The Men Among Men's Groups 3rd annual conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

Name's Bob Darrell, and I am seriously alcoholic. Yeah. Through the grace and power of a very loving God as I've that I've accessed through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, an ability to maintain a position of being sponsorable, commitments, dedicated home group, and bushels of newcomers. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substances since October 31, 1978. And for that, I will always owe you my life.

I I am delighted to be here. I I'm delighted to know that alcoholism kills people in Iceland just as much as it does in Las Vegas, as it does in London, as it does in Costa Rica, as it does in Japan, that all over this planet, there are guys like me that will never get into these rooms, that will die of this disease, and that there I get to be among some very fortunate people who have found who've made it into Alcoholics Anonymous. And maybe, if you're really lucky, you've gotten a foothold here, and you'll be able to stay here. And I if you if you've gotten a foothold here, I encourage you with everything in me. Don't let any person, any idea, any resentment, anything drive you out of here because you're the only one that can leave.

And your and your judgments can can kick you out of here. I know that there are people in this room that are as in love with Alcoholics Anonymous as I am. And how can you not love AA if if it does for you what it's done for me? In 1978, I stood on a bridge with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose, the cheapest, most disgusting wine ever made. It's never seen a grape.

It's all chemicals. It's just it's a dollar 29 a quart. I mean, it's if you're if you're if you're an economy drinker trying to get the most amount of alcohol for the least amount of money, that's what you ended up with. And I'm standing on this bridge in 1978 sobbing uncontrollably because I can't seem to get up enough courage to take my own life, because I'd been 7 years of institution, 7 years of attempting to to turn my life around, 7 years dying on the installment plan and trying absolutely everything I could ever try to turn this around. And, but I tried everything except AA, really.

Even though I'd been to hundreds of meetings, I was part of a group that has existed in Alcoholics Anonymous since day 1, and that's the group that, unfortunately, there's an aspect of that group in this room tonight, the ones that will die of this disease. And the the line of demarcation that separates the ones that recover from the ones that don't is talked about in the beginning of chapter 5. It's read in every meeting when it says, those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. And I went to hundreds of meetings in those seven and a half years, but I was part of that group. I couldn't buy the whole package here.

I had too much judgment. I'm dying, and yet my ego, the more I'm dying physically, the greater stronger my ego is becoming. And I was the kind of guy that I could I could ruin everything in my life, and I could come into Alcoholics Anonymous, and I could pick you all apart. And I couldn't do what you did, and I was unsponsorable because nobody tells the great I am what to do. Right?

And little did I, I could not see me the way that you could see me, Because if I could see me the way that you could see me, what I would see is I would see a guy, a pathetic guy, a pathetic egomaniac, insisting to be being at the wheel of his own ship. Regardless of at the wheel, he keeps running it into the rocks over and over and over, and I don't get it. It's because I'm in control. I get it. They're they're putting rocks in the wrong place.

You know, it's it's the damn tides. It's it's never it's it it's me, but I can't see that. And I, I fell into your hands one more time in this in 1978, and I was I was a broken man. And the thing that was broken was the only thing that had to be broken. It was that ego and that self reliance.

And I thank God I had a I think that the the amazing recuperative powers of this alcohol alcoholic ego are amazing. I had a small window where I was so demoralized and so beaten up that I was willing to get a sponsor and and actually do what he said. I got commitments in Alcoholics Anonymous. I started doing things that a guy like me would never ever do, and I did them without judgment. I did them out of absolute hopelessness, and my life started to change.

Now what brings a guy like me to that point? A guy that's as judgmental and as egotistical and as wanting to be in control as I do, what brings a guy like me to that point? Wasn't treatment centers. I've been through some of the greatest treatment centers. I've listened to the doctors and the psychiatrists, not religion.

I've been blessed and dunked and sprinkled and, I mean, everything you could I'm rededicated. I I think I was baptized enough times to have watermarks. I mean, I just they don't I none of that. Not the love of my family. Not that I didn't love them.

I just there wasn't enough. And what brought me to the table in 1978, the last time, what brought me to that bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania trying to take my own life, is that I was in a trap I could not spring. I was stuck. I seemed to have an absolute inability. No matter what I tried, no matter what I drank, no matter what I smoked, no matter what pills I took, I could not get back to the magic that I'd once found in getting high.

And out of that, I was I lived the last couple years of my drinking in a in a a bleak state of desolation, where I would drink and I would feel sorry for myself, and I would drink and be full of self pity, and I would drink and hole up somewhere and go on crying jags, and I would drink and break furniture, and I would drink and end up in the emergency room of hospitals because I put my hand through a window and I ble can't stop bleeding. I would, I would drink and I wouldn't bathe. I would drink and have and walk around in clothes full of body excrement because I didn't care anymore. I drank at the end, not for a party. I drank just to blot it out.

Just to blot it out. And and the tragic thing about all of that was there was a time when alcohol was magic, and I'll get into that in a minute. But that in itself, the fact that my drinking was horrible, wouldn't be enough to bring me to the place where I'm willing to buy the whole package of AA. Because some people drink until it's horrible, and you know what they do? They quit drinking.

Right? I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Oh, it's drinking? You're horrible? Quit drinking.

The problem is I couldn't quit. I could quit for short periods of time, but something happens to me when I stop drinking that is is is insane as the things and maybe more insane than the things that happen to me when I do drink. And what happens is I enter into a state of abstinence, and if you're not medicating me or giving me anything, I'm just raw natural. It's not good. And I'm restless.

I'm irritable. I'm discontent. I suffer from low level depressions. I suffer from a loneliness that a that a man in my country is not supposed to even admit that he would feel, because men are supposed to be above those feelings. I suffer from fears and and petty, childish anxieties that men are not supposed to suffer from.

And I don't fit anywhere, and I I I don't drink day in and day out and week in and week out and month in and month out, and I just get it up to here with being sober. And I am not stupid. I understand that when I pick up a drink, I will burn my life to the ground, and yet I can't stop picking up a drink eventually. And, I'm an alcoholic of my thank you. I'm an alcoholic of my type.

If you're the alcoholic that is in this book, the question with untreated alcoholism, the question without a sponsor, without God's grace, without the 12 steps, without people your sponsor, without the whole package, as it says in chapter 5, completely give myself to the symbol program. The question for people like that who don't completely give themselves to this simple program is not if you're gonna drink again. The question is when. It is an absolute inevitability. Now it may take 6 weeks or it may take 6 years, but it's an inevitability.

Because to have to have alcoholism of my type and to quit drinking is to create a is to create an itch in the middle of my being that I am compelled to eventually scratch. And I'll try to scratch it a lot of different ways before I actually pick up the drink. I'll try to scratch it with sex for a while. I'll try to scratch it with money. I'll try to scratch it with with material things for a while.

I'll try to scratch it with being right and getting you to see how right I am. I'll try to scratch it by being a hard worker and being the, the I'll be the workaholic, best worker there. I'll work myself into a state of an illusion of validation. I'll try to scratch that itch with everything I can scratch it because doctor Silcor says that when I quit drinking, I'm restless, irritable, and discontent unless I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort. So I become an ease and comfort junkie, and I look for ease and comfort everywhere I can.

And then what happens to me is after a period of time, whatever I've acquired and brought into my life that's supposed to pump me up, make me comfortable enough to be sober, what happens is the shine of it eventually wears off. And that's why that's why people like us, we cannot stay sober through acquisition. Spiritual this this malady of my spirit that occurs when I stop drinking, this sick, disconnected feeling is never treated by addition. It's always treated by subtraction. Spiritual growth never comes by addition.

It comes by subtraction. And that's why if you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you remain a taker, I mean, all you're gonna get here is alcoholism, because that's all we got. That's all we got. But if if you wanna change your life, you must come here and become the giver. And this is not this this does not equate with alcoholic mental mathematics that you give stuff away and your life gets better.

It doesn't I know it doesn't make sense. Because if you're new, you're it especially if you're new looking at the amend step, and you're thinking, paying all this money back is gonna make my life better? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. I'm telling you, the things that may listen to this. Look at the things that you've done recently prior to coming into AA that made sense to you.

How was that working for you? So maybe if AA doesn't make sense, maybe that's a good idea. Maybe that's a better idea than what you've been trying. And alcoholics always doesn't make any sense. So I'm on this bridge because of 2 things.

I can't jump start start the party. I can't I I finally get it that no matter what I do, I cannot control and enjoy my drinking. I can't get back to the fun days. I can't get away with it. It's horrible.

And I can't live without it because abstinence feels like I'm doing time, and I can endure it for a while. See, I get like a mule in a hailstorm. I just hunker down and take it. But, eventually, I get to that point where I just had enough. And I just do you know when that gets on you?

That that that the thoughts and the obsessive thoughts with and yearning for the effect of alcohol. And what I really what I I I don't crave, and I'm not obsessed with actual beverage as much is the effect I'd once found in drinking. Where I what I yearned for against this dead spirit that I have sober, what I really yearned for is that time in my life when I had the magic. That time in my life when I could have 3 or 4 drinks, and it would just light me up. Or I could have 3 or 4 drinks and come out and play.

Or I could have 3 or 4 drinks, and I could be funny. I mean, I was funny. I wasn't I'm not really funny, but I was funny when I was drunk. I could dance, and I really can't dance. I could I could be philosophical and deep.

Remember 3 o'clock in the morning, cracking the secrets of the universe? I'd say things I'd say things that would blow my mind. I'd just go, oh, that was great. I could I could talk to women when I was drunk in the early days, not at the end. In the early days when the magic worked.

I remember I remember God in, like, when I was 18 years old, 19 years old, going to dances, getting lit up, drunk, parties, I'd start talking to some girl. And do you ever have the the the experience of almost stepping back from yourself, and I'm watching myself say things to this girl that are just incredible? I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna work. Oh, yeah. And it's, you know, it's you know, but where is this coming from?

This is great. This is brilliant. Oh, this is amazing. I'm I'm gonna get laid. This is good.

This is, you know. And it's almost as if alcohol awoke something in my spirit and got me in touch with some sort of flow of power in this universe that did for me what I could not do for myself. It was amazing. And I'll tell you something. This will sound to some of you like AA heresy, but this is the honest truth.

If I could get that effect and that magic from alcohol, I'd have never quit drinking. Matter of fact, I have a really good life today in sobriety. If God were to come in here today and say, Bob, I'll give you 3 more years like it was when you were 17, You may see a breeze as I hit the door. Now I hope that wouldn't happen, but I don't know. I don't because that when that magic worked, man, it was awesome.

It was incredible. I mean, if it wasn't for alcohol, I'd be celibate to this day. I real I could've never gotten in a relationship with a woman. I was too afraid. I was too inadequate.

I was too scared. I I remember in junior high school, we used to have dances. Right? The you know, young teenagers pre you know, add you know, barely adolescents. And I remember going to this this dance, and I went there because there's a girl in my class that I have a crush on.

And so I kinda have a mission. I'm there to wanna dance with this girl. And I'd taken to some guys that showed me some dance steps and etcetera. And I go to this dance, and I'm standing up against the wall of this gymnasium, like, just terrified. And I'm watching them dance, and I'm gonna I'm trying to psych myself up to get enough courage to go ask this girl to dance.

And I remember thinking, I'm sitting here, okay. Okay. Okay. Not this song. Next song.

Next song. Next song. Next song. Next song would come along. No.

Next song. Next I did that for half hour. Finally, screwed up enough courage, walked across, asked her to dance, and she said no. And I gotta walk back across that 7 mile gymnasium, and everybody's looking at me. I can feel them looking at me.

And I know and I can feel them thinking about me. Do you ever know what people are thinking about you? It seems like all of a sudden, the whole world stops and everybody's thinking about me, you know? And I and I walk I walk back over to my wall, and I stood there for about 10 minutes, and I'm spinning in my head. Every time somebody looks my direction, it's like, oh, you know?

I finally bolted out of there. Couldn't take it. I'll tell you something, I had never ever done that again. I had never risked that again. Except later on that year, I was at another dance under the power of 151 rum and Coca Cola.

And I must admit, I was smooth. And I had a suave fare about me and a and a confidence, and everything just flowed. It was just like I was in the groove again. And women I was asking girls to dance, and they were saying yes. And if one said no, oh, boy, is she missing it.

Now that's power. That is power. That's that's getting immersed in something that does for you what you can't do for yourself. And the naysayers and everybody would say, oh, that's just an illusion. Tell you, it was what it was better than what I had sober.

Because I'd sober up and I'd go back to being me again. And I never liked that much, really. But at the end of my drinking, I can't get that back. I I can't no matter what I do, I can't get it. I can't stop remembering it.

I remembered the glory days. I yearned for those days. I wanted them with everything in me. But once the once alcohol stops doing something for you and only does something to you, there's never been a recorded case of an alcoholic of my type that's ever being able to get back on the other side of that fence. And most of us, millions of us, have lost our lives dying, and we've died of this disease chasing the illusion that I can get back to the other side of that fence, that I can get back to those glory days.

And it's pathetic, and I never could. So I'm 1978. I'm standing on a bridge, and I'm trying to take my own life. The book says it best in a vision for you. It says, we get to a place where we can't imagine life with it, and we can't imagine life without it either.

And I was at that place. And I can't imagine life with it because it's bad now. And I don't drink when I drink, I don't I can't I've never in my life been able to just drink for a while and then shut it down when you should. When I start drinking, I can't get enough. I've always been that way.

I've never never once in all my drinking because of this phenomenon of craving, because of this allergic reaction I have to alcohol, once the buzz hits me, what that does in the in the craving for more of that feeling, I have never once in my life been sitting at a bar or a party, drinking for an hour, have the bartender come over and say, Bob, would you like another drink? I've never once sat there and honestly thought to myself inside, no. This is just right. Not once. Matter of fact, if you don't if you're sitting here and you're not sure if you have an you're an alcoholic, there's a test in the big book.

And the test is on it's in the beginning of chapter 3. It says, if you're not sure if you're an alcoholic, go over the nearest bar, tried some controlled drinking. The the book says try to drink and then stop abruptly. Well, it's not a good test, really. And I wouldn't wanna recommend it, you know, somebody might die.

I don't you know, you some I'll tell you something. I've seen evidence in my own life, in the life of other people who've drank again, that often the phenomenon of craving in in your is so strong within you and you don't even know it until you try to till you start again, and it just takes you over. And I would wanna recommend the test. And besides, let's let's imagine the test it's not a viable test when you really think it through for a guy like me. If you have the same mind that I have, the test is it's it's it's useless.

Because here's what's gonna happen. Okay. I'm gonna go down here to the bar. I'm gonna try to see if I'm an alcoholic. I'm gonna have 2 drinks.

That's it. Shut it down. Go home. You can't smoke nothing, take nothing, nothing, nothing, 2 drinks, that's it. Well, about halfway through the second drink, it's gonna become very apparent to me that this is a bad test day.

It's a good test, but this is not the day for the test because there'd be some girl in the bar. Oh, man. I gotta have a drink with her. There'd be some guy come in, like, he's got some good stuff going on, gotta have a drink with him. Bad test day.

And tomorrow, if I tried the same test, somewhere in the middle of that second drink, it's like a key turns in my head. And then all of a sudden, my total ability to rationalize, to justify, to minimize things in my life, to change my perception, well, it'll do my mind will do anything necessary to make it seem perfect perfectly reasonable to have another drink to satisfy a craving that's driving me that I don't even know is driving me. And I think the next drink's my idea. When I could have went into that bar swearing to myself, 2, and that's it. I can't do the 2.

Or if I do do the 2, 3 hours later, I'm so irritable, I'm going back somewhere. Because it started an itch, I got a scratch. And I can't live without it, so I'm stuck, and I'm trying to take my own life. And in a vision for you, it says we get to a place, we can't imagine life with it anymore because I keep burning my life to the ground, and I'm I miss I'm I'm shooting if there's a fun part in there, I shoot by it so quickly, I don't even see it. I just go I just go from phenomena to craving, it seems like, to pathetic.

I mean, I used to I used to get 2 hours of fun before I got pathetic. I mean, I don't even get the 2 hours of fun anymore. I just get I just go right to pathetic. Right? And I can't imagine life with it, and I can't imagine life without it either, because abstinence is not good for me.

Abstinence feels sometimes like I'm dying of loneliness. And when I stood on that bridge trying to take my own life, I wouldn't have told you I was dying of alcoholism. It would have never occurred to me. Oh, I could admit, drinking is a problem. Yes.

Yes. Look, I got the DUIs. I've been in the institutions. I have to get detox. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. But that's not really the problem. I am absolutely convinced that's not really the problem.

What I think I'm dying from is loneliness and an absolute something I suspect something is wrong with me. Maybe emotionally, maybe physically, maybe maybe mentally, but there's something wrong with me that I I can't connect with people sober the way they connect with I don't fit in AA. I can't have relationships of of any degree of intimacy and success that I see people having all the time, there's something wrong with me. I I do bizarre things. My emotions are out of control often.

I I am moody sometimes. I can't control my feelings and my emotions, and then sometimes these blue periods and and other times bouts of anxiety, and I get uptight, and I can't see other people. You ever when you're like that and you look around you, it looks like everybody's fine, and then there's you. Right? Did you ever notice that?

It's it's really the the worst time to be it's really bad in AA. If you what's the worst is is to be really, really depressed or just overcome with fear locked in your own head, and then go to a really upbeat spiritual positive meeting, where you just sit there and it's like you just know there's something wrong with you that's not wrong with any of those people. You know? It's just a horrible feeling. And alcoholism is a disease of separation.

And I drank to overcome that at one time, but alcohol doesn't help me anymore. And I don't know what's wrong with me, but I don't think it's drinking, and it's not. What's really wrong with me is a malady of my being, of my spirit called alcoholism. And if if it would have been so simple that my problem was alcohol, then my first treatment center would have solved my problem. But I got something more insidious called alcoholism.

The book says we get to that place, we can't imagine life with it, we can't imagine life without it. It says, we'll know loneliness such as few do. We'll be at the jumping off place. I'm on a bridge, and we'll wish for the end. Oh, yeah.

Do you know that in the Jelinek chart of the progression of the disease of alcoholism, it is only in the last stages of alcoholism when you're just about dead? You're at a point where you're either better pretty quick recover or you're gonna die, that alcoholics of my type start wishing we were dead or at least thinking we were wishing we had the courage to kill ourselves or even thinking if you're sitting here and you've had thought you've had thoughts and you've come 2 mornings and you wished you were dead, or you've had those kind of thoughts and feelings, let me tell you, you may not you may delude yourself into thinking that you're not that bad yet. Clinically, that's the last stages of alcoholism. The last stages. And I was in those last stages.

I could I was at the jumping off place. I wished for the end, and I didn't know what was wrong with me. And I this is where this is the state that I was in in 1978 when I came to you the last time. And this is really the state that it took me to break my self reliance so I would stop being at the helm of my own ship, and I could come into Alcoholics' office and buy your whole package. You know, there's an I don't know about you guys, but I go I go out and get drunk and go on a run, and alcohol may take everything away from me.

I'll end up back in a, and the first thing I get back is my goddamn opinion. You know, that's just the kind of guy I am. I can be 3 weeks sober and all of a sudden I'm in charge again, you know, in my head. Right? I know what's right.

I know what I need to do. I know I was, that's the state I was in when I ended up in a hospital in 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was facing 2 years in a state penitentiary in prison, and I was on the run. They were looking for me. A judge had put me into a treatment center to see how I would do, and and if I didn't do well, I was gonna do the 2 years of prison, and I split town and got out of there.

And I'm on the run, and I'm facing the prison. I'm all alone. There's no one left in my life. There's no one to call. And I end up in a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada at that place again where I can't I used to I'm the kind of guy that when at the end of my drinking, when you drink for oblivion and you're almost obsessed with blotting it out, what happens to me is I don't eat and I drink, I pass out, I come to, I drink, I pass out, I come to and you do that for a while, and then you get to a point where you can't even fit.

Your body just goes no more. And you try to drink and it comes back up on you. And you try to get it down because you're shaking, you're gonna jump out of your skin if you don't get enough alcohol in you to just to calm to calm the insane nerves that are exploding within you. And I and I had to go into a hospital because I was in danger of seizures. And and, in this hospital, something had happened to me.

And I didn't understand it until I I met a guy named Chuck Chamberlain, and Chuck talked about being surrendered by the bottle, and that's what exactly what had happened to me. I'm in this hospital, and I had this little window where enough of me had been beaten out of me to finally hear you. And for the first time in attending meetings in seven and a half years, The first time I didn't run the little dialogue in my head, the critique over what you were sharing. I just sat there like a child and let your experience wash over me. And I remember sitting there, and I found myself nodding my head and thinking secretly to myself, my god, I'm like these people.

That's not good news. I don't wanna be like you, but I am. And I'm I'm watching you. And you come some of you came in to this hospital a couple times a week and brought meetings in there and took guys out to meetings. And I'm watching you, and you're and and I started to get that you were like me, but yet you're not anymore.

And something has happened to you because you were something that you didn't used to be able to be, but you are now, and I can't get there. And you got there. And what you are is you're happy and sober at the same time. I can't imagine that. I don't know.

I don't get that. To me, AA has good news and bad news. The good news is that maybe if I went to 1,000 of those stupid meetings, I'd stay sober the rest of my life. The bad news, I'm gonna live a long goddamn time. I mean, I might you know, I can't imagine life without it.

But now I'm in a place where I can't imagine with it or without it. And I, I got a sponsor, which is not not only did I get a sponsor, I was willing to do anything he said. And he said a lot of things that didn't make sense, but I just did them. I just did them, and I I didn't know that I'd been surrendered. A friend of mine talks about surrender, and he says that if you ever watch the old war movies, when in in wars, when when when soldiers surrender, what they do is they put down everything that they have with them that they can defend themselves with.

Their guns, their knives, their their hand grenades, they put it all they lay it all down, walk away from it, and they sit down on the side of the road, and they will sit there and wait for somebody to tell them what to do. And that's exactly where I was at in 1978. I put down all my judgment, all all my, defense mechanisms. I just I had that window where my ego was beaten out of me enough that you could tell me what to do, and I would do it. I would do it like a surrendered soldier that they say, go over here and stand there.

I just go over there and stand there. They'd say, go to this meeting. Get there a half hour early. I just went to the meeting and got there a half hour early. They said, get down on your knees and pray.

I said, okay, but I don't believe in god. They said, we don't care. Do it anyway. I just did it. They told me to stand and greet people and stick my hand out.

They say they told me, look for the new people. Look for the guys. They so you got 4 weeks now. Look for the guys that got 1 week that looks scarter than you feel. Try to make them feel welcome.

This guy says to me, he says, you may be the only person in the room that the experience of the awkwardness and the difficulty of getting sober is fresh enough within you that you can actually let this guy that's new know that he's not alone, that there really is someone there that knows exactly how he feels. And I started doing that, and I started taking some other actions in my life, and my life started to change. And I, I off and I started, you know, I started having these experiences. I was about a couple months sober, and I realized that I was becoming happy sober. And I didn't understand it.

I was getting comfortable, and I was still periodically depressed and insane, but I was having windows in my life where I really felt enthusiastic about being here, where I started to connect with people. I'd sit and go to coffee shops after meetings and and get lit up with some of the conversations we'd have. I'd started feeling a part of. And, you know, when you come off the streets and you're a homeless guy, really, Alcoholics Anonymous gave me everything. People in AA gave me clothes to wear because I didn't have any money, and I didn't have a job, and I didn't have any clothes.

They gave me cigarettes because I couldn't afford cigarettes. They gave me rides to meetings. And and I walked and hitchhiked a lot, but they gave me all they gave me rides often. And they were very free with the most important thing that they ever had. They were free with their time and their attention.

And they sat with me sometimes for hours in coffee shops. And one day, a guy gave me a bunch of clothes after a meeting, and he gave them to me. I tell you, there are people in Alcoholics Anonymous that are incredibly gifted and skilled lovers, Because you to love someone who cannot be loved and cannot accept love is an art form, really. And a guy this guy came up to me named Tim, and I'll never forget Tim. And Tim has has relapsed since then.

He's had some struggles, but he's a great, great member of Alcoholics Anonymous at that time in his heart. And he came up to me after the meeting, and he says to me he says, I really need your help. I said, yeah. What what do you need, Tim? He said, come on out to my car.

I take takes me out to his car, and he opens his trunk, and he's got all these really nice clothing in there. He's got sport coats, and pants, and shirts, and they're just from the dry cleaners, and they're all folded, and they're all neat, and they're just they're really nice. And he says to me he says, you know, my wife is on my back about getting rid of some of this stuff. And I'll tell you, if I don't if I can't get rid of it, I think she's gonna divorce me. You could really help me out here if you could take this stuff.

I thought, well, yeah. I I almost said, do you do you have a car you need to get rid of? But I didn't say that. I didn't I just I took the clothes. But he knew exactly how to give that to me.

See, if he'd have come up to me to meet and say, I know you don't got anything. Let me give you some. I you know what I've done? I said, I don't need nothing, because I feel so unworthy of your help. And one of the things he gave me, he had a box of books, and I I took these books home.

He said, you like to read, and I I like to read. I'm a reader. Some people watch TV. I I kill time by reading. And I started reading this book that it was not AA.

It was not recovery. It was not even a self help book. It was just simply a very simple novel, and I was reading it for entertainment. And I got to a part of this novel that just blew my mind. And it all of a sudden, when I read this, I connected the dots, and I understood exactly what had happened to me.

I understood all of a sudden why now I'm able to come to the table in AA, and I couldn't before. And here's what I read. I read about this account of these scientists that were doing experiments on the human brain. And they discovered in the human brain was a part in the book had a Latin name, but they called it the pleasure center. It's the part of the the brain that allows you to experience the euphoria from alcohol and drugs.

It's where you get high in your mind. It's what enables you to feel that feeling. And so what these scientists did is they took these laboratory rats, and they put 2 tiny wire filaments into the pleasure center of the rat's brain, and then they would pass a mild undetectable charge through those wires to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. And when they did that, they discovered that the rat got high. So what they did is they took the they took the juice and they hooked it up to a petal in the rat's cage, and the rat would learn it could hit that petal and get high.

So the rat would just lay on the damn pedal. I mean, you know, he's he don't eat, he don't drink water. He don't even have sex. He's he's too busy. I'm not now, baby.

I'm partying. He just keeps hitting that bell. Sit that bell. Hit a bell. Hit a bell.

And he would do that until he died. Usually, of either starvation or dehydration, because he wouldn't even drink water or eat. He just hits that pedal. Now most alcoholics get that. Matter of fact, I can see by the glazed eyes of some of you, there's some rats in this room tonight.

I mean, you get that. But but that's not that's not what really hooked me and got me. What I start then what happened is I started reading about these sign these same scientists would wait until a rat was just about dead. And right before he's almost dead, they would turn the juice off. And this time, the rat would go back, and he'd hit the petal, only nothing would happen.

And he'd hit it again, and nothing would happen. And again and again and again in countless futile attempts to turn the juice back on until he finally got to that place where he got it, that there is no more juice, that the party's over. And instead of being able to go back to being a rat, he would curl up in a ball and lay on the floor of the cage to die, because without the juice, there's nothing to live for. And I'm reading that, and I'm crying because I'm not reading about no rat. I'm reading about me.

That's exactly how I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't come I didn't come here in 1978 for sobriety or spirituality or, oh, I just want a sponsor or just let me at those amends, please. Or or do you have an inventory I can write? I mean, not. Oh, I just wanna sponsor people.

No. I didn't want I don't want any I don't want any of that. I'm here out of an absolute lack of alternatives. I can't I can't get back to the good old days, and I can't live without it. I'm stuck, and I'm desperate, and I started following your directions.

If if God would have appeared before me in my early sobriety and said, Bob, we'll give you one wish, it wouldn't have been sobriety. You know what I would've said to god if I could've if I could've sorted out my mind and would've known that what to really ask for what my heart desired? I would've said, god, give me 3 years of drinking like I had when I was 18 years old. You give me those 3 years, you can kill me at the end of those 3 years, but I want those 3 years. I wanna sit with the bands again.

I wanna dance. I wanna get laid. I wanna have fun. I wanna be able to come out and play. I wanna laugh, god.

I wanna be like I used to be. But instead, I got a big book and a sponsor and a not what I would have asked for. And if you're new, I I what I'm about to say, I I hope you hear this. And even if you don't even if you you hear it and you have a hard time believing it, I want you to know something. I'm not a salesman for Alcoholics Anonymous.

What I'm about to tell you is absolutely my honest experience. I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous, the process in these 12 steps, when put in to action by an alcoholic who's desperate, that everything we do in here, having a sponsor, helping others, service commitments, everything is to one end and one end only, and it's not to get you to quit drinking. Wanna quit drinking? Punch a cop. You'll quit drinking.

What Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to do is to turn the juice back on. It's designed to create a transformation and a rearrangement very slowly within me until someday what happens and I don't it happens for every one of us. And it's usually somewhere after we've been through the 12 steps. We've survived the first couple hurdles as our ego has come back and tried to run the universe again, and starts judging everybody. It usually happens when we've settled in here, and we're sponsoring guys, and we love them, and we get to we're watching guys get their kids back that could never see their kids.

We're watching guys buy their first home that were homeless 3 or 4 years before. We're watching the hand of a loving god in not only in our own lives, but the lives of others. And what happens is that I start to realize that some that I am alive today and vital in a way inside myself in in relationship to this world that only ever happened for me, and I only ever felt like this on small little occasions with just the right amount of vodka and just the right amount of drugs when I had the balance just right. That what I've really duplicated in Alcoholics Anonymous slowly is I've recreated the experience that I drank for, except that this is substantial, and I'd never have gone to jail for helping too many people in AA. But I've gone to jail for seeking that other solution well beyond the point where it worked.