The 47th annual North WestFlorida Conference in Pensacola Beach, FL

my name is Bob their own name alcoholic

and I'm sober only through god's grace in the program and fellowship I'll call Exxon Mr

I want to thank the members of the committee for asked me to come down here and spend the weekend with it really is a privilege

I thank John for picking me up at the airport and all the hospitality in the the bucket in the room and it's just been a great weekend

I you guys have a great line up the speed of speakers telling you this is a great conference Mildred who's gonna be your Sunday morning speakers one of my favorite women speakers in a she's unbelievable

and Wayne tomorrow night I've watched women in action I watched him work with newcomers he sponsored a guy that

name Mike with who is one of the great teachers and lovers of alkyl in Alcoholics Anonymous when the greatest ones I've ever met watch my kids sober I watched when work with them and

watch wait and I've seen one in the trenches I

I love done

Therese is talk this afternoon which she was mentioned I don't for those of you that heard it that she was talking about putting the K. Y. jelly honor

on our mouths before she talked I was which she said that I Wayne got excited who is like

I could tell he got excited I was sit behind him in the top of his head got red

and now

mark mark I knew what a great story I tell I list very listen very carefully it was a one of a great day talks of her in a long time and I listened very attentively and I've

as a result listen your story of became very very clear to me mark you shouldn't drink it's not a double deal for you man I'm telling you I'm glad you're in a

I'm glad I'm in a

don't know why I'm here sometimes I

my parents were an alcoholic I've been a we got through the phase the last ten years where it's been fashionable to

almost talk about your childhood almost with a subtle implication that I'm alcoholic because my parents were alcoholic gross abuse but I

my parents warn ELCA holy god that never saw him drunk even drew even drink that I can remember really I never abused me they just loved me hi they were always on my side I sometimes a set meetings Alcoholics Anonymous especially as a newcomer and head of

a peculiar kind of envy of the people who'd been beaten his kids and it came from alcoholic homes lease they had somebody to hang their weirdness on you know but there's nobody to blame me on except me I mean I was it you know I came from a family that will Love Me and they they're always on my side and

okay I I think that I look back over my childhood and I think I had a local holism forever took a drink

I think

I was like a freeze dried alcoholic wait for alcohol

and I believe that because I was had a inclination for self involvement in self folk goodness even as a little kid my mother used to say rob your full yourself and I don't know what she's told that day

I am

the back of my childhood

the only thing I can really remember is

me

I remember all about me I can't tell you too much about my sister and my mother and father listened to do with me I mean I was it was the center of the universe even as a little kid

if you're new here I really want to welcome you to a collection items I just tried to that's how many people are in their first year just wow whoa

hi I am excited you're here I am really excited you're here and I know people have been excited you showed up anywhere recently but I am excited you're here

and I'm excited you're here because there's a tremendous

tremendous amount of hope here for very hopeless people

and if I could

if I could tell you to do one thing I I would tell you and I don't know how to tell you to do it I tell you to surrender

and I wish I could tell you how to I wish I could find in the words to tell you

I started coming around Alcoholics Anonymous is a very young kid and I I take a little step story I was in nineteen

seventy seven I was in a

halfway house again

and there was a guy in there that used to come in from Alcoholics Anonymous and do some the meetings aren't talking name was what he and I I never heard anything that what he said but he made me laugh sometimes

and I for what another drunk out of that place and I got a felony hit and run do you why in a stolen car and I was sitting in a county jail facing two years in a state penitentiary

and what he was one of the guys that came in there and I tell you I didn't want to see what he does what he was one of those enthusiastic happy members of Alcoholics Anonymous

and I don't want to see anybody like that is the I saw him and I you know I'm always properly ashamed of myself and I

hi go up to what he and I said oh I'm so sorry I slipped a little you guys down you know all the stuff I said I don't know what I'm gonna do I can't get out on bail and I'm facing two years in the prison and there's nobody left and it's my life some massive

any and I stand I started the telling but if I can get out here I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that he said to me since he says you're not ready he said you haven't had a bottom yet you haven't surrendered

and I only say I I didn't say nothing to me but my head was Screamin what do you want

there's nothing left to me what do I got to lose my family hasn't talked to me a couple years and will not have anything to do with me there's no one left in my life that cares about me I'm facing two years in prison I've been homeless for a couple years there's nothing you're saying I've been hit a bottom what do you want

we want

and he was right

I had bought

I had lost the one thing that a guy like me has to loose

the one thing that keeps me from surrendering and I didn't know what it was for a long time

it's not the house it's not the job it's not the self respect

I lost my self respect years before I got here to an sleazy disgusting things to get a dollar twenty nine for bottle Richards waters rose

hi it's not guilt it's not shame I just lived with that for all the things I did to my family and the people who cared about me

what is the thing I have to lose

it's my judgment

it's my opinion of what's good for me and what I need and I couldn't give it up because I was so afraid

I couldn't give up my own self concern

and it kept me from getting everything that you people had I'm the kind of guy I go on a run alcohol will take everything out of my life struck me to the bone

when I went up in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous the first thing I get back my damn opinion

and doctor TiVo it comes of age talks about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic eagle the guys like me can be laying in the gutter or just crawling into a detox somewhere making people please help me I'm dying I'll do anything I don't know anything leave me show me teach me anything please and three weeks later I know what's wrong with everybody I know what I need I know what's wrong with what you're suggesting I you know the recuperative powers that eagle it's like a bad tumor that just grows back over and over and over and over

in in

nineteen

seventy seven

I sat next to the county jail facing two years in state penitentiary with when they give me my phone call there's nobody to call

there was nobody left did have a girlfriend anymore another one point it's just it's hard to get a date when you're homeless

it's like

Hey baby you want to come to the TV room with a halfway house I mean you know

it's really hard to get any action like that I mean it's really it's a tough deal

I don't have any running partners left I mean I because I'm a pig you drink with me a couple times and you don't wanna drink with me no more because I get crazy and I drink more than my share and I ain't I'm a hog right

and so I'm all alone as a result

as a result

of my very best

efforts just to try to make me feel better and make my life better

I don't I don't know a group of people in the whole on the face of the earth have have spent more time and energy

in the pursuit of happiness in trying to make themselves better than us and the end result

is a well with most of us get to a point we wish you were dead

I got sentenced by judges two years in a state penitentiary

I almost didn't hear what he said next because when he said that I just

I thought I was gonna die I I I I don't jail well I mean I just I I really don't G. O. well I I I you know I don't like it I I take it some people do but I I I've done I've never done any hard state time any longer the time but I've been a lot of county stuff and I hate it I hate having to pretend like you're a tough guy and put on that crew will outfit on the outside when the real truth the real honest raw meat inside of me is I'm a pathetic scared little boy inside trying to act like I'm tough and so I got a sucker punch people to show him I'm not afraid I hate living like this I hate it and when the judge said two years I thought I can't do it I I just I'm gonna die and then he said something I almost didn't hear he said we're gonna we're cut you a break I'm going to stay the commitment I didn't know what that was he he said you're committed to two years and so we're gonna put on hold we're not gonna carried out the PO department found a place that would take your call the ark house and was the only place it would take me I'd burn out here I've been through every other rehab they don't want me they had my action already

and they didn't want me in this one place

I went back and visited there a couple times since I've been sober it's not really a rehab it's kind like the bottom of the food chain for rehabs I mean it's like it's it's almost a mission I mean it's just it's it's down on Skid Row in Pittsburgh it's run by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous check can he's sober a long time in the house like a whole bunch of a couple hundred guys like me they're just at the the bottom of the barrel

and I went in there in this because this judge told me to cut me a break I tell you something I I went in there and I

I really this time at this time I was determined I'm not going to drink no more

you see I I've had this solution all my life

and and the illusion was I yeah okay I know I'm really going to cut this crap out it's killing me

in the illusion is that one day I'll get to a point where I want to straighten up bad enough and then I'll be able to

and one of the horrifying things about alcoholism is guys like me we get to the point where we want to street not bad enough and I can't

I can for a little while

I can't for a couple months but abstinence to me feels like I'm doing time

and I'm I'm the guy that sold for talks about in the book arm rest will sign your double and discontent I am prone to deep depression sober I get my life just on me and I can't get it off I

the service tell me one time

ms Bob you're just not in touch with your feelings

I thought to myself if I was any more in touch with my feelings I would kill myself the problem is that I get my feelings on me like that creature in that movie alien that attach itself to your face and I can't get anything off and I drink again not because I'm not touch with my feelings I drink again because I'm consumed with my feelings and I five shots of Jack Daniels and it's like

the thing just

so I go into this place this R. counts and I gotta tell you determination and commitment

was enough to overcome alcoholism that would have been my sobriety date

but I'm the guy that talks about the book when it's his lack of power

that is my dilemma the gal that was talk this afternoon she says a lack of dilemma and I thought I thought to myself

what I think lack of dilemmas my power today

really

really I just think when you said that I thought wow isn't that funny

yeah but I can't I can make up my mind I'm never going to drink again and I didn't mean it

but abstinence is just a very painful place for me

and I don't want it to be painful I just don't know how to fit sober

and so I don't drink I don't drink day in and day out weekend and week out and month in and month out and I just start to go crazy

and it's it's not a it's not a running down the street screaming pulling out your hair crazy it's a sicker kind of silent sickness of heart in here it's a loneliness because you don't feed anywhere it's a depression because you can't get your own emotions off of you and you can't get yourself unfocused from yourself

and it's a awful thing

and I don't drink but it's wearing me down I'm the kind of alcoholic that the most tremendous resolve in the world to not drink in the emotions and the desolation and disconnected nous of abstinence gradually grinds away that resolve

and I got a screw it switch in my head in one day the matter if I'm facing prison no matter if all the evidence to the is is is in that this is a bad idea to pick up a drink

when the screw it switch goes I'm going because I can't help it lack of powers my dilemma there comes a time when I have absolutely no mental defense against the first week

Hey I'm in this place and I'm not drinkin ends several months have gone by and I'm just not tonight I grab a guy and I just said to him I said I need help by I'm dying here

and he said though he said what's wrong and I started telling and I had told him about all my other attempts to trying to stay sober and how I failed in it you know something I started to really hate myself for being that way I see this and I wanted to newcomers all the time that in that place where the slip again and they come and Ainley feel like a failure we are that's ridiculous because you never had the power to beat this disease anyway your only hope if you're an alcoholic of my type is to completely surrender to the simple program and through the process of the twelve steps in good sponsorship in a lot of newcomers and a lot of action today you'll eventually find yourself in the hands of something that will do something for you you can't do for yourself the only hope a guy like me who is

and I'm telling this guy about my failures to

trying to stay sober up I told him I tried to explain to him about I because there's something wrong with me in the therapist don't seem to find out the give me pills to kind of take the edge off from for a little while but eventually it's not enough and I drink again and I don't know what it is but I'm the kind of guy can sit somewhere and be fine and then all of a sudden without anybody saying nothing to me doing nothing I'll just sink into this deep depression

for no reason no apparent reason I got mental problems in a I I one time I thought I had a brain tumor because it made sense to me because I thought weird stuff I just I just crazy stuff runs through my head I can't turn it off and it's not good stuff it's stuff like I think I'd be working somewhere in the I'll get a little note saying the boss wants to see it two o'clock this afternoon

by two o'clock I'm going to kill him if for nothing I mean he wants to give me a raise or something you know but I build this case in my head it's just crazy

and I get I get headaches I don't get headaches I get brain tumors I mean it just

I just go there I make leaps and bounds in logic that people more people would even go there I mean it's just

and I tell him about that trying to explain I think I'm crazy I can't stop this thing in my head the only piece sabre had was about five shots would

whiskey or pine a wine no just kind of

cool it down a little bit

I can't work I get I get good jobs interview well

just

can't seem to hold a job I don't know why they're I'm it's I don't understand that you take alcohol away from me I get restless irritable and discontent and part of the irritability is it I either gets so withdrawn from life that some psychiatrist thinks I'm clinically depressed because I go in here so deep it's so disconnected from you because you threaten me or I get I react the opposite I get on the muscle with people when I get that I get to be one of those you know just real jerk guys you know that's always on jumping on people's case imagine that you're thinking stuff in question you know about it you know and jump you know hi

so I can't hold a job like that there I'm the guy that they're telling me stuff like you your hard worker Bob but you're not a team player so yeah

not I knew I knew I'm not give me a pint of Jack Daniels lead your god damn team solver

I don't know how to fit I don't know how to be like these people I stopped drinking it it's it's almost as if there's this like invisible I'm sure mountable impenetrable wall between me and the rest of the world but I can't seem to break through and it seems like everybody on the other side of that wall is connected to each other and they're a part of in there all that stuff it's a sense it's like all of you and then there's me

and I think alcoholism the ism is I separate myself and I don't know how to not do that I don't understand that I I I have a spiritual illness the the condemns me to live in a lonely state of separation left untreated I don't know that I don't know that I have an insistent you're earning

for the effects said once found in alcohol because alcohol gave me a an illusion of community and unity connected me to people

even though at the end it didn't work like that at the end I was just as alone and pitiful and pathetic and full of self pity drunk because I was when I was sober

but there was a time off there was a time

there was a time when alcohol was the most effective treatment for the illness of alcoholism I've ever found

you all know those are times walking into a bar and a party or something you said loneliness you can't you're stuck up in your head you can't talk to anybody in your full of anxiety and anxiousness

five shots of whiskey menu come out play

you can talk to people eight shot so whiskey in he just kinda love a mall

I love you

for a guy who's lived most of his life in desolation Hey that's the best I ever got

that's the best sense of community I've ever had

that's the best overcome it best thing away from what best moving away from the loneliness I experienced I ever had

tell this guy all this crap and we're in the dining hall in the basement of this bank in the north side of Pittsburgh have been converted to this we have been

I am calling about the two years and all the other stuff and he

preached in his coat pocket he pulled out his business card he gave it to me and

he said Bobby said that if you put those steps in your life and pointed to the steps on the wall this is all help you it'll solve all these problems for you

he gets up the walkway to the back this big room to get a Cup of coffee and I sat there and I'm looking at the steps that I looked at the steps

for hundreds of times I suppose I'd been in a lot of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I know what it's like to sit right in the center of a meeting actually in the back wall and die of alcoholism I know that I have been there for years

but I thought to myself man I'm gonna read these again I did I know that okay says steps and I you know just I started reading them in the more I read in the more aware I become that this guy hasn't heard anything I've told him there's there's nothing in those steps it relates to my problem and it's not that I was philosophically opposed to them I thought that's a nice stuff I mean Hey if I ever got my life together I could do that I can I might join a gym to who knows what this is I got immediate problems here I need a set of steps like step one make Bob's police record disappear

step step to bring her back properly ashamed of herself

step three give me a thousand dollars I mean that would have increased my sense of well being tremendously for a week

you know get get my parents to realize how wrong the bit about me but turns turn you well in your life over to god all

I mean that's good for you good people that's a good thing but I knew about god you know I stood the book says step two it says the first thing I'm gonna do is get rid of all my prejudices I had a lot of prejudices about god I don't even know I had a just preconceived judgments and notions in a sense of god based on stuff I heard as a kid and I tell you I want that one of the things I heard is god existed to judge me

that's what he did

we could see in the dark which is not good for a guy like

you could see under the blankets to that's really really bad

so you know

turn the life over to god I'd rather turn it over to an attorney I mean

it would be a major step oh my god the immense step the man stepped I terrified me more than anything I've ever seen in Alcoholics Anonymous I remember looking at that in the years I was in and out and after I could sober knew in early sobriety looking at just being overwhelmed looking at it thinking oh my god I can't

if I didn't know that that was going to have to do this one day I would have done all that stuff all my god

you people I could tell by looking at you that's a good step for you all yeah I'm sure you some of you drank too much and said someone kind your wife go make it right good for your marriage great that's maybe a padded your expense account did you make that right build character nice for you but all right I lived on the streets like an animal there's a guy Mildred chat help me try to help me find in Leicester I thought I found him to this day I've never been able to find that I open his chest up with a big hunting knife he'll never be the same

there's guys that went to prison as a result of me you know because I got stuck between a rock and a hard place and I was facing ten years in prison and a walk a dime to mount how do you make amends to somebody like that how do you make amends to a mother and father who

the worst thing they ever did was love you and you punish them Ford and you're punished for it and you're punished import until my mother was not an alcoholic ended up on tranquilizers and my father slipped sixteen twelve sixteen hours a day

he couldn't take it anymore

he loved me very very much he couldn't he couldn't take what happened to his son any blade and the sad part is he blamed himself

how do you ever make amends to the people that you battered emotionally over and over and over by getting up again and telling in giving their hopes up that you're that you're going to be fine and then six months later you're in jail you've stolen or TV or you have gist evil why did them one more time if embarrass them or their homes in their community

my parents ended up with no friends at the end they were too embarrassed because they're afraid they couldn't go out places and they could even you could even didn't want to go outdoors because the neighbors would ask them about me and it just hurt too much he make amends to people like that

so this guy came back down to the table and I just

walked off I said NO thanks and I shuffled off to my bunker

and I was to start my last run

I didn't know it would be my last run

I started the last run and I'm the guy so core talks about I pick up a drink the phenomena craving kicks in I I've always been that way I was that way when I was twelve years old drink for the first time I have never had a social drink in my life

I've always the guy that once I start I can't stop

I have a physical allergy to alcohol expresses itself in a phenomena craving

and

I didn't know that for a long time

I know it today

and so course says any picture of alcoholism that ignores the physical is incomplete

and I'll tell you some you could be sober thirty forty forty five years so I got forty five years drink

and that phenomena craving waits for you

it is part and parcel of who I am

and I will always be there

and I got that thing I've never had a social drink in my life I've never I've never been had the experience of being in a bar drinking for an hour so it had a bartender say Bob another would sit there like a non alcoholic go

no this is just right

just right but you know what happens to me I get close to just right I get so close it makes me crazy I get a sense that maybe on the next drink I'm gonna be there I drank with a sense of urgency

I couldn't I drank quickly and I just I always drink that way if you're sitting here in your your new

I'm not sure if you're not there's not if you're an alcoholic

hi can hang out here listen hope for identification there's a test in the big book I I don't recommend it personally it's in chapter three it says it all if you don't think you're an alcoholic try some control drinking try to drink and stop abruptly I don't recommend that test because it I I would never want to have it on my shoulders if you take the test and the phenomena craving was stronger than you ever imagined you got so drunk that you were out of it and gotten a car killed yourself somebody else may not taste some I would feel bad that I was the guy told to take the test so I don't recommend the test for another reason I don't think it's a viable test really for an alcoholic who has the kind of mind I got because if you think about it okay I'm going to take this test I'm gonna go into this bar to see if I'm an alcoholic I'm gonna have to drinks that's it go home don't smoke nothing take nothing nothing nothing to drink sets it

well about halfway through the second drink it's going to become real clear to me that this is not a good test day it's it's it's a good it's a good test

but this is not the day Joe Joe's here and I got a drink with Joe and I got it didn't very sues over there just blinds over here and I get you know I just because I started drinking and all my ability to rationalize justify minimize all gets behind whatever's necessary to satisfy their craving and I don't even know that that's happened to me I can't see the phenomena craving in me

but it said Air and most people in Elko sinus cancer if you drink like I drink you don't see the phenomena craving because you only see can only realize a craving when it's interrupted that's not satisfied

everybody in this room tonight is in the grip of a craving you're not aware of that secrete craving debris there but let me tell you some somebody slip up behind you the plastic bag put over your head you would instantly realize you got this craving debris there because it's not satisfied

and I had to look through the help of identification listening to you long enough I started to see the few rare instances in my life in the past where I've only had one or two and then all of a sudden unbeknownst to me I found myself in a situation where I couldn't get any more and then what happened to me

how how driven was a high and I could see the phenomena craving in me

I got sober the last time in nineteen seventy eight

I bounce around if you're following me good luck

and

I got sober knowing that I'm the guy that sold or talks about but also so course says to us are alcoholic life seems the only normal

so I know that I can't take a drink because I'm often run and I know that I know that from bitter pain next painful experience but I secretly suspected everybody who drinks it's the same effect from alcohol that I could I mean when you think about it why would I think anything else I would be like

thinking that strawberries taste different to someone else in the taste to me I'd never occurred to me I just assume strawberries two six robbers to everybody and I thought everybody who drinks gets that all

more feeling I just thought that some people could control it and stop and then for some reason it was a guy like me that's weak willed and I couldn't stop and I show I'm should drink so courses that's not true he says it it never this phenomenon of Craig a craving differentiates us and sets us apart is a distinct entity it never ever occurs in the average temperature most people never could never reach their experience at all I was four years sober before I really understood how different I was I was dating a gal there wasn't an alcoholic and we go out to dinner she ordered drink it which was fine but I tell you what was maybe crazy take a half hour to drink one

I mean she'd sit there staring talk kind of watch that I can watch the ice melt which is alcohol abuse you know what I mean

she cheated times forget the drink was there Jennifer get your drink was there

I might for I would forget she's there before I forget the drink was there

one time we have a drug can she said yeah one time in college it was awful I never do that again

cedar cedar apartment one night she was so proud of the **** this little display cases glass case and she brings it out it's got a marijuana cigarette in it from Thailand she told me this story she was at this party a little while ago and some guy gave her this marijuana cigarette from Thailand she taken two hits of it off of it she was saving the rest for new year's eve

I mean you could die before new year's eve

god help her it's not her fault she seems to have been born that way

two times maybe three the whole time I dated I saw or have two drinks but I'd never start finishing second drink what time is this Andres is French restaurant we were there for like almost two hours eating dinner and she orders second drinking other time at a cocktail party for work but she get about two thirds halfway through the second drink and she's always late somewhere push it aside she said I don't want anymore I'm starting to feel

it's easier for me as an alcoholic to have sex and after two or three strokes I don't want any more of that I'm starting to feel it going to do that with two drinks

I started to realize

by contrast in experience the alcohol really affects her different than it affects me she takes two drinks and she gets to feeling like she's losing control I take a couple drinks man I get a feeling like I'm getting control I got a Feelin like I'm all most on the threshold of completeness here

and I can never get enough

so I took a drink coming out of that halfway house because I couldn't stand it anymore and I

the party's over high

it's not I drank for relief because I couldn't stand it anymore I was so depressed and so lonely I started drinkin it was just like the drunk the last trump before that I was still just as depressed and just as long and full of self pity and I entered into a stage of alcoholism that is very bleak but it sets stage of alcoholism were you or you said sometimes in his sobbing because you feel like you you you hate yourself what should be common place to break my hand a lot puncheon parking meters and walls and stuff because I hated me so much and I hated my life

and I just to sit in those bars or sit in that park with a bunch of guys drinking wine and it's just that separation and it seems like they all were having a good time and then there was me and I couldn't jump start that thing inside of me that that allowed me at one time to live that glorious life of conviviality that alcohol once he'd given me in the party was over

and I knew it and I'm facing two years in a state penitentiary and I know that I can see my wife so clearly in this super I'm in

that I'm going to drink and get sober and sobriety is painful and desolate and then I'm gonna drink and drunkenness is disgusting and lonely until I forced back into this abstinence and I'm going to go from one state to the other and I just thought I don't want to do this no more

I took my bottle Richards wild Irish rose I walk staggered out under this bridge

in Pittsburgh and I was standing there looking down these railroad tracks about a hundred feet blown on there because I just

I just want this to stop

I just don't want no more I'm like the rat I don't want any more cheese I just want out of the trap

and I am out there to kill myself and I I start sobbing because I can't kill myself I I am so close and I look back and I shudder sometimes to think that my life probably hell was saved by just a minuscule amount of I needed us just a tiny little bit more desperation I think I would've overcome my fear of dying but I would have leaked

and I couldn't do it and if you ask me what's killing you Bob I witness said alcoholism my

I might have told you I was dying of loneliness because I didn't fit no were drunk and I don't fit in or so we're

there was nobody I could connect with I felt so sickeningly alone

if you ask me Bob wanted to ever tried AA I just told you hi yeah I was in a I tried

it would have been tragic his iPhone to take in my own life photo taken my own life thinking I tried it thinking I was a part of it

what to hundreds of meetings but I was not a part of Alcoholics Anonymous I was part of the passing parade that goes through a on its way to the graveyard

I was part of a group that exists in Alcoholics Anonymous since the beginning of may exist in this room tonight there's people in this in this part this group of nay and you know the sad part is you don't know you're in that part

the talks about in the beginning of chapter five verses those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program

and I was part of that group I didn't know what I thought because I went to meetings I I was part of a

I never work to step never had a sponsor never helped anybody never made any amends

I just sat in the rooms Diane of untreated alcoholism and sat in rooms with people who I look back

who were able to do what I was doing and not drink and they were able to do it comfortably I think that there's the tragically enough when we in nineteen

forty eight

when bill Wilson agreed to go with the short form of the traditions I think we lost water membership requirements

originally the long form it says membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism

that's why I'm a member of a a today I suffer from alcohol is you leave me alone with me and my life in a big house no matter how good my life is and I will die of alcoholism and I'll die of alcoholism before paper pick up a drink the drink will just make the ge I'll just do it under the feudal illusion it'll make the journey into definitely more comfortable

and there are people in Alcoholics Anonymous entered talks about on page twenty and twenty one of the big problem hard drinkers

they stop drinking for a sufficiently strong recent

and they can do that on their own