The topic of "Access the Power" at the 46th Tri-State Convention in Mt. Vernon, IL

My name is Bob Darryl. I am an alcoholic. You could see that lack of power still was my dilemma. Through the grace of a very loving god who I didn't believe in, who I found is crazy about me and has no taste, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, good sponsorship, and a commitment to this way of life. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substances since Halloween 1978, And for that, I owe you my life.

You know, it said the thing with the program said this was a spirituality meeting. Every meeting is a spirituality meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous. As a dear friend of mine says, there's two sides to the program, the spiritual side and the outside. It's really delightful one meeting spiritual as opposed so it makes the rest of the meetings will be selfish and decrepit, I think. I I wanna talk about something that is dear to my heart because an experience that I've had in Alcoholics Anonymous that if I didn't have it and try to maintain it, I probably would've died probably by my own hands years ago.

And that's this coming to believe and connect and actualize a relationship with a power greater than myself. I I want you to know that I was the guy who came in and out of AA for a number of years, and every time I heard someone talk about God, it was like a steel door would slam in my head. And I didn't understand that I had a lot of prejudices in this area and a lot of fears. Almost a sense that if there really was a God, I was in a lot of trouble. Because I I grew up with, these funny prejudices and I don't know their prejudices.

And I work with a lot of guys that have prejudices about god that they don't even know that are prejudices because you don't think it's a prejudice because it's just the way it is. You don't get that it's a judgment that might be a little screwy that you don't even know where you got it, but I had a bunch of those. And one of them was a view of God well, first of all, he existed to judge me. He could see in the dark, which was not good. That's not good for a guy like me.

He could read my mind, I I was told. I and I oh, man. I I'm always thinking stuff I'm not supposed to be thinking. And somewhere along the line I threw I surrendered to this to an idea of prejudice that there can't be a God. Because if there is, it to me, it it looked like a lose lose situation because I was never gonna be good enough.

I was never gonna be the guy I need to be. And so it's easier to reject the whole thing. And and that is, I think, is part of my nature. I I did that with people a lot of my life. I I came into Alcoholics and did it with a lot of you for a number of years.

I would just get this thing in my head that you don't I would imagine you don't like me, or if you really knew about me, you wouldn't accept me so I'd beat you to it. So I reject you first. Right? And I kinda did that with God. On page 44, it talks about a condition that brought me to the table in Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's really one of the best descriptions of of alcoholism. It says, if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. Honestly, want to, like not like the other 13, 15 times. This time, I really mean it. Quit entirely.

What do they mean by entirely? They don't really mean entirely, do they? I mean, that's fanatical. They don't mean everything. I can quit alcohol for long periods of time, just like doctor Bob, if you keep me medicated, or if you give me an alternative.

But what I can't do is I can't quit entirely. And I that's a painful thing to face that I and the second thing, it says, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, and that's always been true for me. I I always no matter what my intentions are as far as how far I'm gonna go getting drunk, I just the minute I start drinking, I move the line. You know, it just keeps moving. I because it that's what alcohol does to me.

It just every drink of alcohol I've ever taken has given me the single one reaction. It's made me feel like I'd like to have another one of those. I mean, every drink I've ever taken has done that. So I have little control over the amount. You take the book says, if that be the case, if you're in this trap you can't spring where you can't stay away from it, and every time you pick it up, you burn your life to the ground even though you don't mean to.

If you're in this trap, the book says you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. Well, that's not good news for a guy like me who has all the prejudices I have about God. I remember sitting in an institution up in Maine. It was I just last year, I got to go back there and visit some of those places. And I was sitting in this institution and listening to an AA speaker talk and I by this time, I've been around Alcoholics Anonymous.

I've been in and out of AA meetings for 5, 6 years probably by this time. And I've heard a lot of AA speakers, saw been to a lot of AA meetings. But this was the first guy I ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous that I I started to connect with. And he was part of a a trustees group from Thomaston State Penitentiary in Maine. And he was, they they brought him and a couple other guys from the prison, this trust group of trustees that were on good behavior with guards, to this mother's seat in hospital where I'm in the alcoholism treatment deal there, and and they bring this guy in and he's he's there's a speaker, a 10 minute speaker, and then there's this guy.

And I'm sitting there looking at this guy and listening to him, and he's the first person in Alcoholics Anonymous I ever started to connect with. And he had really long hair and a long beard and tattoos, and tattoos were not big back in those days. I mean, you had to be a a outlaw motorcycle guy or a gangster to have I mean, that was and this guy was big guy, probably £300. He'd I think he'd killed a cop. He was a tough outlaw motorcycle guy.

The kind of guy if you're secretly weak and pathetic and trying to pretend like you're not and you're tough, the kind of guy you wanna drink with because he'll watch your back. I mean, this is the kind of guy I'd like to drink with. And he's a man's kinda man. The kind of guy nothing would bother. This guy couldn't possibly be afraid of anything.

He started talking about his drinking and his emotions, and he started saying things that just I connected with. He started talking about coming to after maybe beating pistol whipping some guy the night before, coming to in a fetal position like a terrified little kid, shaking at the memory of what he did and the and and and I'm I'm sitting there going, woah. I mean, I understand I feel like that all the time because I'm weak and pathetic, but you, you feel like that. You and I think, oh my god. And he started to talk about, himself.

And I'm I tell you, I'm ready to sign up for AA. I'm connecting with this guy. And then he talks about going to AA, working the steps, and finding God. And the minute he started talking about his relationship with God, it was like a steel door slammed in my head. And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, what have they done to him?

Oh, not him. Oh, no. Not this guy. Oh, I know what he's oh, he's he well, he's become one of them. I had a running partner that became one of them.

You know, you you drink too much wine. You do a little bit too much drugs. Your brain turns to a loaf of wet bread, and you end up a sunbeam for Jesus at the airport giving out flowers. I know. I've been I understand the dynamic.

And little did I know that there would come a time when I would be in I would be so stuck and so hopeless that all my prejudices wouldn't even mean anything anymore. I'd be willing to come to the table with something I fought against and threw away for years. The book Bill says something funny in the book. He there's a line in here. It says, to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis.

He says, for us, there are not always easy alternatives to face. Now I think that's a it's a bizarre line, but it's true. Now we're talking door number 1, death. There's the I've watched people die of alcoholism. I know guys that have died of it.

It I I can't imagine a worse way to die. I can't I know there's not a way to die that we have more shame and self loathing. By the time alcoholism finally kills you, and it's a long tedious process for most of us, you've wished you were dead for a long time. By the time it finally kills you, you've been in hell already. The death is just stepping just finally stepping over the threshold.

You've already been there. By the time it finally kills you, you hate yourself. Everyone you've ever loved wants nothing to do with you, and they're gonna be glad you're dead. As my mother, when I was a year sober, and I my first approach to making amends to them, she broke down with tears in her eyes because she loved me to have to tell me that she used to wish I was dead. And I did that to her.

How do you take a mother's love and do that? Did an angel get its wings? And I did that. So we have alcoholic death, worst death there is, or to live on a spiritual basis. And Bill says, guys like me that's not always easy alternatives to face.

It's like you you come to meetings and people wanna tell you about steps and we're gonna do God and all that stuff. You start thinking, what? How bad could that alcoholic death be anyway, really? I mean, you know. And if you when my mother my mother died of a terminal illness, lung cancer, and it was a very brutal brutal deal.

And I, got to talk to a lot of doctors back then about terminal illnesses. And do you know if you went to a hospice where people who've been pronounced terminal and they're dying of cancer, and there's no hope for them through human means, and you were to say to them, we got a deal here that if you'll just change your lifestyle a little bit and do a few things. There's over 4,000,000 of us that have not that were terminal, that did don't have to die of this disease. I'm telling you, they beg you to tell them what to do, and they do it. I go in on a weekly basis for the last 20 year 28 years, I've gone into places where people are dying of alcoholism every week, and you lay out this simple kit of spiritual tools at their feet.

And most of the time they kick it away because they they can't make this choice. And it's it's ludicrous, but it's true. There's something about alcoholism that it it's almost as if I imagine sometimes like it has a life of its own. And it wants you dead. That's why there seems to be a resistance in a lot of us that well up in anything that's gonna take us closer to God or freer from our disease.

Almost like the alcoholism does will make you nuts not to go there. Look at how many times some of us try to write 4 steps and can't pick up that £5,000 pen or go wash well, I I used to wash my car rather than write anything. Just what is that? It's crazy. The book says after a while, we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else.

And isn't it strange? I I've always think I just think it's strange that I, and a lot of us, fight this whole idea of a spiritual experience or a spiritual awakening. And yet, in reality, spend my whole life seeking that. I don't know about you guys. I drank alcohol because it it vitalized my spirit.

It it allowed it gave me an awakening. A guy who was locked up in himself, depressed, I can't fit, I ain't doing too good, could walk into a bar or a party and have 5 drinks and get connected. I could come out and play. I could be a part of. I could feel plugged in.

It really was a spiritual experience. Putting aside all my prejudices about religion and spirituality, the truth always has been that when I in my early days of alcoholism, ism, no matter how sick my spirit is, 5 shots of tequila would vitalize it. Not at the end, not the last couple years, but for years it did that for me. And especially in the years when the hook is set and the obsession is put into place. So I got a deal here.

I I I gotta come to the table. I don't wanna come to the table. Earlier in the book, there's a there's a place where it says that it talks about before we ever come to believe in God or even that a a will work. It says, we will come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we've been living it. And I I believed that before I ever believed a would work for me, before I ever really started to believe in a power greater than myself.

I believed in that. And isn't it it's it's I think spiritual growth is it's a funny thing. It doesn't come from education and I I really know that. I had a a dear friend who died a few years ago with a lot of years of sobriety. He was a Catholic priest who had studied and taught theology at the Vatican and he's and was a drunk doing that for years.

And he said it wasn't until he came into AA that he started to really connect with God. And it really wasn't from educating himself more in spiritual things. Because he was at the top of the food chain as far as education and and intellectual knowledge about god. It came from throwing some of that stuff out. It's spiritual growth always comes from subtraction.

It never comes from addition. Never. And that's really my story in this subtraction was that I I got to the place where I believed in the hopelessness and futility. My best thoughts and ideas had failed me, and I'm dying here, and I've tried everything else. They say it there's a saying in AA that that Alcoholics Anonymous is the last house of the on the block.

I think within AA, sometimes God is the last house on the block also. It says on page 45, it talks about something that's very interesting. It says lack of power. That was our dilemma. Not lack of religion, not even lack of faith.

I've I've known some men that have tremendous faith in god that have died of alcoholism, and drank themselves to death. I've had the fortune or privilege to have sponsored, several members of clergy. I've I watched a guy drink himself to death that prayed more in one day than most of us will in a week, who knew more about God and scripture and the bible than most of us ever would. And he died with more faith than probably intellectually, and he could give you tremendous arguments about the to prove the existence of god. But he could not connect with the power, with God's grace.

And he died he called me right before he died. He was weeping because he couldn't understand why a guy who has served god his whole life couldn't get what these bombs and AA were getting. Right? But it's not lack of faith. It's lack of power.

I I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. And in the summertime, there are times when it'll get up over a 115 degrees. And if I were to if you were to come there and visit me during that time of the year, I could take you in my car, and we would we could drive out to Lake Mead, which is one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the Western United States. And I could show you the lake, and you'd know that the lake was there, and then take you about 15, 20 miles away, and drop you off at the middle of the desert with a map on how to get to Lake Mead. And I'm telling you that if you don't follow the directions on that map, you will wander around that desert and die of thirst knowing that water's there.

Knowing. And that seems to be the problem, is that I have to access this power. And that's the dilemma. If I don't, I'm gonna die. I, I I I struggled I remember when Frank died, he was a was a priest, that just blew my mind.

You know, because I under at the time, I was sober a little while, and I understood and believed with everything in me that I was only sober through God's grace and I knew that. I knew that. And yet I what was so baffling to me is why why would you know, you'd think if that's true, a man of the cloth would have a leg up on the rest of us. Right? And then at other times, I've watched I I had my own experience.

I I was in a I came to in a jail cell, up in Maine, and I was up there on a geographic. I didn't know it was a geographic. I thought it was just crossing state lines to avoid incarceration, but I the people at a will educate you about this stuff. And I was up there on a geographic, and, I had one friend left in the world. This guy Chris Morgan who I've tried to find and try I keep trying to find him.

He's on my 8 step list, never been able to find him. And Chris was a great guy and he helped me out, put me up on his couch and got me a job and I come to in this jail cell and I don't know why I'm there and I'm sick and I need a drink and I'm shaking. Wanna jump out of my skin and they take me into a room and the detective tells me I'm there because I took a hot knife and opened up Chris's chest the night before. And I'm sitting there in that detective's office, and I feel these these emotions like I'm gonna start screaming. And if I start, I'll never stop.

And I pushed those feelings down and hardened up in the way that some of us can. And they took me back to my cell, and I fell down on that concrete floor and just came apart and started sobbing. And I did something that was out of character for me in that moment of hopelessness and weakness. I begged god to please never let me drink that stuff again. And I got drunk the day I got out.

So if you've had those experiences and then you see a guy like Frank drink himself to death who's such a good man, It's it's it's scary. And I didn't understand, and yet I'm sober by this time longer than I've ever been sober my whole life since I start start drinking at 12 years old. I and I feel pretty good about it. And one night I was watching a movie, and it was an old movie b old b movie from about World War 2, and I, all of a sudden I connected the dots. I understood what had happened to me.

And the movie is about this, about the South Pacific. And in the South Pacific during World War 2, there was so many islands that the United States did not have enough troops to station garrisons on every island. So what they did is that they would often parachute in a guy whose job was to be an observer. And he would set up a base camp, and through radio, he would he would keep in contact with the US fleet and and watch for Japanese troop movements and ships. And this story is about a guy who did that and he but on landing on the island, the radio got screwed up.

And so he's setting up his camp and he's trying to get the fleet and he can't get this weird kinda static and stuff at the and he can't get nothing. He's completely cut off. And so he goes about the business of surveying the island and building his camp, and then one day he's coming up over the sand dune, and there's the whole Japanese fleet. And they're coming towards his island, and he panics. And he runs back to the camp, and he's he's hitting the radio and screwing with it, trying to get the fleet in because he's now it's desperate.

And he can't get enough. And he he remembers, he thinks, wait wait a minute. There was a manual somewhere. And he starts digging through this duffel bag. In the bottom of the duffel bag, he pulls out this manual.

And he starts reading the manual and it starts describing the symptoms of the radio. The weird static and all the stuff that's going on. And then it gives him some tests to try. And some things to do, and he and it leads him into finding this tube that's been knocked loose and resetting it in there, and all of a sudden, there's the fleet. There it is.

And the reason he couldn't get the the juice or couldn't get the power from the the message, the deal from the fleet was not because he was a bad guy or he played with his knobs too much or none of that stuff. It was just simply that he had a broken receiver. And I started to get, that's it. That's the deal. God has always loved me.

God has is crazy about me. God has exist to give me his grace. But I got a broken receiver. And I can't receive it. And I think that's why people will die of alcoholism knowing with absolute faith knowing god's there.

But they can't access the grace because they're blocked from it. And couple little things, on page 46, it it talks about 2 things that are necessary in order to begin to connect with this power. In the middle of the page, it it says, we found that as soon as we were able to first lay aside prejudice and with with a lot of the guys I sponsor, we we I try to talk to them. We try to even sometimes get them to write down, what are your prejudices? What are your ideas, your opinions, your judgments, your notions about god?

Especially look let's look for the ones that at times may make him his love and grace, give you a sense of that you're not worthy of it or you can't access it. And I'll tell you what one of mine was and I think a lot of have this and it's it's unconscious. That's the problem with most prejudices. I don't get that they're prejudices. It's just an unconscious stance that I take towards things.

And my one of mine was this idea that God would only help me and love me when I'm good. That in my very worst day when I've just done something I can't stand myself for, that God wouldn't help be there for me because I've I've rendered myself unworthy of his grace. When I've just got into a restaurant and because I haven't eaten all day and I'm really hungry and I'm nuts and the waitress doesn't wait on me quickly enough and I I knocked the sugar thing off the counter and read and start yelling at her and storm out of there. And then I'm sitting in my car and I wanna go out in the garden and eat worms because I become the guy that I can't stand. I become the guy I can't stand.

If if I don't have a god that I can access even at my very worst, I got a problem because that's when I need his power. I it's when I need him the most. And so that's a deadly deadly prejudice. And I so many of us have that and and many many more. So this is the first thing we have to do is lay aside prejudice.

These prejudgments that I have about god, these opinions. And the second thing it says, and express even a willingness to believe. It doesn't say we have to believe. It asks for an expression of a willingness. And it says, if we do those two things, it says, we'll commence to get results even though it's impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God.

I sort of thought that I had to understand God before I could approach him, and that's not the case at all. Matter of fact, my desire to understand and figure god out was a very self oriented thing. The reason I wanna understand god is just the same reason I wanna understand the boss at a new job. Because if you understand the way he thinks, you're gonna get a little leverage there. You're gonna get a little more control.

You're gonna feed self a little. I mean, what about he's gonna do me me me me me. Like, maybe if I could understand God enough, I could I could tailor my prayers in such a way to get the the Bentley and the new you know what I mean? Just but you have to make him see that this is what's necessary, and just kinda have to understand him so he can lay that down. Book says, don't even try.

Friend of mine says that if God's small enough for me to understand him, he's not big enough for me to to help me. That's and I believe that's true. So if I can just express a willingness and that what the old timers in a a told me to do was stuff that didn't make any sense to me. I'm living in this halfway house because I'm a homeless guy. And they told me that I I I must get down physically, get down on my knees every morning and every night, and turn my consciousness towards whatever's running the universe.

And and to know that I needed I needed help from that. And I knew that. I knew that I didn't have by this time, after seven and a half years of relapsing, I know that I don't have what it takes to stay sober. I know that. I don't know a lot but I know that.

And so I would turn I'd go in the bathroom at the halfway house and I because I don't believe in god so I'm embarrassed to do this. So I locked the door. I pushed the throw rug up against the crack underneath the door. Like, as if I'm afraid somebody's gonna peek under here and see me pray or something. Like, I'm nuts.

Right? I'm whacked. And I get down on my knees, and I say, okay. Whatever's there. I'm scared and I need some help, and I don't I don't I need your help to stay sober.

And at the end of the day, I would just simply get down in there on my knees and I'd thank whatever that was. And some funny things started happening to me from the moment of this expression of willingness. And I I didn't understand that, the physical demonstrations are so powerful. And you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, we often talk about change of attitude. And And I didn't know what that meant for a long time.

Pilots talk about attitude. It's the angle of approach. And if you got a bad attitude in an airplane, you're gonna land in the mall. Right? You're gonna land you're gonna hit the side of a mountain.

So you must adjust your attitude, your angle of approach. And what the problem with me and God is not God, it's my angle of approach. And from the moment I started to take actions against my natural inclinations, what I started to do is I was changing my angle of approach. So I was starting to access this grace, this power. There's amazing stuff started happening to me from the moment I did that.

I I was I was living in this halfway house. I got one roommate that's shooting heroin and another one that's smoking pot. Like, and I'm I'm on thin ice here. Out of nowhere, a guy came to me and offered me a job with room and board living in a treatment center for teenagers being the house manager. I'm telling you, this job was divinely crafted for me.

It did not give me a lot of money because a lot of money, I would have ended up in a saloon telling everybody how smart I was. It was just enough money to start chipping away at some amends, having money to put in the basket and maybe get a pack of cigarettes. But it gave me put me in a position to think of others. I could get to 2 meetings a day. When I lived there.

It was perfect for me. Perfect. And it got me out of a very danger and I didn't look for that job. It just came to me. I had other things happen to me like that.

Like, I I I used to I would go through these really awful mood swings in early sobriety. Unexplicable stuff because I don't understand myself to know why why go from one minute feeling like I'm on top of the world to the next minute into this abyss. And I I had dozens and dozens of experiences like that where I'd go to some meeting and there'd be a stranger there talking about what's going on with me and he's got my answer. I remember one time coming, I just I was so frazzled at work. I I went to a noon meeting and I'm nuts.

And, I'm ready I'm gonna go back after the noon meeting and quit my job because they've been disrespecting me and taking advantage of me, and it and just it just they've really been it's been bad. And I go to a meeting, and there's a stranger there talking about something that went on with him in the job. And all of a sudden, it was like, oh my god. I don't have to quit my job. I gotta make amends to my boss for being an idiot.

It that would never have occurred to me naturally. Never. And I started to experience the hand of something working in my life. I mean, who's choreographer who's the choreographer behind all that? And I started to come to believe in something I I I suspect the only way a guy like me could really by what started to happen to me.

Over over in London, to to this day, there's parts of London that the streets are lit by gas street lights rather than electric. And, years ago before they had the electric starters and the before they were all gridded and automatic, there was a guy whose job it was at at dusk was to go up and down the streets of London. He had a key to turn the gas on in a long pole with a flame on the end to light the light the deal. And he was called a lamplighter, and you could climb up to the top of the highest building in in London and look out over the city and you no matter how hard you looked, you couldn't see where the lamplighter was. But you could always see where he'd been by the lights.

And I could sit in a meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous at 3 years sober, 2a half, I don't know. I couldn't see where God was, really, but, boy, could I see where he'd been. I mean, I could see where he'd been. And even more closely and more distinctly than seeing where he'd been in my life, man, could I I was doing a lot of 12 step work. I I was going into the hospitals and institutions.

I could see the hand of god and some of these new people that came in 6, 8 months after me. I saw the deadness of the eyes. I saw I saw the hopelessness. I met the guys that would never see their kids again because of the restraining orders. I met the guys that were so far in debt that they're not gonna live long enough to get themselves out.

I met the homeless guys and years later they're buying their first home and the guy's got his kids and I mean, tremendous transformations. And I came to believe, I guess the only way that I could, I had to see it. I had to be up close and personal. I Some people have an ability that someone they respect will tell them you need to believe in this and they just go, oh, okay. Or it says it in a book and they go, oh, okay.

But I'm not that guy. I'm a skeptic. I'm an over I'm a deep thinker. There's a lot of deep thinkers in alcoholics. Sometimes, if you're a deep thinker, you should not own a gun.

I mean, deep thinkers have a hard time in alcoholics. I'm a deep thinker. And God came to me the only way that he could and he started working in my life. There's a friend of mine, Jim Jim Ami, sober 40 probably 45 years now. Lives in Pacific Palisades.

He's a dear, dear man. Told me a story once that motivated me to go to Florence to try to find the statue he was talking about. And I found it, but I couldn't see it because you had there was a almost a week waiting list to get in this one museum. But he told this story that just lit me up. And he said he was walking around this this very famous museum in Florence and looking at this exhibit of sculptures from the sculpture from the sculptor Donatelli, and Donatelli does a lot of spiritual sculptures.

And he said he walked into this room and there was a a life size statue of the Mary Magdalene. And he said when he looked at it, it took his breath away, and he had to sit down. And the more he looked at it, he started he started weeping. Because it's it's different. This this statue, this depiction of Mary Magdalene is different than anything he's ever seen.

Usually, you see Mary Magdalene with the flowing robes, the long hair, and she's very pretty. But he said, this was not like that. This was a woman who was etched with pain and hopelessness. A woman who looked like she'd been turning nickel and dime tricks on the back alleys of Jerusalem for years. And there was a deadness and a hopelessness about her, and yet through that, shown a spark as she stood there with her hand out, as if saying, this could be for me?

For me? And, oh, man. I knew it. I've Jim's telling that story and I'm weeping because I know exactly what that feels like as you start to approach God and realize he's working in your life. Sometimes early sobriety, which is I'd be driving down the street.

I just start crying because something has happened to me, something that I know what I am that I don't feel like I deserve. I ain't giving it up, but I know I never felt worthy of it. And there's a line in our book that says, God does not make hard terms with those who seek him. And from the moment of approach, of changing my angle of approach and attitude, this thing started coming into my life. But I had a lot of work to do in Alcoholics Anonymous and, you know, on page 55, there's 2 paragraphs that have become 2 of my more favorite paragraphs of the book because it's really a vision of exactly what happens to every single one of us that works his steps and devotes ourselves to this primary purpose of helping others do the same.

It's a vision of of exactly where, exactly how, and exactly when we will find and access this power which is God. And it it And that's really the the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous. It says in our book our main purpose is to help you find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That I think the great single most great promise of all of AA is is stated and read in every meeting. Most people don't even hear it.

It's in step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the the meeting single most only, as the result of these steps. I think that's the the that's the deal. We're here. Something must wake up inside of me, or else I don't have the power to live in this world.

Sobriety is too depressing. It feels like I'm doing time. I can't do this. I can't change my life. I I can't will myself into being a guy that's having a good time sober.

I don't know how to I can't. I've tried therapy. I've tried everything. I can't. Something must wake up within me or I'm I'm toast.

Page 55, it says, actually, we were fooling ourselves for deep down deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. And me? I used to hear guys like Chamberlain and and some of the old timers and talk about the God within. I used to hear people saying that they would commune with God. They would listen to the still small voice of God within them through meditation.

Early sobriety, I haven't worked the steps yet. So I try to go in to connect with God. I don't find God. I find a pack of crazy people. I find Legion.

I find just just just nuts stuff going I can't even be alone in in an apartment without the TV on because when it gets quiet out here, it gets crazy in here. I there's I if there's a God in side of me, boy, it's news to me. And I I think if that's God, that those voices sound more like Satan to me. I don't Crazy. But but it it explains why I can't just go in and connect.

It says because it may be obscured. This power may be obscured, which is blocked by 3 things, by calamity. I like calamity. I like I like the edge. You know what I mean?

There's excitement on the edge. I'm the guy I go to amusement park, I'm right at the roller coaster. You won't get me on the merry-go-round. I'm right going, I want calamity. I want excite I always misinterpreted excitement for happiness.

It's crazy. And I think serenity is like is the feeling you get when you just about died. You know, I mean, I think I think that's serenity. Right? If you're identifying with me, you need AA badly.

I'm telling you. Badly. I like if you don't know what calamity is, imagine you wanna hear the voice of calamity, imagine that a surgeon could surgically implant a microphone into your brain on a bad day, hooked up to speakers, and we get to hear what you think for one day, we would hear calamity. The second thing it says it's blocking me is pomp. Is it, I'm so defended and opinionated and judgmental.

I'm so full of myself that I'm like a glass of water that there's no room for anything else. It's just me and my judgments and my perception and my view of life and me me me me me me. I've just there you know, God could be inside of me with a megaphone in between the pump and the calamity. I ain't get he there's nothing he ain't getting through. There's too much of me between me and God.

Just like the loneliness that I felt every time I got sober because there's too much of me between me and you, and too much of me between me and God. And then the third thing it says is worship of other things. That's a hard thing for me to see because I don't know what they're talking about, really. And I was a year and a half, 2 years sober, and I'm I had an experience that would change my whole perception of of what this was about for me. I I was ending a my first sober relationship.

And in my experience, I don't think there's a more self involved person on the planet than an alcoholic ending a relationship. I mean, oh, man. You can go up to a person like that and say that, I just came from the doctor, and I have terminal cancer and 2 weeks to live. And he'll go, you know what else she said, man? Oh, it's funny, but that's we get that's the way we are, I mean, you know.

Oh man. And I'm that's what I'm doing and I'm at this AA meeting one night, and I'm nuts. I can't I can't hear anything in the meeting. It's like music in a doctor's office because I'm in my head thinking of when I see her, I'll say this, and then she'll say that, and then I'll say this, then she'll say that, and then I'll hit her with this, and she'll be properly ashamed of herself and beg me back. You know, so I'm crazy.

Right? And if you're plus, she's a member of AA and she's not in this meeting, which means that some hideous forces implanted a spring in the back of my neck connected to the meeting room door. Every time the door opens, I go not her. Okay. Right?

So so god could be trying to talk to me through the people in AA, and I get it. I mean, I'm just blocked. Right? The meeting's over and I end up going to coffee with some people. And ends up me and this guy from Glendale, who was visiting, who was sober about 28 years.

And I started to tell him captured audience, since he rode there in my car. I gotta so I'm telling him about this relationship for 20 or 30 minutes till his eyes have glazed over. And he sits there very kindly, and he's listening to me, and nod, and, you know, and just like, you know, like AAs do. And when I'm done, man, he said some things that just rocked me. He said he's First of all he says to me, he says he says, you ever thought about the first commandment?

And I said, no, I'm not in the I just did AA. He said, yeah. He says, I know. He says, man, you and I are a lot alike. He says, guys like us can't get past the thou shalt not.

He said, the first commandment is thou I am the lord thy God, thou shall not have false gods before me. He said he said, I think the 10 commandments were originally written as statements of spiritual cause and effect. That somehow as they got translated through the different languages, the Greek, and the Aramaic, and the Greek, Latin, etcetera, etcetera, somehow they got an authoritarian spin put on them. He said, I don't think they were that way originally. He said, it is my experience that God loves you no matter what you do.