five shots of tequila and I'd just fall off of me and I'd be free.
And my problem really becomes the condition of my spirit once I stop drinking. I have done nothing, nothing in 32 plus years to address alcohol. Nothing. Matter of fact, I can't tell you one action I have taken that has been anti-picking up, fighting, where I fought the bottle. I have not fought the bottle in all these years. I know about fighting the bottle. I know. I fought the bottle. I can't tell you how many times I would make up my mind and swear to myself.
When I got sober in 78, I heard a guy say in a meeting the funniest thing I ever heard, and it was so right for me. He said, I quit drinking over 50 times. Then he said, every time I quit drinking, I got drunker in hell. He said, that quitting drinking was killing me. And isn't it odd that we come here and we have a problem with alcohol, but it's almost like the answer is not found within the problem.
And I come here and I start fighting in a different arena. I make a lot of effort in doing something, but it's not in battling alcohol. It's as I, every day, look for the resurgence of my ego and self, and it's every day, it's there. It comes back. It comes back so quick. And the greatest trick it's ever pulled is to convince me it's not there. It's not ego when you're right, is it? I'm not playing God.
If you really are out of line and need straighten it out, I mean, that's not playing God, is it? And I don't even know I do that sometimes. It just slips in, and I'm entrenched in a twofold accountability. Actually, probably more than that. One, I have a sponsor and a couple guys. I have a group of guys that are sober a long time, and they have complete license with me, and they take it to tell me when I'm getting full of myself.
And I do, on a regular basis, get that deal going again. And then even probably more importantly, I have a whole bunch of guys over here that I sponsor. Some of them, I always seem to try to have one or two brand new guys in my life. I need that. I'm the guy in the book where it says we have a seeming inability to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering, humiliation of even a week or month ago.
But when I'm sitting with a guy that's three weeks old, But when I'm sitting with a guy that's three weeks out of detox, and he's depressed and his life's in, he's burnt to the ground and it's a mess,
[00:45:01]
through him, I will be able to bring into my consciousness the memory of the suffering humiliation, which alone in my blessed life, I could not achieve that connection with me. And I connect with me, which is through him. Through him. And then the guys I sponsor, they turn to me. I didn't want this. I didn't sign up for it. I just started sponsoring people when I was new because I was told to do it, and I didn't want to do it.
I thought maybe I should wait a couple years, and they said, no, you just do it. Bill Wilson didn't wait a couple years. You don't wait a couple years. Just start doing it. And what has happened over the years is that I find, I found myself, and this didn't happen overnight. I was sober a long time before I woke up to this, that I am the primary example of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and how to conduct your life sober in AA that these guys will ever see.
And when I started to wait, when the veil of me and my crap lifted enough for me to see that, all of a sudden I saw some things in my life that I was doing that I was ashamed of. It's funny how I will think it's okay for me to do that, but I don't want anybody else to. I'm one of the kind of guys that I think the 55 mile an hour speed limit is a really good idea. I mean, without it, there'd be chaos on the highways, but I'm in a hurry today.
You know, like I'm above the rules. It doesn't apply to me. And when you wake up to seeing that you're the example, and you'll see it, because what will happen if you're like me is that if you're a point or a person of disharmony and disunity in Alcoholics Anonymous, your sponsees will start to copy some of that behavior. And I found myself many years sober in a situation where I saw guys doing some things, and I realized they were doing it because I did it.
And it gave me greater motivation to come to God and really seriously ask him to change me in step six and seven than I ever could have had any other way, I think. And the end result is freedom. Why are we here? I know why I'm here and why I will come here again tomorrow and the next day. I go to a lot of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm involved here because I seek something that I desperately, desperately need that I only seem to be able to get intermittently because it fades so quickly.
And that is freedom. Freedom from what? From the bondage of self. Everything I do in Alcoholics Anonymous is to that end. It's amazing how, in God's world, how the problems seem to exist that don't really exist. And if you take your hands off your life and leave it alone and go help someone, how much of that stuff is self-correcting? How I have hurt myself in sobriety trying to fix myself in sobriety.
I've hurt myself financially when things come up on the radar and I just have to get proactive and I make it worse. And I make it worse. I just went through a thing where I was scared. And like every time I've been scared in my whole sobriety, it's based on things that are delusionary. It's imagined. But it doesn't look that way when you're in the middle of it. I'm telling you. I can see the end coming at me.
I mean, I can see the end coming at me. And, well, let's wait and see. So I didn't take any action. I tightened up my leash to the old-timers in AA. And I started having lunch with guys like Dick T two or three times a week and talking to Clancy more often and spending time with some of these guys because I needed the reassurance that everything in God's world is perfectly in place as it should be.
And I got to watch the situation correct itself.
[00:50:04]
And I didn't have to do anything. And looking back, I could have really hurt myself in that situation if I would have reacted to my fear. And I guess that I don't have any better ability today in managing my own life than I did when I walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. But my ego has gotten smarter. It's gotten a lot smarter. It's trickier. It uses passages out of the book. It'll use the traditions.
It'll use whatever it has to use. But you guys have saved me from me. And I bank my life on it. I just want to make and keep Alcoholics Anonymous the center of my life. And I believe and bet my life that if I do that, that all will be well. That God will take good care of me. He has. I told him in a prayer about ten years ago. I said, all right, I know I'm supposed to really try to be more serious about this decision in step three.
All right, I'm going to be a little more diligent about trying to let you run the show and hands off and let you run my life. But if it doesn't turn out well, I'm going to tell everybody. Thanks for listening.