Chapter 5 at the Men Among Men Groups's conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

Hi, I'm Karen. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank you all for having me here. It's been an interesting trip. I've been up for 24 hours so I'm going to try and behave myself up here,

but I can't guarantee that I start getting a little off after about, you know, 20 hours of no sleep. So

we started off and say ask God to put the words in my my mouth and love in my heart and help me to speak the truth.

My sobriety date is September 6th, 1994. My Home group is a Way Out group in Tannersville, PA. My sponsor's name is Peggy. Whenever I give a talk, those are three things that I always say because it reminds me that these are not

a sobriety date obviously is really important when one wants to stay sober. We have to stop drinking to we have to get a sponsor that carries this message that works the program of recovery because there's something called the fellowship, which is what we're doing right here. This is the fellowship. We're hanging out, we're having coffee, we're talking, we're doing this thing. And then there's a program of recovery, which is what we do with our sponsors,

you know, which are the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so we need all of these three things in order to

produce the spiritual experience that one must have in order to recover from alcoholism. So

I'm going to talk about the doctor's opinion and what I'm going to try to do and what I liked it. What I like to do when I do things like this is not turn this into a big book study. Because the fact is, is that if you're sitting here and the information that you're getting about the big book is from me, from this podium, something's wrong. Because sponsorship is key.

My job is to disturb and inform you about what

what alcoholism is, what it does, and what one needs to do to recover. But what happens or that recovery that happens is between two Alcoholics when they sit down together and they work for a common purpose. And that common purpose is to get closer to one's higher power because it's through that relationship with a higher power that one recovers from alcoholism. Now I'm a recovered alcoholic because I no longer have the obsession of the mind and I no longer put alcohol in my body.

And for me, that is the greatest gift or promise that one that an alcoholic could ever get.

And the idea here is this is if I had to come into Alcoholics Anonymous and stay here and be unhappy and be miserable and just not drink, I don't think I would have stayed here because I had this progressive spiritual disease that's continually kicking my butt. I'm driven by 100 forms of fear, self delusion and stealth pity. I step on the toes of my fellows. They retaliate seemingly without provocation. But at some time in the past, they made a decision based on self that placed me in the position to be heard. So basically

every time I'm hurt, I'm usually asking for it. That's just basically the boil down to that. So the idea here is I have all these self created problems and I'm going to continue to create these problems because I have a spiritual malady and we're going to talk about that later today. But when we're talking about the doctor's opinion, the reason why I touch on this is because there are three parts to the disease of alcoholism. There's a physical craving, there's the mental obsession, and there's spirituality,

and the doctor's opinion touches on all three parts of alcoholism. And if you really want to look at if you want a good distillation of what

the symptoms are, the earmark of an alcoholic, what they are, all you have to do is really look in that chapter,

because the doctor points out the physical allergy. He says that, that, that, that craving, you know, he uses the word craving, but what he means is abnormal reaction to alcohol, meaning when I put alcohol in my system, my body metabolizes alcohol differently than other people. What that means. And here this is, I remember being in gym class in America, we have something called sex Ed, health Ed. You know where there's one semester of the year where you sit around and you talk about STD's and drugs

and they tell you not to have sex and they tell you to not do drugs? Which of course, most of people like myself use it as an information gathering session

and say, oh, LSD does what?

Note to self. So when you're in junior high school, they sit you down and they tell you all about this stuff. And I remember being in in in this class and I remember them talking about alcohol and saying that it was essential nervous system depressive.

And I remember thinking, that's not the experience that I have with alcohol.

I don't go down. It's not a downer for me. In fact, when I put alcohol in my system, I feel alive. I feel. I like the words. And I've heard it so many times. I get right when I put alcohol in my system. The average drinker, the average person who's not an alcoholic, doesn't react that way to alcohol. I have a sister. She's not an alcoholic. She's a wonderful, beautiful human being.

She does normal things and she says things like I want a nightcap.

I don't know what that is. She says things like,

I'm finished with this and I'm, you know, she, she'll drink a glass of wine and she'll put it on the table and she'll be like, I'm done. So that's not a word in my vocabulary, especially regarding alcohol. She'll say things like, I just want to relax with a glass of wine. And I remember I went on a cruise with her and I'm sober at this time. I'm sober maybe 10 years. And we're in the Bahamas. And she's got this. She went and she got this beautiful bottle of wine that, you know, she picked it out

and she got it. She brought, she smuggled it back onto the ship. I didn't say she was honest. I just said she wasn't an alcoholic. So she smuggled this alcohol back onto the cruise ship and she's got it in the in our cabin and she's got this little glass and this bottle with a cork in it.

And every night she pours out two fingers, She drinks it and she goes to bed. And I remember just watching her do this one night thinking, whoa, how are we related? That is not my experience. She's like, and, and, and in this, in the context of this, we start talking and she starts asking me. And I've been sober for, you know, a decade and I'm, I'm very quiet in my family regarding what I do in Alcohol Anonymous, not because I

am ashamed or anything like that, but I think my actions speak louder than my words.

And so she started to ask me, she's like, you know, can, you know, can you ever drink? And I'm like, no, she's like, why? And this is where, this is where when the book talks about it says that that the, this type of drinking or this type of craving, this type of physical reaction that Alcoholics have to alcohol is limited to this class of drinker, meaning the alcoholic and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. Because in this conversation we're talking and she completely does not understand the experience that I have an alcohol and I don't understand hers.

So I have this physical craving and basically what happens is I put alcohol in my body. I go up and I want more. I get right when I don't have alcohol in my body, I'm something called irritable, restless and discontent, meaning that I don't know where you end and I begin and I feel like I have no skin ever. Like walk around you. Ever have one of those days when everything, when people think at you,

where they're looking at you, they're thinking at you, everything's about you and like,

and everything's really loud and your head is screaming. Ever have a day like that? That's me when I can't drink and I don't have God.

Now the big book says that says that alcoholic strength essentially because they like the effect that alcohol produces, right. That though we admit is injurious that after a time we can't differentiate the truth from the false. So the things that I told myself about my drinking, such as it was my parents fault. If you had my life, you drink like this or I don't care. I mean, I think towards the end of my drinking, it wasn't so much about blaming other people for my drinking, was simply the fact that I could not give a crap about

consequences of my drinking. Because the pain that I was in before I put alcohol in my system was so great that whatever could possibly happen didn't matter. Because the hell that I felt being me at that moment overwhelmed any possible rational thought that I would have regarding alcohol. You know, basically I drank to get relief because I could not be me and not want to kill myself every moment of every day.

I just wanted to die,

and it wasn't a a blatant you know what? I did die for two minutes, but that's a whole nother story. You'll hear about that tonight

when I get to tell my story, but you know it. For me, it was more a matter of

not being able to be present at all, not ever able be being able to be where I was. My head was always somewhere else, whether it was projecting to the future, reliving the past, constantly running those tapes, and I could never turn that volume down unless I had alcohol. I put alcohol in my system and all of a sudden the volume in my head became

just ever so slightly less and I was able to function

and do the things that normal people can do, like get up and take a shower,

go to school, interact with human beings without wanting to murder them. You know, I used to say when I in my active addiction, I used to say that alcohol kept me from killing myself and others, and it really did for me. It allowed me to just be human. The problem with that is that once I put alcohol in my system, I can't control how much I drink.

There's that there's that statement in the big book. It's in a we agnostics. It says that, you know, it says that if you if, if you can't control the amount that you drink when drinking, right, or you can't stay away from it, that you might be a real alcoholic, right? So essentially the issue that I had as an or I have as an alcoholic is the fact that I, I need this substance to be able to function, to be able to breathe, to be able to just

get out my front door.

The problem is, is that very substance that does that for me, turned on me.

And I love that in the doctor's opinion, he talks about it and he says that this is Doctor Silkworth and and Bill, because Doctor Silkworth wrote all these letters and Bill edited it to, you know, an embellished and added his own stuff. So it's the doctor and Bill's opinion, but it's still just as worthy. But he talks about it says that our problem, our problems pile up on us and become a

stonishingly difficult to solve, right? That human power fails us

if we're Alcoholics, meaning that all the things that we use or do in order to control our drinking or to control ourselves no longer work, right? So the, the, the new boyfriend, the, the new job, I mean, the, the running line that I had in my life constantly was if my boobs were just a little bit bigger and I was 5 lbs skinnier, that everything would just be OK. You know, because I really thought that if I rearranged my external life, that somehow I wouldn't need to drink the way that I did.

The problem was, was every time something changed in my external life, nothing changed inside of me. I didn't have that psychic change that one needs to have in order to recover from alcoholism. So I was constantly rearranging the chairs on, you know, the deck of the Titanic, you know, or as Tyler Durden from a Fight Club says, polishing the brass on the Titanic. I don't know if you guys are Fight Club fans, but I found that to be a very spiritual movie.

A lot of my personal philosophies come from that movie,

but that's a whole nother thing anyway. But the idea is that I was constantly polishing the brass and the Titanic, and I was constantly feeling the need to go back to this. And that's the mental obsession. My mind told me that this time it would be different or that I needed it, or that I didn't care. And I was unable to think about the consequences of what would happen once I put alcohol in my system. So in the Doctor's opinion, he really

thoroughly goes through and explains what the nature of alcoholism is. He tells us that we need to have a psychic change in order to recover from that. What's a psychic change? Well, that's a fancy way of saying a spiritual awakening,

awakening that's necessary to recover from alcoholism is a spiritual awakening that that is outlined in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I sponsored a lot of people over the years and they've all had profound spiritual experiences. Some of them had them through the 12 steps and some of them had them before they came into a a during and and they asked me, well, why am I crazy? Why do I still think about alcohol? Why do I still have the mental obsession? I said, well, because those profound spiritual experiences are real,

but they're not the profound spiritual experience that's necessary for me to recover from alcoholism.

That's a very specific set of instructions that I need to follow. I follow those instructions being the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and that spiritual awakening happens and the obsession to drink

leaves me. Once the obsession a drink leaves me, I no longer put alcohol in my body and therefore I don't set off the craving. Does that make sense to you? You guys follow me with this. All right, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I got to cover the eight. I got to cover the basics. All right, So the idea is what, what does all of this mean? What does this look like? And this is what I, what I like to talk about is what does it look like? Because the idea here is every one of us has our own personal experience with alcohol, just like we have our own personal experience with God.

We're all bringing these things to the table and we're all sitting right here, right now in this spiritual community, in this room

with all of our own personal experiences. Now we have things in common. If you're an alcoholic, you have the physical allergy, the mental obsession and the spiritual malady. Those are the things that define the disease of alcoholism. How those things express themselves in your life are completely different. There are people who come here who are stockbrokers and never lost anything. And there are people like me who lived on the streets. You know, I got sober at 18. I was a homeless drunk. I couldn't graduate from high school.

I was incarcerated in mental asylum after mental asylum put on all kinds of medications. I've been in four point restraints more times than I'd like to count. 4 point restraints, when they tie you to a bed

in the rubber room and take away your shoes,

I died. So that's what those three things look like for me and what they look like for you is something completely different. But those are the those common bonds that 33 aspects of what alcoholism is or what allows us to have that identification.

Now the identification for the first step is really important. After that, it's really not because that's the beauty of this program of recovery is that where I where I got sober and I'm sure this doesn't happen here. I know you guys have great recovery. I've been I've been here before, I've met you guys before. I know that you guys all do the deal and nobody does this stuff, but

where I got sober people would say things like, you know, bring the body and the mind will follow.

Just keep coming back. Just don't drink.

They say things like,

oh God, they say crazy things like think, think, think, you know, live and let live. You know those slogans, Those are Alanon slogans. Just just point out think, think, think is nowhere in the big book of Alcohol Anonymous. Live and let live and easy does it is in the chapter to the wives and the family afterwards, because they're al Anon slogans meant for the alcoholic. When we're dealing with our family after we screwed them over for so many years, they can't tolerate us anymore. We come back and we say, oh, I'm sober and spiritual and everything's great. And Bill saying easy does it, man,

that's easy does it. There's no easy does it in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's easy does it when we're dealing with the people who we screwed over,

you know, So they used to say things like that to me. They'd say just just relax. So I came into Alcohol Anonymous, the first team, when I was 13 years old. My parents went to Al Anon. They were very smart. I'm one of five kids. Four of us have darkened the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, so we're Irish.

I'm going to blame genetics on that one.

My parents are adult children of Alcoholics, so they're pretty normal. I mean, they got their own. They're weird, but they're really wonderful people. I mean that like, my mother is Eucharistic minister, my father's an usher in the church. They're upstanding members of society. They pay taxes. They, you know, they pay their mortgage. They have great credit. They're normal people.

They gave birth to four spawns of the devil

for the most shiftless, disgusting, horrible human beings you will ever meet.

So these poor people were completely unprepared for the hell spawn that they were going to raise,

and I'm not kidding. So naturally

they needed some outside help. And I'm the youngest, I'm one of five and I'm the youngest. So by the 5th child, they discovered this place called Al Anon. I'm pretty sure it was my brother's fourth rehab that told him about Al Anon. But they decided with me that they were going to try it. So they made me the example, which really pissed me off for a really, really, really, really long time. I was really mad that I couldn't get away with some of the stuff that my older brothers and sisters did.

Like my brother got to shoot heroin for 10 years without getting sent to rehab, you know?

Meanwhile, I stumble home drunk, you know, with half my clothes covered in blood three times and I'm in rehab. I think that's not fair. They're interfering with my drinking,

you know, So I got annoyed. I, I have since been what, what, what? A good friend of mine from Alanine likes to call a visiting dignitary, meaning that I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It goes to Al Anon and steals their secrets and brings it back to AA.

Anyway,

that's neither here nor there. We're talking about the doctor's opinion alcoholism. But here's the deal. So my parents were pretty normal. They were regular people for health spawn. So I had three other Alcoholics before me setting a wonderful example in which I could pick up many, many devious tools.

So I hit 13 years old and I'm drinking as an alcoholic because here's this amazing thing is that

there are two schools of thought when it comes to alcoholism. And this is the way that I like to look at it and can disagree with me later. You can even get me in the parking lot and yell at me about this. But I think there are people who cross a line. I think there are people who are born alcoholic. I've sponsored many people who were able to drink with some level of control for a for a long period of time and some point in their drinking. They lost the power of choice in drink

where they were no longer able to control how much they drank once they started. But there was a point in time in their drinking when they had some level of control. I was not one of those Alcoholics. The first time I put alcohol in my body, I came home. I had a spiritual experience. I had a I excuse my French, the Big O.

The second, well, you guys know what the Big O is, right? And nobody's laughing, so you don't. All right? I had,

yes, I had an orgasm the first time I put alcohol in my body. That's a big oh, by the way, thank you, earmuffs.

I apologize. I, I have to admit I'm from Jersey. I have a, a colorful vocabulary. Goddess Sin has not seen fit to remove some of the euphemisms I like to use. I think I've been asking. He hasn't done it, so we're good with that. And I apologize if I offend any of you. But here's the deal. You guys have all watched The Sopranos, right? You know how we all talk.

So here's the deal. I put alcohol in my body. I woke up, I came home and I felt whole for the first time in my life. Once that happened, that was nine years old, I felt the need to have more.

I could not control how much I drank at nine years old. My mind didn't tell me. Oh, drink again, my mind said. I threw up everywhere. I ended up in my brothers room, passed out on his floor and this was Thanksgiving. They thought it was going to be really funny if they gave the the baby some wine. They didn't realize that the baby stole a bottle of Lauretta and went up to her brother's room and hid under his bed and drank the rest of it.

So then my parents, you know, I was found in a pool of vomit at 9:00,

twitching.

I didn't do that again for a little while,

but somewhere along the lines, my mind didn't connect that experiencing alcohol poison, my mind connected that experience that alcohol good. We like that. We're going to do that again as soon as we humanly can. So I did. And so by the time I was 13 years old, my parents were looking at my first rehab, you know, and I had been in an Alcohol Anonymous for five years before I was able to get any kind of sobriety I had

because people told me things like, easy does it. They told me things like

bring the body and your mind will follow. They tell me just don't drink and make a meeting. If I could just not drink and make a meeting, I don't have to come here. I could find something better to do with my time. I mean I could like join a crafting club. I could start crocheting or some crap like that. And honestly, if I have the power to just not drink and come to a meeting and be fine,

I'd rather like join a cooler club, you know, than Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll find something, you know, awesome to do, something prestigious that makes me look good and makes people think I'm important. Instead, I'm here. Why? Because I don't have the power to do that. I don't have the power to just not drink and go to a meeting. And the reason for that is because I had that mental obsession and I have that spirituality and I have that physical allergy. I have a mind that tells me that I can drink. I have a body that says more

now, and I have a spirit that tells me I'm a worthless piece of shit and I'm not worthy of breathing

and it says this stuff all the time. Not anymore. So much.

So naturally, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I spent five years in these rooms, in and out, in and out, dating everything under the sun because I thought that if I got a boyfriend who had worked a program, that I somehow get sober. I thought that going to dances were, you know, we're going to get me sober. I thought making coffee was going to do it. No one ever explained to me what alcohol, what alcoholism meant, what alcoholism was.

So I spent five years in alcohol ax claiming to be an alcoholic and not even aware of what it meant to be an alcoholic.

No one ever pointed out to me that there was a big book. I mean, they gave me one and they said, you know, you might want to read the stories in the back. And the sponsor who I had who gave me one had a big coffee stain in the middle of it. I'm pretty sure it was just on her coffee table. She was using it as a freaking coaster. So she hands me this coffee stain big book, which is not this is the big book I drag around to studies. It's a mess. But this coffee stain big book and says, read the stories in the back and identify

so, and it was a third edition

and they were all old

and they all drank wallpaper remover and crap like that. And I remember and meanwhile, I, I come in a, A and I got a green Mohawk. That's when my, your, your head shaved and it's all sticking up and big spikes and it's green hair and purple hair and pink hair. You know, I had spiked belts, I carried knives. I wore Doc Martens. I still wear Doc Martens, but you know, something's never change. But

you know,

and came in with a mess, you know, Misfits T-shirt and safety pins in my face, OK. And they tell me to read the stories in the back and identify. Well, I can't identify with that crap because that stuff didn't happen to me because

I wasn't a Southern gentleman.

I do not have a penis.

I'm from North Jersey. That's way far from the South. By the way, that's NSI didn't identify with that. So I read the stories in the back, it didn't identify and said I guess I'm not an alcoholic, I can go drink.

So I did. I continued to put alcohol in my body and guess what happened? Craving happened. So once I start drinking, I can't stop until somebody locks me up, which was my experience. So here's here's my personal experience with craving. I get out of my 97th rehab, I sign a contract with my parents swearing that I'm never going to hang out with those terrible kids again.

Then I'm going to grow my hair back,

that I'm going to stop listening to that music,

that I'm going to behave myself and go to school because I didn't attend school at all. I I didn't get out of the ninth grade because I never went to school ever. And I was thrown out of a school for the emotionally disturbed because apparently I was too disturbed for them.

That's really not alive. There's no exaggeration. In fact, one of my classmates from that school is in the pro, is in the program, has found me on Facebook. And she was like, I remember you. You were crazy. Like I, I hope you're sober. And I'm like, I am

anyway. So I get out of rehab. I spent a couple weeks hanging out, trying not to see those people, usually hiding in my room wanting to die because I can't drink, I can't leave my house. My parents are watching me every second at every moment of every day. My shrink is calling me, patrolling the streets looking for me. You know, when I, when I do escape, they, they, they all converge and hunt me down. So I had this wonderful therapist and my parents had great insurance and they had lots of money

lawyers, and I had all this stuff, all these resources to hunt me down to interfere with my alcoholism. So I come out of rehab. I spent a couple weeks hiding out. Then I'd get this idea. If I climb out my bedroom window in the middle of February and a snowstorm

and I go over to my friend's house, I know that they're gonna have alcohol. Now I can drink a little bit and climb back in my window and no one will know.

So here's what Here's a typical Saturday night for Kerry Cosgrove.

Climb out my bedroom window in the snow with Chuck Taylors. No socks, no jacket.

I climbed down the roof and my, my, my window. There's two roofs and I hop from roof to roof and then I jump on the deck in the snow and I walk over to my friends house, which is about 15 minutes away. I climb up onto her porch, into her window. We drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and then I got to get out her window and back into mine. That's the difficulty.

So typically what happens is I either

stomp through her house, wake up her parents, and then she could her parents call my parents because I'm too drunk to get out the window.

Or I do get out the window and I'm able to get part of the way home. And somewhere along the way I fall over into some bushes and then I throw up on my parents front porch and then I pass out and then my mother hears a commotion. She comes downstairs and she sees me laying there in my own vomit. Why do I do that

now? I was locked up for 30 days away from alcohol, right?

No alcohol in my body.

I'm under house arrest. I got to climb out my window, which they did begin to board up after a couple of those incidents.

I got to climb out my window because I'm on house arrest, right? And I got to go to my friend's house because my parents have now taken all the liquor out of their house because they know better.

And I gotta go drink her liquor, her parents liquor.

And I do all this without any alcohol in me. That's not craving, that's a mental obsession. That's my mind telling me that I have to do this because there's something not right with me. And I get to my friend's house and I think I'm just going to hang out. We're going to watch, I don't know, The Lost Boys, whatever movie it is that we're watching, because we're 1314 years old

and we're going to just drink a little bit and then place some Nintendo, of course, or Sega. That's how old I am.

I'm going to go home

and no one will be the wiser.

And at 14 years old, once I put alcohol in my body, alcohol decides for me when I'm going to stop. It decides for me how I'm going to get home. It decides for me what How much noise I'm going to make, how many stairs I'm going to fall down, how many bushes I'm going to fall into, where I'm going to throw up, who's going to find me, and whether or not I'm going to actually half freeze to death laying on my parents front porch in February.

All of those things are beyond my control because alcohol is doing all of my thinking and all of my acting for me. Because once I put it in my body, I can't control how much I drank. I know what will happen if I drink. I know that I'll end up in rehab again. I know that I almost froze to death last winter.

I know all of these things,

yet once I put it in my body, it doesn't matter. Actually, before I put in my body, it doesn't matter honestly. But we're talking about cravings. So once I put it in my body, I can't stop. That's craving. And here's The thing is that that only happens in Alcoholics. So whether you're whether that's happened to you twice or 1000 times, the fact is, is that that reaction alcohol is limited to Alcoholics.

It never happens in the non alcoholic. So when you have somebody who may be like myself, got sober young, was in a a for on and off for a long time and lied and cried and whined for a lot of years,

how do you explain to them what it means to be an alcoholic without having to, without having them have to drink for 30 years? Well, we use the trifecta,

allergy, mental obsession and spirituality

and that's why I said that each one of us comes here with our own drinking story. We have our war stories, our war stories, They belong and 12 step calls.

When an alcoholic calls me up and then they've never been to Alcohol Anonymous, they need some identification. That's where the identification comes.

But the purpose of the doctor's opinion, the purpose of there's a solution more about alcoholism, the purpose of those pages is for an alcoholic to read that, diagnose themselves an alcoholic and then do something about it.

So just identifying myself as an alcoholic is not the solution to my problem, is simply identifies what problem I have because as as the doctor's opinion. So perfectly put it, and I love this and I have to read this every time.

It says the physician at a request, gave us this letter and it's been caught enough to enlarge on his views in a statement which follows. In this statement, he confirms we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. So I might be crazy, squarely, completely insane. I could be Charles Manson. That doesn't make me an alcoholic. That just makes me crazy.

My body is as abnormal as my mind.

That's what makes me an alcoholic

went to spirituality. Well, we'll get to that says that it does not satisfies to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we're maladjusted to life full flight of reality or outright mental defectives. Now I was in full flight of reality, I was an outright mental defective and I was maladjusted to life. I was all three of those things.

Doesn't totally solve the problem. Because here's the thing, you put me on Prozac, give me a good shrink, a nice little boyfriend to rub my toes. You know, I should be OK, right? Because I'm maladjusted to life. I'm full flight of reality and outright mental defective. So shrinks should fix that, right, 'cause their job is to help me to, you know, get in touch with reality. Isn't that a shrink's job, right? I'm a mental defective, so there's something wrong with my brain. So, you know, give me some drugs, give me some Prozac, some Zoloft. That should fix it, right?

I drank while I was on those things, by the way. That's not a very good combination. If you want to kill your liver, that's a perfect combination to die anyway.

So

I'm maladjusted to life because I'm an angry, unhappy, blaming little shit. That's what I am.

I have all these three of these things going on. I have a shrink. I have loving parents. I have all the money and resources at my fingertips. I have private schools. I have I have multiple therapists. I've been in some of the best rehabs in our country. I was in rehab with a drummer for with a drummer from Pearl Jam.

My parents put me in Club, Med rehabs,

state-of-the-art crap, and I drank again. Because if those things were the things that made me an alcoholic or made me drink, then I could just fix that stuff. I could rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and everything would be OK. But for me, because those things are not the things that make me drink,

I came in here saying those things. I came in here saying I drank because I drink, because I drink because I'm an alcoholic. And I'm breathing. Breathing is A cause. Awareness. Being awake is a trigger. Want to know a trigger? You looked at me. You looked at me, so you must be thinking about me. And it can't be good because you're thinking about me. And I suck, so you know I suck, so therefore I suck and I can't be here. And I got to hide under the chair, so I got a drink.

These are the things. This is the way I think when I'm not, you know, not treated. You know, I don't think like that so much anymore

where I couldn't really be up here doing this, that wouldn't work. So these things were true to some extent, in fact are considerable stand with some of us me, but we are sure that our bodies were sinking as well. Our belief that any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out the physical factors incomplete. So the reason why I'm harping, I'm telling these funny stories is because leaving out the physical factor of alcoholism

is an incomplete explanation as to why I do what I do. Because if I could just fix all this stuff, then I wouldn't need to drink so much. I wouldn't need to be in flight from reality. But the fact is, I'm not in flight from reality.

The fact is, as reality could be, whatever it is, but I'm in a flight for myself because inside me is a cesspool of fear and resentment. And I need to kill that. I need relief from that. And it's that cesspool of fear and resentment which makes me not care about the fact that once I put alcohol in my system, I can't control how much I drink. Bill knew that the first drink got him drunk. He says it in his story very clearly, he says.

I came to see

that I could not take so much as one drink. Right. So what he do? He was banging the bar. Because knowing that you can't drink will not get you sober. Knowing that the first drink gets you drunk will not get me sober.

Self knowledge avails me nothing. So I knew very well long before I stopped drinking that I needed to not take the first drink. But the fact is, is that was beyond my power because I'm powerless. And what being powerless means is that it's beyond my power and I cannot on my own power on human power. Using you, my parents, every shrink in the state of New Jersey.

I cannot arrest my drinking with those things.

The thing that is needed is an entire psychic change. And this is entire for a reason. In the Doctor's opinion. It says entire psychic change. Why did Bill say entire psychic change? Not sorta,

not middle of the road,

not mostly psychic change. I like mostly psychic change. It meant that I could avoid paying back a whole lot of money,

meant that I didn't have to make amends to people I really didn't like. Because that's a mostly psychic change, right? A mostly psychic change is doing the stuff that I like doing and not doing the stuff I don't want to. But he says entire psychic change. Why?

Because we have to entirely do everything this book tells us to do in order to have that psychic change. Now, Doctor Silkworth says that we have to follow a few simple rules. Who says there are no rules in Alcohol Anonymous? My book says they're rules. It says this is a suggested program of recovery, meaning that the program in Toto, they're all 36 principles that triangle the three legacies. You know, that's a suggested program of recovery to recover from alcoholism.

The individual principles are not suggestions. Their demands, their must, their rules. You better or you're going to die. Bill says things like in in a fist step. He says, you know, if you don't tell your fist step all to one person, the the first reason, the most important reason is you're likely to drink again. He says things like willing to go to any lengths for victory over alcoholism.

I Bill chose his words very carefully when he wrote this book. In fact, that's why we had that whole thing about, you know, shortcomings and character defects.

You give me the time signal yet? OK. Can you give it to me though?

OK, somebody

how we doing on time? OK, OK,

just give me the cut.

Anyway,

so I forgot. Oh, character defects and shortcomings. Bill. Bill had a thesaurus. OK. And he was an egotistical writer, so he made sure he didn't like to repeat himself, yadda, yadda, yadda. So that's why, you know, he'll interchange things, but he's very careful about how he crafts things and things that he say. So when he when he says, you know, that we need to follow a few simple rules and he says we must or will die, you know, we must be rid of selfishness. We must.

I mean, he's not, he's not mincing words with this because he wants us to understand that it's an entire psychic change,

not a sort of psychic change. And so in the doctor's opinion, it tells us that we have to have this entire psychic change. It says that frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. Then a message which can hold an alcoholic has to have depth and weight. What does that mean? It means that I hope that what I'm talking about right now has depth and weight because the whole point of coming up to this podium and sharing with why did you guys pay to fly my butt out here? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a housewife. I actually live in Pennsylvania now. I keep saying Jersey because that's where I grew up.