Bob B. from St. Paul, MN at Colorado State Convention – Denver, CO – 8/31/2001

(0:00 – 0:15)
Hi, my name is Bob Bezans, and I’m an alcoholic. For the grace of God and the power of
AA, I haven’t had a drink since the 10th of December, 1967, and for that I’m very
grateful. It’s been a very nice weekend.
(0:17 – 0:30)
Lots going on, and I have a lot of friends here, so that’s very cool. I’ve got a little family
here, too, which I’m not used to. My sister showed up, and I have three nephews that are
here.
(0:30 – 0:48)
And judging from our gene pool, I would say there even could be some self-protection in
why they’re here. It’s interesting and good to have you guys here. And my friend Carl,
we talked Friday night.
(0:48 – 1:10)
Carl and I have been friends a long time, and it’s nice to see he and his son and his
bride. The best thing about Carl is his wife. And that’s true of most of us, but it’s so damn
obvious in Carl’s case that I almost needn’t mention it, but I thought I would anyways.
(1:11 – 1:20)
And I enjoyed Patty last night, and Dolores, and so it’s been good. You have a beautiful
state. I like the flavor of AA here.
(1:20 – 1:35)
Every place you go, it’s kind of funny, AA has a personality. It has kind of a collective
consciousness or unconsciousness, I guess we’d call it, and you just get a sense. I get a
good feeling about the spirit of AA here.
(1:36 – 1:45)
And I’m here with my wife. Linda, would you stand for a minute? This is my charming and
gracious wife. I said gracious.
(1:48 – 2:06)
You weren’t gracious when I married you, but you’re gracious now. Precious, is that what
you’re saying? Courageous. Because she’s married to me, she’s courageous? Boy, there
is, I’ll tell you, this is a tough group.
(2:08 – 2:23)
I’m going to talk a little bit about what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like
today. And I started drinking when I was 13 or 14 years old, freshman in high school.
When I entered high school, I was 4’11 and weighed 95 pounds.
(2:23 – 2:31)
I was the second smallest kid in my high school class. It was mostly mouth. I was small
all the way through grade school.
(2:31 – 2:46)
And when you’re small, I guess you’re always looking for a way to attract attention to
yourself. And so I was always the guy who would do the daring things that no one else
would do. I was always trying to fit into the in-group.
(2:46 – 2:54)
It seems like there’s always a group of people who get to school an hour early and hold a
meeting and decide what to do for the day. I always missed the meeting. So it felt like I
was playing catch-up.
(2:57 – 3:18)
And when I went to high school, it was even doubly bad because everybody, you know,
jocks and big guys, and I was kind of the, I should say, the second smallest guy. I tried
hard enough. I got to be a marginal member of the in-group, but even after that, I
thought I was only there because I was being what they wanted me to be, and if I ever
stopped being that, they wouldn’t want me anymore.
(3:19 – 3:32)
One night, a friend and I took a fifth out to a party, and we split that fifth, and my life
changed. It was, you know, I just had a sense of well-being that I just never experienced
up until the time I took that drink of alcohol. I didn’t feel like I was on the outside.
(3:32 – 3:43)
Hell, I felt like I owned the group. I could move with ease within it and do all the things
that alcohol enabled an awful lot of us to do. I went to a military high school on a college
campus.
(3:43 – 3:53)
We drank in high school like most people drink in college. You know, we had fraternities.
We, you know, of my five closest friends in high school, four of us are in Alcoholics
Anonymous, and one’s in Al-Anon.
(3:57 – 4:05)
Of my graduating class of 119 guys, I know of 12 of us that are in Alcoholics Anonymous.
We had a lot of alcoholism. We had a lot of recovery.
(4:05 – 4:16)
I mean, that’s, you know, kind of extraordinary for that group to get into. By the time I
finished high school, my drinking problem was a loud subject of conversation in my
home. I come from a really neat home.
(4:16 – 4:27)
I’m one of seven kids, great mom and dad, but a lot of alcoholism. And I thought the
reason that I was always in trouble is I was underage. You know, if you’re underage and
you get caught drinking, it’s just no good.
(4:27 – 4:32)
I mean, it doesn’t matter if the police catch you or your parents catch you. You’re just in
trouble. It doesn’t matter if you had one drink or 20 drinks.
(4:32 – 4:38)
You’re just in trouble. I never wanted to get caught with one drink. That never made
much sense to me.
(4:38 – 4:56)
So usually I was pretty well oiled when I got caught. And I figured, you know, if I could
get them off my back, get away from home and, you know, drink like an adult. Because,
you know, my heroes were those Second World War guys that came back after the war
and they were, you know, they had big families, big businesses.
(4:56 – 5:02)
They just played hard and, you know, played hard and worked hard. They made life look
easy. They really did.
(5:02 – 5:07)
They were great people. And cocktail parties were the order of the day. There wasn’t a
party that there wasn’t a bartender at.
(5:08 – 5:17)
And, you know, we just copied them. We were drinking like we were kind of playing
house. We were drinking like they were when we were 15 years old, false ID card suits
and all that sort of stuff.
(5:18 – 5:23)
So I had a chance to go away to school. My drinking did not normalize. Had it
normalized, you’d have a different talker this morning.
(5:24 – 5:32)
To make a long story short, I drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame middle
of my senior year. One day I just walked out. I was the class drunk.
(5:32 – 5:42)
I had three guys petition to have me removed from engineering school. I was just, you
know, I just started out as an A student, ended up as a C student. I just couldn’t shut my
drinking down.
(5:42 – 5:51)
I was just, you know, first year I did okay. Second year I went to school about three days
a week. Fourth, third year I went to school about two days a week.
(5:51 – 6:00)
And my last year I was going one, well, I wasn’t even going one day a week. I remember
when I, there was a time during my senior year I thought, God, I just got to get back to
classes. But I didn’t know where they were.
(6:02 – 6:12)
It gets kind of tough to bluff your way through a thermodynamics exam. I was carrying
about 25 credits a semester in civil engineering. I ran my string out.
(6:13 – 6:18)
I was due to be commissioned that summer as an officer in the Army. I had to get a
medical release. The medical release I got was for alcoholism.
(6:18 – 6:26)
I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19 years old. It does seem crazy to me. It
doesn’t seem possible that a 19-year-old could be an alcoholic.
(6:26 – 6:37)
But I ran into a psychiatrist who knew something about alcoholism and recommended
that I either go to treatment or go to AA. I wasn’t willing to do either. And I was able to
go back to school.
(6:37 – 6:46)
But it got me out of the Army. I wasn’t going to get drafted. If you’re an ROTC and you’re
going to be an officer, if you screw up in the program, you are drafted.
(6:47 – 6:56)
And I didn’t want to get drafted during the Vietnam War as a private. So they gave me a
release for alcoholism. I showed up back at home to a set of very disappointed parents.
(6:56 – 7:04)
I finished school at a local university. And when I finished school, my dad had a chat with
me. He said, We love you, and we care about you, but you’re a horse’s ass, and we’d like
you to leave the home.
(7:05 – 7:14)
And he said, You’re a bad example, and it’s not working. And I, armed with my degree
and my freedom, I left home. I got a job at a liquor store.
(7:17 – 7:27)
You have to use your gifts. I had to go back and make amends. I stole a lot of liquor from
that liquor store.
(7:27 – 7:35)
And then I got a ticket for going 80 miles an hour with a delivery truck. And then I got
fired. I got a job as a waiter.
(7:35 – 7:43)
This is the last year of my drinking. I’m living on, not skid row, but $5 night rooms. I’m
sleeping around with waiters and waitresses.
(7:44 – 7:58)
I didn’t have a permanent place to live. You know Dr. Seuss, that child author? Those are
actual photographs of people I lived with during that last year of my sobriety. And I’m
getting up in the morning, taking a couple of ducks, drinking a beer, going to work.
(7:58 – 8:13)
I work from 10 to 2, from 2 o’clock to 5. I’m sorry, yeah, I work from 10 to 2. From 2 to 5 I
go drink beer, and at 5 I go buy a pint, and I come back and I work as a waiter until
whenever I’m done. I was drinking about a fifth a day in life. No one knew where I was.
(8:13 – 8:23)
My family hadn’t seen me in about six months. One night I went to a party and I got my
face kicked in, and they didn’t want me being a waiter anymore. So they fired me, and I
had no place to go.
(8:23 – 8:36)
I would just tap. And I went back to my dad and I said, asked if I could move back in the
house, and he allowed if I wouldn’t drink that I could move back in the house. And I lied,
but I promised not to drink, and I moved back in the house.
(8:37 – 8:47)
I was 23 years old, and I guess, you know, alcoholism meant a lot of different things to
me, but every six months I had to start my life over. It was always going to be different.
Next semester was going to be different.
(8:47 – 8:54)
Next month was going to be different. Next year was going to be different. As Patty said,
it was different, but it wasn’t always better.
(8:54 – 9:00)
It just got a little stranger. I think I wanted for me pretty much what my family wanted
for me. I just didn’t know how to get there.
(9:00 – 9:12)
I had a brother who was 5’8 of cap in law school. Alex’s dad had a sister who did
graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris, and I was kind of the horse’s ass in between.
Well, Dick’s a horse’s ass, but he didn’t look like it at that time.
(9:14 – 9:23)
That’s my brother. That’s a joke. But I wanted my life to work.
(9:23 – 9:33)
I just kept blowing it apart. When I moved back in the house, I made maybe the largest
full-court press of putting my act together that I had ever done. It occurred to me if I
could restructure my life.
(9:34 – 9:52)
I got back together with Linda, who today is my lovely wife, an active member of AlAnon. I don’t think we’d be married today if she hadn’t been such an active member of
Al-Anon. I know none of you had trouble after you quit drinking, but I even had trouble in
sobriety, and that’s the sad part of my story because I understand that didn’t happen in
Colorado.
(9:56 – 10:11)
I know there’s something we’re doing wrong in Minnesota, but we’re working on it. I got a
job as an executive trainee with a manufacturing concern, bought my first car, and I
thought, wow, it’s finally going to happen. I’m finally going to be what I always wanted to
be when I grew up, only I just couldn’t shut my drinking down.
(10:11 – 10:21)
Now I’m the company drunk. I’m in a company of engineers, you know, and big
corporations are tough places. They like to have you come in on Mondays and stay on
Fridays, and they’ve got lunch hours.
(10:21 – 10:28)
I’m in trouble almost immediately. I used up my sick leave the first couple of months. I’m
coming in late all the time.
(10:28 – 10:37)
I’m falling asleep at my desk, and I just, it’s bad. Sleeping my hangovers off in the
darkroom, and I know I’m in trouble. I quit that job.
(10:37 – 10:47)
After six months, I get a sales job, which I thought was more appropriate and more
flexible. And I had that job about three months, and I went out on about a four-daydrunk. One of my buddies got married, and I went out on a four-day-drunk.
(10:48 – 11:15)
Woke up one Thursday afternoon, didn’t know if I had a job, a fiancé, or a place to live,
and I just panicked. And all of a sudden, the recommendation of my father and my
psychiatrist that I look into AA didn’t seem like such an impossibility, and I called
Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got an old timer down at the central office, and he talked to
me for a while on the phone, and then he came back out and called someone else on the
other line and said, Could you go meet a couple of guys at a cafe in about a half hour, or
in about an hour? And I said, Yeah, I could.
(11:16 – 11:25)
And he described them. We hung up. And I called work and found out I was still
employed, called Linda and found out I was still engaged, and called home and found out
I still had a place to live.
(11:25 – 11:35)
And I thought, Why the hell did you call Alcoholics Anonymous? It’s just, you know. God,
that’s kind of an overreaction. You’re just feeling kind of guilty.
(11:35 – 11:47)
I could always tell when I felt guilty I was breathing, you know. But I wanted to go see
what an alcoholic looked like, so I kept scouts on. I really did.
(11:47 – 11:54)
I was curious as to what these two guys would look like. So I went over to the St. Clair
Broiler on Snelling. My sister’s here.
(11:54 – 12:05)
She knows where that is. And I met two guys. You know, when you’re young and in
trouble, you get put in front of a lot of judges, attorneys, bishops, priests, nuns, doctors,
lawyers, Indian chiefs.
(12:06 – 12:24)
And I was lost in front of an awful lot of people over a long period of time trying to figure
out why Bob was trying to kill himself, and no one could quite figure out why I was so
rambunctious. So I just figured there was going to be two more people interviewing me,
asking me a bunch of questions and then coming up with a recommendation. Well, these
two men sat me down, and one guy’s name was Warren.
(12:24 – 12:30)
He had six months. The other guy was Bob, and he had six years. They said, We’re from
AA.
(12:30 – 12:37)
They said, We had a drinking problem. We found our solution in AA, and we’d like to
share it with you. And we’re here as much for ourselves as we are for you.
(12:37 – 12:46)
We hope it helps you, but we found, for some strange reason, trying to help other people
helps us stay sober. They weren’t getting a toaster for signing me up. It wasn’t a
multilevel marketing deal.
(12:48 – 13:05)
Today you’re never quite sure if they’re selling you magnet belts after the meeting. But
they sat me down, and they told me their story. And we have a lot of traditions in
Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most wonderful of which is that we share our
experience, strength, and hope, but not just our philosophy.
(13:06 – 13:16)
These two men that day changed my life by sharing their life with me. All of a sudden I
found myself identifying. I found myself sharing stuff that I had no intention of sharing.
(13:17 – 13:30)
I found myself laughing awkwardly at things that they shared freely that I had been
hiding. And at the end of the meal they asked me if I wanted to go to my first meeting
that night. I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(13:34 – 13:46)
And that was a great night. That man, the six-year-old guy, is dead right now, but, boy,
he was a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank twice after that night, once on
a trip to the West Coast.
(13:46 – 13:59)
I had about a month of sobriety, and they told me to call AA the moment I got off the
plane. I didn’t. I told everybody I had a $100 bet and wasn’t drinking, and stayed sober
one week and didn’t stay sober the second week, and got into a mess of trouble.
(13:59 – 14:08)
Came home, got sober for three more months, and then Linda and I were married. We
honeymooned in Mexico. You know where the divers dive off those cliffs? I dove off those
cliffs on my last drunk.
(14:09 – 14:17)
I was in the audience watching a world’s high diving contest. I thought, God, that’s not so
tough, you know. I could do that.
(14:17 – 14:28)
And I had about nine planter’s punches in me, and I’m, you know, now do not picture a
graceful, this is the ugly American. I am just plastered. I go over and introduce myself to
the ex-president of Mexico, Aleman.
(14:28 – 14:33)
His nephew had been my roommate at Notre Dame. He was not impressed. His
bodyguards were not impressed.
(14:34 – 14:40)
I dove off the public landing, climbed up the cliff, split my swimsuit, cut my leg. Now I’m
stuck. I’m up about 85 feet.
(14:40 – 14:46)
I can’t get up. My wife’s going absolutely nuts with this horse’s ass stuck on. You know,
she’s married four days.
(14:48 – 14:54)
Her husband’s about to go back home in a body bag. But they were great days. I mean,
you know, four days.
(14:58 – 15:01)
And I’m stuck. I’m trying to figure out. I’m looking at the waves.
(15:01 – 15:07)
You know, they’re coming in, they’re going. I’m trying to figure out whether to jump or
dive. I’m trying to figure out what the hell.
(15:08 – 15:11)
I dove. I made it. God watches after fools and drunk.
(15:13 – 15:22)
Norm Alpe used to have a saying, but for seconds and inches. And by the way, you are
now the female Norm Alpe. Norm Alpe was a guy who could give an hour and a half talk
in 45 minutes.
(15:23 – 15:33)
And Patty can give an hour and a half talk in 45 minutes. And had I jumped, I would have
died. Because you have to get out almost 30 feet to hit the channel.
(15:34 – 15:38)
If you jump, you just can’t get out. I didn’t know that. I would just kind of like flip a coin,
jump or dive.
(15:38 – 15:45)
Ten years later, Lynn and I were down there for a family vacation. About midnight, we
were watching the divers. And I said, she gave me a picture for my 10th AA birthday.
(15:45 – 15:50)
And said, but for the grace of God. And it showed that chasm. And I said, God, honey,
that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
(15:50 – 16:03)
And she said, Bob, it’s not even in the top ten. So, I don’t know. I don’t know how two
people can share a life and see it so differently.
(16:03 – 16:19)
But, you know, that’s kind of a deal. I had my last drink of the airplane on the way home.
When I went to my first meeting that August of 1967, I made two discoveries over the
next couple of weeks that were to change my life.
(16:19 – 16:24)
One is I learned alcoholism was a disease. You say, heck, everybody knew that. I didn’t
know it.
(16:24 – 16:33)
I thought alcoholism was a condition. I thought it was something that happened to you
when you were a lot older, a lot sloppier and had a problem drinking because you were
just drunk all the time. That didn’t seem to describe me.
(16:33 – 16:46)
But I was told that alcoholism was a disease. It was physical but also mental and
spiritual. And then once you cross the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, your
alcoholism affected you all the time when you were drinking and when you were not
drinking.
(16:48 – 17:04)
God, that was like the Gettysburg Address for me of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, the
idea that your alcoholism could affect you when you were not drinking was, you know,
like nuclear physics. I mean, I knew that my drinking affected me when I was drunk.
(17:05 – 17:36)
You know, I could kind of put that together. But I never thought, you know, what they
told me that what they did in Alcoholics Anonymous once they took their last drink of
alcohol is they used the 12 steps to deal with the mental and spiritual aspects of the
disease to change, to find a different way to live that’s sufficiently better than the way
they lived before so they don’t have to go back to drugs or booze to do something for
them that they were unwilling or unable to do for themselves. And if they didn’t change,
one of the other very important things my sponsor told me, if they didn’t change, they
were doomed to go back to drinking because they didn’t know how to live sober.
(17:40 – 17:52)
And truer words I’ve never heard. And the other thing I learned over the next couple of
months is there were an awful lot of people at those meetings who had drunk an awful
lot of booze and taken a lot of dope, and now they weren’t doing it. And the reason they
weren’t doing it is you like what they found in sobriety better than what they found in a
bottle.
(17:55 – 18:08)
And I’d been out there chasing it pretty good, and they’d been out there chasing it pretty
good, and now they weren’t doing it. And their lives weren’t over. There was a zest and a
vitality and an energy and a sense of humor and attraction about those people that I
liked from the moment I came in.
(18:08 – 18:20)
And my gift for me when I walked into AA was I liked AA. I don’t know, I felt like I was
home. That first couple of years, every time they got—I was the youngest guy in that
group for almost two years.
(18:21 – 18:33)
In 1967, there weren’t too many 20-year-olds, and I just turned 24. And every time one
of the surrounding groups or our group got a new guy, they wanted me to go call on him.
Well, it was the worst thing in the world.
(18:33 – 18:42)
I had absolutely no success. I worked with about 40 people over those first two or three
years. There’s only one that I can think of today that’s sober, but I stayed sober.
(18:42 – 18:52)
And I could never figure out why the hell they didn’t like AA. I couldn’t get them to go to
meetings. But I never realized what a gift it was for me that I did like it.
(18:52 – 18:58)
Now, I had trouble living it. I had trouble doing what the hell I was supposed to do, but I
liked the people. I liked the meetings.
(18:58 – 19:05)
I felt like it was the first place. I felt like the ship had come down and gotten me. It felt
pretty familiar.
(19:06 – 19:09)
So now I’m 24 years old. I’m in AA. I’m sober.
(19:09 – 19:15)
I got explained that AA could straighten my life out, and I thought, this is wonderful. I got
the problem. You got the answer.
(19:15 – 19:30)
Well, if I got the problem and you got the answer, I got four or five other things that are
going on in my life, and if you got the answer, hell, those ought to go away. And it might
take a year. Well, my problem didn’t go away in a year or two years or five years and
haven’t totally gone away.
(19:31 – 19:42)
Carl, put those hearing aids back in. Carl always takes his hearing aids out when I talk. I
get my feelings hurt.
(19:42 – 19:56)
I mean, you didn’t take them out for patties last night. I mean, I saw those. When I came
to Alcoholics Dynamics, I was a confused young guy.
(19:56 – 20:10)
People say, Bob, I think you’re an alcoholic. And I say, well, I can see with the information
about me why you think I’m an alcoholic, but there’s a lot of things about me you don’t
know. Most of the problems I had, I had cold, stoned, sober, and I think if you knew about
all the issues of my life, you wouldn’t think I was just an alcoholic.
(20:10 – 20:19)
And sure, I drink too much, and sure, I get in trouble, but, you know, drinking is my
solution. Drinking is my answer. I mean, drinking is the best thing that ever happened to
me.
(20:19 – 20:26)
Drinking works as good as anything I’ve ever run into. I don’t know why I’ve got a noise
in my head. You know, it’s like my amplifier is up around nine all the time.
(20:26 – 20:36)
I don’t know why it’s up around nine. When I take four or five drinks, boy, it goes down to
about three, and I feel like I can be with the rest of the world. I don’t know what the hell
is wrong with me, but there’s something deep and dark, and I can’t.
(20:36 – 20:43)
It’s like I’ve got a built-in failure mechanism. I’m a great starter, but I’m a poor finisher. I
interview well, I just can’t work.
(20:46 – 20:59)
And I think they ought to give awards for interviewing. I mean, you know, I mean, that
would be… But people have been thinking I had a drinking problem since I’ve been, you
know, maybe 15 or 16 years old, and I just could never get on that program. It just didn’t
make sense to me.
(21:00 – 21:15)
But when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, it started to make sense, and I figured, boy,
maybe this is it. Everybody’s always telling me, you know, when you’re young, they tell
you how much potential you have and what you can do with your life, and now I’ve, you
know, I’ve always felt like I was, you know, screwing it up. And now I felt like now that
I’m an AA, it’s finally going to work.
(21:16 – 21:23)
And I had these other issues. You know, I had issues I couldn’t get up in the morning. I
later found out that it had something to do with when I went to bed.
(21:23 – 21:36)
So if you’re running, you know… I had money problems. I spent about $400 more a
month than I made in 1967. And if you do that over a long period of time, you’ll end up in
debt.
(21:36 – 21:46)
I just want to report that to you in case you don’t know where that’s going. And Linda
and I were newly married, and I started to have marital problems. Her father came home
every night at 5 o’clock.
(21:46 – 22:08)
He was a great guy. I kind of passed through at 5. And she’s a… I’m going to AA every
night, and I’m coming home at midnight, and she’s a nurse, she’s going to bed early,
she’s getting up at 6, and we’re like ships passing in the night. You know, she doesn’t
see me, and, you know, and she’s not all that pleased with AA, and she’s going to AlAnon, but she’s not all that pleased with Al-Anon at that moment in time either.
(22:08 – 22:14)
It’s a pretty big adjustment for us. And she’s starting to get kind of crabby. She’s
wondering if one of the places I’m supposed to practice my program is in her home.
(22:16 – 22:24)
And I thought, God, that’s none of your business. You’ve got your program, I’ve got my
program. I mean, you ought to be happy that I’m sober, for God’s sakes, you know.
(22:24 – 22:39)
But she seemed to want more, and I don’t know why that was. Dolores talked about that
a little last night. And then we started to have kids, and I had great parents, but even
great parents make mistakes, and I wasn’t going to make the mistakes my parents
made, and I didn’t.
(22:39 – 22:49)
I made all the mistakes my parents made and a bunch they never thought of. I was loud
and patient, angry, immature, and sometimes violent with my kids. I’m not proud of that
fact, but that’s an accurate description of how I was.
(22:50 – 23:01)
And I had a gambling problem. More of a hobby. Four or five hours a day, four or five
days a week is all it was.
(23:01 – 23:13)
But I was making about $10,000 a year playing backgammon, and, you know, it was like
a second job. And these were not annual problems or quarterly problems or monthly
problems. These were daily problems.
(23:13 – 23:20)
I had these problems every day. I didn’t even notice them for my first six months of
sobriety. They never showed up on my list, you know.
(23:20 – 23:30)
They never showed up in my first inventory. And they started to get sober one by one.
So we’ve got a phone going.
(23:31 – 23:45)
We’re going to answer that so you wonder who it is. The, you know, one by one, these
issues. During my first year, I took an inventory and I did my fifth step, and I wasn’t very
insightful.
(23:45 – 24:01)
I mostly had on the list the most horrible things that I had done, which was the best I
could do at that moment in time. I did the, you know, I did the very best job that I knew
how to do, and talking with my sponsor, and I did it with a clergy. And I really, it was fine
for me.
(24:01 – 24:18)
I felt a significant sense of forgiveness and felt a sense of cleaning up a little bit. I started
to work, and I never really had a good sense to my defects of character, but until about
the middle of my second year. And one by one, these issues would come up and get
handed to me, and one by one, I would take them on and try to do something.
(24:19 – 24:23)
I’m going to five or six meetings a week. I’ve got a sponsor. I’m real active in Alcoholics
Anonymous.
(24:24 – 24:47)
And all of a sudden, you know, the first major thing that happened when I came into AA
is I had that wall built up that Patty talked about, that big brick wall that protects people,
and the thinking that goes on behind the wall says, you like me, but you only like what I
let you see about me. If you could see everything about me, you’d hate me, and, you
know, I hate me, and who knows more what a lousy, crummy, insufficient person I am
than me. I’m walking around comparing my insides with your outsides.
(24:47 – 25:03)
The only way you come out doing that is second best. When I came into Alcoholics
Anonymous, at that point, I was sick enough and hurt enough and afraid enough that I
started to tear that wall down, and I said, hey, come and get me. I don’t care who you
are or where you come from, but just come and get me and help me not be who I am
anymore.
(25:05 – 25:13)
I didn’t come to AA because I thought I was an alcoholic. I came to AA because I couldn’t
stand me five more minutes. I started to tear that wall down.
(25:13 – 25:29)
When I called AA, I continued to tear it down in conversation with my sponsor, and I tore
it all the way down when I took my fifth step. And I made a discovery, and the discovery
was that I’m not unique. Clancy talks about if there ever was a flag that we could all
pledge our allegiance to in AA, it would say, but I’m different.
(25:31 – 25:49)
Because most of us have a profound sense of uniqueness, understandably. But if you
don’t take the edge off that uniqueness, all you’re going to see is the differences. If you
can’t somehow start to identify with your alcoholism, all you’re going to see is the
differences, and you’re going to work your way out of alcoholism.
(25:50 – 26:02)
When I tore my wall down, I made a discovery that I’m not unique. My personality is
unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my feelings, and not my experience.
And I started to have a sense of hope early on in alcoholism that what works for you
could work for me.
(26:04 – 26:18)
But pretty soon in sobriety, I started to have issues and problems that I didn’t think
someone should have a year sober. I’m kind of an idealist, you know, so all of a sudden I
say, thanks a lot for helping me with my drinking problem, but stay out of my sex life,
and I’d put a brick up. Stay out of my marriage, and I’d put a brick up.
(26:18 – 26:29)
Stay out of my work, stay out of my parenting, stay out of my gambling. And brick by
brick, sober in AA, going to five meetings a week, I built my wall back up. Because I don’t
want to disappoint you.
(26:29 – 26:36)
I ruin everything I ever start. And now I’m in AA, you know, I’m trying to hide these
problems. Everybody’s patting me on the head telling me what a good job I’m doing.
(26:38 – 26:46)
And by the time I’m in my fifth and sixth year of sobriety, these things are starting to eat
my lunch. I really would like to clean my act up. I’m having problems at work.
(26:46 – 26:50)
I’m having problems going to work. I’m having problems staying at work. I’m having
problems figuring out what the hell to do when I’m at work.
(26:51 – 27:06)
It’s not funny. And I’m telling my sponsor about 70% of what’s going on. And I know in
Colorado you do 100.
(27:07 – 27:16)
I mean, I know you do. Hell, 70% was about all I was telling me. I mean, I just couldn’t
face the full thing myself.
(27:17 – 27:32)
And I’m starting to have, you know, that feeling of impending doom. I’m starting to have
the feeling that once again you’re a great starter but poor finisher and this is not going
to work out for you like school didn’t work out for you and the family didn’t work out for
you or church didn’t work out for you. One more time, you’re just going to be the crap
head.
(27:34 – 27:43)
You’re just not going to be able to do it. And, you know, by the time I’m into my seventh
year, I’ve got that wall built up. I’m starting to think about suicide again.
(27:43 – 27:59)
You know, it’s either suicide or talk to your sponsor. I mean, it’s just one of those, you
know, flip a coin, you know, go turn yourself in. But it seems, I mean, it just seems so
hopeless.
(27:59 – 28:04)
I mean, I don’t know why you see it. I had sponsees that were making more progress. I
saw other people growing and I was stuck.
(28:05 – 28:13)
Stuck, hell, I felt like I was going backwards. I felt like I was on a down escalator walking
up. Every time I took a breath, I lost about four feet and that’s just the way it felt.
(28:15 – 28:21)
I knew what the answer was. The answer was to find out what God had to do with
Wednesday. I had great teachers.
(28:21 – 28:40)
The two things that have saved my bacon in AA is I can’t keep my mouth shut, which
means eventually I usually talk to someone about what’s going on in my life. And the
other one was is I’ve had great examples. I’ve got the same sponsor that I walked in the
front door with, which is unusual in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I’m in the same town I
was born in, which is also a little bit unusual.
(28:40 – 28:49)
So I’ve been raised in a village. I’ve been raised by those same members of Alcoholics
Anonymous all the way through, and I had good examples. And the people who had what
I wanted had a dimension of spirituality.
(28:50 – 29:07)
They weren’t, you know, holy people, but they had an element of spirituality, a
connection with God. They were able to put these principles and values into action and
implement them in their lives, and I wasn’t able to do it. I wasn’t able to work properly,
and I wasn’t able to quit gambling.
(29:07 – 29:14)
I wasn’t able to do a lot of things that I thought I needed to do. I just wasn’t able to do it.
And I was trying like heck, and I wasn’t able to do them.
(29:15 – 29:23)
But there was a problem. The minute I go knock on the door, and God answers the door,
and God says, Who’s there? I said, God, it’s Bob. God says, What do you want? I said, I
want to turn myself in.
(29:23 – 29:26)
I’m six years sober, and I’m dying. I’m going backwards. I’m out of here.
(29:27 – 29:36)
It doesn’t seem to be working for me. Well, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to
sign up. I mean, I just, you know, I want to do the next thing that I have to do to get
myself well.
(29:38 – 29:45)
And then whenever I had that conversation with myself, I always figured God would say,
Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Quit gambling. Get up in the morning.
(29:45 – 29:49)
Go to work. Stay at work. Don’t spend more money than you make.
(29:49 – 30:06)
Be kind and loving to your wife, and be gentle with your children. I’m going to say, Hell, if
I knew how to do all those things, I wouldn’t need God. You know, I mean, what is the
use of going to God to develop a relationship if you can’t fulfill the conditions of the
relationship? I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t trying.
(30:06 – 30:12)
I did not know how to do it. I could not do it. I knew what to do.
(30:13 – 30:29)
I just could not do it. And I had not done it over a long enough period of time that I felt as
bad at seven years of sobriety as I did when I walked into Alcoholics Now. You had gotten
me well enough to feel bad about myself.
(30:30 – 30:37)
It was just kind of a return to how I felt when I came in. It really felt bad. I was stuck in
that place for almost two years.
(30:37 – 30:46)
And finally, out of a sense of desperation, I went back to the steps. I took step one sober
eight years. It wasn’t very hard to figure out that I was powerless and unmanageable.
(30:46 – 30:55)
God knew that was pretty obvious. What was not obvious to me was step two. Step two
says, came to believe that a part greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
(30:55 – 31:05)
I had always believed that for us, but I didn’t any longer believe it for me. I mean, I really
did believe it for you. But I was going backwards.
(31:06 – 31:11)
I was having problems. My life wasn’t working. I felt like I was kind of on my way out of
Alcoholics Now.
(31:12 – 31:28)
When you’re in trouble, you either get more active or less active. I guess I got a little bit
more active, and I started to see people with larger problems walking through walls than
I was trying to walk around with the dignity and a sense of humor. And I started to come
to believe again that God would restore Bob to sanity.
(31:29 – 31:39)
I took step three on my knees with my sponsor in his office. We didn’t do that very much
in those days, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I thought, this time, boy, I’m going to
dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
(31:40 – 31:55)
And I started another four-step, my third four-step. And I went through it. In that fourstep, I started to dredge up and get in touch with a lot of the defects of character in a
much more, somewhat more insightful and direct way than I had before.
(31:56 – 32:09)
And when I went to take my fifth step, I went to my sponsor, and I said, be careful
because when you’re done with this fifth step, I said, whatever you tell me to do, I’m
going to go do. I said, I feel like I’m dying of thirst lying next to a lake. I know where the
water is.
(32:09 – 32:17)
I know what to do. But there’s like a plastic wall between me and the lake, and I can’t get
to it, and I’m just dying. I’m so tired of feeling the way I feel.
(32:18 – 32:25)
So I just can’t explain it to you. And I took my fifth step. When I was done, one of the
things he wanted me to do was go to an industrial psychologist.
(32:25 – 32:41)
I had a lot of issues around failure and success and money and lack of money. I had a
pretty successful father, and I was always comparing myself to my father, and I thought,
I’ll never be as good as my old man and all those sorts of things. I had a lot of issues tied
up inside of that.
(32:44 – 32:54)
And I didn’t want to go to the psychologist. I really didn’t, but I figured, what the hell. So I
went to the psychologist, and he said, well, you get your wife involved.
(32:54 – 33:06)
And I thought, oh, God. You know, when you get your wife involved, they see things so
differently that I think they do. I mean, I thought it would kind of confuse the issue.
(33:09 – 33:14)
And I said, okay. He said, well, you get your mom and dad involved. I said, no.
(33:15 – 33:24)
I said, my mom and dad have been over-involved with my life all the way through. If you
can’t help me without getting my parents involved, please refer me to someone who
can. He said, well, you get your kids involved.
(33:24 – 33:41)
I said, they’re pretty young, but if I have to, I will. And so I started to go to this guy. And I
remember over a period of time, I can remember the meeting I was at, and he asked me
why I was so afraid of failure.
(33:43 – 33:53)
I remember I wanted to get up and pull his nose off his face. At this point in time, I’m in a
business, an investment business, and it’s going down the chutes. And I don’t know why
it’s going down the chutes.
(33:53 – 34:07)
I’m busting my ass two or three hours a day, two or three days a week. And it’s, I mean,
I’m out there. I mean, this is no, and it’s about to go down.
(34:08 – 34:25)
And I remember I said to this guy, I said, why you jerk? I said, you’re a doctor. I said, if
you fail or go bankrupt, you know, you just take your little sign, walk down the hall, put it
on another door, and you’re making 100 grand within six months again. I said, I’m about
to go bankrupt, and I’m going to lose everything I have.
(34:25 – 34:29)
Read my lips. Do you understand? Everything I have. They’re going to publish my name
on the paper, and I’m going to be done.
(34:30 – 34:46)
I’m in the investment business. I’ve lived in this town all my life, and I’m going to lose
everything I have. He looked over at my wife, and he said, if Bob lost everything he had,
would he lose you? Linda said, no, he wouldn’t lose me.
(34:47 – 35:09)
He looked over at Billy and Peter, and he said, if your father lost everything he had,
would he lose you? And the boy said, no, he wouldn’t lose us. You know, if you can’t lose,
you can’t play. I was the guy on the football team, and I had the uniform, and I did the
calisthenics, and I did the locker room, but when they blew the whistle to block and
tackle, I went up on the stands because I don’t block and tackle.
(35:12 – 35:32)
If we were going to have a marathon, all of us in this room, I’d have a great pair of tennis
shoes and a good running suit, and I’d look and sound and act like a runner, tell you that
I won some race in Minnesota. When the race took off, you’d expect that I’d be in the top
ten, and I would be for the first 25 percent of the race. But somewhere between half and
three-quarters of the race, I’d fall down, hurt myself, and I’d pull out.
(35:32 – 35:38)
And when the race was over, someone would say, what happened to that guy from
Minnesota? I’d say, I don’t know, must have pulled a hamstring or something. Pretty
good runner, won some race in Minnesota. Too bad.
(35:41 – 36:04)
But if you would have followed me around in a helicopter in my life, you know, for the
previous ten years, you could have guessed within 35 feet of when I would have fallen
down, because I don’t finish anything. And I’ll tell you, it gets old. The price of alcoholism
for those of us that are in this room is not ever getting able to have our lives.
(36:05 – 36:23)
It’s not being able to be who you’re supposed to be and to use the gifts that you’ve been
given, because you’ve got a major illness that keeps getting in the way and keeps using
your life. You don’t get to have a life if you’re a practicing drunk. And it seemed to me
that well into sobriety, I didn’t get to have a life.
(36:26 – 36:50)
And what I discovered when I was working with that psychologist is how afraid I was. I
had taken three inventories, and fear, other than snakes in high places, did not show up
in a very insightful way on my inventory. And that day in that conversation with that
psychologist, I got in touch with fear, and I found out that fear was like water to the fish
to me.
(36:51 – 36:58)
That I was afraid of being a husband. I was afraid of being a man. I was afraid of working.
I was afraid of not working. I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of success.
(36:59 – 37:14)
I was afraid of everything. I was so afraid I didn’t try. I was afraid, you know, I like people
assuming that when I was in college that I could get by going to school one day a week,
and they’d assume that if I ever really studied, I’d be gangbusters.
(37:14 – 37:27)
But I was afraid to really study and put it on the line, and find out that I was just average.
I was afraid of everything. Not too long after I worked with that psychologist, I was home.
(37:28 – 37:39)
Had one of the worst days in AA I’d have, about eight years sober. I went to work late,
left early, got in a back cabin game, and won about 600 bucks. I missed dinner, missed
the AA meeting, came home, got in a fight with my wife, and slapped one of the kids.
(37:39 – 37:56)
One of those days you like to have a videotape, kind of sent to the general service office
to show what eight years of sobriety can do for you. And I’m in my living room reading
some non-conference-approved literature, and I’m just, I’m really down. And I’m saying,
gee, it happened again.
(37:56 – 38:04)
And I’m saying, what do you mean it happened again? Weren’t you there? It’s your life,
guy. I’m saying, yeah, I was there. But it’s like I’m in a blackout.
(38:04 – 38:13)
It’s like it’s so habitual, I don’t even have to think about what I do. The ship just kind of
turns. And all of a sudden I realized that that was a bunch of crap.
(38:15 – 38:29)
I realized that my life was the way it was because I designed it the way it was. When I
came to AA, and I took step one, I stood naked in front of my alcoholism, and the truth
changed me. It altered me.
(38:29 – 38:36)
I drank twice after I took the first step, but it wasn’t the same. I mean, I wasn’t kidding
myself. It wasn’t the same.
(38:37 – 38:53)
That night in my living room I was stripped, and I stood naked in front of my life, and I
saw it through. I realized that I had tried as hard as I know how to try to clean my act up,
and I had failed. And for some reason I was given the idea that that was okay, that I was
where I was supposed to be, and I was given the opportunity to take the sixth and the
seventh step of AA.
(38:54 – 39:04)
The sixth step said that we’re entirely ready to have God remove our defects of
character, and the seventh step said we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. I
had spent eight years trying to get rid of them. I don’t have the power to get rid of them.
(39:04 – 39:16)
If I had the power to get rid of my defects of character, I wouldn’t need to be ongoingly
active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as Patty talked about last night. I mean,
I’m the pipe. I’m not the well.
(39:16 – 39:24)
It happens through me, not by me. I’m responsible. I’m not saying I’m not responsible,
but I individually do not have the power.
(39:24 – 39:34)
I’ve always known what to do. I just haven’t had the power to do it. And that night, I got
down on my knees and took the sixth and the seventh step, but four of the major
problems I had in my life disappeared.
(39:36 – 39:43)
You know, we change. You know, a doctor doesn’t heal. A doctor creates an accepting
environment, creates an atmosphere where healing can take place, and God heals.
(39:43 – 39:52)
A farmer doesn’t grow. He creates an atmosphere where growth can take place, plants a
seed, and God grows, and we don’t change. We create an atmosphere in which change
can take place, and God changes us.
(39:53 – 40:05)
When you’re really ready to make a change, you put in a structure of support. I’m a guy
that when I go on a diet, the first thing I do is I buy a bag of cookies and a quart of ice
cream. It’s already been a bad day.
(40:05 – 40:18)
I’m just going to finish off the day. It’s probably never going to have ice cream again.
Well, if you’ve been there and got the T-shirt on that one, you know, we’ve made a lot of
promises to ourselves that we’ve been unable to keep over a period of time.
(40:18 – 40:28)
And for some reason, I knew that if I didn’t do something serious, I was not going to keep
those changes in place. I turned the finances over to my wife. My wife does not have the
ego issues with money that I had.
(40:30 – 40:34)
She had a set of financial problems in about nine months. She had this new technique.
She could pay a third of a bill.
(40:35 – 40:46)
It never occurred to me you could pay a third. I thought if you pay a third of a bill, they’d
think you don’t have the money. I mean, I, you know, she, just this new scientific
technique, you know, that she had.
(40:47 – 40:55)
And I quit gambling that day. I made a deal with my sponsor about when I’d go to work
and when I’d leave work. I started to date my wife every Friday night.
(40:55 – 41:03)
I dated my wife every Friday night for probably the next 25 years. I had her love and
affection. It was just everybody else’s love and affection I wanted.
(41:03 – 41:13)
And I realized that what I had really done is I was a guy who sounded like I wanted to
quit gambling. I didn’t want to quit gambling. I wanted to gamble whenever the hell I
wanted to gamble for as much money as I wanted to gamble and not have problems
because of gambling.
(41:13 – 41:23)
I wanted my wife’s and children’s love and affection without spending time with them. I
wanted money without work. Not a good plan.
(41:27 – 41:35)
And that night I took the sixth and the seventh step and my life changed. My life took off
like it was on a rocket ship. For the next 10 years, everything I touched turned to gold.
(41:35 – 41:42)
I was in the real estate investment business. Turned out to be a pretty good time to do
that. And for the next 10 years, I made enough money to burn a wet elephant.
(41:42 – 41:53)
You know, I had the big house and the cars and all that sort of stuff. And that was kind of
my deeply shallow period is kind of how I look back on it. I have a gift for being shallow.
(41:53 – 42:00)
A lot of people don’t do that well. My mother always said, Bob, you’re not very bright.
Dress well.
(42:00 – 42:02)
And I have. I’ve tried. God knows.
(42:03 – 42:10)
God knows that I have. Would you get me a little water on that? Got a couple of nephews
like that. You know, we’re.
(42:13 – 42:25)
Thank you. And. You don’t learn much when things are going well.
(42:26 – 42:36)
I became arrogant and didn’t know it was arrogant. I thought God was blessing me
because I was just such a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’d show up in the
$600 suits in the new car and I would like to go to meetings with me.
(42:37 – 42:44)
It was. And it was invisible to me. It really was.
(42:44 – 42:46)
I mean, it was just. God. And.
(42:47 – 42:50)
Carl. I was delicate about that time. And I remember Carl.
(42:51 – 42:56)
Carl, who is a cowboy. You know, he showed up in New York in a banker’s suit. I showed
up in alligator boots and.
(42:57 – 43:05)
A 10 gallon hat and jeans and. Arrogant little dink. God, it was not a great time.
(43:07 – 43:17)
And then 1986, they passed the Tax Act and my life started to go backwards. And from
1986 to 1991, I lost about $8 million. And I went broke.
(43:18 – 43:27)
And in 1991, I had to negotiate my way out of bankruptcy with four banks. And I’m back
failing. I’m back looking at having to be on a budget.
(43:28 – 43:35)
I’m getting rid of the Mercedes and I’ve got to sell the big house. And I’m under my desk,
sucking my thumb in the fetal position. I am, like, tanked.
(43:36 – 43:40)
This is not, you know. All I ever wanted. You know, I wanted to be a success.
(43:40 – 43:44)
I wanted to be like my father. You know, I wanted to be a millionaire. It never occurred to
me to pray to keep it.
(43:45 – 43:54)
You know, I mean, if you’re. That’s what I always tell my sponsees. I said, if you’re
praying to be successful, you might also add over a long period of time.
(43:54 – 44:01)
Or that you might learn how to sustain it or keep it. Because lots of us get there briefly.
Kind of pass through.
(44:04 – 44:13)
And all of a sudden, I’m in back with all the issues that it seemed to me that I had during
my early sobriety. And it just felt horrible. I couldn’t believe that I had lost everything I
had.
(44:13 – 44:24)
I couldn’t believe that I had made decisions so dumb. I had heard about people who had
made a lot of money and lost it. And I thought, how the hell do you lose all of it?
Wouldn’t you put some aside? I mean, wouldn’t, you know.
(44:25 – 44:32)
I found out how you lose all of it. So here I am. I’m 22 years sober.
(44:32 – 44:39)
23 years sober. Peter had been out here to Colorado going to college. And, you know, he
came home at Christmas and got in a car accident.
(44:39 – 44:42)
Totaled off the car. Got arrested for drunken driving. Ended up in detox.
(44:42 – 45:06)
It was his Christmas present to his mother and I. And he just celebrated 10 years of
sobriety and alcoholics and alcoholics. I don’t usually do this, but we have three boys
that are sober in AA. Bill got sober when he was 18 and went down to the University of
Texas and finished.
(45:06 – 45:17)
Went to Europe and lived for three or four years. Came back, got a master’s degree. He
never would have been able to do that without the stability and growth that he got in
alcoholics and alcoholics.
(45:17 – 45:22)
Peter was just a little horse’s ass. I mean, he was just terrible. I mean, he was just, you
know.
(45:22 – 45:28)
And he went to six colleges. I mean, he went to three of them before he got the idea of
attending. You know, I mean.
(45:30 – 45:51)
He had registration down, but he never had attending down. And when he finally turned
the tail end of his career, he moved to New York and moved across the street from NYU
and somehow talked his way into Columbia and somehow talked his way into film school.
And he’s out in Hollywood trying to get in the film business, and he’s got 10 years of
sobriety.
(45:51 – 46:00)
And Dan, he’s got three. I don’t know why we’ve been so blessed with recovery. Because
God knows we’ve got a bad gene pool.
(46:02 – 46:16)
I’ve turned my wife in as a carrier to New York, but I don’t. Most people think it’s really
more my responsibility. When you want your children to get sober, they do not want your
help.
(46:17 – 46:29)
They do not come to you. Maybe indirectly they see your example, but it’s going to be
someone else that’s going to help them. And when someone else steps up to help them,
you really want those people to be grounded in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(46:29 – 46:38)
You’ve never been so grateful that they run into someone who knows what the hell AA
has, you know, and they did. They all did. My business partner is 37 years sober.
(46:39 – 46:47)
All three of my sons went to my business partner when they had a problem and they got
sober. They went to California. Lynn sponsors my one son.
(46:47 – 46:54)
They went to New York. Two of the guys in the general service staff sponsored my boys
when they lived in New York. I mean, this is just a network.
(46:54 – 47:09)
You know, I’ll help your kids, you help mine, because I can’t do it for my kids because
you just can’t have that relationship. Too grounded in emotions. And Lynn and I couldn’t
be more grateful and couldn’t be more pleased that we’ve had the opportunity.
(47:10 – 47:36)
I would have thought what a great deal it would have been that I would have been such
a horse’s ass in my recovery with some of the physicalness that I have with my sons,
that when my sons got the disease of alcoholism, they didn’t want to come to AA
because of their Mr. AA, the big AA speaker with a horse’s ass he was at home. That
could have happened. Wouldn’t that have been a great testimony to Alcoholics
Anonymous that I could have been such a way in my own home that my children didn’t
want to go to AA.
(47:37 – 47:53)
I’m glad that this program continues to work and I was able to deal with the issues that I
needed to deal with in my middle sobriety. I don’t know why I’m kind of lost today and
don’t know where the hell I am. Maybe it’s because of my sister and nephews being in
the audience.
(47:53 – 48:01)
But, you know, that early phase of sobriety, you feel like you’re failing. You feel like
you’re going backwards. But I’ll tell you something.
(48:01 – 48:08)
I’ve been sober 33 years. If you’re going to be someplace for a lifetime, you’re going to
have your turn in the barrel. You’re going to have a period of time when it’s not working.
(48:08 – 48:12)
You’re going to have illness. You’re going to have failure in business. You’re going to
have issues.
(48:12 – 48:23)
Your life is going to have texture. It’s not going to be—you know, I used to think—you
know what I thought recovery was? I thought recovery was the absence of problems. I
mean, no one told me that.
(48:23 – 48:28)
I made that up. I mean, I literally thought—no, but I believed it. But I believed it.
(48:28 – 48:39)
I thought that if you really got your act together in Alcoholics Anonymous and had a
good program, you would not have problems. I so admired my teachers in Alcoholics
Anonymous. I didn’t think they had problems.
(48:39 – 48:45)
Or at least I diminished the problems they had because I trained them. Hell, they owned
houses. They had cars that were paid for.
(48:45 – 48:52)
They had—some of them had careers. I mean, it was—you know, they had their act
together. I didn’t have my act together in any area of my life.
(48:52 – 49:00)
And I thought those were pretty sharp people. But their lives weren’t perfect, you know.
But I was so focused on myself.
(49:00 – 49:07)
All I could see was myself. I tell my sponsees, you see those shadows out there? Those
are people. Just—it’s good.
(49:07 – 49:28)
It’s good, you know, just to kind of know how those are because some of us are a little
self-involved. It’s not— But it is my experience that somewhere between 5 and 10 or 5
and 12 years, your ass is going to fall off. And it isn’t a sign that you’re doing bad in
Alcoholics Anonymous.
(49:28 – 49:46)
It’s a sign that you have so grown that you are now ready to do what’s next for you, to
take on the things that you were unable to identify earlier in your sobriety. And you now
have those defects of character that are somewhat more refined and not as obvious to
you, and now you can start to see them and take them on and deal with them. And I’ll
tell you, it takes the courage.
(49:47 – 50:07)
Patty talked about most of us come in, we have a short list of things that we want to take
care of, and if you just got those things that are on the list, you’d shortchange yourself.
Well, we lose a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous between 5 and 10 years. And I
think it’s because the people start to get into a lot of issues and a lot of problems in their
life, and all of a sudden they get an idea that AA isn’t working.
(50:07 – 50:22)
They build that wall back up. They’re sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, but they’re isolated
and alone and starting to feel like AA isn’t working for them. If you’re sitting in an
audience, listening to someone who has crawled out from under a bridge and is now
sober and their life is okay, they know it works for something like that, but they wonder if
it works on marriage.
(50:23 – 50:33)
They wonder if it works on a job. They wonder if it works with a sex problem or with an
eating problem or with whatever the hell happens to be going on in your life. And I want
you to know it works on everything, because if it isn’t our power, it’s the power of God.
(50:37 – 50:48)
It works in the business of living. Our answer has never been abstinence. It’s about, you
know, stop drinking and start using the steps as a new way to live and deal with the
mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your illness.
(50:48 – 51:08)
You never gave me an idea that once I got sober that, you know, I had had the job done.
I got the idea that people were active and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous because they
were using the steps on the issues and things that were going on in their life today. And
that’s why I’m sober and active in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I’m glad that I’ve had a
way to deal with the issues that have gone on in my life.
(51:09 – 51:16)
So now I’m 23 years sober. I’m going broke. And I went to my spiritual advisor about a
year before that, a guy that I had asked to be my spiritual advisor.
(51:17 – 51:28)
He said, What do you want? I said, I want to be less materialistic and more loving. So
within about a year, I started to lose everything I had. I went back to George and said,
We’ve got to talk.
(51:28 – 51:41)
I said, I didn’t really explain this to you. I said, I wanted to be less materialistic but keep
the stuff. It wasn’t to be.
(51:41 – 52:00)
I had a lot of things to learn about money and failure and success, and I don’t think God
had the real estate collapse just for me, but I think in every phenomenon that you’re in
in your life, there’s a personal lesson that you have to learn, and I had to learn who I was
without money. And AA is a great place to learn that. And I’m 23 years old.
(52:01 – 52:09)
I’m in meeting. I’m going to that halfway house where my kids live in, and I’d start crying
when the meeting started, and I’d stop crying when the meeting ended. I can just see
those guys.
(52:09 – 52:17)
See that guy over there? He’s got 23 years. How’d you like to have what he had? I think
he’s got the clap. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him.
(52:23 – 52:30)
But I got more active, and I got more grounded, and I lived through it. AA is such a
wonderful place. I would not have been able to get through that without Linda.
(52:31 – 52:39)
I don’t know how the hell I would. You were a great partner during that process. I felt like
I was losing my money and losing my business.
(52:40 – 52:46)
I didn’t lose my business. Losing my money was not like changing clothes. It was like
tearing the skin off my body.
(52:47 – 53:09)
And I started to find people in Alcoholics Anonymous who had gone broke and were back
in business and alive and well, and I started to get a sense like maybe I could survive,
and I started to rebuild my life. Sold the big house and got rid of it and moved down the
block, and things have been just great. And little by little, I’ve clawed my way back up,
and things today, life is pretty normal.
(53:09 – 53:15)
I’m in love with my wife. I’ve got a pretty successful business. Our kids are in recovery,
and life is pretty good.
(53:16 – 53:47)
I’ve lived almost my entire life in Alcoholics Anonymous, and it’s so hard to explain to
someone that, you know, when I came in, they always talked about that AA will return
you to normalcy, and I said, God, don’t return me to any place I’ve been in my life. I
never felt like there was a spot in my life that I wanted to get returned to. But you have
taken me to places that I never thought I would go, and I never would have been able to
go, and had I gone, I never would have been able to sustain them because I didn’t have
the stability, didn’t have the emotional and spiritual and mental stability.
(53:48 – 54:12)
The frustrating part, as I said, is that many of us have gifts, but most of us never get
them out of the box. Most of us never get the ribbon off the box to find out what it is that
we’re supposed to do with our lives. We get some sort of sense that we have these gifts,
and we’re able to use them maybe over brief periods of time, but most of us cannot
sustain ourselves in any reasonable way over a long period of time because we have the
disease of alcoholism.
(54:13 – 54:30)
And even after we get sober, many of us are not able to sustain it in sobriety because we
still have work to do in the program. I mean, the great news is alcohol is synonymous,
isn’t that half answer about just don’t drink? The answer is change. Most of us want a
different answer.
(54:32 – 54:49)
I got a new deal. You know, I never realized, I mean, I always thought I was the guy who
wanted to get my life together. I thought, you know, if I was to ask everybody tonight,
how many people, and I’m not asking you to raise your hands, how many people would
like to get rid of the things in their lives that don’t work and hurt other people? I think
almost all of us would raise our hands.
(54:50 – 55:10)
Let me tell you something, that’s not quite as easy a question to answer as we might
quickly answer it. I got some guys I work with right now, and pretend that I’m working
with a 35-year-old guy married with kids, and I’m working on him and he’s starting to do
his four-step, and he’s having trouble with all the columns. I’m saying, Bill, don’t do that.
(55:10 – 55:19)
I said, the book’s kind of complicated. I said, I got a new way I’m trying out, and I’d like
you to be one of the guinea pigs for it. And you don’t have to do all those columns.
(55:19 – 56:04)
Just get your mom and dad and your brothers and sisters, your wife, a couple of
neighbors, your boss, your children, and two co-workers and bring them over to your
house, and pass out paper and pencils, and then tell them that we’ve got to step in and
out of all these nine months and we’re trying to get in touch with their defects of
character, and I’m having trouble identifying them. And then serve coffee and leave. Do
you know why we laugh at that? Because most of us would never call that meeting.
(56:06 – 56:32)
Do you know why? We don’t want to change. We are so identified with our thinking and
so identified with some of the problems of our illness and so identified with the issues of
our life that we think they are who we are, not what we do. We’ve become so
psychologized that we view our thinking and our behavior to be our identity, and it is not
who we are, it is simply what we do.
(56:34 – 56:44)
The other reason we wouldn’t call that meeting is we don’t want to change, but we don’t
even want to know. We train each other. We train our wives.
(56:44 – 56:49)
We’re not talking about that. You understand that? We’re not having that. If you want to
have that conversation, it’s going to be a tough conversation.
(56:49 – 57:03)
Nod your head up and down if you understand, because we’re not having that
conversation. We train our children as to what we can talk about and what we can’t talk
about. We train our co-workers as to what they can talk to us about and what they can’t
talk to us about.
(57:03 – 57:13)
We get a very clear message. Lots of us get sober in AA, and we get to a degree. When I
was early in AA, I could try and fail and try and fail and try and fail and try and fail and
still change.
(57:14 – 57:33)
But there comes a time in your mental sobriety where you’ve got to change or you get to
a point where you try and fail, and if you don’t start changing, you’re in deep doo-doo.
What people do then is they start to accommodate the problem. They build an addition
onto their house for the elephant that no one talks about.
(57:34 – 57:54)
Chasers hang out with the chasers, gamblers hang out with the gamblers, and they
make a deal. I won’t call you on your crap, you don’t call me on mine. We’ll talk about
the steps, we’ll talk about the traditions, we’ll talk about meetings, but we’re not going to
talk about that other stuff.
You got it? We’ll sponsor people and we’ll do this stuff, but if you don’t get in my face, I
won’t get in yours. Bad deal. Bad deal.
(57:58 – 58:15)
It takes a courage to continue to change. There was a guy, when I talked about not
wanting to know and not wanting to change, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has those five stages
of death and dying. Scott Peck wrote a book called A Road Less Traveled, and later he
wrote another book called Further Along, A Road Less Traveled.
(58:16 – 58:41)
He talks about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of death and dying, denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance. He talks about how when they first tell you
you’ve got cancer, you know, denial, maybe I don’t have it, I’ll get a second opinion, and
then anger, you know, why is this happening to me? And then depression, when your
problem gets pressed up against you. And right now I’m not trying to play doctor, I’m not
talking about a clinical depression, I’m talking about a depression appropriate to the
circumstances that you’re facing in your life.
(58:43 – 59:21)
And you get into a depression because you get faced with a problem that is eating you
alive, and then he uses a phrase, but if you allow depression to do its work, which from
my own personal experience is to grind the ego to dust, you go through depression into
acceptance. But he said most people don’t go through the five stages of death and
dying, they go through denial, anger, and bargaining, but they get to the depression, the
pain of the depression is so great they back off and recycle into denial, anger, and
bargaining. He said interestingly enough, those are the same stages we go through in
major changes in our lives.
(59:22 – 59:47)
And most of us get to the pain of depression, we are unwilling to go through it, it’s
illusionary, we feel like we are going to die, and we are not going to die, it is simply
behavior, it is not skin and bones. The process of finding God and the process of
recovery is a process of coming home. The process of finding God is not a process of
addition, it’s a process of removal, it’s taking out what’s in the way.
(59:48 – 1:00:23)
And what you’ve done to me over a period of time is you’ve helped remove some of the
unworkability of my life, and you have returned me more to who I have always been.
When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I wanted to be Warren, or I wanted to be
Chuck, or I wanted to be, you know, my heroes in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that wasn’t
who I had to be, I had to be me. And what has happened is you have taken away some of
the unworkability of my life and some of the unmanageability of my life through the
practice of the principles and through the support and conversations that I get in
sponsorship and in meetings, and little by little, I’ve returned home.
(1:00:25 – 1:00:35)
And that’s why, in some ways, it’s the easiest process in the world. It’s becoming who
you are, there is nothing missing. There is nothing wrong, there is nothing missing.
(1:00:35 – 1:01:05)
We are like perfect magnets that have been dragged through the junkyard of life, and all
we have to do is start removing some of the clutter that has been accumulated and the
unworkability of our lives, and we have a practice. You can’t get well alone. We have a
practice, we have a village, we have a community, and we have a set of principles that
are spiritual in nature that if we practice them, over a period of time, we will be restored,
we will have a spiritual awakening.
(1:01:05 – 1:01:14)
What has happened to me is that you have awakened me. I used to be a jukebox. You’d
put a quarter in and push B5, I played B5, I had no choice about playing B5.
(1:01:15 – 1:01:25)
Today, you put a quarter in and push B5, I get to choose whether I’m going to play B5. I
was a monkey on a stream. I had an idea, reaction, idea, reaction, idea, reaction.
(1:01:25 – 1:01:30)
I could have thought it was my reality. It was printed on my eyeball. I never had a
choice.
(1:01:32 – 1:01:43)
I guess sponsees today, and their thinking is their reality. Today, I get to observe my
thinking. It’s a little scary from time to time, but I get to observe it.
(1:01:44 – 1:01:54)
As my friend Frank M. says, I have a Grand Central Station in mind. I don’t have to get on
every train that goes to the station. I used to think that was my responsibility.
(1:01:54 – 1:02:03)
I’d get in, lock myself in the club car, and just ride that son of a gun wherever the hell it
took me. Today, I get a choice. I get a thought, and I have a gap.
(1:02:04 – 1:02:17)
Between the thought and the reaction, I get to choose. And in that space, I am a human
being, not a human doing. I am not a monkey on a string, and I get to have a choice in
my life, and it is like being let out of jail.
(1:02:18 – 1:02:22)
Most of my life, I just felt like I’m holding back a team of horses. I don’t know why. It just
feels that way to me.
(1:02:23 – 1:02:32)
A team of eight, I just have a lot of energy that runs through my body. I used to
experience it mostly as anger. I later found out that it was mostly fear.
(1:02:33 – 1:02:49)
I have a deep sense of apprehension and anxiety, and I don’t know why I have that. But I
do. But in the practice of my program and the practice of meditation and the practice of
meetings and the practice of being a sponsor and the practice of being a sponsorship
calms me.
(1:02:49 – 1:02:59)
It acts like alcohol used to act. My amplifier goes from nine down to four, and I am able
to be a human being. I have the same tendencies to anger.
(1:02:59 – 1:03:06)
I have the same tendencies to rage. I have the same thoughts I used to have. I just don’t
act on them.
(1:03:08 – 1:03:23)
And that is freedom that I have never had in my life. I never dreamed that when I came
to Alcoholics Anonymous that I would be finding it. I thought I would spend most of my
time thinking and talking about how not to drink.
(1:03:25 – 1:03:51)
And instead, I’ve been led on a journey about how to live. We have a program that is
designed to return us to who we have always been, to bring us home, to find our gifts, to
be in life as we were always intended to be, to find the God of our understanding, which I
think at its core is who we are. This isn’t some big old guy sitting up in a cloud.
(1:03:51 – 1:04:11)
I think the God of our understanding is who we are in our true self. So we don’t have to
have this fear that if we really find God, he’s going to send us to China. I think if we
really find God, he is going to allow us to bring the full power into our lives to be who and
what we have always meant to be.
(1:04:12 – 1:04:23)
And I believe that that has always been there. I believe that that is one of the gifts we
give each other, that we see in you what you can’t see in yourself. Dolores talked about
last night that poor self-image.
(1:04:23 – 1:04:50)
I think that’s one of the things we do is we give the gift. When we see people that are
broken and hurt and their spirit has gone out of their souls and they walk into Alcoholics
Anonymous, and we hold the vision for them until they can start to get a little sense of
what it is. And little by little over a period of time in their recovery, that vision gets more
revealed to them, and they become stronger and stronger as they start to take on the
participation in their own lives and start to help other people.
(1:04:51 – 1:04:55)
And that’s what we do, and that’s what Patty talked about last night. Thank you for my
life.