The 15th Annual Tri-State Roundup in Laughlin, NV

Well, thank you very much.

I'd like to just listen. Thanks. It's

I hate when people do that at meetings. I always thought I like to try that at the public level.

I've been a lot of places. I've never any ever heard anybody read the traditions and have a favorite before

it was good. Or the guy in the front when they said that science will someday get us. Maybe they'll find a way to get us to be normal drinkers. How could that happen? I mean, even if they fixed our physical craving, we'd screw it up again. Who wants to be a normal drinker, right? I mean, they're so boring. So

I am going to just very, very briefly thank the committee. I don't like sometimes how people just get into thinking and thinking. But you know, every once in a while you go to a conference and they do everything they can to make you feel like you're welcome there. And this committee has done that in in every way. And my wife is here with me, which is unusual. Normally what they do is they pick you up at an airplane, check you in a room, you deliver your talk in the morning. They say, are you still here?

You know, there's nothing is useful.

Sunday morning is a Saturday night speaker. That's that is the truth.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a place where we love to eat our young and

I got a chance to stand in your lineup. I wanted to find out what you were really like before you knew who I was. Interesting. I was lined up right into where the movie theater is waiting to come into this meeting, and I didn't hear anybody being rude to anyone or any sort of pushing one. I just see a guy come down who is just about loaded and he had this that the deal going, you know,

and he he said, is this the Alcoholics Anonymous, the whole line, the Alcoholics Anonymous? Somebody said, yes, it is. And he said, well, I get a suit if I join that thing, somebody.

And then he got downstairs and said, well, losers, they all have to wear suits. You know, it's

so it's different coming here to talk. You know, in Nevada, I heard two people out front of the casino saying where do you think they get the money to build all these beautiful buildings?

Yeah, and everybody in the casino says good luck,

stupid.

And so anyway, my name is Marty Jeffrey and I'm a alcoholic.

I'm from a place in Canada called Red Deer, AB. So there's not a double speaker. Red D is not coming along with me

for some reason on the program they made where I'm from. Anonymous as well.

I don't know whether to be inspired or nervous at this point.

Red Deer, AB is between 2 Canadian cities, one named Calgary and one named Edmonton, and Alberta is the province next to British Columbia. And I, among many, many Canadians, consider it an honor and a privilege to have neighbors like the United States of America. We love United States of America in Canada. Glad that you're our neighbors.

And we don't have to have any guns either. That's neat. When you got a neighbor the size of you guys, you know who's going to attack you. So,

well, I'm an alcoholic and that's a contraction of two words, alcoholism and addict alcohol. Ick

and I'm there's other stuff I'm going to tell you. It's getting deep so far, but that is

somebody said to me the other day, where do you think the word alcoholic came from? I said, I think alcoholism is that situation that happens when you get so much alcohol in your blood. It's like Botulism. And and so people that drink to excess and have a lot of alcohol in their blood of alcoholism. Alcoholics are people that have no more alcohol in their blood.

To get it, you have to stop. You see, it's, it's kind of screwable. A lot of people don't understand how that works. But, but even people that return drinking say that I thought it was an alcoholic, but I, I guess I wasn't. And so they're back in alcoholism. We're Alcoholics.

Yeah, some of you in the other room are saying ick already to this talk, but it just try to get comfortable. By the way, High Star Lightroom, I want to scream real loud and see if we can hear them.

No, glad you're there anyway.

You know, there's a there's a real, I don't know where it started, but somebody at a podium somewhere started saying that we say what it was like, what happened, what it's like now, you see, and it's not right. It's not right. What it is, is what we were like, what happened and what we were like. Now what it was like doesn't really matter. And I hear a lot of people living in it, you know, like what it was like, what they were doing, what happened to me and yadda, yadda, yadda. And, and what?

Like now I got money, I got friends and, you know, like, So what

I want to know, like the we that I lived with back there is what I want to talk a little bit about, first of all. And I can say, well, I think most Alcoholics recognize that they had many voices in their heads.

I had one group that was for destruction, mainly of me, and I had another group that was for survival. I had my father's voice in my head. I had a number of voices that used to talk to me. Some people think that's schizophrenia, but it isn't because each voice is clear all of the same time. And they

I find the voices that I meet with usually like to shower at about the same time and start talking. It just depends on This is why willpower will do you no good here. You 32 members think that you're going to come in and will yourself sober or something. The problem is when the idiots in your head meet, it depends on who has the strongest presentation that day.

And so if the voices that are saying don't do it, if they're there, you don't do it the next day, you say, who's going to stop us? I mean, it's just a, you're like a volleyball in your own life. And so this, this concept of the of, of not being able to hear and not being able to see when you're new and Alcoholics Anonymous really true was for me when I first came here. And I, I guess one of the other things that I want to say tonight before I really start saying anything tonight is that

I, I didn't

come here. I was brought here and I was one of the big voices at 10 years sober for non intervention. Well, about 15 years old, but I realized that I was an intervention.

I used to say to people, let him drink till they've had enough. They'll know when they've had enough. And then they'll they'll come in, They'll want, well, maybe, but maybe they'll die first. I know I would have. And so this person that brought me does mean I want to talk about some of my sponsorship issues tonight. And I want you to know something that what I say tonight, which sometimes sounds like criticism of my sponsor, is from a very deep place of love. I mean, you will understand quickly in this fellowship that that the more they abuse you, the more they absolutely adore you here.

That words like fathead and stupid and get in the car are terms of endearment. I love you.

The ones that tell you you're OK are the ones that are killing you

anyway. What we were like, you know, I was, there's a step in the program that says that we're restored to sanity. And so that's it dawned on me one day. I must have been saying somewhere prior to when the disorder started. And so I started to map back through my life and I, the last thing I remember that I was any semblance of normal was about four years old. It was the last time I ever remember kind of being part of Christmas. And then from then on, it was, what are these people doing? Like my mother

used to really annoy me, you know, Breathing in, breathing out, breathe in.

I just want to just, you know, I these people that love and care for you, I like to kill the whole bunch of them. I hated that particular group of people. I prayed God every day until age 9 that I'd been adopted and these weren't my real nuclear people.

I had a brother. He turned out to be alcoholic. And this guy was a work piece of work and, and maybe contributed to some of the fact that, you know, I started drinking at age 11. And I'm sure the next speaker will start at 7:00 and then we'll have a prenatal alcoholic by the end of the conference. But

this guy, I mean, this is the kind of stuff he's doing. Christmas morning, he'd get up and he'd move all the labels around on the Christmas presents and I'd get like, this is my fourth pair of socks and he's getting a truck and an airplane. And I

hell is going on with this,

but there is a God. There is a just God. Because when I was about 11 years sober, there's a knock on my front door. And there he stood,

the present snatcher, and he had everything he had in the whole world in a Safeway shopping bag. And he said, I don't know anybody, Marty, that can help me. I am out of control. And I just believe that you're the only person left in the earth that I trust. Would you sponsor me? I thought, sure I will, you son of a bitch, get in the house. I'd be happy to sponsor you

and I had years of frustration

taken out on him in his recovery.

He's still sober today. Damaged, but still sober.

That's the kind of stuff that will happen to you if you stay in Alcoholics Anonymous long enough.

A lot of trouble with the word alcoholic. I knew that for a number of years that I had been drinking to change what I was. I knew that. I mean, I understood that if that's what alcoholism was, it probably had that. But I had, I had no sort of conscious recognition of that. You know, like I, I, I knew something was wrong, and I knew other people were different than than I was, but I didn't, you know, drinking

seemed to me to be more as the books as a solution than any sort of a problem. It seemed like when I was drunk,

even though I might be puking up chunks of pizza under a bed, I felt in control

and felt out of control sober. And, you know, I've really come to understand that that first step is everything I need to know about me. It's every statement of everything that's wrong with me. I am powerless over alcohol. And I have to admit that my life has become unmanageable. That's, that's the total statement of everything that's wrong with me. And I mean, I was a kind of a guy and I never would have come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I, I went out one night and I got drunk one more time

and you know how that goes. I had made a a pledge to God, absolute pledge that if you could just Get Me Out of this

little scrape that I'm in right now,

Father, I will never drink again.

And and this happens when you're an alcoholic. And I don't know if this happens to earth people or not, but when you're an alcoholic, seemingly unsolvable, things get resolved. And this day I went from I'm going to get fired. I mean, I, I went to a party, staff party, was in the radio television business in those days, went right to the food stand, picked up a pizza,

walked right to the president of the company and

and then stood back to see what the hell was going to happen next. You know, there's that sense of adventure when you're alcoholic.

Like I'm convinced there's something not attached in a full blown alcoholic, like cause and effect. I was always surprised when people hit back. I was always surprised when people were mad. It was like it just screwing around. We're just having fun. And I mean, I did a bunch of other stuff and I woke up that morning and Oh my God, was I sick. I had that kind of like in the throat, nausea, dying, puking

sick where you just honestly don't know if you're going to make it or not. Your your heart is going an arithmetic.

You know that this is the vomit goes up a little bit.

Somebody once said, you know you're alcoholic when you can puke over your own head and I get your hair wet. That's it's.

Oh yeah. And I had that down, man.

I wasn't in the car, wake her up kind of guy. And anyway, the phone was ringing. I could hear it off in the distance, ringing

way off in the distance. Anyway, I picked the phone up and it was my loony sister. Man, she was nosy, this woman, it's seen and she had radar. Every time I was in trouble, she seemed to zone in and she had the dumb question du jour, which was how are you?

How am I, you know. Excuse me?

Good. How are you?

And

she said the most remarkable thing. I'm absolutely convinced today that she had been one one of you, because she asked that question, that this is the right question. People say to me all the time, how do you approach somebody about quitting drink? And I say, ask him this question, she said. Do you think you have a drinking problem?

Thinking drinking problem Like everybody I know is out cold before I ever stop drinking. I can swallow more liquor than anybody I know, no problem.

Like, I don't, I don't think. Where is this going? So she says. Would you see a member of Alcoholics Anonymous

for me? And I'm thinking, man, I'm not in enough trouble now I got to see some idiot from Alcoholics Anonymous and try and help him out.

Oh,

for a moment I had a flash of Eleanor recognition just right. Oh, not another alcoholic to help.

And

she sent over an alcohol ick by the name of Dwayne. Now, Dwayne was a Norwegian.

That doesn't offend a lot of you. It really offended me because I was married to a Norwegian. That was good, but her father was a Norwegian. You know what? I'm getting out here. And I'd go to pick her up and he'd talk to me in Norwegian. He got, he did. He did. He said Freddy Gervini, the BBQ, you know, and I'm not in this guy's car 2 minutes and he's telling me he's Norwegian. I think it's like, So what?

Got a brush cut in 1976. I was 1976 when I had my last drink. I was 23.

I am 23 years sober. I'm at the Equinox right now. And this guy, at that time now, yeah,

Alcoholics Anonymous, the only place in the world you get a round of applause for saving your own ass. You know what I'm saying?

This guy at this time is 13 years sober. 13 years, I'm thinking, you liar.

First of all, anybody who was 13 years sober would be in a religious cult of some sort, not Alcoholics Anonymous. And #2 he told these bizarre stories. You know, I, I look back on this. And again, if you're new in the room and going to be doing a thing called a 12th step call, don't delay going out there right away. You can't screw it up. They can't hear you anyway.

I often wonder where the two year rule comes from. I mean, a bill would have waited two years to 12 step Bob, you know, we'd all still be dead, right? Well, anyway, he takes me out in the car and he starts telling me about breaking trains in the half to get to the bar and all this stuff. And he tells the story and I tell a story to get worse and worse worse. And eventually, of course, they've extracted most of your 5th step out of you. And and he said the the one thing that allowed me to come here and stay here and that was this. He said, do you think that when you get in trouble, most of the time it's when you're drinking? I had never thought of that before, he said.

Pose that like when you're not drinking, these things don't happen. I never really ever put that thought in my mind before. Not, not that you should quit drinking. Not that you know, you're a bad person or morally weak or any of that stuff, he said. Do you think that if you didn't drink, you'd get in less trouble? I thought,

interesting concept.

Now, the other thing you can be absolutely sure of if you've got a new alcoholic on the line is, is that within 12 seconds of being with you, they're already changing their mind a number of times.

I want what he has. I don't know what he hasn't. Want what he has. I don't know what he has. Well, if he's going to say that, then I don't want what he has, you know? Oh my God, Look what he's doing now. Now I want what he has. No, don't. Do you know,

you know, you're laying out the profound things and I'm trying to say might, might. Was I driving the car when we parked or was he driving the car when we park? Are we in my car is I mean, I got I got stuff going on up there, nothing to do with anything he's talking about. But in the morning he says there's a meeting, this was a Sunday morning meeting called the breakfast group in a place called Saskatoon, SK Canada. And he said I will pick you up for that meeting. It's at 10:00 in the morning. And so I'm an alcoholic.

I left the house at 9:00.

He was in the car waiting for me. That's that's something you learn real quick.

They're psychotic and they also have telepathy. That's something you learn right away if you're going to be. And so we went to this meeting and I would characterize this meeting like this at 23 years old. To me, everybody in that room is over 100.

They looked like they'd been sent out to be wrinkled, they were so old. And

they had,

I don't even know how to describe the way these people were drinking coffee. It was, it was it was like compulsive, you know what I'm saying here? I didn't drink coffee. To me, coffee was a way to screw up a $5 drunk was drink some coffee and there. And I figured any minute some of these seniors were either going to pass or pee on themselves. One of the two

there, there this meeting is in the back of a restaurant. And I'm going through this restaurant and I'm saying to people as I pass, I'm not in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm just I, you know, and finally he came over to me and says, would you shut up? You're, you're embarrassing me. I just thought anybody that went to that backroom was instantly marked with a big A on their forehead or, you know, I didn't know what Alcoholics Anonymous was, but it sounded suspicious. The anonymous part sounded suspicious. I thought they were all hiding there in shame, for

they did. I had no idea that anonymity is more to do with protecting us from our super egos

than it is to do with us being ashamed of any particular thing that we've done. And I go into this room and there they are.

Right? Jerry, Adric. Miracles, everyone of them.

And were they happy? Holy God, were they happy?

They're going up and down some 12 stairs or some damn thing. I couldn't understand what they were talking about,

but the more stairs you did, the better you got.

And there was one unfortunate

who was stuck on the 12 or the 5th stair

and there was quite a bit of discussion about that 5th stair.

One of them said if you don't get off that 5th stair, you will get drunk. And I'm thinking, so where is the 5th stair? Let's get at her.

Yep,

Yeah. That was a big meeting for me. I'll tell you, I could hardly wait for that thing to end. It was just. And anyway, at the end of it, the one the president or whatever the hell he was at the front of the room says, and this was the most remarkable thing I'd heard anyone say at that meeting to that point. He says if you want what we have,

I start looking.

God, they've got no hair.

I know, I know.

Yeah,

you stick around anywhere long enough, you go out like you came in. No hair, no money, no teeth. But

I and I'm like, and they're like, they're 100 and then they can't drink for the rest of their lives. Do you want what we have? Oh, absolutely, I do. Sure, I want that.

I'm thinking, what were those choices again? Oh yeah,

here it is.

Death, insanity. Or join them.

I'll take death. I mean, I'll take death.

Oh, man,

that thing. And and you know, they never leave. They haven't had enough coffee. They won't have some coffee after. You want to stay? Have a coffee after the meeting. I'm thinking, where the hell are you going to put it? You know,

I'm figuring they've all going to have colostomies or some damn thing to be. It's incredible the amount of coffee that these people drink, inhale.

Oh man, I think some of them were. You know,

that's.

I'll tell you one piece of information I'm glad I didn't have when I got here was the vanilla in the eyeballs routine last night.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the spray net up the throat. It sounded attractive to me. I don't know about you. A yellow couch with blood and urine. Man, this is living.

We get outside of the meeting after it's what seemed like an interminable amount of time. And he says to me, another remarkable question, what did you think of the meeting? So, but I'm an alcoholic. I'm not stupid. I know if I say I didn't like the meeting that I'm going to get a lecture. So I says to him I loved it.

I almost wish I was alcoholic. I swear to God that was interesting stuff and whatever you people are doing there, I am more than happy. If you need money, you got to understand we had not a pot. We had nothing. You need money or, you know, need me to get you on the radio for some publicity or whatever you need, Dwayne, you just call me man because what, you guys are doing good stuff.

And he said, yeah, right. Anyway, So I figured that's that. I went home and my wife is here. She'll testify. I came home for the meeting. I said to her, I have been at a zoo. You wouldn't believe what's going on at this place. And I told her that she went no, no. And I said, you know, do you think I'm an alcoholic? No. She said, you know what? I think? I think you shouldn't drink so much. Problem solved.

Well, as I surprised when he came to pick me up for another meeting because I thought I'd been pretty clear, you know? Anyway, I didn't want to offend him because he's Norwegian and they get rough.

Got in a car, went to another meeting and this one is called the Mustard Seed group. And we go into Mustard Seed group and there's all the same guys from the early morning meeting and there's a couple of women

hookers. I figure,

well,

you know, what would a nice girl be doing at Alcoholics Anonymous? That's what I'm thinking because I was a St. myself, you know.

So at the end of the meeting they, you know, they'll say sometimes does the newcomer everything to say. And I said, Oh yeah, I got something I'd like to ask. So they said, well go ahead. And I said, are you 2 hookers?

And

yeah, Ruth said no, we were never hookers, Marty. But what we would do sometimes if we got really drunk is we'd pick up an inert, an anemic little turd like you. And if he was very good, we'd show him a good time. And if not that, we'd just throw him out of the car, you know?

So now I hate the women and Alcoholics Anonymous. I hate the men and Alcoholics Anonymous. I hate Alcoholics Anonymous. I know there's nothing for me. All they got is these stupid 12 little steps. I could have written them myself. I'm thinking, God, anybody could do that. And I got out in the car. And it says to him, you know what, Dwayne? I don't go to anymore meetings. He said So what?

I said So what? So what is I have rights? You don't have any rights. Where did you hear that?

I said I've got rights, I'm a Canadian. He said you're an alcoholic, Alcoholics have no rights. And he said I have people all over this town. I know where you go and I know what you do. We are everywhere. That's why we're anonymous. We're watching you all the time. And he said, if you decide to drink, you phone me right away and I'll give you your first beer and then I will bust every bone in your body.

So why do you talk to me like that? And he said, it's really simple. He said, I know if you drink you're going to get hurt, and I don't want you hurt by strangers. It's really simple.

I want to do it myself.

See. You know.

How do you know what you don't know you don't know?

See, I had a way of solving things all of my life. It went in a kind of a circle. I started here, I went there. Alcohol was involved somewhere in the middle. That's how it always turned out. How do you know what you don't know you don't know? I mean, it's so crazy. And so I did not know. I was powerless over alcohol because I took alcohol. It always did that to me. I can't. When I was 11 years old and I took that first drink, I was in a bathroom. It was loganberry wine. And from the first time I took that first drink, I knew that I was for the first time. I swear to God that the words that I've got to describe it are this

I was all in one place, all at the same time for the first time ever in my entire life. That's just, that's what happened to me and I got on my bicycle and I knew I could ride faster

that any person in history. And I got on this thing and I just let it rip. And I was probably doing between 4 and 700 miles an hour when I hit the truck and I went off the back of the bicycle and I did a little skin donation. And I remember thinking as I was caring off of the pavement, this came through my mind as it does every alcoholic's mind. This doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts. I can go home and beat Michael up. That's I mean, everything just came into focus and I went home and my mother and I did not come from an alcoholic home. You need to understand that I came from a

home. This is a breeding ground for Alcoholics because they don't know anything.

And my mother opened the door and there it was, 11 years old, knee out of its pants, blood all over it, lying, you know, she said, Are you drunk? I had two.

I'm 20 years old. I'm still saying I had two. That's it. It's the only lie you get when you start drinking. And so she threw me in the bathtub. I puked. I found out, you know, that loganberry wine goes down this dark purple comes up this foamy pink. Life was good. Could hardly wait to get to school in the morning and tell all the kids the transition, the transformation, that it happened to me. Could not get one other kid in grade 6 remotely interested in drinking

and so I did what the book says. I started to look for lower companions. You got to do that until you finally become

a lower companion.

And by grade seven, I was kind of an alien in my own class. In grade 8, I didn't really know the kids very well. And grade nine, I was a stranger there. And, and that's how that went. And so in that car that night when he said I didn't have any rights and that he was going to look after me immediately, what happened to me was I felt the same powerlessness I'd felt all of my life. And, you know, I'll tell you something about powerless people. Powerless people blame other people,

you know. We confused resentments with thinking.

It's not thinking, you know, we try and find a whose fault is this anyway, that I'm in this trouble? And, and then if I can attach to that person, I can spend the rest of my time not focusing on me, but focusing on them and what they did to me. And my powerlessness is justified. And then I can get juiced at them and I can do this on. And you know what, that night in that car, that powerlessness, it was just, it was the blackness and the madness was all around me. I had the Norwegian hitman who had taken a personal interest in me. This idiot introduces me to a guy at the meeting who had murdered his best friend.

Told him where I lived.

If you want what we have and you're willing, you see what I'm saying? You guys aren't exactly catch of the season when we first come in here.

And so the powerlessness over the alcohol made my life unmanageable. But the sobriety compared to the drinking, the sobriety was absolutely untenable. I never ever got drunk once to get drunk. And I hear all sorts of Alcoholics contradict me and and say, I, you know, I don't agree, but I'm telling you something. I never went out to get drunk. I went out to not get drunk. I went out to get a buzz,

I went out to get comfortable, I went out to get different.

And we shouldn't tell newcomers it's going to get better. We should say it's going to get different just for a period of time because it it just doesn't get better. It's like the Australian dung beetle. It rolls manure until the ball is so big it can't push that crap anymore. So it drills a hole in the middle of it and lives in it.

And yeah, you get up every day and it stinks and you got a shitty outlook on everything.

And then and then what they say to you is I never remember it smelling like this when I drank. No, that's right. You weren't awake long enough to have it smell like that when you drank. You know, you weren't conscious long enough to see what you pushed behind that wall that now has to be dealt with. And so when he said to me, I will keep you sober for 90 days, you're not going to drink immediately I started thinking you are my problem. And I was able to focus on him. And I started thinking, in 90 days I am going to kill you.

And I'm, this is sort of like newcomer gratitude stuff.

I'm going to kill you. I'm going to burn your car. And I'm going to. I wanted to kill his dog. He had a dog that was like 100 years old. He was like all the people at the meetings. Yeah. It's name was Tinker.

Tinker Guys 6 foot four, 280 lbs. Got a dog named Tinker

and you knock on the door and you'd hear

and he'd say, and this was the big Saturday night entertainment. Say smile, Tinker and the dog go.

I'm 23 years old. We're over at Dwayne's watching Tinker smile. Saturday night.

I don't know about you. Wasn't what I kind of had in my mind for Saturday night.

90 days was forever,

90 days was a jail sentence and I swear to God the only thing that kept me sober was the fear of what He would do to me if I drank.

That's the truth.

That is God's truth. And you know, it's an amazing thing. But by the time I went through those 90 days, something happened and it happens to anybody. That'll go to enough meetings. They say if you drag your mind to enough meetings, eventually it'll open. And that's what that was what my experience was. And you see, if the problem is that I'm powerless over alcohol and the problem is that my life has become unmanageable, I am going to go in the same circle over and over. The unmanageability is going to drive me back to the powerless nature of the drinking. And so it goes. And unless somebody breaks that cycle, how do you get out of there?

And you see the whole solution to my problems in the second step where it says that that we have come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. And you know, I'll tell you what sanity for me today means being whole,

being being good in my mind, in my body and my family and my community, like being whole. That's what being sane is. The first vestige of that that I had was that at some point, somehow, someway, I didn't want to drink anymore. And I can't explain that to anybody. I just all of a sudden I did not want to drink. People say to me sometimes, don't you wish you could drink? No, I don't even want to drink. In fact, I get with people drinking and they make me nervous.

They seem like they're out of control. They're going to flip any minute. I can still remember thinking like that. I don't want to be around people that are drinking.

I like to be around people that are thinking

row 15. No. So here's what I had to do. I had to, over a period of time, let go of some old ideas. I had some ideas that went like this. If there's a God, I'm going to hell.

So I can't accept that there's ever going to be any sort of a higher power or a God because I know that a scumball like me is never going to be forgiven. I remember calling Dwayne and about my 120th or something day of sobriety and saying, Dwayne, I can't give my life and my will over to the care of God. He said. Why not?

I said. Because if I give my life to God, Dwight,

God will send me to Africa as a missionary.

And he said, what do you think God would do with an ass like you in Africa?

You know, as as screwed up as I was, I had to think good point. That's a really it's a good point.

It didn't come on me all at once that my solution was going to be from a power outside of myself. In fact, the first thing I had to accept

was how utterly defeated I was. This is the paradox of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's the only place in the world where they say, look, if you'd really like to win at this thing, give up. So it's upside down and backwards. Most of the stuff in here is they say no dues or fees, and then they pass a hat. What's that about?

I, I remember the day that it finally dawned on me. Oh my God, I'm alcoholic. I was driving a car. It was like 94 days sober or something. I'm going down a freeway and all of a sudden it came across me with such finality. I had a terminal disorder that only a spiritual experience could relieve. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm screwed. Oh my God, I'm really an alcoholic. I'm one of them. I'm going to get tinker the whole thing. It's going to, it's

I, Oh my God. So I phoned Dwayne. I said Dwayne, Dwayne, God. Oh my God. I'm an alcoholic. He's said, Oh Lee, God,

what what brought you to that conclusion? I said, I don't know. I just know I'm an alcoholic and if I if I drink, I die. And he said, Marty, treasure this advice for the rest of your life, OK? He said people that are alcoholic can bath in whiskey. Just don't put it in your mouth. That's it. Don't take the first drink and you won't die from the 9th drink. Click.

That was Dwayne's sort of like we're done talking sound.

I wasn't good enough for me. I went to an associates of Duane's. This guy was a he had Gray hair. You know those guys that look like they're out of a soap opera. His name was Bob. He's got the like the $1500 suit. And I said,

Bob, you know, you're like, you're so much brighter than Dwayne.

Did you talk about your sponsor behind his back? I always did. I said, Bob, you know, tell me what this alcoholism he says, well, Marty, Bob was very official. He said, Marty, what's your suffering from is a genetic disorder centering in the hypothalamic information Control Center of your brain. And this is made worse by your livers inability to metabolize alcohol without producing acid aldehyde, which mixed with dopamine produces tetrahydro isoquinoline. That's a nasty combination, Marty, given

narcissistic egocentric core of your personality, which is driven at times by feelings of omnipotence, which tend toward their own integrity despite cognitive dissonance and stimulus augmentation.

Yeah,

I said, what does all that mean? He said. Your drinker is broke. Go back to Dwayne.

You know, Bob taught me a lot of lessons. I remember one time I was in, I was selling clothing and Bob stopped in the store and I said, geez, I hear Jake C got drunk. He said, when were you talking to Jake? And I said, I, I wasn't. I just heard that, he said. So then what you're really telling me is you're a malicious, snotty little gossip?

Oh, yeah?

Well, I said no, he said. Oh yeah,

yeah, that's exactly what you are. And he said, I don't associate with gossip. So see you,

I don't know. You know, Doctor Silkworth talked about deflation at great depth. Deflation at great depth is, is that thing that happens to you when you've got people that love you so much they won't lie to you anymore and that they are, you know, ready to point out some of your shortcomings. It's a it's it's a, it's a loving thing that's done. Sometimes it's it's about, it's about the fact that if you're like I was and you're in a fog, you know, the fear of the obligation and the guilt. And you got the repetitive solution going the same thinking, trying to solve the same old problems.

Then you got to have some people that that have the, the, the

wherewithal not to worry about you rejecting them. These are the people that will save your life. If you got some crusty old fart in your sobriety right now that says things to you that you don't like, but you know at the same time that there's some sort of a truth and never let them go. They are absolutely invaluable to you. Because you see, if the first step is the problem and the second step is the solution, then what it's asking me to do next, next is the really hard piece. And what it's asking me to do next is simply the most difficult thing Alcoholics have to do.

Make a decision, make a decision. No, there's a guy in 1936 wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich, and he had interviewed a number of millionaires in 1936. And without exception, people that became wealthy all made decisions quickly and changed them very slowly, if ever. People who never acquired anything made decisions very slowly and changed them frequently.

It should non alcoholic alcoholic, right? I made decisions every day,

but I could never stay with them. And you see what these people, this, this, this group of crusty old timers said to me in those days was really simple is that you are too sick to make a decision. We'll make the decision for you until such a time as you get your brain reinstalled and then you can start to make some decisions. They said somewhere around 15 to 20 years sober.

I was brought up in the old school where they said you will not quit your job, you will not change your relationship, you will not do anything life altering for the first two years.

And we've really interested to hear how much that upset you because we don't give a rip.