welcome to sober Sunrise a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience strength and Hope from around the world we bring you several new speakers weekly so be sure to subscribe whether you join us in the morning or at night there’s nothing better than a sober Sunrise we hope that you enjoy today’s speaker hi I’m Bob bazan and I’m an alcoholic hi Bob for the grace of God in the power of AA and having a drink since the 10th of December 1967 and for that I’m very grateful um uh this has been without question an above average experience of conferences that I have attended around the United States this is one of the best organized uh I love the way we’re dressed tonight uh so many places we go I think we’re looking tacky and I like uh I like the feeling in the room you know when the when everybody’s dressed up I want to thank the committee and Tommy and Ken and Beth and anybody else with anything to do with my being here I for some reason have been kind of dry lately and I’m about to dive back into some step work and I think I needed this weekend this has just been this has been terrific just all the speakers I think I think it Blended together it’s a you know there’s a every place you go there’s kind of a collective Consciousness and the collective consciousness of this room is very good everybody you know just been been very cool I’ve been with most of the speakers before I because I played golf I didn’t hear everybody and I arrived after one or two of talked but I really do think there’s been a synergism of of what everybody has said and kind of a theme has kind of run together and and it’s been very cool especially you like larine this morning larine would be a good reason to start to urine test alanon um I I mean I’ve been a little worried they talk about all the the level of energy in Southern California and I think June and larine are just a little flat and uh what I like best about line is you know the story that they’ve survived through but they love each other and I really think at their best our stories are stories of love and I think Laren is that story and and I think that’s cool June’s story to me is the story of Christmas you know it’s just almost your head keeps saying that’s not quite possible it isn’t quite and for me there’s always been one or two stories maybe John Harris maybe John vard there are different people at different periods of time where I’m kind kind of a you know I think too much and uh and I compare and there were certain stories that if you hear them you just could not think and you could not compare they just take you in such a way that they you know kind of Astound you and Junes is one of that one of those stories for me so it’s been nice I enjoyed Keith and Julia this afternoon I I think your relationship is a very sweet relationship I like that relationships are challenging and and uh I think that’s good so to be here with Dick and and and that this is also a service conference I mean I you know you have got a couple of ex-staff members from General service you know you got Betty and Helen and you’ve got enough ex delegates around here to caused serious damage if they ever got together and and started talking then the extraordinary amount of sobriety that’s in this room uh which is very cool one of the things I’ve always liked is being around the the big people you know the people who have more sobriety and I think the ones that are here like Liz and and Katie and the people who had you know 40 plus years I’ve never I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a room where you’ve had uh you know 25 people or 30 people with over 40 years of sobriety and a half a dozen people with over 50 that is really cool and for and for some time I have been recommending when I go to conferen is that the person who gets the book for the least sobriety give it to the person the following year and this is the first place I have ever been where the young woman who got it last year gave it to the young woman who got got it this year that is just you know very cool most enjoyable has been my time with Sandy I I I love Sandy and he’s been one of my Heroes I think he’s our you know one of the great communicators his use of language is kind of poetic but I like his program and I like who he is and uh so I enjoy my time with you very much I started drinking when I was a freshman in high school 13 years old I was uh 4′ 11 weighed 95 lbs second smallest kid in my class mostly mouth um I went to a military school on a college campus and we drank in High School like most people drink in college we had fraternities uh of my five closest buddies in high school four of us are in AA and one’s in Allen on and we and and four of us were friends since we’ve been 9 years old so we didn’t pick each other you know because of our drinking sort of thing in my high school class have 115 guys we have a dozen members of AA so we had a lot of alcoholism we had a lot of recovery uh when I found alcohol it was kind of like you’ve heard everybody talk about this weekend it was just it was not just like an improv movent it was kind of like a sex change operation it was kind of transformational it just you know it took me from the fringes and put me in the middle I was an uncomfortable kid I mean you know you’re the second smallest kid in your class you feel a little insecure you know to start with an alcohol made me part of just solved all my problems it was a solution I I loved it enough that I chased it I went after it almost died of alcohol poisoning a couple of times in high school by the time I finished high school my drinking problem was the largest subject of negative conversation in my home I come from a great Home in St Paul we’re kind of a Catholic town and we have these Catholic kind of thongs or you know Clans you know everybody had you know somewhere between five and a dozen children and it’s so it’s a small town of the Twin Cities were kind of the Fort Worth of the you know the St Paul Minneapolis and uh so families know each other it’s more like a village and I got kind of a reputation for drinking I didn’t uh you know seek that I thought my problem with drinking was that I was underage and my father was too strict you know when you’re underage if you get caught it doesn’t matter you know how much you drink it was just the fact that you were drinking and my father caught you it didn’t matter how much you were drinking and I thought when I had a chance to go away to school that that would be solved and I went away and I didn’t get solved I drank my way at the University of Notre Dame in the middle of my senior year I that’s what my dad said that was uh you know in the yearbook with my class ring I but I was in civil engineering carrying 25 credits a semester going to school about one day every two weeks and it gets tough to Bluff your way through a thermodynamics exam um I was a class drunk I had three guys petitioned to have me removed from engineering school they used my room as a study hall we were someone was talking about one of their favorite movies was Rudy you know if you’ve seen that movie he went there I passed through I mean it was just I remember many years after or a few years after was over maybe 15 or 20 years that I got invited to give an AA talk at Notre Dame and I went down there and I had some amends that I wanted to make and it was really kind of an emotional reunion for me and I went back there and I’m in the middle of my talk and I said I’ve always had a deep sense of failure about this place and I said I think I just figured out why I think it’s because I failed um I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19 that seemed impossible and inaccurate to me it didn’t seem um I was always in trouble once or twice a year I almost killed myself in a car accident or some other like event and uh when he diagnosed me uh I kept on pleading with him that I say I drank like my friends and he said well maybe some of your friends are alcoholic but he said I think you drink differently than most of your friends I think you drink with different people more often and I think you get in more trouble than the average person did I didn’t buy that and uh but you know when I was when I walked out of Notre Dame I was due to be commissioned as an officer in the Army I had to get a medical release the medical release I got was for alcoholism uh it got me out of there and I went home and I finished school at a local University and when I finished school my dad asked me to leave the house he said we love you but we can’t almost can’t stand here right now um you know I’m one of seven kids uh I was the family problem couldn’t follow the rules so I left home I got a job at a liquor store and uh have to use your gifts and uh I’m drinking a I don’t know qu a day this is the last year of my drinking I’m stealing booze I’m absolutely a mess I get fired from that job for going 80 miles hour with a delivery truck and I get a job as a waiter the last four months or five months of my life I worked or my drinking I worked as a waiter I’m living not on skdr but $10 night rooms I’m shacked up with different people that I work with and uh you know Dr Seuss The Child author those are actual photographs of people I live with during the last year of my sobriety and uh I get up in the morning you know take a couple of decks or dream drink a couple of beers i’ go to work I’d work from 11: to 2: and at 2:00 I’d go to a bar and i’ drink beer and at 5:00 I’d go buy a pint and that was my life day in and day out I didn’t want anybody to kind of know where I was I was out of touch with my family for four or five months during that period of time and then towards the end of that I went to a party and I got my face kicked in and I got fired as a waiter and I had no place place to go I was tapped and I went back home and I asked my dad if I could move back in the house and he said if I wouldn’t drink he’d allow me to move back in the house and I promised I lied as it turned out cuz I when I moved back in the house I’ve been drinking a better part of a fifth of day for most days during that year and I started to go through withdrawals so I it was necessary that I drank when I moved back in the house I was so tired of being the family problem that would be hard for I was so tired of being me that it’ be hard for me to explain to you and when I moved back in I really wanted my life to change and I started I thought if I could change the circumstances of my life so when I moved back in I got I had just got back together with Linda now my wife is a 37 year member 38- year member of Alena and that’s been a great partnership and she’s a lovely lady and she’s mad at me that she’s not here this weekend we both made a decision not that she wasn’t going to come but when she heard who was on the program she’s a little upset that she did not come so she’s wants it both ways and I remember uh we were talking the other night and I I just got my face kicked in uh we had broken up for the last year of my drinking and I’d call her about every month and a half kind of like a low-grade headache just about the time she’d start to date someone I’d call her and kind of bug her just just you know just to let her know I was still there and I went into this party that she’s at she’s got a date I walk into this party my face is kicked in I’m drunk and uh I walked up to her and I asked her if we could get together the next day she saides the next day I got together with her and I said I would like us to see if we could seriously look at marriage um at that time she was a psychiatric nurse working on an alcohol Ward and she said yes and um not too long after that we became engaged remarried uh I got a job as an executive training and a manufacturing concern about my first car and I thought wow it’s finally going to happen I’m finally going to be an adult only I couldn’t shut my drinking down I just now I’m the company drunk I’m in a company of Engineers I’m in the research Department I’m falling asleep at my desk I use up my sick leave in the first four months of work you know I’m just a basket C when I went back to make amends to my boss at that company he said you interviewed so well and um yeah I interview well I just don’t work well isn’t that interesting we can get in good schools we just often can’t finish good school you know we we can do the extraordinary it’s the ordinary that we have trouble with isn’t that we are room full of people who can do the extraordinary but have trouble with the average and I worked at that job for four or five months I got in some trouble I left I got a job as a Salesman thinking to give me f more flexibility I worked as a Salesman for three or four months a buddy of mine got married went out about a 4-day drunk called in the the first couple of days didn’t call in the next two woke up a a Thursday afternoon in August of 1967 or July of 1967 I didn’t know if I had a job a fiance or a place to live until I was married and all of a sudden the recommendation of my father and my psychiatrist that I look into AA didn’t seem like such an impossibility and I called central office I got an old timer on the line and he talked to me for about 15 minutes called a couple of other guys and arranged an appointment and I met two guys at a cafe and when I went there you know I after I hung up the phone I called work and found out I still was employed and found out I was still engaged and found out I still had a place to live and I thought why the hell did you call AA I um kind of an overreaction but I wanted to go see what an alcoholic looked like so I went and I met these two guys one guy had 6 years one guy had 6 months when you’re young and in trouble you get put in front of a lot of people for help doctors lawyers Indian chiefs Bishops nuns priests psychiatrists and you’re always a subject of the conversation but not always a participant and uh usually there’s recommendations after they meet with you and I thought that was going to be kind of what this was I was 23 years old but it wasn’t what it was these two guys said we’re from AA we had a drinking problem we found an answer in AA we want to share it with you and they sat me down in the booth they told me their stories it was the first time in my life that I’d ever been tried to be helped by someone who had a drinking problem I found myself identifying and sharing with them and that night I went to my first meeting of alcohol anonomous we have many traditions in AA one of the most wonderful ones of which that we share our experience strength and hope and not our ideology and philosophy there is something very powerful about sharing your life those two men and the sharing of their life with me changed me that night there was something significant that happened I went to my first meeting of AA and uh that was an extraordinary experience I thought you know I was 23 almost everybody else in the room probably average age 45 they sat me down I still have the same sponsor that I got that night in Alcoholics Anonymous Andy talks about he’s got a sponsor for the last you know 42 years and I have the same sponsor that I have had for the last 38 or nine years he’s 52 years sober and he’s 87 years old and he’s still active member of AA and uh not bad I drank twice after walking in the front doors of AA once on a business trip to the West Coast after 30 days of sobriety and once on our honeymoon I think I had planned to drink on my honeymoon it was kind of subconscious but we honeymooned in Mexico you know where the divers dive off those cliffs in Mexico I dove off those Cliffs on my last drunk I was in the audience watching the world’s high diving conc I like God that’s not so tough and um I had a swimsuit on underneath my Bermudas I dove off the public landing climbed up the cliff got up to about 90 ft I split my swim suit I cut my leg my wife is going absolutely nuts and I’m stuck I can’t get up I can’t get down I’m trying to decide whether to jump or dive I’m watching the waves and finally I figured out a hell with it and I dove God watches after fools and drunks cuz I made it and over the next 20 years we went down there quite a bit with the kids we vacationed down there and when on my 10th anniversary Linda gave me a card with a picture of the chasm at lockr and said there but for the grace of God and we were watching the divers and I said God that’s a dumb thing I’ve ever done and she said Bob it’s not even in the top 10 uh the U I don’t know how you can share life and see it so differently it’s uh got I got back on the airplane I got home I was embarrassed to go back to the group but she told me to call Warren I called Warren I got back active in AA and I can remember I didn’t think I was an alcoholic I’ve been being told I was an alcoholic for some time I thought alcohol was my answer not my problem I thought if they knew about the other issues of my life they wouldn’t think I was just an alcoholic they were telling me that bourbon was my problem I quit drinking once or twice just before I went back to my senior year I was beaten robbed and rolled and shot at and ended up in tough shape and a ended up in a psych wward after I got patched up and they were not going to let me go back to my senior year but they let me go back on the condition that I wouldn’t drink and I went back and I didn’t drink for two or three three months and my life didn’t get instantaneously better I didn’t all of a sudden become what I thought you were telling me I’d become if I just wouldn’t drink and I thought I proved that I could quit if I had to and I thought I proved that alcohol wasn’t my problem that there was some other kind of built-in failure mechanism that was operating in my life I remember that Warren sat me down when I walked in the meeting and he said he said Bob alcoholism is a disease it’s a three-fold disease it’s physical mental and spiritual once you cross the line from problem drinking into alcoholism alcoholism affects you all the time when you’re drinking and when you’re not drinking the idea that alcoholism could affect you when you were not drinking was a brand new idea it was like rocket science I had never heard anybody say that he said what we use what we’re after in in AA is not just abstinence we’re after sobriety what we do an alcohol eous the on we take our last drink on our last drug we use the 12 steps to change to find a different way to live to deal with the spiritual and and the emotional side of alcoholism and if you don’t change you’re not going to stay this is a program of change and those were the TR us that was like the Gettysburg Address of AA and what I found in in Minnesota especially at that time all the meetings were closed step discussion meetings all we did we got in a room if there were 30 or 40 or 50 of us we some man or woman would get up give the step for five or 10 minutes we’d count off and we’d go into two or three different groups and we’d finish the meeting with a discussion about about how the step operated in our life the steps were and after the meeting I I mean I’d come early I’d stay late and after the meeting all the guys would meet with their sponsors and they’d be talking about the different issues and they were I thought we’d be talking a lot about how not to drink almost no conversations about how not to drink they have assumed that you didn’t want to drink the conversations were how to live fights you had with your wife problems you had at work making amends making lists it was a I pretty quickly got the idea that this was about living not about not drinking and I got back and when I got I I was always an active member of AA my sponsor was the 12-step champion of our group and he was phenomenal and uh I said okay I’ll buy it I got the problem and if I got the problem and you’ve got the answer I got a half a dozen other things that are going on in my life and if you’ve got the answer those issues ought to be dealt with in AA and hell it might take a year yes um my problem were horrible but ordinary I uh I had trouble getting up in the morning I later found out that had something to do with when I went to bed but at the time I had there was no I I had some work issues I had a little trouble getting to work uh I had trouble staying at work and I had a little trouble working when I was at work um other than that I was a pretty good worker um I had money issues I spent $300 more a month than I made in 1967 and I was supporting most of that habit by gambling and uh doesn’t seem like much money now but 1967 that was a pretty good amount of money and then we started to have kids and I had great mom and dad but even great parents make mistakes and I wasn’t going to make the mistakes that my parents did and I didn’t I made all the mistakes they made in a bunch they never thought of I was loud impatient angry immature and sometimes violent with my children I’m not proud of that fact but that’s an accurate descript destion of how I was and I had a gambling issue it was more of a hobby um four or five hours a day four or five days a week it wasn’t a big deal and uh but I was making five or 10 grand a year playing back gaming and it was kind of like a second job I had every one of those issues when I walked in the front door of AA none of those issues were on my first inventory my first inventory was you know in hindsight not very insightful it it was the best I knew how to do at the time that I was two or three months sober and uh it was kind of a recitation of the things that I felt the most ashamed about and the things that I was trying to hide and bedeviled me the most and it was still a a good process for me it was a process that I felt a significant amount of forgiveness and an idea that I was going to take my life in a different direction and proved an important very important process for me so I had these issues of one by one they kind of came up during my first year I had trouble identifying my defect of character was kind of on a honeymoon I liked everything about AA it was one of the most Pleasant times that I’ve ever had in my life isn’t that funny that many of us when we come in a that the cir circumstances of our lives are so mixed up at the first year is often in many ways and I think because of the surrender that we have we’re you know and it was one of the most exciting nicest times I’ve had in my life and then on my second year which I found to be much less comfortable one by one I started to take on the issues of my life and one by one I would grab them and I would take them and I would try to deal with them and i’ make a little bit of progress and mostly I wasn’t making much progress by the end of my second year I had a pretty good list of my defects of character I worked on them pretty hard during year two three and four and when into my fifth and sixth year they started to bother the hell out of me and eat my lunch and in my seventh and eth year they were really grinding on me now I’m an active guy I’m sponsoring guys I’m going out in 12ep work I’m active in service I’m starting to give AA talks and I’m start I’m trying to deal with the issues in my life and it’s not working and uh felt pretty familiar kind of like everything went in my life I’m a great starter but I don’t finish many things I interview well I just don’t work well and now I’m in AA and everybody’s patting me on the head for the first year the first two years and all of a sudden I’m an AA and you know the first thing that happened to me when I came in Alcoholic Anonymous is I tore down the wall that I built up between you and me I had a wall built up so you couldn’t see the intractive things that were going on in my life and the thinking that went on behind the wall said you like me but you only like what I let you see about me if you could see everything about me you’d hate me because I hate me and who knows more what allows the insufficient crumb I am than me I was walking around ceca would say comparing my outsides my inside with your outside in a very good way but when I came in I started to tear that wall down I started to tear down on the first 12-step call I started to tear down a conversation with my sponsor and I tore it all the way down when I took my fourth and fifth step and I made a discovery the discovery was is I’m not unique most of us come in with a profound sense of uniqueness and if you do not drop some of that sense of uniqueness we probably won’t stay because we’ll be looking for the differences rather than the similarities and when I dropped that wall I made the discoveries I’m not unique my personality may be unique but not my illness not my behavior not my experience not my feelings and I started to have a sense of hope that would work for you would work for me and that was why I was on that honeymoon that was the first place I had ever been where I felt like I was home and where I felt like someone understood me but as I started to get sober I’m two and three years sober and I’m one of the younger guys in the group I started to have problems with sex or I started to have problems with money and I started to have problems with work and when I started to have money those problems I say thank you very much for helping a drinking problem but stay out of my work life stay out of my gambling stay out of my marriage stay out of my parenting and Brick by Brick sober going to five or six or seven meetings of alcoholic stamus a week I broke my wall back up when I came in a what I wanted to find was someone who was so insightful that they could see through me and see the issues that I have and help me straighten my life up I didn’t find that what happened to me as I came to AA I made a surrender and I became an alcoholic and what I had was hundreds of people who could help me with recovery from alcoholism and then as I started to get sober and move through I started to look for an expert on Bob not on alcoholism and when I was six or seven years sober I was feeling pretty alone and I think the experience I’m about to describe to you is not an unusual experience in Alcoholic Anonymous I think a lot of us between 5 and 10 or 5 and 12 years of sobriety your pants catch back on fire I think we are surprisingly wonderful at dealing with the early issues of our sobriety we come in with a list of things that we’ve got to take care of and we are amazingly successful and alcoholic synonymous with dealing with some of those issues in early sobriety but there’s a lot of things that we are not bright enough or insightful enough to put on that list we wouldn’t have put them on the list if you told us to put them on the list you know and uh that was the list that started to get me in trouble and at seven or eight years of sobriety I’m not thinking about drinking but I’m thinking about suicide I’m in the meeting that you know a new guy comes in with that bushel basket full of manure that they have and I sit them down they share with me and I say hey as bad as it is and as tough as it seems you’re in the right place I’m really glad you’re here I know it seems hopeless for you but if you come in here you get a sponsor you get in the book you take the steps you’re going to be okay you do not have to do it perfectly you just have to have a reasonable attitude get into this stuff and not drink and you’re your life’s going to be okay you see that guy over there that guy over there I called on 24 years ago I had a I was his sponsor in St Paul Minnesota for quite a number of years I said you see that guy over there his life was a mess and now he’s hitting it out of the park you’re going to be okay and then I’d get in the car at 11:00 at night and I go home and I’d say Bob when’s it going to be okay for you you’re seven years sober when are you going to learn how to work everybody knows how to work you don’t know how to work when are you going to stop spending money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like when are you going to be gentle with your children and more loving with your wife when are you going to quit gambling and I didn’t know because I’ve been trying as hard as I knew how to try to get rid of those defects of character and I had failed and by this time I knew what the answer was the blessing that I had I’ve always liked the old-timer had great examples I you know I knew that what I had to find was something you know what God had to do with Wednesday is what I think I had to discover as a Catholic I had so many issues around religion that I that was a very uncomfortable subject we talked a lot about spiritual spirituality and I was so uncomfortable with spirituality if the meeting got we had an upstairs and a downstairs and when if the meeting got too spiritual I left the meeting that got to a spiritual and went to the downstairs which was off in a breakout meeting for a new guy my blood pressure went up 15 points just going by a church and I had a lot of unresolve and it was that way because it was important to me and I had a a lot of unresolved issues around that that I didn’t know how to it was clearly explained to me the difference between religion and spirituality but at that point in time recovery I didn’t understand the distinction and I knew what I had to do but I had a problem and the problem was is I go knock on the door God says who’s there I said God is Bob he said what do you want I said I’m at your sober and my pants are in fire I’m dying I need help it seems to me that people have a better relationship with you are doing better than I’m doing and I want to turn myself in and God’s going to say okay and then I’m going to say what every drunk wants to know what do I do yeah you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what God’s going to tell you to do get up in the morning go to work stay at work work at work get on a budget I think that’s an allenon word I think that’s a harsh I I think it’s a difficult it’s it’s a harsh word I think um stop gambling be more gentle with your children and be more loving with your your wife and I’m starting to have trouble at home I’m going to all these AA meetings my wife saw more of me when we were dating than when we’re married and uh she’s starting to wonder one of the places I’m supposed to practice a program is in our home I thought God that’s none of your business you’ve got your program you know I’ve got my program you know we’re not supposed to take each other’s inventory and uh I was stuck in that place for 2 years and the problem was is how do you go to God develop a relationship if you can’t fulfill the conditions of the relation ship I thought as soon as I clean my act up I’m going to develop a relationship with God but right now I don’t know how to do it and then with a desperation that I guess I hadn’t felt for some time when I was about seven years sober I went back to the steps and for the third time I started to formally go through the process of taking the Steps step one was really easy my life was powerless and I was unmanageable it was as clear as night and day you know what was what I had lost step too and that was a usual for me I believed it for us but not for me I absolutely without question believ that God would restore us to sanity but he wasn’t going to restore Bob to sanity I had lost belief in that cuz I’m seven or eight years sober and it looked like my life was going I was on the down escalator going up and I think when you’re desperate you get more or less active than not of desperation I started to see people with bigger problems with smiles on their faces walking through the walls that I was trying to walk around and out of that observation I started to believe that God would restore me to sanity I took step three on my knees with my sponsor in his office we didn’t do that in those days but I started to go to conferences and I started to hear people talk about doing that and I thought I’m going to try that and then I did my third four step and I think that maybe was my best four step and I did my fifth step with my sponsor which we also didn’t do in our group we did it with clergy and I told them I said be careful when I’m done cuz whatever you recommend that I that I do I’m going to do I said I feel like I’m dying of thirst LLY next to a lake I said you know if you gave me the test I could pass the test I know what to do I just can’t do it and I am so tired of not being able to do it so I did my fist step with him and when he was done one of the things he wanted me to do was go to a psychologist about work and money issues he said Bob you’ve got a lot of I had a pretty successful dad and the idea was i’ never going to be as good as my father and and I was had a lot of money problems and a lot of failure in my life and uh I did not want to go to a psychologist but he he lined me up with an industrial psychologist and I said okay and I called the guy up and he said can you get your parents involved I said no said my parents have been over involved in my life and I don’t think at this stage they need to Mommy and Daddy need to come with me he said we get your wife involved I thought oh crap uh uh well they see it so differently um maybe more honestly you know I mean it’s tough uh where you get your kids involved and I said they’re pretty young uh I didn’t want my children involved I was ashamed of not only do we have a pattern of alcoholism in my family we had a pattern of rage and I hope that as I’ve helped in my family once you have the example of recovery that becomes available to other members and we have quite a few members of Linda and I have three sons that are in recovery my father got in recovery I have a brother in recovery and I have two I have couple of nephews in recovery uh but uh I said yeah I’ll bring the kids I did not want I was ashamed of how I was and we had a pattern of Rage in our family that’s two or three generations old as near near as I can tell and I also hope I’m going to be of help breaking that pattern in our family because there are those old those are old ideas and those patterns do so I go to the psychologist Lindon and I and Billy and Peter are there and we’re having this discussion and he and he looks at me and he says I’m I’m going broke my company’s going downhill I don’t know why I’m busting my ass two or three hours a day and it is times are tough it’s bad bad business times and uh he looks at me and he said ‘why are you so afraid of failure I wanted to punch him I said look uh you don’t understand you’re a doctor I said if you go bankrupt you know you they you just take your little sign walk down the hall pounding on another door and within six months you’re making 100 Grand I said I’m about to lose everything I have I said nod your head up and down if you understand that I said I’m in the investment business and I’m going broke I’m about to lose everything I had he looked over at my wife and he said if Bob lost everything he had would he lose you and my wife said nope wouldn’t lose me he looked at the kids asked him the same question the kids said no wouldn’t lose us if you can’t lose you can’t play I’m the guy that if we were going to have a marathon I’d look and talk and act like a runner I’d have a great pair of running shoes and a nice outfit I’d tell you I won some race in Minnesota and you’d expect me to be in the top 10 in the race and for the first third of the race I’d be up front with the top 10 and somewhere between halfway and 60% of the race I’d fall down hurt myself and I wouldn’t finish the race when the race is done someone would say what happened to that guy from Minnesota I don’t know a hell of a guy want some race he must have pulled a hamstring but if you would have followed me around in a helicopter in my life for the 10 years preceding that race you could have guessed within 50 yards when I fell down cuz I don’t finish anything and I’ll tell you it gets old it gets old they had gifts you’d never get out of the box you want a price for alcoholism it’s not having a life you listen to a guy like Sandy who didn’t feel very good about himself in early sobriety you look at the qualities that that man has and the accomplishments that he has and you wonder how could anybody not feel very good about themselves well most of us feel that way I mean we are this complex sort of thing where we have this love hate relationship we can do great things but we know that over a period of time you know that life isn’t a Sprint it’s a marathon and we don’t do well in marathons we’re quick not too long after that and what I discovered in that interaction with the psychologist Was Fear now I’ve done three inventories my fear inventory had to do with dogs snakes and high buildings it was as uninsightful with respect to fear as it could pass possibly be and what I discovered in that meeting with the psychologist is I was afraid of being married I was afraid of the responsibility of being a husband I was afraid of the responsibility of being a father I was afraid of failure I was afraid of success which was an interesting Discovery so I was a guy who was swimming in fear and Chamberlain used to talk about the three fishes in the ocean with the three fishes said isn’t the ocean wonderful and the other fish looked over and said what’s the ocean I’m swimming in fear and don’t know what it was two weeks after that meeting with the psychologist I’ve had one of the worst days I’ve had in sobriety I got up late went to work late left early got in the back am and game won 600 bucks missed dinner missed the AA meeting came home got in a fight with my wife and slap one of the kids one of those days you’d like to have videotaped and sent to the general service office to kind of show what eight years of sobriety you’ll do for you and uh I’m in my living room 11:00 at night reading some non-conference approved literature and um the other big book as it happened to be at that moment and I said Gee it happened again and I said it happened again weren’t you there yeah I was there but I said it’s so habitual it’s almost like I don’t have to think it’s like it happens it’s like I’m in a blackout it’s like it happens automat and all of a sudden I stop and I realized that was a bunch of hoie I sounded like a guy who wanted to quit gambling I wanted to gamble for as much money as I wanted to gamble whenever I wanted to gamble and not have problems because of gambling I wanted money without work I wanted my wife’s and children’s affection and love without spending time with them and all of a sudden I realized that I had designed my life to be it way it was I had tried pretty darn hard and alcoholic synonymous to clean my act up and I had failed and for some reason at that that moment that seemed okay that had never seemed okay for a moment up until that moment and I was allowed the experience to take the sixth and the seventh step of the program of AA the sixth step said that we were humbly that we were entirely ready to have gu remove defix of character and the seventh step said that we humbly asked him to remove our shirt companies I had spent eight years trying to get rid of them I didn’t have the power to get rid of them I’m responsible but I am the pipe not the well it happens through me not by me a doctor doesn’t heal it creates an aseptic environment creates an atmosphere in which healing can take place and God heals and I don’t and a farmer doesn’t grow he plants a seed creates a fertile environment which grow can take place and God grows and I don’t change I create an atmosphere in which change can take place maybe the attitude of being honest open-minded and being willing or the attitude of the sixth and the seventh step and God changes me it happens through me not by me most of us have the profound experience that out of our render we stopped drinking and stopped using and most of us know that at that point in time it took very little effort it was removed from us you read page 84 and 85 and it talks about you know that we’re not using any effort it has been removed and that’s how I believe that change happens in Alcoholics Anonymous to a significant extent and that night I got down on my knees I took the sixth and the seventh step and four of the major issues of my life disappeared that night such as the power of AA I knew that I’m the guy you know when I go on a diet the first thing I do is I go buy a little ice cream and a bag of cookies um well it’s already been a bad day I’m just going to finish it off and I’m probably never going to have ice cream again anyways so it is uh and I knew that I needed to put some structure in place or that wasn’t going to happen and God gave me the gr I made an appointment with my sponsor about when I’d go to work and how long I’d stay at work and a little conversation about what I’d do at work I started dating my wife I dated my wife every Friday night for 30 years I we stopped doing that the last number of years cuz we travel so much and we’ve got I think we’ve got to pick that back up that was the best thing in the world she and I knew that one night a week we had each other’s undivided it was a real live dangerous day we got dressed up no one else we were alone no one else went out on it it was you know often a night of romance it was it was it was a very good thing and it was awkward I had you know we found ourselves talking about kids and bills that wasn’t how we fell in love you know we had to kind of reestablish a romantic environment we started to go to Chicago and shack up for the weekend and start to do some fun things and reestablish our relationship uh I quit gambling that night I uh I have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to be a better parent I think being a parent takes 125% of whatever you got I think having children it’s like having a bowling alley installed in your head it is it is one of the most demanding processes it is one of the great privileges of life and as most of us know that the great relationships of life being a child to a parent being a parent to a child being a spouse those are the unavoidable relationships I I guess you can anal those and you can walk out of them but but for for practical purposes they’re unavoidable and what you keep running into is yourself it keeps presenting yourself with the message of the universe saying this doesn’t work we keep wanting a different message kind of interesting if God wanted to get us a message who would he get it to us through bad news probably your spouse um maybe the eyes of my children as I get angry or go to strike one of of them maybe a coworker maybe a boss maybe your sponsor maybe someone at a meeting but it’s going to be someone Close to You probably and uh when I got through that period when I got when I made that change my life took off like it was on a rocket ship and for the next 10 years everything I touched turned to Gold the guy that couldn’t work I have a business partner uh thank God that’s part of my business success is picking Partners well part of my marriage success is picking women well uh my wife’s activity in Alena we we we just La a couple of months ago had uh eight people over the house mostly widows of people who were in The Allen and AA group when we came in 38 years ago and the women said we had everything we could do to tell Linda they’re talking to to tell you not to get the hell out you weren’t married why are you going with this nut I mean you know she’s an Alan on we’re engaged they cannot understand why someone would marry someone knowing they were alcoholic and Linda said I wouldn’t have listened we were in love we were you know she was 21 years old I were 22 and I was 24 and we wouldn’t have listened and thank God you know because it’s been a great run but I’ll tell you without each of us having a program I don’t know if we would have made it uh I can really be a horse’s ass but I’m not a bad guy I love my wife it isn’t like I’m the worst guy in the world but it’s you know to have a woman who’s a partner that when you’re being a real horse’s ass that can still look for her small part in that situation to diffuse it rather than turn the laser on me is a wonderful thing it’s a wonderful thing and uh so all of a sudden my life took off and part of it was because it was the right time the right business environment and the guy you know we built a company with 500 employees and we put together a real estate Investment Company and this was my deeply shallow period uh everything I touched turned to Gold we bought the big house and I had two Mercedes and I was the guy in the very expensive suit the very expensive tie showing up in the Mercedes at the meeting thinking that God had blessed me because I was such a wonderful member of me in your group um there’s problems with failure well there’s problems with success I mean I became arrogant and then that was as invisible to me as the some of the defects of character were invisible to me during my during my lack of success and then in 1986 they passed the tax act and between 1986 and 1991 I went broke I lost $10 million and gained 40 pounds I was going to write a book but I couldn’t find a publisher if any of you were out there are praying to be a millionaire you might include the idea of keeping it um it never occurred to me that once I got it I’d lose it but uh after the tax act change I lost everything I had I negotiated my way out of bankruptcy in 1991 so the guy who was a failure who became um business-wise a success lost it all my dad was always concerned because I’ve always been a spender kind of a spend Thrift and I was a guy who liked things and I like money and he was always nervous I said Dad don’t be nervous it’s going to be okay and he well of course my father saw things in my character and in my behavior that made him nervous and I I just couldn’t you know just before I lost everything I went to a guy and I asked him to be my spiritual adviser he’s still my spiritual adviser this day he said what do you want Bob I said I want to be less materialistic and more loving and within 6 months I started to lose everything I had um I went to him I said we have we have to talk I uh said what I really want to do is I want to keep the stuff and be less materialistic we laugh about that today today I wouldn’t trade the stuff for the lesson I’d take the money in the lesson but I but once again uh when you’re in pain you get more active and uh I got more active and I’m I think one of the Great lessons in my life I I had to find out who I was with money and who I was without money at that time our middle boy uh came home from college and he got arrested for drunk and driving total out an automobile and ended up in detox it was kind of was Christmas present to Lindon and I and he went to a halfway house after he went through treatment and I go to the halfway house this big halfway house for the meeting on Friday nights and when the meeting would start I’d start crying and i’ cry all the way through the meeting and can’t you see someone there see that guy he’s got 24 years of sbet how how’d you like to have what he has I um I think he’s got the clap I’m not sure what he’s got but it and then over the last almost 20 years I’ve built that business back up and today I’m in love with my wife and I have a great relationship with my three boys our Three Sons uh all are in the program I’ve turned my wife into New York as a carrier um our oldest our oldest boy has 17 years of sobriety and he’s 37 our middle boy has 15 and he’s 34 and our youngest has eight years and he’s 26 your children very very seldom come to you to get well we are in a program where I’ll take care of your kids you take care of mine I am as grateful my business partner helped initiate the recovery of all three of my children he’s got 43 years of sobriety uh I don’t know why we’re so lucky but it’s uh wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Mr AA the big talk ER with such a horse’s ass at home that what if I would not have been able to correct my violence at home that when my children developed the disease of alcoholism they didn’t want to come to aing but he gives a hell of a talk you know wouldn’t that have been a bad deal I am so grateful that this program helps us take the issues of our lives and as Sandy talks about chip away the unworkability the process of finding God is a process of removal not addition it’s a process of coming home it’s a slower process than I would have liked but I have the privilege of being in this Village I have the privilege of sharing my life in the last little bit of my talk I want to talk about change which I think is the uh Sandy and I over the weekend I’ve been talking about some of the great oldtimers and it’s really interesting most of the young people in the program today wouldn’t know who we were talking about I’ve had the privilege of listening to and being around some of the great members of Alcoholics Anonymous they just Were Heroes of mine I heroes are not very fashionable today but I’ve always had Heroes and Alcoholics Anonymous and it’s been an important it’s been a very important thing to me and I’ve always had the message that AA brought us to recovery brought us to God that was a program of change that I had a responsibility and what I like today we have become so big that there are people who talk about what it is to be a good AA and you can be a good AA by getting all your merit badges how many people you sponsor how many meetings you go to how many talks you give how many committees you’re on but the real measure of what it is to be a good AA is how it’s changed your life in the world go to your husband go to your wife go to your boss go to your brothers and sisters and see if they think your life has been improved by the process of all col n of I always thought if I were going to ask people to raise their hands and I’m not if I said how many people in this room want to get rid of the issues that hurt themselves and the important people in their lives I think most of us would raise our hands and say that’s what I want to do you know we don’t have a very we don’t have a definition of alcoholism we have a couple descriptions of alcoholism in our literature the the one joke that I like the best is if you take a normal you take this room when you have a normal person and an alcoholic and you go out there that door and there’s a guy with a baseball bat that hits you over the head you go out that door and there’s happiness Forever After the normal person will get up go over to that door open it up get hit on top of the head come back in and then go out that door and of Happiness us forever after an alcoholic will go over to that door open it up get hit on top of the head and come back in and they get up and they go over to that door and they get hit on top of the head and they do that six or seven times and they go out there for the last time and the man isn’t there so they go looking for him um the the uh uh I was enormously afraid of change I thought my behavior and patterns was was who I was I had collapse a distinction between what I do and who I was the behavior of Our Lives that we don’t think we can change it’s just Behavior it is not Skin and Bones it is not who we are it is just what we do an alcoholic synonymous a transformation that takes place which is a kind of a Quantum Leap from change the transformation that takes place is a transformation of the heart and mind it is not just an improvement it is a total change our program says that we’re going to have a spiritual awakening what happens to us as we become more awake as we take these principles and put them in action in our lives pretend for a moment that I’m working with a guy who’s 35 38 years old married with kids and he’s having trouble doing the four step you know the columns and stuff like that gets kind of complex and I say to them look I know you’re having trouble don’t worry about that just get your mom and dad and your wife and your kids and a couple of co-workers and two guys from your group and bring them over the house your brothers and sisters and here’s what I want you to say to him I want to say in Alcohol Anonymous we have a step where we try to get in touch with our Defector characters and I’m having trouble identifying mine and I was wondering if you’d help most of us wouldn’t call that meeting you know why we don’t want to change but it’s worse than that we don’t want to know we train each other about what we can say and what we can’t say you train your spouse we’re not having that conversation you want to have that conversation going to be a tough conversation you train your kids about what they can say and what they can’t say you train your boss you train your co-workers you train the guy guys and gals in your group look I won’t call you on your crap you don’t call me on M we’ll talk about the steps we talk about the Traditions you stay out of my face I’ll stay out of yours for the first eight years of my life I tried and failed to change some of the significant defect of character and unworkable areas of my life life I tried and failed I tried and failed I tried and failed but I still grew but there comes a time where you either change or you stop growing and that’s a different point for many of us for some of us it’s earlier and for some of us it’s later and we when you get to that point you either start changing or you build an addition onto your house to accommodate the problem Chasers hang out with the Chasers gamblers hang out out with the gamblers make a deal we’ll talk about the program steps activities you stay out of my you know bad deal but there’s so much fear around the idea of change and I thought change took effort I thought it took information that’s why I think so many people I think the study of our book is terrific but I really think that most of us but there are more tapes and more studies about the big book today that there ever has been I don’t know if there’s much more transformation than there was in the early days the steps are not mechanical if they were mechanical all we’d have to do when we got in trouble is say the third step prayer and click our heels and we’d be back in Kansas but sometimes when you’re in trouble you go to that prayer and no one’s home the program isn’t just about doing it’s about being there’s a way of being in the process of taking the steps and it’s hard to describe Chamberlain one time talked about when I shared that in the thing that Sandy and I did about he went to a symposium where all the experts were on alcoholism and someone asked him what he thought of all the experts and he said they well they don’t know much about surrender which is the key if you have someone in trouble and their pants are in fire what you’d like to have them do is surrender but you can’t tell someone how to surrender and you cannot surrender for them so the process how do you when you go to the steps there’s lots of people doing lots of us at different periods of time do step work but have trouble sometimes making the change happen in the process of taking the steps I still think that process is worthwhile but sometimes it’s drier than we’d like it to be and it doesn’t work as well as we’d like it to work because the ego almost says go ahead do what you want to do you want to inventory it fine you want to study it fine you want to talk to someone fine but get this straight it’s not changing do whatever the hell you want to do to make yourself feel better I think that’s good but it’s not changing and that’s where the real issues of Our Lives rest and our program says having had a spiritual awakening what happens to us is as the process of taking the steps we awaken I still have a tendency to anger but because you have helped me be more awake I no longer strike children and I no longer have is an issue in my life to the extent that it causes me serious trouble with the important people in my life that’s how it happens it’s like it falls away but most of us as I say have collapsed a distinction between Behavior we have so strongly identified with it that we think it’s Who We Are we almost think that if we were to change those things we’d be gone and that’s what Sandy was talking about and the world today is is absolutely nuts the world today support I I think when I got sober in the 1960s I think the world supported recovery I mean today it’s just crazy out there and this very strong message is you just need more money bigger houses faster cars I mean it it is just you know the the answer is external it is not internal and uh thank God when Sandy talked about the message from Carl young that you need a spiritual awakening and to have a society that will support that Spiritual Awakening and that’s what we have we have a set of principles spiritual in nature that are practiced in our lives will allow us to be useful and whole I don’t know where you get a better deal I mean the privilege of being able to walk into a room many of us sometimes have difficulty with one another but I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a meeting where people don’t want the best for you I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a meeting where where we had an argument about a step we argue about the tra Traditions a lot because we use them as rules rather than principles but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard an argument about the steps of Alcohol Anonymous most of us have such respect for the program and the steps we know that we do not none of us are experts in the process in this process because it is a process of living not just studying not just information I’ve always had I have always known what to do I’ve always been able to pass the test I’ve always had the information but the information is the booby prize there are people today that are the first 164 pages of the book memorizing their horses asses I’m serious I mean it is it is uh and and please don’t in any sense of that think that I’m not encouraging the study and the applic you know the study of the book and the you know that’s our text it is I I think greatly inspired but I think the process is spiritual I think it’s of God and because it’s of God you can’t own it and you can’t describe it it’s a rough track out there all of us you know we do pretty well most of the time but I’ll tell you if you’re going to be sober 30 years or 15 years or 10 years you’re going to have your turn in the barrel your wife’s going to turn up with cancer they’re going to downside your company your kids’s going to get sick you’re going to crash the car you’re going to lose your insurance your health insurance and something’s going to happen to you you know dick that health issue that you had it comes slapping in your face I have seen people with programs that have dealt with issues in life big issues in life and have been able to meet them with great dignity and and well I think we see more miracles and alcohol EX anonomous on a regular basis than you would see any place else it’s been a privilege to sh thank you very much for having me this weekend God bless you thank you for listening to sober Sunrise if you enjoyed today’s episode please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message until next time have a great day