The 12 step convention in Reykjavik, Iceland

We're pretty this weekend together. Thank you.

But enough about them back to me.

I know we're going to do a sobriety countdown later, but just it helps me just so for my own understanding, do we have anybody in the room that's in their first 30 or 60 or 90 days of sobriety? Anybody new in the 1st 3060 or 90, raise your hand. That's fantastic. You're very welcome.

And I know I speak on behalf of everyone that's here. If you're in your first 3060 or 90 days, I really want you to understand that we are delighted that you are here. We also know that if you're in your first 3060 or 90 days of sobriety, you may not be delighted,

and we understand that. We also understand that it's difficult to be new and Alcoholics Anonymous because we don't mean to insult you. We don't mean to offend you,

but we say things to you because it's been a while since we renewed. Sometimes we forget what it's like to be new and how sensitive and uncomfortable we can be. And we're so welcoming and smiling and hi, how are you? Do you want to kill us? I know and

and we and we say things like, oh, I know right where you've been and it's offensive. When I was new in a A and people would shake my hand. They go, I know right where you've been, kid. I said no, you don't.

But I'm here to tell you, if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, believe it or not, we know a great deal about you.

Now, you might think, well, how can that be? How could you know anything about you haven't even met me? Well, we do know a lot about you. For instance, we know last year wasn't a good year.

Nobody gets the Alcoholics Anonymous on a winning streak. Nobody.

Nobody has a wonderful life. Everything's great. The kids love you, the wife loves you. The jobs great. Your neighbors love you. You say, You know what? My life's perfect. Maybe I'll do something about that wine I'm drinking. It just doesn't happen.

No, we are driven to Alcoholics Anonymous under the lash of alcoholism and good old fashioned failure. You know, I just, I'm, I'm not a guy. I'm not a success. You know, I'm not, I'm not a success story in Alcoholics Anonymous. I, I don't think of myself that way. I think of myself

is an utter failure at the game of life who's been given a new purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, my sobriety date is September 16th, 1991. I'm over 24 years sober and I'm having the best life I've ever known, surrounded by the best people I've ever known. And I know if you're new, that delights you too. I know that this makes you so happy. We're so happy for you. Yes, that's great. Maybe you'll die on the way home. That would be terrific

because I was happy for the happy people when I got here. I got to tell you

and I I don't really have any explanation of why I'm an alcoholic. I mean, I just am. I'm an alcoholic because of the strange, bizarre effect alcohol has in my system. It only happens to about 10% of the population, but it happens to me. I am abnormal. We're drinking is concerned. And I didn't know that about myself for many years, why I was out there drinking. So I'm drinking uninformed. I'm drinking ignorant. I'm drinking and I'm having these problems and I'm thinking

it's a moral issue.

If I was only a better person, if I only tried harder, these things wouldn't happen to me. And I had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous to discover the fatal nature of my illness and find out what was really wrong with me. And I'm so grateful for rooms like this and people like you that were here in Alcoholics Anonymous waiting for me that had blazed the path. Because I don't think it's just an honor and privilege to be standing here tonight. I do. I'm just, I'm honored to be here in front of you. But I think it's an honor and a privilege just to be a member of alcoholic,

just to be able to go to meetings with people like you and enjoy the gift of sobriety one more day. And this is a gift that for a long time I didn't think I wanted. And then once I wanted it, I knew I'd never make it. Oh, I knew I never get sober. And Alcoholics Anonymous. Why? Why would I think that would happen For me, 'cause I had tried everything I could think of to put the drink down. And like most Alcoholics, I can put the drink down and I can even walk away from it. But there's something about living life on life's terms,

day and day out, trying to be good. At some point, it's just too much work, isn't it? It's just too much work. And I reach for that relief that never lets me down, and I tear my life apart again. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in a Hollywood, CA. He graduated from Hollywood High School, believe it or not. And there's really such a place as that,

and Hollywood's an interesting town. How's the best way I can describe Hollywood? You ever drive down the street

and you lookout your car window and you see something really weird and you think to yourself, wow, there's something you don't see every day. You don't say that in Hollywood because you see it every day, every day. And the neighborhood I grew up in was it was pimps, it was hustlers, it was prostitutes, it was St. gangs, it was Alcoholics, it was drug addicts. It was, it was, it was wonderful.

I mean, what a great playground for a budding alcoholic to grow up in.

You know, we saying Alcoholics Anonymous, we don't feel like we fit in. Move to Hollywood, they won't notice.

There's alcoholism in my home. My mother's an alcoholic. That's not why I'm an alcoholic. It's anonymous. I didn't make me an alcoholic. I might have some stuff I'm going to have to work through through the steps because of how I grew up.

You know, here's the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous and being sober for a while. Not only do we get the honor and privilege of living two entirely different lives, you know, lives that are so different

and don't resemble each other in any way. You could set them on other sides of the room. We've lived the life of the drunkard and now we get to live the life of the sober alcoholic and they don't resemble each other at all. And it's really we get to be two different people in our lifetime. But I'm telling you this also, through the steps, I actually get to have two different childhoods

now. I have the childhood that I dragged into Alcoholics Anonymous with me. And it's very tragic. It's very sad. And if I talk about that childhood, hopefully somebody in here, we're so sorry for me. And that was always my intention. And it was when I talked about my mom's alcoholism and my my father, who got up off the couch when I was two years old, said he was going out for a pack of smokes and we never saw him again. And it's that tough neighborhood I came from. And it's the physical abuse and it's all of those things

so quick to talk about. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and when I told you those stories of victimization and the abuse and all those things, I wasn't being in delusion. I wasn't in denial. But what it was is I've been telling that side of the story for so long and for so hard. It had become my truth. And my perception is my reality, and my reality is my truth. But it was an incomplete picture.

But a funny thing happens if you come to a A and you get a sponsor. Let me tell you something,

if you want to stay a victim and Alcoholics Anonymous, do not get a sponsor. They will screw up your victimization too quick

because what happened for me is I got a sponsor and he took me through this 12 steps of recovery and in particular the inventory process. And we got to the 4th and 5th step in the inventory process. And it was amazing to me the things I conveniently forgotten on my way to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I had a mom that raised three kids on their own. She never took a dime of welfare, any kind of assistance. She got up early and got us off to school. She took two buses to work and two buses home where she

picked us up from school, helped us with our homework, put food on that table. I have a mom that made great sacrifices for her children. I have a mom that stayed behind when the heat was so hard and life was so difficult and was a mother to my myself and my two sisters when my father ran away and never sent a dime. And yet that woman, the Saint of a woman that gave up so much of her life for her children. By the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was filled with spite and rage

and venom for that woman, and I blamed her for so much. And why do you think that is? Why is it so important that the alcoholic, if he's going to keep drinking, has to play the role of the victim? It's so simple. You see, if it's my fault, I might have to do something about it. I need that justification and that rationalization. I need those stories that I can tell myself in my head that justify and rationalize my next dream. Because the perfect thing about being an alcoholic

and a victim, every drink I take, I take with impunity.

It's really not my fault

if you would come from where I came from and saw the things that I saw came from the family I came from. You drink too. So why don't you back up and take, get off of my back and take a look at yourself? Why don't you walk a mile in my shoes before you judge me? And that kind of belligerent denial, that alcoholic bluster, kept me sick and stuck in a bottle.

And I'm so grateful for the steps in the inventory process in particular that probably corrected the only mistake God ever made. In my case, God made my eyes looking outward instead of inward. All my life, from the time I was a little kid, with no effort on my part, I could look out at the world and the people in it and tell you instantly what you're doing wrong. And not only that, I can tell you what you should be doing instead,

and I love to share that because I'm a giver.

But where my life is concerned, where the quality of my life is based on the quality of my actions, I'm a blind man in the wilderness, absolutely no ability to look at myself.

I got drunk for the first time when I was 17 years old.

It's not my first drink. I'm not really interested in my first drink. I mean, it's cute information if you can remember it, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about getting drunk. I'm talking about when you get enough alcohol on board in one setting to get there. Because alcohol, as much as anything, it transports me. It takes me to the land of I don't care. And I love that feeling. And the first time that I got drunk, 17 years old, I'm with the high school basketball team that I played for. And these guys are my friends. They're

and we're driving up the hill up to a place called the Hollywood Reservoir, which is kind of a concrete pond that overlooks the city. And what we were drinking that night was something called Old English 800. And that's a fine malt beverage if there ever was one. I'll tell you. And, and I'm not drinking to get drunk that night. I'm drinking to fit in. I'm drinking to fit in with my buddies. And somewhere in that second tall can of malt liquor, I had a feeling come over me to fill me from my toes to my head.

And in that moment, from the inside out, everything in my life changed. Yet nothing changed. I'm standing there with the guys that are my friends they play basketball with. I like these guys. And I look at these guys and suddenly I realize I love these guys. And I get all emotional about it and I start talking about it. You guys I love. You were the best. We're going to be together forever, man. I mean it.

And I'm listening to the Rock'n'roll come out of that cheap stereo and that rickety car we drove up there that night. And I'm going, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Listen to that. And I'm looking at the sun getting low and shimmering on this concrete pond, the reservoir down there. And it was, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. And then I had something that happened to me that happens every time I drink. I start to think and what I thought was I got to get down to that water. It's just so beautiful. I got to get down that water. And we're on the top on this road and down to the water is about a 45°

and it's nothing but chaparral and scrub oaks and things like that. And I don't realize that I'm drunk. So I start walking down this hill and then I'm walking kind of fast and then I'm kind of jogging and then my feet are like, wouldn't be a little behind my ears. And then I fell, bam. And it was like sky, earth, sky, earth, sky, earth.

And I slam into this oak tree, bam, and I'm all shook up. And I stand up and I know I'm going to be hurt. I know I'm going to be hurt. You know, I'm an athlete. You can figure that out quick

and I check myself out. There's no pain. My first drunk and I'm already acquiring valuable information that's going to serve me for the rest of my drinking career. If you drink enough alcohol, there's no pain. You know, I know there's guys in here that go to the gym and you work out and you have that expression, no pain, no gain. You know, I, I have my own expression. No pain,

no pain.

And I do the things you do when you're 17 years old. You drink too much malt liquor in front of your buddies. I got violently ill. I fell down the hill. My friends made fun of me. They dumped me at my mother's door. My mother yelled at me. I woke up the next day with my first hangover. None of it bothered me. None of it. I remembered something. I remembered the moment on the hill when I was standing there with my buddies. And I had that feeling that filled me up from the inside out. And for the first time in my life,

probably, I was where I was doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with. And I didn't want to be anywhere else. I didn't want to be anybody else. And I didn't need anything else. I was perfect. I was OK. I've been transported to the land of I don't care. The rough edges got smooth and I got to step out easy and life became perfect. And I fell in love with my first drunk with the effect produced by alcohol. And what's the effect?

What's the effect produced by alcohol? We talked about that in the doctors opinion.

If you talk to a social drinker you will get a very different answer about the effect produced by alcohol than you will from an alcoholic. I've done it. I have friends that social.

I asked them what's the effect? They say, well, you know, sometimes at work you have a tough day, arts of celebration, and you decide to go out and have a cocktail. And you drink the cocktail

and it produces a feeling of relaxation. And maybe you're in the bar, the music playing, You know, when you hear that beat, maybe, you know, you start to move your feet and tap along with it and you're feeling pretty good. So you order a second drink. And somewhere in the middle of that second drink, I start to feel it, so I stop.

No, you don't.

And I don't understand.

Understand. That's a normal reaction to putting poison in your body. I don't understand that for normal people, when they start to build alcohol, they don't like the effect produced by alcohol. They get signals from their body that say stop this. Stop putting this in me. I don't like the way this is making me feel. It's making me feel out of control. It's making me feel uneasy. It's making me feel like I'm talking too loud. Alcoholics have a different message. We only have one message really. More, More, more, more, more right now. More and more and more. Let's go. When we drink, what's it like? Every night is New Year's Eve

and every morning is Christmas morning. We're just happy. I get excited when I dream. From the first time I drank the last, there's an excitement about it. I mean, I don't know about you, but I take a drink and all I want to do is have a drink. I just want to have a drink and relax. But I take a drink and the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes me and I want to go places,

I want to do things, I want to hit the nightlife, I want to make some new friends.

And I love the effect produced by alcohol and the effect for me, and a word is relief. I drink for the relief, for the ease and comfort that comes almost immediately. We're taking a couple of drinks and I love the effect produced by alcohol, but I don't know what I suffer from. I don't know anything about alcoholism. I don't know. When I got drunk for the first time, I lit a fuse to a keg of dynamite.

I thought I had a choice. I thought I was doing what I wanted to do. I didn't understand. I think that the progressive alcoholism is a progressive disease and I think like any disease, the progression is different in different people. I think we see people that come in Alcoholics Anonymous, 151617 years old with a progression was incredibly fast in their case. And there is alcoholic and chronic alcoholic as people have been drinking for 20 years. Other people seem to be able to drink and control it and moderate

for 2025 years till it turns on them. The progression is different in different individuals, but once we become an alcoholic we all have that one thing in common. I can't safely put any alcohol in my system without having that allergic reaction. I have an unnatural reaction to alcohol. The unnatural reaction is why other people might have a drink, maybe a drink and a half. They start to feel they want to stop. Once I put alcohol in my system, I can't stop drinking.

It produces something we call the phenomenon of craving.

Sets me apart as a completely different entity from the rest of society. Only about 10% of it has have it, but we don't know we have it because we only live in our own skin. I mean, I couldn't understand people that didn't drink the way I drank. I mean, we go out to the bar after work and you know what it's like. You start drinking about 5530 and about 1010 thirty, it's starting to get good, you know what I mean? It's starting to get really good. That waitress, she's not really that good looking. She's starting to have potential, you know what I mean?

Yeah,

you just get warmed up and you're thinking, what are we doing? Where are we going next? You know, and there's one of those social drinkers with you. You know, when they stand up, these social drinkers, they stand up and they they look at their watch and they go, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize it was getting so late. I think I should go home. And they leave. It's crazy. Alcoholics don't go home. Alcoholics are always willing to room tomorrow for the promise of a couple of more hours of fun tonight. That is the way that we,

my wife Eileen, who's an alcoholic. I mean, this is the best description I can tell you that between social drinkers and Alcoholics. When my wife and I got engaged, my sister Patricia threw us a big engagement party. And there were all kinds of people over there. So we're at this party, there's some social drinker going on, and we're in the kitchen and we're talking to my we're talking to my sister Eileen and I. And my sister has a glass of white wine. And at one point she sees someone in the living room she wants to go talk to. So she takes her wine and she puts it down on the table and she just walks away.

My wife, Eileen, I thought, she's going to lose her mind. She's looking at the wine. She's looking at my sister. Get further away. She's looking at the wine, looking at my sister getting further away. She's getting all answers. She goes. Pat left her wine. I go, Yes, she did. Well, should I go get her?

And I said, baby, she's not like her. She's not suffering separation anxiety right now.

Alcoholics aren't like that. We'll lose our car keys. We'll lose our clothes. We won't lose our drink

ever.

When I got silver and Alcoholics Anonymous, there was a lot of talk in the room. People would say I was born an alcoholic and other people say I was a progressive disease. I progressed into an alcohol. I don't get into that debate. I don't know if I was born alcoholic. I don't. I don't know when the progression took out. It seemed to be very quick in my case. I don't know if I was born out, but I know this. I was born weird, you know what I mean? We always feel just a little bit off, half a bubble off plum. There's just, you can't put your finger on it, you know? And people, people know it too.

People know it. People meet you and they meet your family. Go Something wrong with that boy, You know they know

because I'm kind of, I got a nervous disposition. I'm kind of clicky, you know what I mean?

And I got the ISM and I haven't even drank yet. I'm a little kid. I got the ISM, you know what I mean? I'm selfish, I'm self-centered. I'm not much, but I'm all I think about, you know what I mean?

I'm the Willie Nelson alcoholic version of that song. I was always on my mind, you know,

I was always on my mind.

I'm the kind of self-centered alcoholic. I would trap you in a corner and talk endlessly about myself for 1/2 an hour straight, realize I was doing that and go wait a minute. That's enough about me. What do you think of me?

This self obsession, this over concern with myself, this undying love affair I have with my own thinking.

These are not things produced by drinking alcohol. These are things that magically reduce or even disappear with a couple of drinks.

Doctor Silforth and the doctor's opinion talks about a guy like me, and he says men and women drink essentially for the effect produced by alcohol. That effect for me is relief. It's relief from what swirls around in my head in a sober state. The problem is I will quit drinking because my drinking is problematic. I will go to jail. I will lose jobs. I will break hearts and break promises and I don't want to live that way.

I wasn't raised that way.

And I'll feel shame and embarrassment for the way that I'm conducting myself as a man and I'll gather my resources and my strength and I will say that's enough of that and I will quit drinking. I will make a decision to quit drinking. And it's my idea and I love that decision. When I make it, everyone around me is excited and delighted. My family members, my girlfriend, my employer, everybody so happy I made that decision to quit drinking. And I am delighted too.

For 2 1/2 days, for four days, for five days. And at some point in my mind, I think, you know, I made too much of this quitting drinking thing. That's ridiculous.

And what so forth says in the doctor's opinion describes me the T. It tells me that when a guy like myself quits drinking in very short order, I find myself irritable, restless and discontent. Which by the way, in my opinion is the biggest understatement in the Big Book

because irritable, restless and discontent, it don't sound half bad. It kind of sounds clinical. Clinical, doesn't it? I mean, Can you imagine if I showed up in a meeting and saw my buddy Brendan there and Brendan said, Donnie, how you doing? I said, well,

this particular evening, Brendan, I do find myself a little irritable, restless and discontent,

if you must know.

But it doesn't feel like that in here, does it? Irritable. I want to hurt you. Restless. I think I'll go over here and Nope, that's not it. I'll go over here. Hope I don't like those people. God, maybe I'll get some ice cream. God, I'm getting fat. You know, just

wherever I am, it's not the right place. I'm like a dog circling his tail, looking for the right place to lay down. Just circling. No, no, no. I'm restless and discontent.

Discontent. Misunderstood. See, when we talk about discontentment and Alcoholics Anonymous, we think that's the same as unhappy. It's not. It's very different. See, happy or unhappy come and go. Happy or unhappy seem to be influenced by things outside of us, the weather, how they're treating us at work. Is the money good? Is the money bad? What's going on?

What's going on with the gut, things outside of us? Happy comes and goes. I can live with happy coming and going,

but content or discontent are very, very different and very, very powerful. The best way I can describe discontent in the doctor's opinion is this. When I'm sober and I am in a discontent state, I have an utter and complete inability to experience joy. You see, Alcoholics like it when things are wrong.

Gives us a chance to be spiritual. You know what I mean?

It's like he got cancer. I got cancer. With God's help, I'll be all right. You know, your wife leaves you well, you know, she was a good woman. But you know a guy. It must be God's will. God will send me something else, you know? Gives us a chance to be spiritual. You know what we don't like? When there's nothing wrong yet it feels like something's wrong. Like that itch you can't scratch

and you run that mental list in your head and you go, no, no, that's fine. Works good. Got money. I don't know. I just want to. I don't know what it is. There's nothing wrong. And show up at meetings. How's it going, Don? Good, Good, good. Everything is great. Any better? I go on a shooting spree. Yeah. I just look terrific, you know,

and we're discontent

and we talk about this irritable, restless and disconnect nature, which is untreated alcoholism in a sober state and so forth. Goes on to say

I'm irritable, restless and discontent unless I can once again experience the ease and comfort that comes almost immediately with taking a couple of drinks, Drinks I see others taking with impunity. Those are the normal people drinking that are pissing you off when you're sober.

It tells me that I was to come to this urge to drink one more time and I'll go into a spree and I'll tear my life apart. And at the end of that spree I'll emerge from it remorseful, with a firm resolve not to drink again and so forth. And doctors opinion promised me this will be repeated over and over and over again.

And unless this alcohol can experience an entire psychic change,

there's very little hope of my recovery. And what all that means is for a guy like me, it's not am I going to drink again? It's when am I going to drink again. I passed into a region where there's no return to human aid. My dilemma is lack of power, only I don't know it so I'm bringing a gun to a knife fight. I can't figure out why I can't stay away from the first drink, even though it's tearing my life apart and I don't understand that.

Silver tells me that I'll get to a point of my alcoholic life that all admit that alcohol is injurious to me,

admit that it's hurting me. I'll admit that it's tearing my life apart. But, he writes, the sensation for Alcoholics like me is so elusive.

So elusive that I can't differentiate the true from the false. My alcoholic life seems to be the only normal one. And what does it mean when it says that sensation is so elusive? For me, it means this. I can't make enough money, have enough sex, go up the ladder in business enough. I can't put enough things in the hole that's blowing through my gut. Nothing gets it for a guy like Don. Like a couple of drinks

and that's all I want when I drink again. I never drink after a brief period of of recovery

to crash the car, lose the job, go to jail. I'm drinking to overcome a mental obsession beyond my own control. But the problem is I don't understand alcoholism. So I don't understand that once I put that in me once too many and 1000 is not enough.

And I live with this discontent nature where I have an utter inability to experience joy in a sober state. The thing I found in Alcoholics Anonymous is discontentment cannot be comforted or corrected

by things outside of ourselves, by outside stimuli, but true contentment, which is the product of working the steps and having a relationship with God. When you are truly content in your sobriety, it cannot be affected by outside stimuli. It doesn't matter what they're doing, it doesn't matter how the money is, it doesn't matter how the health is. You're going to be content regardless of what the outside stimuli is.

It's the most important thing that we can have, I think in Alcoholics Anonymous is not just to be physically sober,

to be sober and to be content. What a gift it is to be able to step out easy, to enjoy your life and not be a slave to alcohol anymore.

By the time I was 25 years old, the light went on.

It seemed. For years people have been talking to me about my drinking and I've had them in my life. I'm sure you've all had them in your life, the well meaning people.

And you know who the well meaning people are? You know, they're doctors or lawyers or district attorneys. They're doctors that are stitching you up and you don't feel the needle. And they think that's weird. And they all said the same thing to me and they started this brainwashing campaign without my permission. And I don't blame these people. They didn't know any more about alcoholism than I did. And all these people that cared about me, loved about me. They're almost saying the same thing and they're brainwashing me. They're saying things like it seems like a great guy.

It seems to me I have a lot of

potential. You could probably be anything you wanted to be, go anywhere you wanted to go, do anything you wanted to do. If you just quit drinking, if you just quit drinking, you'd be so happy. If you just quit drinking, everything would work out. If you just quit drinking, all your dreams would come true. And I hear that stuff and I think about it, and I look at my life and I go, well, yeah, I went to jail. I was drinking, lost a job. I was drinking, blew up the relationship. I was drinking. Yeah, it's the booze. And I suffer from the delusion that if I just

drinking, everything in my life will be fine. So I make another vain attempt to just quit drinking. And you know what? Everything in my life ain't fine. And I can't stand the way I feel when I'm silver. And by the time I was 25 years old and that light went on and I had what our big book describes is self knowledge. Which not the courts telling me. It's not mom telling me, it's not my girlfriend telling me. It's not my employer telling me I got a problem. It's me.

And self knowledge, by the way, isn't delivered by those people. Self knowledge was delivered to me in a dirty motel room

about two in the morning. And there's all this screaming in the room.

And then I realize it's dead quiet in that room. And all the noise was in my head, in my voice. And the voice kept saying if you don't quit drinking, you're going to die. And I got it. And I decided that I was going to quit drinking

and I made the alcoholic declaration. I told everybody I couldn't think of that. I'm quitting drinking. Don't try to tempt me. I

called up my pharmaceutical representative of record and told him not to sell me anything because they're a very reputable type of person and be asking not to sell you nothing. They won't, you know, so

and I actually quit drinking. I didn't come to a a I didn't get a sponsor. I didn't work your 12 steps and I quit drinking without you. Thank you very much

for two weeks.

And The funny thing about this two weeks, you know, we talk about alcoholism is the family disease. And I really believe that, you know, that's when the tentacles that are alcoholism really start to stretch out and start to affect the family, You know what I mean? Because before that, the families having those backroom meetings about me, you know, and they're talking about me. They're saying, what are we going to do about Donald? What are we going to do about his drinking? And he said, what can we do? He doesn't get it. He says he's having a good time. He says it's no big deal.

You know, he's saying things like, well, everybody goes to jail once in a while. You know, I just.

He doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. And then what do I do? I make the declaration I'm quitting drinking. You know, my family's having those meetings again. They're saying, did you hear? Did you hear the good news? He quit drinking? No, no, it's his idea. No, he didn't go to jail or nothing. He just quit. Yeah, it's been like a week. No, he says he's happy

and I give my family the worst thing, a drink and drunk and give their family those brief moments of recovery. I give my family hope because when I tell him I'm quitting and I'm not going to do it again, I'm not lying. I mean it,

I mean it, the mirror of my bones. I mean it to the bottom of my soul when I tell you I'm quitting drinking, I mean it. I don't want to live this way anymore. I don't want to hurt you anymore. I mean it. I'm not lying. But here's the problem. There's no room for the truth where the game of alcoholism is played out. So there's no room for that truth. And I say those things and I meet him, and then my family sees me all lit up a couple of weeks later and they think to themselves, Oh my God, he's drinking again. What happened? And I have to justify and rationalize why I'm back on the sauce, why I'm drinking again.

And I pulled a big geographic, you know, I, I figured out that Los Angeles was my problem. So I moved to Boston, MA and found out much to my surprise they drink in Boston.

I think they drink more and,

and I stayed in Boston for about 3 years until I wore out my welcome and, and I came back to Los Angeles and I got the best job I've ever had in my life right after I got to LA. I don't mean the best job drinking, I mean the best job to date I've ever had in my life I got when I came back to LA. Alcoholics are amazing people. We are like a cat flung outside a second story window. We land on our feet, boom in a three piece suit at a job interview, you know,

and we get the job.

We can get jobs, we can get girls, we can get money. We just can't keep any of it. You know,

I

and I did a great job at that company. And then the owner, you know, he made that fatal mistake. He came up to me one day after I worked there for about 6 months. He put his arm around me and he said, Don, I want you to know you've done a great job here. And I don't know about you, but I have an alcoholic translator in my head. And when he told me I did a great job, this is what I heard. Don, I want you to know you've done a great job. You should probably slack off a little bit. And you know, I start, I start getting drunk before I go to work. I start showing up hungover. I start missing time. I start doing the old behavior, you know,

and, and I get fired for my drinking and, and I play the recovery card and my sister in Simi Valley, CA, I call her up and I go, Pat, they fired me after all I did for him and, and I need a place to get on my feet. Can I come stay at your house? And my sister said, listen, Don, you come stay at my house. But if you drink, you're out of my house 'cause everybody knows I'm a drunk. And I told my beautiful sister Patricia, I won't drink, I promise. And I drink every day in that house for like seven months. And if you don't know how you do that when

watching you, maybe you're not a sneaky rat like I am.

I got no problem drinking around your schedule. I'm unemployed. What time do you go to work in the morning? 7:00 AM bars open. And at this point in my drinking, I'm not drinking the kid myself. I'm better looking than I am. I'm not drinking so I can feel closer to my friends. I'm doing oblivion drinking. I'm doing light switch drinking. I'm getting the whiskey on board hard enough and fast enough to shut off my head so I can go into a blackout

so I can pass out in this room. I'm mooching off of my family so I can come to the hideous 4 horsemen. Terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair. They sat on the end of the bed and they waited for me to come too. And then they asked me questions and made statements and my voice in my head like, who are you going to rip off the date on? Who are you going to hurt the day, Don? Who are you going to take advantage of the date on? And I don't know what you do with a head like that when you're hungover in the morning. But I just took another pull off the bottle and I swear I thought it was going to go down that way and it was going to end that way because

I had surrendered.

And it's not the kind of surrender we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had surrender to the fact that I was a drunk and I was going to die drunk and I was too much of A coward to kill myself. But I couldn't go on any longer. I was so tired of fighting the drink,

so I stopped working. I stopped driving, I stopped dating. I just lived to stay in that bottle and get one more day. I know everything there is to know about living one day at a time. I know everything there is to know about singleness of purpose. I lived in as a drunk where my only job that day was to get drunk and do whatever it took to get drunk.

Few days before I got sober I got an unemployment check from the state of California and I went up to my brother-in-law Larry. And I said, Larry, I got my unemployment check, can I borrow your car? And Larry asked me a funny question. He said. Don, will you be coming back this time?

Who's a fair question?

I borrowed his car a few times that summer and gone out a little Alcoholic vacations. We know what those are. And the 12 and 12 tells me my outstanding characteristic is defiance. And when Larry said that, I got right in his face. And I said, Larry, how dare you? You know the last time this happened. I apologize to you.

I opened my heart to you, Larry. I don't really need this crap. And Larry untreated Al Anon that he was, felt terrible. He took the keys out and they snatched the keys from this man who I'm mooching a room off, left his house to get in his car. And I remember thinking there better be gas in it. You know, just

the delusions of entitlement that this alcoholic suffers from don't have any boundaries. And and I go down the liquor store to cash my unemployment check because that's where drunks like me cash or unemployment checks. And why I'm in line I have with the book refers to is the thought that precedes the first drink. And in my head it's always like this. I'll just get 1/2 pint, what's 1/2 pint? And I got the half pint and I drank it in the car and I decided to get another one and I drank that. And I thought, you know, I go see those friends in the valley and be back in 45 minutes. They'll never miss me. And I'm