The 46th Tri-State Convention in Mt. Vernon, IL

My name is Bob Darrow, and I am certainly alcoholic By the grace of a very loving god who is crazy about me and has no taste, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is outlined in the big book. Good sponsorship, commitments in my home group, and bushels of newcomers. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substances since Halloween 19 78. And for that, I will always owe you my life. I I'm really I'm delighted to be here.

I I wanna thank, Joe and Dave for inviting me here and picking me up at the airport and got to ride from the Saint Louis airport with, a Cardinals fan and a Cub fan in the car. And I got to see that AA does work. And I've had a great time. You've made me feel very welcome. I wanna welcome the new people, especially the 2 guys that got the book, the 2 newest guys.

I'm really glad you're here. You know, you're next week, you're gonna if you're lucky enough to have a home group, you're gonna go to it, and they're not gonna give you a standing ovation. And you're gonna realize that they don't treat you nearly as well as those people at that conference. But and it's kinda downhill from there. You got your standing ovation.

It's just you're gonna be end up with another member of AA, but that's a good deal for people like us. I, I'm here, I believe, to talk to 2 people. I don't know who you are, but I I know you're here. You're always here. The first person I'm here to talk to is that man or woman who for some reason you don't understand that no matter how hard you try, you keep going back to drinking.

And maybe you've been coming in and out of these rooms for a number of years. I'm here for you because you are me. I was 7 and a half years in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a matter of fact, the worst, most horrific years of my life came in the year at the time after I came to my first AA meeting. Because as I was in and out of these rooms and the disease progressed, and I I know exactly what it's like to sit right in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous and feel like I'm dying.

And I don't know what's wrong with me, and I'm trying I'm trying everything in me not to drink, but I couldn't do it. And I'm the other person I'm here to talk to and I you're here somewhere, you always are, is the man or woman who's leaving AA. And you don't even know you're leaving. And maybe you're leaving one compromised action or commitment at a time or or more likely one judgment at a time. You don't even know you're leaving.

You just know that the people in AA are just all of a sudden aren't really up to your standards like you thought they were at one time. And you're starting to really notice what's wrong with them, and, that's how I'm here to talk to you because you're me also. I I almost left AA couple times. I I've been fortunate enough to have survived myself here. Because I don't know about you, but if you're an alcoholic of my type, my alcoholism doesn't want me to get better.

It always will incline me out of here. It will always incline me back into self will and the judgment and the ways I play god in my head by picking people apart and cause, you know, all that stuff. The same before I think we're all pretty much alike. I I suspect, even though I have no evidence, that I might have been born with the disease of alcoholism. And I don't know I don't have evidence to that except to tell you that there was something that wasn't quite right about me before I ever picked up a drink.

And I think I was like a freeze dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. And I I look back over my childhood, and the only thing I remember with any clarity is me. I remember all about me. I can't tell you how much much about my mother and father or sister unless it had to do with me. I was the center of the universe back then, and everything and as if everything had to do with me.

And, nobody made me that way. I didn't come from an alcoholic home. I came from a home with a lot of love. My parents adored me. They had done anything to help me.

To did it done anything for me. My sister, if you were to ask her about the home we grew up in, she could tell you all about the love there. She could feel it. But I was that in so internally focused and self involved as even as a child that I knew intellectually that my parents loved me, but I couldn't feel it. I was that disconnected and disassociated because I didn't really live out here in this world.

I lived up here in this one. And that's what self centered people do. We don't live we're not centered out here in this world, we're centered up here in this one. And I didn't know that there was anything wrong with me. Doctor Silkworth in the doctor's opinion says that to us our alcoholic life seems the only normal one, so I just adjust to being a little weird.

I just adjust to a feeling, like, I don't quite feel like other people look. I just seem to adjust to a to an awkwardness socially around people that other people don't seem to have. And I had an event that happened to me when I was about 12 years old, almost 13, where the disease of alcoholism within me was touched by alcohol for the first time. An event that would I didn't know it at the time, but would change the course of my life. And I'll just to sum it up, what happened to me is when I was started drinking that whiskey with those older kids that I wanted their approval.

Is basically after the burden stopped it made me feel so good that the way I would be without that effect from that moment on would never be enough again for me. And I started to live for it, and it seemed like partying and getting lit up moved right into the center of my life. And it seemed like from then on, I just kind of existed between opportunities to get lit up. And there was a tremendous, magic about it in the early days and for a lot of years, I probably my first 8 years of drinking was set 6 to 8 anyway was phenomenal. I mean, there was a a magic about it.

A guy a guy like me who who doesn't really fit very good, who's who's has mild low level depressions all the time, and my emotions seem to eat my lunch, and and I just and I I'm overly sensitive, and I live up in my head, and I can't connect with people. I could walk into a party or a bar, and after 3 or 4 drinks, I'd come out play. 7 or 8 drinks, and man, I just loved everybody. Remember that feeling that, I love you, man. Oh, yeah.

I'd be with that gang of guys I hang around with, man. I'd there were times I'd feel so a part of and connected to them and almost bring tears to my eyes. Just, oh my guys. Then I'd sober up and I'd be back to being me again. Never liked that much.

Alcohol allowed me to shoot pool better than I could ever shoot pool. Allowed me to dance. I can't dance. You get me about half lit up, man. I I can dance.

Allowed me to be funny. I'm not funny really, but I get about half lit up. I I could be funny. I could be deep. Remember 3 o'clock in the morning, deep cracking the secrets of the universe.

Get to that place where, oh, I can see the big picture now. Yeah. Oh, this is what Buddha saw. Yeah. Right?

This is amazing. I I tell you, if it wasn't for alcohol, I'd I'd probably be celibate to this day. I well, I'm too insecure. I'm too shy. I'm too shy is a nice word for self obsessed.

I'm, you know, I I I I'm just too locked up in me. I can't I can't connect with people. I remember junior high school going to a dance, and I I went there kind of on a mission. There was a girl in my class I had a crush on, and some some guy had showed me a couple dance steps and a little awkward, but I kinda want to go and dance with this girl because I really had this crush on her and stand against the wall in the gymnasiums trying to get up enough courage and she's out there on the dance floor dancing with her girlfriend. I'm psyching myself up to go ask her and I I'm just struggling, man.

It's I said, okay. I'm gonna ask her. And I said, not this song. Next song. Next song.

Next song. Next song. Come. Next song, man. I did that for about a half hour.

Finally psyched myself up, just made myself walk over to her. She said, no. And I gotta walk back across that 9 mile gymnasium, and everybody's looking at me. And I it's it feels like everybody every time I meet, I eye contact with somebody. It it's like they're they're I can hear what they're thinking.

It's like they're going, oh, you poor pathetic loser, you. And I go back over to my wall, and I stand there, and I'm spinning in my head. Every time somebody looks in my direction, I just, oh, till I can't take it bolted out of there. I want you to know I'd never ever risked that again, except later on that year I was at a dance under the power of 151 rum, Coke, and Coke, and I was smooth. And I had that confidence, and I just and women girls were dancing with me, and and I was just I was a part of, man.

I just had that magic going on. That magic. And if a girl said no, boy, she missing it too. Now that's power. That's power to to change my experience on this planet.

Do you know that nonalcoholics don't get that? They just get drunk. So it's no wonder that after throwing up and maybe one DUI, they just bail out. They can't hang, man. They can't hang.

If they got out alcohol, when I'd found out alcohol at one time, they'd hang. They'd hang in there, hoping to get it back. You know, guys like me, we hang in there years be beyond the point where the magic's there, hoping to get it back. It's an amazing effect. I I think that, I think alcohol really in those days, in the days when the hook was set.

I think alcohol was the most effective and immediate treatment for the real secret disease of alcoholism, the thing that ate my lunch. But it's a progressive disease and which that if you don't know what that means it's means as the years go on the effect and the magic gets more and more elusive and the problems increase. I'm 16. I'm 15 years old, almost 16, and I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the 3rd time. And I'm standing before this judge because there's something is going on with me and I don't understand it, but I'm in trouble a lot.

And what it is and I can't connect the dots is that every time I go out to party with my friends, I can't shut her down when I should. I always go a little too far. I'm always the guy that's getting whacked. I'm always the guy that's that comes up with the bizarre ideas that seem like a good it's idea at the time. I'm the guy that has alcoholism.

I have that physical allergy to alcohol that they that Doctor. Silkworth talks about in the book. Every time I take a drink alcohol something happens to me that I never understood for a lot of years. And I I I think you can best see it sometimes out of contrast. And my sister is not an alcoholic, and I've watched my sister drink on a lot of occasions.

I mean, I've watched my sister drink like a cat will watch a guy eat a tuna fish sandwich. I mean, I've watched my I even look in her eyes waiting for the effect. I wanna see it happen, you know. And my sister who's not alcoholic, the the weirdest thing happens to her, about 1 or 2 drinks or drink and a half into the deal is she's starting to feel the effect in her wiring, which is not alcoholic. It's normal healthy wiring.

It goes, woah. Woah. And she shuts her right down. She gets a feeling like she's losing control. She would she the idea of getting drunk is just I'm alcoholic.

As I drink alcohol and the effect starts to hit me and that glow starts to hit me and my wiring lights up and goes, oh, yeah. Come on. Come on. Come on. And I can't get enough, and I I've always been that way.

I I've had that phenomena of craving, I think, since the very first time I ever drank. I don't think I've ever had a social drink in my life. I I have never once had the experience that non alcoholics have all the time. The Al Anon's in here have probably had this experience of going to a bar with some friends and you're you're going for the purpose of it's a little more than social drinking. You're going for the purpose of me getting lit up and socialize with some people.

I have never once sat in a party or a bar, been drinking for about an hour and had the bartender come over and say, Bob, it's like another drink. I have never once sat there and thought honestly to myself, no, this is just right. I Not once. Not once. Now, I may shut her down if the heat's on, and my boy I'm with my boss or something, but I never felt like it.

Right? I all because a drink of alcohol always makes me feel like I'd like to have another drink of alcohol. And do you know that that that reaction to the feeling of alcohol only occurs in chronic alcoholics. It never occurs in non alcoholics. And that's one of the 2 one of the reasons, one of the two pieces in the puzzle why a guy like me will burn his life to the ground.

Not just once or twice. I mean, anybody can do that by mistake once. I do it over and over and over and over again. But why? Because I got an I will get into that a little later.

I got alcoholism. It's a hideous disease. It's the only disease I know of if you've got it, use your own mind against you, which is not good. So I'm standing before this juvenile court judge because I keep I keep whacking myself when I drink whiskey, and I I love whiskey, but I'm a lot of trouble. And they my parents at the end of their rope keeping me from getting locked up, and I got sent someplace to live for a while.

I'm not there very long, and I'm talking to this kid. It's a little bit older than me. He's about 17a half. He's one of the hip kids this joint. I'm telling him about what's happened to me, the trouble I'm in, and he's listening.

And then he says to me, he says, well, so you like to party, do you? And I said, yes, I do. He said, but you drink that liquor that'll make you stupid. I said, Oh man, I don't know. I like that liquor.

I just like that. He says, Listen, what if I told you that I could give you something that make you feel maybe as good as that? They can't smell it on your breath. You will not slur your words or stagger. They won't even know you're high, and you keep a whole week's supply in your shirt pocket.

What would you say to that? Sign me up. And he introduced me to drugs. But I'll tell you, I'm a I'm a real alcoholic. Alcoholics should not do drugs.

We are pigs. It was bad. Because I do drugs alcoholically. I mean, it's I just everything I pick up, I just take it to the wall. I can't get enough.

I got that deal. I got this vacancy inside of me that I can't fill, and I'm just I'm thirsting for this stuff and the effect, and I can't get it from out I can't get it from the drugs, like I got it from the alcohol, and I can't get enough, and I had no time at all. I'm doing speed. I don't I god. I'm I'm doing it.

I'm not doing it very long. Speed freaks of a dozen 10 years are telling me to cool it. I mean, I'm just whacked. I in no time at all I've turned myself into some kind of paranoid schizophrenic. I become the guy that if you leave me alone in your car to go get a cigarettes, by the time you come out, I've dismantled your radio looking for microphones from the FBI.

I mean, you know, I'm nuts. I can't it got to the point I couldn't even put 2 sentences together. I'm spinning in my head so much. A guy came along and said, here, try some of this. And, god, when the throwing up stopped, I could think straight.

It was, oh, yeah. And my head stopped spinning. He introduced me to heroin. But, god, I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholic shouldn't do drugs.

Oh, man. I took that to the wall and I just have and doctors and all and full circle back to alcohol, what I started with. And I think I did drugs for the same reason doctor Bob did drugs. Doctor Bob actually did in sheer occasion and tonnage did more drugs and alcohol. He did a high powered sedatives according to his story every day of his life for 17 years.

He did it for the same reason I did them because every time I drank the phenomenon of craving, the alcoholism was so strong within me I couldn't help but whack myself. And so the drugs bought me some periods of abstinence. One of the great things that was mysterious to me, and I'd come to these treatment centers, and I started going to treatment before I was old enough to take a legal drink. And I'm in an institution people started telling me about alcoholism, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. Because I can quit drinking.

You keep me properly medicated I can quit for a while. But what I can't do is I can't stand alone in this world because my spirit seems to get sick when I stop drinking. And I'm the guy that doctor Silkworth talks about. He's when he says, guys like me when we quit drinking were restless, irritable, discontent. And the guy talks about on page 52, I I suffer from misery and depression.

I have sense of uselessness. I'm full of fear. I'm unhappy. I mean, I I can't connect with people. I get these low level depressions.

I just don't do very well. So what I do is I get sober and I pretend, but eventually I it don't work, and I eventually just yearn for the effect. The great psychiatrist, Carl Young, in a letter right before Carl died, he he wrote a letter to Bill Wilson in response to a letter that Bill wrote to him thanking him for his contribution to AA in the case of Roland Hazard. And how that pieces of that puzzle, that information he gave Roland was part of the Alcoholics Anonymous coming about. And Carl wrote back to Bill, and he said something.

It's an amazing letter if you ever get a chance to read it. There's so much amazing stuff in that letter. But the one thing that hit me the most is is Carl said to Bill that that he'd always believed from working with alcoholics of Roland's type, but he wouldn't tell Roland this that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol wasn't really a thirst for alcohol. He said he believed it was a low level thirst of his being for unity, for connectedness, or as expressed in religious or medieval terms a union with God. I guess I drank because I missed God I didn't know that, but there was a vacancy right in the center of who I am and I tried to fill it with a lot of things.

Alcohol came the closest for a number of years, and then years after it turned on me I still drink and hoping against hope that I'll drink like I drink when I was 18 years old one more time. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. What that means is as the years go on my ability to get the magic diminishes and the problems increase. And it's it's a it's a bad as the it's almost, you know, what it's like it's like in the early days when I would go out to party with my friends, it was like spinning a roulette wheel, a party wheel, and on that wheel you'd have drag racing and dancing and getting laid and, playing with bands and shooting pool and laughing and roughhousing with the guys. You have a once in a while, you'd have throwing up in a little allocation with the police.

But for the most part, you'd spin that wheel. It's coming up party, party, party, party, party. And as the years progressed and the disease progressed within me, it's like some hideous forces screwing with the wheel, and they're taking off some of the good stuff and they're putting up some awful stuff like wet pants. I'll tell you something, diaper rash is cute when you're 2 years old. It's not cute when you're 22 years old.

Getting arrested and going to jail and getting so physically sick I feel like I'm gonna die. Problems with jobs and inability to hold them and emotional mental problems and relationship problems and and blackouts. Oh, I'm a blackout drinker. Any blackout drinkers in here? Oh, Patty.

Oh, yeah. My people. It's hard going through life when other people know more about you than you do. I mean, that's just an that's a rough deal. I'm telling you.

And, you know, if you're like me, nobody ever comes up to a guy like me the next day and says, oh, Bob, you were so helpful full last night. You peed in our kitchen. You hit on my wife. You broke my lamp. You sideswipe my car.

You passed out of my front lawn. I had a guy one time I was hungover on my way to the liquor store. I'm shaking. He came up to me to tell me that I told everybody the night before that I beat Bruce Lee in a karate match. Oh, my God.

I just wanted to crawl under a rock somewhere. There's always those people that just wait to tell you. It's like Christmas for them. They just can't Oh, they just lights them up. Oh, some of them end up in Al Anon.

So I'm encouraged. My my drinking's turned turned into as the years go on. And and yet isn't it funny even in the bleak years and those the last few years were bleak. And the reason I love the description in the big book in a vision for you where it talks about the end. And it says, we can't imagine life with it because it's turned on us, and it's pathetic, and it's awful, and it that really was it.

Now at the end of my drinking, I'm not the guy that's playing in the sitting in with the bands. I'm not the guy that's laughing and talking to the girls. I'm the guy that holds up somewhere if I can, drinks myself into oblivion. I'm the guy that drinks and feels sorry for himself. I'm the guy that goes on crying jags sometimes.

I'm the guy that ends up in emergency rooms because I in a panicked rage or just a fit. I'll put my fist through a plate glass window, and now I'm bleeding all over the place, or I don't bathe anymore because I don't care. I don't I don't take care of myself because once the the fun and the magic came out of partying it felt like there's nothing to live for. And so I drank for oblivion. I drank the last couple years just to blot it out, Because every time I was conscious, I'm in the presence of the guy I hate the most, me.

Because as the years went on I started compromising every moral and value I ever had. I hurt every person that ever loved me. It seemed like my parents who would would have done anything for me. I just for loving me, I seem to punish him for it. And my little sister who I was at one time was her hero.

I punished her for her love. And any woman that tried to love me seemed nobody came away from me feeling good about Bob. Nobody. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in 78, and I started getting into the steps.

And I had a when I got to my 8 step list, I'll tell you I had a long list of people I heard. But on the square, there was not one name on that long list of people I really heard a lot that I ever set out to hurt intentionally. And I just don't get what I'm doing to these people. I can't see past myself in my own drivenness. I can't see past my own obsessive need to try to fix myself, to try to jump start that party to make me better.

I can't see past that, so I don't even get a clue what I'm doing to you. I never once even put myself in your shoes to even spec you. I never got it. I couldn't I couldn't see past me. I had too much of me between me and life, and me and you, and me and God, me and everything.

One of the great descriptions of of Alcoholics Anonymous was coined in 1946 by a non alcoholic. And he was a Doctor. Bill Baron, and Bill was asked to investigate us because in the early forties, Alcoholics Thomas was getting a lot of notoriety. We just had the Jack Alexander article in Liberty and a whole bunch of stuff. And and we were we were up for the Lasker award.

It was cut didn't come for a few years, but they we were on we were on the radar for it. People were wondering what AA was all about. So this doctor Baer went to a few meetings, looked at our book, and and he made a report to for the to to the AMA about what he thought we were. And it a little portion of it is repeated and reprinted in the back of the big book in a little obscure section very few people few ever read called the medical view of alcoholism. And I'll tell you something, I think doctor Baird nailed us.

And if you're new and you think this is a self help program, I'm telling you it's not. Matter of fact, it's almost the opposite. And doctor Baer said that he he says that Alcoholics Anonymous, he says we're not a we're not Crusaders, and that's true for the most part even though there is a little phase some of us go through. But then we usually get out of that, or we don't or we usually if you don't get out of that phase, you don't stay sober usually. We're not Crusaders, and that's true.

He says there and we're not a tempered society, and that's true. Probably in this room, there's people that work in bars or restaurant, but we're not again we're not fighting alcohol. What he says, and this is where he really nails this, he says that they are people, these AAs are people who know that they must not drink. And that knowledge for some of us almost killed us in its acquisition. Some of us almost died before we got that.

And then he really nails me, he says, so so they throw themselves into helping others with similar problems, and in that atmosphere, the alcoholic will often overcome his excessive concentration upon himself. I read that the first time, and I thought, oh my god, doctor Baer. Is it that obvious? I think I was sober for several years before I got that everything I do in AA is so I can overcome my excessive concentration upon myself. That when I stop when it says in the big book that selfishness self centeredness is the root of the trouble, they're not kidding.

I stopped drinking, I just get me and my emotions and my judgments and my me me me just kinda on me like that creature, an alien, that attaches itself to your face. How you doing, Bob? Well, I'm hanging in there. And it feels like depression to me, but it's not. It's the depression, It's not it's not clinical depression, it's spiritual depression.

My spirit is smothered with me. It's the depression of the obsessively overly self involved, and I can't get free. And every time and I relapsed for seven and a half years, I can't tell you how many times I got sober and and drank again. It was many times. And and when I look back, I can remember incidences of abstinence right before I'm about to drink again.

And I'm going at I'm going at the first drink with an anticipation of freedom. Because I've been up in here locked up now for 7 or 8 or 10 or 11 months feeling like I'm doing time not drinking. And man there's a part of me just wants to bust out. And the only thing in my whole life that I've ever found that when I'm locked up in my head the bondage of self that ever freed me like like that was at one time 5 shots of tequila would free me from the bondage of self. But what I can't see is the truth, And the truth is is that alcohol has stopped doing that for me.

I've entered into the bleak years now. And and isn't it funny, a guy like me, where the last 10 times I went out to party, it's no fun. It's pathetic, it's self pitying, it's it's it's just it's it's awful. And yet I'll be sober for 10 months, or 8 months, or 7 months on my way to get drunk, believing, deluded into thinking that I'm gonna I'm gonna get the effect from alcohol that I got when I was 18 years old again. In spite of overwhelming experience and evidence that that is dead, that horse is dead, but yet I don't want it to be dead.

And the book talks about this self delusion, which is if you don't know what that is, it's like a psychotic wishful thinking. It's all the evidences the party's over, but man I ain't no good without the party, and I don't want the party to be over, and I don't want it to be over so badly that I will start imagining that it's not even though it is. It's that psychotic wishful thinking until I believe it. Until I'm on my way to drink convinced that I'm gonna I'm gonna cut it up. It's gonna be great.

It's gonna be like it was when I was 18 years old. My second to last run, I was in a halfway house, and I've been I've been sober a while for me. I mean, a long time. I don't know. It wasn't a year.

It was maybe 9 months, maybe 10 months, maybe 11. I don't know, but I know it was less than a year, which is it is a terribly long time to live dry with untreated alcoholism if you're an alcoholic like me. It's a it's a terrible long time to have to be feeling that loneliness and separation like you don't fit anywhere, of of the boredom, and the vacancy, and the depression, and the restless, the irritable, the discontent. I I remember one time I went to I went to this old timer, and I was so at the end of my rope and I just said, what do you guys do? What do you do for fun in AA?

And he says, oh, we go to a lot of meetings. I thought, oh, you got anything else? He said, oh, twice a year we got an AA dance. You ever been to an AA dance with untreated alcoholism? Oh, my God.

Do you remember why I used to drink quick? I mean, oh, it's horrible. You you it's it's like, oh, it's all of them, and then there's me. Oh, it's terrible. The book says, well, no loneliness such as few do.

Man. So I to me, to me, I had good news and bad news. The good news that if I went to to 1,000 of these stupid meetings I'll stay sober the rest of my life and the bad news I'm gonna live a long time. And I'm the guy talks about vision for you. I can't imagine life with it without it.

And then the book says someday he will be unable to imagine life with it or without it. And then guys like me get to the jumping off place. And we either take our own lives or we come to Alcoholics Anonymous again. And I'm in this halfway house, and I'm hanging on by my finger nails, and I know I don't wanna drink because I'm in I always in trouble anymore, and I'm homeless. I'm the re I'm in this re this halfway house because it's winter.

I know some people go to Bermuda. I go to treatment. I mean, I just I'm you know, because I I'm a homeless guy. I live in on the streets. I know what it's like to just about freeze to death walk in the streets when it's 4 degrees outside, and you can't even sit down.

So I'm in this place and I'm hanging on. It's getting to be I think it was like beginning of March. It's not too bad out anymore. It's starting to be a little springtime coming at me about a month away or so, and I can't take it anymore. And I I plan this run.

I I plan on going to party with this guy that I was in detox with, and I found out he was I called him. He was back to drinking. I kinda suspected he was. I'm gonna come down, and he told me to get a weekend pass. I can stay in his trailer.

I could party with him all weekend. He told me about this rock and roll bar he found out. He found he knows about, and he had some tie stick. And he said the girls down there great in the bands. And, man, I'm I'm I'm up to here with this sober thing.

I need some fun. I don't wanna hurt nobody. I don't wanna burn my life to the ground. I've just gotta have a little fun. I mean, I have been a really good sport up to now.

Because I'm a victim of the delusion, the illusion it talks about chapter 3 that someday, some way I'll control and enjoy my drinking. I think I can still enjoy it like I did when I was 18 years old, and control it enough to keep the damage down to something reasonable. That's the delusion. And I went to meet this guy, and I'll never forget it. The best part of that run, like the last 8 or 10 I was on was the hour or so before it started.

And I'm in this bar, and I I'm ordering these double shots, a 100 proof whiskey beer backs because when you only got a weekend, you gotta get downtown now. I mean, just I wanna jump start the party. I want I wanna get that thing going on right and come out and play. There's some girls I wanna dance with. I wanna I wanna I wanna shoot some pool.

I wanna I wanna have some laughs for god's sakes. Aren't I entitled to that? And I'm throwing those double shots down in an 8 jump start. Only thing that's jump started in me is a phenomenon of craving, and I'm sitting there sinking into self pity as I'm watching the people in the bar laugh and have a good time, and wondering what's what's wrong with me? Because I could remember when I was all about that, and I couldn't get it back.

And every once in a while alcoholics get real lucky, and through the fog and the self delusion a window opens up and you can see the truth. And I could see the truth that this is it. This is the best it's ever going to get. It's like that scene in that movie, As Good as It Gets, where Jack Nicholson's walking through the waiting room of the psychiatrist office. Everybody's depressed, and they're doing badly, And he stops and he looks at everybody and says, what if this is as good as it gets?

And they all go, oh, that's exactly how I I the window opened, and I saw that this is it. That I'll never I got it. I got it. That I can drink myself to death, but I will never get back to the way it was when I was 18 years old again. And that was a horrible, horrible, depressing realization.

You know, they say the truth will set you free, but I'm telling you, it'll ruin your day first. I never made it back Sunday night to the halfway house. I came to Monday morning in a county jail facing 2 years in a state penitentiary for hit and run DUI in a stolen car. They gave me a phone call and I hope I never forget that a guy like me that was once real popular that had a family that would have done anything for me. My alcoholism took me to a place where there was no one to call.

There was no one that would take my call, and I did that to me. I'm so I signed up to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the county jail. I be honest with you, I did not go for recovery or sobriety or any of that. By now, I'd given up on AA because I'd been in I'd been in probably I'd probably been in 200 meetings by now. I've been in many institutions.

I'd watched all the Father Martin movies. I'd I'd done all that stuff. I've been to the psychiatrist. Some of the greatest the guy Clayton and I loved his talk. I I my dad was so politically connected.

He actually got me in therapy with Albert Elvis. He said, ship me up to New York to the rat the Institute of Rational Motive Therapy. I I was in therapy with Ed Silverman who was a who studied under Fritz Perls. I mean, I I went to some great psychologists. I really relate to Roland Hazard.

That it never changed anything really. And I I remember one time going to a a weekend deal where they wouldn't even let you sleep. You just they kept you awake until you just broke down and dealt with your feelings. I mean, I'm telling you, that weekend changed my life for 2 weeks. And then what happens to me is I'm always back to being me again.

And that's not good because back to being me again is the guy that's restless, irritable, discontent. The guy that has that suffers from the loneliness of the anxious apartness that Bill talks about the 12 by 12? An inability to fit until the loneliness just eats my lunch. Back to being me is not good. Back to being me is back to being the guy who in spite of everything will always drink again.

And I didn't know that I had alcoholism. I I go to AA meetings and I I'm convinced that I don't have I'm not this I'm not like you people. I knew that I had I had seeming evidence because I watched you guys for 7 years, and I watched you you stop drinking. You burnt your life to the ground with alcohol, but you stopped drinking and you were magnificent. You were wonderful.

You were grateful for everything. You loved everybody. Your life just took off like a rocket. You had great relationships and success and all this stuff. I stopped drinking.

I feel like I'm doing time. I mean, it's not I I not any of that. And I don't understand. Say meeting not for recovery. I'd given up on alcoholics.

I went for cigarettes. And in the back of my mind, I I knew that some of those people in a had big homes and did very well financially. I might be able to kinda lead someone into putting their house up or helping me to get out on bail or something. You never know. You got you got to be thinking all the time when you're on the streets.

I mean, you just got to be thinking. And I'm sitting, and I'm waiting for the do gooders from AA to show up, they always show up. You got to understand, I'm not an alcoholic. But for some strange reason, every time I start drinking, I end up where all the alcoholics are at. I don't know what that's about.

But I'm just sitting in the room waiting for the do gooders for me to come, and here they come. And leading the pack is a guy I know. I I I don't like that I know him. His name's Woody. He's Woody used to bring meetings into the deep one of the detoxes I was in.

Woody brought meetings into the halfway house, Woody brought meetings into a treatment center I was in. Woody was one of those big book carrying, God loving, grateful for everything. Oh, God. If you're sitting there with untreated alcoholism, it's just about more than you can take, really. I mean, he's just he's he's awful.

He's he's something that just annoys me. He's happy and sober at the same time for God's sakes. And here he comes, they rub his great life in my face, you know, like they always do. And here he and I'm so ashamed of myself. I've always every time I relapse, I'm properly ashamed of myself.

And I I go up to him and I apologize for letting him and all the people in AA down as if I expected that Alcoholics Anonymous has gone into mourning because I drank again or something. I don't know. And I start trying to work him. You know, I'm trying to work him because I knew he had a big house and 2 nice cars and a great job, but he was a boss at the steel mill, you know, and I'm working him. And I'm he's I worked him around to him telling me that he's like to help me.

Yeah. So I explained it to him about how I needed him to put his house up. And they the people they are hypocrites. They say they wanna help you until you explain it to him, and then they don't wanna go. And he don't want to he wants to give me a big book.