The Party Was Over, But I Kept Trying to Restart It – AA Speaker – Bob D.
Bob D. shares his AA speaker story about chasing the feeling of early drinking for decades, self-delusion, and finally finding recovery in the fellowship after hitting bottom.
Bob D. was a freeze-dried alcoholic before he ever took his first drink at 12—always awkward, always searching for connection, always the outsider. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through 28 years of recovery and explains why the last three years of his drinking were the darkest: chasing a magic from his early drinking days that could never be recaptured, trapped in what he calls “psychotic wishful thinking,” unable to kill himself or get drunk anymore—until he finally landed in a Las Vegas detox in 1978, broken enough to buy the whole package.
Bob D. describes his lifelong struggle with the disease of alcoholism, from his first drink at age 12 through decades of failed attempts to recapture the early magic of intoxication, explaining the phenomenon of craving and the inability to stop once he starts. He explores the concept of self-delusion that keeps alcoholics trapped—the belief that someday they’ll be able to drink like normal people again, even as evidence overwhelms them that the party is over. Bob shares how he finally surrendered in a hospital detox in 1978 and discovered through AA sponsorship and working the steps that he was never unique or separate; the same vacant, self-centered, fear-driven person shows up in every fifth step he’s heard in 27 years of sponsorship.
Episode Summary
Bob D. begins with gratitude for the people who went to great lengths to get him to this meeting, then immediately turns serious: he’s here to talk about alcoholism and recovery, not to brag about the journey. He celebrates another member’s 10 years sober, acknowledging that no matter how sick or hopeless you feel, watching someone stay sober for a decade has to plant hope.
What struck Bob early in life wasn’t alcohol itself—it was something missing inside him. He describes himself as “a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol,” awkward and anxious even before his first drink at 12. When he drank that day, something shifted. The way he felt without that effect would never be enough again. From then on, he was chasing something.
Unlike his friends who could drink to the edge and stop, Bob couldn’t. There was no stopping point. He had an allergic reaction—what he calls the phenomenon of craving. As the buzz hits, a yearning kicks in for more, more, more. He’s the guy who, if still conscious, isn’t done drinking. By 15, he’s in juvenile court for the third time. He doesn’t understand why he can’t shut it down when everyone else can. He doesn’t know yet that he has a disease.
The disease got worse. Bob moved to drugs—methamphetamines, heroin, methadone maintenance—everything taken to the wall. He connects his drug use to Dr. Bob’s use of sedatives. Dr. Bob, an alcoholic like him, couldn’t stop once he started drinking. So he took barbiturates for 17 years to buy himself periods of abstinence. Bob did the same dance with different substances, all to get away from the core problem: the thirst wasn’t for alcohol or drugs, but for an effect. He references a letter from Carl Jung to Bill Wilson describing alcoholism as a “low-level thirst of the being” for unity, wholeness, connection to God.
For Bob, alcohol was magic. Sober, he was the awkward guy who couldn’t fit anywhere, felt a barrier between himself and the rest of life. One drink and everything changed. He could dance, talk to girls, laugh, belong. He was the man he always wanted to be.
By 1978, standing on a bridge trying to take his own life, Bob realized the magic had turned on him. The last three years of his drinking were spent frantically, futilely trying to recapture something he couldn’t get back. No more dancing at bars, shooting pool, laughing with guys. Now he hauled up somewhere with a half gallon of vodka, seeking oblivion, going on crying jags, not bathing, feeling sorry for himself. He was pathetic. No one wanted to drink with him anymore—he was unpredictable, might punch through glass, might just whine about hurting his parents.
He tried everything. Psychiatrists, therapy with Albert Ellis, Gestalt therapy, primal screaming. He went to AA meetings for 7.5 years as what he calls a “slipper”—never buying the whole package, still running his own ship, doing what felt right to him. He calls this self-delusion: “psychotic wishful thinking.” All the evidence says the party’s over. But he can’t accept it. He wants it to still be going. He believes somehow, someday, he’ll drink again like he did at 18. Over 28 years, he’s seen people relapse for this reason: they never really shattered the two delusions in Chapter Three—that they can control it, jumpstart the party, get away with it. As long as they hold that back door open, they’re not fully in AA.
After the ark house (a recovery residence) where a judge sent him as an alternative to two years in prison, Bob came out, tried to take his own life, couldn’t jump, and cursed himself for cowardice. Seven to ten days later, foggy and lost, he landed in a hospital detox in Las Vegas, Nevada. Little did he know he was about to enter the only really good life of any value he’d ever had.
In that detox, members of AA came in—the cream of the crop, Bob later understood, the people who understand their primary purpose is to help other alcoholics. He met these guys, got a sponsor, started calling every day, started doing peculiar things he never would have done in his right mind. They took advantage of his weakness and brokenness, and he says he’ll owe them his life forever.
They introduced him to a fellowship he never thought he could be part of. He’d always believed two things that turned out wrong: (1) he could never fit anywhere or feel connected to people sober, and (2) if he did find a way not to drink, it wouldn’t be good. AA had bad news (thousands of meetings to stay sober) and good news (he wouldn’t have to kill himself). Abstinence felt like doing time, hunched down like a mule in a hailstorm. He couldn’t imagine being comfortable sober.
But here’s the thing about AA: the actions don’t care about your opinion. The steps work regardless of what you believe. Bob compares it to spiritual physics. You do certain things, you get certain results. An aborigine who’s never seen electricity won’t believe pushing a button lights a room—but it happens anyway whether he believes it or not.
Today, Bob has a relationship with a power greater than himself, one he calls God. He doesn’t claim his experience is the same as anyone else’s. But AA promises something, and to Bob it’s the single most important promise: something’s going to wake up inside you. Something’s going to come alive that’s never been alive before. Maybe for some, a glimpse in early drinking. What happens in AA is an awakening.
That awakening brought awareness. In his first six months sober, Bob didn’t realize there were other people in the rooms—they were like cardboard cutouts. Then he started waking up to the fact that other people were actually there, struggling, feeling things like him.
Over 28 years of sponsoring and listening to fifth steps, Bob discovered something overwhelming and comforting: it’s always the same person. Same vacant, insecure, self-centered guy full of fear, stepping on everyone’s toes just trying to feel a little better. Same pathetic story, over and over. He hasn’t heard anything new in 27 years. Maybe, as Einstein suggested, the great illusion of mankind is that there’s more than one of us here.
That’s comforting for a guy who always believed he was unique, separate, apart. Through the Fourth Step, he awoke to a sense of community. He can walk into a meeting anywhere in the world and feel connected because the people he’s listening to are him. Some on a really bad day, but they’re him. The separation is an illusion.
To newcomers, Bob says: if you’re lucky enough to know you don’t have anywhere to go, dig in. Get a sponsor. Follow the process in the book. Ignore the psychobabble from treatment centers. Do the fundamentals. Understand your primary purpose: you’re not alive to gratify yourself. You’re alive because your pain and suffering has divinely crafted you to help the next guy who walks through those doors just like you, six months down the road. In God’s hands, even the worst things about you become vital tools. Claim your community and your inheritance.
Notable Quotes
The party was over and had been over and I spent the last three years of my drinking frantically, feudally trying to recapture a magic that I could not recapture.
If you’re a real alcoholic, your alcoholism really starts where the bottle in the bag ends. It’s in abstinence that a guy like me suffers from depression, feelings of restlessness, irritability, chronic malcontent.
I don’t want much. I want one thing more than I want anything. And it’s the one thing I can’t have. I want to be able to party like I partied when I was 18 years old again.
The actions of Alcoholics Anonymous work regardless. Matter of fact, I think they work better if you don’t believe they’re going to work.
After a while of listening to fifth steps, you start to get a truth that is overwhelming and very comforting. And the truth is it’s the same person. Every it’s the same person.
Step 2 – Higher Power
Hitting Bottom
Self-Pity & Ego
Sponsorship
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Step 2 – Higher Power
- Hitting Bottom
- Self-Pity & Ego
- Sponsorship
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> >> My name is Bob Daryl and I am an alcoholic. >> I tell you, I've been to gone to some great lengths to get to a meeting, but never like this.
and and the people involved in getting me here and the expense and the trouble and some of them are somewhere out in the middle of nowhere right now, lost. Uh, all for a guy who has been convinced lately nobody even cares about him. Wrong again.
I'd like to welcome anybody that's new. I'm not here to tell you about my trip up here. I'm here to talk about the disease of alcoholism, the recovery from it.
Uh I want to welcome anybody that's new. And tonight, Calvin's celebrating 10 years. And I want you to know something.
No matter how self-centered you are, no matter how sick you are, no matter how hopeless you feel, seeing him stay sober for 10 years must surely give you hope. Uh I uh I'm in love with Alcoholic Anonymous. How can you not be?
If it's done, if it does anything close for you, what it's done for me and the people I've come to care about, you can't help but fall in love with AA and what it's done for my parents both went to their grave knowing their son was okay, something they never knew before. My sister has a brother today. My daughter is has a father who's always been there for her.
She's 19 years old and she's never seen me drink. And Alcoholics Anonymous is this is created all of that. If you would have seen what I did with my life prior to getting here, you would know that.
I I I want to tell you, I think I've always had the disease of alcoholism. I I I think I had it before I ever picked up a drink. I there was before I ever drank, there was something that was a little peculiar about me.
I I didn't seem to feel like other people looked. I had an awkwardness about me. And so I became a pretend kind of person.
The guy that just pretends like he fits but has this this knowing anxiety about being found out. And I was driven. And I was that I was that way before I ever picked up a drink.
I think I was like a freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol. And when I took my first drink, I was 12 years old. I I didn't know anything about it.
All I wanted to do was fit with a bunch of older kids. And I'd have done just about anything for their approval. And something happened to me that day that would change the course of my life.
And I didn't know it. You could have asked me in the middle of it and I wouldn't have known that it was anything that dramatic. But what really happened is that when I drank for the first time, it made me feel so good that the way I would be on the Natch without that effect from that moment on would never be enough again for me.
And I live for it. But when you're 12, 13, 14 years old, you can't get drunk every day. But I got drunk every chance I could get.
I'm 15 years old, almost 16, and I'm standing before a juvenile court judge for the third time. And I'm standing before this judge basically because there's something wrong with me that I don't understand. But every time I go out with my friends to party and we start to drink, I have an inability to shut it down when you're supposed to.
I always go too far. I always take it to the wall. I always get whacked.
And some of the guys I I partied with, they like to party a lot, but they'd go right to the edge and stop. There ain't no stopping for me because once I start, I can't stop. I don't know that I have I have this disease called alcoholism.
I I don't know that I have an allergic reaction that defines alcoholism. That in this allergic reaction is when I drink alcohol, I break out this phenomenon of craving. And what that really is is as the buzz, as the glow starts to hit me in my wiring, which is 100% alcoholic, comes a yearning and a and a craving for more of that feeling, more of that effect.
And I can't get enough. I have never once I just had the on the way to the airport this morning, this new guy I'm starting to work with, we were talking about the doctor's opinion and I asked him I said I said, "Was there ever one moment in your whole drinking history where you'd been drinking for a half hour or so and you're getting pretty starting to get lit up where you ever actually sat there and honestly thought to yourself, I don't think I want anymore. This is just right." And he looked at me like, "No." I said, 'You know, only alcoholics are like that.
Normal people get they can drink enough. They can drink to the point where that's enough now. Not alcohol.
I'm the guy I I've drank myself till I'm laying on the ground. I'm so drunk I can't get up. But if you'd bring me a drink, I'd you know, I'm the guy if if I'm still conscious, I ain't done drinking.
And that's been the story of that was the story of my whole drinking career. So, I'm I'm almost 16 years old and I'm in front of this juvenile court judge because I'm in trouble because every time I start, I get whacked. I I get in trouble a lot.
And I got sent someplace and I was a compromise. My parents were at the God bless them, they they tried to help me. I eventually beat that out of them and they would tried to keep me from being locked up at this really bad place and there was a compromise and I had to go live in a different place and and I uh I'm not at this place that I'm sent to more than a week.
I don't even think I'm not there very long and a guy an older kid's there and he he comes up to me. We start talking and I'm telling him about what how the trouble I got in and everything that happened to me. And he said to me, he says, "Well," he says, "Oh, you like the party, don't you?" I said, "Yeah, I do.
Yeah, I do." He says, "But you drink that liquor. That'd make you stupid." I said, "Oh, I don't know, man. I like that liquor.
I like the time I was drinking one 151 rum was my favorite at the time." He said, he says, "What if I told you that I could give you something and make you feel about as good as that? Maybe even better. Can't smell it on your breath.
Will not make you slur your words. You will not stagger and you keep a whole week supply in your shirt pocket when you're high. Most people won't even know it.
What would you say to that? Sign me up. And he introduced me to drugs.
And I I am an alcoholic and I got to tell you something. Alcoholics should not do drugs. We are pigs.
And I we do I did drugs. alcoholically. I mean, I just Oh, man.
Everything I picked up, I just took it to the wall and took it to the wall and burnt my life down with it. Every single thing I ever picked up in no time at all, I'm I'm doing methamphetamines to the point where where speed freaks who would have been doing speed for 10 years were saying, "Hey, you better cool it." You know, I I I I'm the guy that if you left me alone in your car to go in to get a pack of cigarettes, by the time you've come out, I've taken your radio apart looking for microphones from the FBI. I mean, I I've like whacked myself with this stuff.
I CAN'T EVEN It got to a point where I couldn't even put two sentences together. It would be, "Wow, look at that tree in the sky. Where's the bicycle?" I just crazy.
I just like I was I was spinning in my head. It was like a whirlwind. And I'm nuts.
And a guy came along and said, "Try some of this." And when the throwing up stopped, man, my whole being just went and I could think straight. And the spinning slowed down. He introduced me to heroin.
But I'm an alcoholic. I'll tell you, we shouldn't do drugs. And I took that to the wall and methodon maintenance.
And my dance with drugs was several years to come full circle back to alcohol. I I think I did drugs for the same reason that Dr. Bob did drugs.
And his story, Dr. Bob was an alcoholic of my type. Every time he drank, uh, he couldn't stop.
He'd get so whacked. I mean, when he the day he Bill tried to meet with him, it was Mother's Day and he went out to have a couple drinks and the end result he's taking a nap under the dining room table. I mean, you got to love a guy who takes a nap under a dining room table.
I mean, cuz that's the kind of drunk I am. So Dr. Bob started doing sedatives, high barbituates and high-powered sedatives and he did them for 17 years of his life every day because it enabled him to buy himself periods of abstinence because he got in so much trouble when he started to drink.
And that's my whole dance of death with drugs was for that. And plus there was the facade of the, you know, being a hippie and a a head and all that stuff. But I came full circle back to alcohol because I am the guy who needs the effect.
Dr. Dr. Carl Young in a letter to Bill Wilson in early the early 1960s said something to Bill in this letter.
He said that he was afraid to tell Roland Hazard. And he said he always suspected that this was true of alcoholics, that their thirst for alcohol was a lowlevel thirst of their being, for unity, for connectedness, for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval terms or religious terms, a union with God. And I I drank because I thirsted for the effect.
Not for the alcohol, but for the effect. Because see, alcohol was a magic thing for me. And a guy who on the Natch doesn't fit very well anywhere.
I I'm the guy that I walk into a party and I can't seem to talk to people the way other people seem to talk to each other. I have an inability and an awkwardness around me. A a difficulty integrating myself into groups of people.
A lot of my life when I'm sober in groups of people, I have a feeling like it's all of you. And then there's me. As if there's some invisible yet impenetrable barrier between me and every the rest of life that I can't seem to surmount.
And when it says in our book that the alcoholic will know a loneliness such as few do, they're not kidding. 1978, I stood on a bridge on my last drunk trying to take my own life. I didn't think I was dying of alcoholism.
Felt like I was dying of loneliness because the one thing, the magic effect that I had once found from partying had turned on me and I can't get it back. And I spent the last three years of my drinking frantically, feudally trying to recapture a magic that I could not recapture. And those were the worst worst years of my life.
I remember s I I remember there was a time in my early drinking when it was so magical. In the last three years, I would if I I most of the time I would haul up somewhere with a half gallon of vodka and just seek oblivion. The glory days of of being the guy that's dancing with the girls at the bar and shooting pool and laughing with the guys, those days are over.
I can't recapture them and I'm dying here and I don't know what's wrong with me. And I I started I went to started going to psychiatrists. I went to some of the great psychiatrists in the country.
I went I was therapy with Albert Ellis for God's sake. You had my dad was so he got me connect got me hooked up with that another one of contemporaries of Fritz Pearls one of the founders of Gustalt therapy. I I did all that stuff.
I primal screamed for God's sakes. I mean laying on the ground hitting my hands and being going mommy daddy mommy daddy. I mean I mean I tried some wacko stuff.
I haven't tried it. I hadn't tried every that thing in chapter 3 about all the crazy stuff we tried to control. Imagine if they read wrote that today.
I mean you could do chapters on that stuff. The weirdest one I heard was a couple years ago guy was talking about coffee enemas. I thought oh man.
I mean is that is that with cream and sugar? I mean, I hope it's not whole bean. Oh my god.
But I don't know what's wrong with me. And all I really want is I don't want much. I want one thing.
I want one thing more than I want anything. And it's the one thing I can't have. I want to be able to party like I partied when I was 18 years old again.
And I want I will do anything to do that. and I can't do it and I'm killing myself chasing this illusion. It's the book the book talks about self-d delusion that we're driven by it.
And if you don't know what self-d delusion is, it's psychotic wishful thinking. It's all the reality and the evidences that the party's over and has been over and is not you can't recapture it. That's reality.
But this wishful thinking, this this self-d delusion is that I don't want that to be true. I want the party to be still going. And I want it so desperately that I will start to imagine that it's I can drink again like I drank when I was 18 years old when the evidence and the reality is overwhelming that the party's over.
I think a lot of us die and drink ourselves to death because we think we can. We drink again because we think we can. I And over the years, the last 28 years, I've seen a lot of people relapse.
I've seen guys go through the steps and do a really good job and relapse. And they do it for one of two reasons. either they never really smash the delus the two delusions it talks about in the beginning of chapter three the idea that somehow someday some way we'll control and enjoy it that I'll jumpst start the party and be able to get away with it and I as long as I had that I was I was in and out of AA because I'm not going to be in here 100% not really I can you I can look like because for your approval I can look like I'm in here 100%.
But I'm not in my innermost self where I really live. I'm not in here 100% because I don't have to be because I got a back door that if life ever gets painful enough, boring enough, lonely enough, frustrating enough, depressing enough, I'll go get high because I think I can. And I think I can in the face of overwhelming evidence that I can't.
You know what it was? Here's what my drinking was like the last couple years. I would haul up somewhere.
I would drink. I would go on crying jags. I would feel sorry for myself.
I don't bathe anymore because I don't care. This is not a party. This is pathetic.
I am the whiny crybaby depressed drunk that that that I couldn't even stand. Nobody even wants to drink with me anymore. You drink with me once or twice and that's it.
Cuz you don't know what I'm going to do. I might be in a good mood. Or I might put my fist through a plate glass window and sever an artery and you're going to spend the rest of your night in the emergency room with me.
Or I might just start whining about my father and mother and how much I hurt them. Or I might You don't know what I'm gonna do, right? But it ain't good.
This I'm a party buster, man. I'm a It's pathetic. That's why I like to just haul up somewhere and get as out of it as I can.
Just trying to blot it all out. In 19 70 78 I was sober quite a while. And I was sober quite a while because a judge had sentenced me to two years in a state penitentiary and cut me a break and told me if I went into this place to live that's called the ark house on the north side of Pittsburgh and if I could stay in there a year and get good UAS and good PO report and make the restitution that uh I wouldn't have to do the two years.
So, I'm in there and I'm toughing it out and I'm not drinking day in and day out and week in and week out and I ain't taking no medications because I've done all that and I know it always eventually sets me off to go back to drinking. I ain't even smoking any pot because I've tried that too and that always brought me back to drinking. I've tried it all and I'm just not drinking and it's bleak.
And I don't understand something that that that makes this a deadly disease. If you're a real alcoholic, and I'm not talking about a problem drinker, if you're a real alcoholic, your alcoholism really starts where the bottle in the bag ends. It's in abstinence that a guy like me suffers from depression, feelings of restlessness, irritability, chronic chronic malcontent.
Nothing really satisfies me. Whatever I can bring into my life, the shine of it wears off so quickly. And it's as if there's some huge vacancy right in the center of who I am.
And I frantically try to fill it up. I try to fill it up with sex and jobs and money and motorcycles and everything I can. And no matter what I bring to me, it ain't it.
Now, I don't know what it is. It just ain't this. And what it really is is an effect that I had once found in drinking when I was about 16 years old.
where I could go to a high school dance and a guy who couldn't dance or talk to anybody or talk to the girls or be a part of could drink a half bottle of rum and I could come out and play and I could laugh and I could talk to the girls and and I was a part of I I could s I could play guitar and sit in with bands and sing and I was man I was I was the guy I always yearned to be the end of my drink and I was the guy I hated. I hated myself. That's why I'm standing on a bridge trying to take my own life.
I I I can't fit anywhere and I can't endure this loneliness anymore. And I uh I didn't I I came I came out of that ark house on this last run, tried to take my own life and couldn't at the last second when it came time to jump. I couldn't jump and cursed myself for being a coward.
And little did I know that I would end up about 10 days, 7 to 10 days later, I'm not sure exactly how many days. It was so foggy then, in a hospital detox in Las Vegas, Nevada. Little did I know that I was about to enter into the only really good life of any value I've ever had.
Little did I know that I was finally going to get to a place where I was willing to buy the whole package of Alcoholics Anonymous, a program I had been around for seven and a half years as a slipper, but I never bought the whole package. I would buy whatever was convenient or ever whatever I felt like doing. I still narcissistically was at the helm of my own ship, running my life on what I felt like doing and what made sense to me.
Now, the crazy thing about that is if if you're anything like me, whoever's watched you the last year of your drinking is going to easily come to the conclusion whoever is making decisions for this person is out to kill them. But yet in here, in this psychotic, wishful thinking, it all makes sense. I never intended to do that to my parents.
I never intended to end up in jail. I never intended to break her heart. I never intended to do that to my kid's sister.
I never intended to lose this incredible job opportunity. All I ever intended to do was to feel good or at least to feel a little better. But in this process of trying to fix myself, I burnt my life to the ground over and over and over again.
And I'm not even talking of this isn't all when drinking. I did some of this in periods of abstinence. In 1978, I uh came off this drunk in this hospital and I was so demoralized.
You know, I guess I was finally ready for AA cuz you know when you can't drink, when you can't jumpst start the party and drinking is terrible and abstinence is depressing and vacant and bleak and you can't even kill yourself. What the hell's left except aa really? I mean, you know, I mean, there's no fraternal organization look trying to recruit people like me.
I mean, there's, you know, there's nowhere else to go. I mean, this is it. They call it the last house on the block.
The book, it says we get to a place where there was nothing left. Nothing left. No more plans, no more good ideas, no more hope.
No more hope. I was finally an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. I was in a trap.
I could not spring and I couldn't get out. And I'm I'm sick sober and I'm sick drunk and I'm sick medicicated and I can't change any of it. And I was finally ready for Alcoholics Anonymous.
And some the Buddhists say when the students ready, the teachers appear. And I was sat in that detox in 1978. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous came in there and I don't know anything about AA really.
Even though I'd gone to hundreds of meetings, I didn't know that always in every city in the world. It's the cream of the crop in AA that goes into those institutions because it's the people the only people that goes that will give of their time and go into these deal with these hopeless people are the people who buy the primary purpose that understand that that's why they're alive that their purpose is to try to help other alcoholics. I didn't know I was hooking up with the cream of the crop in of a in Las Vegas.
I just was desperate. And I met these guys and I I started hanging around with him and I got this guy to be my sponsor and I I started calling him every day and I started doing peculiar things I would have never done. The people in Alcoholics Anonymous took advantage of my weakness and brokenness and got me to do some things if I if I was in my right self, I'd have never done.
And I will owe them my life for that. forever. And they started to introduce me to a process and a a fellowship that I never thought I could be a part of.
And I I never thought two things that I was wrong about. One is I never thought I could fit anywhere with people and be a part of sober because I never could. I had the only time I ever felt a part of anything or be connected to people was in the early days of my drinking when I was half lit up.
I had just resided and res myself to a life of that kind of separation and loneliness and I lived in my head a lot and I just was that way and that's the way it was going to be. But the people in alcoholics didn't care about that. And they also I I resolved myself to the person that if I if I do find a way not to drink, it's not going to be good.
To me, AA had good news and bad news. the good news that maybe if I went to thousands of these stupid meetings, I'll stay sober the rest of my life. And the bad news, I'm going to live a long time because I can't imagine life like this because I feel like I'm doing time.
Abstinence feels like I'm doing time. I feel like a mule in a hailtorm. I just hunker down and take it until I can't take it no more.
And I can't believe that I could ever be a part of. And I can't believe I could ever be comfortable sober. But the funny thing about the actions in the fellowship and the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is that they don't care.
The actions don't care about your opinion of what you're going to do. And the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous work regardless. Matter of fact, I think they work better if you don't believe they're going to work.
It's a lot like, you know, not so much today because we we live in a world economy today and things have changed, but I remember little as a little kid seeing things on TV about these guys, these aboriges in New Zealand who grew up their whole lifetime and they never knew anything about technology or modern conveniences. And you could bring a guy like that into this room with all the lights off, dark, and show him the light switches and you could tell him, "You push those buttons, this room will light up like daylight." And you know, he's not going to believe you. He's not going to believe you.
And you know something, it doesn't matter whether he believes you or not. Because if he pushes the buttons, the same thing is going to happen for the guy who believes it's going to work. Because the cause and effect in the realm of the spirit is independent of anybody's opinion or judgment.
It just is what it is. Alcoholics Anonymous is not some kind of ethereal mystic thing. It's like spiritual physics.
You do certain things, you get certain results, and you get them every time. We don't know what happens to guys like me. I I can tell you today that that I have a a relationship in my life with a power greater than myself.
A power that I call God because for basically because I haven't found a better word. But I don't know that my experience with that is is the same as yours. And we don't and Alcoholics Anonymous isn't going to tell you that you're going to have the same experience I have.
All we're going to tell you is we're going to promise you something. We're going to promise you what I believe is the single most important promise of all Alcoholics Anonymous. And there's there's a couple hundred promises in that book.
But the single most important is that is that something's going to wake up inside of you. Something's going to come alive that's never been alive before. And maybe for some of us, we had a glimpse of it being alive when you were 15 years old and you got lit up for the first or second time.
And something woke up inside you, a vitality, an essence of somebody that you've always wanted to be. And I think that what happens in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we have an awakening. Something wakes up inside us.
And with that awakening comes a lot of responsibility and a lot of awareness because one of the things that started happening to me as a result of the steps and a result of joining the fellowship and being a greeter and a coffee maker and a secretary and all the things we do in AA is that I started waking up to the fact that there were other people here. Now know that sounds weird but I think for my first six months of sobriety I didn't even realize there's anybody else here. I mean, you were like cardboard cutouts for my entertainment or something.
And then I started realizing there's actually people here that and some of them are a lot like me and some of them have feelings like me and some of them are strugging. You know, when I wake up in the morning, I I I open my the phone will ring and I open my eyes and answer the phone. I'm kind of a little awake.
And then uh five minutes later, I might be going to the bathroom. I'm a little more awake. Another five minutes later, I'm getting a cup of tea.
I'm a little more awake. And I am in the process of awakening. And that's really been the last 28 years of my life has been a process of awakening.
Awakening to to God's grace in my life, to how much like you I am. Um, I I've been privileged to to sponsor and work with a lot of guys and work with a lot of newcomers over the years and and and take a lot of guys through the steps and listen to a lot of fifth steps. Uh, not all of them are as bizarre as Calvin's, but but but you know what what you get if you and those of you who sponsor people and have listened to fifth steps will understand exactly what I'm talking about.
And those that haven't done this and are still locked into being unique will not. But after a while of listening to fifth steps, you start to get a truth that is overwhelming and very comforting. And the truth is it's the same person.
Every It's the same person. It's the same person. It's the same person.
I haven't heard anything new in a fifth step in 27 years. I'd like to hear something new. You know, a chunky peanut butter and a vibrating lawn rake or something.
I mean, something interesting, but it's never anything like that. It's always the same vacant, insecure, self-centered guy full of fear, driven, and he steps on the toes of everybody around him in the process of just trying to make myself a little better. It's the same pathetic story over and over and over and over again.
Over and over again. And maybe what Einstein said was right. Maybe the great illusion of mankind is that there's more than one of us here because it's the same guy.
And I'll tell you why that's a comforting thing for a guy who always suspected and believed he was unique and separate and apart from is that the sense of myself and the sense of you that I got especially through that fourth step in doing that this was our course. I started to awaken to a sense of community. I am a part of not I can I can walk in I just came from meetings in in a couple other countries.
I I can walk into a meeting in any place in the world and have a sense of connectedness because the people I am listening to in the meeting are me. Now, some of them are me on a really bad day, but they're me and there is no difference. And the the separation is an illusion.
If you're new, uh I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of work to do here. But if you're real lucky, you don't have anywhere to go.
You don't have any. And you can you can think in all our newcomers think, "Oh, I'll just they they think they can go out again and like they're going to find a new life." They always they're either dead or they end up back here. So if you go out again, just remember you're everybody that you've you're just going to be in the room again raising your head because there's nowhere else to go.
You're going to end up back here if you're an alcoholic or you're going to end up dead. So, if you're real lucky and you know that and you have nowhere else to go, dig in, get a sponsor, follow this process in this book. Ignore all the psycho babble and all the crap that tries to come in here from treatment centers and everywhere else.
Just ignore it. Do the fundamentals of Alcoholics Anonymous. by your primary purpose.
That you are alive not to gratify yourself, but you're alive for one reason and one reason only. Because your pain and suffering has divinely crafted you to help a guy that's going to come through those doors that's just like you maybe six months down the road. Realize that in God's hands, even the worst things about you will become vital and useful tools and claim your sense of community and your inheritance.
And we will see each other on the road to happy destiny because you're going to be an example of of something. And I would like to be an example of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you for my life.
>> >> 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.
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