At a Big Book Study Weekend in Adelaide, Australia

In the northwestern part of the United States, I was up for a conference many years ago at a place she called Eureka. Actually, I'm going up there again next year. It's been quite a few years and, and I was never been up in that part of the country before.

And this guy was my host and he was very kind and wanted to show me around. And he took me to this place called the Avenue of the Giants. And if they had these trees there that were like, it was like something out of Jurassic Park, huge. I mean, these trees were 2025 feet in diameter, 250 to 300 feet high. I mean, they were spectacular. I had never seen anything like that. And, and we're spending some time there and I'm walking around this

forest and it had a feeling about it almost like it had like it was had a presence about it was very amazing.

We're done. The guy says, come on, get in the truck. And he wanted to take me down to the the ocean where there's these cliffs and these these really remarkable rock monoliths that come out of the ocean, these towering rocks that just shoot straight up. Wanted to show me that. But we had a little bit of a drive. And so we're driving across country down to the ocean from the forest. And we're going by these meadows and fields. And he says to me,

do you notice how you don't see a 250 foot tree standing alone all by itself in a field?

And I said, yeah, he said, do you know why that is? I said, no, I don't. He said, well, this particular type of tree, God has designed it in such a manner that it aspires naturally to grow to such magnificent heights that alone it literally outgrows its root capacity to support itself and hold itself up. And it will eventually grow to a point where it will topple over on its own aspired magnificence.

It can't stand, it will fall. I grow until it falls. And he said that it died.

He said what must happen in God's plan is that these trees must grow up in community and they literally will intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest. And that allows them to hold each other up and grow into their aspiration. And and I thought to myself, that's that's exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous

become so full of myself, I implode and fall over. I mean, I just, I'm no good. But if I come here

and I intertwine my life with yours and I get a Home group and I get a sponsor and I start sponsoring people,

you will allow me to grow into into God's image of Bob. And God's image of Bob is much better than my image of Bob. And you guys have allowed me to do that. And that's that, George. That's all you get.

All right. Don't. Don't encourage him

if if I haven't at least made my if I haven't poked fun at my host one time during the weekend, I haven't done my job. OK, I'm going to try to do some of these questions. I I may not have answers to these things. I don't. I don't know if I have some experience. Good. It's just a long question. Along with the allergy to alcohol that chronic Alcoholics have

in more about alcoholism, they go into great detail about the peculiar

mental twist prior to the first drink, the insidious insanity. If there is time, can you say anything about this queer mental condition that convinces us that we can drink like normal people with impunity?

Well,

I can tell you what it appears to be to me,

this queer mental blank spot. Silkworth refers to it as an inability to differentiate the true from the false,

and the book refers to us as people being driven by self delusion. So here's what I think it is.

I think that I'm not drinking

and I ain't doing very well. I don't like the way I feel. I'm not happy about my sobriety. I don't fit like I used to fit when I was drunk. And and what happens is I start to yearn

for the connectedness that I felt when I was 1820 years old and alcohol worked and I yearned for it to such a degree that I start believing it's obtainable again, even though it's not. And I the blank spot is my inability to bring into my consciousness the memory of the suffering, to see the truth

when all you, all you can see is your own yearning and need for relief. You can't see consequences. You can't see

the last five times you drank and how it wasn't fun anymore and how horrible it was and how you swore to yourself you'd never do it again. It's a blank spot. You can't see it because all you can see what's right here is the need for relief. For right here is the fantasy, though, the psychotic wishful thinking that I'm going to party.

And it's against the backdrop of of of this lonely abstinence, this restless, irritable, discontent abstinence, this depressing feeling of useless abstinence, abstinence.

And all I see is the need for relief.

And I don't see, I don't see the truth. I can't differentiate truth from a false. I can't see anything except that

treatment centers tell you weird things like if the first one, let's tell you stuff like if you think about if you think about drinking, obsession to drink returns, call somebody. Who the Hell's going to do that? I'm not. It's too late. It's way too late. This is that's the philosophy of a guy who says I'm not going to put oil in my car until the engine seizes up first. I mean,

it's too late. By the time the obsession to drink is on me, I'm I'm not gonna call anybody to get my way. It's too late.

I have to treat my spiritual conditions so I don't yearn for the because once, once, if I get spiritually sick enough, I start seeing hope in the bottle.

Hope of freedom, hope of relief. Doesn't matter that it hasn't been that way for a while. I can't see that. The book says we have this seeming inability to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. I can't see the truth at that point. All I can see is, man,

I'm going to have fun anyway. That's, that's my view of it. I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody. That's that's just based on my experience and it's, it is a blank spot. You can't see it.

It's a blind eye towards the truth.

Based on this psychotic wishful thinking, is there any significant difference between how women and men approach the 12 steps and recovery?

No.

Well,

listen, I did. I, I want to tell you something that I believe really strongly. Alcoholism is across the board here

and I think it's a dangerous proposition to single yourself out as a special. I'm, I'm a, I'm a male alcoholic. I'm AI used to be able to say before Mother Nature got her paintbrush up, I'm a redheaded alcoholic. I'm or or to say if you if you're you're a Catholic alcoholic or you're a gay alcoholic or you're a heterosexual alcoholic or you're a young person and alcoholic. So not

we, we

survive in a herd.

And if you want to get yourself a little group out in the edges of Alcoholics Anonymous, you ever watch those animal documentaries? Who gets picked off? It's, it's the, it's the three little it's the three little Wilder beasts that think they're a little different from the rest of the herd. They're out here. They're out here saying, you know, let's our case is different and it is their their their dinner.

Just be a drunk here.

My my sponsor, my first sponsors departed. Wife used to say we share our similarities and we ignore our differences.

How do you use the program to help with comparing yourself with others in detrimental ways?

How do you use the program to help with comparing? I don't need any help with comparing myself to others. I've had that. That's an art form with me. I need help to not do that. I need to help to stop it. I mean.

I mean, that'd be an interesting program.

I, you know, to see the truth, you know, you work the steps and the Step 4 did so much for me as I started to really honestly and genuinely see myself in other people, even even especially the people I hated. I returned me to community and my case isn't different. My, my sponsor says that he has a, he has a banner in his garage that somebody made him because they heard him say this in a talk. He says if there was a flag

that Alcoholics could rally around and feel like it would unite us all, their flag would say, you don't understand. My case is different.

We are pathetically common in our feelings of uniqueness

and we all feel that way. Don't God I get you get to alcoholic times. Well, well meaning people come up they all we know how you feel.

No, you don't.

No you don't. I you're a do gooder. I know, I know you say that, you say it to everybody, but you don't really know how I feel. Nobody knows and just we just wall ourselves off with this uniqueness.

I'm and what do you and we from deep within side of me. I'll compare these unique squirmy hard feelings and look out from deep within myself centeredness to what I see on the outside in you and I always, if I do that and compare how I feel to how you look, I'm doomed to be depressive

because it always comes up short because what am I doing? It's not legit. I'm comparing my my magnified because I have my mind magnifies stuff. Did you ever stare at one of your feelings and have it get smaller? It never does that. It gets bigger. I I, I magnify my emotions and blow them up until they consume me and then compare how I feel

in the consumed state of emotions to how you weigh out there. Look.

Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't, nobody feels like I feel. Well, you know, it's not a legitimate deal here. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's not legitimate. Although I am developing a relationship with God, I do not believe there is a devil. Hell is when we make what we make of ourselves on earth. What do you think?

Well,

I think very similar thoughts.

I, I'm not a, I'm not a religious guy, but yet I yet I can see tremendous truth in most religions today, but sometimes not not literal in a, in, in a analogy, analogies and things.

If you were to take, if you were to go through everything in Christianity that talks and refers, even letters and stuff outside the Bible, outside the Bible, and you were to, to lay down all the traits and descriptions and everything

that were attributed to Satan, the Devil or Lucifer. And then you were to honestly and put on paper all the things that have happened as a result of your ego and the harm that's been done and the damage that's been done. I think you would find that there was a match,

I think from the beginning of time,

and this is just my view, a religious, more religious person would probably think what I'm saying is heresy. But it's just my view based on my experience. And I might be wrong. But I think from the beginning of time, from beginning recorded history, there's been a knowing from experientially from our experience that there's some force of love or good within me and there's some force of negativeness and it hurts people and hurts myself.

And So what is its natural to personify stuff,

but I think it's just me. I, I, I was sponsoring a very involved born again Christian guy and we, he would not do his fourth step because he didn't need to, because he was forgiven.

I said, yeah, but you're not going to feel that until after you make the amends. He says, no, you don't understand. I didn't. It was not me that did all that stuff. Satan made me do it,

I said. You know, everything you're attributing to Satan looks a lot like you to me.

And he just, he fired me. You don't believe in Satan. He fired me

and he he was dead in six months. There were a drug overdose.

I think we have to look dead on at who we are.

S not pretty. It's not comfortable, it's not gratifying,

but you can't. You, you know your enemy, know your enemy. I'll tell you two things that have happened to me in in 33 1/2 years. One

is I have developed a tremendous sense of God, and yet I've never seen God eyeball to eyeball. I've seen his hand in my life and in your life I've seen I felt his presence at times, but I've never sat and looked him right in the eye. Never seen him. And on the same hand, I've never seen my ego. Oh my God, I felt it driving me. I've seen the destruction in my life drunk and sober as a result of it. I've seen how it's it's pushed me to make

decisions based on self and ego that have hurt other people, but I've never seen it directly.

And yet through all these years

I've been looking every almost every day

at the creation of my ego

and have also been looking at the creation that have comes about in my life is from the hand of God.

And over the years, I've got a pretty good sense of God and I pretty good sense of the enemy.

It's, it's like anything else. You can, if you can learn and get a tremendous sense of a creator by its creation. There are writers who I've never met, but I've read everything they've ever written to the point where if, if I were to run into them in a, in a plane somewhere in an airport, I think I could have a conversation with this guy, feel like I know him. I've never met him,

but I've read I've. I've looked at everything he's ever created and I've looked at everything my ego is created and I've looked at everything God's done in my life and I feel close to both. I understand him. You you never get rid of your ego, but you better get to know it.

And what do you do? How could you not get to know it if every single you do the daily review and you look for its hand, you look for its manifestations in your life. Eventually it starts and there's a beauty in that because you start laughing at it,

you know? I mean, it's like, you know, you get this is silly. That's that silly thing in me.

Bob, how long have you been down in periods of depression? One month, Three months? Six months

has worked with newcomers always worked. Yes. It has not immediately. It doesn't work as fast as a pint of 151 rum. And then sometimes it has worked that quick some in that immediate

in the years that I wouldn't do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous except come here and whine and and think about myself, I would stand depressions. I've been in depressions that were hard for it's funny. My time sense is weird. I was about to say for years, but I suspect it was only months. It just felt like years.

And then I would drink again and I've been in depression where they gave me medications

and the medications would help for a short period of time, but eventually I'd start sinking back into the depression again. It was almost like it wore off. And I would always seem to see Carter drugs or seek alcohol again because I'm a funny kind of guy. And I don't know if this is true for and I'm not. If there's people, if people have legitimate mental health diagnosis, I'm not trying to tell anybody

anything about it. I'm not a doctor. I all I got to my experience here, but I am one of those kind of guys that if I'm emotionally distraught and I'm depressed or angst up to the point of like I'm losing my mind from fear and anxiety and you give me a little bit of relief from my emotions. It's a slow burn for me. It's not the phenomenon of craving,

but there always comes a time that whatever relief you've given me isn't enough anymore.

I mean, I'm not the kind of guy who gets, you can't give me enough relief, you know what I mean? It's always, there's a part of me that just yearns for more. And, and that's, I think that's part of why I would always return to either alcohol or something harder, which eventually would lead to alcohol.

You know, I, it's every time I smoke pot, I end up drunk. Every time I do heroin, I end up drunk. Every time I do, I end up drunk. It's like you can start out, you can say, well, I'm not going to drink, but I'm going to do this. And my, my sponsor told me my, my, the sponsor I have now, I heard him say this before you sponsored me. He says our only hope is is what Silkworth says is absolute abstinence.

Oh well, that's not good. I don't like absolute abstinence

because of the way I'm squirmy inside. I'm not a good, I'm emotionally pretty. I'm, I'm really messed up here.

Well, I found a way to go here. I'm free.

I don't know if that's that can be happened to everybody. It's happened to a lot of guys I sponsor.

I don't know if it can happen to everybody. It's happened to everybody I've seen that's thrown themselves 100% into it, with a few exceptions. I have some friends that have legitimate mental health issues and they it's fun. There's another question here about medication.

This is a weird thing I asked a psychiatrist about that. I have a lot of respect for about this and he didn't. He noticed it to some degree, but he didn't understand it either, really. But the the people like me who

really don't need medication, I need action in my life. My natural inclination is to want to take the medication. People who have legitimate mental illnesses who really need medication for some crazy reason don't want to take it. I have several friends in Alcoholics Anonymous that really intrude. They have legitimate mental illness. They need medication. Mary Lou, 52 years sober. She, I, God, I remember her before they got her meds, right?

She, she and she would, God, she was what? Or she, she'd, she would stop taking it. And I couldn't understand why would you stop when you, you're, when you take it, you're fine. You stop taking it and you come to meetings and you start telling us about how they're tunneling into your house and soiling your underwear.

Take your pills. Stop it. She got, she got arrested running down the street naked because she imagined her hair, her clothing was on fire.

Why do you stop taking it? My friend Dino, I've known Dino and I got sober and he got sober six months before I do. So he's sober 30 / 34 years. And we were. Dino was a member of my first Home group. And Dino takes his medication. He's a good guy. He functions very well. He helps people. He's great,

but Dino, just like Mary Lou will about once a year or every year and a half

will start planning on getting off his medication. He'll do it like I'll plan like I'm when I'm in a halfway house planning on going on a drunk. He'll get everything lined up so he can go out of his God damn mind and just, you know, get off his medication and for he usually does it around the time of the a a conventions and he'll he'll quit his medication a day before the before the convention. He'll be at the convention. He won't sleep all day. He'll

be up every night hug and everybody in the hospitality room talking about

so on fire. He loves this is great. Let me show you this. Let me let me show you. This is great, great. And then a week later he's he's in he's strapped down in in a in a in the mental hospital. And I said, I said to Dino, I said to Mary Lou,

why don't you take your medication for God's sakes? And you know what they said to me? It blew my mind. Both of them said different words, the same thing. They said you don't understand. When I take the medication, even though I do better, I feel like someone smothered me and I feel I don't like the feeling.

And I thought to myself, my God, that's how I felt every time I stopped taking stuff

with untreated alcoholism. I felt like somebody was smothering me.

I don't understand. I talked to this psychiatrist about it. I said, what is that? And he said, you know, I've observed a very similar thing and I don't understand it either.

But I don't know,

um, there's a great doctor in, in Kentucky who's been working, he's an addiction ologist and a psychologist and a, and a medical doctor and he's been working with a treatment center there for, for 40 years, almost 435 years. And he has an odd approach.

And if you don't have if, if you're just a little depressed or you have depression and anxiety, we're not talking about extreme mental illness here. He will

he and you want to go on medication. He'll put you on medication. But first he wants to sit down with you and your sponsor and your spouse in a room and they want to go through a checklist of Alcoholics Anonymous to see if you're doing it all. And you've been doing it all for a while. But.

And if you've been doing it all and you're sponsoring guys and you've really done, and he goes through these points to find out if you've really done the 4th step as is outlined in the book. And if you made all your amends, the sponsor has to be on board saying, yes, he'd done all that. And the wife has said, yeah, he's cleaned up all the record. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then at that point, you're still overwhelmed with stuff. He'll give you medication. But what he's really saying is,

let's see if a A was enough for you. Let's see if God's big enough. Let's try this first.

If this doesn't work,

you know, with here it's nothing. We're not saying there's anything wrong with the medication, but let's try it first. Because if you're given, if you could get free and not take stuff, would that be a better thing than I mean, some people have to take medication, there's no doubt about it and I don't argue that point. But wouldn't it be a little optimum to be free of it if you could? And I don't know if you can or not.

I don't know. There's a book I give to guys. I've given this book

to probably 25 people. I gave it to Tom Ivester and I gave it to my sponsor and they loved it. They thought it was one of the best things they ever read. And it's written by,

I think, one of the great psychiatrists of our era. His name is Doctor Peter Bragan and Dr. Bragan was the founder of the Institute for Ethics in Psychiatry and Medicine in the US.

He was a, I think a four or five time past president of the National Psychiatric Institute. He is a chair at Harvard University in psychiatry. He's written about eight or nine books and he he did private research years ago at Harvard University on antidepressants because he started to to observe something in his practice that what the marketing brochures that are supposed to be

that are being put out by the pharmaceutical companies that the doctors get to tell them what's the medications about. He's starting to suspect there's some stuff in here that ain't right.

These have been doctored

and through discovery, he found out. He found it. He went to Eli Lilly and found, through their R&D found, uncovered some stuff that he showed evidence that they've been doctoring these case studies and convincing the medical profession of stuff that's not true.

And he did an in-depth research on the actual interaction of the brain chemistry when you take antidepressants and what happens in short term and the benefits short term and then what happens in long term. And it's a great book.

About 9 out of 10 people on antidepressants that have read that book have made the decision on their own to go to their doctor and ask their doctor if they could be weaned off the stuff. And they're free of it today.

Now, I'm not telling anybody to do that,

but

I really, if this guy is probably done more private research than anyone alive today, that's a legitimate Dr. and psychiatrist and he's the guy that's become the expert in the world on this stuff. I think it would benefit you if you're thinking about taking it or if you're taking it and thinking about getting off to read what he says.

A little bit more information is not all bad. And so I suggest to guys, I don't tell people I'm not a doctor. I will not play doctor. I have no opinion on this stuff. I have some experience, but experiences doesn't necessarily mean it's right for you. And so I'll say, I just say, why don't you read this book? See what happens.

It's called the Antidepressant Fact book by Doctor Peter Greg, and he's written a whole bunch of books. I mean, some great stuff. I just got his new one. It's his new one's a little hard to read. It's very clinical. It's written for psychiatrists and it's written for doctors. He does a lot of seminars teaching doctors and psychiatrists how to deal with stuff. You know, I'll tell you one thing he says makes perfect sense to He says that he believes it's malpractice for a General practitioner with no psychiatric training to give

psych meds. He said there is qualified to do that as your taxi driver with no psychiatric evaluation. He says that's malpractice. He said you want, he said. He said there's legitimate reasons for this stuff.

That's what Bragan says. There's a lot of doctors don't like breaking it.

What is your view on the 10th step inventory should be done as spot check or at the end of the day. I think it's it's right now spot check. And the reason I at the end of the day is is to me and the way I I see it in the book, it's part of step 11. It's it's continued to watch. And when these and when these come up, it's it's it's immediate right now. And one of the great things about the 11 step self examination is that most of us were. So we get so wrapped up

in our lives and we're just rolling. We roll right over stuff that we should have stopped and dealt with that I should have stopped and made amends. I should have stopped, paused and talked to God and my sponsor about that. But I'm busy, busy, busy, busy. And I roll over And what happens is it builds up. It builds up. And if I catch it at the end of the day, I have a chance of not filling up with me to the point where I'm I'm wacky again.

Step 4. Can you speak a little on that? I really want to be honest.

Who who wrote that probably wasn't here yesterday? I don't know.

Well,

follow the book.

I I've done different formats in the fourth step. I've used the 12 by 12. I've used the life story stuff. The book is what helped me the most.