Bob B.

Hi, my name is Bob Bazanz and I'm an alcoholic.

The grace of God in the part of a haven't had returns to the 10th of December 1967 and for that I'm very grateful.

You've now seen my Sport coat

been warm. I fulfilled my responsibility to my sponsor and to our to our traditions of, you know, trying to look, you know, good when we're up here. Well, congratulate the people who it's really nice for me to see Walt up here. My sponsor just celebrated 44 years.

And it's really, everybody wants to hang out with the big kids. You know, I mean, when I was six, I wanted to hang out with people who were 12. And when I was 15, I wanted to, you know, hang out with the people who were 18 or 21 or, you know, and when I came in AA, the people who had a lot of sobriety were important to me. They, they were, you know, the big kids as far as I was concerned. And it's not much. It's kind of scary when you have, you know, 20 years of sobriety and you're the oldest sober person in the room. It doesn't feel right. And so I treasure the people who are

still active and have long term sobriety, that's it's important. And as their fellowship grows, I think it's important that we keep those, that the people keep themselves and that we encourage them to stay active. We need, we're a village, we need our elders and we need, you know, our new people.

And I hope that the three people who took the Big Book will be here next year, celebrating one year of sobriety. And

I've,

yeah, I don't think it's an accident that you're here. And I think that we all get opportunities, special moments, just little, you know,

little particles of grace to come down that aren't, you know, that weren't there before. And we're here tonight and, you know, take that energy and use it

and hang in there and and come back with the year of sobriety next year and stand up when they do that. I think we really need if along with Walt next year, that the you know, that you had those same books to pass on to three more people who stood up with the with the one day. There's a nice energy with the

conference and with the people. I want to thank Eric for

constantly trying to get a hold of me, which I'm kind of a moving target. I do not like people trying to control me. Find out where I am. I

and

do that I want to take Harlan and Kathy for taking us out to dinner Friday night and hosting us Harlan with a Minnesotan. There's a number of people here Jim and Chris who are people that Linda and I sponsored earlier on are here that we either our state's kind of empty and your state's kind of growing. I don't know why that is and,

umm, but it's been nice for us. I we have our two of our three sons here and

Daniel has 70 days and Peter has seven years and her oldest boy Bill is in Japan tonight, but he's got, he just celebrated 11 years yesterday and.

I've turned my wife into New York as a carrier and

the.

I think there's enough evidence now that there's a problem, you know, and

doesn't always feel good when you discover that you've got alcoholism or chemical dependency in your family, but it feels good when the solution becomes available. We've been a blessed family. Thank you, Pedro.

And

we've been blessed, you know, blessed with the disease and blessed with the recovery. So that's good.

Yeah. We had a nice dinner tonight. I like, I love your dress. I think that's really cool.

Think she's got it on backwards, but it's great material.

The

so. So it's been a nice weekend. It's been nice for London night to be here with the boys. Peter, our son just moved to Los Angeles about four months ago. So we really haven't seen feet for since Christmas. So that's been that's been nice. I'm going to talk a little bit about and I've enjoyed the other speakers this weekend. I

hit a miss Walt this afternoon because it was so close to her dinner arrangements and I missed the Allen on. But I've enjoyed everybody else and enjoyed the the workshop that we had this morning. I took my first drink of alcohol when I was 14 years old. I was a freshman in high school. I was 4 foot 11. I weighed 95 lbs. It was the 2nd smallest kid in my high school class as far back as I can remember. Never like two or what I was. Always wanted to be something different, bigger, better looking, wanted to be an athlete. I felt like everybody else. Got to school an hour early and held a meeting

and discussed what was going to go on for the day and who was going to do it. And I always missed the meeting. And it seemed like everybody else kind of knew. They just kind of, you know, it was a natural flow for them. And I was just like, I was always trying to catch up. And I'd say, you know, hell of a meeting, wasn't it? A great meeting. Hoping you'd talk about the meeting. But, you know, you didn't see me. Couldn't get you to talk about the meeting

and it, it really seemed like you knew stuff that I didn't know. And it, it seemed like course I was looking at your outsides and my own insecurity, you know, So it was, that's the way we all were to a certain extent. It just seemed harsher to me.

And when I had a friend of mine at a 5th, we went out, we split. That fifth of my life changed. It was,

you know, guy when I put alcohol on the side of me, I got a sense of ease and comfort that I had never experienced up until the time I was just I can remember that night was magic. It it, it allowed me to move,

you know, talk to girls, be funny, dance. I went to a Military Academy on a college campus. We drank in high school like most people drink in college with fraternities of 120 kids in my high school class. There are twelve members of Alcohol Anonymous and my five closest friend. Four of us are 9 ones in Al Anon. I mean, we had a lot of alcoholism. The good news is we had a lot of recovery. We had a lot of alcoholism. And I loved alcohol, loved what it did. Drink a lot. Gotten a hell of a lot of trouble,

got arrested a couple of times. By the time I finished high school, my drinking problem was a loud subject of conversation and my.

I come from a neat home. Great mom and dad, seven kids love, you know, nice brothers and sisters. We lived in a town that lived in Saint Paul, which is kind of the,

the smaller of the Twin Cities, kind of the Fort Worth of the Dallas Fort Worth, you know, and

real Catholic. We live with, you know, there were like clans. I mean, everybody had, you know, somewhere between 5 and 15 kids, you know, and it was just, you know, get less than five. You had a lot of miscarriages. I mean, we just had, you know, there were just there were, I mean, just big families, you know, we, we had seven and we were kind of an average. I mean, it was really a wonderful time. It was, and I still live in that town. I see people that I went to grade school with high school with and, you know, all the time. So it's a big small town and really is. It's kind of a nice field

to do that. I went away to school, went away the University of Notre Dame, thought my drinking and normal life, my drinking didn't, could not shut my drinking down. Don't know what the hell that was,

you know, and school was important to me. I don't know, you know, but I not as important as my drinking and, you know, started out as AB student, ended up, you know, as barely AC student. And by the time I reached my senior year, I just drank my way out of the university. I just walked out. I was in civil engineering. It gets kind of tough to bluff your way through a thermodynamics exam. That's, you know,

I was going to one school, maybe a day a week, get on. By the time I was in my junior year, I, you know, kind of cribbed and crammed my way through

college. I was good at physics and good at math and somehow was able to hang in there as long as I did. I was due to be commissioned as an officer. I had to get a medical release. A medical release I got was for alcoholism. I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19 years old.

I thought that was nuts. I mean, I was just, you know, I was always, you know, trouble like almost got killed a couple of times and car accidents and people thought I was, you know,

had a serious drinking problem. But also maybe I don't, I don't know if they thought it was suicidal, but self-destructive would be a good word. And, you know, seemingly a kid who was fairly well equipped and but a catastrophe, you know, just not, you know, not able to, you know, to get it on the road and make it work.

And, you know, noted. I didn't want to walk out of Notre Dame middle machine. I remember it's a a kind of returned you to the scenes of your crime in an interesting way. About 20 years ago, I think I got invited back to Notre Dame to give an A, a talk. And I went back there and I had I hadn't been back since I walked out And a buddy of mine came down. I had some amends I wanted to make. And it was I had a lot of old memories and it was it was neat for me because it released me. It was, you know, this it looked totally different. The buildings look smaller. You know, I mean, when I was, I don't know what, you know how it is when you go back to revisit something.

I was in the middle of the talk and you know how you know, simple questions are difficult for Alcoholics. You know, they, they're not simple for, you know, like where did you go to school?

Simple question, you know, now you ask an alcoholic that question. There's this pause. And it isn't that they won't answer. They just don't want to know. They don't know how much time you have or how interested how, how interested you are. Do you want to know the, the one I attended the longest or the, you know, I mean, it's a, it's a multiple. It's not a simple question. And you know, are you married? And they get this, you know, this kind of tortured look on their face that, you know, and

you know, do your work.

You know, I mean, it's not, I don't know why that is, but you know, do you have any children? You know, I mean, you know, questions that, you know, normies could, you know, those are, you know, one liners and, you know, for they're not, they're not. And so I used to get it, yes, where I went to school, I always felt bad. And they had explained, you know, because they finished at a different place and I only went there a year. And it was and I said, you know, I've always had a deep sense of failure about this place. I said, I just figured out why. I said I think it's because I failed.

Well, it's kind of like a moment of clarity, you know, it just kind of came through.

So if you're looking for deep insights tonight, you might want to take a potty break.

The

But I left, I came home. I finished school at a local university. When I finished school at Saint Thomas University, my dad asked me to leave home. He said we love you and we care about you, but you're a pain in the ass.

And he said you don't follow the rules. And he said it's just not working, you know. And this time that you left and I left home and I took a jab at a liquor store and I was I was

I was a delivery guy and I all was bad. I was I almost killed a little girl that delivery truck drunk one morning. It was just a long story, which I won't bore you with. She was not hurt, but I came with an inches of doing that lost the job for going 80 miles an hour. The delivery truck took a job as a waiter at a private club in Minneapolis and living, oh, not on Skid Row, but I have actually, I have an apartment in Saint Paul that I'm sharing with the guy that I, in the six months I was a waiter, I think I only meet at home a couple of nights.

But I was living in kind of flophouses in Minneapolis. And I'm, you know, getting up in the morning, drinking a couple of beers, going to work, having a Dexedrine. I work from 1:50, little later and it's from 2:00 to 5:00. I go drink beer and at 5 I go buy a pint, half pint, 5th, you know, keep it in my locker. And somewhere during the day, I'd find where I was going to live, you know?

You know, Doctor Seuss, that child author, those are actual photographs of people I live with during that

period of time in my life.

And one night I went to a party and I got my face kicked and I got fired as a waiter and I was tapped. She had no place to go.

And I went home and I asked my parents if I could move back in the house and they said yeah, if I wouldn't drink, I could move back in. And I I moved back in. Alcoholism meant a lot of different things. We maybe would have meant more than anything else is about every six months I started my life over. It was always starting over. I mean, I never,

you know, I look like I would just hell bent to tear my life apart and to destroy our families, values, property, you know, prestige, all those things. I just I mean, I just look like I wanted to kind of sully everything around me and it wasn't true. I think if you go to put my own man in one room and me and another and asked each of us the question about what do you want for Bob? I think what my father wanted for me was much what I wanted for me that that, you know, would have surprised my father. I'll tell you,

but it was true. I just didn't know how to get it. I, I much, I wanted, I wanted to be accomplished and I wanted to finish school and I wanted to maybe go to Graduate School and do different things. I just could not shut my drinking down,

but I made it the largest full court Press of trying to change my life. When I moved back in the house I thought, God, if I could just, you know. So I got back together with Linda, who today is my lovely wife and they became engaged and married. Linda's a very active member of Alina, but an Alan on 30 years. I have been a constant source of growth for Linda.

Stand up, Linda.

Come on,

she wasn't much when I got her, but she's over the year. But you know, the,

but you know, there's just, you know, as hard as your work, there's, there's always communication for I've gained a little weight and I've gotten kind of out of shape the last couple of years and I've been trying to, you know, so we're discussing and maybe I should get a bike, you know, and get back and shave. I bought a bike. Now she just, I bought a Harley and I don't know, I mean, I, I tried to, you know, you try to do those things for her and I don't, you know,

just try as you may, you know, I just can't figure that out.

So I got back together with Linda, bought my first automobile, got a job as an executive trainee with the manufacturing concern. I thought, what, you know,

wow, it's really going to happen. I'm going to become an adult. So if I could just kind of make it to 30, you know, I'd be OK and only God, it didn't happen. I just now I'm instead of being the I was a class drunk at Notre Dame, I had five guys petitioned to have me removed from the engineering school of Notre Dame. I mean, it literally was the class drunk. Now I'm in an engineering company. I am the company drunk. I mean, I am, you know, I used up my sick leave the first two weeks. I'm falling asleep and falling asleep in the John, you know, and I'm stumbling down the hall with my legs asleep. I mean, I'm just,

I'm falling asleep at my desk. It's just, you know, I could not shut it down. This is not good. I know it's not working.

And you know, God, just, you know, I just falling apart and I've got all this big audience all around me. You know, work was not, you know, my thing in those days. And

I don't know, I left that job, You know, I took a sale job, thought I needed more freedom, flexibility. And

I had that job, I guess for about, I don't know, two or three months. And I went out on a

about a three or four day drunk. One of my buddies got married. Weddings were always good for about a week, and

I woke up Thursday afternoon,

August 1967 and

hungover.

Been drinking for four days, bad shape, and all of a sudden the recommended. I didn't know if I had a job, a fiance, or a place to live. And all of a sudden, the recommendation of my psychiatrist, of my father that I call Alcoholics Anonymous didn't seem so impossible. And I called a egg

and I got an old timer down central office. He talked to me

and he asked me if I could go meet two guys at a cafe in about an hour and I said yes, I could and describe them to me and told me where to go at the cafe. And

I, I got off the phone and called work and found out I had a job and called Linda and found out I was still engaged and called home and found out they were concerned rather than mad. And I thought, why the hell did you call a A? I thought, you know, it's kind of a

kind of an overreaction, You know, I mean, this is,

it was kind of the first example of God working in my life. I wanted to go see what an alcoholic looked like. So I wanted to go meet these two guys. I

When you're young and in trouble, you get exposed to a lot of helpers. You get exposed in my case to priests and nuns and bishops and, you know, Deans, lawyers, doctors, judges, psychologists, psychiatrists.

Indeed, I, I had been in a lot of family conferences, a lot of conferences where they're talking about you, but not to you. You are the subject. You are there, but you are not participating. And,

and I thought when I went to meet these two guys that this would be similar, that they would be, you know, I was 23 and I, you know, they'd be older guys and they asked me a bunch of questions about myself. And then they maybe give me a test and you know what to do.

And of course, that wasn't what I found. I went and I met one guy had six months, one guy had six years. The guy was six years. Just celebrated 36 years in this last Saturday with my sponsor who had 44 years

and they sat me down. They said we're from Alcoholics Anonymous. One guys name was Bob, the other guy's name was Warren. They said we had drinking problem and we found an answer for our problem. And one of the things we do is try to share that answer with someone else. And that seemed to help us stay sober. So we're here as much for ourselves as we are. You know, they weren't getting a toaster for signing me up. It wasn't a multi level, you know, marketing deal. It was just, they were just there, you know,

they were there doing a toss up call and they took and they told me their stories and that night my life changed. We have many traditions in Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the greatest of witches, that we share our experience, strength and hope and not our thinking, not our ideology, not our concepts. Those two men shared their life with me and my life changed such I believe, I think there's a mystical quality to communication. I really think that those two men, something magical happened in that conversation.

They asked me if I wanted to go to my, you know, it was the first time I'd ever talked to another person on a drinking problem.

And I talked to lots of experts, but I'd never, ever talked to another person who had my, you know, we were laughing about stuff that I would not tell anybody,

you know, and they were very free about sharing it. And it was, it would have a little embarrassing. You know, it was interesting. I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And over the period of the next number of months, I was able to make two discoveries were to change my life.

I drank twice after walking and I ate once in a business trip when I had almost a month. And I went on a trip to the West Coast. Did not go to a A like I was told. I was told to call the moment I got in and I didn't. I told everybody I had a bet and I

states over one week and drink the second week and got in a bunch of trouble. Then I get I stitched over almost three months and Linda and I were married and we honeymooned and I got drunk on our honeymoon, which I think I planned surreptitiously. I did not. I was always, you know, I don't think I quite let me know I was going to do it, although I was making lots of preparations for it,

you know, where the divers dive off those cliffs. And I drove off those cliffs on my last trunk, and I was in the audience watching the world's high diving contest. I thought, God, that's not so tough.

But I could do that, you know, Went over and introduced myself to the ex president of Mexico. His nephew had been my roommate at Notre Dame. He was not impressed. His bodyguards were not. I was just blind drunk. I drove off the public land and climbed up the Cliff, split my swimsuit, cut my leg. Linda's going absolutely nuts.

I got about 85 or 90 feet. I got stuck, you know, you couldn't get up, couldn't get down. And,

you know, I'm watching the waves come in and go out and I'm trying to decide whether to jump or dive, you know, not sure whether I want to jump or dive. And I finally figured out screw it. And I don't. God watches after fools and drunks because I made it. And

you know, normally Alpa used to talk about seconds and inches. If I would have jumped, I would have died,

End of story. You can't get out. You have to get out almost 30 feet, you know, to get out in the center of the channel. If I would have jumped, it would have died. I didn't know that I was just, you know, dive. You know, 10 years later, my wife and I were celebrating our 10th wife anniversary. And she gave me a little picture of that chasm. And we were standing on the balcony at the El Mirador Hotel, a lackey bride looking at the divers, David midnight. And I said, God, that's the dumbest thing I ever did. And she said honey is not even in the top 10.

So I don't know how people can share a life and look at it so differently.

But I had my last drink in the airplane on the way home. December the 10th 1967

I came to a It was 23 years old. I was confused. Everybody was telling me they thought I had a drinking problem. I didn't think I had a drinking problem. I thought drinking was my answer, not my problem. I thought drinking caused me some difficulty, but by and large I found nothing. I don't know why I walked her. I like a noise in my head. I had let my amplifier was up at 9:00.

I can't tell you why I don't, you know, it seemed to me that I've been blessed in lots of ways, you know, and, but I've never felt OK about me and I never felt OK about it. I never felt like I was OK. I never felt like it was OK. And I, I can't, I don't have an answer for that today. I don't know why I had that angst inside of me. I don't know why that I felt better with the half pint or a pint inside of me that I felt normal. It took my amplifier from 9 down to three. It let me hear the things that were going on and it made me part of what was going on in the room

when I didn't have that. I was so self involved, so in insecure in many ways that I just could not freely participate in what was going on. And so I thought alcohol was my answer. But you told me that alcoholism was a disease, physical, mental and spiritual. And once I crossed the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, my alcoholism affected me all the time when I was drinking and when I was not drinking.

Wow,

I never, I remember, you know, you guys, I mean, someone my response to told me that alcoholism was, you know, the physical part was 10% of the deal. It blew my mind. Still blows my mind. You know, I thought we'd spend a lot of time in a, a talking about how not to drink. I mean, I literally thought, you know, we'd have been, oh, you're where are you going next week? How are you going to handle this? You know, what are you going to? And there's almost no, not much discussion about that. You know, if you're new and you are going back to a family reunion or something like that, we'll talk about how to handle some of that stuff. That mostly is talk about how to live.

And what they said to me, you know, is you've got all you have is a drinking problem, all you have to do is quit, he said, have you ever tried to quit? I said, yeah, I quit. He said, did it work? I said no, it didn't work,

he said. I didn't think so. What's wrong with you? Is alcoholism, the symptom of alcoholism is a drinking problem, but alcoholism is spiritual and and mental as well as physical. And what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is once we take our last drink of alcohol is we use the 12 steps of the recovery program of A to find a different way to live,

a different way to live that's efficiently better in the way we live before. So we don't have to go back to booze or drug to do something for us that we run willing or unable to do for ourselves. And if you don't change, if you don't find a better way to live, you're gonna go back. If you don't know how to live without it,

Boy, I tell you, I don't know if I've ever heard a truer thing than that, that those men told me that night. And I, the other discovery of me is there was an awful lot of people who 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, they like what they found in sobriety better than what they found in a bottle. That confused me. I thought, boy, I might have to quit, but my lifes over. I thought, you know, long, dull. I didn't like people who didn't drink, didn't want to be around them.

But listen to your stories. You're out there chasing it real good. It got too tough. Something happened to you and you were able to stop and your lives weren't over. There was a zest of fatality and energy and a humor in you that I have been attracted to since I walked in the front door of the AA. And is, by the grace of God, allowed me to stay and find my answer and I'll call His son.

So I had my last drink a week after my 24th birthday. I'm 24 years old. I was a kid who was always kind of an underachiever, supposed to be, you know, lots of potential as we've all heard that word. Those of us, you know, through most of our life, everybody will. But I thought, hey, baby, this is it. You know, now I got it. I got, you know, I got the problem. You've got the answer.

I mean, what could be better? I mean, the reason that I've never been able to fill my potential that I've been an alcoholic. Now I know I'm an alcoholic. Now I'm an alcoholic synonymous. Now that I'm an alcoholic synonymous, if I do what the program says, I won't have any more problems. And

yeah, I,

and

so I thought I've got five or six other things that are going on in my life, you know, and if you've got the answer and I got the problem, you maybe won't make them go away. And hell, it might take a year. Well, my problems did not go away in a year or two years, Five years, 10 years have not totally gone away

in 30 years. But you know, my problems were horrible, but ordinary. You know, I couldn't get up in the morning,

Dad. You know, it's not a big deal. I was supposed to be at work at 8:00. I get up about it. I set the alarm clock for about 6:45. I get about 7:45.

It's hard to be at work at 8:00 if you get up at 1/4 date if

now an alcoholic can do it, but it's hard on them. It is, we are now we're quick, we're we're quick and you know, and, but it's tough. And, and then when I got to work, I was never sure quite what to do there. I

you know,

so I left a lot and

and then I I go on these two hour a lunches because or three hour anytime, anywhere the hint of a reaches out. I wanted to be there of course, and

because I was responsible, I think, you know,

I had some money from, I spent $300.00 more a month than I made.

If you do that over a long period of time, you'll end up in debt. I just want to report that to you in case you run on that one and you don't know where it goes

it. And then we have some marital issues, Linda and I Linda, you know, was the only child came. Her father was this great guy, came home every night at 5:00. I was not quite that regular. And you know, so we both came to the marriage with expectations. Expectations about everything from I don't know how to communicate, you know, and she's a nurse, she's an RN. She was, you know,

seeing less of each other married than when we were dating. We were because, you know, she'd get up at 6:00 to go to work, ID, and then I'd come home, usually sometimes around 5, and she'd broil something. All she could do is broil. So whatever, whatever we could broil, she'd broil

and we, she since has become a wonderful cook, but in those days she could only broil. And

so we broil something when I go to the meeting and when I came home from the meeting, it was, you know, I didn't want to miss anything. So it was 11 o'clock 11:30. You know, she is in bed and I'm going to 567 millions a week and you know, so she's seeing less than me. She's going to al Anon, but she's and then she starts these real negative questions. Like isn't one of the things you're supposed to do is practice the principles in our home? That's none of your business. I mean, I don't know why I don't

think, you know, I mean, that's kind of personal. I mean, you know, you have your program, I have my, you know this.

And

and then we started to have kids and I had great mom and dad, but even great parents make mistakes. And I wasn't going to make the mistakes my parents did and I didn't. I made all the mistakes they made in a bunch. They never thought of a

I was loud and patient, angry and mature and sometimes violent with my kids. I am not proud of that, but that's an accurate description of how I was.

And I had a gambling problem. It was more like a hobby,

three or four hours a day, four or five days a week. It was kind of like it was just, you know, but I was making five or 10 grand a year playing backgammon in a kind of felt like a second job, you know,

And

these were not annual problems or quarterly problems or monthly problems. They were daily problem. I had everyone of these problems in my first year of sobriety and never noticed them. I was like on a honeymoon. I was so in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. I was so enthusiast. It was like coming home. It was like, it literally was, I mean, it was like, you know, I just wanted to just immerse myself in AAI, wanted to know the language and the words and the steps and the program. And I just, I hung out. I hung out with the old timers,

wanted every. I just wanted everything about it. About towards the end of my first year, I started to get in touch one by one with my defective character and the unworkability of my life. And one by one these issues. I'm glad they weren't handed to me all at once, but they they'd come and I'd take them on. And

but my second year, I think by the end of my second year, I had a pretty good list. You know, I did a fifth step during my first year, but I don't, my inventory was not very insightful. My inventory was mostly getting rid of the things that made me a moral leper, that separated me from you. And really

made me feel quite guilty. And they, even though I thought they were the most dramatic important things in my life, they turned out to be not very important to me. The, the, you know, some of the most disgusting things that I did in my life didn't have much meaning with respect to my life. They were random events. And, but the daliness and the ongoingness and the, the root of many of my issues that remained after I got sober were more important to me. And I didn't have much insight about them in my first year of sobriety.

By my second year now I've got a list and I'm starting to find out about what a A has to do with Wednesday and I'm bumping along. And

by my second year, you know I got the list. My third year they're starting to bother me. My 4th and 5th year they're eating my lunch. And by my 7th year, I'm having a tough time.

I'm a very active member of alcoholism. I'm a guy who really wanted to live life well. It's important to me how I live. I my print. The principles are important and my integrity is important to me. I wanted to live on the inside, like I was talking on the outside and it was important to me and I wasn't able to do it.

I had, you know, God, I'd be seven years old, a new guy come in and come in with a bushel basket full of manure that everybody does and tell me about

all the problems. And I say, hey, as bad as it is and as hopeless as it seems, God, you're in the right place. I'm really glad you're here tonight. Sit down and get a cup of coffee.

And I know you don't know this, but

if you just stay, and I'll say that to the people tonight that took those big books. If you just stay,

try to practice the steps, get a sponsor, read the book, just try to in court. You don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to stay and don't drink. Keep the body here. You will. You know, it takes time to heal. She that guy over there got his life with just a mess two years ago and now he's just knocking it out of the park, you know? So hang in there and glad you're here. Now I get in the car and I'd say when's it going to work for you, Bob? You know you're 7 years sober. When's it going to work for you? You just bought a sparklet today for 300 bucks at a store. We had a $400.00 bill. When are you going to stop doing that?

When are you going to stop buying things you don't need, You know, with money you don't have to impress people you don't like? I mean, when are you going to, you know,

another couple of

the, you know, when you gonna learn how to work? You know, I mean, I don't think you have a pass. Almost everybody knows how to work. When are you gonna learn how to work? What are you gonna be nicer to your children and more loving with your wife? When are you gonna cook? Gambling.

I didn't have an answer because I had been trying as hard as I knew how to try to change each of those things and failing regularly.

I thought, you know, you get me sober and I'll learn how to be a husband. You get me sober and I'll work. You get me. You know, you, you kill my alcoholism. I don't know why I thought that. I mean, I, I don't know, no one taught me that as I look back on it, but that internally I, I kind of separated my life and I thought you get me well from alcoholism and I thought I should know intuitively. No IA good models intuitive. I mean, everybody knows how to work. Everybody knows how to, you know, be a husband. Everybody knows how to be if well, I did not seem to know or I wasn't able to perform. If I knew how to do it, I wasn't able to do it,

did not have the power to do it.

And you know, I got a problem. The problem, you know, the two things that have saved my Fanny and Alcoholics Anonymous are #1 I've never been able to keep my mouth shut, which is good because I didn't have as many secrets as some people who I sponsor to. I was, I was in community. You know, I would tell my sponsor about 75% of what was going on. And I know you're supposed to tell your sponsor 100% of what's going on, but 75 was what I did.

And I, I really think that, you know, people who say, I tell my sponsor everything I say. Oh, baloney

almost. Don't make anybody like that. You know, they I do everything I'm told. Give me a break. You know, I mean it just, you know, I got these guys that call me in the morning and they say, you know, Gee, do you think I should wear Gray socks or blue socks today? And I'm saying, well, Dave, I don't know, let's go with the Gray. And then you get together with them later. And oh, by the way, I got married on Tuesday and I, you know, so it is,

you know, it's kind of a, you know,

then later in the week you hear Dave talk about how close he is and he just, you know, I just came in here and did everything I was told. And it's just everything is going well. And

and the other thing that saved me is my love, I believe for the old timers and my my sponsor. I was close to my sponsor and

but I and, and I, I just, I was doing the best I knew how to communicate to warm what was going on, but I was scared and I didn't know how scared I was. I didn't know I, I, I did not know that I just, I told, I talked to Warren as much as I could and told him as much as I could tell him. I knew what the answer was. The answer was to have a better, stronger relationship with God. By the time I'm seven years sober, I know that answer, but there's a problem. Go knock on the door. God says who's there? Say Bob is God or God is Bob and

that's the problem.

And

God says, what do you want? I say, well, I'm seven years sober. My ass is falling off. I said I feel like I'm on the down escalator going up. I said I just, I'm working as hard as I know how to work at 1:00 to 5:00 meetings a week. I'm active. I'm talking in a a I'm active in service and sponsoring people