Sober Village 16 in Sonora Bay, Mexico

Our speaker today, as I said, is doctor Paul. Just give him a one moment. Good evening. My name is Paul, and I'm a full blown outcry. Hi, Paul.

And I am absolutely delighted to be here, And I, agree with everything, Greg has said about meeting everybody. And I was thinking, one of the happiest things about being here so far, I asked Steve about, about how many of us there were here and he said at least 350 and, which is fine. But the real key point is we are it. We are the only people here. We are filling the place up.

The point being that anybody you meet at any time during this weekend in the activities or whatever else is one of us. And you you say hello to them. You say and you give them a hug. And you and my biggest problem that creates for me is I get so used to saying hello to everybody that when I leave here, I say hello to men and the John and the airport and all kinds of stuff. It's hard to stop, but I'll take care of that a week from now.

What I'd like to see and another thing that bothers me is that on cruises and trips and stuff like that, about the time you're ready to go home, then people exchange phone numbers and addresses and get to know everybody. And that's a shame. We need to know each other while we're here. In fact, you're all sitting there looking so damn serious. Don't expect I hope I hope you're not expecting me to say something profound.

But the most profound thing I can say is I'm an alcoholic. But I for instance, I'd like to have us go around the room and introduce ourselves, but that would take too long. So why don't we at the count of 3, why don't everybody state your name and your disease? At the count of 3. 123.

My name is Paul, and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you. You did that very well. Now do you realize that now you know everybody in this room? So you have absolutely no reason well, let's make it even better than that.

I'm impressed with it, really impressed with the number of people here for the first time. That's terrific. Let's see that again. People here, their 1st sober club med, raise your hand. Just look at that.

Let's give them a hand. We saw the hands of the alcoholics. Let's do that again. All the alkaliks, please raise your hand. Oh, God.

The place is crawling with alcoholics. I've always been impressed with the number of alcoholics that you see at AA meetings. What about, what about, cocaine addicts, dopers? How about the cocaine people? Like, cocaine?

Raise your hand. They're the real sickies. What about, what about pill heads? Any pill heads here? Oh, yeah.

Lots of pill heads. The doctors and the pharmacists love you. I mean and, what else we got? What about, some more what? Pot.

You mean marijuana? Anybody here smoke pot? I don't know. My goodness. Quite a few.

That's always been one of my basic resentments. I have never smoked pot. I have never never, I've never had the pleasure of meeting pot. I mean, it wasn't because I wouldn't try it. It's because I couldn't find any.

I got sober too soon. It was 29 years ago. And I remember I would think about it. And I think I I knew they had marijuana on the, parochial school playground just down the street. And I wanted to go get some, but I could just see the headline in the Alliance review, prominent local physician arrested for selling pot on the parochial school ground.

And I thought my defense was saying, no. No. I wasn't selling. I was buying. Didn't sound like much.

I was afraid to go get some, but I never tried any marijuana. I felt real bad about that until I found a guy that got sober so early, and he had never tried vodka. Wouldn't wouldn't that be awful to have never tried vodka? Because it leaves you breathless. You could drink forever with that.

And What about what about other drugs? LSD. What's that? Anybody on LSD and the recreational drugs? Ecstasy?

Oh, gee, we got we really got some sickies here this time. And what about the real sickies? The Al Anon. Don't be ashamed. Put your hand up.

I'll put mine up too. I go to Al Anon every week. I don't Max isn't an alcoholic. I feel a little bit like an imposter, but I have a son-in-law. And as far as I know, the only significant thing he's ever done in life was make me eligible for Al Anon.

And I love Al Anon. I, in fact, if I find it interesting, people will come we will talk about a problem. One of the most common problems I hear from other people is that somebody's going crazy in a relationship with another alcoholic. And I suggest I said, that's a that's that's an Al Anon problem. Why don't you go to Al Anon?

And they're insulted. Me? Go to Al Anon? I'm an alcoholic. Yeah.

And I've come to the conclusion that alcoholics, alcoholics and all is the only place you'll find people who are convinced that being an alcoholic makes you more of a person than a non alcoholic. Anyway, I love but the main thing is, what I'd like to see I like hugs. I like hugs And I'd like to see you all stand up and hug at least 2 or 3 other people, somebody you didn't come with. And just come on. Just stand up and hug some people.

Thank you. Thank you. Now, don't you all feel better? Have you ever had that happen at an AA meeting before? But this is unusual AA meetings here.

These are what I would consider generic AA meetings. I mean, everything, well, almost everything goes at these meetings. And like it was said here, I think a guy said that if you have a meeting you want of some other group and you don't find it on the list, start 1. Don't whine about not having it. Start it.

If it's not started, it's your fault. And it's very easy. It's almost as easy as signing up for a massage. Anyway, I'm just delighted to be I like being an alcoholic. I just I I just love being an alcoholic.

I think being an alcoholic is, is just a lot of fun. This is the best life I've ever known. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is, my marriage is the best it's ever been. Max, stand up.

And this is Max. She drove me to drink for 28 years. She drove me to drink for 28 years, and now I've been sober for 28 years. So we've been married for 56 years. And wow is right.

You're nowhere near as impressed as I am. And everything about my life is getting better and better. I think, I think everybody ought to be an alcoholic. And somehow sometimes I think maybe they're making them faster than we're, curing them anyway. But I, I like this way of life.

And I it's surprising that I do like it so much because, I I it's amazing how hard I fought trying to stay out there to stay away from here. And, the, I I guess you have as much trouble hearing as I hear these things. Is that any better now? Okay. Up.

You want me to raise it. Talk louder. Well, it only took half hour. Let's see. My name is Paul, and I'm an alcoholic.

It started out with everybody naming themselves. Anyhow, I went to a lot of trouble living this story, and my god, I don't want you to miss any of it. I'm always concerned about the people who, have heard me before and I was thinking how to get a new story and I thought but then I wasn't sure I'd be able to meet the plane getting out here and I wouldn't know whether I when I got back for the thing. So anyway, as I was saying, I'm surprised it's surprising that I enjoy alcoholics not as much as in fact, if you if it bothers you, if you're relatively new or whatever, even if you're not new, and it bothers you to hear me say that I enjoy being an alcoholic, because I hear people say they're glad to have the program, but they're not glad to be alcoholic. And I always think, well, what what what the hell good would the program be if you were an alcoholic?

I hardly ever see any nonalcoholic running in saying, Would you listen to my 5th step? I think we have to be threatened to die drunk if we don't do these steps. Otherwise, we'd never do them. And, so I'm glad to be alcoholic and glad to have this program, and be part of this is by the fact that I fought real hard trying to stay out there to keep from being here. And I wouldn't have even come here.

I don't know ever. And I wasn't sent here. I wasn't sent here by a judge. I wasn't that bad. I wasn't.

I didn't have to have a court card. The only reason I came to AA in the first place was that getting a pass to come to an AA meeting was the only way I could get a pass to get off the network of the hospital I was on the staff up. There was nothing funny about that. In fact, it was a very boring place to be. They were fanatics there, on occupational therapy.

They wanted, they insisted that you make leather belts. In fact, I don't think you could graduate from there if you didn't make leather belts or ashtray or something really useful. And I, and they were really fanatics on it and they kept insisting that I learned how to make leather belts. And I couldn't see the philosophy. They tried to convince me that the quality of my life would be improved if I learned how to make leather belts.

And I I told him. I said I told him. I said, I have I have a whole wall. I have a whole wall with licenses and certificates and diplomas and papers to prove that I've been educated way beyond my level of intelligence. And I don't see how me knowing how to make the results would improve the quality of my life one bit.

I didn't understand the philosophy and besides, I didn't understand the instructions. That wasn't my fault. That was the fall of the dumb occupational therapist because I've always had a theory that if you don't understand a thing well enough so you can explain it to me, then you don't understand nearly as close as you're supposed to. And, she had already told me 3 times, and, I wasn't gonna embarrass her by asking her a 4th time. And I have I remember sitting here in the nut war commiserating with myself about the series of mistakes and poor and misdiagnoses because I had a brain tumor and, they had missed it.

And here I was in a nut ward by mistake and, thinking of all these things going on when this psychiatrist walked up behind me and, he's a stupid psychiatrist. He couldn't see that my problems were marital and, walked up behind me and asked me would I mind talking to a man from Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, my God. My God, doctor, I don't have enough problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from AA. But I could tell by the look on his face that he thought it was a good idea.

I don't know if you know that or not, but happiness on a note board is having a happy psychiatrist. And I was willing to go to any length to make him happy. And, I said yes and went off to the meeting and, boy, I don't remember the meeting. I don't remember. In fact, I don't know how many meetings they went to before I knew what meeting I was at.

But I know that meeting had a profound effect on the psychiatrist. He was delighted and and full of questions now. He always been ignoring me before. Now he's full of questions. He wonder what's this about the book?

What's this about steps? What's this about other meetings? How often do they have meetings? How often are you gonna go to what other kind of meetings do they have? All these questions.

I thought, my God, I've got me an alcoholic psychiatrist and he's ashamed to go, so he's sending me. And I wondered how many meetings I'd have to go to before I can get him sober. And so I went to all the meetings I could. And finally got my enough brownie points and I got my discharge button. I had no intentions of going back again.

Why wouldn't it? It wasn't even alcoholic. And, so what happened was that Max had been going to the meetings and she liked him. And, of course, once I found out she liked the meetings, I would use that against her. And if she didn't behave right, I wasn't gonna go to AA anymore.

And I said that once too often and she ended up I would have you ever tried sitting home on a Saturday night drinking while your non alcoholic spouse is off laughing it up for the day, Hey, meeting? I found it real boring, and so I had to go back to the meetings to find out what the, alcoholics were laughing about. And I found out they were laughing about they were laughing at anything. I don't call. I just laughed.

And I I in fact, I sat there for 7 months, listened to him, trying to figure it out. And one night, I found myself laughing with him and I haven't had a drink since. And the laughter has been very, therapeutic and actually very spiritual for me. The laughter is very spiritual for me. In fact, I'm convinced I'm convinced that my Higher Power laughs every time he hears the alcoholic's laugh, whether he gets the joke or not.

And I that's how I got to be an alcoholic. It took me 7 months. I was coming to AA for 7 months and I wasn't an alcoholic, but I was associating with all these alcoholics. And I turned into a very mild alcoholic when I first became alcoholic. Yeah.

When I first became alcoholic, I was very mild. Very very almost non alcoholic. But it was more allergic to alcohol. I wasn't I was allergic to alcohol, but I wasn't a drunkard. I wasn't a wino.

I wasn't a lush. Certainly, I wasn't a skid row bum, but I was kind of allergic to alcohol. And it was but the problem with that was that once I found out I was an alcoholic, then I decided I wanted to be I keep AA feeling like a failure in all departments. Just a failure in all all departments. And I was really ashamed when I ended up in AA, for God's sake, well, I I ought to at least succeed in this one thing for God's sake.

Is there I mean, I I certainly this is one thing I'll at least be a success in. So I decided I was gonna be, quote, a successful member of AA. And I set out to be a successful member of AA. And over the years, I periodically have changed to some extent my definition, my own personal definition of what a successful member of AA is. But but but I consistently realized that successful members of AA don't drink.

And so I in fact, we used to talk about back then, they used to keep saying, stick with the winners, stick with the winners, stick with the winners, stick with the winners. And what I've set myself up to do is to to act like a winner, act like a winner. When I don't know what else to do with a problem or a situation or whatever, I ask myself, what would a winner, what would an AA winner do? And try to act like an AA winner, whatever that is? And that kept me sober because, as I say, winners don't drink.

And, in fact, that's the way we we do it in AA. And I was been impressed today how we don't drink. We just don't drink no matter what no no matter what. We don't drink. We no matter no matter what happens.

We no matter what doesn't happen, you know, what whatever, we we don't drink. We just say, hey, hey, we just we don't drink. We don't. We said, no matter what, we don't drink. And I in fact, I I think that my I haven't even had an occasional social drink.

I I haven't had anything to drink. I said, we don't drink. In fact in fact, we're kinda noted for not drinking. I think that not drinking has a lot to do with my sobriety. They just don't drink.

I and as a result of trying to be a successful member of AA, I had to keep coming to meetings, of course. I had to not only do I have to keep coming to meetings, so I had to work the steps. I hear a lot of see a lot of people who try to stay sober on just the fellowship, just the meetings, and, and can stay real comfortably sober right up to the point where they get drunk and I wonder what happened. I was going to meetings every day. I think it takes I don't know.

For me, it takes both. It takes both the fellowship and the program and the steps. And I have redone all the steps to the best of my ability, not by plan, but just that has worked out that way, an average of every 5 years. And every time I've done that, I've moved to a new plateau in my sobriety. Just like the first time I did it.

I don't I'm not saying you should do that. I know a lot of people think you just do the steps once and then from then on, you just do the maintenance thing. There are other people who like to redo the steps every year on their birthday or something like that. Well, I'm saying, whatever works for you, fine. I'm just telling you what has worked for me, and I I enjoy doing that.

And, no, that's not true. I don't enjoy doing that. I'm glad that I every time I've done it, I've been glad that I did it. And, but the problem, what happens, you see, not only is it a they say it's a progressive disease. And when I when I had decided I had to go to meetings and keep, in order to stay sober, I kept getting re exposed to alcoholics and I kept getting worse as a disease.

My disease kept getting worse. And today, I am much, much, much, much more alcoholic than I was when I first became alcoholic. Like I say, when I first became alcoholic, I was hardly alcoholic at all. Today, I'm much more alcoholic. Today, I'm a real alcoholic.

And, I even had, I've even taken a few pills, but I never became addicted to pills or narcotics. You can't any doctor will tell you, you can't get addicted to pills unless you abuse them. You have to abuse the pill in order to get addicted to it. Any doctor will tell you that. I don't know what that means.

I don't even know how I don't know how to abuse the pill. How do you abuse the pill? You throw it up against the wall? You know, stomp on the thing? Verbally abuse it.

You dirty, rotten little pill. Why don't you do what I told you? I don't know. I never abused a pill in my life. I was always very they were very tiny.

Just to look at them, you could see they were very mild. In fact, I was very careful where I even carried my pills. So I used to keep them with my change. People say you got change for a dollar? And I say, yeah.

And I'd go like that. And they say, oh, you carry a second all around in the daytime. I put it over with my keys and got in the car in the parking lot and I take the keys out of my pocket. And the Quaalude run down the street, you know. It always run faster than I could run.

I didn't dare stop on it or I'd abuse it. And so I've, I've never abused a pill in my life. And I, but by being exposed to more alcoholics, I just got more and more alcoholic. And, that's, in fact, that's how I come to realize that alcoholism is not only a disease, it's a contagious disease. You get it from other alcoholics.

And people that are here this week that aren't really alcoholic, I don't know if you realize how what a dangerous situation you're in. Alcoholics have given to you. They and then not only not only is it contagious, they're glad to give it to you. They feel proud of themselves to make you alcoholic. So you're in a very dangerous situation here.

And you need to be careful. Be careful what you listen to because it's a virus and it goes in through your ears and affects your brain. And and I and that's how I've gotten to be more and more ill qualified the longer I've been here. The other thing that's happened to me was that, it has affected my thinking. My sponsor tells me, he says, Paul, don't drink and don't think.

My problems I don't have a drinking problem. I don't have any problems related to drinking as long as I don't drink. But my difficulty is that I can't keep from sinking. I can keep from drinking with your help and God's help in the program, but I can't keep from thinking. And, I have a lot of problems with that because my mind has a mind of its own.

And I will find it I will find it thinking about, And I will find it I will find it thinking about the dumbest things. What in the hell are you thinking about that for? I'll be riding along in the car, fighting with somebody, having a tremendous argument, and winning. It's a continuation of a argument I lost a week, a year, years ago, and the voice will say to me, who are you talking to? We are alone here.

And that happens all the time. And I, my mind is and it talks to me. I don't know how you if how it is I don't know how you think, but I think by somebody talking to me and talking, talking, it's just all the time talking and voices talking. And it's it's even now that somebody up there will I'm trying to talk to you in somewhat of a straight line, somewhat coordinated, and they will make a suggestion. And before I can say anything about it, another will make a different suggestion.

And before I can talk about that one, they get the fighting about whether I should talk about 1 or the other, and then others will join in. And they get the fighting back and forth up there as to what I should talk about, and it's very distracting, very confusing. And I said, shut up up there. And they all showed up, and I can't think of anything to say. It's it's a talk, talk, talk, talk.

All the time. Talk, talk, talk. A lot of times. A lot of times, I'll be tired at night. I'll lie down.

My body wants to slide down and go to sleep. My brain says, still, let's lie here and talk about it for a while. You know? Or even 3:30, 4 o'clock in the morning. Say, hey.

Wake up. We've had an emergency meeting, and we need to talk to you. Yeah. You know that deal that you thought you handled so well today? It wasn't like that at all.

They're really ticked off at you. You wait in the morning. You'll find out. I think, god, I don't wanna listen to that nonsense. I'll roll over and go back to sleep.

And just as I'm about to lose consciousness, I'll think, boy, I'm sure glad I'm not thinking about that anymore. And one of them said, oh, I'm glad you're still awake. You know, that's not the only time you did that. About 6 months ago, you did the same thing. In fact, you've done a lot of stupid things.

In fact, let's spend the rest of the night lying here making lists of stupid things you have done. If there's anything that the program has helped me with, it's helped me get used to the idea of, of getting along better with the pea the voices in my head. I used to fight him. I used to fight him just like the one that, no matter what's going on, no matter what's going on, he had the he always had the same suggestion. Well, let's have a drink.

It used to be when he'd say that it was almost like it was a command from God that we should all have a drink. And now now some of the things they say, God, I'm I'm glad you can't hear them. Because that some of the things are not only illegal, but they're lewd and and it's it's bad enough. I have to listen to them. But now what happens instead of fighting, I can say, well, thank you for participating.

Now if you'll sit down, we'll call on somebody else. You know? And there's a meeting going on all the time. What I found is whoever I listen to the most, they speak the loudest and come to the front of the room and talk the most. And who ends up once I say, that's okay.

I don't fight him. Don't put any energy into it and let it go. They move to the back of the room and, I don't hear the voice that says, let's have a drink. I haven't heard his voice in a long time, but I know he's still there. Nobody ever leaves, but they're still there.

And, in fact, I've done that with, defects of character on my 7th step. What I do is tell when I have a defect like depression or I love being depressed. You ever been depressed? I love being depressed. Depression has a lot of redeeming social value because it narrows life down so much.

All the problems in the world come narrowed right down to just me. And I, I I I like to simplify it. But my problem is that I, often can't distinguish between depression and self pity. But, but depression, fear, insomnia, I'll tell God, I'd like to have this I've become willing to have it removed. I asked him to remove it and then act as if he has.

Act as if he has. In fact, I'll tell him, I'd I'd like to have you take this. I'd like you to have it removed. I'd like to take it and remove it completely. But I know there's that business in the 7th step prayer about maybe it's useful to you or to my fellows.

So maybe you don't wanna remove it completely, but I'd like to have removed most of it. Take it. Know that I'd like to be completely rid of it. Sleep on it tonight. And in the morning, you give me the amount of it you want me to have, and I'll accept it as a gift from you.

So that actually what it is is that I no longer fight it. And I, I so I still have my defects, but I no longer fight them. And, all I can say is I and my higher power are doing the best we can. And if my defects bother you, that's too damn bad. I'm not gonna fight it anymore.

And, anyhow, it all gets back, as I say, to attitudes. Somebody told me early, AA means altered attitudes. And I've read, somebody gave me a paper the other day by somebody named Swin Doyle, who I guess is a television evangelist. And if the television evangelist says it, you know it must be true. He was saying that in his opinion, life was life.

Life was 10%. Life is 10% what happens and 90% attitude. I've always been convinced that my life, the quality of my life doesn't depend on what happens. It depends on what the people in my head think about what happens. It's the same way with my relationship with Max.

My relationship with Max doesn't depend on what she does. My relationship with Max depends on who of the people in my head I listen to who are interpreting what she does. We're the ones that are telling me that that's a cruddy thing for her to do or whatever. That might be it's my attitude is what determines whether we get along well, not what she does. I can know in fact, I've written that.

We'll be getting into this later in the week, but I've given her written paper stating my declaration of my independence that she is no longer responsible for my feelings, and I'm no longer responsible for hers. But that how all has to do with attitude. I I and I I am really, convinced that attitude is so important. And I and I it's very important for us here. Guy and Steve and the Club Med and Ryan and all have really done and Jack have all done a great deal of work, a great deal of work to set this whole thing up so that we can have a tremendous week.

And yet all their work together isn't worth isn't really worth a damn if as far as competing with our attitude. It's really impossible for them to make us have a good time if we have a bad attitude. Like somebody said, it's hard to have a good day with a bad attitude, and it's hard to have a bad day with a good attitude. So that our our life actually our time here and it all depends on our attitude. In fact, let me close with this because I'm, in spite of what he says, I wanna all rush for the food food.

Will that guy wait? He can wait and we'll go eat. The, the, but I've heard it all my life, you know, that, when we die, we'll have a preadmission interview with Saint Peter. And and and he'll he'll ask us whether we've been good or bad. Now they wouldn't tell us that if it weren't true, but I've never met anybody who's been there and knows that's what happens.

And I don't know. I don't he maybe he'll ask us if he'd been good or bad, but I don't think that'll be I no matter what else he might ask, I think what he's really gonna ask, the thing he's really gonna be interested in is I think he's gonna ask us, what was your predominant attitude down there? What was your predominant mood down there? And you probably wanna say something about guilt or something. They say, no, no, no.

Everybody that comes up here wants to talk about guilt. No. He's gonna say, I know that you know that this is a place of happiness, peace, and joy. What you don't know is how we keep it this way. Disgruntled, unhappy, resentful, fault finding people.

We have a special place for them. What we like are people who have the right attitude. In fact, you're standing over the trap door. With that in mind, what was your predominant attitude while you were down there? I think that's what he's gonna ask.

And so what I'm saying is, I think our lives throughout eternity and certainly all the time we're here is gonna depend on our attitude. And I think that, the way I see life is that our job is to enjoy life. Says it right in our book. I've studied many textbook of medicine, but I've never studied one that has the statement in it that's in the very very very very very middle of page 132 after you've done the steps right in the middle the very, very middle of 132, it says, we absolutely insist on enjoying life. That's a major part of our program.

It's there in our big book. May we absolutely insist on enjoying life. And I think our job is to enjoy life, whether we like it or not. Have a good weekend or a good week. Thank you all very much.