Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00546 – Bob D – PRESCOTT SHOESTRING RNDP – 2002-07-13.mp3 File: dicobe-00546-bob-d-prescott-shoestring-rndp-2002-07-13.mp3 Duration: 01:15:24
============================================================
My name's Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. You hear me? Don't want you to miss a word. I want to thank Dave for picking us up at the airport, picked Scott and I up after our third step flight from the little plane. I really want to thank Mark. I know he's put a lot of work into this. He used to have hair before he started this. And the funny thing is, you know, it turned out really well. And if it wouldn't have been, everybody in AA would have said, see, that Mark's trying to run the universe again, playing God.
And now that it turns out, everybody will say he was an instrument. I want to welcome the newcomers. I'm real glad you're here. There's a lot of hope in Alcoholics Anonymous for people who really have lost all hope. There's a lot of hope here for people who are hopeless, if you can be open to it. I don't know why I'm an alcoholic. I didn't come from an alcoholic home. My family loved me. They were always on my side.
They were always trying to help me. At times, when I first, in the early 70s, started coming to AA meetings, I think there were moments when I kind of wished I'd come from an alcoholic home where I'd been mistreated so I could hang my weirdness on something or somebody. But I just, I was always weird. And I look back over my childhood, and the only thing I can really remember about it is me. I was that self-involved even as a little kid.
I can't tell you a whole lot about what my mom and dad struggled with or what they were anxious about or my sister, but I can tell you all about me. I can tell you about everything that ever happened to me as a little kid because I was the center of my universe even back then. And nobody did that to me or made me that way. I was just born that way. I think I was born like a freeze-dried alcoholic just waiting for alcohol.
And the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that this disease that I have is a spiritual illness, a spiritual malady. And I think that there was something like a hole in my soul that kept drawing me inward to me. And I would look only at the outside world of how it was going to affect me and this sense of discomfort that I had and this feeling of incompleteness that I'd had for as far back as I can remember.
I share this story a lot because I think it has some relevance and it usually gets people to like it. When I was three or four years old, I went with my family back in Pennsylvania one Sunday afternoon. We went out to see this historical monument. We used to do a lot of stuff like that. We were a pretty close family. And we're coming back home in the afternoon and my dad wanted to stop at this farmer's market to get this horseradish that he'd heard about that had won a bunch of awards and it was hotter and spicier than any other horseradish.
And my dad loved stuff like that. I remember memories of him when I was a little kid of him sitting with a bowl of jalapeno peppers and eating them until the sweat would just pour off and his eyes would glaze over. And he would make noises like somebody having sex or something, you know like, he's eating his pepper. And that was like his alcohol. And so we're going in and he's bragging to my mom about this horseradish and I'm a little kid.
I'm three or four years old. I don't even know what horseradish is, but I'm hearing the commercial. So he gets the horseradish and I said, Papa, I'd like, can I have some? And he said to me, he says, Rob, you can't have it. It's too strong, it's too hot, too powerful. You can't have it. It's only for adults. And I'm the kind of person by nature that I may not really want something until you tell me I can't have it.
Then I just can't stop thinking about it. I mean, to this day, I can barely make it by a do not touch wet paint sign without, you know, it's just something about me that's like that. So I waited until my folks weren't around. I snuck in that kitchen. I got that jar of horseradish in a big spoon, sat on the floor of that kitchen, stuck that spoon in there, loaded it up, threw it in my mouth. And this was before LSD, but I saw God that morning.
Snots pouring out of my nose and tears are running down my face.
[00:05:03]
And I spit that horseradish out across that kitchen. Sick, sick, sick, sick. Oh, man, that hurt like hell. And that was, I got to tell you, over 40 years ago, I have not once sat with a jar of horseradish in a big spoon. Didn't need no sponsor to do that. No meetings, no steps, nothing. But if you're new, I hope you can hear this. That if that horseradish would have done for me what alcohol did for me, I'd have spent the rest of my life making myself sick with that crap every chance I could get.
Because I was born with a hunger and a thirst and a yearning and an incompleteness that I never knew I had. Because as Dr. Silkworth says to us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And I didn't know that I was… I think I had that ADD before it came out. Because I was always just a malcontent little kid, just self-involved and restless, irritable, discontent. The disease of alcoholism was touched by alcohol in me for the first time when I was 12 years old.
And I was with a bunch of kids that were older than I was. I was 12, they were like 13, 14. One kid was 16, he'd just turned 16, had a driver's license. And these were the juvenile delinquents of my neighborhood. These were the kids that were always in trouble and always going to juvenile court. And I wanted to fit with them. And I wanted to fit with them because they just looked cool. They looked like nothing bothered them.
They were afraid of nothing. And I had all these anxieties inside of me, and these feelings of inadequacy. And I didn't fit very good. And I just thought, if I could fit with them, maybe I would feel like they look. And so I'm hanging around with these kids, and I'm fighting, and I'm smoking cigarettes and cussing and doing everything I've got to do to be even with these kids. And no matter what I do, I'm coming from behind.
I never really feel like they look. And one day we pulled a burglary in our neighborhood, and one of the things we stole out of this house was a bunch of bottles of whiskey. And I remember this like it was yesterday. We had this court bottle, a Seagram 7. I remember the 7 with the crown on it on the label. And they were passing it around, and I wanted to fit with these guys. Now, I didn't know nothing about drinking.
I never saw anybody drunk in my house. My parents, I don't even remember them drinking. I never thought nothing of it. I just want to belong, and I want to be a part of. And I took a big hit off this bottle of Seagram 7 to fit. And I've got to tell you something, that after the burning stopped, I felt so good that the way I was from that moment on without it was never enough again. And I lived for it.
And when you're 12 and 14 years old, you can't get drunk every day, but I got drunk every chance I could get. By the time I was 15 years old, I'd been in front of a juvenile court judge three times. My parents, who were very influential in the community and they knew a lot of people, were running out of an ability to protect me anymore. And I was in a lot of trouble, and they sent me away to this private school back in those days.
It was an alternative to the juvenile home. If your family could send you to one of these academies, you'd go there and live. And they sent me to this place, and I'm in a lot of trouble. And I met a guy there, and he was really into drugs. And I've got to tell you, alcoholics should not use drugs. It's not good for us. We are pigs. It's a bad deal. And it was a bad thing from the gate. I thought to myself, I can't smell this stuff on my breath.
It doesn't make me walk as funny. It never occurred to me to do abstinence. Because when you're coming from where I'm coming from inside, I need the effects I've found in alcohol. And no matter how much trouble I am in, I've got a disease that demands attention. I hung out with these guys for a while and got in a lot of trouble. I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in a treatment center in 1971.
And I was a young kid. I wasn't quite old enough yet to even take a legal drink. And I'm in this place, and one of the counselors that worked there made me go to these AA meetings. Now, first of all, I don't want to go to AA meetings.
[00:10:02]
I'm too young. The people in AA, they should be there. They're 30, 35 years old. Their damn life's over with anyway. But I'm like a young kid. I don't fit there. I am not like you people. My case is different. And I sat there in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know why I'm there. I had all these reasons why I was different. I'm too young. I also did a lot of drugs. I did that, and that was a way for me to say, yeah, but I'm different than you people because I also did all this other stuff.
You guys talked a lot about God. I don't do God. I secretly suspected. I convinced myself and reinforced this attitude for a lot of years and had all kinds of intellectual arguments why there is no God. And the real truth underneath all of that was that I was terrified, that if there was a God, I suspected I am in a lot of trouble, and I don't measure up. So I sat in these meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't hear anything, and I drank again.
I was in and out of institutions from 1971 to 1978. And I have to tell you, the first couple years and the first few of those places I went into were like foxholes for me. I didn't really want to get sober. I just was in a lot of trouble, and I just had to hole up somewhere until I could regroup. And I was still functioning under a delusion. And I tell you, I've shared this, and I bet you I've met a hundred people in AA that had the same thing.
And what the delusion was is that I secretly believed that one day I would get to a place inside myself where I want to quit badly enough, and then I would. I'm just not there yet. And what was horrifying for me is I eventually got to a place where I wanted to quit badly enough, and I couldn't. I could for a little while. But there's something about me that is just so confusing, especially in the light of what I observed in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And what that thing is, is that the longer I'm physically sober, the more crazier I become. And I'm the kind of guy that no matter how tremendous my commitment and resolve is not to drink, that the emotions of abstinence will gradually grind away that resolve. Until one day, there's like a screw-it switch in my head. And one day it's just… And no matter what's at risk, I go drink. And I go drink because I can't do anything else.
And what was so confusing to me about that is I became one of those repeated relapsers in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I would end up back here in some halfway house going to AA meetings, and what I would observe in AA is I would observe groups of people who seemed to easily lay down the bottle, and they became very comfortable. Almost just as it seemed to me, as a result of not drinking, they got more comfortable and their life got better.
And I would hear an endless series of gratitude stories of how people's lives had taken off, and how they had wonderful relationships with people since they stopped drinking, and great economic success, and developing prestige and self-respect in the community. And I would sit there and I would be physically sober, and I ain't getting it. I ain't getting none of that. As a matter of fact, abstinence to me feels like I'm doing time.
I'm restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontent, I'm prone to just horrific bouts of depression. I have a mind that just won't leave me alone, and it just runs and just runs in this insane stuff, and I can't shut it off. And it's just these conversations that go back and forth in my head, and they're just crazy making stuff. They're stuff that always makes me feel terrible. I can walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and say hi to some guy that I met last week, and if he doesn't say hi to me, it's just the head starts with, he doesn't like you, he never liked you, he only said hi to you because his sponsor made him, none of these people like you, it's just their do-gooder bullshit in AA.
My head would just start that stuff, and until I want to… Start that stuff and until I want to fight people in AA, right?
[00:15:03]
And I don't know why. And I don't know why. I don't want to be this way. I don't want to always be on the outs with everybody and I get in beefs with people in the treatment centers and the halfway houses and I'm the guy that when I stop drinking I get on the muscle around people. I don't mean to. It's just and I don't understand that I'm just so afraid of you and that that is my number one defense mechanism is I hide behind that wall of anger and I get on the muscle with people and I get aggressive and I attack and I do all that kind of stuff.
I'm capable of putting down a drink, did it a lot of times. And I'm even capable of saying no to a drink. I lived in a halfway house at one time where a lot of the guys in there were sneaking drinks, several of them were smoking pot, there was one guy that was doing heroin and all in this halfway house and I could say no to those guys because this time I was serious and they would offer me, they want to have a beer with no, want to smoke no, no, no, I said no, no, no, no, no, okay, and I got to tell you an alcoholic of my type there's a yes in every barrel of no's.
Sometimes it's at the bottom of the barrel, sometimes it's at the top of the barrel, but if you're an alcoholic of my type with untreated alcoholism, there's a drink coming. And it has nothing to do with my commitment or determination not to drink. I'm the guy that it talks about in the big book when it says lack of power is my dilemma. I don't have what it takes to stay away from another drink. I can for a little while.
I've come to the conclusion that every alcoholic of my type when you put down your last drink it's like lighting a fuse. And sometimes that's an eight month fuse. Sometimes it's an eight day fuse. And sometimes it can be a longer fuse and I can throw stuff at the fuse and make it burn slower, I can go get in a relationship, get laid a lot, slows the fuse down. Get a good job, all of a sudden have a lot of money in my pocket, slows the fuse down.
But I'm the type of alcoholic, no matter what I do to slow it down, it's coming and I can't stop it because of what happens to me when I stop drinking. I'm the guy that when I stop drinking I start to suffer from alcoholism. I never understood that. And I came into AA in a part of the country where they had, all the meetings were of one format. It was a 30 minute speaker followed by comments. And a guy would get up and tell a horrific, tragic, disgusting drunkologue.
He came to AA, put the plug in the jug, got sober and now he's the president of some big company and it's just wonderful. And then everybody would stand up and make comments on what he said and they would all talk about what a wonderful guy he is. And I would sit there and I would be physically sober and I ain't getting it. And I tried a lot of things in those years. I couldn't believe that what you were offering me would work for me.
And it's not that I would deny that I was an alcoholic. After five or six treatment centers, I got intellectually blungeoned into an acceptance that yes, I'm an alcoholic. But I am a special type of alcoholic. I am not like you. And I had evidence that I wasn't like you. All I had to do was sit and get into me and my feelings and then look at you and there's no match between the way I feel and the way you look.
There's no match at all. So I came to the conclusion that whatever's wrong with you is not exactly the same thing that's wrong with me. And I went to a lot of therapy and therapy helped me a lot. It just didn't… I love what Scott shared Friday night. I had very similar experiences in therapy. Went to therapy with some of the greatest therapists at the time. My family, upper middle class family, and they spent a lot of money for a lot of years trying to help me.
I was in therapy with a guy named Albert Ellis for a while, went to New York and was in therapy with him. He was the founder of Rational Emotive Therapy. I was in therapy with a guy named Dr. Ed Silverman who was a brilliant man, he was a contemporary of Fritz Perls, he was brilliant. And I think I went there, I had a secret agenda and what the agenda was is that I seemed to, even though I came from a good family, I suspected that somebody must have damaged me because
[00:20:00]
I felt damaged. And maybe I wasn't potty trained right as a kid or something, I don't know. But I wanted to get to the bottom of it, fix it, so like a child's toy helium balloon that's released I would soar into some state of mental health and be able to be like you people. And I never did, I did a lot of work in therapy and I never found out what it was. I even went, in another desperate attempt, I went to a hypnotherapist and went through regressive hypnotherapy and went back through my childhood thinking, you know, there must have been something and never did find anything.
Because what I suffered from was not a psychological illness, it was a spiritual malady, it was a spiritual illness. And for those of you that are new, and that kind of makes you crazy as it made me because it reeked of religiosity to me and I thought it sounded like a cop out, there's a line in our book, in We Agnostics, it says, do not let these terms deter you from honestly asking yourself, what do they mean to you?
And I'll tell you what was real true for me. When I stopped drinking, it seemed like my spirit withered and got sickly and depressed and five shots of Jack Daniels vitalized my spirit. And I started to, in Alcoholics Anonymous, I started to realize that what I realized, what I was really sick of was I was sick of heart. And that's where I found the treatment for my disease in those steps. I went in and out for a lot of years.
In 1977, I was sober for a period of time, probably 7 or 8 months, at least over 6, really about 2 months longer than I could stand it. And I'm in this halfway house and I am just going crazy. And I just can't take it and I'm just up to here with being sober. And I called up a guy that I had been in detox with and I knew that he was back to drinking. And I got him on the phone and he lived in a little trailer, like two towns away, and he starts telling me what he's doing in his life and he's told me that he found this rock and roll bar with these live bands and there's all these girls there and they're just awesome and he's got this tie stick.
And I am drooling listening to him talk about this stuff because I've been sober just way longer than I could handle it and I'm ready. So I got a weekend pass out of the halfway house and I have a plan. And here's what the plan is. I'm not going to screw my life up, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to go down and meet him, I'm going to party with him all Friday night, all day Saturday, all Saturday night till really late, I will pass out, I will come to Sunday morning, I will not drink or do anything, I will tough it out so Sunday night I can get back to the halfway house and not lose my place to live.
Reasonable plan. And I remember, I'm not completely stupid, I remember thinking as I'm on my way to meet him, thinking, you know, what's the worst that could happen here? You know, they find out I'm drinking, they throw me out of the halfway house, maybe I can stay on this guy's couch, I'll go down to the mission or the salvation army, I've been there before, it's not the end of the world, I mean it's results I can live with.
In the big book Alcoholics Anonymous in chapter 3 it talks about the delusion that kept me from getting in here all the way. It says the idea that somehow, someday I'll control and enjoy my drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. And it's the obsession, it's not that I can control it and not pay a price, my illusion is that I can keep the price down to something I can live with. That's the illusion.
I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to get away without a price, but I think I have enough control that I can keep the price down and that I'm going to be able to reap the ease and comfort, the fun, the treatment for alcoholism I'd had when I was 20 years old. And this last, this is my second to last drunk and I'll tell you it was a very big turning point in my life. I started that drunk as I'd started them for the last couple of years and I've got to tell you, this had been true for a while but I finally realized it, that the best part of that run was the hour before it started.
[00:25:00]
I'm telling you, I had this incredible anticipation, I'm going to meet her, it's going to be awesome, I'm going to shoot some pool, we're going to dance, it's going to be great. And I started, I was drinking 100 proof southern comfort, double, triple shots with a beer back and I'm throwing them down and I'm waiting for it to happen. I'm waiting for the thing to start, you know where it's like, oh yeah, and I can come out and play and I can talk to people and it ain't happening.
Now the phenomenon of craving has kicked in and I'm sitting there and I'm throwing them down and I'm sinking into oblivion and I'm watching everybody else party and have a good time and all I'm doing is getting drunk and it's not fun anymore and I sat there and about the second or third drink and I realized that the party was over. And it had been over for a long time, I just didn't want to face that.
I don't want that to be true because if that's true, what's a guy like me going to do? Why would I, God, why would I go to work if I can't get screwed up on the weekends? How am I ever, if I can't drink and it doesn't work for me anymore, how am I ever going to be able to talk to girls? I'll never get laid, I'll be sober for the rest of my life. I'll never have any friends because I don't know how to mix well with people sober.
And I didn't want to know this and I came back to that guy's trailer sometime late Saturday I think, I'm not even sure, we'd been drinking for a long, we'd been drinking and smoking stuff and doing, we'd just been on this insane run and we come back to his trailer and he goes and passes out and I'm supposed to crash on the couch. But I'll tell you the kind of alcoholic I am, if I'm still conscious, I ain't done drinking.
And I'm wide awake and he's passed out and I'm out of money and I don't have a car and he left his car keys in his wallet on the kitchen counter. Now I'm not a thief but I do know when a loan's appropriate. I took a little money out of his wallet and I took his car keys and I'm not going to get in trouble, I'm going to go out, I'm going to go down to this bar, I'm going to have a couple shots and beers, get a six pack of beer, come back so I can put myself to sleep.
You see, I'm one of those alcoholics that when I'm drinking I don't go to sleep, I have to put myself to sleep. And I went down there and the next thing I know I'm coming to in a county jail, hit and run, DUI and a stolen car. They give me a phone call, I'll never forget this, they give me this phone call and there's nobody to call. There's not a person on the face of the earth that will take my calls.
My parents haven't had anything to do with me in several years, I had just broken their heart so repeatedly that my father slept all the time and my mother was on tranquilizers. And they were not bad people. The worst thing they ever did was love me. All my running partners I'd burn out. There was no girlfriend in my life, there hadn't been a girlfriend. It's hard to get a date when you're homeless.
It's really, really, it's like baby you want to come back to the day room at the halfway house. I mean, you know, there's nobody in my life, I'm totally alone. So I start calling bail bondsmen and I have no luck there, they all want me to have like an address and a job, you know, geez. So I sat in this county jail for several months. I went before a judge who sentenced me to two years in a state penitentiary and I got to tell you, when he said that I thought I was going to die.
I don't jail well, I don't like it, I've spent a lot of county time, I've never done any long prison state time but a lot of county time and I hate it. I hate having to put on the gorilla outfit and look like and act like a tough guy on the outside when the real truth is inside I am so afraid and terrified and I'm constantly afraid these guys I'm being tough and on the muscle with are going to find out how really scared I am.
I hate living like that. And I've been in those places and I've gotten, I still have scars from fights I've gotten in those places because you can't give a guy a break. You have to sucker punch him if he even thinks
[00:30:05]
And this judge, he said something right after he sent me to the two years, he cut me a break and he said we're going to stay the commitment, and I never heard that before. And he said the PO department had found a place it'll take in, it was the only place left. I had burned out all the other treatment centers in that whole part of the state. There was one place on the north side of Pittsburgh and it wasn't really a treatment center, it was like a, it was run by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous named Chuck and it was, they just housed about 200 skid row winos and guys out of prison.
And it was like the bottom of the food chain for rehabs probably in the whole east coast at that time. And I went in there and I went in there with a determination not to drink, I don't want to be back on the streets, winter's coming on, I almost froze to death walking the streets the winter before, and I don't want to do the two years. And I gotta tell you, I don't know that there's ever been a time in my life I have been more determined not to drink than I was going into the Ark House.
And if determination was enough for a guy like me to overcome alcoholism, that would have been my sobriety date. But I'm the guy that it talks about in the book when it says lack of power is my dilemma. I can make up my mind, I can have all the resolve and all the knowledge of what this is doing to me, but abstinence drives me insane. And it will drive me so crazy that no matter what is at risk, and no matter if I'm facing two years in prison, no matter if I have great opportunities in my life if I just don't drink, no matter what's at stake and what's at risk, eventually the emotions of abstinence and the desolation and feelings of depression that I experience without drinking will make me so crazy that I will pick up something that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is going to ruin me and I can't stop myself.
I can put it off for a while, but eventually I give in. And I always hated myself for being that way. I saw a movie as a kid, I thought about this not too long ago. There are some people and alcoholics, there are some alcoholics, like I have a guy that I run around with, Billy, and Billy is tough. I mean really on the inside, he's a tough guy. And Billy stayed physically sober for seven years without the steps, without a, I mean, he is like the John Wayne of alcoholism in my book.
But I'll tell you the guy I am. I saw this in a movie, and this is me. There was this spy movie I was watching when I was a kid, and the Russians had caught this American spy, and they're going to torture secrets out of him. And they got him strapped down to this chair, and this crazy guy's got these electrodes that spark, and he's naked in the chair strapped down, and they're putting these electrodes on the guy's testicles, and he's screaming and withering in pain.
And they do that to him hour after hour, day after day, and finally he breaks down and he tells them everything they want to know. Well, I'll tell you the guy I am. I'm the guy you just show the wires to, you know? I don't want to be that guy, but you just show me those wires, and I'm giving it up. And that's the kind of alcoholic I am. When my emotions start putting the screws to me, and I still have the illusion of relief, even if the only relief I got is oblivion, and there's no more party in it, I go for it.
And I can't help myself. And I'm in this arc house, and I'm not drinking day in and day out, and week in and week out, and month in and month out, and I'm just going out of my mind. And I'm not taking any meds, and I had tried other periods of sobriety where I would go to doctors, and they would give me, I've been diagnosed, everything is from panic, free-floating anxiety with panic disorder, to clinically depressed, and then they give me meds.
I like pills, don't get me wrong. I'll tell you what happens to me, and I don't have an opinion of whether people should take meds or not, but what would always happen to me when those doctors would put me on those things is two things. One, it gives me a little bit of relief, but a little bit of relief has never been enough for me. And what it does, it's like dangling a carrot in front of me. Now I know that I could even feel better than this.
And it starts a slow burn, and it also, it takes just the edge off of my pain and desperation
[00:35:06]
that I never really have to grab a sponsor and do everything that you people do. And this time, I don't have a sponsor, I'm not working the steps, and I'm dry about as long as I can stand it, and I am ready to drink again, and I don't want to drink. I don't want to go to prison. At an in-house meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I grabbed a guy, and I did something that I had never done in AA before, really, and I got vulnerable.
And I grabbed this guy, and I said to him, I said, I need help. And he lit up, as members of AA do. And he sat down with me in the dining hall, and we sat there, and I talked to him for a long time. And I, I tried to be as open with him as I'd ever been with any doctor or anybody. And I tried to tell him about my emotions, and how I was emotionally just wacko. I could be doing, I could be sitting in the day room, watching TV, feeling great, and then all of a sudden, I would sink into a depression without anybody ever saying or doing anything to me.
It was just like this roller coaster ride, and I didn't know why it was that way, and nobody could even tell me. I had this mental insanity, all these voices in my head that just talked to me non-stop, and I couldn't shut them off, I couldn't work. I, I could get a good job, I interview well, but I couldn't hold it. There's always something about me, where I'm the guy they're calling to the office, and they're saying, Bob, you're a hard worker, but we're going to have to let you go.
There's something wrong with your attitude. And nobody explains that. You know, what do you mean, attitude, what, what? And it's just this vague thing, you just know they don't like you. And, and one time, I really wanted this job, it was a good job. And I was working, and I was doing everything I could, and I was sober. And I was really trying. And they called me to the office, and they said, Bob, we're going to have to let you go, you're not a team player.
And when they said that, I knew he was right. You know, I know, I know. Sober, I don't know how to fit with these people. I'm sober, I work with a bunch of guys that laugh, and slap each other on the back, and tell jokes, and they go out, and they have dinner together, and they, they play golf, and they, they do all kinds of neat things, and they party, and they, it's just, they're great guys. But I don't know how to do that sober.
I'm not a team player, I don't know how to fit with those people. Give me a pint of Jose Cuervo, I'll lead your team. But sober, I'm like a bump on a log. And I'm telling this guy all this stuff, and the prison time I'm looking at, and all this crap. And he gives me his business card, and he, he points to the wall where they have the 12 steps, and he says, if you will put those steps into your life, and I'll help you, all of this stuff will take care of itself.
And he went up, and he walked to the back of the dining hall to get another cup of coffee, and I'm looking at the steps, and I had seen the steps. I'd seen them hundreds of times in meetings of AA. But I'm trying to read them, and I'm just looking at them, and I just know, the more I look at them, that this guy has not heard anything I have told him. I mean, there is nothing in those steps that connects with anything that's wrong with me.
I mean, stretch your imagination all you want, there's no connection here. I mean, I need a set of steps like, step one, make Bob's police record disappear. Step two, make my family realize how wrong they've been about me. Step three, bring her back, properly ashamed of herself. Or do you have a step that's, it's a give Bob a thousand dollars step? I mean, that would have really helped me. But instead, it's like, turn your will and your life over to the care of God.
Oh, come on. Oh, even if there is a God. That's impossible. My only experience on the might be a God concept was what I had from a little kid. And I've got to tell you that I listened to the nuns in Catholic school with the mind of an alcoholic. And I didn't hear about a God of love. I only, I listened from a self-involved, self-centered, fear-based perception. And so, I only ever heard about the things I had to worry about.
I only heard about the things I had to defend myself against. And I didn't hear about a God of love. Because I don't have to defend my, what I heard, I heard about a God who existed to judge me. And he could see in the dark, which is not good for a guy like me. That is a bad deal.
[00:40:00]
I remember the nuns used to say, they used to have this saying they used all the time. You must be pure of thought, word and deed. And I'd be, oh my God, I'm one of those kind of guys that thinks stuff all the time I'm not supposed to think. I remember sitting in a class one time, mind-wandering like I do. I'm just one of those kind of guys. Next thing I know, I'm imagining what this young nun looks like naked.
And I catch myself and it's like, oh God, oh I'm going to hell now. I know it, I just, that's it, that's over the line. And I don't know how to be different. I'm just too good at being bad and too bad at being good. So, you know, you guys say, turn your will and your, I'd rather turn it over to a lawyer. I'd have a better shot than to God. And make it immense. Immense horrified me. I remember, God, not only that time, but even coming into Alcoholics Anonymous in 78 and looking at the immense, the 8 steps, 8 and 9, and just, oh God, feeling so hopeless.
You know, and it wasn't that I disagreed with the idea. I thought it was a great concept. And I thought you people in AA should make amends. It's a good thing for you. I can tell by looking at you. Some of you drank too much and you probably said something out of line to your wife or husband. You should make that right. Good for you. Give you character. Or maybe you padded your expense account. Oh good, just make that right.
But I, man, I live like an animal. There was a guy, God, I thought I found him last year. I was so excited I found him. It was a dead end street. I've been hiring investigators for years to try to find him. A guy that, he'll never be the same. I took a knife with a blade this long and in a drunken stupor I opened his chest up. And he lived, thank God, but he'll never be the same. There were guys that I sent to prison because I got busted and I dimed them out to keep myself from going to prison.
How do you make amends to people like that? How do you make amends to people that are kind to you and they let you stay on their couch and then they go to work and you rob them? How do I make amends to a family, to a mother and father who just loved me and one of the worst things I ever did to them is I kept getting up again and giving them hope and telling them I've learned my lesson and the next week I'm stealing their TV or I'm embarrassing them once again.
How do you ever make amends to 15 years of just emotional brutality? So the guy comes back with his cup of coffee and I just, I said thanks and I shuffled off to my bunk because I knew what he was offering. It was nice. I mean, I didn't have a philosophical argument with the 12 steps. I mean, they looked like nice things to do that if I ever had my life together I might do that, I might join a gym too, I don't know.
But it didn't apply to my set of problems. I don't know about you guys, but I go on a run, alcohol cleans my clock, it strips me to the bone, it takes away everything of value inside me and outside me, I end up back in Alcoholics Anonymous and the first thing I get back is my damn opinion. And it is my opinion and my judgment of what he had offered and what had been offered to me for seven years. You see, it didn't make sense to me, so I never tried it.
And I went on my last drunk and on that drunk I tried to take my own life. I walked with a bottle of cheap wine down on these railroad tracks, up this cliff, up this hill, I staggered on this bridge and I'm looking down about 100 feet below on these railroad tracks and I'm out there because I just wanted to stop. I'm out there to jump. I'm out there because I don't want to do this anymore. I'm out there because I've entered into a phase of alcoholism that is bleak.
I've entered into periods of depressing, restless, irritable, lonely, abstinence until I can't stand it anymore, followed by drunkenness that is rummy and disgusting that's not even any fun anymore until I'm stopped. And you know something, I was sober a couple of years and I realized I had never stopped drinking. I had never stopped drinking once. In my whole drinking career, I was always stopped, by getting arrested, going to a detox, running out of money, doing something so disgusting
[00:45:05]
I would literally shame myself into abstinence. But I have never once ever said to myself and been able to carry it out, I've said it to myself, I can't carry it out, that, you know, this is getting out of hand, I really should quit now. I can't do that. And I'm out on this bridge and I'm out there because I want to die and I didn't think it was alcoholism. If I could have been honest with someone, I would have probably told you I felt like I was dying of loneliness. Because I didn't fit anywhere sober and I didn't fit anywhere drunk and the only thing that I had ever known, my whole life, that allowed me to take my place on this earth, that allowed me to feel like I was a part of, that allowed me to come out and play and mix with people, didn't work anymore and now I don't know what the hell to do. And I can't live with it and I can't live without it and I'm out there. But I'm a coward and I can't, I'm sobbing, incredibly sobbing, because I feel so awful and I don't have the courage to jump. And I hate myself for being a coward. You see, I'm afraid it's going to hurt. With my luck, I might not die. With my luck, I might end up paralyzed from the neck down in some charity ward where I have to lay there for 50 years listening to my head tell me what a piece of crap I am while members of Alcoholics Anonymous parade their newcomers through the charity ward saying things like, well this is what happens to you when you don't find God and work our glorious 12 steps. You know, I'm paralyzed, I can't even give them the one finger salute, I'm just stuck there. And I got to tell you something, when you can't live with it and alcohol doesn't work anymore and you can't live without it and abstinence is a bleak, desolate place and you can't even kill yourself, there's not much left except AA. There's a line in our book and it really, it's really what it happened to me. It says that we got to a place where we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we had been living it. So that when we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, which is you, that there was nothing left, nothing left but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. And that's where I came to you in 1978, I got to that place. I came here and I had nothing left. If there would have been a new drug or if there would have been something, if I would have had something that could have given me a little bit of hope at beating the game, then I would not have been an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. And I had to become an alcoholic of the hopeless variety because I couldn't open myself up completely to this simple program because I had too many judgments of what you were offering me. My experience in seven years with Alcoholics Anonymous, and there were many times where people had offered to sponsor me and did, and I just, nah. It's like, my experience with that is like walking down to whatever the skid row part of the town you live in is and watching some little old man who's been obviously homeless for years crawl out of the bushes and he's got long dirty matted hair and he's got like all these old tattered clothes on and he's dirty and he comes up to you and he asks you for a quarter and you feel sorry for him so you give him a dollar and he says to you, he says, I really like you. I'm going to give you ten million dollars. And he reaches in his inner coat pocket and he pulls out this dirty tattered check that he's obviously stolen from somewhere and with a broken pencil he writes out this check for ten million dollars and he gives it to you. If you're like me, as you're walking away and he's out of sight, you're going to tear it up and throw it away because you know it's not any good. The guy doesn't even have a quarter except that the check's good. And he's one of those nutcases like Howard Hughes and for seven years I'm tearing the check up and throwing it away because I got an opinion about what he's offering me. In 1978 when I got to the place where there was nothing left, I guess I lost the most important thing I'd ever lose was my opinion. And I remember sitting in the detox in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was trying to hitchhike to California and I made it as far as Vegas and I was so sick from drinking around the clock and I was afraid of going into seizures and a cop helped me get into this hospital there and I'm in there and they're making me go to these AA meetings
[00:50:00]
and I'm sitting in the meetings and all of a sudden I'm identifying with these people. And I thought for a long time that AA must be special in Las Vegas. And what I think it is, is I think the view is different from the bottom. Dr. Thiebaud talks about the alcoholic must have ego reduction in depth. And I had gotten to a place inside myself where just enough of me was beaten out of me that I was open to you. Thiebaud also talks about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego and I was so blessed and so fortunate to have fallen into your hands, in the hands of real activists in AA, in that small window of opportunity before the ego returned. And I fell into your hands and you had me going to 15 meetings a week, you had me doing a lot of things, you had me praying and I don't even believe in God. This guy in AA said, he said, I know you don't believe in God but I want you to get physically down on your knees every morning and ask whatever is running the universe for help. I got out of the detox, I'm in this halfway house. I'd go in the bathroom in the hall, walk the door, put the rug under the door, like I'm afraid somebody's going to look under the crack and catch me praying or something, I don't know. And I'd get down on my knees and I would feel stupid. And I would feel like a hypocrite. And I'd say, well, whoever's running the universe, would you please help me to stay sober today? And I'd get off my knees and feel stupid. I told this guy, I said, I feel like a hypocrite.
He said, well, what's new about that for a guy like you? My head cleared up and all of a sudden I'm scared to death because I've got this prison time I'm facing. It's driving me crazy. And it's just like it's right here all the time and I don't know what to do about it. I grabbed this guy in AA, this old timer, and I said, man, I don't know what to do. I said, I skipped out on, I was in this recovery house, a judge cut me a break, but he said if I didn't do what he said, if I didn't follow the conditions that I was already committed, I was going to do the time and now I've crossed a couple state lines, I've split, I've not reported to my PO, I've never sent, I'm behind on the restitution, I don't know what I'm going to do. And he said to me, he said, you're going to have to turn yourself in, contact your PO and offer to come back there at your own expense and do the two years at any time they want to tack on for splitting. I said, what?
Hey, I'm sober here. I'm not drinking, man. This is good, isn't it? He said, you have to do, I don't want to do that. He says, you have to do that. What do you mean I have to do that? He says, think about it. He says, how long do you think you're going to be able to stay sober looking over your shoulder when you can't use your social security number, you can't get a driver's license, you can't even go to work? How long are you going to be able to survive under that kind of tension of looking over your shoulder before one day you're just not going to be able to take it anymore and you're going to have to drink or take something? How long are you going to be able to last? I thought, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, you're right. He says, do you want to stop this? Do you want to get better? Yeah, I want to be sober. I don't want to be like this no more. He said, here's what you do. You write your PO a letter, you tell them that you're in AA, you're out here and that you screwed up and you're willing to come back and do the time and you will come back at your own expense and you will do whatever it takes and then you send him that letter and ten days later you tell him the date and on this date you say, I'm going to call you and you do that. I said, yeah, okay, and I wrote the letter and I showed it to him and I said to him, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do the two years, I don't want to do it. And he said to me, he said, well, he said, from my experience, he says, I don't think God's going to have you do the two years unless there's somebody in prison he wants you to help. I said, what kind of crap is that? I don't want to help anybody in there.
Oh, geez, I sent the letter out and I called and he was waiting for my call. The secretary said, he'll be right with you. He got on the phone and he blew my mind. He said, I want you to start reporting to a place called CRS and you're going to do classes down there and individual counseling. You've got to send us a check, a money order every month. You're going to be on probation out there for two years with this guy and if you do all that stuff you don't have to come back. And I walked away from there and I think for the first time ever I started to maybe trust that this thing called AA is not going to hurt me. That
[00:55:04]
maybe there really was something here that would work for a guy like me. Oddly enough, I started from day one doing hospital and institution meetings. A couple years must have been, the guy's got six years, seven years later, I'm doing a meeting at a skid row detox and a guy, this black guy comes up and he asked me to sponsor him. And he's a tough guy. He's a three-time federal loser. He's a pimp, a drug dealer and he was on federal parole. And he says, I skipped out, I'm two states away, I haven't been to see my federal, I've been on this run, I haven't seen my federal parole officer in a couple months. He says, I know I'm violated, it's already in the works and I don't know what to do. So I've been waiting for this guy. So I said, well, you have to write him a letter, tell him you're willing to come back and do the, he was facing five years in a federal penitentiary, do the five years plus anything they want to tack on, do it at your own expense, follow it up by a phone call. And he's looking at me like I'm crazy. And I said, hey, I told him the same thing the guy told me. I said, you think you're going to stay sober looking over your shoulder? And then I couldn't wait to tell him this. I said, but you know, I don't think God's going to have you do the five years unless there's somebody in there he wants you to help. And he looks at me like I must have looked at that guy, right? But he did everything I told him to do. And they sent the federal marshals for that guy and they locked him up. I could not believe it. I get this phone call. I think you can in the cosmic rift, you can hear a big ups. I thought, oh my God, what have I done? I said, it worked for me. And I'll tell you what happened. They kept him for about three weeks and his federal parole officer was so impressed with his desire to make it right and do the right thing that he had already been violated. He was already in the works, but his federal parole officer went to bat for him and unviolated him. And he's a free man today. As a matter of fact, he's the general manager of a large car dealership in Las Vegas. He's almost doing too well. And he's a free man and he sponsors a lot of guys and he's really doing very well.
And I get, on my AA birthday every year, I get a letter from his mother in Memphis, Tennessee. And in every letter she ends it by saying that she's praised for me and thanked me and she thanks me for what I did for her son. I never did anything for her son that somebody didn't do for me. And that he doesn't do for countless guys. I started getting into the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't want to go too deep into that, I could take too long. But I'll tell you something, I really, I've become over the years something that I didn't set out to become. What I've become over the years is like an AA fundamentalist.
I believe in the steps as they're outlined in this book and I'll tell you why that's happened for me. Is I've watched too many other people try too many other venues and I watch the results and when everything is chipped away it seems like this is what's left that works. My first attempt through the steps, my original sponsor didn't know how to work out of the book and through some help of a handful of people, Don P., Wesley Parrish, Tommy I., Joe and Charlie and a bunch of guys, at four and a half years sober I was suffering from acute untreated alcoholism in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know what it feels like to suffer from acute alcoholism in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous? What it's like, it's there's nothing wrong with me but there's an awful lot wrong with all of you. And I started to create that separation once again and I got really hostily self-righteously judgmental of everybody and I was backing my way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't even realize it. And I knew I was the guy. And I had a lot of depression and a lot of anxiety in my life.
and a lot of anxiety in my life and I went back through the steps as they're outlined in the book and I have to tell you, when I did that fourth and fifth step as it's outlined in the book, there's nothing I've ever done in AA that has been, that has changed me more
[01:00:03]
than that. And I think especially the resentment section. When I went back through my life and I listed every, and I allowed myself, I indulged myself and I got real petty. And I had a long list of everybody who had ever hurt me or ripped me off or annoyed me. It was really a list of people that if you would have asked me, I would have secretly believed that these are the people that really owe me an amends. And I made the list and I put down what they had done and I made it brief and to the point and I put down what was threatened, affected, interfered with, hurt. And then the part that changed my life the most. On the next page in the book it talks about resentments and it says that we must be free from them, we must or it kills us. And it says, what do we do? And it says, this was our course.
And the book is asking me to do something that was very difficult for me to do and yet it was probably the most powerful thing I've ever done. It literally changed the result I would get out of life from that moment to this. And the book says you must realize how the people who had harmed you were perhaps like you, spiritually sick. And even though I didn't like their symptoms and how they affected me, that they like me were sick too.
Well what's that mean? I mean I have to go to every resentment, through every single resentment and see how I am like the person that I resent? And what I had to do is I had to get honest enough with myself and come down off the high horse, off the throne of judgment and put myself in their place and really realize how if I had been raised like they were raised, if I was afraid like they're afraid, if I was drunk or stoned like they were drunk or stoned, if I really was in their position how I could have easily done to someone else what they had done to me. And not because I would be a bad guy, but because if I was in that spot I would be just sick enough to do that. And I'll tell you something, when I could do that all of a sudden I started to understand these people that I had built this case against and the separation between me and them started to diminish. And a lot of them I started to even develop a little compassion for them. And I was able to come back and do the final part where in the situation had I been selfish, dishonest, etc. etc. And for the first time in my life I stood up and I woke and took the responsibility for all the states of separation and conflict that I've ever experienced in my life. All the situations where I for years had blamed them. And I took the responsibility and I saw that I was the guy that was the seat of the separation was me and my judgments. And one of the things that amazed me about, I never imagined that the exact nature of my wrongs, I thought it was the guys stabbed and the things I stole and that was for sure, those things were on my eight step list. But the real exact nature of my wrongs was that I was so wrong in my judgments about so many people. I mean I was really, really wrong about my employers and the women in my life and my mom and my dad. And I had built these cases against people based on my own petty self-involved little perceptions of life, trying to validate myself and pump myself up and make myself feel superior to these people who had more power than I did. And boy was I wrong. And I got to tell you that just from that moment to this, I haven't been problem free. But I'll tell you something, I have never again been able to convince myself I've been a victim. There is never from that fourth step and fifth step to this day, I've gotten myself in some bad spots, but I always know that I'm the guy who did it. I am the guy who made the decisions based on self, which by the way, is what I did. Based on self, which put me right in that spot, that I'm not a victim, I was the volunteer. And there's a tremendous amount of freedom in that. Many years ago, it's been about 12 years now, maybe 14. I was taking a guy through this process and I love to hear fifth steps. I never fail to get to feel more connected to God's kids and more one of the
[01:05:02]
human race than I do when I'm listening to a fifth step. And I'm hearing this guy's fifth step and about a third of the way or halfway through, he starts talking about his dad. And he came from a bad home and there's no doubt about that. His father was a bad father and there's no doubt about that. His father was a raging drunk and his dad used to get drunk and just beat this kid unmercifully. And then sometimes when his father would try to sober up, he'd feel so guilty that he'd make these grandiose promises, we're going to go to Disneyland and we're going to do this and I'll get you a pony and then he'd never follow through and do any of it. And then other times when he wasn't drinking and he was hungover, he'd be just so miserable that he'd slap the kid or yell at him, get away from here and shut up and don't, go in your room and don't come out. And this kid had a resentment that just devoured him. And now he's an adult and it's ruined his life and he's spent some time in treatment centers and he's talked to counselors and psychiatrists and therapists trying to get free from that. He told me the stories where he imagined his dad was a pillow and he beat the pillow and he did the gestalt stuff where he'd imagine his dad was in a chair and he'd sit in the other chair and scream at him and then sit in the other chair and scream back and he did all that stuff and he never really got free of it. And we're going through this process and he's got the first three columns, what it was threatened, affected or interfered with was everything. He was devastated by this resentment. And then we start to talk about this was our course and we're talking about it and there's a little part in the 12 by 12 where Bill expands on it even more what he's talking about and I read that to him and we're talking about it and he starts getting on the muscle with me. And he finally starts yelling at me, he starts saying, are you trying to imply I'm like my father? I'm not like my damn father, my father was a monster and he's like, I'm afraid he's going to hit me. So I backed off, yeah, anything you say, let's just go on and we went into another resentment and I think that what happened in the next couple of minutes was inspiration. I don't think it was of me. And I believe that because whenever I start, whenever I listen to a fifth step, I always start by asking the guy to get quiet and try to invite God into this. And I always get quiet at the same time and I ask God and I mean that to make me useful. And we get into this other resentment and I stopped him and I said, can we go back to something? And he said, what, do you want to talk more about my dad? No, no, no, not your dad. No. I want to go back to that marriage you talked about in the beginning. You're that ex-wife. She says, okay, what of it? I said, wasn't there a couple kids involved in that? He said, yeah, why? And I don't know where this came from, but I said to him, I said, I just wondered if, if there was ever a time in that deal when you were drunk or you were stoned or you were hung over when you might've ever done anything to hurt those kids. And he put his head down and he looked up at me and tears are coming down his face. And he said to me, he said, my God, I'm just like my goddamn father. I said, how did you feel about yourself when you hurt those kids? And he got a funny far away look and he said, I couldn't stay drunk enough. I said, do you think your dad's any different? And he got this funny way. He said to me, he said, my dad is old now and he's got pancreatitis and he's got liver problems and he can't even physically drink. He cannot metabolize alcohol anymore and he's sick and he's the most lonely, frustrated, neurotic, negative person I've ever met in my whole life. No one in the family wants to be around him. He's totally alone and he's miserable.
I said, do you think you could be like that? And he said, he says, my God, that's my future without Alcoholics Anonymous. And he got something that he never had gotten before. He got understanding of his father. And I think through the understanding came the forgiveness and he was able to clean up his side of the street and he was able to go back to his father. And in spite of how all the wrongs that his father did as a result of his sickness, he was able to lay them aside and be there for his dad. And he actually sat with his dad and visited his dad and took care of his dad and he was the only one in the family that did until his father died. And if you ask him to this, I just saw him about not too long ago and if you ask him, he'll tell you to this day that the second greatest thing he ever got from Alcoholics Anonymous next to getting sober was he got his daddy back. This is an amazing,
[01:10:04]
amazing process. I think through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm able to do something that I need to have done. I'm able to reduce the separation in my life between me and you, between me and me. Because I was separate from myself. I had no integrity. I had no oneness of spirit. I was a fragmented, flaky individual that might tell you one thing and do something else. And through Alcoholics Anonymous, I've reduced the separation between me and me, between me and you, and that ultimately is a result of between me and you, between me and God. And I often wonder if what Einstein said was right. When he said that the great illusion here was that there was more than one of us here. And I've got to tell you something.
You listen to enough fifth steps and you'll start to suspect that maybe Einstein was right. Maybe the great illusion is that there's more than one of us here. I'm waiting to hear a fifth step that's new. I hear the same things over and over. I'm waiting for some guy to talk about some rare elements and jumper cables. It's just the same stuff over and over and over and over and over again. There's a branch of Buddhism called Maya. Maya means the great illusion. And this branch, not Buddhism, Hinduism, from India. And this branch of Hinduism has a story of creation that I think is wonderful. And it's quite different from the Judo-Christian story of creation. And what their story is, is that God existed timelessly forever. He always was without time. And he got bored with being that way. So he decided to play a game. And the game was that he was going to break himself up into an infinite amount of pieces and give all the pieces amnesia. And the game was, let's see what pieces realize that they're not separate first. What pieces realize first that they are connected to the whole. And I'll tell you something. I believe that this spiritual malady, like Carl Jung said, was my hunger for unity, was my hunger for being restored to my rightful place in this universe as one of you and one of God's kids. You see, my great dilemma is that when I wasn't drinking, I never fit anywhere. And once alcohol stopped being a treatment for that condition and my drinking became as desolate and as lonely as my sobriety, I had a lack of, I was in a bad spot. I was in a very bad spot. And through Alcoholics Anonymous and the gift of these twelve steps in my life, I found a process that helps me to reduce the separation. And I'll tell you, I struggle with a lot of self-centered fear. And I've come to believe that that's the enemy. It is the self-centered fear that in me creates the judgments about my life. And the problem is that my fear, sometimes for me, unfortunately, I believe my fears more than I believe in God's grace. And if you ask me at the time when I'm in the middle of it, I'll deny it. But I know that it's true because if you watch my feet, I will act like someone who believes the fear more than I believe that God is watching over me. I tell you, it's been a real privilege to be down here. I've met some wonderful people.
And I know that there's some new guys here and new gals. And I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've got to tell you that no matter how you came here, no matter how impossible your life seems, no matter how hopeless and no matter how much damage you created, I've got to tell you that you can tap into a synchronous process in here that will show you a way to restore your life and you will be able to claim your inheritance as one of God's kids. And that if you get a sponsor who understands this book and this step…
Sponsor who understands this book and this steps, and you throw yourself into helping other alcoholics and clearing up the wreckage of your past, I can promise you that there will come a time that you will stand and you will look around your family, you will look around your neighborhood, you will look around your workplace, and you will look around your AA group, and no matter what's going on at your life personally at that moment, you will not see another individual you would rather be than you.
[01:15:14]
I want to thank you for my life. Applause.