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Source: Bob D. AA Workshop Las Vegas, NV – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-02-15.mp3 File: bob-d-aa-workshop-las-vegas-nv-box-of-chocolates-2025-02-15.mp3 Duration: 01:09:54
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I'm Bob D. I'm an alcoholic. Can you hear me? I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm grateful to be here. I've, because of a power that I didn't believe in and I was afraid to believe in that I've accessed after a surrender through the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions and Alcoholics Anonymous, the ability to remain sponsorable and a persistent and consistent effort in this primary purpose of trying to help others. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering medication since October 31st, 1978. My personal best, actually.
And I called somebody yesterday, I called two people yesterday to find out if I, I had a, I have a coat tie for tonight to find out if I should wear a coat tie this afternoon for the workshop and they told me no and then everybody shows up in coats and ties and I get it. You don't want to miss an opportunity to make someone sober longer than you are feel bad about themselves. I, and you've succeeded. One of the things that first got my attention once I got past the drinking and I started to get a glimpse of that there's something wrong with me in abstinence that eventually drives me back to drinking. The first thing I ever started to identify with was I heard Chuck Chamberlain say, the first time I heard him say it I didn't get it, but then I heard my sponsor say something similar and I started to piece it together.
He said that there was one problem and it contained all problems and that was conscious separation between me and you and me and God. And I didn't get that at first and then I heard my sponsor share that every time he got sober he had this feeling that overwhelmed him that he didn't fit like other people seem to. And I thought my God I've had that as long, I had that before I ever drank. It's this feeling if Wilson calls it anxious apartness in the 12 steps and 12 traditions that feeling like it's all of them and then there's me and I'm the pretend guy sitting in the crowd of people that belong. I'm the guy who has the facade. I'm the guy who pretends he's okay, who pretends he's not afraid, who's just not I don't even know why I'm there because I don't belong like you people apparently belong. And I had had those feelings a lot in AA meetings and then I in 1978 after relapsing for a half dozen years I tried to kill myself because I was done. I just couldn't do this anymore. I'm in a trap I can't spring where drinking has somehow turned on me and it's not giving me the freedom and the ease and comfort and the relief I used to get. It doesn't allow me to come out and play anymore. I drink in depression and horrible horrible pathetic feelings of loneliness and I've been trying to jump start that party and I'm failing every single time and at the same time I get physically sober over and over and over and over again and sobriety is not good for me because I get sober and I sit in those meetings and I'm not like you. I listen to you, I watch you, you guys stop drinking, you're wonderful. I hate you for it but you're wonderful.
You know if you love everybody you know I just I'm not that I'm not that guy something else is wrong with me and I tried to kill myself in 1978 because I had this hopelessness. I had been fighting the bottle for six years seriously and the harder I fought it the more drunk I'd get. I heard a speaker in early sobriety say he said I quit drinking seriously 50 times. He said every time I quit drinking I got drunker now. He said that quitting drinking was killing me and I thought I sat there and went oh yeah oh yeah and I don't know what's I don't know that this is alcoholism. This is a disease as Chamberlain said a disease of separation and our book it says something very interesting and it's not I don't think this isn't about drinking. I think this is sober. It says the alcoholic will know a loneliness such as few do. This inability to connect. So I found a paragraph I thought like a lot of us think my first five years or so
[00:05:07]
of sobriety I thought the the answer to soothe these feelings of separation this lone the secret loneliness I don't want anybody to know I feel at times because everybody else looks like they don't have it and this this depressive lean I have in my my personality and so I thought uh what I need is I need somebody I need to find the right person to have a relationship with right I was convinced of that I if I had the right person to love me the right way not not like the others but the right way surely then this this thing inside of me would be soothed and healed and filled up this vacancy and I failed at a bunch of those and and I can't not only just with personal relationships I failed on the job I don't know what it is about me I interview well and I get a good job three weeks later I start building cases against the people there and it's I can't help it that I I can see the stupidity in people quickly it's a gift and I went through nine jobs in four years now nine jobs in four years speaks volumes of of separation volumes of untreated alcoholism volumes of a guy who doesn't fit anywhere and it doesn't matter how much I try to blame them you know after after a while after about six or seven of those failed jobs you start thinking I start thinking to myself listen either there's something wrong with me or I am the most amazing idiot magnet on the planet you know what I mean what's it you know is and you you run after the you run after a time you run out of the ability to blame them and you start what starts to cook out is it's it's me but I don't know what to do about it I found this paragraph that smashed a lot of my hope that I could overcome this on my own that I could just eventually outgrow it and it's in it's in step four in the 12 steps and 12 traditions first time I ever read this it made me sick to my stomach because it was true and here's what it says it is from our twisted relations with family friends and society at large that many of us have suffered the most we have been especially stupid and stubborn about them the primary fact that I failed to recognize is my total inability to form a true partnership with another human being my egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls either I insist upon dominating the people I know or I depend upon them far too much if I lean too heavily on people they will sooner or later fail me for they are human and cannot possibly meet my incessant demands in this way my insecurity grows and festers when on the other hand I habitually try to manipulate others to my own willful desires they revolt and resist me heavily then I developed hurt feelings a sense of persecution and a desire to retaliate as I redouble my efforts at control and continue to fail my suffering becomes acute and constant you see I have not once sought to be just one in a family to just be a friend among friends to be a worker among workers to be a useful member of society always I tried to struggle to the top of the heap or failing that to hide underneath it this self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any of those about us of true brotherhood I had small comprehension it's horrible isn't it because it's true as I read it I could feel the hopeless feeling of distress and loneliness that I that is if I can't will myself out of it and when Chuck said there was one problem contains all problems selfish conscious and unconscious separation in the book it talks about something that's very interesting that hooks into that it says selfishness self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles my separation is because I got too much of me between me and you and I got too much of me between me and God and I understand that sense of anxious apartness he talks about
[00:10:05]
and so you know what I here's what I did I get sober I don't I'm having I have an abnormal reaction to abstinence which drove me to eventually to sponsorship in the steps because if I could have just quit drinking and been happy joyous and free I'd have done that but my alcoholism for all intensive purposes starts where the bottle in the bag ends I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of the membership requirement that was originally written by Bill Wilson in the third traditional long form when he says membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism my suffering from alcoholism begins where the bottle ends I would return to drinking time and time and time again because it's medicine because I don't know what else to do when I get I start suffering from anxiety loneliness depression that feeling and not fitting and so Wilson says that selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of our trouble and so I start going through the steps and the steps reduce selfishness and self-centeredness some I started getting a different perspective on life when I when I finally did a fourth and fifth step and the fourth step out of the big book when I listed all my judgments my resentments and then I said the book says we so we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle and I started looking at it through their eyes what did my relationship with my mother and father look through what it looked like to them how did they feel see selfish self-centered people we never look at that I'm too self-centered to be have any other centeredness and so I started looking at that from their point of view I did this was our course to realize that these people on my list were perhaps spiritually sick and even though I didn't like their symptoms which was the second column and the way those symptoms disturbed me in the third column they're asking me to realize something I don't want to realize that I am perhaps like them spiritually sick so you guys are asking me to get humble enough and honest enough to start putting myself in their shoes and see how if I was afraid like they were afraid if I'd been hurt like they were hurt if I was vacant and driven like they were and I've been all those things in my life truly that I could have done to somebody else what they'd done to me and it was a game changer for me I remember coming out the back side of that thinking oh my god how wrong I'd been about my mother and father how wrong I'd been about all the all the girls in my life how wrong I'd been about the bosses and how wrong I'd been about the world that I viewed as unfair unforgiving and just kind of vengeful and you know what I saw coming out the back side I was the only guy that was like that what I couldn't understand is why my parents put up with me stealing from them and lying to them year after year how could they because I wouldn't have I couldn't have put up with what they put up with I don't think I have that capacity to love to that degree the bosses I understood why they I could all of a sudden see why they fired me what I couldn't understand why did they give me the second and third chance because I wouldn't that's how selfish I am and the girls that had dumped me I understood why they don't I put myself in their place and saw what they saw and felt what they felt oh my god I understood exactly why they dumped me what I didn't understand is why did she take me back that blew my mind and what happens is the whole world changes and and I am the guy that's the most unforgiving I'm the guy that's the the most vengeful the most reason it's me I tried to make it out to look like you and this exercise was massive ego reduction for me because that's what my ego does it judges it's an it creates opinionation entitlement and so I I was getting dialed down a little bit and it really was good for me but then something happened to me that happens to a lot of people and I sponsor a ton of guys and and what this happens a lot to people that are sober over 20 or 30 years.
to people that are sober over 20 or 30 years. They've been through the steps five, six times.
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They don't, they've made every amends to make, they sponsor people, and they're still struggling with this lonely feeling and this inability to have a true, as the book says, a true partnership with another human being, and I remember I was probably, I was probably 20, 20 years sober, and I've been through the steps a bunch, and I was gonna go, I don't know what else to do, so I was gonna go through them again, and there was a guy in AA that used to talk about practicing the original Twelve Traditions as a spiritual way of life, and he used to say things like, I think they're the higher set of spiritual principles. Well, when I got, I don't think I could have heard that any other time in my sobriety, because when I first got sober, those were like some kind of rules, and I don't like rules, and I don't, you know, I just, I felt like that character in the, that Humphrey Bogart movie, The Treasure of Sierra Nevada, or Sierra, it goes, badges? I don't need no stinking badges, only I was that way with the traditions, right? I'm rule-resistant. Now, listen to this, I like rules for you, but my case is different, right? I'm a special case, and I started thinking about this, and I started looking a little bit at the history of the traditions, and how they got adopted, and you know, Bill Wilson didn't write the short form of the traditions.
Matter of fact, he resisted them. He wrote the long form, but after almost two years of frustration trying to get groups to adopt them, he couldn't even get groups to read them. There's actually letters in our archives asking the founder of AA to come and speak at the group anniversary, as long as you promise not to talk about those traditions, and I get it. We used to read, we used to read them at my home group, and the long form is long. I mean, we'd read, we'd read them, and you could just watch the eyes of the newcomers glaze over, and just, oh, make it stop. I want to get back to the important stuff that has to do with me.
You know, I get that. See, I get that, but after almost two years of frustration, Wilson agreed to back the short form, and they became really our main traditions, and it's odd how most of the fellowship of alcoholics and non-alcoholics isn't really aware, or have never really looked at in any depth the long form, and yet, that is where the spiritual growth sort of came from for me, and I was a little over 20 years sober, and I started thinking about these as a way to practice, a way to conduct my life, and I started practicing them in my business, and I had a very, it was a fairly successful company, but there was friction there, and a lot of the friction came from me, and I started introducing the Twelve Traditions, not as something from AA, but just as principles that we would try to conduct our company by, and it's so, it was so mind-blowing to me, because non-alcoholics, you present them with these principles, and they go, oh yeah, that sounds, that's great, oh, group conscience, common welfare, oh yeah, that's good, that's good, you present that to alcoholics, and they go, well, I don't know, you know, it's, what about me, what about me, you know, it's, but I ran the business, and we had a lot of unity, because in the First Tradition, it defines the problem that I suffer from, and a lot of us suffer from in sobriety, we cover it up, we normalize it, as Silkworth says, to us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and so I started looking at these as if some, these are principles I could try to live my life by, and in the First Tradition, defines the problem, and just, just like the steps, the real problem is defined in step one, powerlessness and unmanageability, and then it goes through all 12 steps, and by the time you get to 12, the solution should be
[00:20:01]
somewhat in place, and the solution is having had a spiritual awaking as the single result of these steps, that's what, it's an amazing thing that Alcoholics Anonymous can promise with reasonable certainty, that you take these steps, something's going to happen to you, we don't know what's going to happen, but something inside of you is going to wake up, and I've been to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in countries and places where there's no Christianity, I did a workshop, three-day workshop in India, everybody in the room except for me and Debbie D was, were Hindus, and there were people in that room that were sober over 30 years, and they became, AA made them better Hindus, made them better husbands, better sons, better citizens, it did something to their spirit, something inside of them that's good woke up, I've had the same experience in several countries in the Middle East where everybody there was Muslim, that's all we can really promise you, we don't know what you're going to believe, you may go back to your religion in your childhood, who knows, we don't, we don't really care, we just want you to take these actions and we can promise you with reasonable certainty, something's going to happen to you, and you can interview a thousand members of Alcoholics Anonymous who have worked these steps and they'll tell you how they sit in their own lives differently than they did before they got here, something changes, and I had a friend who was a pilot and he said one time that he thought AA could also stand for altered attitudes, which I didn't like when I first heard that, because everybody's been telling me I have a bad attitude all my life, and then he explained it, he said in pilots an attitude is the angle of approach when you're trying to land a plane, and I thought about that, I thought man I've had a selfish, self-obsessed, self-concerned angle of approach to life, what I suffer from every time I quit drinking is an obsessive self-concern, I just get me right on top of me, and I start feeling like I'm smothering myself with my fears, with my dissatisfaction, with my resentments, I'm smothering Bob with Bob till I can't take it anymore, and I'm not drinking because I want to ruin my life, I'm drinking because I'm hoping, I'm hoping that the medicine will work even though it hasn't worked in the last couple years, and I play that game of let's bet my life on something that doesn't even work, late-stage alcoholism is is horrible, you're paying very very high rent on a house that already burnt down, and I don't know it, I keep hoping, and so I start looking at this, what's what's the problem here, if if powerlessness and unmanageability is the is the original problem in the steps, what's the problem here, and it's interesting the wording it says for our common welfare should come first, personal recovery depends upon a unity, there's two there's two principles there that are important to me, it's the first is the pecking order, the common welfare, so in other words I got to put what's good for you ahead of what I think is good for me, well alcoholics, I mean I'll do that if I'm getting my way, right, but if it comes to what somebody here is not going to get their way, it's going to it's going to be you, because I'm a me first person, obsessively self-concerned, and you're asking me to put God first, everybody else second, and me always last, I'm telling you, you can, first time I ever realized that my ego, I could feel it twitching inside me, oh no, you know the great cry of the alcoholic, well that's all good, but what about me, what about me, so and then the second thing is that personal recovery depends upon a unity, I drank alcohol for a sense of unity, Carl Young talks about that in a letter to Bill Wilson, that he said he suspected from working with Roland Hazard and countless other alcoholics, that the alcoholics, my thirst for alcohol isn't a thirst for alcohol, it's a thirst for connectedness, unity, or if you're more religiously minded,
[00:25:05]
you consider it a union with God, my need to become one with, because I'm painfully one apart from, and I drank whiskey for that, it worked for a while, I'll tell you, whiskey was the most immediate and effective treatment for the spiritual malady of alcoholism I'd ever found, and I would drink it to this day if it hadn't stopped working, I could walk into a bar in the good days when it still worked, depressed, loneliness, my life is crap, I don't like me, I don't like anybody, I don't like anybody, I don't even like the people in the bar, do you ever walk into a bar sober and just instantly know that they're stupid clicky people, you know, just, and then four drinks later, they're starting to shape up, aren't they, they're, you know, I could, I like some of these people, I was shooting pool after about six drinks with a couple of them, eight drinks in, we're planning our vacations together, you know, I mean, I remember walking into a bar, horribly lonely, and after about 12 drinks, I'm saying things to my new best friends, like, I love you, bro, I'd die for you, man, you know, I mean, against the backdrop of how my spiritual condition, when I walked in there, that's amazing, I mean, if a therapist could promise that kind of effect, after one therapy session, oh, you'd be you'd be dealing out the money. So alcohol, when alcohol worked, was the most immediate and the most effective treatment for alcoholism I've ever found. But when it turns on you, it turns on you and I've never known a case of somebody who could turn it back. I've known dozens of people and most a lot of them are dead that have tried, they've tried to recapture that effect and failed and it cost them their lives. So I got to somehow, I got to reproduce the effect that was produced by alcohol when it set its hook in me and I became obsessed with the effect because I wasn't obsessed with Budweiser or rum or vodka, I was obsessed with the effect. And if AA doesn't duplicate that effect, why would I stay here? Just to feel like I'm doing time? Because that's what abstinence had for me. I just get sober and I'd be miserable and lonely and depressed and I don't fit anywhere and I'd get like a meal in a hailstorm and I'd hunker down and take it as long as I could because I understand intellectually I must not drink but my god, I can't, my emotions can't take this and I drink again, hoping for the medicine. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and before I ever believed in God or anything here, I had witnessed it work. I'd met some people that I was in halfway houses with and they would throw themselves into AA and a year later they're different and they're happy, happy and sober at the same time. I can't get those two things in the same zip code. And I thought, as it says in the book, we saw that it really worked in others.
And I believed in the hopelessness and futility of my life as I'd been living it and I believed that. If you have been the guy like I was that for a half dozen years you're in trouble up to here and it's turned on you and you're swearing to yourself and meaning it, sometimes sobbing, I'll never touch that stuff again and you always go back to it, then you know hopelessness and you know futility. And the depth of the hopelessness is not just that I go back to it, I go back to it and it's miserable. The last couple years I drank, I drank in depression, sometimes if nobody was around, it didn't even do what it needed to do and that's to wash away the shame and the guilt and the remorse and I had a wealth of that. At the end of my drinking sometimes I'd drink and I'd cry because I don't know what's wrong with me and alcohol has turned on me. The only thing I could ever rely on and it's turned on me.
Ever Rely On and It's Turned On Me, and I'm dying of alcoholism, and when I went to a bridge
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in 1978 to take my own life, it truly, it didn't feel like it was alcoholism, it felt like I was dying of loneliness and depression, because I don't fit when I drink now, and I don't know why, I used to, and I don't fit when I'm sober, and I'm lost, and I'm in a trap I cannot spring, when abstinence is horrible, and drinking has become horrible, you're in a bad spot, and I was in a bad spot, and that's when I tried to kill myself, and I didn't think it was alcoholism, and I kind of had proof, delusional proof, because I'd go to meetings and I'd have all the depressive, lonely, anxiousness going on inside of me, and I'd sit in those meetings and I'd look at you, you guys quit drinking and you're wonderful, I quit drinking and I feel like I'm doing time, and I don't know what's wrong with me, but it's evidently not the same thing that's wrong with you, because look at you, and so I never, I came to a conclusion that AA is not for me, and I never did it, isn't it, it's, at least I didn't have to, by coming to that conclusion, you don't have to write an inventory or pay the money back, it's just easy, and I was dying of alcoholism, and you know, one of the things that turned me off about AA was God, and I was a want-to-be atheist, when I say that, I'm not a real atheist, I've known some real atheists, you have to be very religious about your atheism to be a good atheist, you know what I mean, I can't get that much traction behind it, what I really and truly am is I'm a guy who's afraid, I'm a guy who in the core of my being is a feeling of unworthiness, that if there was a God good for you, but you don't understand, I'm too stained for that, you don't, I did some things that I've never heard anybody in AA talk about, some horrible things to some really, really nice people, so if there's a, there can't be a, there just can't be a God, and I'm the kind of guy that if I think you don't like me, I'm gonna not like you first, and I did that with God, because, not because I'm a real atheist, I'm not, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, and so I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, and my sponsor starts spoon-feeding, he spoon-fed me the traditions before the steps, and one of the things he talked to me about, he said, you got to go to meetings and listen, because if you listen, and you're not in there having conversations in your head with people that aren't in the meeting, but if you actually listen, and you're present in the meeting, God will talk to you, and he, because I asked him to sponsor me, and I told him I'll do anything he asked me to do, he got me to pray, I don't think any other situation or place on the planet could have got a guy like, and I told him, and he didn't care, I said, well, I can't pray, I don't believe in God, he said, I don't care, I said, well, I'll be a hypocrite, he said, you've been a hypocrite all your life, just do it, and I wouldn't, that's one of the things I, to this day, I love about Alcoholics Anonymous, we don't care about how you feel, and what you think, I know you do, I know, I know, you care about that a lot, but it's in caring about that, that guys like me destroy themselves, and he only cared about what I did, and he wanted me to do it, and I started praying, which, and I basically, because I didn't know what else to do, and I told him I'd do anything he asked me to do, and it's a weird deal, from the moment, and this is true no matter what your religious background is, it happens in every alcoholic, the minute you turn your consciousness towards something, that something starts to show up, and it's through the promise in the second tradition, the second tradition says, for a group purpose, but I think also for my personal purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God, as he may express himself in our group conscience.
What does that mean? That means if you ask this power you don't even believe in to show up in your life, and you go to meetings, and it's usually the first place, God starts talking to you, and he talked to me a lot, and that's why I, when I'm in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous,
[00:35:06]
I'm very respectful, I'm not, I don't want to be on my phone, I don't want to do anything that would distract the guy sitting next to me from hearing what he's got to hear, so I'm very respectful. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is something I take seriously, now I don't, I try not to take myself seriously, but I try to take what we do here seriously, because it's a life-saving thing. Now maybe there's some people that come to Alcoholics Anonymous, they just sort of had a problem, a little bit drinking maybe, or a little drugs, and they get sober, and they're fine, well then this isn't life or death for you, it is for me, that's why I get, I get a little uncomfortable when people want to change stuff in AA, I get a little uncomfortable because I, there's nothing in the history of the planet that's ever worked as effectively with guys like me as AA, and I get it, the alcoholic comes along, first thing in 10,000 years that ever worked for alcoholism, and we're going to improve it, I get it, I get it, but let's not do that with, we can't duplicate this again maybe, you know, the window of opportunity that Wilson, all those things fell into place, oh my God, so God will talk to me in a meeting if I can, if I can be, if I can be clear, and to be clear that means I got to be free of resentments and fears, I can't be sitting in the meeting worrying about me with full of fear, or sitting in the meeting full of resentment, having conversations with people that aren't in the room, and I've done that, you ever been in, you ever walked into a meeting, something on your mind, just sit down, they start reading chapter 5, next thing you know, instantly it seems like, they're saying, we're saying the Lord's Prayer, what happened to the meeting, right, because I'm self, I've returned to the bondage of self, so I really try to respect AA meetings and try to pay attention, and you don't know what you're going to hear, I was just at a meeting the other day, a meeting that I would, that I've judged somewhat, I know you, most of you find it, oh Bob, you judgy, yeah, I got to notice her, I just notice things, you know, and I'm in this meeting that I don't really expect to hear anything spiritual, and a guy said something blew my mind, he talked about a prayer that he used, and I thought, I left that meeting thinking, I'm going to do that, that's good, and the only reason I heard that is, I was reasonably clear of resentments and fears and anxieties on that day, so I could hear God, God speaks through people, and the add-on, the second tradition is one of the, it's so odd because it's the one place where it's longer in the short form than it is in the long form, which has an alcoholic spin on it somehow, I don't know what that's about, but the add-on is brilliant, it defines us in a unique manner, it says our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern, Alcoholics Anonymous is the only organization on the planet where you can come in a big shot, who knows everything, and you work your way up into a servant with some humility, every other place opposite, go to work somewhere, you sweep the floors, maybe someday you'll be the manager, now we're the opposite, we all come in here with an ego disorder, we all, I almost died of alcoholism because I fit the adage, you can always tell an alcoholic, you just can't tell him much, right, I'm the I know guy, I can sit and I can't hear you because I can't shut this off from judging you and picking you apart, there was a great psychiatrist in Pennsylvania, he was on the staff of three different treatment centers I was in, third time, I was at a place where he was lecturing, he singled me out and he said something to me that was the most accurate, I've been in a lot of therapy, this was the most accurate diagnosis, the rest of them was all nonsense, but he said to me, he said, kid, guys like you don't get better, he said, some of you will find a way to stay abstinent for maybe a decade or more, but you don't recover and you don't get better because even though you have no self-esteem, and I don't know how he knew that, even though you have no self-esteem, you've grown this giant ego and because of that, you have an inability to listen to anyone in order to learn anything new, Bob, you're only capable of listening to see how you were already right, and I made, in my head, I had to discount him and make him into be stupid, but I'll
[00:40:01]
tell you, truly, of all the therapists I was, that was the most accurate diagnosis of me, and what was killing me, it was creating the separation between me and life, I thought she was going to come up with the hook, any day now, you know, I just, and I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of the membership requirement, the third tradition that membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism, I'm an everyday guy, I mean, every day I get up, I have two hours before I do anything in the morning, where God and I try to get right, and in that, I also have the sponsees that have called and texted and emailed, and I think about the plans for the day, and they start off by responding to that stuff, I've always returned phone calls and texts and emails, the worst thing, the most irresponsible thing I could do is somebody reaches out for help, and I let them hang out there on the branch, right, so I respond, because that's what spiritual responsibility is, the ability to respond, and I think about my 24 hours ahead, and I get going, and I do all these, and I go to a meeting every day, I mean, I probably average, I mean, like, I'm over 46 years sober, and I still average 10, 8 to 10 meetings a week, and I don't think I ever fall below 8, unless I'm sick or it's in the hospital or something, and why is that, why, well, do you need that many, Bob? No, probably not, but I'll tell you something, I'd rather do a little bit more A than I need than a little bit less than I need, it's that little bit less that'll kill you, so I'm not a minimalist, minimalists are driven by self-serving, you want recovery of convenience, I think there's high spiritual value in actions of inconvenience, which the selfish, self-centered, self-obsessed, self-serving, self-absorbed, alcoholic of my type, we don't like that, and yet it's good for me, and I hope, if you're struggling here, I hope you either have or will get service positions that are inconvenient, because if you only do the the convenient stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's your, it's back to serving yourself again, so we do self-serve, we do inconvenient things, and God, I sponsor guys, I always take their calls, and maybe if you, if any of you sponsor a lot of people, there's always one or two that when their name comes up on the phone, you go, oh, oh, he's gonna go on for 15 minutes about his sick relationship, and oh my God, I just want to hang myself, and then I take the call, and it's something about something different, right, so we respond, you know, in the fifth, uh, I'm gonna talk, I'm like, I can't, I don't have time to do all, touch all this, my experience with all the traditions, we do tradition workshops in my home group, we do four times a year, we go through the long form, then we have a weekend, usually once a year, where we do that in a depth, and it takes time, it's a lot, and so in the fifth tradition is where I stumbled and got, I got lost, it talks about our primary purpose, and Wilson is brilliant when he talks about the three things that will easily divert us, when he calls it in the long form, from our primary spiritual aim, money, property, prestige, I think if he wrote it today and observed in the fellowship what I've observed, he'd probably add sex and relationships to that, that will easily divert you, it's all the things that serve self, that have, that give an erroneous promise of self-gratification and self-security, money, how many of us become driven by that, you know, and it doesn't, it has, it, there's no decimal points in that, no matter how much you make, you just kind of know you need a little bit more, you know, and there, it's a dog you can't feed full, and the same with relationships, and the same with property, and prestige, how many of us become, we become prestige predators in AA, we just want attention, I had a friend who used to give the funniest, Attention, I had a friend who used to give the funniest talk, he'd say, I was so bad at that, that I thought every meeting I went to, my name was, does anyone want to share?
[00:45:04]
And he'd share it at every meeting. And he said, even in home, when he was all by himself, he'd open the refrigerator, and when the light came on, he'd tell his story, you know, kind of gives a new idea of what attention deficit might mean, you know. And so, we don't self-grandize here, we don't grandize ourselves, we don't promote ourselves here, and that's covered in depth in the 11th tradition. So I, because of success and sobriety, I got off track, and I didn't even know it happened.
You know, I bought this thing, hook, line, and sinker, that my purpose in life is to help other drunks. And I started doing that, and I started, you know, I'm making amends, and I started trying to carry these principles into my job, and I became very successful materially. And that thing that happens to a lot of us, you know, when you're in detox, or you're in the county jail, you got a bad case of alcoholism, and you know it.
You're 10 years sober, 15 years sober, with a couple hundred thousand in the bank. You know intellectually you have alcoholism, but it doesn't feel as bad as it was when I was in detox. And what happens, it says this in the 10th step, one of the warnings is that it's easy to let up on this spiritual program of action, arrest our laws, it really is. And I get seduced by the results of living a spiritual life into a false sense of okayness.
And it started when I was probably 14 or 15 years sober, and I was doing well. And it accumulated in a severe, frightening depression at 19 years sober. And the crazy part about that, that year I made the most money I'll probably ever make in my life. Deep seven figures. I had everything, it's horrible when you have everything you want, and now that you got it, you don't really want it. The shine is worn off of everything.
And I don't understand why I feel so bad. But I heard Chamberlain say this in the early 80s, he said that without a surrender, you eventually can get to a place where you'll run out of things you can put between you and you. And there you are, and the shines were off of everything, and you're still you. And the things that you believe would make a difference have not only not made a difference, they kind of disappointed you and made you feel worse.
And here I am at 19 years sober, and I'm in bad shape. And I'm still doing AA because I get this kind of ego that wants to do the minimal, my ego left unchecked will do the minimal amount of recovery because it still wants the bragging rights of a good member without being all in. You know what I'm saying? I still want that attention, that look, but I'm not all in. And I've diminished my service, I've diminished my involvement, still going.
And I was so depressed, I could almost not get off the couch, and I finally went to this meeting and I ran into an old friend of mine. I opened up to him and I told him how I felt, what was going on. And I'll tell you, God spoke through him. And he said to me, he said, well, you run your mouth a lot in AA and you still go to some meetings. He said, but I don't think your primary purpose is helping God's kids anymore.
I think your primary purpose is you. And that nailed me. And I got very uncomfortable because he was right. And it snapped me out of that deal and I, within a day or so, I got my car, got a couple new guys in my car. I've gone back to about four or five treatment center meetings a week, plus the regular meetings in my home group. And I'm back on fire through my actions. And here's one of the things I learned, I didn't feel all in at first, but here's something that's amazing.
If you act like a surrendered servant, even if you don't feel like it, you get what they get because it's all in the actions. And so I started acting like back, acting like the member of AA I should have been in. I haven't wandered from that since. Not that I don't get full of me sometimes, I do, but I've never changed my focus and my purpose. And I think the purpose of helping other drunks is one of the greatest gifts we're given here because it gives my life meaning.
[00:50:01]
Mark Twain said, it had a quote, it was one of my favorites. He said that the two most important days in any human being's life is the day you were born and then the day you realized why you claim your purpose. We have a sublime divine purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous, a purpose of helping other drunks. And because of that, the worst things about you, the things you were most ashamed of, all your mistakes, drunk and sober, become valuable to helping a guy who's done some of the same things and he's convinced he's alone and no one ever has been stained like he's stained.
And the worst about you becomes the best of you in this purpose that's not you anymore. And so I try to be mindful. And the only way you can tell is you can't tell by how you feel or what you think. You got to keep watching your feet. What are my actions? I just had this conversation with a guy who was going to put a pistol in his mouth when he was 18 years sober. That's how I get these guys a lot.
And I said, listen, I want you to imagine that there's an alien race on another planet and they got this high tech equipment and they're monitoring everything you do 24 hours a day. You're watching everything you say, everything you do. Would they come to the conclusion that your primary purpose is recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous or would they come to the conclusion from observation that your primary purpose is you?
What would they see? Because that's reality. That's what AA started introducing me to is what's real. See in my mind, there's all kinds of stuff. And I've had great sponsorship, people who would tell me the truth, even when I don't want to hear it. Well, you say that, how come your feet are making a liar out of you? I don't like to hear that. The only way I can tell what's real about me is from what I do.
In the 7th tradition, when I came to my first meeting, Alcoholics Anonymous 1971, I put like 50 cents. A lot of people are putting dollars in the basket. I put 50 cents in and I thought I should have a parade for doing that. But in 1971, a gallon of gasoline was like 30 or 35 cents. If it's in today's money, you're still putting a dollar in the basket and you're having five cups of coffee. Here's the truth.
You're a taker. You're using AA. You're a selfish taker because where can you go and get five cups of coffee and attention and get to share your feelings for a dollar? I mean, you're getting therapy and coffee. So I get the guys I sponsor, I said, listen, what the rule has always been unspoken is we put the price of a cocktail in the basket of your home group. Now that's an absurd amount of money in today's world.
I don't know how people can stay out there drinking when you pay $20 for a nap, a gray goose and a bread bowl. I mean, geez, $20. When you come to you, you blew the mortgage. I mean, Jesus, that's a lot. But it's important that we pull our own. And it comes in a lot of forms. When I was a year sober, I lost my first job and I was eligible for unemployment insurance that would have given me $120 tax free every week for nothing, for zero time working.
And my sponsor made me take a job that after taxes, I ended up with less than almost between $96 and $97 a week. I thought this is stupid, but he knew that my self-respect and he knew that my integrity that it was important for a guy like me to pull my own weight. And so he said, you've taken money from the government, you've taken money from your parents, you're going to put your own deal in here.
[00:55:01]
And so I started to do that. Tradition number eight, this is so pertinent in today's world. It's a hard one to talk about because it calls for opinions sometimes, but I'm going to try to keep it to my experience. In the long form, it says, Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher. But we may employ alcoholics where they're going to do or they're going to perform those services which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics, administrative, clerical.
Our central office, we have a hired administrator who runs the office, but he doesn't get paid for 12-step calls. If he takes a 12-step call, he's got to take himself off the clock because the book goes on to say, even though these services may be well recompensed, our AA 12-step work is never to be paid for. At first, I had a lot of credentials from in the early 70s when I became a therapist of sorts, which is, that whole concept is ludicrous, but I had them.
I took a job. My first year of sobriety as director of inpatient treatment at a treatment center for teenagers with drug and alcohol problems. My sponsor was livid. He said, what's this? The blind leading the blind, you know, you're supposed to do that stuff for free. You're not supposed to get paid for it. You know what I thought? Here's what I thought. You know, he's just not smart enough to figure out a way to get paid for it.
And it started to corrupt my spirit. And I started to edge away from being sponsorable and surrendered because when you're a professional, I started becoming the I know guy again. I didn't want to do the hospital and institution meetings that he was making me do. I don't want to be on the 12-step list because here's what I tell myself. I tell myself a bunch of BS. I do that all day long. I said that to my sponsor one time.
He said, but you get paid for it. It's different. And I started cutting off the flow of grace. I was up in the Rocky Mountains when I was sober about eight or 10 years and I saw this pristine lake. It was so clear and so clean. You could see the rocks on the bottom. And the reason it was that way on one side, you had a stream with water rapidly coming in and on the other side, you had a stream with rapidly water rapidly going out and it could not stagnate, which in my experience is for me to fill up with me.
And I started to fill up with me and I lost that job, thank God. About a year and a half later, there was an article that came out in this magazine for people that work in the field and it was a synopsis of occupations for people in recovery and which ones had the highest relapse rate and the highest recovery rate. The one with the highest relapse rate was counselor. I mean, you have a statistically, according to that article, you have a better chance staying sober as a drug dealer than a counselor.
And I've sponsored a lot of psychiatrists, a lot of, oh my God, the two most difficult people to sponsor are clergy and therapists because they know everything and they don't feel like they have to do what we do. They're above us. So I don't, you can't make money here and we live in a time, I'll tell you, where there's more people trying to profit off of people's recovery than ever in the history of our planet.
I take my talks, Sandy's talks, Debbie's talks, Clancy's talks, and they put them on places like YouTube where they get 30 cents for every view. Now you got a couple million views on there and they don't ask you. My wife has sent, she's a lawyer, she sent cease and desist letters, they don't even answer you. They know you're not going to spend the money and the time and trouble to take them to court and they're making too much money anyway, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
We have recovery coaches now. I remember. in general service, and we were sitting there, a bunch of us were talking, and we were goofing
[01:00:00]
about, you know, isn't it a shame that we can't sponsor people for money, you know? And we were kidding. It's happening. It's been happening for about 10 years. I just, I, there's a guy that just died, a very famous, very wealthy man, and he would not go to AA anymore because he got, had a bad experience with a recovery coach, and he thinks that's AA, I guess. It's not AA. We're for fun and for free, as Chuck would say. We don't, this is not, this is not a taking place. It's a giving place, and this stuff like that, it, to me, it just bleeds the altruistic heart right out of Alcoholics Anonymous, because we're here to help. Our primary purpose for fun and for free is to help other people, so that's, that's an important, in this day and age, more than ever. The ninth tradition I'm not going to talk about, we should never be organized. I don't think there's much danger of that. I mean, it's, but I want to talk about 10. 10 is one of the most violated traditions in AA.
It's the one I, I've violated a lot. It's the one I aspire for, for spiritual and unity reasons to, to do better at, and let me read it. It says, no AA group or member, so they're talking about me, should ever in such a way as implicate AA express any opinion on outside controversial issues. Well, if you can't talk about your opinions, what are you going to talk about? My god, I mean, I'm an opinionated, opinion generating machine. I mean, I just, I can walk into some situation I've never been into, and I'll just have opinions about it. I don't even know anything about it.
It's, it's the, it's the muscle of the ego. So, and it says especially those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. I know some people that left AA for a while because on Facebook, there were members that they looked up to that were sober a long time that were bashing their beliefs. And what, and it doesn't matter if it's politics, it doesn't matter. And when you talk, if, if selfishness is the root of our trouble, how selfish do you have to be to share a contrary opinion to some new guy?
And because your opinion is more important than his welfare, people who left AA because they felt like they can't, I can't belong to that organization if they believe that. So we don't talk about religion. We don't talk about politics. And it makes AA a safe place that you can come here and we don't, you don't have to have, share our opinions about anything. Matter of fact, we're hoping you don't have any opinions because if you can get to a place where your opinion less, you may be carrying out the decision in step three, because it's, that's the one, it's my opinions, my judgments that interfere with my surrender. The Buddhists say that all human suffering comes from an attachment to opinions and ideas. There was a great psychiatrist who said that the road to hell was paved with expectations and ideas. What if you were, what if you were opinion less, then there'd be no conflict because you have to have a judgment to be mad. You have to have an opinion to be a conflict or to be afraid. What if you really understood that God's got you, he's got you, he's got me, he's got us all. What if this is just the most amazing romantic comedy ever created by the creator of the universe and I don't have to control nothing. I don't have to defend nothing. I don't have to stand up and tell you where you're wrong. I just have to sit back and enjoy the show. And every once in a while I get called to participate. I participate from a position of a servant. How can I help? What can I do?
And if I can, if, if I can live that way and don't get me, don't get the idea that I can live that way all the time, but I have these, I have periods of time when I'm that guy and it's bliss because there's no conflict. It's the promises in the ninth step are coming true. Understanding that not only understanding the word serenity, but I have serenity and I know peace because you have
[01:05:01]
to have opinions to have conflicts. And I got that kind of ego. Oh my God. I don't care if my, I don't care if it kills me. I'm going to be right. Even if, even if it did kill me after I'm dead, as long as people walked around and said, yeah, Bob's dead, but he was right. You know, our 11th tradition talks about self-grandizement, self-promotion. We never recommend ourselves. Our friends can recommend us. We don't promote ourselves here.
And then finally in 12, and I want to read this and then we'll kind of wrap this up. I think the 12th tradition in the long form is one of the most beautiful things Bill ever wrote. He says, and finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place, to place principles before personalities, that we are to actually practice a genuine humility.
This to the end, that our great blessings may never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all. You know, I didn't understand that for a while. I didn't understand anonymity. I thought something that a lot of people think, well, that's just, we don't give our last names. Anonymity is such a spiritual principle. It's that I do not distinguish myself. I'm not here to become somebody. I'm here to be, to be a servant. And I think that's the highest thing you can get here is to be a service, to be a servant, help God's kids. Lose your life in the service of others. Not easy.
And humility, what is humility? I thought it was just being beaten up and, you know, mea culpa, mea culpa, that kind of. Humility is rigorous honesty without ego. That I can be genuine. I can tell you everything. I can just be humble. I don't have to, I'm not trying to make myself bigger than I am. And I'm not trying to look exceedingly humble and try to make myself look less than I am. Early sobriety, I was at a meeting, the subject was humility, and I heard a guy say, if you think you're humble, you're not. So I get called on and I went five minutes on telling him how I knew I wasn't humble, knowing that they would all think I was really humble for saying that. You know what I mean? Right. And I didn't understand principles before personalities. And here's, I get this kind of mind. I think I know stuff that's not true.
I thought for close to 20 years of sobriety, that what that meant is that I was supposed to put these principles of A, which I assumed were forgiveness and acceptance and tolerance before your difficult personalities. And that's not it. There's only one personality. I have to put these principles before and try to live by them. And it's mine. I'm the source of all my opinions, my judgments, my conflicts. I am the source of the separation. I think the ism of alcoholism is, I separate myself and it comes from the ego disorder. So I need to put these principles and live these spiritual principles. And there are principles in action to say Bob from Bob.
And it's such, and so, and to keep mindful of where all this stuff comes from. In my 19th year of sobriety, one of the reasons I was in trouble was that the blessings of my life were corrupting me and I didn't know it. And I somehow, I was taking credit for my life. And I love what it says, this to the end, that our great blessings may never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all, not just Bob, not just you, but over us all. We're a family here. I had a friend, Patty O, used to say, I understand I'm the child of God. I just resent the fact that I'm not the only child of God. Thanks for listening.