The How to recover from a spiritual malady weekend seminar in Fresno, CA

I'm Bob Darrell, and I'm an alcoholic. Would you join me, after a moment of silence in an opening prayer I like to use? Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you. Everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, and everything I think I know about my own recovery for a new experience in you, lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in my fellows, and a much needed new experience in my own recovery. Amen.

What we're gonna try to what I'm gonna try to do, and I'm not a I'm not an expert on the big book or the steps or anything like that. What I am is a guy who throughout the early seventies, came in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous and relapsed over and over and over again. And I tried to stay sober on the fellowship, and I couldn't understand what was wrong. Why in the why I kept going back to it, until I eventually, in 1978, came into Alcoholics Anonymous the last time. And I I've had some people that were put in my path that showed me how to put the process in this book into my life.

And and like everything in Alcoholics Anonymous, I am just basically gonna share with you my experience with that. And, I hope that it might be useful. On page 20 of the book, I wanna there's a little paragraph that I belong to a home group in Las Vegas. It's called the specific group, and a lot of people think the group is named after a group in California, and it's not the The group the group is named after a passage that I'm gonna read on page 20 that really is our purpose, and we read it at the beginning of every meeting. And it's what we're gonna try to do this weekend.

It says, you may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very ill from drinking. Doubtless, you're curious to discover how and why in the face of expert opinion to the contrary that we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. If you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may be already asking, what do I have to do? It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. And that's really what what my experience has been with this process in the big book is is that I learned that I had the the spiritual malady and physical allergy of alcoholism.

The big book defines the problem. It spends matter of fact, it spends probably 2 thirds of the working text on defining the problem. And then it tells you what the solution is And then very specifically, not off the wall like you see in the meetings, but specifically gives you blow by blow directions on how to implement that solution into your life. And what I wanna try to share with you is my experience with that and how much it's changed my life. I tell you when I when I started and I said I'm an alcoholic, I know I'm an alcoholic because I fit the description of an alcoholic or or you can almost say it's a definition, but it doesn't really call it that.

That it talks about in we agnostics on page 44. It talks the book says if 2 things are present in you, you're the alcoholic that this book was written for. You're the guy that this was written for. And it's at the 4th lie down on page 44, it says, if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. I'm both of those things.

You know, the thing about if when you find when you honestly want to, like, really, since sincerely this time, I mean it unlike the other 30 times I thought I meant it. This time, I really, really mean it. And it says quit entirely. What do they mean by entirely? I mean, they don't really mean entirely.

I mean, I quit drinking for long periods of time to keep me properly medicated, but what I can't do is I can't stop doing everything. I'm like doctor Bob. If you read doctor Bob's story, doctor Bob was able to stay away from alcohol for sustained periods of time with sedatives and medications. Matter of fact, in his own story, he said that he used those every day of his life for, I think, it was 17 years in order to function so he could still go to work. Because every time he was just like me, every time he started, he couldn't stop.

And that's the second thing it says, or if when you honest, not only when you honestly want to, you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take. And that was always true for me. There was something about me from the very first time I started drinking as 12 years old that I seemed to have an inability to shut it down when I should. I always went too far. And I, and it said I had both of those things.

I'm not only powerless over alcohol once I start drinking, but I am powerless to stay stopped once I've been stopped. It's a double double deal. There are some there there are types of of drinkers that, I think there are 2 different types of alcoholics. There's acute alcoholism and chronic alcoholism. This the book of Alcoholics Anonymous in AA was designed for chronic alcoholics.

But there's an acute alcoholic and I grew up with guys like that and there are people who because of their alcohol consumption, they drink so much, so heavily for so long that they they become debilitated as a result of their massive alcohol consumption. And they are powerless over alcohol while they are drinking. Once they're in the process of drinking, they just they always go too far, they're bad like that. But their powerlessness ends where the bottle ends. Once they've been detoxed, their alcoholism goes away.

And once they make up their mind that they'll never drink again, they just do. They just don't drink no more. I grew up with guys like that, but I'm the guy that when I honestly want to, I can't quit entirely. And I've said to myself anybody in here besides me ever said to yourself, this time, I'm never gonna touch that stuff again? Right?

Okay. Then of all people that have said that, how many have touched it again? Right? Yeah. Right?

Okay. I'm that guy. I'm that guy. Don't mean to be, but I'm that guy. And we're gonna we're gonna get into a little bit about why why this thing is like that.

Doctor Silkworth, I think Alcoholics Anonymous owes Silky a tremendous debt. He he really I don't think we would be here without him, without his input to Bill Wilson about the disease of alcoholism. On in the doctor's opinion on page XXVIII in the 4th edition, I think it's a different page in the 3rd, I'm not sure. But it's at the top of the page where it says, we believe. In the 4th edition, it's XXVIII.

I think in the anybody have a 3rd edition? No? What is it? Just 2 eyes in the 3rd edition? No.

Is it 4 3 eyes? Okay. Anyway, it says we believe and suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics that's me, chronic. I have chronic alcoholism. I don't have acute alcoholism.

My alcohol is not my alcoholism is not induced by alcohol. And that's the I think that's the the this is subtle difference between me and people who are problem drinkers. I did not I am not an alcoholic because I drank obsessively and abusively. I drank obsessively and abusively because I'm alcoholic. Very subtle difference.

Very subtle difference. It's it's what came first, the chicken or the egg. I am not now there I'm not an acute alcoholic or a person has acute alcoholism. Their alcoholism comes from drinking. My drinking comes from alcoholism.

I'm the guy that if you were to if you would have if I when I was 15 years old, if you would have transplanted me to another planet where there was no alcohol, I'd have found some fungus or something. You know what I mean? I right? I have I've been grinding rocks up and stuff. I've been finding some kind of alcohol there.

You know what I'm saying? Right? That's because I got alcoholism. I'd have been found I'd have found it. These chronic alcoholics, the action of alcohol on chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy.

And and Silkworth talks about something unlike other allergies, like if you have an allergy to strawberries and eat strawberries, you break out in hives. We don't break out in hives when I drink. I break out in what Silkworth calls a phenomenon of craving. That is my allergic reaction to alcohol. I ingest alcohol into my system and I develop a craving.

But most of the time, I don't know that that's happening. I don't get it. Because a craving, you never realize you have a craving until you can't satisfy it. Everyone in this room right now is in the grip of a craving you're not aware of, and that's the craving to breathe air. And you're not you never think about it because you satisfy it.

But if someone were to slip up behind you with a plastic bag and put it over your head, you'd realize instantly you have this craving to breathe air. And my drinking was like that because I very very seldom ever allowed myself to be in a position where I had 3 or 4 drinks and then could not get anymore for a sustained period of time. If you've ever been in that place, it makes you crazy. It's like a stone in your shoe until you eventually got to go find some more alcohol. That's the phenomenon of craving.

And Silkworth says that this phenomenon of craving is limited to this class, to us, to people with chronic alcoholism and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. And because of that, these allergic types, these guys like me, who once I take a drink, there's something in my wiring where I react to alcohol differently than nonalcoholics. My sister doesn't have alcoholism, and I watch her drink. And a funny thing of what to me is an alcoholic, what her reaction to alcohol seems like a phenomenon to me, just as my reaction to alcohol seems like a phenomenon to her. But she'll take about 2 drinks, maybe 3, maybe 2a half.

And, you know, she starts to get that buzz. You know what I'm saying? That little buzz, that glow starts coming in in her wiring. That buzz is interpreted as, woah. Woah.

Woah. Woah. Woah. Hey. K.

Back off from this thing. Getting a little out of control here. Now my wiring is I get that same feeling and it's like, whoo, you know, full speed ahead. And we're different. My sister, I could never she would look at me and wonder why do you gotta drink yourself into stupidness every single time?

And I would like and I'd look at her and say, why do you stop when it's getting good? You know what I mean? Right? I don't understand her, but it's not a craving for her. Couple drinks of alcohol make her feel like she's losing control.

Couple drinks of alcohol make me feel like I'm about to get control. I drank with an urgency. I drank with a feeling most of my drinking like I am about to arrive, and I suspected it was on the next drink. And that's why I always drink I was always one drink ahead of myself. You know what I mean?

You're sitting at a bar, and I'm drinking and I'm already figuring out better get the other one lined up. Because I always had a feeling like I'm not there yet, but I knew I was I always had a sense that I'm about to be there. And then I don't think I ever really got there except maybe in the very early days. But I spent most of my drinking being almost crazy because I'd get so close to there I could almost touch it, but I couldn't quite get it. It was just one more, one more, one more, one more, one more.

And I'd come to somewhere, don't know if I got there or not. I'm that guy. And it says that guys like me because of this phenomenon of craving, these allergic types, it says we can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. Now, I I imagine I'd I'm not sure what Silkworth means by that. Earlier in this chapter, he talks about his experience with people with alcohol and mind altering drugs.

And he there's a book out, written by Charlie Townes who, I I don't I don't know what alcohol in any form means to you. It might mean beer, wine, whiskey, gin, and rum, and tequila. But I think from my experience, and this is only thing I have to base it on is I think that for some of us, I don't even know about us, but I know for me, there were other things that did the same thing for me. I think there was I was allergic not not only to certain beverages, I'm allergic to certain pills. I can take vitamin c and aspirin all day long, never never get weird.

You give me a Valium, and I'm gonna end up watching a donkey act in tick in Tijuana before the week's over. You know? I'm gonna be I'm gonna be somewhere crazy because it sets something off in me. And so what I my life depended upon me finding out what are the 4 what what is alcohol to me? What does that to me?

Off of me and my emotions off of me. When that anything that'll do that for me, I've discovered that I have an allergic reaction to it, and I never ever really get a feeling of getting enough. I know I have this phenomena of craving for a couple reasons. 1 is I look back through my whole drinking career. And I'll tell you honestly, I can't tell you one moment when I was drinking where I ever really had a sense of drinking just enough.

I have never had the experience of being in a bar drinking for an hour or 2 or in a party and have the bartender come by and say, Bob, would you like another drink? I've never known the experience of sitting there and thinking to myself, this no. This is just right. I've never been there. It's always more, more, more, more, more.

You see, if if that wasn't true, if I could get to just right, then I would have been able to shut it down without going too far. But when you can never get just right, you always go too far because there's never enough. And, that was my experience all every through my whole drinking. The bottom of page XXVII, Silkworth talks about the other aspect of the alcohol of alcoholism from alcoholics with chronic alcoholism. If if all there was to alcoholism was the phenomenon of craving, then, Betty for or then, Nancy Reagan when she said that deal just say no would have worked for people like me.

But what is it about me that after 3 or 4 treatment centers, after getting arrested, after getting it, getting it, that this is destroying me and making up my mind. This time, I mean it. I'm never gonna touch that stuff. What is it about me that draws me back to that in spite of overwhelming information that to drink again is a very bad idea for me? Socor touches on it.

This insanity, the sickness of heart that we have in the bottom of this page. And he says, men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol, and I think that's probably true for everybody. The difference between me and nonalcoholics is not only do I like the effect, there's something inside me that yearns for the effect, that needs the effect, secretly needs the effect. This sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. The last couple years of my drinking were pathetic.

I had crossed into a realm of alcoholism where I had wrung all the fun out of it, and I'm not it's it's no longer the kind of drinking where I am at a bar and I'm shooting pool and dancing and talking to the girls and I'm getting laid and meeting people. It's no longer the type of alcoholism where where alcohol is a social lubricant. It's no longer the deal where it's a party. And yet, I I can't, differentiate the truth from the false because every time after a period of several months of abstinence, and I will start a run again, I will start the run with a high level of anticipation that it's gonna be like it was when I was 18 years old. In in spite of the reality that it hadn't been that way for 2 or 3 years, I will become convinced it's gonna be like that again.

Because I don't wanna face the truth. I don't know. I would rather believe the delusion. You know what delusion is? It's psychotic, wishful thinking.

It's like evidences it's not this way, but I want it to be that way so bad that I'm willing to to alter my vision of reality in my mind to imagine that it can be that way again. Now I've not only been that kind of delusional about alcohol, I've been that way in relationships, about all kinds of stuff. I mean, just wacko crazy stuff. I can't differentiate the truth from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one.

Not only do I adjust to the damage I create my life and I just, you know, it's really kinda sad when you at the the end of the last couple years of my drinking if, if you would ask me how I was doing and I had enough money in my pocket to get drunk that day, I'd have probably told you I was doing fine. If you'd asked my mother how I was doing, she would have broken to tears. But see, as I spiral down into oblivion and and lower levels of degeneration and more crossed all those barriers and those lines I'd never cross and do the things that I told myself I'd never do and living with the lies and the hurt and the disappointment and the broken relationships and the lost jobs. I just adjust to that journey to hell. Every step of the way I make it normal for me somehow.

I alter my view of reality. This is okay. And it's because the the road to hell is not like a ski jump. It's an incremental thing. It's just gradual.

They call it a progressive illness. It's a gradual thing. To me, my it seems the only normal one and that my the big secret and the thing that I don't want anybody to realize, I don't even want to face myself. And it's one of the reasons I returned to drinking when it's even though I know it's killing me. Is that the only time in my life I really ever felt normal.

The only is when I in the early days when I was half lit up. It's the only time I ever really felt like you looked. It was the only time that I ever able was able to fit and integrate myself with you the way you always seem to do so easily. If you ever remember the that feeling of separation of loneliness of of being at sober in a party or a dance and standing back in the corner watching everybody else integrate in that sick lonely feeling. Almost as if there's an invisible yet impenetrable barrier between me and you that you guys can don't have and you connect with each other and then there's me.

And I am distant and apart from and 5 shots of tequila and the barrier goes away and I am as a part I feel like you look. I connect and can talk to you and come out and play, and I'm a part of the way you've always looked to me to be that I could never do on my own. And see the real reality, my big secret is that I owe I really that's normal to me. That's normal to me. Now to the rest of the world, when I'm drunk, I don't look normal.

I look drunk. But to my internal reality, that's a better grade of normal than I am when I look normal to the rest of you and I'm sober, but feel so apart from. My alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And then this is the part. This is Silkworth.

This next line touches on the spiritual malady. He doesn't call it that at this party. Later, he refers to it. He says to me, to us, to them, these these chronic alcoholics, they are restless, irritable, and discontented unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort, which comes at once by taking a few drinks. Drinks which they see others taking with impunity.

Well, what's that mean? That means I get sober and my as I enter into abstinence, I become restless, irritable, and discontent. Unless I can once again experience the the thing I got from alcohol. That's why I go back to it. So for all practical purposes, my alcoholism starts where the bottle ends.

I enter into a state of abstinence, and the further I get from the last drink, the more restless, irritable, and discontent I become. And if you don't know what that means, I think you do. If you're a real alcoholic, you every alcoholic I've ever known has had that subtle low level feeling of restlessness. It's it's a it's like an inability to feel settled in your own life. It's it's you ever watch a dog circle a room looking for its spot to lay down?

I'm a dog who can't find its spot. Right? There's a restlessness about and irritable is that life and people especially rub me the wrong way. They irritate me. They threaten me.

And I don't even I don't even connect the dots and understand that that's what's going on. But one, I find myself in 1 or 2 1 of 2 emotional stances towards life. One is that I I'm I get times I'm the guy the irritated guy that's on the muscle with people that flies off on the handle, you know, that's really kind of a pain in the ass to be around, or I'm the guy that's so threatened and rubbed the wrong way by you and life itself that I've withdrawn so deeply into me that some psychiatrist is diagnosing me as clinically depressed. And I'm not clinically depressed. I just run-in here and I go too far and I stay too long and I can't get out.

It's the depression of the overly self involved, and I'm that guy. And then the last thing, it says discontent. I think I heard a guy say this 25 years ago. He said that alcoholism was a disease of chronic malcontent. There's something about me that I never wanted to admit really is that no matter what good things life will bring me, the shine of them wears off very quickly.

And I have an I live in a world where people have good stuff happen and they're 5 years later, they're still grateful for it. You know? I'm the guy, you give me a brand new car within 3 weeks, it's the wrong color. You know what I mean? It it it it's just something like that with me.

And I didn't understand why am I that way? Why does why does nothing ever seem to ring my bell and really keep ringing it? And I just go through life. I go from one thing to another. This is it.

No. It's not. This is it. No. It ain't either.

This is it. No. That ain't it. Oh, she's it. No.

She wasn't. This job is it. No. It wasn't it. And it's just I just go like that.

It's just from one thing to another, and it it always appears like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No.

No. No. Right? It's my whole life's like that. The disillusion with the high hopes and then the the the the the you know, it's like awful.

And I'm this this chronic malcontent. And I'll tell you what I think it is. I think once you've tasted the connectedness that you get in the early days of drinking, once you've tasted that thing that happens to you after about 5 or 6 drinks and you could come out and play and you're in the zone and you can sing better than you can sing and you can dance better than you can dance and you're funnier than you've ever been, and you can talk to members of the alcohol of the opposite sex, and you you're a part of, and you know the glory of that, then everything in life pales by comparison. And what happens to me is I'm sober and I know I can't drink. It's killing me, but I don't feel very good.

And I see it. I see a job and I think my and then this happened to me. There were some guys I knew that had this job working in this steel mill, and this is back in the mid seventies, and they were making 20 some dollars an hour. That was an that's like $200 an hour today. And I remember thinking to myself, my god.

If I had a job like that, I'd be there. I'd be there. I'd you never get the feeling like if you were properly financed, you'd no longer feel the way you feel. You know what I mean? That kind of thing.

Right? And I and I got that job. I got that job. And I tell you, it wasn't wasn't even a month before I realized that this was that they they really didn't appreciate what I was doing, and they were taking advantage of me and, you know, and it was just people there were crap heads, and it was and I eventually left. I remember I I grew up with a guy, we used to drink together.

He did not have alcoholism even though at times he looked like he did. He was a problem drinker. He had acute alcoholic. He was an acute alcoholic rather than chronic. And, he met this girl and, they got together and they were getting married and she, gave an ultimatum.

She said, you know, I I don't want you I I can't live with this partying like you're partying, and you gotta make a choice. And he was seems very much in love with her and he said, no problem, sweetheart. And he put the plug in the jug and never looked back and never went back, walked away from that way of life, walked away from it. And I remember him seeing him doing that, and I remember thinking to myself, man, well, yeah. If I had somebody that loved me the way she loved him, I would probably be able to quit drinking.

And you know the problem with that is? It's not I found people that loved me the way she loved him, and I'd find them. It'd be great for a while, and then after a little while, I'd start no. You know, I just start noticing. I got one of those noticers.

You know what I mean? You I get you get me restless, irritable, discontent. I can I I can I I tell you I could find a turd at a buffet? You know what I mean? I guess I'm that kind of consciousness when I get like that.

My head gets like that. And I, I think what was happening is I compared what it I without realizing it, subconsciously never aware of it, I think on an emotional level, I eventually started to compare what it felt like to have that job and make all that money sober to what it felt like to have 5 shots of Jack Daniels, and all of a sudden the job didn't really do it. And then I started to compare what it felt like to have this gal love me to what it felt like to have 7 shots of Jose Cuervo and one the same thing. Now I never sat down consciously and thought any of that, but that's almost as if what was going on inside of me. I was expecting I was expecting these things to be a treatment for the spiritual malady of alcoholism.

You see when I stop drinking I start to get sick of spirit. And I don't it's not that's not really a religious thing. If you've ever if you've ever entered into a state of forced abstinence, whether it's your ID or somebody else's, it doesn't matter, and you're just not drinking. You know, if you're a real alcoholic, what it feels like to suffer from alcoholism sober. And I'll tell you why it's a spiritual deal because you could be put on an MRI when you're feeling like that and it will show up nothing's wrong.

But I'll tell you if you've ever had that thing eat your soul in here, it's as real as you are, and it does not exist on any kind of material or physiological plane, but it is real as I am. And when I would have 5 shots of Jack Daniels, this this spirit that seemed to get sick and depressed and removed and disconnected once I entered into abstinence, 5 shots of whiskey, vitalized that spirit when it worked. Now it didn't do that at the end because the alcoholism moved into us the chronic into the advanced stages where it stopped doing that for me. But it did that at one time. And so, I enter into abstinence and I'm restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontent until I can again experience a sense of ease and comfort.

Ease and comfort which where which I will frantically look everywhere for and fail to find until I eventually returned alcohol. Tried meds. Tried smoking stuff. I did marijuana maintenance for I was sober one time for about 6 months on marijuana maintenance, about as long as I could stand it. I was sober a couple times, several months on for not never a year, but a good part of a year one time on meds.

But the thing is I really hunger for a higher level of relief from my spirit than I was getting in marijuana, that I was getting in the medication. And so all it did for me was start a slow burn inside of me that eventually made me yearn for for the next level up. Right? I'm the kind of guy you give me a little a little bit of relief from the way I feel sober. I don't know about you guys.

Is a little bit of relief ever been enough for you? Real I mean, you know what I mean? A little bit? It's still don't tease me. I mean, you're just teasing me.

You might pacify me for a period of 7, 8, 10 months, but eventually, now you've opened the door. I know there's more relief there. You've reminded me and you've teased me and I'm gonna eventually, I just go for it. I I just can't help it because I got chronic alcoholism. I get a disease that starts where the bottle ends and I start to become sick of spirit.

Page 30, more about alcoholism. Book says most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. I didn't I tell you, I spent I don't know why I didn't wanna be an alcoholic, but I went to incredible lengths to not be an alcoholic. I thought I was willing to be a drug addict. I was willing to be a mental patient.

I was willing to have grave emotional problems. I was willing to be a relationship addict. I was willing to be anything about except an alcoholic. But I don't wanna be an alcoholic because then the gig's up, then I gotta quit drinking. I mean, that's not right.

I don't wanna I don't wanna be an alcoholic. I don't wanna be an alcoholic. Irreparable. I want to be something that I can kind of get over. You know that, let's get over this.

Let's get on with it. Let's get over it here and go on. I wanna go and that's one of the reasons that AA just I hated AA. And I always gravitated to psychiatrists. I liked psychiatrists.

And because I remember being in a treatment center, and I used to end up I kept ending up in AA over and over again. I and I kept thinking, I'm not an alcoholic, but, god, why is it every time I drink, I end up where all the alcoholics are at? What's what's what's with this? And I'm telling this guy in his treatment center one day. I said, I don't wanna go to that AA.

They're so negative. They talk about this absolute abstinence and this absolute abstinence and this powerlessness, and they can't manage your own life. If you say that crap enough, you'll start to believe it. Why do I don't wanna go there. It's negative.

Negative. Negative. Negative. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna be a real alcoholic.

I don't wanna be. I want I like therapy because I wanna get fixed. And I remember I had this illusion. I knew I was I was screwed up, but I couldn't figure out why. And I didn't come from an alcoholic home.

That would have made it easier. If my parents would have abused me and been bad drunks, I could have said, well, sure. Look. They did this to me. See?

But my parents loved me. My parents were never hurt. They were I went out of their way. They sacrificed for me. They did their I was the they loved me.

That was the center of their life. And I thought to myself I remember going to this therapist and telling him, I you know, I know my parents had seemed like they were good parents, but I suspect that they must have damaged me because I felt damaged. I suspected they must somebody must have done this to me. And we spent a long time in therapy, never figured it out. So I got him to send me to a hypnotherapist because I figured I must have blocked it out.

You know, they probably mis potty trained me or something, and I I didn't. I blocked it out. It was so horrible. Blocked it out, and it scarred me and warped me the rest of my life. And through hypnotherapy, I'll uncover what that is, deal with it, and like a child's helium balloon that's released, I will soar into mental health.

And I remember going to I got regressed back through my childhood and we spent, like, a long time in this hypnotherapy going back through stages in the years and touch. And I never found out what it was. Because I don't have a environmentally induced illness. I don't have a psychological illness even though it looks like it. The book has makes a statement that's very very amazing.

It says that when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. Well, if that's true, and that's really what alcoholics the people who you watch get better in alcoholics and healthier, they get they get healthier not through trying to make themselves healthier physically or mentally, they get healthier by applying spiritual principles to their life, and what happens is they straighten out mentally and physically. Well, if that's true through cause and effect, then maybe the reverse is true. Maybe I got crazy and looked like a nutcase because I was so sick of spirit that it was like a stone in my shoe that my head just spun on trying to figure out control. Maybe my disconnection and my inability to integrate myself in life because of a spiritual state of separation just made me crazy in the loneliness wrapped up inside my own head.

The book says when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically. I wanna tell you something, my head does not do what it used to do to me. And physically, I as a result of that, I haven't had to punish myself physically and I am physically probably in the best shape of my life, and I'm mentally probably in the best shape of my life if you don't leave me alone for too long. That's why I'm an everyday member of AA. I got a sponsor and I sponsor guys.

Because I could go I could kind of drift back to it's it's it's not that I get sick. You know what happens when I get sick? It's not I'm not sick, but you look sick to me. You know what I mean? When I'm getting spiritually sick, it looks like to me you're getting ill.

And I have this urgency to straighten you out. And that's a lonely business when you get like that. It's a lonely lonely business. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. I will always be that way.

I'll never overcome that. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless faint attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

The book talks about 3 illusions or delusions in alcoholism. This is not denial. This is more hideous than denial. Denial is like, I stole your wallet. You asked me if I've seen your wallet, and I got it in my pocket.

I know I got it, and I lied to you. I deny that I got your wallet. This is not denial. This is like I got your wallet and I don't even believe I got your wallet. Right?

I am like and then what is it that that that I can control and enjoy my drinking? What's that mean? It means that I'm gonna be able to get back to the good old days in spite of the fact that I haven't been able to do that, and that I'm gonna be able to jump start the party and get back to those days when it was glorious. Get back to those days where where you walked into a bar and you can't talk to anybody and you're depressed and your head spinning in it, you can't get your own life off of you and you have 5 shots of Jose Cuervo and you come out and play. Seven shots and you look around the bar and realize, I love all these people.

I love you, man. Do you ever do you ever get I remember I remember being at this bar they used to go to. They I this this like this bar was like sacred ground for me because I could walk in there so sick. And after a little period of time of drinking, just feel so a part of it. I remember feeling so connected in love with the people in there.

It would almost bring tears to my eyes. You know? Just like, oh, when you've been as lonely and as isolated as I had been, to all of a sudden be a part of like that is a tremendous thing, Tremendous thing. And then I have the illusion that I'm gonna con I'm gonna enjoy it like that one more time. In spite of overwhelming evidence that the last couple years I drank, it ain't it's not like that anymore.

It's not that party. And it says to control it. I've never been so deluded to imagine when I went on a run after period of several months of abstinence that I'm not gonna pay a price. I always knew that. I always knew that there was a price to be paid.

My delusion is that I have enough control to keep the price down to something I can live with. Right? That's the delusion. That's the delusion that my one friend had, that I heard of that took my one friend who told me about a guy that he sponsored who went on his last run. He was sober about 2 years.

And he woke up in jail and he was and this is a guy that was a was a a bookkeeper. I mean, he was like a real milk toast guy that never got in trouble, and he was he came to in jail and he in a blackout, he'd shot and killed his wife and kids and tried to kill himself and they took the gun away from him. And it was the great, oops. Maybe I can't control it as much as I thought I could. See, when I would drink at the as the disease progressed in me, what happened is 2 things that were hideous.

Is one thing is the disease progressed, my ability to have fun and reap ease and comfort and can be connected and and have a party and come out and play got less and less and less. And at the same time, the problems got more and more and more. And it was almost as if over the years as I drank, some hideous force was changing things. In the very beginning when I would start drinking, it was like spinning a roulette wheel. And I go on a run, and on that roulette wheel there'd be drag racing, dancing, and getting laid, and jam sessions, and singing acapella music with the guys.

It'd be a little bit of throwing up occasionally, little bit of getting in trouble once in a while. But for the most part, it would come up that roulette wheel, come up good stuff. In this hideous force that that's part of the progression of the disease, it was like stuck in there and started changing crap on that wheel. And putting up more wet pants, blackouts, going to jail, getting physically sick, crying JAGS, broken noses, fights. Until the very end, I'm spinning that wheel thinking frantically there's gotta be a party in here somewhere.

I know there's gotta be. If I could make it come up party 50% of the time and I could keep the damage down to something that's a price to pay but something I can live with, I'll tell you something, I'd still be drinking. I had never got sober. I did not get sober because I came to my senses one day and realized this is something I really should do. A guy with more mental health than me maybe could have done that, not me.

I had to take it to 3 years past the point where it's fun anymore, and I my life is the price I'm paying is hideous. And I go on a run, I don't know what's gonna happen. I go on a run and I just may get drunk drunk and feel sorry for myself and feel bad and be sick and hungover, or I might come to in a jail cell as I did up in Maine covered with blood and don't know why I'm there and find out that I the only friend I had left on the face of the earth, I took a hunting knife with a blade this long and opened his chest up. Or I just might get a DUI or I don't know what's gonna happen. I never knew.