At a Big Book Study Weekend in Adelaide, Australia

Is there anyone here that are from the Ghana nation?

All right, my name is Christine Franks. I'm a descendant of the UN people of NSW South Coast. And before we start our meeting, I would like everyone to acknowledge and honour the Ghana people whose land we are meeting on today. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic

and only through the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in that I've accessed and maintained in my life through the process in this book,

good sponsorship and ability to remain sponsorable

in a persistent and consistent effort in this altruistic movement of our primary purpose to help others. I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotional and substance since October 30, 1978. And that is the most important day of my life, the day that I stopped dying.

I'm delighted to be here. I want to thank George and all the members of the committee for all their hard work. I've been on a lot of committees over the years. It's it's really a labor of love and they've put a lot of energy into putting this weekend together.

I want to thank them for that.

I'm I'm curious. Before we start, let's I'd like to open with a prayer If you'd indulge me with a moment of silence.

Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, and everything I think I know about this program recovery. All for a new experience in you, Lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in other people,

in a much needed new experience in this program of recovery.

Amen.

Who's here? That's what I'm curious about.

How many people here are in their first year of absolute abstinence?

Don't be embarrassed. Great. Oh, I'm really glad you guys are here. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Anybody here in their first 30 days?

Oh, welcome. Welcome. All right. Cool. Very cool

and but in their last 30 days I was want to check

catch you on the way out

the people that are new. I hope you hear something here that will drive you to get with your sponsor. There's nothing going to occur this weekend. It's going to change your life. But there may be some things that occur this weekend that will lift a veil and you will see

a path that you didn't see before.

Maybe you'll a fire will be put under you to drive you to do this thing

that changes lives.

One of the things that prayer we opened with has been an important part of my my recovery for about 30 years now. I suppose I got it. It's an extrapolation of a prayer I got from a guy in Colorado has been dead for a few years. It was a dear friend named Don Pritz.

And the reason it's so, it's such a great prayer for me is that my ego is that part of me that thinks it knows stuff, right? That blocks out learning anything new. It's that thing, that little party that that that feel, the smug part, the part that you can't tell anything to, the part that already knows, the part that that only can listen to see how people are wrong.

That part. And

that is the enemy.

The Buddhists often

teach by story, and one of their stories that depicts what they believe is enlightenment. When you get to the point where you know, the most important thing you'd ever know is a story about an old Chinese farmer who exists

on this meager piece of land with his son. And they, they're very, very poor and they don't own the land. A Lord owns the land and allows them to live there and work hard in the field, and they have to tithe most of their crop to the Lord. They'd get to make a meager living.

They don't own the house. They don't own the tools that they toil the fields with. They own only one thing. It's their whole estate, and that is a horse. And they're very proud to own this horse.

One day the horse runs off

and they virtually have lost everything they owned. And all their friends and neighbors and families come over to console them to tell them how horrible this is. And this little old wise Chinese farmer just looks at them and as they're telling him how terrible this is, he's lost everything. And he shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't know if it's terrible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't.

And they look at him like he's he's out of his mind.

A couple days later, the horse returns and it runs right into the corral as the sun stands there holding the gate with a leading a whole herd of wild horses. And, and it all of a sudden this guy is the richest man in the valley. He's hit the freaking horse lottery. I mean, like,

Oh my God. And now his friends and neighbors and family come over to celebrate, to tell him how wonderful this is. And he

he says, I don't know if it's wonderful. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. And they they think this guy must be smoking something. You just hit the horse lottery. You don't even think it's good. And he just goes, I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

About a week later, his only son is trying to break one of the wild horses. And he's thrown, and he's crippled up pretty good, and his leg is all mangled up and broken badly. And he can't walk and he can't work. And of course, his loved ones and his friends and his family come over to console him, to tell him how horrible this is, that his only son has been mangled up pretty badly. And he looks at them and he just shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't know if it's bad.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. And they look at him like he's crazy. This is your only son, and he's been crippled up and he's got a terribly badly broken leg. And you don't even think that's bad? And he says, I don't know, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. A week later, the Chinese army came through the valley, and they would force all the young men to go and fight in a battle where none of them could survive. And they couldn't take the sun because of his leg.

See, the old man knew the most important thing he would ever, ever know. What

true enlightenment is, is that he doesn't know.

It is the ego that supposes. It is the ego that assumes. It is the ego that judges. It is the ego that is my enemy

and the worst thing I can carry

into today's recovery is the stuff that has come from yesterday because it limits me here. And, and it, they think sometimes some of us puff ourselves up with how many years we have or our accomplishments in a A and,

and it really blocks us from having legitimately new,

today's only day of God.

I want to talk some and I know there's a lot of new people here. So this is very important. I want to talk some about what what step one has been in my experience. I'm not, I'm not an academic guy, even though we will talk about some things in the book, but I've discovered over the years that the most important thing that we have to give each other is our experience.

Not our opinions, not our beliefs, but our actual experience. You can argue with my opinions because you may not be your opinions,

but you can't argue with my experience. It may not be your experience, but it's my experience. I mean, it's just, it is what it is. And, and that's you're going to get a lot of that today. And the great thing in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we connect with each other through our the genuineness of our experience That and, and I know everybody in this room has had that experience. Sitting in a room and someone is opening up and talking

genuinely about themselves. Maybe some things are hard to talk about

and you're sitting there and something is happening between you and that person. There's a resonating thing inside of you. Some of you may have also had the experience of sitting in a meeting and listening to a man or woman

share something that intellectually you know you've never heard that and yet it is. It hits you with such a rightness. It's as if you always knew it and you never heard it before.

And and that has always been the power of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not in what we know, it's in our experience.

I was baffled by step one. I think step one is the hardest thing we ever do it. It is so difficult. It kills most Alcoholics because they can't do it. When it says in the beginning of chapter 3 that most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real Alcoholics. Oh my God, that's so. That is such a universal thing. I bet you there's people in this room that sitting here today know beyond the shadow of a doubt you're an alcoholic. Yet you can look back

life to a point that you can see now you were alcoholic that 10 years ago, but you didn't know it, did you? You would have bet anything you were an alcoholic back then.

We don't want to be alcoholic.

I'd rather be. I'd rather be a mental health case. I'd rather be a drug addict. I'd rather be anything but not an I don't know what is that about a I mean about alcohol. We don't want to be Alcoholics,

but I am and they didn't know it. And very slowly,

over years of failure

trying to control and enjoy my drinking, I started to to get it down. In here

in chapter 3, it talks about step one differently than than it does on the

than it does here. Here it says we admitted we are powerless over alcohol,

that our lives had become unmanageable.

I I could do that and not mean it and think I meant it.

You know, I could you get me in a treatment center. I'm in a bunch of people looking at me in a group. I'll admit just about anything. Just I don't want, I don't want any problems here. You know, I don't want conflict. I don't want, I don't want the counselor jumping me after the meeting.

Yeah, I'm alcoholic, but that doesn't mean that in my innermost self that I believe it. And that's what it says in in Chapter 3, it says we learned, which implies that this is a little bit of a process than an evolution,

a learning that we learned that we had to fully concede, fully concede. That's like complete fully concede to our innermost selves that we were Alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery.

There is a place in every single one of us, I believe,

where you know stuff. It's not chatter up here. There's no conversation in your head debating about it. You just know it like you know you need your next breath. And that's where this stuff has to occur. My grand sponsor was again, a guy named Chuck Chamberlain, and he used to say that this is an inside job and because of because of this place that we have to do this in here

and the reason it has to happen in here. I think it exemplifies the great failure of intellectual approaches to the treatment of alcoholism.

Treatment centers will try in 30 days to give you the equivalent of a doctorate degree in alcoholism.

I, I've watched, I watched that we have a, a big, very fancy treatment center in the US called Betty Ford. And I would sit in meetings and people who just got out of Betty Ford, they're, they're sober about six weeks, would come to meetings and announce that they had, they just graduated from Betty Ford and they had the new information

here. As if they, they, we, they said it as if they'd graduated from Harvard or Oxford or something. You know, I wanted to say it's a detox.

It's not some kind of, but they, you get, they, they come out of there with a head full of information

and how often that's a setup,

then how often those people drink again

because it has to happen in here.

Well,

how do you do that?

I think I think there's a thing that happens. It involves God's grace. Whether you're, whether you believe in God or not, there's something inside of us that has to happen and you can't manufacture it. It's a coming together of our own bitter experience,

coupled with the experience of others and the information in this book where all of a sudden stuff moves from up here down into here, down into the heart, where you start to get stuff.

One of the great contributors to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't think any of us would be here without him, was a man by the name of William G Silkworth. And Doctor Silkworth was a psychiatrist who

had devoted his life to us

and he wasn't an alcoholic.

And he was a remarkable man and he made inroads in it. He had insights and intuitive insights into this disease that were remarkable

later had been proven absolutely scientifically accurate by research. But he just came to these conclusions from observation over and over and over again of us.

And on in the big book on page XV, I, I, I Silk Worth starts to talk about these things that he's come to know.

And this is important information for me if I'm going to understand at a gut level what it is to be powerless over alcohol.

The first full paragraph on that page, Silky says. We believe and suggested a few years that the action of alcohol,

these chronic Alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy,

that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class. What class chronic Alcoholics limited to this class and never occurs in the average tempered drinker.

Well, there's a whole bunch of stuff in those those couple lines. The first thing he says that is meaningful to me is he's talking about a type of alcoholic, a chronic alcoholic. I am a chronic alcoholic. I have come to believe over the years through observation that there's also acute Alcoholics and it's a big it's a world of difference between the two positions. Yet when the acute alcoholic drinks and

chronic alcoholic drinks, we appear to be the same. If a chronic alcoholic that has been drinking and an acute alcoholic that's been drinking will end up in the office of a therapist or a doctor or a clergy member, that both of them will be easily diagnosed as alcoholic. But there is a very major difference between the two, and it is important to know which one you are, because the whole course of your life depends upon

and your whole recovery is different. The recovery of a chronic alcoholic is different than the recovery of an acute alcoholic.

On page 20 and 21 of the book it talks about the two differences.

It talks about the 1st. On the very, very bottom of page 20, it talks about what could be considered an acute alcoholic.

They call them the hard drinker. I've heard of other, I've heard therapists, I've heard doctors refer to it that are sober and a a is, is the problem drinker. And it says we have a certain type of hard drinker. Now listen to the symptomology of this guy.

He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. This is not good. First of all, he's he's drinking habitually to the point of mental and physical impairment. Most people with diagnosis guys in alcohol,

it says it may cause him to die a few years before his time. It's it's shaving the longer he drinks, it's shaving years off his life. This is horrid. This is a a life threatening disease.

And then and then here's the difference between him as an acute alcoholic and me as a chronic alcoholic. And I bet you every chronic alcoholic in here has known people like this. Maybe you grew up with people like this. Maybe you went to church with people like this or worked with people like this. It says if a sufficiently strong reason

ill health.

The doctor says, hey, you got you got some liver problems and some pancreas problems. You keep drinking, you're going to die a horrible death

falling in love even more. You meet that perfect person and they don't want to put up with your drinking and they give you an ultimatum and you just OK and you stop.

Change of environment. Warning of a doctor. Warning of a judge. Warning of a boss.

These things become operative. This person. This person who look is drinking horridly can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention. If he's been drinking every day, he could even need detox.

He might even have a little bit of tremors when he stops drinking.

But within him is the ability to do to one of two things. And there's two types of acute Alcoholics. There's the type that can stop and there's the type that can stop and moderate. I, I've, I've met you, I've had the experience at least eight times where I'll be, I'll be somewhere. Maybe I'll be on a plane sitting next to someone or I'll be in a restaurant. I, I when I had my corporation, I used to put on a lot of social events and I'd meet people and they'd find out I was in a A and they'd say, oh, I used to be

alcoholic.

Really. Oh, yeah. When I was in the Navy. Oh, my God, I was in the Brig. I was terrible. But I see you're drinking a beer. Oh, I learned my lesson. I just have a couple once in a while. He don't have what I had.

If I could do that, I'm telling you I'd be doing it.

I'm not sober because it's a moral issue here, you know,

You kidding me or, or you? I grew up with God. I grew up with a guy. He was the first guy I ever knew. I never even knew what DTS were. And he had first guy ever. He had DTS in high school, ended up in a mental hospital in high school from drinking because he, oh, he just, he couldn't stop once he started

and he, he'd gotten in a lot of trouble. He got a DUI, he had his license taken away from him. He lost jobs

and then he fell in love.

And this girl he fell in love with just said, you know, I'm not going to have it.

And he said he thought to himself, man, I really, I don't want to lose her. And he put the plug in the jug. And 30 some years later, he's still sober and he's happy and, and he's comfortable. And he what happens to him when he quits drinking is his problem is solved.

But the chronic alcoholic

like I am when I quit drinking my problem in a vague way I can't put my finger on in it right below the surface where I can't really see it, my problem starts

and it's baffling to me.

I'm not that guy. I would I used to want to be that guy because I had sightseeing guys that could make up their mind to quit drinking and they did and they were fine. There's people in a a like that that are sober 30 years with the benefit of step none and their happy, joyous and free. I mean, they're they're they're alcoholism ended when they quit drinking and they come to AA because it's it's, it's it fills the social gap that used to be filled by going to the pubs.

The A A to them is like the sober elk's or something. You know, it's like, you know, it's,

it's a social support group and that's all they need. And they're as long as they don't pick up the first drink, their alcoholism is over.

But mine isn't. See, I'm the guy. I'm not like them. They're kind of cool people when they quit drinking. They're nice people, friendly, able, kind.

I, I'm, I'd like to be that way, but when I quit drinking, I just, I really see how stupid people are.

You know, I just see it. I just see the idiots. I mean, it's a gift. It's a gift. What can I say? I just see how stupid everybody is.

I'm restless, Silkworth says.

The bottom of the page. He says when we get sober, we're restless, we're irritable and we're discontented. What does that look like? What's this? What do they mean by restless? Every chronic alcoholic, whoever's quit drinking, knows what that means. That that vague, undefinable feeling that wherever you are, it's not really where you need to be.

Now. I don't know where I need to be. It's just not here,

you know? Do you ever watch a dog circle a living room looking for a spot to lay down? I'm a dog that can't find its spot, you know, I'm just, there's an aimlessness. I, I spend my whole life running from one thing to another as if this is the thing and it's not the thing and this she's the one and she's not the one. That's the job and it's not the job. And I can't get settled anywhere, really.

I'm restless. The next symptomology that Silkworth says to this, and these are the things that make me so sick sober, drives me back to drinking restless. And the second thing is irritable

and people rubbed me the wrong way.

But see, I don't know that. See, what it looks like to me is now that my mind's clearing, 'cause I ain't drinking, I can just see. Oh my God, you are really messed up.

Oh my God,

you know, when I was drinking, this was a nice place to work. But now, Oh my God, they're doing it wrong.

They're, they're idiots.

And it's, it's that, it's my ego puffing up.

I don't know

that what I really am is I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex,

and that what that means. It's not so much I'm a piece of whale crap, I'm a very special piece of whale crap.

I I don't, I loathe myself, I have no self esteem and yet at the same time think I'm better and smarter than everybody else. That's crazy. It's almost a contradiction,

but I've always been that way when I get sober and and so consequently I I get angst up because life just seems to irritate me and and because people are doing it wrong. I don't. I can't forgive them until they're properly ashamed of themselves,

so I keep score. Because nobody's really properly ashamed of themselves. So I keep score

and until I feel like I'm gonna blow up

until it's, I'm overwhelmed with all these judgments and these conflicts inside of me. So I'm just about insane. My sponsor says it best. He says it's. He says he gets sober time and time again. And after a while, it was like some hideous force put a spring in the pit. His stomach and life just started. Tighten it up every day a little bit more, a little bit more.

And the and the kids don't why are they making so much noise? And you know, and the tax, look how much taxes I'm paying and the boss, he's such an idiot. And the traffic has gotten worse and my God, it's raining all week and it just

until you feel like you're going to head's going to blow up.

So I'm restless and I'm irritable, and then the last thing is goes

goes deep down within me

and discontented. Alcoholism is a disease of chronic malcontent

that in its independent of reality. To know that it's the same feelings of dissatisfaction and disillusionment occur in the Alcoholics living in $10 million homes just as much as in in a couple $100 a month flats

because it's it's a misinterpreted yearning.

Carl Carl Jung, the great psychiatrist who was influential indirectly, he didn't realize it in the forming of Alcoholics Anonymous. He's the psychiatrist that talks about in our big book when it talks about the guy who went to Switzerland, the rich businessman. He went to see Carl Young and he spent a year in treatment with Young. His name was Roland Hazard. And Roland drank again and Carl told him the truth. Carl said, oh, you're in. I didn't. I was hoping you weren't a real

alcoholic, but you're a chronic alcoholic and there is no help anywhere on this planet for you.

Then your only hope is to make some kind of spiritual conversion, to have some kind of connection. And he thought he could find it in church. And Young said going to church may be nice, but it is hardly will provide the vital spiritual experience you need.

And Roland felt like the doors of hell were closed on him. And Young continued to work with Alcoholics. He was fascinated by them

and in a letter in the early 60s to Bill Wilson, our our cofounder, Young said something to Bill that is so right on to me, he said. After working with Roland and countless other Alcoholics, he said. I came to the conclusion that the Alcoholics thirst for alcohol is not really a thirst for alcohol,

he says. I believe it is a thirst of the Alcoholics being for unity, for connectedness, or if you're more religiously minded, a union with God

that something deep within me yearns for a homecoming, You'll yearns to connect to that from which I came. But Young also says that this is a misinterpreted yearning. And and so consequently the the unaided in our culture and society, this misinterpreted yearning will take guys like me down

constant roads to perdition to hell.

And yet I'm driven by the yearning and never knew it and never once was conscious of it. I have never been on my way to to obtain any kind of self gratification that later I'm going to regret. Whether it's going to a bar, a liquor store, a drug dealers house, going to have sex with someone I really don't even want to have lunch with. I mean any or go spend money I really can't afford to spend or do anything self self where I'm clamoring for

kind of relief and gratification on my way to the drug dealers house or the bar or the pub. It I never once have stopped and thought to myself,

this is a misinterpreted yearning for God.

Never. I never comes on the radar for me. And yet when I read that I thought my God, I think that's it. I think that's it.

So, Silky says.

With this, I always return to drinking this chronic malcontent. And if you're like me,

this, this vacancy drives me, unconsciously drives me. I don't know that it's driving me, but it's all it's like I always got my antenna out. I always got my radar turned on. Looking for stuff that might make me feel better

if I if I'm in a relationship, immediately I start noticing better people.

If I have a good job, I am automatically see better jobs.

I acquire things because I'm an acquire. I I think I've been driven by some sort of delusion that I can fill my vacancies by acquisition. If I bring enough of the right stuff and people into my life, surely then my vacancies will be filled

and I spend my whole life going

Oh yeah, Oh yeah, oh, come here. Oh, no, no, no.

Oh,

oh, yeah. Oh,

wrong again. You know, and there's a tremendous depression that settles in after every time. It's just this depression because I, I don't, I don't realize I was, I was over 10 years sober

and I'm talking to a guy I'm sponsoring and he said something and the light went on and I realized what the malcontent was,

is that I, I get sober and I'm vacant and I get, I get the job. The, I get that job. I mean the job, the, the own a boat, buy a house and have a Harley-Davidson kind of money job. I mean the job. And I'm not even at the job six weeks and it just sort of just starts to look bad. You know, it's just, it's just the, the shine wears off of it so quickly for me. I get the girl that well, I remember there's this girl. I was infatuated with her for such

long time. I finally hooked up. She fell in love with me, which is not good because if you love me, you're automatically below my standards. I mean, I want someone who has taste,

but when she's, when she's, I finally had what I wanted and the shine just started wearing off on it. And this guy said something to me and the light went on and he and what I realized is unconsciously now, I was never conscious of this, but on an emotional level, unconsciously,

I would compare what it feels like to have that job to what it felt like to drink four shots of tequila. And the job sucks. I compare what it feels like to be loved by her to what it felt like to drink a pint of whiskey. And I don't like her anymore. Now nothing's changed with a job. Nothing's changed with her.

The problem is within me.

See, alcohol spoils us. It ruins us really. Those of us normal drinkers never understand this because they never have had the spiritual experience from drinking that we had. They just get drunk. But it does something more for me than it does for them. And if you've ever watched a non alcoholic drink,

it's it's a baffling thing to watch. My sister is a not an alcoholic. I've sat my sister and I are very close. We have dinner together quite often and my sister will have a drink or two. I don't I don't think she's ever. I think she might have been drunk once in her life

and doesn't ever want to do that again. But my sister, well, first of all, it takes her 1/2 hour to drink one drink. I mean, the ice is melting. It's like this is alcohol abuse, if you know what I'm talking about. This is, I mean, it's evaporating right before my eyes. She's just she she forgets her drink is there

if the reminder I remind her. Oh, do I?

Hey, I paid for that.

She'll order a second drink in the second-half hour of the evening and drink about 2/3 of it and then leave it on the table. And if I ask her about it, I say, aren't you going to finish that? You know she'll say she'll say the the weirdest thing. You're she say no. I'm starting to feel it.

Yeah.

I mean, you're quitting now. You're you're 5 minutes from heaven. What are you quitting now for? But my

my sister, when she feels the effect of alcohol, when that feeling starts to come over, she likes a little bit of that feeling, just a little bit. But she gets this sense, and it's really a sane sense, that if she drinks more, she's going to lose control.

And so she goes, whoa.

But there's something wrong with me that I get to the same point where my sister gets to where she's starting to feel the effect of alcohol and gets a sense that if she goes further, she's going to get drunk and lose control. I don't get that. I get a feeling like I'm about to get control.

I get a feeling like, Oh my God, come on, come on, come on. And and I don't have the same reason. I don't have the same relationship. So when my sister and my parents and and the women that I live with and tried to love me, when they would see me build my life back up again sober and then tear it down one more time,

they were baffled why I would do that.

They would. They were baffled why when I start to drink, I just can't get a little high. I have to get whacked.

Why I have to go so far. Why have you ever been? If you ever drank with a non alcoholic, they'll say things to you. Don't you think it's time to stop? Don't you think you've had enough? Has anybody in here? Have you ever had enough? Have you ever sat in a bar and thought, no, this is good? I mean, it's never. I'm a chronic alcoholic. It's one more, one more. Now I may stop to prove a point. Or if I'm with you and you're on my back about my drinking, I'll show you,

I'll quit, and then I'll sneak out somewhere later on. And

but I, I have a different relationship to alcohol than these people.

And So what happens to me is I quit drinking and it just starts to wear on me this restlessness that I can't really put my finger on. I remember in this in the irritability and discontent. I had a counselor one time I because I get depressed after I'm sober for a little while. I just sink into these depressions because

my my life pales.

Would I yearn for? And what's so depressing is I'm not back to where I was when I was 18 years old and getting high like that. That's that's depressing. And this counselor said to me one time, she said, because I looked like I was depressed. He later sent me to a psychiatrist to get medication. And he said to me, he says, Bob, what's wrong?

I remember sitting there and I thought,

I don't know.

I, I don't know.

I'd like to tell you. I really would like to know. By this time I'd been to a dozen psychiatrists, probably. I've been in and out of treatment centers. I'd talked to so many people.

I don't know. It's not that there's anything wrong, and that's the baffling part. It's just that nothing is right.

It's just that there's something

terribly missing here

and I don't know what it is, and I do today. It's that it's the uplifting spiritual effect of alcohol was what was missing

out of given anything. In my periods of abstinence. If I could have drank and got the effect that I gotten when I was 18 years old, I'd given anything.

So what happened? Silk Horse says it best. He says. We succumb to the desire again, as so many of us do. We pick up a drink hoping

and the phenomenon of craving develops. We pass through the well known stages with Spree

to end up somewhere swearing to myself again

I ever gonna do this again

just to start the whole cycle of progressive restless irritable discontent until it's backed me into a corner till I pick up a drink or maybe I switched to something else

and that starts the cycle over. In the book Silkworm says this is repeated over and over and over and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of his recovery. This thing about relapse is so bad. Was so baffling to me how this could happen to me. I remember I even I I've always secretly believed that knowledge was power,

that if I could get enough information. So I, I went and studied and

took a lot of courses and seminars and stuff. And I became, when I was just a kid in my early 20s, I became certified drug and alcohol abuse counselor because I believed that if I, my God, if I was working in that field and I had the information, I was a professional, surely then I'll beat this thing.

And I was a great counselor right up to the day I lost my job for being drunk on the job.

It was baffling to me that the thing that happens to me in my mind that would drive me so insane that that I'm the guy who knows I know I just can't. And I've made-up my mind never touch it again. And I and I keep going back to it. And you know what it's like? It's, it's if you ever, have you ever had a biology course where you work with live frogs?

It's very, if you've ever, if you can imagine trying to boil a frog that's alive, it's very hard to do. If you take a pot of boiling water about this deep and you throw a frog in there to boil him, his hind legs are very strong. He gets out of the pot. Now, he'll get scalded like hell, but he'll get out of the pot.

So what you have to do in order to boil the frog is you have to set him in a pot of room temperature water. And he just settles in, gets comfortable. And if you turn the heat up slowly enough, the frog never realizes what's happening and he never jumps out of the pond. And he will sit there until he's dead.

And alcoholism is very much like that in my own emotional juices. It cooks me

and when you think about it, if I'm just curious, how many people in here have ever gotten to a point where they seriously said to themselves, I'm never doing this again and they did it after that. Anybody most of the room. Okay, if three days before you picked up the first drink that was going to end up in your demise where you're almost wishing you were dead.

If three days before you picked up the drink, you knew you were about to burn your life to the ground, you would have jumped out of the pot.

But you didn't know. Because alcoholism works us so slowly on the inside.

It cooks us slowly in our own emotional juices and my own restlessness and my own irritability and my own discontent

until it just drives me insane

and saying like running down the street with your hair on fire. No, it's a it's a, it's a more hideous, smoldering secret insanity. The insanity that just all of a sudden has me walking into a bar. And when I swore to myself and I understood I should never ever can ever do this again, Insanity that has me walk into a liquor store

and the day before I would have given you a lecture about how I'm never going to drink and how grateful I am

the day before

because my frog hadn't been cooked quite yet.

And this is repeated over and over and over again.

And, and so the real problem with alcoholism in this twofold fork that I'm impaled on,

umm, is, is not so much the phenomenon of craving. And the reason that that is not the business at hand is because there's nothing we can do to change that.

There is no medical way. There is no, there is nothing that you can do if you have alcoholism, which is the litmus test is do you have the allergic reaction to alcohol? There's a, there's a test in the book. Cause a lot of people nowadays come here. I work with a lot of guys. They're not, you know, I actually probably did more drugs and alcohol. Well, that's not the issue here. We want to find out if you have this terminal

illness that encompasses everything,

this hideous disease called alcoholism and so forth. Came up with a litmus test,

the phenomena craving in the book says. Here's how you can find out.

Chapter 3 it says if you don't think you're an alcoholic here, you can check it out. Go over to the nearest pub, go in there and have try some controlled drinking. Now you may need to do this a couple days in a row to get a good view of it, but go in, let's go in there and you're going to have two drinks and two strong drinks if you want. And then you got to shut her down and go home. Now you can't drink nothing later, you can't smoke, nothing. You can't take nothing, no pills, nothing. 2 drinks, that's it.

Well, if you're like me,

you have the mind I got. I'm going to go into the pub and I'm going to come to see if these AAS are full of crap. I don't think I'm alcoholic. I know I'm in trouble, but I don't think I got that thing