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

I'm Bob Darrell, an alcoholic. It's good to be here. And I'd Matt's not here to thank. Anybody go out to the coffee bar? Did you ever did you notice that Matt's got a is a little peculiar heat?

He's got dozens of doughnuts, and then to eat the doughnuts, he's got chopsticks. I'm waiting to I've been just kind of lingering skulking around out there waiting for somebody to try to eat one of those donuts with a chopstick. Just see how that how that works. Back on page 60. So if we are convinced of the ABCs, step 1, step 2 basically, we were at step 3.

Convinced is a is a pretty powerful word, That's not mean doesn't mean you to you sorta get it. No. Convinced. One of the the major differences, in Alcoholics Anonymous between now and what it was back in the forties, late thirties and forties, and even up probably until early fifties, maybe 51, 52. Is it back in those days, if you look through AA history, you just didn't there was not a hoard of newcomers that just came to AA.

You had to be sponsored into AA. As a matter of fact, if you read working with others, what they did is that they would interview you, and they were in they would interview you before. You never came. They wouldn't give you a chance to come to their meetings and dominate the meeting and talk about your issues. They had to interview you, and a group group of guys would take you up at doctor Bob's house.

They'd take you up stairs, and they'd talk to you about the disease, or they'd come and see you in the hospital. And if they if they were convinced that you were convinced, they started to take you through the steps, and it was not a option. It you didn't have the opportunity to say, well, let me go to your meetings for a year or 2, and then I'll see if I want you you're not ready. Sorry. See you later.

We'll be here if you ever want us. But and I think that's why the success rate back in those days was 75%. And now it's I don't know. I have no idea. 2 maybe?

I don't know. 2% maybe? 3? I don't know. 5?

I don't know. It's not it's not 75. The forward to the second edition, which was written in 1955, Bill made a statement, and I've done a bunch of research to see if he was if he was being overzealous in his statement, and I think he was pretty accurate. He said in 1955 when he wrote that that 50% of all the people who came day a, and then here's the qualifier, and really tried, that actually came here and did this, 50% never drank again the rest of their lives. And of the other 50%, half of them had had a relapse and then never drank again the rest of their life, and there was 25.

The other 25% had said, well, it's it's he's he uses a weird term. He says they showed improvement, and I think what that really means is that guys that maybe would have died years before from alcoholism. Maybe they didn't stay sober the rest of their life, but maybe they got 10 years that they wouldn't had as a result of coming in and out of AA. So 70% of the people who tried Alcoholics Anonymous in those days got once and for all lifetime sobriety. Well, it ain't like that now.

I got boxes of pictures at my house that I go through every once in a while of a events that go back, to the late set to the seventies. And I look through those pictures of some of the big gatherings and stuff and I most of the people that I see in those pictures have died drunk, committed suicide because it's different. You can come to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for years and be a chronic slipper and never be required to do anything here. And you can even come here for years and do that or come here and stay dry for years and never work any steps and sponsor other people and encourage them to just come to the meetings and share your feelings, and don't you work any steps either, and we'll just really get us all on the same we will just it's kinda like a fellowship that will we'll grow sick together. We just, you know, we've had a rash of, suicides with long term sobriety in Las Vegas, over the last, 5 years.

A lot of people. The last one was a guy I'd known for years named Tim. 31 and a half years of sobriety blew his brains out. Sober, sort of. He was on antidepressants.

Tim had never worked the steps. Tim had stayed sober for 25 years as a result of a great sponsor, a guy named Mark. Mark was a great guy. Mark would hammer him about stuff constantly. Mark did Mark did Tim step 10 for him, I think, every day.

Right? And he was very active and then Mark died of cancer and, Tim never got another sponsor, stopped doing the deal, got depressed, got on antidepressants. So I was on those for about 4 years, 5 years. Like, I don't know what happened. I think they quit working.

He blew his brains out. My friend Frank who got sober right before me, Frank would have had 20 6 years or 27 years maybe now. And when he was 23 and a half years sober, he put a plastic bag over his head with a rubber band, wrote a note to AA telling them about all his he didn't saying that he declaring he didn't drink for out of his respect for his being chairman of our inner group and the founder of the young people's round up and took his own life. Bright eyes at 17 years sober, put a pistol to her head and Chuck who is with about Chuck must had 14 years. Chuck was Chuck had become one of the greatest greatest cardiac surgeons in the world.

They used to people would come to him from all over the world. He's one of the greatest heart specialist there was, had everything. Put a 12 gauge shotgun to his head. It was a little more efficient. Mike who would have had 9 years was almost 9 years sober, who is the co owner of the world's largest Harley Davidson dealership, one of the most successful construction companies in Las Vegas made possibly 7 figures a year.

And he, at almost 9 years sober, he took a 357, I think it was a 3, maybe it was a 38, but took a pistol shot his own reflection in the mirror, and then put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, and it didn't kill him. And the police report said that he, in this huge mansion, in this big house he had, he staggered around there for 15 minutes trailing blood until he eventually got up enough courage to shoot himself the second time. How do you shoot yourself the second time? What level of spiritual pain do you have to be in to shoot yourself the second time? And these are guys that had everything, kids that loved him, opportunity, wealth, abundance, friends, that everything outside but they missed it in here.

And, some people get the luxury of missing it in there and it doesn't kill them, but we are different. So the book says we gotta turn our will and our life over. We decided to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood him. Just what do we mean by that, just what do we do? The first requirement is that we be convinced, here's that word again, Convinced that any life run on self will can hardly be a success.

Well, that's a hard thing to become convinced of really. I mean, it the problem with that, it's it's a very similar delusion that I had for controlling and enjoying my drinking. The idea that I can control and enjoy my sobriety is just as delusional as the idea that I can control and enjoy my drinking. And the reason that drinking, the delusion was fortified, is that I had times in my drinking where I got away with it. There were a few instances where I would go out drinking, I I would have a good time, I would get laid, I would have some fun with the guys, things were going good and I didn't get in a lot of trouble.

And I years later, even though those events, it wasn't like that anymore, I would always look back at those few times and and think how it's gonna be like that again. And I do the same thing with running my own life. A lot When you run your life on self will, what happens is occasionally, just the roll of the dice, Occasionally, it works out. Okay. But even a broken clock's right twice a day.

That doesn't mean I can run my own life. It just means that once in a while it works out. And I will look at the once in a while that it worked out and focus on that in the face of the other 30 instances where it got me alone and feeling like crap and depressed, and I'll look at that and fortify the illusion I can run my own life. So it's hard to become convinced. I think the only way most of us become convinced to that really is to try and fail.

We crash and burn in sobriety sometimes or in the process of going in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous that we have, we surrender our inability to manage our own lives. And we're gonna talk a great depth about what that means. On that basis, and they're talking about the basis of running our life on self will, on that basis, we are almost always in collision with something or somebody even though our motives are good. My motives are always good. Even if I don't have good motives, give me a minute.

I will come up with some. I have an infinite ability to rationalize, justify, or defend myself. I I just I just I'm good like that. I was talking to a guy not too long ago who's he's dry about 7 or 8 months, and he's he's gonna go he's either gonna drink again or he's gonna surrender, and he's on the verge. And we talk I talked to him a lot about step the first three steps and because he can't get it.

And I'll say things to him about surrender, and he noticed, he'll say his response to me is and you when he says this, you know he doesn't get it. He says things to me back like, so so you mean I'm not supposed to be ambitious? No. So, you mean I'm not supposed to defend myself, stand up for myself? You know, he he's he can't he doesn't get it.

He can't get what surrender means. Right? He it it it's a frightening idea for him, because if he doesn't stand up for himself, and defend himself, and manage things, and make everything right, his great fear is, well, who will? Oh, what about that God thing? Who's made what's he what's his name?

God. That's right. God. Maybe God would. We're either everything or he's nothing.

He either is or he isn't. Some people some of us have a hard time imagining that that could happen for us. The fear, the death grip we get on our own lives is overwhelming. It's hard to let go of hard to let go of. Most people try to live by self propulsion.

Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, the rest of the players, the people at work, the people in the family, the guys in my aid group, the people in traffic, in my own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody including himself would be pleased and life would be wonderful. Wonderful. If they would only behave.

In my early sobriety, my sponsor had me read these 2 and a half pages over and over and over and over again, and I don't get it. I'm reading about this actor who wants to run the whole show, and I and I I can't see that I'm that way. Now I could see how there were a lot of people in AA like that, and I really want to tell them now that I know. And I've I kinda fantasized. My sponsor wanted me to read this so I would understand what's wrong with these other people in our group, so I could straighten them out.

Right? But I couldn't see it in me. There's a line in the 12 by 12 that says that we can see our defects of other we're quick to see our defects of others of ours our defects of character in others before we can ever see them in ourselves. And I could see you running the show. I could see that you were like the actor that was part of a cast that's trying to tell everybody else how to do their job, but I couldn't see I could be doing the exact same actions and I couldn't see that I was doing it.

And the difference is when you're doing it you're trying to run the show, you're trying to control. I am absolutely convinced when I'm doing the exact same actions. I'm not trying to run the show, I'm just trying to make things nice. Right? See, I think I'm right.

That's why in the steps from step 4 through step 10, The whole the thrust of the steps in those steps is I gotta get it when I'm wrong. I gotta get to my judgments that may be not right. I gotta stop defending myself and being willing to see look at the exact nature of where I of my wrongs, and continue to take personal inventory and when I was wrong. I always thought it You know what I thought it said, and when I was bad. Doesn't say when you were bad, probably admitted it.

When you were wrong, When you're wrong about your boss, when you're wrong about the people you resent, when you're wrong about your ex, when you're wrong about your parents, when you're wrong about a lot of stuff, is to step up to the plate and no longer to insist on being right and defend yourself. See, I'm a defensive kind of guy. I I make a judgment about something and you've got to beat it out of me. I mean, I don't wanna give it up. I wanna be right.

I don't wanna be wrong. I'm the kind of guy I I'm the kind of guy that goes to court and say they ask me to plead. I say, guilty your honor, with an explanation. And by the time I've done the explanation, the whole courtroom is now gonna think that he's not really guilty. Why did you even say you're guilty?

You're not guilty. See? Not really wrong. I don't wanna be wrong. I wanna I'd rather die than be wrong.

And recovery from alcoholism is a lot about being wrong and to stop defending myself. I had a great teacher in my early sobriety. He died of cancer years ago, but he was a wonderful guy named Dale. And Dale told me one time and I got it. He said, kid, if you're justifying, if you're rationalizing or if you're defending anything, you're wrong because you never have to defend, justify, or rationalize what is right.

You will only ever be inclined to do that if you're wrong. And I never forgot that, and I'm a defensive kind of guy. And it is absolutely impossible to be surrendered and defended at the same time. They're mutually exclusive positions. You it's like it's like going to a truce with a gun.

You can't do it. It's like you you can't be surrendered and armed at the same time. I mean, it's not it's not the deal. You gotta give up the defenses. You gotta give up the defenses.

You gotta be wrong. In making these arrangements, our actor maybe sometimes quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous, even modest and self sacrificing. Well, finally, a part of the book that applies to me. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest.

But as with most of us, most humans, we are more likely to have varied traits. And you know what always has been my my nature is in my obsessive self interest, in my drivenness self involved drivenness to line life so I will be better and more secure and more happy and more everything, so it's about me and my drive to do that. I will always try to set it up and get my own way. First of all, by doing it through being kind and considerate, patient, generous, modest, self sacrificing. And I'll tell you why, because if you can get your way and do it that way you get your way and you'll look good doing it.

You look good doing it. You look you look like a good guy. But I tell you something. If I you you you screw with me, and I'm convinced it's gotta be this way. I am just as capable of lying about you, back stabbing you.

I'm just as capable of being deceptive. I'm just as capable of being mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest. I'm just as capable, and I will feel justified because look what you're doing. And I will justify my behavior by your resistance to doing it my way. And I won't know that I'm doing that.

I'll I will think because it's because you were wrong. You are wrong. This is important. Do you ever have your your your obsessive will not feel like it's important? It's always important.

It's a big deal. Big deal. Self self driven, self centered people are very serious people. We are when we're in our efforts to run the show and arrange life to sort our suit ourselves, we are it's a serious serious deal. Look, my license plate on my car says rule 62 and I have to remember because rule 62, if you don't know what rule 62, it comes out of the 12 by 12 in tradition number 4, and it's a story and the end result is rule 62 is do not take yourself too damn seriously.

Because seriousness is is is a symptom of self involvement. Seriousness is a symptom of control. Seriousness is a symptom of someone who's running the universe, and you better not screw with me because it's gotta be this way. I really try not to take my tell self too seriously. You know the best way to get your own way?

Don't have one. Telling you the best way. You wanna always get your own way? You you know what it feels like when you get your own way? You always wanna feel that way?

Don't have a way. Don't have a way. And there's nothing to ever get ripped from you. What usually happens, the show doesn't come off very well. He begins to think life doesn't treat himself, treat him right.

He decides to exert himself more. He becomes on the next occasion still more demanding or still more gracious as the case may be. It doesn't matter whether it's demanding or gracious, I just gotta make it right. Gotta get you straightened out here. Gotta get it right.

As the case may be, still the play does not suit him because we never get it right. Get it almost right, but never really right. It never really suits me. I've I've never through my efforts of self will once in my life went, okay, good. This is okay, good.

This is just right. It's always needs a little tweaking. It's always I always gotta maintain the control because I'm afraid somebody's gonna turn on me. I always gotta keep it right here. Even if I get it even if I get you doing it my way, I gotta watch you.

I gotta watch you. Make sure k. Good. Good. And I may do it with the whip or I may do it with honey and flowers.

Don't matter. I'm watching you. Right? Hideous. Isn't it pathetic?

Oh, jeez. Still, the plate does not suit him. Admitting admitting when it goes when it turns to crap, admitting he may be somewhat, oh, little tiny bit at fault, he is sure other people are more to blame. Sure. Absolutely convinced.

The only time you'll ever hear an an alcoholic with untreated alcoholism admit that he's wrong is when he secretly knows he's not. He just says that to look good. Oh, I might be wrong. Let me explain it to you why I'm not. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame.

He becomes angry, indignant, self pitying, self righteous, etcetera, etcetera. What is his basic trouble? What's the what's the problem here? And it speculates. It says, is he not really a self seeker even when trying to be kind?

That when I'm kind and I'm generous and I look like the really good guy, if you really if I really got honest, really, and I peeled away all the layers of the onion, and I got down to what's really going on, isn't it all about me? Aren't I kind and generous and all this other stuff because I want something from you? I want your love. I want your approval. I want you on my side.

I want you to do something a certain way. I want you not to reject me. It's all about me and I may dress it up and look go through life and look like a loving, kind, generous, altruistic kind of guy but of real altruistic love of real selflessness. There's absolutely none involved. It's all about me.

The first the first my first endeavor to to really learn how to love came through helping drunks. Spending time with guys that are that were suffering severely from alcoholism that had nothing going for them that had lost everything. And I found myself falling in love with them for no reason because there was nothing they could do for me. They couldn't help me get a better job, these pukes are not even gonna stay sober a year and give me credit for nothing. I mean, they're not there's nothing they can do for me except that I started to love them because they were like me.

The part of me that is all that I needed to love, I loved in them first and then as a result it came I didn't without even knowing it I started to be okay with myself inside as a result of loving them. And, this next line is the third delusion. We talked about the first two last night. The the the idea that somehow, someday under the right set of circumstances I will find a way to control and enjoy my drinking. And I'll jump start the party, I'll be able to go out there and get high and keep the damage down enough to get away with it, to live with it.

Sort of like do a drive by, get back here in AA, that kind of illusion. Right? The second delusion was that the idea that I am like other people. The delusion I'm like other people, people who don't have alcoholism, or that I presently may be like other people like after maybe 5 years of sobriety or 10 years. I won't need a anymore.

I'll I am better now. Thank you. That delusion, the book says, has to be smashed. Those first delusions make my sobriety precarious. The first one kept me from getting in here and the second one, I think keeps people like me from staying here.

I will incrementally through my actions move myself out of AA gradually 2nd delusion. And the 3rd delusion that we're about to talk about is I think is what keeps guys like me from ever being happy here, ever being connected here. I think it's a delusion that eventually if if pursued will put will put me in a place where I put enough screws to myself emotionally that I will have to take something for the way I feel. It says, is he not, am I not a victim of the delusion that I can rest, rest, satisfaction you can hear the self will in the word rest. Rest, satisfaction and happiness out of this world if I only manage well.

That goes down to the core of my being. It is the fiber of my life. This this delusion that I can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well. If I just get them to see, if I'm properly financed, if I had the right people love me, if I had a job that where I didn't work for crap heads, if I if I had if my kids would grow up right, if I had a little better grade of friends, if I had a if I had a nicer house, I need I need the kind of house that when you walk in you go, wow. Right?

If I had the better car, if I had all these ducks lined up in a row then as a result of my management and getting it all set up, then I am sure I will have rested happiness and satisfaction on this life that I will be satisfied and happy. And I'll tell you why that's a delusion. I don't think there's I don't think there's a group of people on the face of the earth that have spent more time, more money, more energy, more obsessive self focus on ourselves and trying to make ourselves happy. We've spent more energy on that than anything else in the face of the earth and the end result is that most of us wished we were dead. That I am an absolute failure at resting happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well.

You know all the suicides I talked about and I could tell you I could give you a list of probably 50 people that I've seen drink again after a number of years of sobriety and I'll tell you what a lot of these guys have in common. They come into AA and they have absolutely nothing. Their alcohol and drug abuse have destroyed their life and rendered them down to nothing. They're bankrupt in every area. Sobriety and create a wish list.

A list of everything that they secretly imagine would need to be in place for them to be happy and satisfied. By the time they when they at the moment that they drink again or these guys that have committed suicide they would have fulfilled everything on the list. Isn't that weird? My friend Frank who when he put the plastic bag over his head he had everything. He he's a guy that came into AA and he the only thing he owned was an extra pair of underwear that was in a brown paper bag.

And 23 years later he's got a big house, a wife that's an x model, he's got a custom Harley Davidson, a custom truck, an old restored 19 50 something Corvette. I mean, he's he's making a 6 figures a year. He's got everything. Respect in the community. Everything that if he would have made the list, he would have been convinced when I got all of this, man, I'll be there.

I will have rested happiness and satisfaction out of this life. And when he got there and he had it all after living there for a while, he took his own life. Ain't that weird? Wouldn't you think that all that abundance and have that's all that stuff would have at least in improved the quality something in his life? And I'll tell you what happens and I understand this in-depth.

You cannot treat an inside spiritual malady with outside stuff. You can't do it. As a matter of fact, the outside stuff with untreated alcoholism doesn't make it better, it makes it worse. And I'll tell you why, when I was living in an abandoned building it one of the I was one of the low points in my life. I felt awful.

I was alone and desolate and wrapped up in my own fears and judgments and I felt like crap, but you know something, I looked like crap too. I was dirty. My surroundings looked like crap. There was a continuity between my insides and my outsides. There was even it was though it was awful, there was a funny sense of rightness about it.

You get a guy like me self involved, self obsessed with all those fears, and resentments, and judgment, and emptiness, and frustration, and loneliness, and isolation, and depression, and you put me on a backdrop of extreme abundance and wealth, and a backdrop of everything I've ever suspected I would need to have to be happy. And the abundance does not make the vacancy smaller, it makes it stand out in starker and more painful relief. It doesn't help. It doesn't cause the problem but the disillusionment of the the the fantasy and delusion of having it make it better and realizing the reality that it just makes it stand out and seem prospectively more painful is a drop. It's a tremendous drop, tremendous.

That's why the the worst moment in an alcoholic's life is not when he loses everything, it's when he's gained everything out here with nothing changing in here. Because now I feel awful and what do I do? Now, there's a hopelessness. Now, you've gotten to the end of the chain, and the end of the string of human power. Got it all.

What's wrong with me? I know when I was 19 probably years sober, I came back from a trip to Maui. I was going to Maui 3, 4 times a year. I, I'd made made more money and had more money than I could ever imagine. I could more money I could spend in a lifetime.

I had a half $1,000,000 in cash in my checking account. In my garage, I I had lived in this huge house up on a hill, looked over Las Vegas with the gardens and waterfalls, and I still I still live there today. In my garage, I had a it just came out with the r's. I got the first one in Las Vegas, the XJR Jaguar. I had to pay an extra $5 for the privilege of having the first one on the market.

Had a C5, Corvette that I had put about $20 into extra. Had a 7 40 I L BMW, 2 custom Harley Davison's, one had been in a magazine and a van. I sat there in my house. I had absolutely everything. I had respect the community.

I had absolutely everything I could ever want, and I sat there and I was in such a deep depression, and I felt awful, and I felt like I was dying inside and I didn't know what was wrong. And the problem was that there wasn't anything wrong, really. And that's the worst thing of all, is when it's really really wrong in here but there's nothing really wrong out here. It's awful. It's awful.

It's what makes guys wanna kill themselves. And you can't tell anybody what it is because what do you say? Because they'll ask you, what's wrong? I don't know. I don't know.

And I, I started thinking about everybody. It seemed like it was at a time when everybody's starting to get on these happy pills in AA. I knew guys who were getting on these antidepressants and, you know, they were and I started thinking I wonder if I could talk my sponsor and then let me go on. And my sponsor is just one way. I mean, there's no there's not even any discussion about that.

It's either you're alcoholic and you treat your alcoholism with Alcoholics Anonymous, or if you can if that stuff works for you, you shouldn't be here anyway. Go do something different. He's he's a little he's really kinda over the top when I'm a little more open minded, but he's, like, really one way about this. He would not let me take them. And I'm in a meeting, and I'm in a meeting one night and I'm telling this guy that's a friend of mine who's sober a little bit longer than me about it, about what's going on.

And he nailed me. And I've been praying about it. And I'm still going to meetings. I'm still going to probably 6 meetings a week. And he told me he told me exactly what had happened to me.

And I when he said it it blew my mind and I didn't understand it, And I didn't know how it had happened. He said to me he said, Bob, he said, your primary purpose of staying sober and helping other drunks is no longer your primary purpose. Your I mean, you still show up and act like somebody who that's important to, but somehow incrementally it's moved to probably 4th position in your life. Even though you still act like maybe you're interested in helping, you can still go to the meetings and still sponsor people, but it is not your focus. He said, you're Bob, your primary purpose is you.

And when he said that I thought, oh my God, he's right. My first focus in my life had become my me and money, and toys, and my fun, and my gratification, and I had become my primary purpose. And I'll tell you something, I didn't know that that had happened and it didn't happen overnight. It was such a subtle, hideous, incremental shift in consciousness inside me gradually from where my life was devoted to the decision I made in step 3 in helping God's kids to all of a sudden, I'm running it and it's all about me. I was the center again.

I was the focus and I didn't even know how that happened. I didn't sit down and decide to do that. It just slipped up on me. And because I was things were so seemingly successful externally as I started to feel bad as I'm making that incremental jump. I don't get it because I can, I'm covering all the the all the the emptiness up by throwing more stuff at it.

I'm going I've I've finally got myself in a position where I can actually create an endless series of self gratifying events. Another car, another car, another car, another trip, another car, another this, another this, another until all of a sudden there ain't nothing left to buy and nowhere to go. Right? And then it's as Chuck Chamberlain said, the alcoholic gets to a place where he could could no longer put anything between you and you. And I got to the place I couldn't put anything, but I ran out of crap to put between me and me.

And there I am, sitting in the living room of the of the of my dream house, feeling like I'm dying. Feeling like I'm dying. Victim of a delusion that I can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if I only manage well. The guy that told me that I lost my primary purpose, that I was the center again, helped me a lot. Within a week, I had my car full of new guys.

Within a week, I am on fire. Within a week, I am back to my primary purpose and I have never looked back. I've never looked back, and I refuse to do that. I would I talk that's the one thing I work on them. I don't wanna be.

My life cannot be about me. Now I gotta constantly remind myself of that because I'm constantly trying to lean in that direction. Right? But I when I do step, I got at about that time I started getting real serious about step 1011 and 12. Real serious because it was the only thing I have to keep that from happening again.

The book goes on to say, is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? Don't get in my way. And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not even in his best moments a producer of confusion rather than harmony? I'm a producer of confusion.

I don't know it. I think you're I think you guys that are getting in my way are producing the confusion here. If you just get on board with my little plans and designs, there would be no confusion here. But see, when you run your life on self will and you're trying to be God and you're trying to rest life to your own illusion of how it should be, so you can ultimately feel better and be gratified and satisfied and happy, and you're trying to rest like that, you step on people's toes. You do.

It's just the way it is. And I'm the kind of guy that, you could give me the best job I ever got, I'll go to work there, everybody will welcome me and reach out to me and help me to feel like I fit. And within 3 weeks I'm the guy that they're walking on eggshells around Because I'm the guy who's trying to get them to do it right and I'm the guy that's the producer of confusion and it never looks that way to me. It looks like it's them. It looks like it's them.

But see, they're all going with the flow or at least to their own ability. They're trying to go with the flow and most human beings are like that. Most people don't want to live in a state of conflict unless being right is more important to you than peace. Right? And when being right is more important and getting your own way is more important than serenity, then you're a producer of confusion rather than harmony.

They're all singing the same song. They're all do, re, me, fa. And I'm going, me, me, me, me, me, me. And I'm I am the disharmony in the group. Right?

I'm the guy that's I'm the I'm the fly in the ointment. Our actor is self centered, egocentric as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired businessman who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter, complaining of the sad state of the nation, the minister who sighs over the sins of the 20th century, politicians and reformers who were sure all would be utopia if the rest of the world would only behave, the the home group member who's sure that the group doesn't do things right, the outlaw safecracker who thinks society has wronged him, and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. What do all these guys have in common? The outlaw safe cracker, the the the reformers and politicians, the the retired businessman, the minister, they're all the one thing that they all have in common, every example that Bill gives is that they have all separated themselves from their fellows through their own judgment.

The retired businessman who sitting in the Florida sunshine complaining of the bad state of the nation. The minister looking down on the sins of the 20th century. The politician reformers who sure if it could be better if you guys had just straighten up. Already left AA even though he's still sitting in the room because he's taken everybody's inventory there. They all stood sit in a state of separation, and I think that from out of my experience the alcoholism, the ism is I separate myself.

And, I do it through my judgment. I do it through playing God. Whatever our protestations are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self pity. Selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles. The root underneath everything.

The root is what feeds the planet what the plant cannot exist without the root, it is the source. And if that is true, then what they're saying is that the source of all my troubles, my discomfort, my lack of serenity, my lack of peace, my conflicts with people, my inability to integrate myself in society, the fact that I can't stay sober. All my troubles are come back to selfishness and self centeredness. And yet, when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I I'm not stupid, but I'm very defended. And I could not see that I was self centered.

I couldn't see it. And I there was a guy in my home group named Happy Jack, and Happy Jack used to quote this part of the book all the time. He used to say selfishness, self centeredness, you know, used to talk about that. And and Jack were it was his a sales manager for the Cadillac dealership in Las Vegas. So I'm off the streets.

Right? So I don't even like guys that are successful, basically. Right? But any but I don't know that. And Jack would come to meetings and one and he'd always had a lot of jewelry on and he'd have he'd wear these 3 piece suits.

He'd come to a meeting one day, he'd be at the noon meeting, and he'd have a a blue 3 piece suit driving a blue Cadillac, blue shoes, blue tie. The next day, yellow 3 piece suit, yellow Cadillac. The next day, black 3 pea, And and he would say, selfishness, self centeredness is the root of our troubles. I'd look at him and think, yeah. I bet it is, Jack.

Yeah. I bet it is. And I didn't understand what they were talking about. I thought now I thought he was self centered because he was had a lot of stuff going for him, he was self confident, he looked assured, self assured, And I don't think I'm self centered because I don't I'm not like that. I fear feel very poorly about myself.

I'm very insecure. I think I don't think well of myself, but and I do it a lot. I think about myself a lot constantly. And I'm sitting in a meeting one day and I don't think I'm self centered, and the subject self centeredness. And I'm sitting in the meeting and I'm not even listening in the meeting because it's a discussion meeting, and I'm thinking about what I'll say if I'm called on, what you'll think of what I'm gonna say, how maybe I should sit while saying it to to look intelligent and deep, and then I'm thinking about my relationships and finance and job, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And this woman in the meeting, I barely caught it out of the peripheral of my listening, said, she said that she went through life totally self absorbed. And I sat there and went, oh, my God. Self absorb I got it. I was sitting there totally absorbed in myself. Totally centered on myself in my problems, in my stuff, in my emotions, in my life.

And for the first time in my life I started to get it. What they meant when they said selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles. And self selfish, self involved, self centered, self focused, self obsessed, self concerned people like myself. We go through 1 through life really only concerned about one thing, how I feel. Because my how I feel is my constant emotional internal barometer.

How am I doing? How am I doing? It's like, it's all about me. And so self centered people who are obsessed with themselves and their internal reality and how they feel are a setup for anything that'll make me feel better. So my whole life was a series of events where I ran away from things that that that made me uncomfortable, were difficult, that were painful, and ran to things that gratified me, validated me, grew up.