The Paramount Group in Paramount, CA

My name is Bob Darling. I am an alcoholic

and only to the grace of a God that I was afraid to believe in. That I've accessed and maintained in my life through a process in a book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous, the ability to remain sponsorable and a persistent and consistent effort in our primary purpose of trying to forget our selfish nature and help others. And I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotional during medication since October 31st, 1978.

And that's the great miracle in my life. Delighted to be here. Moe. You gave a great talk, Michael said. It was, it was almost word for word the way he wrote it too. It was really.

It's really good.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a really good talk.

I want to welcome anybody. It's new. Glad you're here.

Uh, getting sober from alcoholism is made was maybe the most difficult and the most rewarding thing that's ever happened in my life. I almost died of this disease because I am recovery resistant by nature

and I just, I, I don't mean to be. I don't even know that I am, but I just, I, I, I, it's like I'm too selfish for a A and I'm too wrapped up in, in my feelings, in my,

my harms and what people have done to me and I and what I feel my discomfort and my depression and my worries. And, and you, you know, this a a stuff is like, I mean, if I ever got my life in order, I might do some of this a a stuff. And I got problems and I need to work on them and I need to solve them and all this altruistic crap in a A and this God inventory help other stuff.

If I ever had a good life, maybe. But I got, I got work on me.

And some of you can guess that didn't work out very well for me.

I remember I, I remember sitting in meetings and it's like that they'd start the meeting and the next thing I know, this happened probably 100 times. The next thing I know, they're saying the Lord's Prayer. And I don't know anything that happened in between because I was worrying about me.

I was just sitting there consumed with me

and it's pretty hard to get anything out of here if you got so much of yourself between you and AA and you in life itself. It's and that's really the nature of the beast here.

I'm alcoholism is a lonely, lonely business since I, I, I'm disconnected and apart from because there's just too much of me between me and you. And I don't know that.

I don't intend that. If he even pointed out to me, and if I could see it, I wouldn't want it to be that way.

But even if I knew it, I wouldn't have had the power to change it.

Self cannot move self out of the center. And you know, some of us have battle with that. We, we, you know, it happens to all of us sometimes. Sometime in your early sobriety, maybe first couple years, you get that epiphany experience like where everything they've been talking about in a A, all of a sudden you get it and you go, Oh my God, I'm self-centered

and I'm in selfish. I'm selfish and selfish and self-centered.

Boy, I'm so glad I saw that because I'm just not going to be that way ever again,

right?

An idiot, right? But I think, I think that Nala, with knowledge, I'll find the power to change. And I don't have the power to change. And yet there's a power here.

It's it's here.

Sometimes you can feel it. I go to my Home group,

the Monday and Tuesday night meetings in Vegas, and I get there. I'm always there an hour,

hour early, sometimes more. I like to stand. I like to help set up a little bit and then stand at the door and greet people

and listened to the feeling of the bees returning to the hive and the energy building in the room. And, you know, pretty soon there's 300 conversations starting with the word I.

And it's really, it's very cool. And in in the midst of 300 conversations with people, no, nobody's listening. Everybody's talking.

There's there's something there that's more than the sum of the parts.

It's I've come to believe it's it's God is he always, always shows up in the group conscience and he always shows up and and if you're new here, you got to do whatever you have to do to try to stay here in a A and stay present. I know it's hard to stay present when you have a mind that keeps

poking you away from reality with its seductive little stories of the future. And you know, I get it. I get it.

But if you can

stay present in an alcoholic synonymous meeting, God will talk to you. He talks to all of us here. Most of us don't catch it because we're busy thinking, but he talks to all of us here. And I came to rely on that. I, I came to experience that and it was my, it was the early,

early aspects of coming to believe as I, as I started to go to meetings and you know, there's little coincidences happen. The stranger,

the guy, you don't even know him. You never met him before in A and he's there and he's, he's sharing exactly what I need that day. I mean, in a way that I could, I don't, and I couldn't have heard it from anybody else. Maybe my sponsor might have said it to me, but I couldn't heard it from him because my sponsor's voice had turned into

but I heard it from this stranger. And that's God's the great choreographer here. He He shows up when two or more of us come together for the purpose of recovery.

He's in the midst

and I started to find that there was a solution here to to Bob because Bob is Bobby problem and I started to discover there was a solution here and it wasn't contained within the problem. And I thought it was

I, I had years prior to getting I had years of therapy, you know, and years of focusing on myself, years of of functioning from that delusion. It talks about in chapter 5, this delusion that I'm a victim of. I could rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if I only manage well, if I get enough new information, if I get enough insight into my the inter workings of my neuroses, you know, just get into that. I could surely

then like I would rise like with the knowledge, I would have some sort of epiphany in like a child's released helium balloon. I would just soar above all this mundane crap that's been bogging me down for years.

And I'll tell you what I discovered and it's, it's a pretty common knowledge here.

You never find the solution contained within the problem. No matter how many discussion meetings you go to and discuss the problem, no matter how much you think about the problem, no matter how much you stare at the problem, you will never find the solution contained within the problem. Because it's, it's usually something that is very contrary and completely different and does, it is not even connected to the problem.

Like, you know, I, I got, I got guys all the time

and they, they're just ending a relationship and they're just just a mess. But it's just, it's the end of the world and, and they want to talk. They want to talk about it for I mean, left unchecked, they would talk about it for hours and hours to like if I'd be on the other hand end of the phone with a rope around my neck.

But the, the, the, the solution is not there. The solution is I want you to, I want you to go

to a newcomer meeting and I want you to find two guys to sponsor.

Well, how's it going to help me with my relationship?

I know I get it, I get it. And yet those of us that are willing to do that thing it talks about in the prayer of Saint Francis, self forgetting, push ourselves aside and go help someone else. We something happens to us, we get uplifted

and in 12 step work, altruism, helping other drunks is a big, big piece here. It's such a big piece. Wilson refers to it as our primary purpose, which if you're new, that's a novel idea that helping others could be your primary purpose when you've secretly suspected your primary purpose is you. Pretty much, I mean, you know, and your feelings and your, your stuff and

to forget yourself and devote yourself to helping others is a, is a very

contrarian position for a self selfish, self-centered guy like me.

And I think that I was AI was a depressive alcoholic, been diagnosed with depression a couple times. And like my sponsor and like Bill Wilson, I found a way to be free of that without medication, without anything. But it takes a lot of actions, actions that myself obsessed

consciousness don't want to take and yet I take them.

Hi, it's it's almost like, you know, when you're when you're self obsessed guy and you're experienced in the the misery and depression and anxiety and loneliness of this sickness. Now, now that I'm sober and I'm not talking about what you're drinking, when you're drinking, it's you're numb to it all.

But it's when I when I'm sober that I start suffering from alcoholism

because it's it's so much more than a drinking problem. It my alcohol isn't chased me into a like a rabid dog man, I'm telling you, just on barking at my heels and it's never really left. I've got it to do some tricks occasionally, but it hasn't left.

And every time I take these crazy actions like my before I ever really had done a four step out of the book yet. I before I, I didn't know you could tell your sponsor I'm not on step 9 yet. Well, they just had me make an amends. You know, I was facing two years in the state penitentiary. My sponsor had me make amends to the courts back in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania

started amends with my parents and, and all this stuff I didn't really want to do,

but I, I made a commitment to do whatever he asked me to do. And I, and so they're nudging me down this path of trying to clear up the wreckage of my past and devote my life to helping others. And it's, I tell you, it's, it's in the muck and the depression

and the, the dumb, the dimness of my spiritual condition, the sickness of it.

Every time I'd make an amends, it was like, I'm like a hot air balloon that somebody just cut off one of those sandbags and I just got a little lift. And every time I would go down to the detoxer, I'd go on a 12 step call and spend 3 or 4 hours with some idiot guy that I don't even really want to help, but I'm supposed to. Now I come away from that and it's like they it's like they turned up the heat in that burner that lifts that balloon

and I get a little more lift. And the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous have lifted me right up out of me

and it set me free.

And you know something I guy asked me a while ago, he said, what do you think? What's the, what's the best thing you got out of a a next to not drinking?

I'd say it's a toss up. And I think there it's I'm going to what I'm going to say is two things. And I think they're, they're kind of the same thing,

A sense of humor, the ability to laugh at myself

and also the feeling of freedom.

And I think they're connected because when I was in the bondage of self, one of the major symptoms of my depressive self obsessed nature is when I'm like that everything is serious.

I mean, heavy. And, and people who don't realize the problematic that aren't serious about this problematic world that we live in. I just know that they're pathetically stupid.

They just can't see the problems that I can see so easily, right? And I just lose respect for him and I lose respect and the people in a a just another thing. I'm I'm a funny kind of guy because if you this is this still is a little bit in me to this day. It's, it's hard, but if you really, really think I'm wonderful, I immediately lose respect for you.

Do you know what I mean? I miss you. It's like, come on. I want friends with with taste,

you know,

I've gotten better with that. I just, I just say thank you.

Is that what my sponsor told me to do?

But I, I get sober and I suffer from alcoholism and I don't know what it is and I don't know whether it's alcoholism.

It looks like a mental and emotional illness stuff. That's why I spent so much time within with psychiatrists and therapy and reading all these self help books and all that stuff because I thought it was a psychological or emotional and psychological condition and it's not. It's a spiritual condition

and it's deeper than an emotional or a psychological issue. It's a, it's a

my very chi, my very core of my being is suffocating here and I'm being smothered by myself

and I don't know it.

And it's why every time I would take a drink after six months or eight months of sobriety and and I bet you I've talked to 100 people of the same experience, take that first drink and it's like.

Somebody turned the air back on like I can breathe now because I'm starting to move out of myself and I'm starting to pull myself up off of myself and I'm not smothering me with me and I'm starting to to get free. I, I drank alcohol for the exact same reason that I do service and I, I try to,

I hate to even use the word try to stay surrendered because I don't stay surrendered

when I try to stay in the zip code of surrender. You know what I mean? Because that's because that's the nature I have a chronic spiritual malady, which means I'm chronically disposed to self involvement and, and this and playing God and all that stuff. It's like my default position, but it just to the extent that I try to stay surrendered and I try to live an altruistic life and go to the detoxes. You know I'm right. Now I got 3 commitments a week and

I can't return all my phone calls.

Even the ones you don't want to return, even the ones where you go. Oh no,

another 30 minutes about her.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how I feel. It only matters what I do. And so I return phone calls I, I make, I show up for my commitments, I try to push myself aside. And I'll tell you what something I've, I've discovered this is uncanny, but it's been really my experience.

The more reason, the more personal resistance I have to taking the actions in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's almost like the more benefit I get out of it.

I've had me, I've I've been, I've had situations where

I've had a guy sponsor in the lab. He said, I need to talk to you and I say, OK, what are you doing? So I'm going to a meeting over so and so did one of the clubs and would you meet me over there? And I'll catch myself saying, yes, I don't want to go over there. Matter of fact, I don't even like those meetings at that particular place. I, I don't even, I don't, I just, I don't want to go there. And I just, I resisted, but I said I'd go and I'll got to do what you say you're going to do here and crap.

And I'll go and I'll come out of there thinking. And that's the best meeting I've been to in a long time, right? I've, I haven't had that happen once or twice. I've had that happen a lot.

Or that that 12 step call you don't want to go on and four hours later, man, you're just lit up

because something happened there,

some something I couldn't have,

couldn't have foreseen. I couldn't have predicted. Matter of fact, my mind predicts awful, awful.

Oh, this is going to be bad.

It never is.

So if you're new here, I, I really encourage you to get a sponsor. Don't just get any sponsor. Get get the sponsor you don't want to get.

You know, the, the, the one that you're afraid. If that person sponsored me, I would probably be doing stuff I don't want to do. Get that

the one you get, that's the one you get. Get that one and surrender. My my friend Clint used to talk about surrender. I kind of loved his analogy, he said. And it's so true, he said you we all get a visual of surrender. We see it in war movies all the time. When someone surrenders, they lay down all their means to defend themselves.

And they sit down and they wait for someone to tell them what to do.

I get that.

So in other words, you push, you pull yourself right out of the equation.

It's not about you anymore. It's about whatever I'm told to do. And in 1978, when I asked this man to sponsor me, I was so

I felt like such a worthless piece of crap. I was so afraid that he was going to look at me and say, sponsor you. I don't sponsor losers like you. Now, he would have never said that. But with my emotional disposition, I thought everybody felt about me the way I feel about me. And so I had to up the ante a little bit. I said if you'll sponsor me, I'll do anything you asked me to do.

And that's the day the journey began

and he had to hit some. You know, if you're new, you say that to someone, you're going to be surprised. They have a lot of things they're going to want you to do. I mean, it's

and none of it seems like a good idea until after we do it. It's a nothing weird. A is the the actions of recovery do not look like a good deal until after you do them. And then we all say the same thing. All I should have done that years ago. That was, that was amazing, man, that was amazing, but doesn't look that way because the alcoholic mind, my alcoholic mind doesn't want me to get better.

It's an uncanny, I've noticed this over the years, Steven. To this day,

I have this uncanny resistance to doing the things that are going to uplift my spirit, but I've never had that same resistance to things that involve self gratification,

but always the things that are good for me.

I mean, look, I'm sure I'm not the only one here. That's, you know, when it came time to to do the 4th step and write your inventory where you just,

God, I would do anything rather than pick up the pen, I would wash my car. I, my sponsor, say, are you writing? And I go, no, but I'm going to more meetings like, you know, I like, I have to throw something at him to get him off my back. I'm going to more meetings, you know,

but there's a crazy resistance to doing this stuff. And yet the the 4th step is primarily when I did it. Following the procedure in the big book probably is done

more to change my life than anything I've done here. It it, it just changed my whole world.

Sandy on Sandy Beach one time said something is so, so true. He said that they say you can't change the past. He said I work the steps and ended up with a different childhood. Oh, yeah, really? You know, it was so odd that by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, my life was crap. I I got to that place Clancy talks about where there's no friendly direction.

I tried to commit suicide on my last run and if I would have succeeded, there wasn't, for there wasn't anybody that would have been a pallbearer for me.

I'd burn them all up and use them all up. There's nobody, my parent, nobody.

And

I, I am really at that place where there's no friendly direction. And, and I, I often think about this, I think I had to get to that place.

There's a line in our book and it says that before you ever come to believe in God or your sponsor a, a, or anything, it says you got to come and you got to believe in something else first. It says we came to believe in the hopelessness and futility of our life as we've been living it.

I believe that if you've done everything you can do to get some relief from the bag in the bottle in this party is dead and will not jump start. And you drink in depression and misery and your miserable drunk and you get sober and it's like doing time. And you're miserable

sober and neither option has any hope for you.

Then you know, futility and hopelessness. The alcoholic. The hopelessness of the hopeless alcoholic. That the one thing,

Tinkerbell,

the one thing that I counted on, I, I'll tell you is the effect of alcohol and and combinations of alcohol and drugs. I could put up about with anything. I put up with going to jail every once in a while, as long as I get out, I can have a party. I'll put up with work at miserable, miserable jobs, as long as when I get out of work, I can go get lit up. But when I get to the place where I understand a truth that is unpalatable to me,

but I can drink that stuff till I pass out. What I can't do is get free.

Alcohol hooked me,

and I could tell you a lot of things it did for me, but the primary thing is it did was it set me free,

free from the bondage of self.

And there's only one freedom and that's it right there. It's freedom from the bondage of self. All other freedoms come from that. It's the only freedom that means anything. It's the only thing worth anything in the world is freedom from the bondage of self.

And in the early days of my drinking, alcohol did that. It did it immediately and it did it with an effectiveness that was life changing. I, I, I could tell you a dozen stories. I got one. I remember, I always remember this one. I worked at this factory, Pennsylvania. God, I hated this job. I hated the people there. They were. Did you ever go somewhere and everybody's clicky?

You know what I mean? Just those people, you know and

hated. Those people created that job. Me, I go through that whole shift needing a drink, but I can't drink at work because I did and I got caught

and I got an ultimatum. And I, if I, if they even suspect I'm drinking again, they're firing me. And I can't get fired because I need this job because I need that paycheck. So that paycheck I got a problem. It's no, no medicine without the paycheck and I need this job. So I, I'd get like a mule and a hail storm. I'd go to work hungover sick and I'd hunker down and take it, just glare at those people. Everybody walk on egg shells around me and work

because I just, I just exude like waves of hostility, you know, I keep my mouth shut, I don't say nothing. But you, you know I don't like you, right? You

and I get that buzzer goes off the end of that shift. I'm the first guy that time clock a punch out and shoot across that street to that bar every night. First one, first one from that whole factory in that bar every night. A bartender knows me, sets me up to two Double S, 100 proof beer back.

I've been, I've been sober, grinding away on my emotions all day long.

Do you ever notice that first drink tastes like hope?

Yes, it does. Yes it does. It's it's if, if I was a guy who believed in God, after that first double shot, God's back in the world again, you know, right? It is amazing. I throw down that second double shot and I'm sipping on that beer waiting for him to set me up with another pair. And those people I can't stand

from that factory start coming into that bar. But I got four shots, 100 proof whiskey in me and half a beer. I'm looking at him thinking, not bad people.

They just kind of look, they kind of look nicer. All of a sudden, you know, after about 6-7, I don't know how many drinks I'm shooting. Pulled a couple of them after about a dozen drinks were planned on our vacations together. You know, it's like, and I get this, this sense of intimacy

and connectedness, man. And for a lonely guy who's locked up inside himself, suffering from what now I've come to understand is the bondage of self, that is a freedom that I'll go to any lengths to get.

The problem with, with alcoholism in the progressive nature of the disease is is it got it for you could keep getting that. Oh my God, it'd be a wonderful if I could have kept getting the effect that I got when I was 20 years old from drinking. I'd have never got sober. And I would have been willing to pay just about any price to continue to get that party going. Going to six months every year in jail in exchange for having some fun once in a while would be in my alcohol logic seem like a good deal to me.

Never having anything, never be able to hold a job long enough to get benefits. Who cares? As long as I can, as long as I can go out and get lit up man I'm I'm in I'm in. But what happens is is the disease progresses, my ability to capture and and re recapture that feeling starts to bleed out man. I can't get it anymore and I don't know why.

The last couple years I I hated to go to parties and bars

because what I would see it just break my heart as I would see people who's getting the effects from alcohol that I used to get and I can't get them anymore. The book says we'll know a loneliness such as few do

will be at the jumping off place and will wish for the end.

Because that's all I wanted. I wanted to be able to get free again. And now I drink and I drink in depression. I drink and I'm more in bondage than I was than I am when I'm sober, if that's possible. Because when I'm sober I just get me right on me. And I can't get me off of me. And I'm in a trap I cannot spring. Where abstinence is is bleak and depressing and lonely and and

drunkenness is pretty much the same.

And I'll tell you something, you get to that place,

it looks like there's no options. And I, that's when guys like me start thinking about killing themselves, you know, 'cause I can't get free. And that's all I want. That's all I want is I just want to feel free again. I want to be able to come out and play. I want, I don't, I want to get away from these emotions. I want to get like this, whatever this thing is, that's between, I know what it is today. It's me, this thing that's between me and life. I get to get through it, man. I got to get free of it so I can so I can

loneliness, so I can start making some connections with people,

but I can't think myself through the bondage of self and I can't drink myself through it at the end of my drinking. And, and so I can't live. I can't live like this. I can't live with what's happening to me when I drink because it's turned on me. It's become bad. And yet I can't live without it either. It's it's a bad deal.

And so I try to commit suicide and I couldn't pull it off because I'm a coward, basically.

And I ended up in that detox where I met this man Dick Tucson, and I asked him to sponsor me. And the journey began. And little, little did I know that all the actions that you were encouraging me to take

were designed to set me free.

Designed to slowly and incrementally transform me from the inside out to to the guy who feels at times like I did want to when I was 18 and 20 years old and getting high was amazing

to get that kind of a freedom again. I wouldn't have believed that that was that's to me, a, a looked like some kind of punishment for being such a terrible guy for so long. You know,

and it's not,

I remember I was, I was sober just

few months, I guess I said the older there's a, with the Solano club. It was, it was the one place I felt comfortable going to meetings at besides the detox and the, and some of the recovery houses and this Alano club. It was real. It was kind of like this place, except it it sat on Las Vegas Blvd. in North Las Vegas between a strip joint and a pawn shop.

Just kind of spiritually nestled right in there.

I look and I found it home there because it was a lot of St. people

there is not uncommon to be sitting in a meeting and you somebody would be sharing and someone else would fall out of their chair and have a seizure on the floor. And back in those days, the guy Sharon wouldn't even stop sharing. He just they, they just like, yeah, yeah, it happens all the time. And it was really very comfortable for me.

And I was a couple months sober and I'm in this, I'm in a meeting there. And it was one of those weird discussion meetings where somehow

everybody's talking about their how lucky they are to be alive and all their near death experiences. And I've had a couple drug overdoses that I live through. I'm lucky automobile accidents where I end up in the hospital. I went through a windshield. Don't you remember it? And somehow I must have put my hands up because all the all the cuts and everything are are here and nothing's, nothing's here in the back of my head.

All those near death experiences. Everybody in the room had at least one, at least one.

And I was sitting there and I got this like goosebumps because I'm looking around and thinking

we've all died. We've all died

and this a, a, this is some place we have to come

before we go on.

We have to come here to make things right, to go to the next, whatever that is. And I didn't, didn't upset me. I thought, well, that's cool. That's good, 'cause I, oh, I was starting to like being sober a little bit. You know, I was starting to I, I had a Home group by now. I had a sponsor. I

I was taking some actions of service in AAA. I was starting to feel like I belonged here a little bit.

I had some great, great teachers.

It you know, I I'm one of those guys that man, I just don't fit anywhere. And I had some ran into some brilliant people in a that knew me. And if you're new, I'm telling you we know more about you than you do.

And they knew more about me than I do. And this guy at the old Alano Club, he said he gave me a job. He came up to me and he said like, like I was like he needed me. He said we we need your help.

I said, really? He said, yeah. He said we need someone because he knew I would just out of out of the treatment, so I was just out of detox. Not very long. He said we need someone brand new who knows what it feels like to be brand new, where it's fresh within them, to look for the new people and make them feel welcome and let them know that there's somebody in this room that knows exactly how they feel. Can you do that?

I thought, well, yeah, I could do that. I don't have any profundity to share with them. I don't have any spiritual stuff to throw at them. But I know what it's like to feel awkward and uncomfortable here

and I can let them know I know how what that's about because I'm, I'm in, I'm there. And I started doing that. This guy tricked me into doing that

and I'll tell you I'm looking back, I have no idea if I ever made anybody feel welcome and a A except me.

And in no time at all as a result of doing that, I felt connected and plugged in

and almost and like a loving feeling of intimacy with Alcoholics Anonymous. It was very similar to an alcohol used to work.

I, my first sponsor was a fanatic with 12 step workout. Every time you turn around, help someone sign up for the 12 step list, take meetings back into the detox and on and on you go. Sign up for April's new meet meeting at the gene prison and just just help people, help people help people. Well, I got a lot of problems,

I know. Sometimes I seem happy, but give me a minute.

And he wants me to help people. And I don't want to help people. I mean, I mean, after I get my act together, I'll help people, but I, I need more help than anybody I know.

And he said, he said just do it. And I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. I said to him one point. I said, you know what, don't you think I should work on me for a while?

He rears back to his work on you. You've done quite enough of that. Stop it.

Yeah, I have done quite a bit of that

and I just started doing this crazy stuff and I started buying. I hadn't worked the steps yet, but I I was doing step 12 before I'd even done 4 out of the book.

You know, I in an ideal world to do this in order you do, you get more. That's the best way to do it.

But I think, I think God worked through those people that they knew this guy's not going to stay physically sober long enough to get through the steps. We're going to have to get him a little relief from himself from the very beginning. And, and I started to do that and I started to get these little islands in my basic depressive days that were free.

And I discovered something that Bill Wilson discovered Depression can't hit a move in Target.

So I was going to 1520 meetings a week. I had detox commitments, treatment center commitments. I, I mean, I had all kinds of stuff going on, but I still had those periods between actions and Alcoholics Anonymous where I'd be by myself. And I shouldn't be allowed to be by myself because I'm one of those guys. You leave me alone

and it doesn't matter how good my life could be good. It doesn't even matter. It's nothing to do without here.

You leave me alone and I have a tendency just to start thinking.

And my mind does not come up with joyful thoughts.

I don't start getting excited about how, how good my future is going to be. I, I just see problems. I, when I, I just see potential crap happening. I, I start seeing how, you know, they, I thought that job was good. Now I thinking about it, they're, they're really taking advantage of me. You know, I just, I'm that guy, right? I'm just that guy

and, and my depressive, myself obsessed depressive nature, just like Bill Wilson's it,

it just shifts everything in my perception. It owns and alters my perception. I remember calling up Dick one night when we probably think it was a Sunday or Saturday or Sunday of the weekend and I, I was in a depression again. And I said to him, I said I just feel horrible. I just feel really horrible. And he said, well, how long have you felt that way?

I've always felt this way,

he said Friday night at the Floating Big Book. You were laughing and carrying on with some of the guys. You know what? Here's what I said to him.

I must have been in denial

as it was in the beginning. Is now and ever shall be world without end. Shoot me. You know what I mean, right? Because my head wants to imagine that it's ever. Ever,

forever, forever.

I see my my ego wants me to feel hopeless because in my hopelessness

is significance.

Do you ever have the feeling like you're miserable, you feel horrible, and you look around and you go,

that's in? None of these other people could take this kind of emotional pain.

Puff up on it a little bit.

I'm not going to kill myself because I'm going to show you I can take it.

And it was, it was quite a few years here before I started to get free. You know, I haven't, I haven't had a, a time like that in a long time. And, and I don't, I almost hate to say this because there's an old idea in the back of my head is that I say this, I'll jinx myself,

but I've been really very happy for quite a long time.

But it didn't happen overnight and get to that place overnight. And I think I'll tell you what I believe

wholeheartedly. It's tied to not only the fact that I do a lot of service and I sponsor guys,

but I've been forced over the decades, sometimes from just a lack of alternatives, to trust God.

And trust for me when I got sober was like an atrophied muscle

that had never been exercised. It was worthless and weak and pathetic. But what happens is I get forced into positions like it talks about in the book where I'm all of a sudden I'm sober a number of years and I'm crushed by some self-imposed crisis I cannot postpone or evade. And the reason is I did it man. I made decisions based on self that put me in that position to be heard. The consequences are coming at me that I mean it to

like this. No, I did not.

Did it turn out? Yes, it did.

And there's no wiggle room. There's nowhere to go. And at those points it's God's either everything or is nothing. He either is or he isn't. And the book says what's my choice to be? Sometimes it's there's no choice. The word decision comes from the Latin Cesare, meaning to cut. Sometimes life just cuts away

all the alternatives and it's either it's either God or you're screwed,

right? It's either either this God that you're telling me about, Naya is there or what? I mean, what's the use if it's not that way? Because I got nothing here. I got no plan here.

And I sometimes we have to. We're forced into that wheelbarrow. We're forced into trusting God, sometimes against my way. I mean, I I'll tell you honestly, there's been times when if I could have come up with a plan, I would have and I wouldn't have trusted God. But I have nowhere to go here.

And and then what happens is you, you start showing up like God's going to take care of you. And it seems crazy. You don't even really believe it. But you show up like that because you don't know what else to do. You're praying like crazy and all of a sudden crap starts to occur

and all of a sudden you realize that

you're safe and protected. Something happened. It may be your problem. Maybe you still have dues to pay for your, but you're OK. You've been taken care of. You're all right. Every time I do that, it strengthens that trust muscle. And I think I think it was 25 to 30 years here. I'd say at least 25