Don P. from Aurora, CO at the 6th Annual Big Book Weekend at Tanglewood in Camden, ME

You have some idea of what you would like to have come out of this weekend.

So I live with a constant frustration.

Since I awoke spiritually 35 years ago, I've been living with a sense that where I am, God is

every day.

And that means that I have 35 years worth of stories to tell you of the extraordinary that occurs in the human condition when you're spiritually awake. And we've got 6-8 hours of actual time on the ground here,

so I'd like to make it effective. And my plan is always, we'll just start walking through here and I'll share my experience with this with you. But please feel free

to chip in. This group is too large to do what I normally do. If we go around and introduce each other, if that's all we do

and it never happens that way, somebody has to say something.

We're going to be here all night just making introductions. But I would like to go around, if you would, and get this basic information from each of you, please, for all of us,

your name, whether your alcoholic almond friend, lost in the woods, or whatever it may be.

If you have a sobriety date, you might mention it. Part of that I've already told you. The other part is that I'm conditioned to that. Where I come from, if you don't mention your sobriety date, you may not have one.

We just kind of like to know what's going on and then if you have something specific you would like to see occur this weekend,

why did you come here instead of being where other people are on Friday and Saturday night?

Then I can get an idea of where we're going to go and it'll can we do that and get it done in maybe an hour.

I'm taking book. I'll give six to five odds on that, but we start here. Would you start that?

Hi, Siri.

We don't know that. OK, good. But I'm in the right place.

Welcome, David.

You know, I have problems sometimes at home when somebody won't drive 20 minutes to a meeting. David just came out from Texas, and then, what, 28 hours on the road? Yeah, got stuck in Cleveland for God's sake.

So he obviously is here to teach me something. Welcome, David. Get something to eat, take a nap, you know.

So who are we?

Well, we are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

That's who we are.

Why are we here?

To show other Alcoholics precisely how we recover. That's our purpose. That's the purpose of this book, and that's my purpose in life. So from the very beginning of the forward to the 1st edition, I have really good information to go with if I'll listen to it.

When I got here, if you'd have offered me

a way to learn to cope with life, I would have left you.

My cobra broke a long time ago.

Uh, man, coping with life killed me. It's just too tough.

Anything less than a full new life would not have attracted me at all.

Christmas night of 1967, as a result of the most thorough self investigation I have ever subjected myself to,

I discovered I had become completely useless

and took a two-month supply of amphetamines and shot him up my arm and drank everything in the house and laid down. Died

because I couldn't stand being me one more. 2nd

When I woke up the next morning I didn't feel good,

but I believe that's when it started for me. An old way of life died, a new one started at that moment and I didn't know it for a long time. But from that moment to this, I've not had a thought. I'm a drinker, a pill or a fix. It's over,

but now I'm stuck in a very interesting place. I'm now a failure at living and a failure at dying.

I'm in a body that won't quit and it's got a mind that won't work

and I'm still breathing in and out.

I didn't feel very good.

The one thing my body was telling me is you son of a bitch,

do that again, I'll hurt you.

Y'all new folks? I've been listening close to you. I'm delighted we have some new folks here.

Did you hear it?

Yeah. There's a whole new way of life here, and there's the power to do it. And we insist on having fun

and life will not always be easy.

That sometimes it's a bitch.

I'm really glad you're here.

I need you.

Yeah. I'm just glad you're here.

They won't hurt anybody.

If somebody back there, I'll go. He'll go back there and out the door.

These bugs,

yeah.

This particular group has always impressed me and I get the same sense I had six years ago.

We hit the ground running.

I do a lot of these over the years. I've been doing this for 27 years and usually Friday night and part of Saturday is just trying to get gathered up into a

common purpose is beyond thinking and I sense already we know why we're here.

We want to be here,

so I've got to set aside about four hours of stuff, but I usually have my head. Let me tell you something else. Let me plug you into the whole business here this weekend. I know of at least six of these kind of things that are going on.

You are spiritual kin to hundreds and hundreds of other people.

It's going on in Seattle. It's going on in where the hell Janet's going this weekend, somewhere in the Midwest.

What's going on in New York? It's going on all over the place. By this thing I mean people are gathered together

for real, genuine recovery.

Now one thing I will not offer you, I think it's the worst thing that we can offer any alcoholic, is sobriety.

If that's all there is to offer, why would I stay here? The main reason I drink is because I can't stand being sober.

Meaningful sobriety, however, is a different deal. And the thing has to start with sobriety. That's where it begins. But that is a really painful time. Have you noticed that?

Ah Jesus, being in recovery is awful.

If you're in recovery from any illness, that's a tough time. You're up, moving around and you look pretty good, but everything inside hurts

and there's new stuff.

Year ago October, I went through some serious surgery. It wasn't supposed to be serious, but it turned out that way. And the recovery period for that, there's things I had to do very carefully for a while that I was used to just doing.

And so you become self aware when you're in recovery.

Necessarily so. And self-awareness is the major cause of psychic pain.

It causes more pain than anything I know does, for me anyway,

because when I'm fully self aware, I'm also aware that I ain't getting enough of whatever it is I'm supposed to be good.

He's got more than I do. Where's mine?

That can't be mine. It's not big enough.

It's the wrong color, wrong shape.

I mean, after all, I am a Prince.

Were you a Prince? Yeah, I could tell,

one of my early sponsors said to me.

We will assume you went insane about two seconds after birth.

Then we won't have to track all this stuff down.

Good advice,

he said. We don't even think the truth is going to work for you.

You take the truth into your head and your ego catches it and says something like, aha, I can use that later.

I can catch an edge with that somewhere down the way,

because my life from very early on was about catching an edge. I always needed an edge,

so I said we suggest that you forget everything you think you know about anything,

particularly by spiritual matters, because if any of it would have been of any use, you wouldn't be here. I was in my third penitentiary.

I only say that because that's where I was. I was never a big time gangster. They don't ever go to the penitentiary. They get good lawyers. I this is my third and it was getting to be a bad habit.

Never did get to like it,

but

I battled that. I love people who will battle with me. I said come on, surely I know some truth, he said. It's really doubtful, but it is possible.

But I'll tell you this, if it was true before we started, it'll be true when we're through

and all of the rest of its garbage anyway. So set it aside,

live now, And by some form of grace, I was able to do that.

To this day, I'm acutely aware that if I'm willing to argue with you about something, it's my opinion. Because I never have to defend the truth. The truth just is,

doesn't they defend it? It just is

simple little stuff.

I told you that I've been doing this for 30 some years.

That doesn't mean that's because I know anything in particular that you don't. In fact, I know that I don't know anything you don't already know. You just don't know that.

Write that down. That was good.

Well, one of the fun things of doing this is you hear stuff you never heard before.

Since I gave my own, my life to the care of God,

I have been on a mission.

It's a real mission.

My life work is to find people who are dying and going insane and can't find anywhere to stop that process and in some way touch them in such a way that they gain enough hope

that they're wanting to submit to certain simple things. And as a result of that surrender, they don't die and they don't go insane and their children go insane and their wives don't go insane. I like that. See, I've got, I've never been able to just go to work. 8:00 to 5:00.

Good Lord,

I'm not the only one, Emma. Can you imagine that?

Get up, go someplace you don't like, spend all the day with people that you don't care much for either, doing things that really you don't care much about anyway, and come home tired and cranky and go to bed.

I did try once. My mother came out of the Depression and it was her genuine belief that a secure life would be General Motors.

Eight to five number of years. Work your way up, get a pension and retire.

And she really believed that. And I tried to honor her. Once in the middle of my alcoholism,

which ran about 14 active years, there were periods when I tried to break the cycle. I didn't know I was alcoholic, but I tried to break out of my behavior. I thought the behavior was what's wrong. By the way, we're going to talk a lot about drama. Drama does not define alcoholism.

Alcohol defines alcoholism. Drama comes as a result sometimes of alcoholism, but it doesn't define it.

Anyhow, the kids and I, we had gone through a bedtime. I had two little boys whose mother had abandoned ship a couple years before, and we'd been on the road now for, well, the last 4 1/2 years. We were on the road At this time. We've been on the road about two years because I quit trying to be

super straight, just got into the subculture and ran. I was restless, irritable, discontent. We'll get into some. I love these weekends because I get to get in the details later.

We had had the privilege of sharing the the Easter ceremony with the peyote people in the Wausau and Nevada and I had a genuine vision. To this day, I'll tell you it was genuine. I saw a great bird flying high and understood clearly. That's me in my life, flying high, going nowhere.

Kept me sober four months.

You knew people. If you're thinking maybe visions might help, they're good for about four months of sobriety from my experience.

Well, that's the way that was,

but it did wake me up and we ended up in San Jose, CA and I'm really trying. See, my heart's desire forevermore has been. I want to be a good father and a good son and a good husband and a good member of my community. That's really all I want to be. I am Joe Straight in my heart and

I just can't pull it off.

So I want to work for General Motors.

They gave me a really important job because I am stubborn,

which by the way, God can use. He calls it persistent. When it's in his hands, it's persistent. In my hand, it's stubborn.

I lost his finger in a little racing accident when I was 13 and they told me, oh, you'll never be able to type. Well, I can type between 60 and 90 words a minute. Just depends on because I'm stubborn, because I could type. They gave me this really important job at General Motors as the line came by, on the line being a bunch of cars going by, I had a little wooden cubicle with a typewriter in it, some paper.

As the car went by, I took the paper off the windshield, ran into my little office,

put a piece of paper in the typewriter and copy this paper onto this one and put it back on the windshield.

And well, there's a mission for you.

And by the end of the week, I'm thinking, I wonder how I could do this job if I was a little bit a little bit stoned.

Let's slow the world down, see how it goes.

And at that time I had access to some really nice marijuana. Now I understand I'm not a drug addict. I've used a lot of drugs. That does not necessarily make you a drug addict. I liked marijuana and seldom ever used it, but this time I did. Now I was bored on that Friday, but when I got a little bit stoned on Monday to try to do the job, I found a new dimension of board.

I mean I was fully aware this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever done in my entire life.

I wonder how it would be if I smoked a joint and had a drink.

And of course, by the end of the second week, I don't work for General Motors anymore. And

off and running because the nature of my disease is when I start drinking. I lose control when it's over.

God bless my mother. She's still alive. She's 94 now.

Fine woman,

my sister warned me the other day. Be careful, she's got a new cane.

She has hearing aids now

and I love her attitude. I'm going to practice it myself. If she's tired of listening to you, she just shuts them off,

huh. She hears better than I do, Don't kid me. But she hears only what she wants to hear.

In fact, I want to tell you a little about my family says we're going to talk a lot about alcoholism.

I'm the only alcoholic in my family as far as we know.

My family drinks but they're disgusting when they do. They leave stuff behind.

I'm the bartender because I'm the only one, the family that knows how to make a decent drink. So what those few occasions when we have a party,

I remember a family gathering. There were 73 people there because we were prolific. Cut that about 1/2. That means there were 30 or 40 adults. We have 5 bottles of booze, some vodka and some whiskey and some wine and some other stuff. And after five hours at that party, none of them was more than half empty.

And a good part of the half it wasn't in the bottles anymore was still sitting on tables and half empty glasses.

Just disgusting.

Now my Uncle Walt, we thought for a while he was alcoholic. He and my Aunt Ruth really drank well.

As I look back on until, one thing I do recall is that Uncle Walt drunk was just Uncle Walt drunk.

There was number personality change.

And he and Aunt Ruthie, God, they really drank. They belonged to the Moose or something like that, where drinking was part of it. They just fun people. And then one day, I guess Walter must have been in his forty or fifty. Anyway, his doctor said, Walter, if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die. And he quit. He didn't have what it took to be an alcoholic.

You got well, you got to be tough to be an alcoholic.

This isn't a game for sissies.

You got to be so tough you can sleep in gutters or on the street. You have to be tough enough to tell lies to the people you love and mean them.

You got to be tough enough to steal from your children's piggy banks or do whatever is necessary to continue drinking. It's not an easy life.

You got to betray your own dreams and everybody else's dreams

and live a life of terror. I mean, I'm not. I'd never fears a Sissy game. You pay $0.50 and Roger roller coaster to get scared. I like terror,

lived in terror. It makes you feel really alive.

So Uncle Walt quit and in his my family lives a long time. I'm stuck here for a while.

Oh yeah, barring some strange accident and the planets been trying to get rid of me for years and haven't made it yet. My Uncle Walter finally died and he's, I think he 86 or 87, which is pretty normal, period.

In fact, when we buried him, I come from the kind of family that's in text. So we have three different grave plots, graveyards, if you will, family plots where the family goes, depending which branch of the family. And I was looking at the gravestones when we put Uncle Waldaway

858792 and Anna was 102 and there's another one 101. My dad was 86 when he left, moms 94 and she hasn't shown any signs of going anywhere.

I'm stuck here.

During his last year, Uncle Walt liked his whiskey

and so did my mom's dad. Grandpa

during their last year, both of them asked only one thing. They get a little out West. We take those little

Jelly jars and make glasses out of when you're through and

he filled it up in the morning and sit all day long.

No consequences, no madness, no nothing. Just sip the whiskey all day long. That's the family I come from.

We thought my youngest son was alcoholic for a while. He had this propensity for drinking a great deal and smoking a lot of marijuana. He tried very hard to be a a dealer. He was really awful at it.

He'd come home all beat up

and he's not able to talk to me. He'd gone down into the points to sell some dope and they beat him up and stole his wallet and he's dope.

Took him two or three times for real lives. He's not really good at that,

but he got a job one time that called for random Uas as a truck driver. He quit.

Want to think of alcoholism. I think of my mother.

My mother loves pepper mixed nuts. I mean, she really loves peppermint schnapps. And on the day when it's time I watch her, she's cute. She gets that bottle down. Now, I like Altoids, but Can you imagine drinking that crap?

She's got a tall, slim little glass that wouldn't hold enough to help anybody, and she pours it in. I'm watching little eyes dance. She's pouring in. She's really there

and I'm with her. That's I like people who express passion in any way whatsoever.

And then she'll go like

in that disgusting,

and she'll do that a couple times. And then I've heard her say publicly to my embarrassment,

that's enough. I'm beginning to feel it.

My my mother is not alcoholic.

There's a sound that goes along with my drinking also,

and that's the sound of relief from unbearable psychic pain.

And that's what I suffer from, incredible psychic pain, a sense of separation. I heard some of you talk about wanting to get connected.

Please don't do that. If you get connected, you can be unconnected too.

This is about coming to the awareness that where I am, God is. And it isn't about connection, it's about consciousness,

about my being aware that that is the truth where I am. God is

no longer a human being running around trying to have a spiritual experience. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And what's that's done for me has made me fully available to the human experience because it's cancels out the big fear. I'm not going to get out of this alive anyway.

My sister will have some fun. OK,

we are

a group of people who finally

we have Alcoholics Anonymous, have history with each other.

Apache Rd. Man asked me one time. Have you ever had a relationship with anyone where you just didn't burn your bridges behind you?

He was right. One of the reasons I felt alone is because it was just me and who I needed you to be, and I'd burn you up and run off.

Well, today, part of the measure of my piece is that I have a history with people right there. How long have we known each other? 20 years, something like that.

94 Well, but we've known each other forever. But we have history since 94 and we still talk to each other.

That's a big I've been married to Jackie for 26 years now. Good grief, I didn't do that much time.

We haven't had a fight yet by the way.

Totally unnecessary to fight with the people you love.

We do not always agree, understand that, but we don't have to escalate it to a fight. She's right most of the time anyway, you know.

Dave, how long have we known each other? Six years,

That's a long time, you know,

Taxi, know and be friendly with people. That was important to me. I'm a family man.

In my heart, I'm a family man.

I think most of us are. That's the human condition

and a is like a big family. But as in any family, there's immediate family and there's kissing cousins, and I like my kissing cousins for 1520 minutes at a time,

but I need to spend most of my time with my immediate family. And that applies to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's why we have so many different kinds of meetings and different meetings and everyone of them is completely valid

and I have to find out where I belong.

Where do I fit in? Where am I comfortable? Where where am I most service?

It's kind of like, cheers, I want to go where everybody knows my name

some time. Because the spiritual awakening means you become a missionary and you're out there in the wilderness a whole lot. Go tells us that God wants us to be the spearhead of his Edward advancing creation. Isn't that a trip?

Hey, that's where I want to be anyway. I've always wanted to be right out there on the edge.

Put me on the point. She come with me but put me on the point

anywhere. I like to make a few inflammatory statements early on so we have something to talk about through the weekend.

I have recovered from alcoholism. I have one of we now of Alcoholics Anonymous. I no longer suffer from any of the symptoms of alcoholism.

There's only a couple of them. We live in a world, an Alcoholics Anonymous world, where we blame everything on alcoholism.

Well, the symptoms are simple.

I have a body that doesn't process alcohol like my mother. When she starts to feel it, she quits. I'm drinking for the sensation and I never know for sure what it's going to be, but mainly I'm drinking because I don't have any choice after the first night.

Doctor Silkworth makes it very clear. In fact, it's because of Doctor Silkworth's stuff in The Big Book that I discovered why I went to the penitentiary when I was 19 years old.

I was in a federal penitentiary in Tokyo, Japan when I was 19, wondering what the hell happened.

This is not what I had in mind when I left home and joined the Navy,

but it seems in a simple terms, when I start drinking I get lost and I can't find my way home. That happened to any of you

and when you're in the Navy, that's a felony.

I get a 24 hour liberty.

I'll be back in 28 hours or 30, and this one time I was given a 24 hour liberty and 23 days later when I woke up in Pershing Square in Los Angeles

for 22 days, I could not have gone back to that ship. I did things and was willing to do things, anything so I could keep drinking. I had to keep drinking. There's a lot of emotional turmoil too. But the main thing is I needed to drink and my ship was going to leave. There wouldn't be any drinking. On day 23, the madness was gone. I woke up and turned myself in.

When I got back to Long Beach, the ship was gone. I had missed a ship movement to a war zone and that's a pretty serious crime

now. I ran with another alcoholic. We're not done. We are resourceful of anything.

This kid from Appleton, WI, another drunk I ran with within a week had us on what they called prisoner at large status, which meant I was in charge of me and he was in charge of he.

We were both prisoner and guard at the same time, with orders to report

to the ship's docking station in Yakuza, Japan as soon as they arrived. So we got on a Pan Am Clipper, flew over the ship on its on its way, and we got to Japan 3 weeks before they showed up. So he got away from that war zone stuff and we thought we were slick.

Ah man, I have no idea how upset the captain was when he left Long Beach and we weren't there, but I know from the look on his face when they pulled in the Yakuza and saw standing on the dock up pissed he was.

And so we ended up doing some time, got a bad kind of discharge and I'm out on the street at 19 now. That's where I find my definition of bottom.

From that experience, that was bottom. Bottom is any morning that I wake up and understand clearly whatever I have in mind for my life isn't going to happen.

Just not going to happen.

So I get a new job, Newtown, new car, New Girl, new whatever, and start over. New dreams. And then they fall apart and I start that whole cycle again. And I don't understand why that's going on until I got to you people and you taught me about alcoholism.

Doc Silk Horse says he had been working with men. Well, let me read it to you.

Just sure as hell you're all experts. There's some big book Fernandez going to say I misquoted it.

If you ever run into a big book fanatic

I love, I created several of them.

David knows a couple of them.

I have had many men who had, for example, working period of months on some problem or business deal that will be said unfavorable to them on a certain date.

They took a day, a drink a day or so prior to the date and then the phenomenon of craving became paramount to all their other interests. So the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape, they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control.

And I've got my first duck feather. When we got to this, I come from a sponsorship line where they sat down, read this book to us and shared their experience with it and of it and gave us assignments out of here.

There I am. I was given a 24 hour liberty and 23 days later got back.

You know, what was it that caused that? I had a drink in Long Beach.

And as I look over my life, everyone of those high drama deals, I can point back to a head of drink. In Denver, I had a drink. In San Diego, I had a drink. And that's set in, in this cycle in motion of craving then develops in me. It's beyond my mental control.

I sponsor a kid who helps me get it even easier.

We were talking about this and he said well that isn't me, I'm going to have a couple beers and I just changed my mind.

OK, so we go back over and again he said no, I just wanted to have a couple of beers and I changed my mind and then I'll let him wait until he heard what he was saying. I had a couple beers in, my mind changed,

I have a chain, my body develops a craving and my mind changes and now I'm an active alcoholic. And what active Alcoholics do? They drink.

There's no choice in the matter. It's just that simple.

So you all helped me discover that I am one of those kind and it took a little bit of time

and I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would never have come to Alcoholics Anonymous because nobody knew I was alcoholic.

I was certified by 1 government agency as a sociopath type 2, and I'm not clear yet what it is and it's not good,

My federal parole officer said. You know, everybody has to have one of those,

he said. I was a psychopath

and the doctor said I was a manic depressive drug addict.

I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real high drama. You got four things to get past to get to my drinking,

OK? Because as my mind cleared, one of the things that went on is that no matter what state I was in,

super freak, super citizen, whatever I was doing, drinking was part of it. Very brief periods where there was no drinking. I hated being drunk. Drunk is is a subjective term. And for me, drunk was knee walking, puking in the gutter. Do we have any other knee walkers here?

Drink. You might as well. That's where you're on your hands and knees crawling down the street. And it's a good place to be because when you finally fall, you only have to fall about that fall. You know,

discovered as we went through this book, it says that these are men who should have slept the day around. They're describing a phenomenon. My sponsors insisted on this. And I hope you'll do this. Bring your own memories to whatever this is. This is a report of people and their memories. I need to bring my own to it. So how did that fit me? Well,

I find it amusing today. It wasn't amusing then. There was a period of my life where I was also wore a badge.

I don't like to talk about it much. It's kind of a sordid time in my life. I actually had to make one arrest and it was just scary.

I found a

in the middle of the night. There was a window broken out in the service station. I went over and me and my gun went up and he and his no gun came up and I'm looking right. He's looking into my pistol. I'm just scared the hell out of me. I didn't like that,

but during this period of time

I lived in a chicken coop.

What's funny about that?

I mean, once you clean a chicken shit out, it's just a room.

We moved it off the pile, moved it down 100 yards and cleaned it up. It was not a bad place, just a little room with a slat roof and I had curtains on the walls.

Did you live in 1/2?

And I'm I'm spending about 80 hours a week in a patrol car.

And I had discovered along the way one of the best ways to drink longer when you don't get enough sleep is to take a little amphetamine. So make drinking easier, keep you up.

You can drink faster, you can do everything faster.

You can even clean the house

three or four times in an hour.

Anyhow, on my day off, I decided

to see what it was like to be a burger.

All right, well, I'd started drinking.

My mind changed

and I knew which house was empty. I've been watching it all week.

So I went in and I spent two hours in that house and left and forgot to take anything

and concluded this is not going to be my career either.

I honestly believe, as I look back over that prayerfully, I wasn't looking for stuff in that house. I live in a chicken coop and they lived in a house and I think I was looking for whatever kind of magic might be there. It would tell me how I could have a house too. Because in my heart of hearts, I don't want to be living on a chicken coop. I want to live in a house like other people,

but this business of they should have slept the night around got clear to me. As the memories come back, I remember a terrible, terrible night in my drinking. I was not much of A bar drinker

for whatever the reason. My personality was such that when a bar fight starts, it starts on me and, and, and I don't do anything. I'm just sitting there minding my own business and some guy says it looks like a good one, let's hit him.

So I didn't like the bars much and beside they charge too much.

I want to drink, I don't want soda pop in it, but I don't want to pay a dollar and a half one for $3 and get a whole quart. I, I drank the good stuff and

the good stuff is whatever goes

anyway.

We did use the Lighthouse Bar in Denver as kind of a message center. The group I ran with, if you, if there's going to be a party at your house and then you leave a message with him and he gets it to the White House and then we, you know how it is

and we're sitting at the lighthouse around 2

and I've been looking for it all night.

You ever spent a lot of time looking for It

seemed to me that while I was in Denver, it was in San Francisco. I'll not get to San Francisco. And it had moved on to Salt Lake, and

this night I've been looking for it came 2:00 and in Colorado that's the bar shut down.

And I can remember the horror of that night, knowing I'm not going to find it

someone home now. I always had three stashes.

There was one at home because I got to have that. And this is subjective. I don't think this, I know this. I got to have this bottle there. And then there's the one I carry in my car just in case. And then there's the one that I share with you so you understand what a fine fellow I am.

And I got to go home, and now I'm so drunk. I'm also aware of another thing. I'm at that stage of being drunk where I knew it was about 2:30 or so. If I lay down on this bed, the bed's going to spin and it's going to throw me out on the floor and I'm going to puke on my own floor

and I'd rather not do that.

I also know from experience that if I drink some more than I will pass out

and then it won't happen. Pass out means I can drink myself into a coma,

which is just this side of death.

OK, and I don't have to wonder about Santa being insanity.

Yeah, I just want to sleep, so

I'll risk that. What's the coma between friends?

OK,

should have slept the night around and I'm up at six and eating a drink, so I've got a memory that fits that too. I began to put the pieces together that I'm alcoholic, My sponsor said we don't think you're a sociopath or a psychopath or a manic depressive drug addict. We think you're just a good actor.

Sheer true. I would be whoever you needed me to be so I could get from you whatever I needed from you.

Good actor. We are all good actors. Bill doesn't use that piece in the book describing the actor by mistake. That one describes me a mixture of traits. I can be kind and loving or mean and pushing them. It just depends on what I need to get here and how bad I need to get it. I'm a manipulator.

When we were in our mid teens, 15 or 16, somewhere in there was that first real drunk.

We didn't belong anywhere. We being the I ran with six other guys who didn't fit in anywhere either. We were neither front hall or back hall. We were ostracized and we were glad of it. We weren't jocks, we weren't banned, we weren't anybody. We just, we were trouble

and we got together one night and this guy, we got a guy from our Air Force Base to buy us a bottle of whiskey, bonded bourbon. We had this arrogant idea that bonded bourbon was better than regular whiskey. We didn't know all that means that some insurance company says yes, Seagram's really did make this, and if you can prove otherwise, we'll pay you for it. But we went out to get drunk and have some fun, and

what happened to me is described in the book by Carl Young as a spiritual experience.

We read that too, so I don't

misquotes for you.

This is my bullshit sifter by the way.

It was given to me early on and my sponsor said use this as a bullshit sifter. Whatever you hear, check it with this. If you can't reconcile here, you're either too dumb or it isn't true. Just ignore it

up here. Find this thing. This is what happened to me.

Carl Young calls a vital spiritual experience. It's on page 27 of the book.

To me, these occurrences are phenomena, he says. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements, ideas and emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces, and the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side