The Paramount speakers group in Paramount, CA

My name is Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic.

Thank you for asking me to share. It's good to be at this group. It's a pleasure to open for my good friend Billy S from Las Vegas. You're going to hear a good talk tonight, good Alcoholics Anonymous talk thinking the announcement about

silencing your electronic devices. Most groups say beepers or cell phones. You guys, there must be people here with electronic devices other than that, and I can't imagine what they would be. But if we see if I hear some humming going on in the meeting and and one of the gals gets a glazed look at her eye, I'll just

what my imagination wander.

I I'd like to welcome the people that are reasonably new. I'm real glad you're here. You are very, very, very unfortunate indeed because you have walked into a real meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's a meeting put on by people who suffer from the disease of alcoholism.

And I've been to meetings with people who don't suffer from alcoholism. Their alcoholism ends where the bottle ends

and they stopped drinking on the Just Say No programmer recovery.

And I I die around people like that because I want to just say no so bad. I know I understand. I should just say no,

but eventually, in the face of overwhelming information and determination not to pick up a drink, I always go back to it. And you do that for a few years and you start hating yourself for being that way, especially when you end up in rooms full of people that's just so easily say no. And I started knowing and suspecting there was something wrong with me that wasn't wrong with you until I got around some of you

and I realized that I wasn't anything wrong with me. I had the disease of alcoholism.

I didn't have an alcohol problem. If I had an alcohol problem, the problem would have ended when I stopped drinking.

But I got something more insidious than that. I have a disease. It's twofold.

The big book says that if you find when you honestly want to, you can't quit entirely. Which means that I am powerless over alcohol even when I've been separated from it, even when I'm put into a state of abstinence and have everything to live for by staying sober and everything to lose by drinking again. I will eventually go back to it. And then once I go back to it, I got the second part. It says. Or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take. If those two

present, you're probably alcoholic. And if you have that, you're suffering from a terminal illness. And I'm not saying that to be dramatic. It's just the truth. Guys like me are drawn back to drinking when we don't want to drink. And when I pick up the drink, I have this phenomenon of craving and I can't stop. And I, I am. I cannot shut it down without until it gets so past the point where I'm destroying myself.

And that has been true ever since the time I was 12 years old and picked up my first drink.

I was never able to shut it down when you're supposed to. I was never able to shut it down when it started hurting me. I was never able to shut it down at all. It always had to be taken to the wall. And the only way I would quit is I'd get beaten up, arrested, run out of money, or stuck into a detox. I have an inability when drinking, no matter how much I see that I should stop to stop. I can intend to stop.

I've said to myself, you know, this is tomorrow, I'm going to sober up and then tomorrow would come and this is not a good day for it. It's a it's I should,

but tomorrow is a better day and it's always that way. I had to be stopped and then once I was stopped,

I kept coming back to it.

And if you're like that, you are in the right place.

There are people in this room that know about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, that know about sponsorship, that know about commitments, that will teach you to make something that will save your life important enough to you that you'll be able to access it. And, and that's a good thing for a guy that's dying.

And I would have died of the disease of alcoholism if it wouldn't have been for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I would have died very slowly and I probably would have eventually died in my own hand because I couldn't stand what was happening to me anymore.

There's I heard a friend of mine years ago say there's three phases of alcoholism. There's the fun phase. We all understand that.

Yeah, well, I understand the fun face.

And then there's the flooding problems per phase.

Well, officer, I didn't really mean to. I'm just, but,

and then there's the problem of phase that where you start thinking about you can't shut it down and you can't stop the problems and you can't recapture the fun and you can't jump start the party. And that's when guys like me start thinking about killing themselves. Because I can't imagine life with it anymore. Because I've rung all the fun out of it and it's killing me.

Can't imagine life without it because abstinence feels like I'm doing time,

and that's a hard place to be. If you're here, and not delusionally, but really, really, drinking is still fun for you. I'm going to tell you something you won't hear probably anywhere else in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would suggest you drink.

I would recommend it

because there may come a time when it's not fun anymore and then you can't stop either. And we're here for that. But I would hate to see. I would hate to see somebody get sober and find out they had two good years left. Wouldn't that be on? I mean, really, wouldn't that just be? I mean, that would be really awful. Just think, Oh my God, I had two Goodyear. I came to Hey, premature.

Now, some of us think we come here premature, but we really don't.

I don't think very there's that. That probably doesn't apply to too many people. I think most of us get here about three years too late.

We've been kicking that dead horse for a long time, hoping it would get up and run.

If you're new here and you you can't imagine life with it anymore and you can't imagine life without it, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I drank and I'm going to say this and I'm going to quit. I drank because I didn't understand this, but alcohol and combinations of alcohol and drugs was a treatment for an inside illness of my spirit.

I'm the guy that when I'm not high, I don't. I don't feel too good. I don't fit very well. I feel lost and disconnected from life, and I live in a world where everybody else seems to be connected to each other and everybody seems to fit. And then there's me.

And in the early days of my drinking, when I had about five shots of whiskey and a couple beers, I could come out and play. I could talk to people. I could listen to you and care about what's going on inside of you.

When sober I had that just get away from me attitude. Sober I just leave me alone. And sober I wanted to fit but I can't. And drunk I fit. But as the disease progressed, my ability to vitalize and awaken my spirit through alcohol got diminished. And at the very end, I'm drinking as desperately, frantically

trying to wake me up.

I don't know if you've ever had the experience of sitting in a bar throwing down double, double shots, waiting for it to happen. And it don't happen no more.

And all you get is oblivion. And oblivion when you hate yourself is probably the best thing you'll get. But there you are. You come to in the presence of the person you hate the most. You

and

I, that's why I'm so glad to have been to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and have come into this deal

and found a way out of that trap. And what I found in AA is I found a process and a set of actions that have have shifted me from being internally focused to be externally focused, to be wrapped up in here, to be in wrapped up with you, to be trusting in myself, to trusting in a power greater than myself. And what I really found in Alcoholics Anonymous is a way to vitalize my spirit.

On most mornings, I get up and I'm excited about the day.

I get up with an anticipation of the people I'm going to see that I care about and the places I'm going to go that are my places, where I have commitments,

that have a sense of home, where I get a feeling of usefulness.

And for a guy that never fit nowhere and never met, nothing to nobody to be useful is a good deal.

And I'll go home at night and I'll put my head in the pillow and my head will not spin from all the things that I have to protect myself from because of the crap I did that day.

And that is a type of freedom that I never knew until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And if you're new, I'll welcome you. AA has good news and bad news.

The good news that this is an effective treatment for the your big secret, the illness of your heart that you've run from all your life. The bad news? It doesn't work as fast as five shots of tequila. Thank you.