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Source: Bob D. Las Vegas, NV – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-02-15.mp3 File: bob-d-las-vegas-nv-box-of-chocolates-2025-02-15.mp3 Duration: 01:08:33
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Further Ado, Here's Bob. Like rats deserting a sinking ship, Lord, make me the place where you'll shine through, that you and I could be one, not two, so that I need not worry, fret or plan, you want me where and as I am, and if I could be relaxed and free, you'd carry out your plan through me. My name's Bob, and I am an alcoholic. And I come from the hitting bottom capital of the world, Las Vegas, Nevada.
I'm a member of the Connect the Dots group of Las Vegas, and if you ever come to Vegas, it's an unusual group. Our meetings are sometimes almost as big as this conference, and it's a great group, three legacy group, and if you go there, the people in that group that are members know it's my home group because I have jobs there and I serve there. I have a sponsor who knows from my actions that they're my sponsor, and if you have a sponsor who may not be sure if they're your sponsor, I'll let you in on a secret, they're not.
And I have a sobriety date, and it's a date by which I've hadn't had any alcohol or any of that other, there's other things that guys like me do to use to soothe our abstinence and try to treat our alcoholism. I haven't had none of that since October 31st, 1978. I want to thank the committee for asking me, and Pat, by the time we got here to the hotel, it was late, and I knew more about Pat than I ever knew I needed to know.
I just, you know, you know how we are, and I want to thank him, he's gone out of his way to give up most of his whole evening, and I want to welcome the new people, I'm glad you're here, especially, was it Alex, the guy that got the book, welcome. My God, Alex, this isn't like anything you've ever been to if you've never been here before. It's the only place on the planet where they'll give you a standing ovation and a prize for recently burning your life to the ground.
It's different here. My God, I didn't want to be an alcoholic. You know, in the beginning of our third chapter, it talks about most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. I don't want to be an alcoholic. I had uncles that were alcoholics, and they were pathetic and obnoxious, and I don't want to be like that. I mean, I'll be anything, I'll be a drug addict, because drug addicts, that's kind of sexy.
There were rock stars that were professed drug addicts, sign me up, I'm good with that. Or I'll be a mental health case, because if you're a mental health case, you get pills and sympathy, I like both of those. But I never looked up or aspired to be like someone who wet their pants occasionally, and yet that happened to me occasionally in my story. And I didn't know I was an alcoholic in 1971. I wasn't even old enough to take a legal drink yet, I was made to go to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was an institution, and I didn't want to go. I suspect that you could have put me on a lie detector and asked me, Bob, is there any way in the world you're alcoholic, and I think I would have probably said no, and it might have said I was telling the truth, because I don't want to be an alcoholic. And I came to the meeting they sent me to, and I went to many, 150 meetings at least after that before I finally got sober, and I would sit there and I would look for reasons why I'm not like you.
And alcoholics of my kind, I didn't even know that I'm defended against getting better. I didn't know that. And I looked for the differences, and I'll tell you, if you're here and you want to see the differences and how your case is different, there's a lot of stuff to look at. And I used the fact that I did certain drugs, see, I'm different. I suffered from depression, clinical depression, see, my case is different.
[00:05:00]
Anxiety, to the point of panic and nervous breakdown sometimes, see, my case is different. You guys, I heard some of your stories, you came from horrible families. My parents loved me. I didn't fit, I had that, you know, they have medication now for it, they didn't back in the day, I had that social anxiety disorder, you know, I didn't know what that was. I have problems with jobs, I have terrible problem with relationships.
You see, I'm sober, and I'm looking at you, and I don't feel the way you feel. My case is different. And that almost killed me. And I didn't know that just as alcoholism uses my own mind against me, so I don't see the reaction of the phenomenon of craving, I think I'm just, that's just the way I drink. I can't see that I'm like you either. It's so defended. So when I tell you today, and I would say I was an alcoholic, I remember many, many dozens and dozens of times in treatment centers, where they be in a meeting, they go around the room, and they get to me.
And of course, I say, my name is Bob, I'm an alcoholic. But that's not the truth. I don't really believe that. Step one says we learned, we had to fully concede to our innermost selves in that place where there's no cognizant debate, fully concede to my innermost self that I'm not real alcoholic, this is the first step in recovery, and I'm not, I'm not there. I don't think I'm an alcoholic. If I was honest, what I would have said is it came to me, I would have said, my name's Bob.
And I don't want to be here. And I don't like any of you. And I don't want and I don't feel very good. And I'm depressed. And I don't want any problems or confrontations. So I'm Bob, I'm an alcoholic. But that doesn't mean I believed it. And so I didn't think I was I went to great lengths to prove to myself I wasn't. And I was and people who argue with the truth get sick. And I, I suffered from the delusion that I'm not.
And then at night, you know, when I when I tell you today, I'm an alcoholic, I'm telling you three things that if you're a chronic alcoholic, you know, they're true for you. They're true for me. They're true for every chronic alcoholic. I'm telling you that there was a time, not in the late stages, but in my early drinking, when I received an effect produced by alcohol that was so spectacular, I became obsessed with how that made me feel obsessed with it.
I remember the first time I ever, ever got drunk was with these older kids, man, I just felt so connected and so part of and so free. I felt free. And I remember saying to myself, my God, I'd like to feel like this the rest of my life. And I tried. But I have alcoholism and I don't know it. And so I'm the guy that when I start to drink, I can't stop. And I don't know that I can't stop. I have this allergic reaction to alcohol.
If I were to pick up a drink today for a guy like me, it's like having sex with a gorilla. You ain't done till the gorilla's done. You know what I'm saying? And I don't mean to be crude. That's just the way it is. And I fancy all the time that I can control this and I can do this and I can, nah, don't pet the gorilla. So I couldn't see it because of the way alcoholism uses the alcoholic's own mind against them.
This is the only fatal disease I know of. If you got it, it uses your own mind against you to kill you. And if you're new here, I have a great hope for you and it's the same hope I have for me that I never underestimate alcoholism and I never overestimate myself because that's the fabric of a funeral shroud for a guy like me. And so when I say, I'd say it was an alcoholic, but I don't see people in these recovery programs and AA members and counselors would talk about this allergic reaction to alcohol, a phenomenon of craving.
I don't have that. I mean, I'm in trouble, yeah, okay, it's obvious, but I don't see a craving. And it's funny what happens to me when I drink. I remember I was a blackout drinker. Any blackout drinkers in here? I'm sorry. It's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do, isn't it?
[00:10:00]
It's just, and I may be like some of you, I never found out the next day I did something good in a blackout. Nobody ever said, oh, Bob, you were so helpful last night. You peed in my kitchen. I hear that. I heard, you told everybody last night you beat Bruce Lee in a karate match? Oh, I'm just pathetic. So I'm staying on a guy's couch, which speaks volumes of what stage of my alcoholism I was in. And since my, when my parents would no longer support me and cut me out of their lives, I had to leave.
I didn't have a place in my own name until after I was sober a while. Now I wouldn't have said homeless, even when I was living in the park, outdoors, I wouldn't have said I was homeless. I'd read Jack Kerouac, I was a urban outdoorsman. So I can't, I come to on this guy's couch and it's, I've had a terrible blackout the night before. And I remember little bits and pieces of it, but it's horrible. Everything I remember, every snapshot I remember from the night before is, makes me shudder.
It's embarrassing. It's shameful. And my roommate wants to fill in the blanks and tell me all that he loves telling me they're really disgusting, embarrassing things I've done. It's like Christmas for him and putting it all together. And it's, it's frightening. Now there's a whole group of people that I kind of liked that I can't even ever go around them again. I'm humiliated. I could have went to jail.
I, I'm just so ashamed of myself. And so I'm sitting on his couch, like I'm shaking. I get, my nerves are shot and I need a drink, but my God, I can't do what I did last night. And so I'm having a conversation with myself, which is usually the way I do it. I'm having a conversation with myself, well, I need to go, I'm supposed to meet my buddies down at Dot's bar down on the corner. My God, I can't, I mean, I probably shouldn't go.
I can't do what I did. This is horrible. I can't, this has got to stop. And I, all of a sudden I had this epiphany experience and I got this plan and if you're new or even if you're not new and you're planning to drink again, you need a plan. I mean, you just do, it won't help you, but it'll soothe you on the way out the door. It'll soothe you. And here's my plan. It was a great plan. All right. I'm going to go down to Dot's and I'm just going to slowly drink eight drinks.
I never did anything, I never tried to punch a cop on eight drinks or take my pants off over my head or anything like that. That's always somewhere North of 12. So eight drinks is secure. It's comfortable. I feel hope that eight drinks is good. This is a good plan. And I went down there and you know, about three, four drinks in, my nerves start to calm down. I stopped shaking about five, six drinks in.
I'm starting to have a little bit of fun. And this is an amazing plan until I got to seven and then I got to seven and I could see the end and it was like an epiphany. I just all of a sudden realized, Oh, what was I thinking? It's a stupid number. 12 is a better number. And I ended up drinking all night. I just did the same thing with different people and the embarrassing, humiliating, shameful stuff that night that I did the night before.
And if you would have said to me the next day, you said you were only going to have eight and what you had, we don't even know how many. That's the phenomenon of craving Bob, where you didn't, you didn't stick to eight. You know what I would have said? I said, no, it's not. I just changed my mind. I always changed my mind and I didn't know that the allergic reaction to alcohol was so powerful. It used my own mind against me and I don't see what's going on.
So I have an obsession that was hardwired into me when I was 13 years old for the effect produced by alcohol. I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol where when I start, I can't stop. And then the third part of the equation is baffling. And I don't understand this, have an abnormal reaction to abstinence. And I don't get that. I don't get that alcoholism will chase you up into your abstinence like a pack of rabid dogs, and it'll nip at you and bite you.
[00:15:03]
Single Time. See, there are people who have problems drinking, and that's the problem is they're drinking, and they come to Alcoholics Anonymous, they come to their senses, or they go to a treatment center, or they go to church, or their wife says, listen, if you don't quit drinking, I'm out of here, or their boss says, we're going to fire you, the judge says we're going to put you in jail, or whatever the significant reasons are, and those people have the ability to just put the plug in the jug, and they're good to go.
Not me. I fancied I was that guy, but I'm not. I'm the guy who starts to suffer when I stop drinking, and I don't understand it, and you know, there's great descriptions in our literature about what happens to me when I stop drinking. Dr. Silkworth is the first place I ever found it. The symptoms of untreated alcoholism that will drive a guy like me back to drinking, even if he swore, sobbing to himself, he's never touching that stuff again, because what happens?
Well, I get sober, good intentions, going to turn my life over, you know, I get plans when I get sober. I'm going to go to school, I'm going to go to the, I'm going to get her, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm like one of those cars that won't turn over, I'm going to, I'm going to, got a lot of plans, but no, no action, really. And so, after a time, just like Silkworth talks about after a time, I start getting this restlessness about me, and I can't really put my finger on it.
Do you ever get that feeling like you have, you really have nowhere to go, but you're late? You know what I mean? Like you're late. Like I need to go somewhere, and I don't know where, I just don't want to be here, and I get that restlessness, and I can't get settled anywhere. I'm irritable, he said, the second symptom is irritability, well, I don't admit to myself I'm irritable. First of all, irritable people irritate me, I don't want to be irritable, but I am so bright that when I get sober, I can just see the stupidity in people quickly.
Everywhere I go, I see stupid people in traffic, stupid people at work, stupid people in politics, stupid people on television, stupid, oh, you go to those, they make you go to those A meetings where they have all the stupid people grouped in one room, right there they are. You know, the happy, clappy, grateful for everything people, oh, God, I remember, see, I was in this recovery house, I burnt my life to the ground again, so bad that there's no, not much hope of getting back on my feet, and I'm sitting in this AA meeting, and everybody, all the people from AA that come in there, they're all just sharing their miracle stories.
They're all just so grateful, and I remember sitting there and thinking to myself, I've died and gone to hell. It's not so bad that I ruined my life, and nobody will speak to me, and I'm just totally alone and desolate, because I'm going to have to spend the rest of my sobriety, whatever length that is, sitting and listening to you rub my face in how wonderful you are, and I thought, this is hell, and I don't feel very good sober, I'm irritable, I'm judgy.
You know, there was Will Rogers, said he never met a man he didn't like, I never met a man I couldn't judge, and I'm picky, judgy, and opinionated, yet I would deny that. I was arrogant, and yet I would deny that, I can't be arrogant, I feel like the lowest piece of crap on earth, how can, I'm not arrogant, I have no self-esteem. I was arrogant, because I thought I was too smart and too good to do what you do, and I was dying of arrogance, and I wouldn't have believed it.
And this irritability is, Jesus, it's just, I'm so uptight in AA meetings, people, I don't like being around people, and I don't like being alone either, so that doesn't leave a lot. Have you ever been newly sober, and you feel horrible, I mean, you just burnt your life to the ground again, and again, I hate the agains, I'm not afraid of the yets, I'm afraid of the agains. And some Yahoo in AA, with a big grin on his face, he comes up to you, and says, has anybody told you they love you today?
Oh my God, I gotta, where's the exit, I gotta get out of here, because you know he's gonna try to hug you, and I don't want anybody touching me. Oh my God, and everybody in AA talks about God, God, God, God, God, God, oh, Jesus, I'm
[00:20:02]
an atheist, or I wanna be an atheist, so I'm offended, egocentric people, even though you have no self-esteem, and no self-worth, egocentric people are easily offended. We're entitled, we're judgy, oh, and I'm all of that, and yet I don't know it, I don't know that I'm that way, I just know I'm uncomfortable when I'm sober. And so I'm not only restless, and I'm irritable, I'm chronically malcontent, sometimes, not the last couple years, but sometimes when I get sober, I'll get a job, and I will work like a devil trying to build my life back up again, and no matter what I acquire, and I go in acquisition mode, and I try to get stuff that I think's gonna make a difference, maybe it's gonna make me happy, and no matter what I acquire, no matter how good it is, once it's mine, the shine starts to wear off on it, and I don't know what's wrong with me.
You know, I see that girl, I think, oh my God, if I was with her, I wouldn't ever have to drink again, it'd be so amazing, and I get with her, and two weeks later, God, was I wrong about her, Jesus, get that job that's gonna change my life, and oh, those people are stupid after a while, you know, it's, nothing rings my bell, and I don't understand it. So I live, I get sober, and I get abstinent, and in my abstinence, it's a course of targeting something, going, oh yeah, acquiring it, and the minute I get it, ah, that's not it, next target, and there's a frustration and a depression about that, and no matter what you bring into your life, it's worthless, and I was 10 years sober, and I was working with a guy at the state penitentiary, he said something when I was up visiting him, it opened a whole vista for me, and all of a sudden, I understood part and parcel this chronic malcontent, and what I realized is that the effect produced by alcohol in the early days was so freeing, and so magnificent, and so, it made me whole, that everything I acquired the rest of my life, I'd compare what it feels like to have that job to what it felt like to have five shots of tequila, and when five shots of tequila changed the world, I'd compare what it felt like to be with this new girlfriend to what it felt like to drink some 151 rum and coke, and whatever it is, it's no good, you know, everything pales by comparison, everything disappoints me, when you've had the effect produced by alcohol, everything else comes short. I'm somewhat of a songwriter, and I have a friend who's a pretty good songwriter, a good lyricist, and in one of his songs, he had a great line, he says, you can get what's second best, you can just never get enough, and I know what the not getting enough of stuff is like. Somebody, in early sobriety, asked me, what do you want, I didn't know what it was, I know what it is now, I want more, yours, different, you know, that's all, and it's insatiable, so I'm restless, I'm irritable, and I'm discontent when I stop drinking, I have consequences and guilt and shame that just seem to haunt me, I can't shed it, I can't wish it away, I'm obsessively self-involved, when I quit drinking, I just get myself on me, like in my problems, in my fears, in my past, and I get it all right on top of me until I'm smothering myself with myself, I don't know what's wrong, I have no idea what's wrong, it seems at times as if when I quit drinking, an invisible yet impenetrable barrier seems to rise up between me and life, between me and you, and I can't get through it, and the only thing that ever dissolved that barrier down and got me free was whiskey, but here's what happens, in the progressive nature of alcoholism, you cross over a line somewhere where the effect is gone, the problem still exists, but the effect is gone, late stage alcoholism is like paying high rent on a building that burnt down, alcoholism makes a punk out of you and it uses what should be considered an asset to kill you, what's that asset? Hope, I keep having hope that someday, some way, somehow, for God's sakes,
[00:25:07]
I'm going to control, I'm going to enjoy and control my drinking again, I'm going to jump start that party, I spent the last three years chasing the ghosts of parties past, and it's, I'm burning my life to the ground in the process over and over and over again, and I don't know what's wrong with me, I can't tell you how many times I'd end up in jail or in a detox or where it's bad, I mean it's bad, and I'd be swearing to myself, sometimes sobbing, but I'll never touch, I can't do, I'll never touch that again, and to my horror, I always went back to it eventually, it's just a matter of time, if you have chronic alcoholism as I have had and you don't have a spiritual experience and you don't surrender, you don't work these steps and you're not sponsorable and you're not everything that the people that do well here talk about, then the question is not if you're going to drink again, the question is really when, it's an inevitability, it's an aspect of alcoholism that I have is just as powerless over as I am the first drink once I take it, and I had no idea, see I thought that if I just make up my mind and or hit a severe and horrific enough bottom, surely then I will never drink again, it's not the case, and so I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm treatment center after treatment center and therapist after therapist, my mother was a therapist, she worked for mental health and she encouraged me in during one little brief period of abstinence to get some certifications and I did and I worked in the field for a while and I just, just made me sick, why would I do that? Here's what, here's a delusion of my ego, my ego thinks that it will find and acquire power through knowledge, that if you know, you'll do better and I thought if I just know, I'll be good and honest to God, I never got any power or any significance out of, out of knowledge, I got one thing from knowledge, I got fodder for my ego to puff me up into being the I know guy and the knowledge just gave me a feeling of superior, intellectual superiority and I'm dying and it's, it's odd that I spent years looking at myself and analyzing myself through therapists with the help of people with multiple doctorate degrees, some of them and the more I studied myself, the more confused and the more lost and the more baffled I was and this is with some really learned people that were helping me and isn't it odd, a guy like Neal Spence who'd be obsessed with that and the more I do it, the more lost I become and I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and when I can finally listen, when I finally got enough of me kicked out of me that I can hear you, I'd sit there and I'd listen to you and you slowly introduced Bob to Bob, I would sit there and you'd be sharing about your fears and your failures and you're wet in the bed and all the things that made a guy like me sit there and nod my head and go, oh my God, I'm like that, I've done that, I feel like that, I failed like that and I started to connect for the first time in my life since alcohol stopped working and feeling and giving me that sense of unity, for the first time since then I started to connect and feel, I was finding myself, you were giving me the greatest gift a guy like me could receive, you're introducing me to myself in a way that I could understand it and so in 19, in early probably January of 1978, I got a pass out of this halfway house I was in, you know, if some of you have been there to get to that point where you think I can't stay sober anymore, this is crazy, I'm losing my mind here, I can't take it, I got a weekend pass and I'm not, I don't want a lot, I just want a day or two of relief because God knows I need it and I'd been a really good sport up to that, I'm going to these stupid meetings, I'm scrubbing the pots and pans in the kitchen, I've got a stupid job I don't like with people I don't like, I'm being a good sport up to now but I got a weekend pass to go visit a guy.
But I got a weekend pass to go visit a guy that I was in detox with who was back to drinking.
[00:30:00]
And I was excited. If you had this experience, you're sober for three or four months, you're suffering from the loneliness and depressive anxiousness of alcoholism, and you're going to go get drunk. Oh, my God, it's like going to the Christmas tree Christmas morning. There's an excitement about it. It's just amazing. It's the best part of the run. And then I go to this meet this guy and we go to this bar and he told me about.
I hope I never forget this. I'm sitting in that bar with an anticipation and excitement about achieving the effect I used to get from alcohol. And I ordered two double hundred proof and a beer back because when you only got a weekend pass, you got to get downtown now until the bartender brings me two doubles and a beer. And I throw that first one down like with urgency because I don't want to get there.
And that first after you've been sober a number of months, that first drink always tastes like hope. You know what I mean? Just we all do the same. We all go like somebody turned the air back on through that second double down. And two more, two more got that bartender making me two more double shots. I spin around on that barstool and I'm looking out over the bar. And what I'm seeing is breaking my heart.
What I see as I'm not coming out to play, as I'm sinking into a depression again, as I do the last couple of years, it's making me more lonely and more depressed. As I'm sinking into that, I'm looking at the people in the bar that are laughing and the guys that are talking to the girls and the people that are dancing. And I'm looking at all that. And I could remember when I got that effect produced by alcohol.
And it's breaking my heart because it was like a window opened and I could see a bitter, bitter truth that I couldn't deny. It was like the truth was, Bob, this is all it's been the last couple of years. It's this depressive, lonely drinking. Bob, this is as good as it's ever going to get for you. And there was a despair and a hopelessness in that, that eventually, shortly after that drove me to try to take my own life.
Well, I didn't make it back to the halfway house. I ended up in jail. Monday morning, I came to, I don't remember being arrested. I guess I was borrowed my, I borrowed my buddy's car because he passed out and I went out to get some more alcohol because I'm one of those guys. If I'm still conscious, I ain't done drinking. You know, it's just, that's me. So I had, I was compelled. I have to go out and get some, some more alcohol. And I, there was a, it wasn't quite two o'clock and I still had a chance to get to a bar and have a couple of double shots and get a six pack to take back to his trailer.
And that was the last thing I remember was taking his car keys off the counter and heading out to get some alcohol. Next thing I know I'm coming to in a, in a jail cell. I don't remember being arrested. Evidently, I sideswiped the whole row of parked cars. I don't remember any of that. The cops came and they gave me a field sobriety test, which all, all it said in the report was that they had to discontinue it because the, the subject the subject hurt himself. I, I, they must've been one of those things where you stand on one leg and touch it. I must've just fallen over, you know, I don't know. I was really drunk. I was in a blackout and I come to, and I'm sick and I, they gave me a phone call. I hope I never forget this. There was not one person on the planet that would take my call. And if I ever needed a friend or a family member, I needed one then. I needed to get out of here. I, I called bail bondsmen, but they don't, they, they want you to have a job and an address and stuff, you know?
So I sign up on a piece of paper to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I am not going to this meeting for recovery. I mean, you people are nice, but I'm not like you. I quit drinking. I'm not like you. I'm going there for cigarettes because the people in AA always had cigarettes. So I get to this meeting or they, they take us out of the block and they take us to the room and we're there. I'm there early. And all of a sudden I could see the, you know, the do-gooders from AA. They show up everywhere you are, you know, here they come and the guy leading the pack is a guy I knew. He used to take meetings into St.
John's and St. Francis and Amica's house and this guy, this guy named Woody. Woody was sober a while. Woody was successful. Woody had a brand new Cadillac big house. Woody was a boss at the J&L steel mill. Big money. And Woody's always talking to these, when he comes in these places
[00:35:06]
about wanting to help. Okay. So I start, I went up to Woody and he started talking to me. He said, I said, so I do, I need your help. And he said, yeah, kid, what can I do for you? I need you to put your house up so I can get out on bail. Cause I get, I need to get out. I need a drink. My notice are shot. I need a drink. And you know, these people in AA are hypocrites. They say they want to help you until you explain it to them. He wants to give me a, a book and help me with steps or something. I don't want a book. I gotta get to get out of here, but he won't do that. Hypocrite. So I started blustering to him about, I don't need your help. I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to beat this thing. And back then it was very popular to get this thing quite, which I never got, but it was people talked about it.
Vogue rehab money. You could get Vogue rehab money from the government, go to college, become somebody. I told him, I said, well, I'll just get that Vogue rehab money. I'll be, I might be a lawyer or a doctor. And he starts laughing at me. I mean, I should have reported him to GSO. There's no love in that. I mean, he started laughing at me. And he said to me, he said, kid, you're not going to do any of that. You're going to probably be dead before the year's out because kid, you just haven't surrendered. And I didn't know what he was talking about. I remember I just went and sat in that meeting and I just sat there and just had conversations with him in my head through the whole meeting. And I remember thinking, surrender what? For God's sakes, there's nothing left of me. My family won't have anything to do with me. I have no friends left. There's not a girl in my life. There's not a job. Surrender what?
Years before I had a motorcycle. I had a nice guitar. I was in a band. I had a good job. That's all been gone now for a while. There's nothing left. And I had no idea what he's talking about. I know exactly what he's talking about today. Because from 1978 to this last week, I do two meetings in places like that every week because my first sponsor did. And I've seen myself and people in the detoxes and the jails 100 to 200 times at least.
And what he saw when he saw me, he saw a guy who's dying, dying of alcoholism and yet insisting on being at the helm of his own ship and ignoring the reality of his own life. He saw a guy who just couldn't give up. And I ended up going to court. Judge sentenced me to two years and then cut me a break. He said, we're going to stay the commitment. We're going to put you in the Ark House. If you can stay in there for a year, get good UAs, good police, good urinalysis reports, et cetera, make the restitution.
It's a misdemeanor, time served. If not, kid, you're going to do two years and it's a felony. So I went in this place with a determination that I'm not going to drink and I'm not going to drink until a day came where I couldn't not drink anymore. I had to have something. And I talked myself into thinking I could just for one night, I could get away with it. I just need a little relief. I just need to dial down this nervousness. I just need to dial down this loneliness and this depression. Just one night, that's all. And I went and I got a six pack of tall boy, cold 45. And I, of course, you know what happened. I don't understand this phenomenon of craving very well. I hear people talk about it. I don't know what it is. And that six pack, when I got down to one can left, I was compelled to go get a fifth of vodka. It was just automatic.
And I got so drunk and I just I can't hide it. I think I can. I can't hide it. And I get drunk, drunk, and I get this obsession to straighten out the counselors because they can I can see that they need it. There's some things they're wrong about. And I'm busted instantly and thrown out. I'm living in the park. I don't know how many days I've been living in that park. It's at least a week. I think it was at least 10 days. It could have even been two weeks, but I don't know. But it was long enough that when I came to, I would shake uncontrollably.
It was long enough that I had the sores that wouldn't heal right easily. My gums bled because I don't eat. I'm not against eating. You just I can only panhandle so much money every day.
[00:40:04]
You give me a choice between McDonald's and a half gallon of Richard's Wild Irish Rose. I'm telling you, McDonald's loses that debate every single time. So I come to and I'm sitting on this park bench and I'm grabbing myself like this, like I want to jump out of my skin. My nerves are shot. I'm rocking back and forth trying to just hold on. And I started thinking about this doctor's physical exam I had the prior year. I thought that I had a brain tumor. I was kind of hoping I had a brain tumor because if I had a brain tumor, my parents had realized how wrong they were. Oh, my God, Bob, we thought you were a bum. You have a brain tumor. We didn't know.
All my ex-girlfriends had come running to the hospital. Oh, you had a brain tumor. We thought you were just a bum. And the doctor, after all the tests, came in and told me the truth, which I didn't like. He said, you don't have cancer. You don't have brain tumor. You have none of that. You have alcoholism, kid. And you keep drinking. It's going to kill you. But you're young enough. It might take five more years. And I'm on that park bench that morning and I want to jump out of my skin. I'm in such anguish because alcohol has stopped working and it kind of makes it worse.
And I can't get that party back. I've spent years driven by the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. Someday, someway, I'm going to enjoy and control my drinking. All my drug use was to that end, hoping to control and enjoy my drinking or to fix the other end of the equation, to control and enjoy or soothe my abstinence. Because I'm at a point in late stage alcoholism, drinking's bad, not drinking's bad. I got to fix one of these two areas. And I failed.
And I come to on that park bench and I remember that doctor said, if you keep drinking, kid, it's going to kill you, but it might take five more years. And I know a lot of us try to drink and drug ourselves to death. I'm just going to keep blotting me out. There's a great line in the book that says we had but two choices. One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could or the other one seems ridiculous or seek spiritual help. I mean, that's hard when you're an atheist. So I come to on that park bench and I'm thinking five more years.
Something just snapped inside of me. I can't do this. I can't do five more days. And I made the decision to kill myself. And it was a hopeful decision. I actually felt better because inadvertently I've been looking to blot me out anyway. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. And I've like a lot of us tried to drink myself to death. It's very hard. It takes a long time. It's like being kicked to death by rabbits. It just goes on and on and on. That's why so many of us think late stage alcoholism, we think about killing ourselves. And I went to a bridge to kill myself. Felt good. Felt hopeful. Going to get this over with. I'm tired. I am tired.
Tired of begging for beds in these skid row places. I'm tired of the looks because I had long hair. It was always dirty and matted and a long beard. I think I was a Hope ZZ top tryout or something. I don't know. And I was dirty. I would come to, I could smell me before I could even open my eyes. And I was tired. I was just worn out. And I went to this bridge to make it all stop. And I couldn't, I couldn't kill myself, which is a level of pathetic, more than anything I ever knew. You know, it's not that I've just broken the heart of everyone who ever tried to care about me. It's not that I've ruined my life. It's not that I can't drink effectively anymore.
It's not even that I can't stay sober. I can't even kill myself. Is there anything more pathetic than that? And I was on this bridge and I got this terror gripped me, stopped me because I was getting ready. I wanted to leap. And the terror was not a dying. I'm looking down at these railroad tracks below this bridge. And the terror was, maybe this isn't high enough. With my luck, maybe I won't die. Maybe with my luck, and I've had a chain of bad luck, maybe I'll just end up paralyzed from the neck down. I'll lay in some charity ward.
More members of Alcoholics Anonymous will bring newcomers to show them the object lesson of Bob. You know, well, Bob's what happens to you when you don't surrender and work our beautiful 12 steps. And if you're paralyzed, I can't even give them the one finger salute. from the One Finger Salute, there's a great line in our book and it kind of sums up what happened to me, before you ever come to believe that AA would work, before you ever come to
[00:45:04]
believe in a sponsor or God, the book says you'll first come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of your life, Bob, as you have been living it, this is experiential, and I believed that, I'd spent over 6 years desperately trying to fix my life, therapy, medications, swearing to myself, and everything failed and I just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and I know about hopelessness and I know about futility, I know about failure, and the book says at that point, when you believe that, it says there's nothing left, nothing left except to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools that AA has been laying at my feet for 6 years and I jump over that because I know what I need, don't tell me what to do, and I'm dying of arrogance, and I came off that bridge and I was just broken inside and I didn't understand, I just, I'd never felt that low before, and through a bizarre series of circumstances, I ended up in Las Vegas, in a detox, in a security cop or something, some guy in a uniform helped me get in this detox, and I was not trying to go to Vegas, I was trying to go to California, where it's warm and I could sleep on the beach, but if one of those treatment centers, one of those counselors would have said to me, well, you may get sober one day, Bob, make a list of a hundred cities that that could occur in, Vegas is not on that list, and yet, sometimes it doesn't make sense, but we're brought together by divine appointment, and after they cleaned me up and they calmed my nerves down, they gave me clothes to wear because they had burned the ones I was in, they let me go to the in-house meetings, and there was a man there, his name was Dick Toussaint, he was an all-in member of AA, he'd been a delegate, he'd started the convention in Vegas, he started the retreat, he was on the board for two different nonprofit organizations, and he was at that detox twice a week for the same reason Bill Wilson sought out drunks continually, because he knew his alcoholism needed that, and that's how I met him, he brought a meeting there twice a week, and this was before, there was no H&I committee, he just did that for the same reason Bill Wilson did, he just knew intuitively that he had to seek out people to help, his life depended on it, and he was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was perfect, it was perfect, because he was a no-nonsense guy, he was very principled, he was a five percenter, and what that means is that I heard a trustee, one of my first, probably 1979 or 80, I went to my first general service area conference, and I heard a trustee say that he believed that five percent of the fellowship did 95% of the service in the 12-step work, and then he went on to say that five percent, if they continue to be serving, they continue to serve like that, they never drink again, and I've seen that true for 46, over 46 years, the only people that ever did a whole bunch of service and drink again, the ones that stopped doing it, and so I got this guy to sponsor me, and he was perfect for me, he wanted me to do all, you know, I went up to him in the detox, I was so, I was so dismantled and so scared, I said to him, I was scared, I was afraid to ask him to sponsor me, so I said, would you, would you sponsor me, and if you will, I'll do anything you ask me to do, I think what I was really trying to say, I won't be a problem, I was almost begging, he lit up, and he said, yes, absolutely, and when I said, I'll do anything you want me to do, I had no idea how much stuff that was gonna be, oh my god, the week I get out of detox, he's hammering me to go do 12-step work, and be one of the guys that brings the meetings back into the detox, and sign up for the state penitentiary meetings, and oh my god, he just helped people, helped people, and I didn't fit, most of the things that AA wants you to do, feel a little bit inconvenient, and a little bit difficult, and you don't, it's like very few things, if you come to AA, and everything that we're suggesting, and AA seems like a good idea, you might be an al-anon, because it doesn't seem that way to a selfish, self-centered alcoholic, the, the, the amazing thing about, about Alcoholics Anonymous, is you don't really know for, experientially, how much
[00:50:03]
it works until you do it for a while, then we all say the same thing, and why didn't I do that long years ago, it takes what it takes, so he's, he's pushing me to do 12-step work, so I didn't really feel, I told him I'd do anything, so I said to him, I said, you know, I hear what you're saying, I reached into my old therapy bag of psycho tricks, I pulled out something, I said, said to him, I thought this would sound good, I thought it might change his mind, I said, don't you, don't you think I should work on me for a while, and he looked like he bit into a lemon, he said, work on you, you've done quite enough of that, stop it, and when he said that, I didn't get offended, I, I just thought, my god, I, I primal screamed, I was hypnotized, gestalt therapy, rational motive therapy, transactional analogy, if I could have been fixed, I'd have been fixed by now, and he said, you've done quite enough of that, and I thought, my god, I sure have, when it says in the book, no human power, you don't have to sell me on that one, if it came up on the radar, and it looked like it might help me, I took a run at it, because I am my main piece of business, is me, selfishness and self-centeredness to the core, obsessive self-concern, and so I, when you guys said, no human power, I go, yeah, I get that, he got me to do things I never would have done, he got me to turn myself in, and offer to go to two years in prison, he got me to pray, and I'm, I'm, I'm not a, I don't believe in God, he got me to make amends and face things that I never would have faced, because in my mind, he, I'd have to, some of it I had to explain to him, you don't understand, you wanted me to call my mother, and I hadn't talked to my mother in three years, or longer, maybe, I said, you don't understand, they won't take my call, and you know what he said, he said, well, don't call collect, where do they get this stuff, I mean, I, cuz I, I'm trying to say, it's a pathetic thing to say, but the truth is, I would have never thought of that, that's how entitled I am, and he started changing my life, he gave me an eye, an ethic, of respect for Alcoholics Anonymous, and my second sponsor was the same thing, my second, second sponsor is Clancy, Clancy used to say, that it's hard to have something change, and save your life, that you're not willing to demonstrate respect for, and so I try to be respectful, Alcoholics Anonymous, I try to respect the meetings, because God's in the room, and in a good strong recovery, you come to my home group, you'll feel it, you'll feel the energy, you'll feel that the energy in the room, it's like when we come together for the purpose of recovery, and there's an enthusiasm about recovery, there's something in the room, that's greater than the sum of the parts, you can feel it, in a good recovery meeting, it's, my wife calls it the juice, she said, she says, when people's lights come on in the meeting, and I love Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't, when I first got here, I just was scared, and had nowhere to go, but my sponsor pushed me into service right away, now here's what I discovered, in time, you will eventually fall in love with anything you serve, some of you know that from your, your businesses, or your children, and you will continue to be in love with anything you continue to serve, that's why I'm over 46 years sober, I have commitments, I have service commitments in Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't want to have alcohol-wasm, I want to have alcoholism, and so I'm, I do everything today, in my life, in my recovery, that you guys told me about 46 years ago, I didn't change the game plan, I, I said, I got involved with, and I have this, I have a horrible ego, and the problem is, I don't know I have it, you know, the Harry Tebow, the great psychiatrist that was on our board of trustees for a time, and spoke at one of our internationals, he would talk about that alcoholic must have ego reduction in depth, Chuck Chamberlain used to say, if it wasn't for the ego, we wouldn't even need AA, that it's the, it's, it's the demon in the machine, and then Harry Tebow talks about the
[00:55:02]
amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego, and I've experienced this, and I am, I assume some of you have, where you just, you're just broken and surrendered, and you're just a servant, and you don't think, you're not, just, I just want to do God's will, and help people, and then a week later, you know what's wrong with everybody in your life, you know, you know what I mean, the ego comes back, like, grows back like a bad tumor, and it's, it's weird, but it's, it takes, it, it, there's no end to its hypocrisy, because it'll take, I went into general service, and it took the traditions, and used it for self grandizement, this is pathetic, I hate to admit this, I'd go to meetings looking for tradition breaks, so I could lord it over people, you know, that's like, pathetic, I was one of the first guys that did these big book workshops, I mean, my ego took a hold of that, the self grandizement, the imagined prestige of being a guy who knows something, I went to a, I was, I don't know, I wasn't, so I was probably less than, I don't think I was 10 years sober yet, and I went to a book, a step study, a guy that was sober a little bit longer than I was chairing the meeting, and was on step four, so he's calling on people, and I'm sitting there, and you ever sit in a meeting, just realize, these people don't get it, they're just wrong, they don't want to say anything, because I'm humble, they're just wrong, and he's just calling on, everybody calls on, I'm sitting there thinking, these people have never even done a fourth step, for God's sakes, I was the only one in the room that I thought that ever really did this, but I'm okay, because I know this guy knows me, and he's gonna call on me at the end of the meeting, and I'll just clean this mess up, well, the meeting gets to the end, and he doesn't call on me, so now I'm kind of fuming, self-righteous, anything that has the word self in it's probably not good for a guy like me, and I'm self-righteous, I'm the only one that was right, and he says to me, he says, what did you think of the meeting, it was a horrible meeting, this guy's sober longer than I am, he said, no, it was a great meeting, why did, what didn't you like, ah, nobody, and you called on even, I don't even think they've worked the fourth step, he said, no, I know some of those people, they've done four steps, I said, you've got to be kidding, I don't think you've done a fourth step for God's sakes, he said, I've done a couple, I said, oh yeah, what's it say on the bottom of page 66 and the top of 67, he looks at me like, I didn't come here prepared for a quiz, and it was my ego grandizing myself, and isn't it, it's kind of sad and pathetic that this ego, this ego dominance of mine that I have to deal with here, I'm going to die, would even take the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for self-grandizement and self-righteousness, I had a guy in early sobriety that I did 12 step, I did hospital, I did some jail meetings with and some detox meetings, and he told, he was an old-timer, he pulled me aside one day, he said, kid, I want to tell you a couple things, he liked me, I said, I want to tell you a couple things, and if you'll believe me and you take this to heart, it's going to save you a lot of pain in your sobriety, he said, kid, I want you to know that if you're explaining something, if you're defending something, if you're rationalizing something or justifying, kid, you've got to know you're wrong, because you never have to explain, justify, defend, or rationalize what's right, and it's so true to this day, the minute the negotiator comes on in my head, you know, that little voice and just the hat that wants to, yeah, so you have to explain things to yourself, you know, you don't have to explain good stuff, I didn't have to explain to myself that I got on my knees and prayed this morning, I didn't have to explain to myself that I called my wife and I talked to a dozen guys I sponsor over the phone today, but I explained things that aren't right, my daughter, somebody reminded me of this, I haven't told this story in a long time, I love my daughter, she's 37 years old, gave me a grandson, who's just incredibly handsome and looks a lot like me, she is the most normal, well-balanced person I've ever known, she has an immovable moral compass, she has just a solid sense of right and wrong inside of her.
Sense of Right and Wrong Inside of Her, Never, Doesn't Compromise and Never. Well, when I, for decades, we've had this daddy-daughter date night before she got, had her son, where we'd go
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out to dinner and a movie. And we did that every week. And I loved, I looked forward to it every week. When I turned 60, I was eligible for the discounted movie tickets. So one night we're in the movie theater and I said, here's your ticket. I got it out of the machine. I said, here, here's your ticket, Kate. She looks at it. I said, no, that's not my ticket. That's your ticket, dad. I said, no, that's your ticket. She said, no, it says senior. Ooh. They're both say senior.
She says, dad, you can't do that. That's not right. And I thought I wanted to crawl under a rock. I had to go back to the guy in the window and tell him what I did, pay the difference and ask him if I could make, I did this so many times before. Can I make it right? He said, just don't do it again. And oh my God, I wanted, I wanted to shoot myself over a dollar 50. That's pathetic. That my ego could, could sneak up and hit. What's really sad and pathetic about that. I've been doing that for a while and I never even saw it, but my daughter saw it.
That's why I need accountability in my life. I need to, I have a sponsor that I talk to a couple of times a week and I try, I try to be transparent and tell, tell my sponsor everything that's going on. I try to have no secrets and I can tell you legitimately right now, tonight, there's nothing in my life that at least three or four people don't know about. I don't tell everybody everything, but I got us, I got two people. I know everything. My wife knows everything. I mean, I don't have any secrets because you get sick from secrets in our, in our book, in chapter six, it talks about the alcoholic more than most has a tendency to live the double life.
And, you know, we create a stage character and then we have this other life. We don't want anybody to know about and people like me, we die from stuff like that. So transparency, my first sponsor, he was bigger on that than he was on the steps. You got to be transparent every day with somebody in AA. And I try to do that. I, I had an experience, you know, I was the guy who was felt like he was dying of loneliness and I got so much connection in my life to people and to God and my daughter and friends and sponsors. It's just unbelievable. Sometimes my sponsor had me doing all this service and 12 step work and sponsoring people and all this stuff.
And I was about nine years sober and I got asked to speak out out of town for the first time. And it was, it was a little, I was a little nervous about it, but I went and I did the best job I could. And I had a whole day, you know, I was speaking in an event in Eureka, California, which is up on the northern coast of California. And the guy that's my host has a day to show me around. So he takes me, first thing he takes me to in the morning is this big forest where there's trees. Unlike anything I've ever seen, these trees are 250 feet high. Some of them 20, 25 feet in diameter, unbelievable.
And we stayed there for a while. And then he said, come on, I want to take you down to the coast where you can see these huge rock monoliths that come up out of the water and these cliffs. And he said, get in the truck. And we're driving in the truck. We've got a ways to go. And we're passing these meadows in these fields. And he says to me, he says, do you notice how you don't see a 250 foot tree all by itself in a field or a meadow? And I said, yeah. He said, you know why that is? I said, no, I don't. He said, well, God's designed them and created them in such a manner that it is their nature to aspire to grow to those magnificent heights. But they can't grow up alone because they will literally outgrow their roots capacity to support and hold them up and they will topple over and die on their own aspired magnificence. What they must do is they must grow up in community and they will literally intertwine their roots below the floor of the forest and create a net and they hold each other up and they feed each other. And that allows them to grow into their nature. And I've thought about that a hundred times since then. I thought, you know, there's always something been wrong with me. And I didn't know what it was. It's just I've always yearned and clamored for more. And it almost destroyed me before I got to you. I was chronically depressed, chronically dissatisfied. And I come to you and I get a home group. I get commitments. I get sponsees. I get a sponsor. And without even knowing it, I was intertwining the very foundation and roots of my life with yours. And I was so happy to be a part of that
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with yours. And through that, I found what God's vision of Bob's life should look like. And I've grown into my nature. I've got a good life today. And honest to God, it's not my fault. I just followed some direction and continue to follow direction from sponsors. And I sponsor people and there's an accountability in sponsoring people that is unbelievable. And I always feel I get people that are 30 years sober and they're suicidal. One of the first questions I ask, how many people do you sponsor? Sometimes it's none. There's an accountability. God helps the helper. And when you sponsor people and you're sober a while and you start to wake up to something you may not want to wake up to, but it's true anyway, that you, whether you want to be or not, are the primary example of how to live a sober life that these new people look at.
And I don't know about you guys, but if it was just me, I wouldn't care. But for God's sakes, I don't want to be a bad example to these guys I sponsor. Because anyone you serve, you eventually fall in love with. I fall in love with the guys I sponsor. I want them to do well. I want them to be better. And for God's sakes, I don't want to be a bad example to them. So I've come to the table in step six from that as much as I have from pain.
So I'm such a grateful guy that I belong here. As long as I keep here and I keep doing this thing, I'm going to be safe and protected. As the book refers to it, put in a position of neutrality, safe and protected, not just from alcohol, but from the voice of the negotiator, the one voice that can lead me down the road to perdition. The voice that's… Do you ever notice the voice in your head is more reasonable than your sponsor's voice? Sponsor's voice is a little harsh, a little depriving.
With this voice, oh, it's a good voice. It says things to me like an early sobriety would say, you know, your sponsor said to stay away from the new girl, but he hasn't been laid in years. You know, it's a reasonable voice. And it's the voice that leads a guy like me to perdition. So it's not so much I get my will and my life over to God as I got to get it out of the hands of that, out of the idiot that's been running it. If you're new here, I'm glad you're here. Welcome.
Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know if you identify with me. Not everybody does. But if you do, I'll tell you what I've found here. Alcoholics Anonymous is something I couldn't believe until it happened. It slowly reproduces the effect that was so magnificent in the early days of my drinking. And that is the great news of Alcoholics Anonymous. The bad news is that we don't capture that effect as quickly as you do through five shots of tequila.
Thanks for listening.