The Paramount speaker group in Paramount, CA

My name is Bob Daryl. I'm an alcoholic

and I'm sober today only through the grace a very of a very, very loving God who's crazy about me and has no taste at all.

Through good sponsorship, 12 traditions and 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and and an awful lot of new people

and an awful lot of newcomers. I'd like to welcome the people that are new. I'm real glad you're here. I'm real glad you're here

and I, I don't say that because I I'm glad that you feel you're here and you don't feel so hot. Things have been going pretty bad in your life and I'm not glad about that. But I'm glad that you're here because if you're here,

there's hope and maybe things can change and they as they changed for me. And if you can get

even a small portion out of Alcoholics Anonymous, of what I've gotten out of Alcoholics Anonymous, you probably will get the best deal you've ever gotten in your whole life. And I mean that

I'm not a spokesman for AAA. I'm not a recruiter for A Actually, I think we're overcrowded.

But if you suffer from alcoholism, like I suffered from alcoholism and at times still suffer from alcoholism, I want you to have the same way out that I had and, and still have.

I'm, I'm, I don't want to sound like a whiner. I'm a little tired tonight. I've been, I just did a long three day, 2, two day workshop up at the San Fernando Valley Conference. And then I did this traditions thing and I tell you, I'm about sick of my own voice. Really.

I really like being here. I love this group. See, I just came from Mike in a couple of disrupt. I came from a it's like a one of those hotsy totsy conventions. Don't get don't be fooled by the fact I got a coat and tie on. I'm I came off the streets and I the the Bel Air Malibu set is not really my type of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is more, this is more the grassroots A, a that I'm used to and

I'm real glad to be here. I love the enthusiasm in this group.

You guys are in on fire with Alcoholics Anonymous and and that's

that's just a wonderful thing. It's just a wonderful thing.

I gravitate to people who are on fire with recovery. So just since I've been here, I've had just a bunch of conversations with a bunch of people that are just on fire with AA. They're just in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you suffered from alcoholism, like I suffered from alcoholism and you were given the life that I was given, how could you not fall in love with a thing called Alcoholics Anonymous? How could you not?

It's more than I deserve. I think I was born with a disease called alcoholism. It's a spiritual malady. And if you're new or you're not so new and that kind of makes you uncomfortable as spiritual malady, I got to tell you it made me uncomfortable too. But there's a line in our book and we agnostics that says, do not let these terms deter you from asking yourself, what do they mean to you? And one of the things that has always been true in my whole life is that there's,

prior to my first finding alcohol when I was 12 years old, it seemed like there was something sick with my spirit.

There seemed like there was something with me or about me that wasn't quite right

and it wasn't anything that you could find. You could put me on an MRI and you wouldn't find it,

but it was something and I lived with it and I felt it. It was like a vague separation between me and the rest of the world.

It was almost like an invisible, impenetrable barrier between me and other people that I could not seem to connect with you the way I lived, observing you connect with each other.

And the book says that Alcoholics know a loneliness such as few do. And I, I was lonely as a kid.

And you know, the funny part about that is I had a lot of friends

and the loneliness that Alcoholics experience, Alcoholics and my type is the kind of loneliness where you feel lonely and you're surrounded by people that love you and care about you and you have lots of friends and you still feel alone. You feel separate and apart from I, I think I've come to believe that I had this disease of alcoholism way, way beyond before I ever took a drink. I think I probably was born with it And I I was like a freeze dried alcohol, like waiting for alcohol.

And there was always something weird about me. I I and I didn't come and odd and I by rights shouldn't have. I shouldn't, I shouldn't be an alcoholic.

I didn't come from an alcoholic home. My parents were not Alcoholics. My parents were as far as I can as I can figure, about as normal as you can get my, you know, in the whole history of my family is far back as we can trace. I was the first person to ever get arrested, the first person to ever get divorced, the first person ever in any kind of institution for drug addiction or alcoholism, the first person

that was ever an embarrassment to my family. I was like the squirrel in my family tree.

And so I didn't grow up in in what the become popular the last dozen or so years of dysfunctional family. My family is very functional. They were very successful. They were very loving. There was I was never abused as a child. I, I was, I was loved and taken care of care of, and my parents adored me. They thought that I was wonderful. They always told me great positive things about me. They they tried to instill in me a belief there was nothing I couldn't do if I just put my mind to it.

They gave me opportunities for education, great things. There was a lot of love in my family,

but there was something about me where I couldn't really feel it. My sister could feel it.

She doesn't have alcoholism, but the big book Alcoholics Anonymous says that guys like me. At the root of my disease is a thing called selfishness and self centeredness

is that I am overly self involved

and because I'm that way is a little kid. I look back over my life, no matter how old I was, no matter what age I look at, and the only thing I can remember about my childhood is me.

I remember all about me. I remember what happened to me. I remember what they did to me. I remember when I didn't get the pony, and I remember on and on all about me. I can't tell you what my mother and father struggled with, or what they were afraid of, or what difficulties they had, or what was a big deal to them. I can't tell you about my sister

and any of her stuff at all, but I can tell you about me. If I know anything about them, it's only because it had to do with me.

I was wrapped up in myself even as a little kid and I and no wonder I didn't feel like I fit out here because you're the truth was I wasn't out here. I was up in here. I lived most of my life prior to alcohol, a prisoner in this Control Center in my head where I tried to run the universe. It's kind of like the bridge of the Enterprise, you know, And there's there's guys running around. There's a guy up there like Spock. That's very logical, you know, And it was Bob. We will do this and then we'll do that.

There's another guy like, but that's that's like McCoy. And there's another guy like Bones. And in later years, there's a new character was introduced in this set was a guy that just would run around no matter what was going on. There could be a war with the Klingons. It could be the breakdown of dilithium crystals. It could be Spock could be going crazy in his Vulcan wacko stuff. And this one guy would just say, well, that's all great, but let's drink.

He had one solution. Every problem that came up. Well, that's all fine. We won the battle. Oh, yay, let's drink. I mean, it's just just, it's one voice. And that character was introduced into my committee because when I was 12 years old and I took my first drink, it made me feel so good that the way I felt from that moment on was really never enough. Again, really, not really.

It gave me something that I always hungered for. And I'm the alcoholic that Silk Worth talks about in the book Ioffer my very first drink, I had that phenomenon of cravings. I I,

I was always that way. I, I have never had a social drink in my life.

I don't know. I don't, I don't even know what it would be like to have a social drink. I I know what it's like to feel social,

but I don't know what it's like to have a social drink.

Every drink of alcohol I've ever had, his brought me closer to completeness, but not quite enough.

I've never had enough alcohol in my life. I've never once said to myself, this is just right, I don't want anymore. I've never been there. I it's just not me. I'm the guy with the physical allergy of to alcohol. It expresses itself in a phenomenon of craving. I start drinking and it's just something inside of me that really never gets enough, just wants more and more and more and more.

And I, I started out when I was 12 years old and I,

it was really a lot of fun for I had about, you know, my first drunk. I had a really good

30 or 40 minutes. I mean, it was really, I mean, maybe maybe 45 minutes was really good. Then it kind of turned on me. But it was there was enough fun in that that I had 40 minutes. I mean, I'm talking about glorious 40 minutes. If you've gone through life like I have and up until that point and never really feel complete, never really feel like you're a part of, never can really talk to other people comfortably, and all of a sudden you find something that brings you not complete to completeness, but

close. Just so close.

I lived for it. It became the most important thing in my life and I got in trouble the first time I ever drank. I went into, I had a blackout. I was carried home by the guys that I was with. I was dumped in the front yard of my parents home in the middle of the afternoon. I found out later I laid there screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs. I try and guess trying to endear myself to the neighbors. I don't know.

I I came to and my parents are trying to clean me up and they're waiting to tell me

what I did is people waited all my life to always tell me what I did. It's a tough, I never knew I was going to sign up for a life where other people would know more about me than I did.

And you would think that I would would have walked through what I said, man, this is this is terrible. This is a lot of pain and a lot of problems and a lot of hardship for 30 or 40 minutes of feeling good. But when it's the only 30 or 40 minutes you've ever only ever known,

I couldn't wait to get drunk again. And when you're a kid

and you're 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 years old, you can't drink every day. It's just impossible. So I I was a periodic by age till I got older and I was able to drink every chance I could get. But I drank every chance I could get back then.

And alcoholism for my alcoholism, it was a progressive disease. As the years went on, my ability to

to get a sense of ease and comfort out of drinking seemed to diminish. The fun got less and less. My ability to obtain that type of effect was got less and less as the years went on. And and as that happened and the fund got less, the problems got greater and

I started, I was always in trouble. I, I just, I, I was always and I was always the guy that got caught. You know, I don't know, I don't know what it was about me. I just always getting caught and I,

and I seemed, you know, and I started feeling like a victim, you know, I just like life was out to get me.

When I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a young kid. It was in 1971. I wasn't quite old enough to even take a legal drink yet. And I'm just a kid. I'd, I'd started hitting institutions as a teenager for alcoholism and drug addiction. And I'm going to, I'll briefly mention that I did a stint with drugs and I was a drug addict for a while and I went through all that stuff, not because I'm not an alcoholic.

If you had alcoholism and you grew up on the streets that I grew up in and the time that I grew up

and you ran with the kind of people I ran with, drugs was just part of the deal. You know, it was just part of the deal

and I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1971. I was in an institution for heroin addiction

and I'm a young kid and this counselor who worked there sent me to this a a meeting.

And I don't want to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. No, man, I don't even drink really that much. I mean,

you know, the funny alcoholism when you, a lot of people come into a A and they do a lot of drugs and they drink a lot of it and it's hard to see what's what. It's real confusing. It's like if you go out some nights, if you go out some days in this, when the moon is in the sky in the daytime, the moon and the sun are in the sky at the daytime. You can't the moon, the sun is so bright, you can't see the moon.

I don't mean it's not there. And at that point in my alcoholism, my my drug use was brighter than the alcohol, so I couldn't see it. But the guy who worked there that was a counselor had seen me drink one time and he saw something in me that I could not see. He saw the phenomenon of craving in the physical allergy. He saw that once I started to drink,

I couldn't get enough.

And he saw that thing in me and he sent me to this alcoholic synonymous meeting. And I sat in the back of the room,

which is really, if you really want to judge, it's a good place to sit back there, kind of figure out why you're not really in the right place. And I sat in the back of the room and I didn't hear nothing. I didn't like the people there. The people there seemed very strange to me. They were very, very old. I mean, they were 30 years old, 35 years old. I mean, Jesus Christ,

old men and women and Alcoholics Anonymous. What is my life come to?

So I didn't hear nothing. I didn't belong there. I didn't think I was an alcoholic. And over the next couple years

I switched from 1 drug to another, back to alcohol than to other drugs and switching from one thing. My sponsor calls it like changing deck chairs on the Titanic. It's just

because I am the guy that Silk Worth talks about, he says. If if you take alcohol out of my life

and I and I stopped drinking when I was about 14 or 15 because I was in juvenile court so much and I was getting caught so much.

And that's when I found drugs and you take alcohol out of my life. And what Silk Worth says is I become restless, irritable and discontent unless I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort I'd once find found in taking a few drinks. Now I don't want to take the drinks anymore, but I've got to have that ease and comfort because the truth is, on my own, without nothing,

I'm just not enough. I'm just not enough, man. There's something wrong with me

and I went through several years within the drug thing back in the early 70s. And alcohol, I got to tell you something. Alcoholics should not use drugs.

We, we are pigs. I mean, and I am not a drug addict. And I'll tell you, I know drug addicts. I I had friends that I grew up with that went to Vietnam and they got went, I got over there and they got physically addicted to heroin and they came back to the United States.

They didn't want to do that anymore. the VA detox them and they never looked back. They didn't become winos. They didn't get addicted to cocaine. They didn't start drinking Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo every day. They got married, started businesses and her lead normal lives. And then there's guys like me,

whatever I'm doing, if you take it away from me, boy, I'm going to have to find a substitute. I'm going to have to do something. And as the years progressed and I started get, I got went back full circle to alcohol again because I burn all that other stuff out

and I'm in trouble all the time. And there's times when I'm swearing off because the heat's on me and I stopped drinking and I go crazy and I end up in psychiatrist's office and they talked to me for a while and I'm just a mess. I'm so you take the alcohol out of me. And if you don't medicate me, I just go nuts. And so I keep getting diagnosed as clinically depressed and put on medication, which all that does. The problem with medication is it's never really enough,

you know, And you suffer through that half measure as long as you can stand it. And then I got to go get something else

because it's not really enough. All it does is it kind of, it kind of puts the disease on hold for as long as you can stand it, right? Until I can't take it anymore. And then I got to go get drunk because nothing's really changed inside of me. I still am suffering from alcoholism

and I don't know what's killing me and I don't know what's killing me. And as the disease progressed and it got worse and worse than me, I got scareder and more desperate and I, I started coming to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And now I'm coming and I'm starting to want what you have.

At least I don't know, maybe it's not I want what you have because I'm not sure what you got, but I'm starting to not want what I got.

And I'm coming to the meetings and I'm listening and I'm trying to figure out what you're doing and what I see in a A. The more I look at you and the more I observe you and the more I listen to you, the more confused I become.

I'll tell you what I see. I see a whole bunch of people that stop drinking. So they say I'm always a little suspect to that they're not smoking nothing. They're not taking anything. And their life's wonderful. And I, I, back in the 70s in Pennsylvania, I used to go to these speaker meetings and it was always the same format. Back in Pittsburgh, you'd have a 20-30 minute speaker. He'd get up. He'd tell a tragic,

sometimes funny drunk a log that he comes into a A. He puts the plug in the jug

and his life is miraculously transformed. And now he's the president of some big company, and he's happily ever after.

And I'm sitting there thinking,

I don't know, man, Whatever's wrong with him ain't the same thing that's wrong with me because I ain't drinking. I put the plug in the jug and I tell you something. I don't feel like that. My life ain't like that. I got none of that going. The real truth is, and I couldn't tell you this because I was afraid of what you would say. You see, there's a, there's a couple great fears that I've always walked around with. And I think a lot of them, I think they're like these

unwritten laws of society.

There's four of them. Law number one, don't have anything wrong with you.

Well, I'm sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got a lot of stuff wrong with me. I don't and I don't want to tell nobody. Rule #2 if you do have something wrong with you, get over it quickly.

I don't know how. Rule #3 if you do have something wrong with you and you can't get over it quickly, at least act like you did. So I'm sitting here and, and you know, I'm like the guy in Chapter 11. How are you doing, Bob? Oh, work better, feel better, Having a better time, you know?

And what's really going on is I got a hole inside me you could drive a Mack truck through. What's really going on is abstinence to me feels like I'm doing time.

It is a very abstinence. It's a very desolate, a God awful, painfully lonely place. A place where it seems like to me, I live in a world where it's all of you. And then there's me.

And so the last rule of society, the unwritten rule, is if you do have something wrong with you and you can't get over it quickly and you can't even effectively act like you did, at least be properly ashamed of yourself.

And so I remember sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, being properly ashamed of myself,

sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and looking at you. And all that I observed was was people who just pointed out in stark relief, just by contrast, everything. I wasn't,

you see, because I stopped drinking and I'm not happy, joyous and free. I stopped drinking. I'm not grateful for anything. I stopped drinking. I don't love everybody. I stopped drinking. I don't have great jobs or gets. I'm not having success stories to tell you. I stopped drinking and I'm restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontent. I'm prone to misery and depression. I can't control my emotional nature. I can't get along very well with people.

I I'm very insecure and yet I'm very judgmental of you. And I feel so separate and apart from and I'm full of guilt and shame and I can't hold jobs in a But other than that, I'm really kind of all right.

So I sit in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I come to a conclusion

over the years that I was in and out that I think a lot of people come to a conclusion. It's an erroneous conclusion.

And the conclusion I came to is whatever is, God knows I am screwed up and I have a lot of problems and I guess I need some kind of help. But whatever is wrong with me is not the same thing that's wrong with you because I've stopped drinking and you've stopped drinking. Look at you. Look at me.

There's not the same.

And yet there were. There came a time when I was offered the solution. And see, the problem is I'm sitting in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with untreated alcoholism. All I've done is stop drinking. And I got to tell you, if you have the spiritual malady of alcoholism like I have it, and all you do is stop drinking, you will eventually get sicker.

And because it is a vacancy that demands attention. And what happens is you can throw stuff at the beast. You can throw sex at it for a while. You can throw money at it for a while. You can throw changing of towns at it for a while. You can you can throw excitement at it. You can learn a lot of tricks in in therapy groups and in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to give you temporary relief.

But there is a big difference between relief and freedom.

And I was still I wasn't free because I was still in bondage of this disease. I was still in the bondage of self.

I was still wrapped up in me, separate and alone and apart from

I was still spiritually sick. I was sick of spirit

and I would hunger for a medicine for my spirit. And the only the only medicine that I've ever found up into that point in my life that was worked for this thing that was wrong with me was about five shots of Jack Daniels. Five shots of Jack Daniels would vitalize my spirit. Five shots of Jack Daniels I could would, would relieve me of the bondage of self. I can walk into a bar so locked up in me that I can't talk to anybody. Just kind of get

for me.

Fed up with life

fluctuating from homicidal to suicidal about every second.

Just absolutely insane. Get away from me, have five shots of Jack Daniels and man, I could come out and play five shots of Jack Daniels and I'll sit in that same bar with those people. I want to leave me alone and look around and kind of love them.

You know,

alcohol was a treatment for my alcoholism,

but what it had, what it is, the disease progressed. My ability to control and enjoy my drinking got less and less until I got to it. My last couple years, I couldn't, there was, I couldn't ring any, any enjoyment out of that. And yet, and I'm so out of control, I can't I my life is like a runaway train.

And yet I still have the first delusion that it talks about in the big book,

the delusion in some way. Someday I'll control and enjoy this thing. Everyone, I don't know about you guys, but if you look back over the last year you're drinking or anything like me, every run I started out with was started with a fantasy that related to something a drinking that had happened five years ago. But it hadn't been that way in three, right? It's going to be like it was, you know, and it wasn't like that no more.

I never started out one. I never started out a run thinking, oh boy, it's in the dumpster again. It's yeah.

I don't see. I don't remember. I don't remember the reality of what it has become. I remember the delusion of what it had been. And at one time alcohol was fantastic. I, I tell you, I don't regret being an alcoholic. I don't regret all the I I regret some of the people I hurt. I deeply regret that. But I don't regret those good days. And, and I'm not, I'm not a reformed drinker just because I crossed over a line and alcohol stopped working like that for me. I don't bad rap alcohol.

I don't think you should should bad rap a horse because it gets too old to pull the plow.

But alcohol was a wonderful thing in my life for a number of years. Just when I crossed, as a disease progressed and I got further and further into it, my ability to obtain that, that kind of effect, I lost it. And I'll tell you what, the kind of drinker I became in the end, I drank in loneliness because I stopped trying to be social. I didn't even like to drink in bars. Sometimes I'd have to

because that's the only way I would go wherever the whiskey was

or wherever the wine was, but my given a choice, I'll tell you where the way I like to drink. I like to get 2 cases of cheap vodka and go hole up in an abandoned building. That was my type of drinking. I don't want to be bothered by people. The ideal thing would be to have just ATV set in a couple cases of vodka and I'd have been in heaven because I don't mix well with people. At the end I've no, I'm no longer the guy that's in some bar that's that's drinking and laughing and shooting pull and dancing with the girls and having a heck of a time.

Not that guy no more. I was that guy. What I become is I became the guy that's sitting in the corner of the bar drinking himself into oblivion, feeling sorry for himself, looking at the sometimes sobbing uncontrollably, hoping nobody will seem, looking at the people that are having a good time and thinking inside myself, my God, what's wrong with me? That used to be me.

How was that? I was the guy that would come to bars and parties and pick up girls and make new friends and I could mix it up. But I ain't that way no more and I can't jump start. The thing inside of me that used to make me that person, it doesn't work no more. And no matter what I drink, no matter how I mix it up with other chemicals, I can't get that going no more.

And that's that's really what brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what brought me here.

That's my bottom now. There was a lot of other problems in my life. I've been sentenced to two years in prison. I, I was homeless for a couple years. Last couple years I was out there. But none of that stuff is what brought me to a A There's, you know, Silkworth makes a statement that is very profound. He says. He says after a while, we can't even differentiate the truth from the false. We don't even we don't know anymore.

He says. Our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And the problem is we just adjust to that stuff. You know, it's a when you first, the first time you can't pay rent and you're out on the streets looking for a place to sleep. It's horrible. A year later, it's no big deal. You're just used to matter of fact, it's kind of nice. You don't have to juggle. No landlord no more. I mean, it's, you know, the heat's off really. I mean, it's it's a it's the adjustment that's hard. It's not being there. Everybody bad raps being homeless. Being homeless is not actually being home. I'll tell you what's harder,

being homeless. What's being harder than being homeless is being in the end of your alcoholism, trying to maintain a job and family and all that stuff and juggle all that stuff and they're on your back all the time. Now that's hard. You lose all that stuff. It kind of gets, it's almost like the only talks in the book about getting periods where we think we're regaining control. Once you've lost all that stuff, it's like, oh now, man, hey,

and your life gets real simple. I got to come up with $1.29 two or three times a day. That's it.

I mean, it's not a big this is before sign. We didn't have signs will work for food. God, the first time I saw one of those I I almost wanted to go back out. I thought, Jesus Christ, that's awesome.

You, you don't even have to get rejected. You just stand there and hold this sign. And I watched this one guy, this is like 10 years ago, the first time I ever saw this guy stand on the people are just giving him money. I'm thinking I was born at the wrong time.

We used to have to go up to people. And you, you're God. You're so ashamed of yourself and you accept that. You hang your head and you,

you just go. Can I? You got any spare change? I'm sorry. And be so apologetic, you know, And then some guys that say get out of here, you smelly, you know, Yeah, I'd hear all that. I've heard all that stuff. I've been called everything you can and you just adjust to that. That's not what brings a guy to meet like me to Alcoholics Anonymous the last time. Willing to get a sponsor and work these steps, willing to do absolutely everything. What brings me to a point where I'm as open minded and as willing as only the dying can be

is nothing but a lack of option.

That's all

and a vision for you. It says that we get to a place where we can't imagine life with it

or without it. We will know a loneliness such as few do will be at the jumping off place, will wish for the end.

I'd have failed suicide attempt on my last drunk. I tried to throw myself off this bridge and I just, I just couldn't do it. I wanted to. I was just too afraid. And when you can't live with it and it doesn't make you, it doesn't work anymore make you feel any better. And you can't live without it because without it is such a awful place. And you can't kill yourself, man. There ain't nothing left. And that's what that's my entrance to Alcoholics Anonymous. In our book, it says that we, before we ever come to believe that a A would work for us, before we ever come to

there's a God, it says we will first come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we've been living it. So when we are approached again after all these years of in and out, when we were approached again by those you guys within whom the problem had been solved, you know, there's nothing left

but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools. You were laying at my feet. There was nothing left. I if there had been a new type of antidepressant or a new kind of Valium or a new something, I, there's not. I tried everything. I tried everything. I've been in religion and I've been in therapy and I've done medication and I've done rehabs and I, I tried God, I tried primal screaming and I tried macrobiotics and I was everything from ROM dust or rum dum by the time I got here.

And there was nothing left.

Nothing. And it took that to get me here. It took, it took that to get me here in a place where I was teachable. Because I'm the kind of drunk that I'll go on a run and alcohol take everything away from me and I come into alcohol examine the first thing I get back is my God damn opinion. And it's my opinion and my judgment that just keeps me from getting this, because I sit there and I make judgments according to myself, centered observations of

what I see. And so Alcoholics Anonymous is unobtainable to me because I still got a mind that wants to figure it out. I want to try to run the show,

and I think Alcoholics Anonymous takes desperation. And it takes desperation because it takes, it takes that to get a guy like me to a place where I'm willing to take some directions that mean make absolutely no sense to me at all. And a, a really doesn't make any sense.

In 1977, I'd been, I've been sentenced to two years in prison and a judge cut me a break and he didn't carry out the sentence, told me I had to go into this rehab for evaluation for a little period of time. He said, you come back before me on this certain date. And if you, if you've been doing the restitution and you got the good Uas and the good PO report and everything, we'll take a look at whether you were going to carry out this sentence or not. But if you cannot complete any of that stuff, you're going to do the two years in the state penitentiary. I went into this rehab and I want to stay sober and I want to stay sober bad because I

drinking is no fun anymore.

Winners coming on and I'm I spent a winner on the streets homeless and it's a tough way to go. You can't, you can't even sit down at night because it's 5 or 10° out. And if you sit down, you fall asleep. And if you fall asleep, you're a popsicle. I drank with a guy that was a popsicle. He ended up in the morgue. He just did. That's what happens. So you walk all God damn night long. It doesn't. And it doesn't matter how sick you are, how tired you are,

how shaky you are. You walk every all night long. You get rousted out of gas station bathrooms by owners that scream at you and tell you what a dirty piece of

worthless human meat you are and the on and on and on

winners coming on. I don't want to be homeless on the streets and I don't want to do the two years in prison. I don't like jail. I've been to jail. I don't jail. Well, I'm not a very good at it. I I don't like it. I I hate that. I hate, I hate having to go in there and put on that grill outfit and try to pretend like I'm something I'm not. I hate trying to have to punch guy, Sunday guy, give Sunday punch guys before they say anything to me. So I'll let them know that they can't screw with me when really what's going on is I'm as I'm scared to death and I feel like a shaky little terrified boy inside. But yet I got to put up this

front because I'm scared to death. I hate living like that. I still have scars on my body from beefs I've gotten into that. I've initiated to prove something to somebody in a county jail.

I hate living like that. So I go into this place and I'm trying to stay sober and I really don't want to drink no more. But I got untreated alcoholism. See, I'm not the guy. I'm not the guy that I always was under an illusion. And the illusion was that someday I'll grow up and I'll really make up my mind never to do this stuff again. And then I just won't. Well, the problem is that I don't. I can't do that. I've made-up my mind for a couple years now. I don't want to do this stuff anymore, and I keep doing it. I can't stop

and I'm dying and I'm in this place and I've got untreated alcoholism and I'm hanging on by my fingernails and it's a losing battle and I'm getting ready to drink because I'm every day that goes that goes by is another day that I just can't stand. And it's another day. It seems like every day I'm lonelier and more bored and more frustrated and nothing I seem to do that's going to try to make me feel better ever seems to last or work for any extended period of time.

And I just getting it up to here and I'm I'm ready to drink. I know it. I I'm just, I can I just starting to romanticize

alcohol and I grabbed a guy in a meeting and I said to him, I said I I need help man. I need help.

You got to do something and would you help me? I'm going to get. I'm afraid I'm going to drink. And he sat down with me in this kitchen,

this dining hall in this rehab is a long, long haul where they just feed a couple hundred guys.

And I'm sitting there and I'm telling him everything that's going on with me. And I'm I'm telling him about the two years in prison. And I'm telling him I'm honest with him. I'm telling him about my emotional problems. And I'll tell you emotionally, I was the kind of guy that I would go through these roller coaster things emotionally. And I don't understand. It's like I'm out of control. The big book later I read that says one of the symptoms of untreated alcoholism is we cannot control our emotional natures.

We are pray to misery and depression. And I'm that way, but I don't know that that's alcoholism. I, I think maybe I got a brain tumor or something and I just go through these roller coaster rides. I think weird stuff all the time. It's like you take alcohol out of my life and living with my mind is like driving cross country in a van full of eight-year olds that have overdosed on sugar and none of them like you. I got all these little voices in my head all the time. You know, it's, I walk into a meeting and there'll be some guy and he won't say hi to me and my head's telling me he hates you

killing. Punch him. Don't let him get away with it. I walk it. I I'll be, I'll get called on in the discussion meeting in the halfway house and I'll be sharing something and there'll be two guys giggling in the back of the room. And I know what they're giggling about.

I get aches and pains and it's automatically cancer. Every time I get a headache it's I get feel brain tumors growing in my head.

I am absolutely insane and I can't shut this thing off and it never stops talking to me.

It never will let up

and I'm telling this guy about I just think I'm crazy, man. I can't even explain it to him as well as I'm explaining it to you. I'm just telling my good crazy thoughts all the time and I can't hold a job. I can get a job. I just can't hold a job. I'm always the guy that they're laying off or they're firing or they're letting go and they're remember the state. One guy said to me, God, it just made me feel so awful. He said, he said. Bobby says, you know, you're a hard worker and I'd like to keep you, but you're just not a team player, Bob.