Bottom Is a Feeling, Not a Place – AA Speaker – Frank M.
AA speaker Frank M. explains that hitting bottom is an emotional state of hopelessness, not a physical location or circumstance. A talk on surrender and the first step.
Frank M., a lawyer from Chicago sober since 1971, challenges what most people think hitting bottom means in this AA speaker talk. He argues that bottom isn’t jail, divorce, or bankruptcy—it’s a feeling of hopelessness, a moment when you can’t live the way you’re living anymore and see no other way to live. This is the spiritual foundation everything else in recovery rests on.
In this AA speaker talk, Frank M. defines hitting bottom as an emotional state of hopelessness and surrender, not a physical circumstance like jail or treatment. He explores the disease of alcoholism through his “test tube” metaphor—showing how fear, shame, and other painful feelings are what drive people to drink, not the desire to destroy themselves. Frank emphasizes that the 12 steps require willingness and honesty, and that most people in AA never actually work the steps because they haven’t truly hit bottom and don’t yet believe they need to.
Episode Summary
This is a workshop talk where Frank M., a recovery speaker from Chicago with nearly 50 years sober at the time of this recording, walks through what he sees as the core misunderstanding in AA: what “hitting bottom” actually is. Frank is direct and uncompromising. He’s not here to make recovery sound easy or comfortable. He’s here to tell the truth as he sees it.
Frank opens by establishing his credibility—not as someone with credentials or authority, but as someone who’s observed AA for decades and stayed sober by working the program thoroughly. He challenges the common wisdom that AA is growing (it’s not, proportionally), and suggests that most people in AA cheat themselves by talking about the steps rather than actually taking them. He even tells a story about a 37-year-old sponsor who’d never written an inventory or taken a fifth step, and lived in misery pretending for newcomers.
The heart of the talk is his reframing of bottom. Bottom is not a place. It’s not a jail cell, a hospital, a treatment center, losing money, losing friends, or an arrest warrant. Those things often accompany bottom, but they’re not bottom. Bottom is a feeling—the feeling that you can’t live like this anymore, and you know of no other way to live. It’s hopelessness. It’s the moment when the obsession to control your drinking meets the reality that you can’t. Frank uses the example of a woman who chose to have half her body amputated to fight cancer—she had that certainty that without the surgery she would die. Alcoholics, he says, need that same certainty. Without it, they won’t do what’s suggested.
Frank then moves into his famous “test tube” exercise—a teaching tool he developed in his beginner’s class in Illinois. He asks a room of newcomers to imagine making an alcoholic in a laboratory test tube, adding the ingredients they think are necessary. Without teaching, without AA ideology contaminating their answers, brand-new people list fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression, anger, ego, inferiority, superiority, loneliness. Not one person puts in alcohol. Frank then walks through what happens when alcohol enters that test tube—first it dilutes the pain, makes the person feel better. That works for a while. But for some people, if you keep adding alcohol, something changes. The alcohol stops working. It no longer dilutes the pain—it intensifies it. More drinking means more loneliness, more shame, more hopelessness. That’s alcoholism.
Frank contrasts this with social drinkers, who notice alcohol changes how they feel and decide they don’t like that change, so they stop. Alcoholics, when alcohol stops working, don’t stop—they drink more, chasing the relief that no longer comes. It looks to the outside world like we drink to destroy ourselves, but Frank is clear: we drink to feel better, to escape, to make the fear and shame go away even for a minute. We’re not trying to ruin our lives—we want happiness more than anyone around us, because we’ve never known it.
The second half of the talk focuses on why people don’t work the steps, and why AA’s watered-down message—”just don’t drink,” “one day at a time,” “keep it simple”—doesn’t actually recover people. Frank reads directly from the Big Book: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” The only people who don’t make it are those constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. Frank challenges whether anyone in the room truly fits that description, and suggests the real barrier is unwillingness to surrender, not inability.
He shares stories about how early AA—about how Bill W. didn’t become sober through steps (there were no steps yet), but through a spiritual experience that removed the obsession to drink. The steps came later as a systematic way to help others have that same shift. Frank emphasizes that the program isn’t about not drinking—it’s about becoming happy, useful, and whole. The obsession lifts through rigorous honesty and surrender.
He circles back to his core message: most people who come to AA don’t stay because they haven’t truly hit bottom. Without that feeling of hopelessness, without that certainty that they can’t go on, they won’t do the work. And without the work—not just attendance, but actual step work—they don’t recover. Frank is compassionate about this. He doesn’t blame newcomers. But he refuses to lie to them by suggesting they can get well on slogans and fellowship alone.
This talk lands hard for people ready to hear it. Frank’s not trying to convince anyone. He’s describing his experience and offering a map for those willing to follow it.
Notable Quotes
Bottom is a feeling, not a place. It’s the feeling that I can’t live like this, and I know no other way to live.
Alcoholics come here and they don’t have that certainty. They mustn’t believe they’re going to die or their quality of life will be so diminished that life will have no meaning. Because if they did, wouldn’t they take these simple steps?
I drink because I don’t like how I feel. I like how I see things. And when I see things, they threaten me. I don’t like what I see. I don’t like who I am. I don’t like where I’m at. That’s called alcoholism.
The only reason people seem to fail is people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. Not with their employers or the courts—with themselves.
We take the evidence and we see you’re dying because you’re drinking. And we say you don’t understand. I’m drinking because I’m dying.
Hitting Bottom
Honesty
Surrender & Acceptance
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Hitting Bottom
- Honesty
- Surrender & Acceptance
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Hi, my name is Frank and I'm an alcoholic and I'm freezing my ass off. Bobby, we've got to do something about that air conditioning now.
There must be a way we can at least turn it down. See, when we get warm, then we can turn it up. When we get cold, we can turn it down again.
I uh I spoke at the first Cinjun conference. >> There's no question about that. Tomorrow you'll probably think I spoke last week here.
And after I spoke at the first Kinjun conference, I thought it'd be the last cinjun conference. I'll tell you it was really an impressive little thing. Now, some of you think I have an accent.
I want you to know that I didn't have an accent when I got on the plane in Chicago. I got this accent when I got off the plane in Lafayette. So, if you don't understand me, that's okay cuz I don't understand you half the time.
We're going to have fun here. We're not going to I don't know how you do things here. We're going to do them the way we do them back home cuz that's the only thing I know.
Doesn't make it right. Maybe what you do here is right. But what we're going to do is we're going to share.
We're going to all be in these tapes if there's going to be tapes because this is about sharing, I think. And we're not going to be sitting here for hours reading the book. You can do that at home.
And I'm not a teacher. And you uh I don't think you're going to learn anything or gain anything if you listen to me read. I'm not a good reader.
Now I was told that the subject or the title of this workshop is um spirituality through the steps. I'll tell you what, we could have doubled the crowd had we called it sexuality through the steps. Aa is packaging.
Sometimes the way we label things discourage people. Huh. Isn't that funny?
It's spiritual. That sounds like it's good there. Holy, maybe holy.
I don't know how. What? Spiritual.
You hear that word spiritual? What do you think it means? I don't know.
Holy, godlike, god-fearing. I don't know. I'm not holy.
If you wanted a holy man, you could have found him here. I guarantee you that. You didn't have to reach out to Chicago to find out.
My sobriety date is November 3rd, 1971. And um by some standards that's a long time. Other standards it's a short time.
Now, we don't have any format here today. And I'm going to guarantee you one thing. We're not going to be here as long as this program was planned cuz I don't want to make this a tedious thing.
See, one of the strange phenomenas about people in Alcoholics Anonymous, the people that should be here aren't here. The people that are here don't need to be here. That's phenomen.
I mean, that's that's true. Your willingness to take off out of your life a day after you worked all week to come here indicates to me that your willingness would carry you to do whatever action is necessary to lead a better life. And just by coming here, you've proven that.
Unfortunately, people that really need to be here don't come here. And that's kind of the story of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think most of the people that need this program don't come to this program.
And so many people that come here don't stay here. How many people in this room today have longer continuous sobriety than me? Two.
You know, that's a sad commentary on Alcoholics Anonymous. We've had 54 years to acquire old-timers. We've had 54 years to acquire old-timers.
And yet, the newcomers each and every year outnumber the old-timers 10, 20, 30 to 1. And you know, we all think about that all the time. I go around the country and do a lot of talking in Alcoholics Anonymous and I I hear people talk like, "Oh my god, Alcoholics Anonymous is growing and growing and growing and growing." I don't think it is.
It barely grows in proportion to the population explosion. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, the population of the United States was almost 1/ half of what it is today. The growth of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it's grown less than the population proportionately.
Is that weird? Now, if you hear that, you can say to yourself, "Well, is he saying that alcohol synonymous doesn't work?" No, I'm not saying that at all. I think there's a certain dilemma about the disease of alcoholism that's not true in any other illness.
This is the strangest illness. This is an illness as well while it's killing you, it's telling you you're okay. It's their fault.
You don't really have a problem. you're not dying. And the sufferer from this illness doesn't want to get well, won't do anything to get well, will talk sometimes like they want to get well, give some lip service to something, but to take any action.
And I believe that most people in Alcoholics Anonymous never take the steps. I think that most people in Alcoholics Anonymous cheat themselves. I think they talk about the steps and they pretend they take the steps or they kind of take the steps or they're going to take the steps.
But the actual taking of 12 simple actions or surreners is so overwhelming to them, so threatening to them that they refuse to do it. And the shame of it is a lot of old-timers, don't take steps either. And I wonder why that is.
I was given a talk in Canada a couple of couple of years ago and I said I think there's a hypocrisy about many of us in Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometimes we sit in these meetings for years until the rest of the people assume we're getting better. Newcomers keep coming in and we become elders.
2 years, 3 years, four years sober. They presume we've taken the steps and we live on that presumption. We live on that presumption.
And I said that I really think that most of us in Alcoholics Anonymous cheat ourselves in a kind of a way I think a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous live a lie in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went into that and I said, "It's not I'm just as guilty of that as anybody else." You think, "When are we going to stop cheating ourselves? Why are we going to privately simply do what is the only suggested program of recovery given to us by alcoholics and after that meeting a guy who was a highp profofile big shot in alcoholics a wonderful man sober for 37 years came up to me and said can I talk to you said sure we went outside and he started to cry He said, "I've been a delegate.
I've been this. I've been that. I've been this.
I've been that. I sponsored hundreds of people. Everybody, I'm the oldest sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in my city." He said, "You know, I haven't ever taken a step." He said, "I've kind of taken a step.
I've never written an inventory. never taken a fifth step. I never made any list of people I'd harmed.
He said, "You know what it's been like the last 20 years?" He said, "It's been like hell, but I pretended for the newcomers. Keep coming back. Gets better and better." He said, "You know, I don't care if I'll live or die." Said, "I can't even get up anymore in front of these people cuz I just can't tell them that I lied." And I said to them what I say to other people are in that dilemma.
You know it doesn't say when you have to take the steps when the pain is sufficient if that pain is after 3 years or 3 months or 3 days or 30 years. The grace of God just doesn't come to us when we're newcomers of God doesn't just come to us the day before or the night before the morning we join alcoholics synonymous. The grace of God is a continual flow.
never is unavailable. And you know there's nothing wrong if you've skipped taking these actions, start taking them after a year or three or five or 10 or 20 or 30. Nothing wrong with that.
You don't have to announce that to the you just do it. You can just do it cuz I think that's the difference between staying here and leaving here. That's my opinion.
Now let me just tell you this. Whatever you hear from me today is my opinion. I have no credentials of any kind.
I am not appointed or anointed. Okay? No one has sat in judgment and said, "Yep, he's our man." Nope.
I have no special insights or understandings and I have not um gone to any schools or taken any counselor's courses. I haven't been certified by a treatment center or a hospital. I'm just a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who's been sober since November 3rd, 1971.
And I'm a good observer. I'm a good listener. And my life's at stake.
See, this is not a social function for me. Membership and alcohol synonyms. I believe my life is at stake.
Now, it's not life like my heart will stop if I don't come here. No. And that I'm not afraid that if I drink again I'll die.
Nope. I'm afraid if I drink again that I won't die. And I'll have to live like that one 2 10 20 30 years.
That's what I'm afraid of. And now I come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I like to be at Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think that if I didn't come here this weekend that I'd get drunk tonight or tomorrow.
I don't believe that if I stopped going to meetings next week and the week after that I'd get drunk. I think that the quality of my life would slowly deteriorate cuz I've had that experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know if you have.
There have been times in my almost 18 years of sobriety that I have taken little vacations from alcoholics anonymous. Sometimes it's like I'm going to take a vacation and I'll be gone for a couple weeks. Well, I know they have a meetings there, but I think I'd just kind of relax and have fun and just I owe it to myself.
I'm not going to go to any of those meetings. It doesn't take too long for everyone around me to know that I'm not going to meetings. I start to become critical.
I start to become impatient. I start to become restless and on and on and on. And as you see, I think that alcoholism is a disease that continues into sobriety.
Some people don't think that there seems to be two kinds of people that come into alcoholics. I'm sure there's lot of categories, but I seem to be able to identify at least two. First part class of people come in here believing and they'll argue and argue and argue that the only problem in their life is they drank too much too often and that the purpose and goal of alcohol synonymous is to become sober.
and to stay sober. And for them, that may be true. For me and my class, that's not true.
There's more wrong with me. There always has been and there always will be more wrong with me than I drank too much too often. I'm sober long enough to know that sober can be crappy.
Sober can be full of fear, anxiety, depression. See, I'm sober long enough that I know that's true for me, not for you. So, you got to remember, I'm not saying anything for you.
I don't know you. And even if I did, I would not be qualified to make any judgments about you cuz I don't live in you. You do.
And you're the authority on you. So if I say anything that you disagree with, not only are you wrong, no, I don't mean that. That's it.
If I say anything that you disagree with, don't get mad at me. That's how I see it for me. And I share it because if you're like me, you may see it that way, too.
And if you don't, okay, that's why we have a lot of people in that in Alcoholics Anonymous that speak from these microphones because everyone sees and understands everything differently and no one is right and no one is wrong. It's how you feel and how you see it today. Now the most wonderful thing about alcoholics synonymous is if you keep an open mind you'll discover that what you were certain was true today maybe tomorrow you won't think was so true.
That's called growth. You see our opinions and our judgments and our values change in recovery. And that's why I try not anymore to be so dogmatic.
When I was new and I was so over a year, I knew what was true in Alcoholics Anonymous, what wasn't, what was right and what wasn't. I thought I knew that. Now I don't know that I know any of that.
See, I'm sober long enough now to probably have identified the questions The answers keep changing as I keep changing. And that's what I think Alcoholics Anonymous is. I think Alcoholics Anonymous is an adventure in living.
I think it has little or nothing to do with drinking. It has to do with living sober and being able to stand living sober with me. Now, when people tell me, "Well, no, that's not what AA is about.
AA is about not drinking." Then I accuse Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson of being liars. And they must have been so mentally ill that they would perpetuate a hoax on millions of people who were to follow them because they lied to me when they wrote this book.
If the purpose of Alcohol Anonymous was not to drink, why didn't they say the first step in the program of recovery is do not drink alcohol? Why didn't they tell me that? What were they trying to do?
Play some kind of mind game? Were they so sick that they wanted to bury the truth? Or did they not want people like me to get well?
Why didn't they say that? Why didn't they say look it? You want to get well, don't drink.
They never said that. What happened is over as as I understand it and as I have observed it and as I have been taught, we have some of us so watered down Alcoholics Anonymous that we have really almost changed its total identity in an effort to solicit membership and to help other people. These slogans and these statements that you hear and you see on walls and you see on bumper stickers have nothing to do with the recovery process in Alcoholics Anonymous.
They are helpful, comforting, and useful gimmicks, but they are gimmicks. They're good and they help, but they're not the program of recovery. In addition to the program of recovery, they augment that program of recovery.
What happened sometimes as a traveled west, north and south from its beginning, it was the message was carried by people and they invented these things over the course of years. sometimes that we replace the program of recovery with these gimmicks and then we wonder why people don't stay here. Why don't they get well?
Why aren't they so happy they just keep coming back? Cuz you can only get so well on one day at a time. You can only get so well on live and get let live.
You can only get so well saying keep it simple stupid. You can only get so well and easy does it. And I really think that's kind of the dilemma of alcohol synonymous.
Now I'm going to repeat the statement I made earlier. More people leave AA than stay in AA. More people leave AA then stay in AA.
And that's not because Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work. The truth of the matter is I think Alcoholics Anonymous works nearly 100% of the time. Most alcoholics don't do what's suggested as the only program of recovery by Alcoholics Anonymous.
They simply refuse to do it and they all have their own justifications of why their case is different. You know, when they wrote this book in 19 Let me get this book. When this book came out in 1939, I'm just going to read just a little something that I'd like to talk to you about.
They put in a chapter and they said, we'll call this chapter how it works. Here's what they said. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
That means that between 1935 and 1939, their observation was that people who did the subsequently listed things almost to a person succeeded in effectuating a recovery. Rarely have we seen anyone fail. That translated means hardly ever doesn't it work or opposite the flip side is it almost always works who have thoroughly followed our path.
Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Simple program. Usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
Those are the only people they've ever seen not make it. That's what it says here. And I don't think they were so mentally ill that they put things in this book to hurt or mislead or misguide people like me.
They said our experience is that in our observation is since we started this thing in 1935, hundreds and hundreds of people have come through and hardly to a man or woman has anyone failed who have done these things. And the only people who seem to have failed are people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. Not with us, not with their employees, their employers, the police, the courts, themselves.
It's a simple program they set here. There are such unfortunates. They're not at fault.
They seem to be have been born that way. I read that and I took offense. When I first read that, I wasn't born that way.
I wasn't born incapable of being honest with myself. I don't know who they were talking about. You know where I was born?
I was born a little kid that believed in Santa Claus. I was born a little kid that believed in God. I was born a little kid.
I was a little kid. I was three and I was four. There was no lack of honesty.
To be dishonest was an exception to the rule. I was a good little kid. Want to hurt anybody.
Didn't want to be hurt. I didn't go around when I was started to walk punching people in the nose. I thought this was a nice life.
There was the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. It was when I was about 20 and I found out there was a Santa Claus. I started my problem.
These people that fail, this book says, seem to be incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living that demands rigorous honesty. That's all this program it says demands. Rigorous honesty.
Now, maybe they shouldn't put the word rigorous in there because I don't know what rigorous means, but it sounds awful, doesn't it? I mean, what's rigorous? You have any idea what rigorous is, sir?
>> Unbending. >> Does it? >> Unbending.
>> Okay. And when you're new, the gentleman said unbending. And when you're new, that threatened me because I by the time I come into alcoholic synonymous have lied so much.
My life is a lie. I am a lie. I don't know how not to lie.
It would seem to me when I'm new that rigorous unbending is impossible to me. It would be like purity, perfectionism, perfect. And I know I'm incapable of that.
Rigorous is maybe unbending. Maybe it's not as unbending as unbending. Maybe it's more forgiving than unbending.
I think that now at this stage in my sobriety, I would say for me it's unbending. On November 3rd, 1971, it was do the best you can. Be as honest as you can.
Risk it. Risk being honest just a little bit. Just open the door a little bit.
Just tell one truth. Tell somebody, "I'm scared. I'm in trouble." Or the worst thing of all, maybe I'm rigorous if I just say, "I need help.
Maybe I don't know the chances are less than average that those two suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories in a general way disclose what we used to be like. what happened and what we are like now.
If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. That's the dilemma of alcoholism as I see it. Right now back in my three people who have inoperable cancer doctors in each case have certain hopes for each one of them.
Tell you about a story. 6 years ago, one of the guys that I sponsor came to me and he said, "My wife has just been diagnosed having a very strange and rare muscle cancer. Some sort of a cancer of the muscle." Now, I'm not a doctor and I'm not going to be able to really explain this to you, but just to tell you that that's what it was.
And somehow this lump on her back grew and it was first misdiagnosed by a doctor who operated and then it grew back a few months later and then she went to a teaching hospital near Chicago and they said that she had something a form of cancer that they have only seen medical history 20 or 30 times that's been documented in the medical books. Her name is Joan. And after all the tests, the surgeon said to Joan, "There's only one chance.
If you want to live, we have to cut you in half." What we have to do, Tony, is we got to take your body and we've got to cut you from the neck straight down to the hip. Now, you're going to lose your shoulder and your arm and your breast, half of your chest and half of your back. Now, if you do that, there's a chance you will live.
You know what Joanie did? She got the operation. And I tell you, the day, the night before the operation, Joaniey's not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Her husband is. The night before the operation, Joanie asked me to come to the hospital. She wanted to talk to me.
When I got to the hospital, what she want to talk about is how John was going to take this. That amazing. Now, I'm going tell you, that's proof John's not an alcoholic cuz I she's concerned with how John was going to be able to handle this.
And something happened that just brought me it got my attention. While she talked to me, she manicured her nails on the arm that they were going to remove in the morning. Now, I just know that this wasn't a conscious.
She just did it cuz I guess Shell's did it. And she's talking to me. She's filing these nails and putting on this nail polish.
And I can't stop looking at that arm cuz I'm saying to myself, Joanie, they're going to throw that arm in the garbage in the morning in my mind. She wanted to talk about how John was going to handle it. And she also said to me that the reason she was going to do this is because she wanted to live.
She said, "Frank, there are beaches I have yet to walk." She had the operation and she's half a lady. She's a whole lady, but she's half a lady. She just wanted to live cuz she was certain that without that operation she would die.
Alcoholics come here and they don't have that certainty. They mustn't believe they're going to die or their quality of life will be so diminished that life will have no meaning. Cuz if they did, wouldn't they take these simple steps?
If a doctor, if you were losing your sight, you're going to be blind in a month. And the doctor said, "Now, all you have to do, and it's hardly ever failed, all you got to do is these 12 things, but you got to do them, and you got to do them in the order in which I suggest them to you." How many of us would not do them? What would be the dilemma?
Would we say, "Well, I'll do one, but I want to think about the others, or I'll do the first and the third and the 12th." Would we say, "Well, I'll do a couple and then we'll see. I'll we'll see." Or would we say, "Tell me what I can do to save my sight." There's no question, doctor. I'm going to do it and I'm going to start the minute you tell me I can start.
Only the sufferer from the disease of alcoholism refuses to take the medicine. And when Clancy said some years ago that alcoholism is a disease of perception, he could not have been more correct. What amazing amazing.
Think of that. All they say here is hardly ever does it ever fail. We've never really seen anybody fail unless you they were constitutionally incapable of being honest.
And I don't believe there's a person in this room who feels that they are constitutionally incapable of being honest. And those the only ones can't make it. Everyone else can in our history and everything we observe is if you do these simple things, you will recover.
Why then don't we do it? What's the big deal? What's the big deal?
Why is it so hard? Is this any more less life-threatening alcoholism than that cancer or that blindness or that diabetes or the myriad of other illnesses and diseases? Why don't we do it?
And that's the dilemma that has made people wonder about alcoholics. You know that non-alcoholics that in us they see in us the unwillingness to get well. And that's why I think in most instances you hear about we're misunderstood and prejudiced against and they don't understand and they think we're evil and they think we're weak or they think we're this.
If we just observe our unwillingness to do anything but talk about it, argue about it, theorize about it, and delay simple simple actions. What's the big deal? I think the first thing that we do and where I come from, guys, I'm sorry you're late.
We did all the sex stuff right at the beginning. Actually, actually we didn't. It wasn't just sex.
We did masturbation to mutual. I don't know because when we come in, I don't know that all of us know what an alcoholic is. And maybe we start many of us on the wrong foot.
I don't know. I'm going to repeat. I don't know how many people have heard this goofy test tube thing that I do in my beginner's class back in Illinois.
And I'm going to do it for you. Maybe you think it's crazy. Maybe it is.
I don't know. I have a group in Illinois that I belong to and it's called the Lan Oaks group of Alcoholics Anonymous. About 14 years ago, after a series of misadventures in Alcoholics Anonymous and not being able to fit into Alcoholics Anonymous, I fell into a group of six, seven, eight men who were just like me, losers in Alcoholic Anonymous.
and we met in a little church way out further away than you are from Lafayette or wherever we're away from. Okay? There's no visible human life where we met.
Okay? Nobody could find us if they wanted to. And if you knew you we were there, you wouldn't want to find us.
And that's where we met. Today that group numbers just under 500. That group, we are a group.
We meet on Monday nights. We don't have a clubhouse. We don't have any buildings.
We rent now a big gymnasium in a junior high school. But now we have just under 500 members of our group. See, we think group is different than meeting.
We think group is the commitment to make it together. And we don't care who you are, what you are, what you do, what you don't do. We do believe where I come from that little dope sticks are the measure of recovery.
But we tell you that you have hardly any chance to fail if you'll stop lying and pretending. We start them out with that. And in 1980, I walked into a class.
We call it a class cuz we do a lot of things together in that little class. It's a class because they identify themselves as the class of 1980. Okay?
You know, when you come into alcoholic silence, it's hard to become part of. You know, you come into me and you're all on every seems to know each other. How do you get in?
How do you get in? We get in immediately. You're belonging to class of 80.
You and him and him and her. So in 1980 I walked into that group and there were I don't know 10 12 newcomers Monday night. Last Monday night there were 151 people in the beginner's class.
151 people who were brand new to alcoholics anonymous in one room. We have more beginners in our beginners class than most meetings in the whole world have in their meeting. That doesn't mean that we're doing anything special.
You can do that right here. It's called enthusiasm and truth. And I said to those people in that room, I don't know what an alcoholic is.
And I had been sober at that point 10 years. I mean, I don't know what the definition of alcoholic is. And I've looked at all the books that Alcoholics Anonymous has ever written or approved, and I've never found a definition for alcoholic.
Now, if I knew what an alcoholic was, I could figure out if I am one. They like that idea. That made sense.
They smile like you did, you know, even through their defiance and their pretense. Isn't that wonderful how the newcomers, you ever see newcomers come in, they always pretend they're okay? They come in as if, well, they're just visiting.
They come in as if they don't have to be here. And I understand that because you know the truth of the matter is if you don't gamble, you never think of going to a gamblers's anonymous meeting. If you're so tired of being overweight, unless you're so tired and you feel obese, you never think of going to Overeaters Anonymous or Weight Watchers.
It never dawns on you to do that. Non-alcoholics never think about coming to an a meeting. It never enters their mind.
When you think about coming to a meeting, you got to go to a meeting. When you think you have a problem, you have a problem. And yet they'll come there and they'll be defiantly disinterested.
But when I said to them that I'd like to know what an alcoholic is, cuz if I had a measure of definition, I could look at it, apply it to me, and maybe I'm not. And when I held that hope out to them that maybe they were they wanted to participate, why to be reconfirm their alcoholism? Ah, to deny their alcoholism so they could leave.
And that is how 90% of all the people come into alcoholic synonyms. And that's why I think sometimes it's a dangerous thing to bring newcomers. And we think that if we tell them these horrible war stories, they will relate to that.
So often our speakers relate to I was in chains for 47 years in a dungeon for raping the prince's daughter. I was in prison. I murdered my best friend.
I was in 37 treatment centers. I tried to kill myself nine times. Look at the scars.
I was divorced 11 times and on and on and on. As if we're going to then give them something to relate to. If they're like me, most newcomers when I came into alcoholic, I don't want to relate to your stories cuz I didn't want to be an alcoholic.
I don't know anybody that I've never met anybody who wanted to be an alcoholic. I never ever met anybody who was happy they were an alcoholic. Who said, "My god, I fulfilled my life's dream.
I've becoming an alcoholic." I've never seen anybody write in a yearbook, "What do you want to do the rest of your life? I want to join Alcoholics Anonymous." People come to Alcoholics Anonymous with a resistance to the term alcoholic, to a resistance from the idea that they are at the end of their rope. And they come here to deny and justify that denial so they can leave.
And when we tell them these terrible war stories, they say, "I didn't do that." Good. I'm not an alcoholic. I've never been arrested.
Alcoholics are people get arrested all the time. I've never been divorced. Well, I was, but I should have been divorced.
What does that have to do with that guy's been divorced seven times? They've been arrested 15 times for drunken driving. I've never been arrested.
I only arrested once. And they leave these meetings reinforced that they are not like us because they spend the time in the meeting not trying to hear what they can compare to, but what they can compare against because they don't want to be alcoholics. And I don't blame them cuz I didn't want to be one either.
So what we do in our meeting is we don't tell war stories. We hardly ever mention drinking. We never in the beginner's group ever talk about drinking.
We presume you know about drinking. We presume when you walk into that room it has something to do with drinking. We presume you know everything there is to know about drinking.
We presume you are the world's authority on drinking. We presume you drink more than most people that you know or that you not that you like but that you know. We presume that that's a safe presumption.
I walked into that room in 1980 and I said what's an alcoholic? And they looked at me and I said maybe if we find the definition we can get out of here. They wanted to play the game.
So, I asked them to pretend. We're all good at pretending. We know how to do that.
I said, "Let's pretend we're in a laboratory. Let's make an alcoholic. Let's make an alcoholic in this laboratory all by ourselves.
Nobody's here. Nobody will know. Nobody will see.
It's a private little secret laboratory." And I asked him just for a minute to come into that laboratory with me. And I held up an invisible test tube. I said, "Let's put in the ingredients that you think are necessary in order to make an alcoholic and let's make one.
When we make it, we'll look at it and we'll know if it's like us. If it is, maybe we'll want to stay. And if it isn't, we don't have to be here." And I held up an invisible test tube in 1980 to a little group of people.
And I don't even remember. The truth of the matter is they're having a reunion in November and they sent me a picture that was taken after that meeting and there's like 30 some of in there. But that little group of people looked at that invisible test tube that I held up and here's what they did.
Remember now they're not like you and me. They weren't 18 19 years sober. They were brand new.
Okay? This was their perception speaking. This was their experience speaking.
They didn't know any about alcoholic synonymous. They had no teaching about alcoholic synonymous. This was their guts talking.
I said, "You make me an alcoholic." I wasn't going to make it cuz I don't know what what it is what it is. They made this. They said, first person that spoke was a little girl who was almost more than 16 or 17 years old.
She said, "Put in fear." This is somebody brand new to Alcoholism. Never read the book. Never know anything.
Her guts are talking. Put in fear. Put in anxiety.
Put in shame. Put in guilt. Put in depression.
Put in impatience. Put in anger. Put in remorse.
Put in self-loathing. Somebody else said, "Put in ego. Put in perfectionism." Inferiority.
Someone said, "Put that in." And someone right after that said, "Put in superiority." Wow. Same test tube. Inferiority.
Superiority. I'm thinking my god, what are they making here? Loneliness, guilt, negative selfimage, self loathing.
They went on and on and that's what they put into this test tube. Now, this is a fact. This happened.
This isn't made up for this meeting or any other meeting. They fill that test tube with things like that and those things. And here's the key.
Do you know what those brand new people right off the street? Right off the street before we prejudice them or fed them bad information, you know what they did not put in? What do you think they did not put in?
Alcohol. Cuz nobody had got to them yet to tell them alcohol was your problem. Nobody was there to give him that bad information.
That's why the first time I heard Franklin Williams speak, it was years and years ago. He got up in front of the Evans Avenue group in Chicago. It was a big big meeting, maybe 1,500 people.
And he said, "Folks, there's a lot of information available at Alcohol Anonymous. Unfortunately, most of it is bad." and I thought, I'm going to like this guy. They didn't put alcohol.
Now, what we did to carry on this experiment is we then said, "Okay, I said to him, you know, you didn't put in any alcohol." I said, "Well, then let's put in some alcohol." So in our laboratory in this invisible test tube that was full of the thing they said they felt necessary ingredients to make an alcohol. We started to pour in alcohol. And here's what they said they visioned occur.
When you put just enough alcohol in a test tube that has fear in it. Alcohol seems to make fear go away. It dilutes fear.
They said that as we poured alcohol into the test tube initially, anger was subsided. Inferiority was corrected. Superiority was diminished.
Guilt went away. It seemed to them that in their early drinking when they drank, good things happened. Good feelings happened.
They felt bitter about themselves and the people around them. They reported that alcohol to them used to work more often than not. Now there are some people who do not have that experience but the vast majority have explained that they have.
See if you have nothing in your test tube but good stuff. Why do you drink? What does it do for you then?
If you have nothing in your test tube but good things and for some reason you drank too much too often and then stopped. You got to be happy. It's got to be and that's the end for you.
Sobriety is the name of the game. If that's true, were you drunk every day of your life? Weren't you ever sober between drunks?
And if so, once you were sober and sober is the answer, why did you stay sober? I don't know because I don't understand that segment of the population. But what these people reported was very simple that alcohol used to work for them and it used to make them feel better about them early on.
And they had forgotten about that cuz they only remember the end. But they were caused to remember the beginning through this experiment. As we continue to pour alcohol into that test tube, what happens is called alcoholism.
And it only happens for some people. Some people it doesn't happen to. It never happens to social drinkers.
How many people are here that have less than six months of continuous sobriety? Okay, hold on just a minute. Okay.
All right. Let me tell you a secret. If you're like me and you're here now, you're kind of glad you're here, but you're not entirely too glad you're here.
And you don't mind being here so much today, but you don't know for sure if you want to be here tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, 3 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from tomorrow. Jesus. If you're like me, maybe when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you really think I'd really like to be a social drinker.
And if I could ever become a social drinker, that's all I'd ever want out of life. I'm here to tell you, if you're new and you phantom the idea that you would like to be a social drinker, I'm going to tell you a secret. If I had a pill that could make you a social drinker, it was guaranteed to make you a social drinker.
You would not take the pill. You wouldn't take it. You think to yourself, "Oh, yeah." Definition, what's a social drinker?
Before you decide that you want to be one, let's find out what it is. No sense rushing into this. We don't want to rush into social drinking anymore.
want to rush into Alcoholics Anonymous. You can find out you're in the wrong place. Wouldn't it be terrible?
Social drink is the wrong place. You ever see a social drinker? You know what social drinkers do?
They say to each other, they stop and have a drink. They stop, they have a drink, they go home. How's it like to live like that?
Social drinkers when they sit at the barender puts their drinks in front of them. You know what they do? They talk to each other and then they talk some more and the drinks are there and they talk and they take a sip and they talk.
How'd you like to live like that? One day at a time. Social drinkers when they're offered the second or third drink say no thank you.
I'm starting to feel it. They do this all They do this all over the world. They do this in every cocktail party in every wedding and every reception and in every home in the United States every night saying no thank you.
I've had one. You had what? I've had one.
No No. Thank you. I've had two.
So, thank you. I've had enough. You know what they mean?
You know why they say I'm have I have had enough? Cuz every human being that takes alcohol into their system notices change occurs. Change occurs from alcohol.
Everybody feels a change that occurs. I don't care if you're in France or Tibet or Australia or New Zealand or Tahiti or San Francisco. Any human being that takes alcohol in their system notice a change starts to occur.
When that change starts to occur, non-alcoholics don't like that change. You know what that change is? They start to feel different.
They start to feel different. They don't want to feel different. They like how they feel.
They start seeing things differently. They don't want to see things differently. They like how they see things.
They like how things look to them. I drink cuz I don't like how I feel. I like how I see things.
And when I see things, they threaten me. the world, the people, the circumstances threaten me. I don't like I see.
I don't like who I am. I don't like where I at. I don't like the pressure.
I don't like the injustice. I don't like my weakness. I don't like the dilemma.
I like I don't like the life. I don't like the job. I don't like the lack of money.
I don't like this. I don't like that. And when that starts to change to occur, when that change starts to occur, I don't say no thank you.
I'm starting to feel it. I say I want another. I want the change to occur.
That's called alcoholism. The other is called social drinking. I couldn't be a social drinker.
If I wanted to be a social drinker, then I wouldn't want to be a social drinker. What a boring life. I mean, you go out, you know what's going to happen.
When you're going to go home, who you're going to go home, you know, you know where YOUR CAR IS. THERE'S NO excitement in our life. Drinkers don't know.
You and I take for granted. They never wake up and think whose blood is that? Who is that?
Who am I? Why am I here? Well, how do I get here?
That's the deal. That's the deal. I think maybe I'm wrong.
I don't know. That's how I see it. Now, what they did in that classroom in that invisible in that imaginary laboratory, we can continue that experiment.
For people like me, alcohol when first introduced has a good effect. it seems to soothe and dilute and change and make better everything that I feel wrong even if only momentarily and I like that and I pursue it. Now what seems to happen and what they did in that laboratory is they continued to pour alcohol.
For some small fraction of the people now alive in the world, alcohol has a different effect. Not only does that change occur, but if you continue that process, and the funny thing about it is it's different in everyone. Some people if you continue the process for two years and some people if you contri continue the process for 20 years and some people if you put an awful lot and some people if you put a lot less.
But for some people if you continue to put alcohol into that system into that test tube to enjoy the result the result stops happening. Then you can't get happy all the time, comfortable all the time. Then fear doesn't always go away with three.
self-loathing, financial insecurity, pride, and ego doesn't seem to be controlled with for non-alcoholics would say, "I'm not going to drink anymore. It's not working. They don't even get that far." Alcoholics, when it stops to work, what do you think they decide?
To stop drinking cuz it's not working. What? >> More.
Of course. More. To what?
Get crazy. To get mean. To get ugly.
See, that's what the world sees. As if you drink more to get mean, to destroy, to hurt, to fail. They see you drinking as if you're drinking more to get bad, to get misfortune.
Why do you drink more? To get comfortable, to get happy, to relax, to make the fear go away even for a minute, to make the bad memories go away if just for a minute. to make a sense of self-worthlessness disappear if only for a minute.
To be able to say, "Who cares?" and mean it just for a minute. To be able to say, "I'm not afraid." And really mean it even if just for a minute. We don't drink to destroy ourselves.
It looks that way. We don't drink to ruin our lives. We want happiness more than anyone else around.
cuz we've never known it and they seem to have been born with it. At least my kind of alcoholic feels that way. And if you continue that process and you are an alcoholic, what happens and you don't know that it's happening while it's happening is if you keep putting in more and more and more, not only will it never dilute and soothe again, it begins to intensify everything rotten that's in there.
And alcoholism then takes a reverse effect. The more you drink, the worse your life becomes. Alcohol then intensifies loneliness, intensifies shame, intensifies guilt, intensifies hopelessness, intensifies anger, intensifies financial insecurity.
That's called alcoholism. And when those young young I see you they weren't young they were all mixed ages. One in that class was over 60 years old 1980 when they made that alcoholic I knew what an alcoholic was of my type and I knew I had to stay there cuz that's who I am.
I could tell you my life story. I have just told you my life story. I'm the test tube.
I'm the test tube. I don't know about you, but I've always been different. I've always felt different.
From the earliest recollection, I have felt different. And I hardly ever like remember liking me. Now, do you know, I don't know if you think this is a phenomenon, but I'll tell you a secret.
I know people and I've known them all my life. And you'd say, "Who would you like to be?" And they looked me right in the eye without any thinking and they said, "I like to be me." I think to myself, Jesus, they just want to be them. If anybody any time would have asked me, who's to be, I never would have thought of picking me.
From my earliest recollection, when I get the crap and the justification and the pretense and the line out of the way, when I really look at it, I didn't want to be me. I didn't like me early. I didn't like me.
I thought I had a definition problem. When I was a kid, I thought I had a definition problem. People use terms I knew.
I didn't know what they're talking about. Happy. talking about being happy.
I didn't know what happy is when I'm 12. I didn't know what happy was. By the time I was 12, I was full of secrets.
I had sexual secrets by the time I was 12. Thank you. I did things that I didn't think other little boys did.
I thought about doing things I didn't think other little boys thought about. And I did them before I was 12. I had secrets.
I had religious training when I was a kid and I thought they told me about God. You know what I got out of religion when I was a little kid and I don't blame any religion. I don't know they ever said these things.
I got the idea that God was punishing vindictive God of retribution. said, "If you sinned, because they told me about sin, you got to pay because you offended God." That's what I heard. I don't know if they ever said that in my religion.
And I early on knew that I offended God. How could you be happy when you know you're living alone? You're a little kid.
Comfortable. They use terms like comfortable. How can you be comfortable when you live with a feeling of ill at ease, inferiority, pretense, even as a young person?
I love this term they use. And I knew for sure I had a definition problem. How this one?
This is a wonderful word. Everybody in the world seems to know the meaning of this word. I didn't.
The word is enough. Enough. I never had enough of anything.
Enough money, enough fame, enough power, enough attention, enough sex. I don't know what they mean. I don't know about enough and everybody around me, these other people seem to know what enough was.
So I am the test tube and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was designed to help people like me. People whose lives were the test tube that alcohol had a special effect for and then alcohol stopped having that effect and they continue to drink to get that effect and almost died in the process. Alcoholics Anonymous is about is for people who are hopeless.
Only hopeless people are sufficiently motivated to take actions that are contrary to the nature of people like them. And we're going to break in a minute, but I'm going to tell you a secret. Early on in Alcoholics Anonymous, they never told anyone not to drink.
When they wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous, they did not tell the prospective reader, "Don't drink." Early on in Alcoholics Anonymous, they never said, "Don't drink." Early on in Alcoholics Anonymous, they wanted to help the suffering alcoholic cuz they were suffering alcoholics. They loved that alcoholic and they didn't lie to that alcoholic. They did not say don't drink.
They said drink until the fight's gone. Drink until the denial is gone. Drink.
They say drink. It's in the 12 and 12 and it's in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Drink, Charlie.
Drink, Alice. We're not here to convince you not to drink. You drink as much as you want.
Have a good time. Hello. Hello.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Drink until you can't drink anymore.
And when you're hopeless and feel helpless, you will be susceptible to a thing called recovery. Cuz we drank till we were hopeless and felt helpless and we became susceptible. then to a thing called recovery.
And why do we spend and maybe you don't do that here, but I know when I go around even in Chicago and everywhere else I go, there's all these people telling people don't drink. If you don't become hopeless and helpless, you're never going to do anything about your illness. Only hopeless helpless people will be sufficiently motivated to find the ability to f once become honest and then to thoroughly follow the path of the people who have recovered.
Only hopeless thoroughly hopeless people will ever take the steps. the only suggested program of recovery available to us. So I think sometimes when we tell people don't drink, it's cuz we don't want them to hurt themselves.
But until they do, they won't want to help themselves. And that's harsh truth. Alcoholics Anonymous is not preventive medicine.
It says in this book, you got to hit bottom. We can't keep you three steps from bottom. You got to do what you got to do.
And when you're tired of doing it, we got the answer. That's why I don't argue with newcomers. I don't defend Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I don't tell them not to drink. I tell them drink. If it's working and you think it'll work, drink cuz maybe it will.
And if it doesn't, come on back. Then shut up when you come back and listen. Let's take a break.
Okay. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 I'm drunk. I was sober.
Sober always precedes drunkenness. I always was sober before I got drunk. You got to be sober to get drunk.
Right? I mean, this is not some kind of crazy metaphysics. This is fact.
Now, the perception of the alcoholic sometimes twisted around, I think, as if we're just drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk. I'm sober, then drunk and sober and drunk. Drunk, drunk, drunk, sober, sober, sober, drunk, drunk, drunk, sober, sober, sober.
That's how my life went. Near the end, I drag a lot, drunk a lot, more than I wanted to be, more than I hoped to be, more than I planned to be. Then I got sober day, week, there are people who have had intermittent during their alcoholism of years of sobriety.
So AA was never intended to promise us just sober. They cheat us and they knew that. That's why in the forward of 12 and 12 it says this.
Aa's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in nature which if practiced as a way of life can do four things and I'm paraphrasing. It can one expel the obsession to drink. Two, it can enable the sufferer to become happy.
Three, and useful, four, and whole. That's what Alcoholics Anonymous promises. The obsession to drink will leave.
You can become happy. You can become useful. And better than anything else, you can feel whole.
That's Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't make that up. They tell me that before I even start reading this book.
It's in the forward. It's the third paragraph of the forward. I didn't make that up.
That's not my opinion. The first step in the recovery process is not drink. Mm- can't drink and do this.
What is it? Very simple. The first step, young lady or young man, if you've had enough, if you're tired of living a lie, if you've tried to do it a hundred times, a thousand times, 10,000 times, try to stop by yourself, try to change, and you fail.
And you fail and you fail. And if you just can't go on and you've reached bottom, you know what bottom is? It's my opinion.
Bottom is not a place. It's not a jail cell. It's not a divorce court.
It's not a treatment center. It's not a basement. It's not no money.
It's not no friends. It's not no job. It's not indictments.
It's not arrest. It often happens when those things are happening. Bottom is a feeling.
It's a feeling that I can't live like this. And I know no other way to live. It's a feeling of hopelessness.
I can't live like this anymore. I can't live drinking and I can't live not drinking. It's a feeling, not a place.
So when we get in front of these microphones and we talking about all these places, we're cheating our audience, the newcomer. Maybe cuz alcoholism isn't necessarily a treatment center. Look at I'm going to tell you I'm as much an alcoholic as anybody who is in this room says they're an alcoholic.
And I can't prove that to you because I can't prove to you that I'm an alcoholic. I could talk for hours about what I did and what happened to me. And that doesn't prove I'm an alcoholic.
The only way I can prove to you that I'm an alcoholic is a way that I'm I won't do I won't do it. But I could prove to you I'm an alcoholic. The only way I know how to prove to you that I'm alcoholic is to drink and let you watch how I live and then get sober and let you watch how I live and then drink and let you watch how I live.
I do that long enough and you watch long enough, you might say, "Yes, he's an alcoholic." You have to take my word that I'm an alcoholic cuz that's the best you're going to get. Think about that. Bottom is a feeling.
What do we want to do? Cuz we so often want to help everybody. And it's so good.
And I I everything God I'll tell you once we find some sense of recovery here, we can't wait to share it with everybody. And when we see somebody who we see in their eyes the pain that we knew were in ours, we want them to be well and we want them to be comfortable. We want them to be happy.
And sometimes we want it so much for them that we lie about what this is about so they'll stay. And you know what? We can get them to stay sometimes for a week or a month or a year.
Sooner or later, they're going to go cuz you can't build a house without a foundation. Cuz the wind's going to come, the rain's going to come, cuz that's life. And the name of the game I was told when I not when I came here, I'll tell you what lies I was told when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had people who love me so much that they said to me, "Look, it all you got to do is anything you want to do. Just don't drink, go to meetings. You don't have to take these steps.
You don't have to do anything. It's like a smorggas board. You like it, take it.
You don't like it, don't take it. And they told all of us that came in in 1971 in my group at that time in Chicago. And in that group over the course of the year were over 100 newcomers came through that group.
It's not the same group that I'm in now. There's only two of us. Still an AA.
They loved us so much. They diluted this so much that they took from us the only medicine that might have saved us. And they did it because they loved us.
And they thought maybe that Alcoholics Anonymous is some kind of magic that if you just sit here long enough, you just get cured in spite of yourself. Now, it is important that we in try to do things to welcome newcomers. My opinion, I don't know.
Hey, I don't want anybody not to make it. I wouldn't have devoted my life to the beginner's meetings if I didn't care. I don't need attention.
I'm a practicing lawyer in Chicago that has had a great deal of success. I don't need an audience. I have an audience every day of my life.
I don't need to get dressed up. I get dressed up every day of my life. I don't need any attention.
Where I come from, I got all the attention anybody would need. The only reason that I do this what I do there is cuz it works. And if I keep doing it, I keep staying.
That's the only reason I do it. And I want them to make it. I sometimes want more for my newcomers than they want for themselves.
And that's when I experience pain. When I want recovery, more for them than they want it for themselves, I'm on the wrong track. So I don't tell them this is a smorgus board.
I tell them look it I don't know what this is. I'm not that smart. So what I did young man is I picked up a book that they told me contained the secret.
And that book says if I thoroughly followed the path that the people who made it took, I will make it. And they said if I am hopeless enough I'm ready to take certain steps. They said at first I'm going to block and I'm going to try to find softer easier ways and as long as I did that the result would be nil unless I till I let go absolutely and when I was done and I felt enough pain I would then hopefully take steps to alleviate the pain.
See, that's why this is not an intellectual pursuit. Hey, you got these new people. I don't care if they're 17 or 70.
When we tell them don't drink, let me tell you a secret. Everybody in their life has told them not to drink, their mother, their sister, their cousin, their wife, their kids, their bosses, the police, the courts, everybody has said, "Look at you're a nice guy. If you would just not drink, these things would not happen to you.
And in spite of all those loved ones, we drink. You think it's any different now because we are members of alcoholics and I say you don't drink. Then I'm going to help you by saying that.
I say to you this, just read the book and do those things and see what happens. It's worked for a lot of people, Freddy, and it worked for me. I think it'll work for you.
But if you want to argue about whether you're an alcoholic or not, I don't know if you're an alcoholic. I don't want you to be an alcoholic, Freddy. You don't think you're an alcoholic?
Then, Freddy, you're in the wrong place. This is for alcoholics. This is for people who want it, not for people who need it into 12 and 12.
It says a funny thing. Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people would will sincerely try to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom.
For practicing AA's remaining 11 steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can think of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harmed done?
Who cares anything about a higher power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry a message to the next sufferer? No.
The average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this project unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself. I didn't make that up. I just read that from page 24 of a book called 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.
That's not my opinion. This is the lifetime experience of the people who wrote this book. This is the experience of Alahholics Anonymous.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're wrong.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. And yet you'll hear people talk hours and hours with newcomers. I don't understand what powerless is.
I have trouble with powerless. And he'll sit in cars and they'll stand on street corners and they'll try to tell them what powerlessness is. Tell them you don't feel like you're powerless over alcohol.
Well, let's see. I think they say something about that in the book. Let's see, Freddy, what the book says about that.
You don't think you want to argue and tell me you don't understand you can't agree with powerlessness? I think they had that experience once here. Let's see.
Where is that? Some 21 on the bottom is right. Oh yeah, Freddy.
Here's what it says. You don't know if you're an alcoholic. You don't know what powerless is.
And you're having trouble with unmanageable. Okay, Freddy. Let's see.
Here's what they did. Here's what they've been doing for 54 years. Freddy, this is the only thing AA knows.
Freddy, well, let's see. Maybe this will work for you, Freddy. Freddy, we don't like to pronounce anybody an alcoholic.
You got to diagnose yourself. Not argue, convince, debate. Go diagnose yourself.
That's what we are. Self diagnostics. We diagn We diagnose ourselves.
Here's what you do, Freddy. Step over to the nearest barroom, Freddy, and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly.
Try it more than once, Freddy. I mean, do it for years, Freddy. If you're like us, Freddy, it won't take you long to decide if you're honest about it.
And it may be worth a bad case of the jitters for you to get that knowledge. Don't drink, Freddy, and go to meetings, Freddy. Yes, that's what we did.
And if you want what we have and you are having no problem with semantics, Freddy, you don't want to argue about powerlessness, you don't want to argue about unmanageable, then you don't have to do this, right? But if you want to talk to me till 4 in the morning about what's manageable and what's powerless, we can solve this easy. I'll go to sleep and you go to the bar.
This isn't because I don't love Freddy. I don't want to kill Freddy. I don't want to dilute the medicine so it tastes so good to Freddy that it doesn't cure him, but it slowly kills him.
So that's all I think this book is, is aa. See, we don't have anything but this in what's in this and what's in our common experience. We are Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, you got to remember how this all came about. Bill Wilson did not recover from alcoholism through the taking of 12 steps. Think about that.
There were no 12 steps when Bill Wilson got sober. He didn't take 12 steps and become sober. Bill Wilson had what he describes in what he believed to be a spiritual experience.
I never had one. He had a spiritual experience, he says, laying in a hospital in a period in his life about the 782nd time this experience had occurred. It was hopelessness, helplessness, desperation.
And he reports and reported that something strange happened that he saw a light and felt different. Now, I think that's spooky stuff and I don't know that if that ever happened or it didn't happen. It's not up to me to decide who am I.
He says from that moment on the obsession to drink left him. He didn't take any 12 steps. And he left that hospital like a man with a mission.
For the first time in his life, he was on a mission. Instead of being worried about how much money he was going to make, what kind of deals he was going to make, how much money Lois was going to make, where they were going to live, what kind of big shot he was going to be. Instead, his mission was to talk to other alcoholics.
And he went all over New York saying, "I had a vision and I don't drink." And there's a power there that removed that obsession. And they said to him, "No Excuse me. I want to get to the bar." And nobody paid any attention to him.
You think, And we all know Dr. Bob wasn't the first one he talked to. He talked to hundreds of drunks.
He went into bars, into saloons, in jails, in hospitals, and he laid hands on them and he prayed with them and nobody ever got sober. Nobody. When he met Dr.
Bob, he met Dr. Bob while he was in his missionary stage. But the mo the what got him Akaran was se was personal goal oriented.
He went there to make money to get his finance back in shape and to get back into big time. He was going to get involved in this merger that when he made that work he could go back to Wall Street and become a superstar stock broker. That was for him.
He went to Akran not to save anybody or to tell them about God. He didn't walk in there and say, "Listen, I've been I, you know, I saw a guy the other day. You ought to make this merger." He didn't talk about that.
He said, "How much money is in it for me? And listen, let's put this thing together and we all get rich and we get the hell out of Akan." And that deal fell through. And the first thing he thought about when that deal fell through was drinking.
And he called Dr. Bob is he didn't call Dr. Bob, but he made the telephone calls that led to the meeting with Dr.
above cuz he had a unique thought that never in history had ever been thought before by anyone anywhere in the world. And there have been a lot of people in the world, a lot of them, no human beings of the billions of people who have lived and died ever had this thought. And alcoholism has been with us for centuries.
All recorded history records alcoholism. The earliest writings find talk about people who have an obsession for fermentated grapes and other things that seem to make them crazy. And no matter how crazy they get, they keep taking that stuff.
We've always had alcoholism all eternity. But for the first time in recorded history, a unique thought occurred and this is how simple this is. And that thought led us to be here tonight.
You know what that thought was? Maybe if I talk to someone like me, I won't drink. Not he won't drink.
I won't drink. That thought had never ever been recorded. He made those calls to help somebody.
No way. He helped those calls so he wouldn't walk in the bar in that hotel that night or down the street to buy a bottle and drink it in that room that night. He made that call to save his life.
That's why we make 12step calls to save our life. Somehow somebody started to plant the idea that we make those calls to save people. That's not true.
Because if that's true, what's wrong with us? Why are we waiting for them to call? We know where they live.
Why don't we go to homes? Visit alcohol synonymous, you swab. Why don't we go to bars?
Say, "Hey, look at that mirror. Jesus, look how you look. We have the answer.
Why do we wait for them to call? Why don't we go out and help them?" Bill tried it. He went out everywhere to share this magic with him.
It didn't work. Nobody paid any attention to him. Nobody paid any attention.
By this time he's got some experience in a religious movement, a spiritual movement called the Oxford groups. In the Oxford groups and they the Oxford groups were wonderful. They were kind of like treatment centers are today.
They're going to save everybody from everything. Not I'm not down in any treatment centers. It was like the Washingtonians.
That was a movement years ago prior to alcoholics synonymous that thought through a spiritual way of life we could save everybody and cure everybody and make everybody happy, whole and useful under God. And that's what the Oxford people did. And Bill was introduced to the Oxford people.
And you know what they told them? You read the Bible, accept God, make confession, make restitution, admit your powerlessness, make a decision, and practice right living. Sound familiar?
And Dr. Bob had also had that experience. He was in that movement and he never could stay sober.
Now when he met Bill, Bill told him about Bill so lit up Dr. Bob that Dr. Bob didn't drink.
Haha. Dr. Bob stayed sober on fellowship.
Haha. How long? only long enough to get away from Bill.
Dr. Bob when he met Bill said, "This man has something. God, I want what he has." And on fellowship and the strength of their comm their communication back and forth, Dr.
Bob didn't drink for a couple weeks. And then Dr. Bob got drunk in the worst place at the worst time in a medical convention that he went to show them his recovery and to preach to them his finding of God.
I'm a new man. He went to the convention to say, I got religion. I don't drink anymore.
Me and this guy from New York, we found a way to help alcoholics. He was drunk for 3 days. He didn't have any steps either.
He came back. He had hit bottom. Bill said, "Don't drink anymore." No way.
Bill Wilson gave Dr. Bob his last drink. I didn't make that up, Bobby.
I didn't make that up. That's recorded history. He said, "Listen, Bob, you better take this beer." Bob was sober when he gave him that beer.
He said, "You need this beer." He was sober. He's going to give it do an operation. He also took some pills.
He didn't tell him, "Don't drink, go to meetings. He said, "You won't drink when you're ready to not drink, but in the meantime, you better have a drink and he gave him a drink." Bob went in, did the operation. He came out.
He never had another drink for the rest of his life cuz he had a desire to stop drinking. Bill Wilson never convinced Dr. Bob not to drink.
He couldn't. Nobody has that power. It seems like we have that power.
And he did have that power for a few weeks. And I personally kept people in AA for months. I know that.
Oh, I've given them so much love and I've excused so much conduct and I told them it's given so much leeway that they stayed sometimes for months. I had a guy stay for 4 years. I knew the last two years he'd want to stay.
I knew he didn't even have a desire to stop drinking or stay sober. He just staying on the fellowship. I filled his life with so many activities and so much haha, so many good feelings.
The only reason he's sober today is he went out and got real drunk and real scared and real sick. Now we never talk about whether or not he's an alcoholic. See, so it says here we got hit bound.
That's ourselves. Now I don't know what powerless is and I don't know what a manageability is. It's what you say it is.
You know what it is? It's called enough. Enough.
Whatever you think enough is, that's what it is. If you haven't got enough, then go get enough. You have to not because I want you to hurt yourself or anybody here wants you to.
You got to do it. And the wonderful thing about is you can make enough. You don't have to do those things to be enough.
All you got to do is be willing enough to surrender enough. That's all. You don't even have to have a desire.
All you got to do is have willingness to have a desire. Willingness precedes surrender. If you're having trouble with surrender and you're new, don't worry about surrender.
Think about willingness. Are you willing to surrender? Once you're willing to surrender, surrender takes place.
It's not a mental thing. It's not for smart people or dumb people as I see it. What do you got to do to prove this idea of powerlessness and unmanageability?
All you got to do is cut the crap I say to my people and look at the videotape. I have a videape of me. If you have a VCR or you've seen one, you know what, you know, you go rent videos, movies, plug them in.
I have one. It's here. I have permanently recorded the most obscene, the most painful, the most shameful, the deepest, most ugly secrets.
I have portrayed and captured me living that life, that frustration I have pictured and directed and captured on film. the tears, the hopelessness, the secret prayers. God, what's wrong with me?
And anytime I want to think about unmanageable or powerless, I just sit back and watch my film. What's the argument? What is the argument?
What's this deep philosophical conversation about powerless? Only people who do not want to stop drinking want to talk about what does powerless mean. I don't buy powerless.
You know what they're telling you when they say that? I don't want what you have and I'm not willing to go to any length to get it. And yet we spend hours and hours trying to convince them they're powerless over alcohol.
What's unmanageable for me? I had enough. You don't think you had enough?
Then you got to have some more. And that's really all this book says about that stuff. Nothing else.
Any questions about that? anybody or comments, disagreements, doesn't matter. I mean, I'm Hey, I'm not here to teach anything.
It may I don't know if any of these things I'm saying are right. It's just how I believe it to be today. And I'm not saying you got to agree with this.
This is just the accumulation of my almost 18 years. And maybe when I'm 19 years, I won't think this way. But I'll tell you, the only thing I got to hold on to, it got me here.
You know, it got me from day one, today, whatever that multiplication of days times years would be. And I'm not supposed to be here. You know why I'm not supposed to be here?
Cuz I'm too smart to be an alcoholic. I'm too intolerant to be a recovered alcoholic. I believe too much in a perfectionism.
I want my way. I shouldn't be a recovered alcohol. I'm opinionated.
I'm a faultf finder. I see all the faults in everybody around me and I know what they should do. I've always known God gave me a special talent.
All my life I've looked at you and been able to see your faults. Guys like me should not make it. Okay.
So, something happened. And I got here and I'm still here and all I did was accumulate these beliefs and act upon them. But maybe they're not true.
A problem with powerlessness or unmanageable. Let me tell you what I do with the beginners. Every once in a while with a big class like that and I encourage them to say what they say because you see there's no right and wrong and there's no good question or bad question.
There's no dumb question. There's just an inquiry. So I say, "Well, you're having trouble with this idea of powerlessness." I say, "Okay, let's suppose you have a 4year-old little girl, 2 years old, 3 years old, I don't know.
I'm not good with little kids." And this little girl, your name? Jerry. >> Jerry.
This little girl, Jerry, never seen a match before. And I call her up and I say, "Betsy, come here. Come here, Betsy." And I like this man.
I say, "Betsy, come here. Put your finger here, honey." Betsy won't know anything. She never had this experience before.
See, until you have this experience, you don't know anything about this. I said, Betsy, put your finger here, honey. Two days later.
Hi Betsy. Come here Eddie. Here Betsy.
Put your finger in this fight. Betsy goes running away. Ma, you know why?
That's normal controllable experience reaction. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I put my finger in the flame time and time and time and time again, knowing intuitively what Betsy knew that it burns. But I believe this time it'll be different. Betsy never says, "Well, this time it'll be different." She runs from the flame.
That's called powerlessness. And when you're powerless, you are really unmanageable. In my drinking career and the drinking careers of others that have spoken to me and I don't think this is unique and everybody shares this because I don't.
That's what we have done. We have gone back to that flame. In spite of all the burn, of all the injury, and all the pain that preceded experiences with that pain, we keep going back to it.
And that isn't unmanageable. That isn't powerlessness. What the hell is that?
Besides Goofy. You want to talk about insanity? You having trouble with insanity, Charlie?
Let's do the little Betsy routine again. Maybe you didn't get it the first time. This is a simple, wonderful program.
It's so simple, it's laughable. And we make it such a big deal. That's the first step.
Now, we can approach it a lot of different ways and we can read and it's approachable and discussible in many different ways from a different points of view. But bottom line, it's very simple. It's a heaven enough and not wanting to live like that anymore.
That's all the semantics and definition we need. No. Does it have to be any harder?
See, alcoholics don't like simple solutions. They like dramatic, long, involved secrets. And you say, "That's all there is." Oh, That's all there is.
We have to argue about it. What do we resist this for? What are we trying to tell them?
It's simple. That's it. That's that's as easy a way to look at the first step as there could be.
I can't think of an easier way. Can anybody think of an easier way to look at it? I know there's a lot more scientific ways and doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists and maybe um greater intellects than I could think of more complex ways.
But I don't want to look at the complex ways. I look at the simple ways. That's as simple as I can put it.
And that little Betsy demonstration with that match drives home that point as clear as thousands of words that I otherwise used to say. And now in the beginners every year, I just do a little Betsy for them and let them look at that and they know they aren't smart as Betsy. Something's different about them.
She's only 2 years old and yet she was able to identify the pain and the flame. And once identified, she never went near the flame again. And here they are, 30, 20, 40, 50, and 70 years old.
And they spent their whole life putting their finger in the flame and knowing and having livid, vivid proof that it burns and it hurts and it's destructive and they'll do it again and again and again. Alcoholics Anonymous calls that among other things defiance and selfcenteredness. And I'm going to say this last thing and then we're going to break for lunch.
Alcoholics of my type have a so perverse an understanding and justification system. I think this is best described this way. Tearful wife, tearful children.
Daddy, don't you see what your drinking is doing to us? Wife, we had a good marriage. Don't you see what your drinking has done to our marriage?
Boss, you are a good worker. Don't you see what you're drinking is doing to your job? Policeman, judge, we can go on and on with that.
Mother, sister, brother, priest, rabbi, you're a nice guy. Don't you see what's happening in your life? Every area of your life is disintegrating.
Your wife, your kids, your family, your friends, your job, your self-image, your reputation. Can't you see that you shouldn't drink? That's the facts.
You're the jury. I'm the alcoholic. You know what my answer is?
Yes. I see that job and that marriage and those kids and those problems and those failures. I see that.
You don't have to point that out to me. I know I'm unhappily married and I'm not a good father and my kids are out of control and my job's going down the tubes and I owe everybody money and I've got these all these problems. Don't you see?
I know that. Of course I know that. Jesus, what are you telling me?
Something I don't know. Well, they say if you see it, what's the answer? I know the answer.
I'm an alcoholic. Here's the answer. That's why I drink.
And I believe that that's called alcoholism. That comes with powerlessness and unmanageability. What happens is our perceptions become upside down.
We take the evidence and we see you're dying because you're drinking. And we say you don't understand. I'm drinking cuz I'm dying.
Let's have some lunch. Well, you know, I took a walk at uh during lunch and the more I do this, the more frightening I become. No, I really do.
And I tell you that it's you say to yourself, I hope they don't think you're telling them that you know. I don't know. And I don't want to make that impression.
And if you have that impression, these are just what I think. I don't know that everything I say and you don't have to agree with everything I say. This is just how I see it.
And what alcoholic synonymous is is a sharing of understanding. And this is my understanding. And if I'm wrong, I'll keep trying.
And uh I don't know, but I don't, you know, I don't come here as some kind of authority on anything. And um I want to get that impression cuz I don't want to start to believe that. My god, if I ever started to believe that I was an authority on this, I wouldn't have to do this cuz I'm an authority.
Then I get goofy. Then I get so goofy I'll think I'm not uh I don't need this anymore and that I'm a finished product and I can get on with my life bigger and better thing. See, I'm here cuz I'm an alcoholic and I owe a debt to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Alcoholics Anonymous and the people of Alcoholics Anonymous literally saved and reshaped my life. And I was told that if I didn't share that, I would lose it. And that's the only reason that I'm here and sharing those understandings or perceptions.
Remember earlier we talked about Bill Wilson had had this spiritual experience and he went around telling everybody how he had this spiritual experience and nobody paid any attention to him. And in the meantime he's involved in the Oxford movement which talked about spiritual way of life and changing. Dr.
Bob had also been in that environment. After they met each other, they continued to go to meetings, the Oxford meetings. There they discussed the Bible and other things related to a search for a higher power and a commitment to change one's life.
That's what they did. But they also started to share with alcoholics one-on-one. Over the long after a while they became more uncomfortable at these meetings and they noticed something started to happen outside the meetings.
Alcoholics sharing with other alcoholics. They touched on what we now know is a miracle. Something special happens when an alcoholic talks to another alcoholic.
There is a bond of trust. Now what they did in the early years is they it was a trial and error. It was an experimental thing.
And they went around telling everybody that they had discovered a cure for alcoholism. And Bill kept talking about having had this spiritual experience. And Bob I think it was Bob.
I'm not an authority on history, but or the early people said, "But Bill, we haven't had a spiritual experience." So, this doesn't mean anything to us. Over the years that followed, the next 2 or 3 years before the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published, what I think occurred was they had to describe what was working. And part of what was working is what they took or stole or stole, I guess, from the Oxford movement, the Oxford group.
They knew that Bill had this experience, but they knew they didn't. Some people say that Bill Wilson was divinely inspired when he wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous. That may be true.
I have no idea cuz I don't know much about divine intervention. And I don't doubt it, but I can't prove it. But I know that I met before he died a man who knew Bill Wilson and was long sober and alcoholics and I was 44 years about when he died.
He said, "Frank, Bill could not have written that book." He said, "Bill was so crazy. Bill was so full of depression. Bill was such a womanizer.
Bill got into such crazy things. He was so distracted. He could not have written that book, but he wrote it.
He says, "I got to believe that Bill Wilson was an instrument of God's grace." And when he said that to me, I says, "Who am I to say that didn't happen?" What they did was they took all the combined actions of the people that made it and they put it in this book as steps. They said these people who made it have done this. It's our observation.
The result of which is not sobbriety. The result of the steps of alcohol synonymous is to effectuate a spiritual awakening. That's the goal of alcoholic survival.
It was a means by which every human being, me included, could experience and get the result of the experience of Bill Wilson's spiritual experience. There's a difference between spiritual experience and spiritual awakening. And the purpose of the steps of alcoholic I think is to effectuate a spiritual awakening.
Now people say that there are this step is more important than that step and this step. Maybe that's true for them. I don't know that there's any step more important than the other one.
I'm surely convinced that unless you take the first, you can't take the second. I think the the steps are a chain. The chain is as strong as its weakest link.
And the chain leads from there to here. And you can't get from there to here without covering that distance. And the only way people like me can cover that distance is by covering the distance.
And there's no shortcut. You just can't get to California from Chicago without going through Iowa or Missouri. It can't be done.
You have to go through or over. But you have to pass. And you can't get well in Alcoholics Anonymous by going from step one to step 9 or step 12.
It's not even logical. It's kind of like a birth control pill. You just can't take the third pill and the 19th pill and sleep good at night.
You got to worry. Doesn't work. You got to take them all.
And if you get real worried, you haven't taken one for 10 days and you look back on your conduct, it doesn't help to take nine the night before you go to sleep. Okay? I mean, I'm not authority on birth control pills, but and maybe that's a poor analogy.
Now, the steps of alcohol synonymous are so simple, it's almost laughable. It's literally almost laughable. We talked about the first step and the second step I think we don't take in a strange sense.
I know you hear, well, we take second step and I'm sure that's true. But on the flip side of that, I think alcohol I think the second step of alcoholic synonymous takes us. I really do.
The second step of alcoholic synonymous very simply is we came to believe that a power created in ourselves to restore our society. We came to believe we didn't do it. It happened to us.
What happens I think in alcohol anonymous is people like me come in all kinds of denial and all kinds of resistance. If we stay here long enough with an open mind, with some willingness and some based on some fear, cuz that's the only time I'm willing is when I'm I've got fear or pain. I never react good to intellectual stimuli.
I react best to pain. Okay? I don't know how you are with that.
Okay? Any big reformationation that's ever occurred in my life has been right after a lot of pain. Never been after I read a good book.
It's never been after I read some kind of a self uh health book. I think those are good ideas. I read those self-help books.
But I'll tell you something. When I'm in a corner and all those dogs are there at me, I never can remember what I read in the self-help book. All right, I just can't.
So, in the step two, we talk about we come to believe. I think it's impossible to be here with an open mind based on desperation and watch other people without having to somehow come to believe that there's a power. There's a power in these rooms.
And if you're troubled with God, it don't say in the first in this in step two. It don't say came to believe that Jesus Christ is a power greater than yourself. Doesn't say Buddha.
It doesn't say Martin Luther. It doesn't say anything. It says came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
In the beginning, I had a lot of trouble with God. Remember I told you that I had I had envisioned and come to understand that God was a punishing vindictive God that punished people who offended him or her. Would that be something that he turned out to be a she?
Knowing me, I think he was a transvestite. But but the truth of the matter is take off the but god I'm sick. That's one of the nice things about you never have to get real well you come sneak it in there you know.
Okay. Oh god I forgot where I was. UH, WE'VE HAD everything in our meeting, but we don't know transite yet.
Oh god. I think I sponsor a couple guys that like to volunteer for that though. Oh god.
Anyway, I had a lot of trouble with God when I came here cuz I really thought I was so I thought I was uniquely dirty. I remember when I was uh before I got in alcoholics and before I got here I really if anybody ever was able to open me up and look at me uh I thought I had so many secrets I had done and thought and wanted to do and did and led a life that was so offensive to any kind of a power that would be greater than myself namely God that I um I was uniquely dirty. I really did.
Anything that ever had to do with sexuality, I perceived as insult. And since I seemed to be attracted to that subject, I knew that I was uniquely or I felt that I was uniquely bad. Just bad.
And uh you know I had uh I had prayed I I knew that uh power greater than me wasn't the answer before I came into alcoholic synonymous cuz I'll tell you something even at the worst I was able to pray. I tell you how sick I was. I'm able to pray and think dirty at the same time.
Somebody else is that sick too. Huh? I remember having a lot of episodes like that before I came into alcohol.
I mean, I'd really get so frightened thinking and doing and being involved in some things that I really felt were so degenerate, so weird. And you know, look at when I later on I found out most of those things were just normal, not right, not wrong. But human beings do those things.
Human beings have always done those things. But I thought I had invented perversion or something. And I was so hard on myself.
I mean, I misinterpreted every I'm my own worst critic. See, I put myself under a microscope and I keep turning the power on higher and higher until I can turn a snowflake into a bunch of little monsters. See, and that's what I do to myself.
And I've always done that to myself, particularly before I came here. so judgmental of myself. I could find such unworthiness about myself.
And when people talked about God, I thought, "Hey, give me a break." I prayed. I cried. I did everything in my laser drinking career.
Ask him help me do something. What's wrong with me? You know, I'll do anything.
And I knew that didn't work. So, when I came into Alcoholics and I started hearing about God, I didn't pay much attention. But I'll tell you what, that word that bothered me was power.
And I knew there was power in that room. I knew there was something happening in the that realm. I knew week after week after week that something was happening.
These were not special people. They were not all wonderful. They were not without defects.
But they had a twinkle and they had they had the ability to laugh about their drinking. They had the ability to get up in front of a bunch of people they didn't know and tell things about themselves. They had a freedom.
Can you imagine? We take for granted what we hear in alcoholic synonymous. Nowhere else in the world do people get up and reveal so much of themselves as we do and we take it for granted.
People just don't do that anywhere. You don't find that in the Rotary. People don't get up and say, you know, I've been a pervert most of my life.
Let me tell you what I did. You know, we do that because of its sense of freedom. I mean, we are free to do that.
And I don't talk about these things because this is an exercise of freedom. They don't mean anything to me. See, I've forgiven myself cuz it was pointed out to me that God has forgave me long before I ever forgave myself.
And now I'm in the process that I know that I'm a human being. And that I got that by coming to staying here long enough to come to believe that there was a power. First, it was the group.
It was just the group for me. It was just the fact that something's happening here. I got to keep coming.
There was a sense of okay here. I got a sense that I wasn't alone. That I wasn't different.
That there were other people who understood. Then I progressed to a person. That person was called sponsor.
I gained to believe that some person had an insight that might help me. And he also had a strength that he derived from that group. So I saw a change.
I saw a chain between the group and this person and me. I took a journey to find this God or stop arguing about God. It wasn't that easy but hard because I resisted it.
That's why they made it hard. But I had to go from a group belief to a human belief to a God belief. And I didn't take that journey.
That journey happened. I came, I listened, I didn't drink. I tried to do in a little way what they said in a little way.
And gradually I came to believe in a loving God. Just a loving God. Now, I have no idea if you're having trouble, if you're new and you're having trouble with God, I don't know that I can help you.
But I can tell you this. Two troubles. One, there is no God.
Well, I don't know if there's a God. Maybe there is. I don't know is what religion he is.
See, I'm not one of those people who are blessed with a deep-seated religious belief. That doesn't mean I don't believe spiritually. See, I argue or I convince myself there's a God.
He's more than a face and he's more than a history. I think God is good. I know that good is better than evil.
Good feels better than evil. See, I know that love feels better than hate. See, I know that order is better than disorder.
See, I know that. I know that kindness is better than hatred. I know that peace is better than war.
All those things aren't accidental in my coming to understand the nature of God. I come to the belief that all those things are God. There is a power somehow that I can't understand.
I don't think any human being could understand the nature of God. If God exists, the very essence of God would make him not subject to understanding by humans because only God could understand the magnificence and power of God. You'd have to be God to be able to understand God.
Human beings seek to understand God. seek never will in this life at least. I don't know anything about the other.
Although I'm not going to be there. I'm going to be there soon. That's why I think I take this so serious and why I want to get better and alcoholic synonymous and I don't want to argue about these stats.
You see, most of my life is over and I live by that creed. I'm going to be 52 years of age in September. Most of my life is over.
I'm going to be dead soon. I'm not going to have any more time. See, I'm not a little kid that can pretend that I'm going to go on forever.
Nobody goes on forever. This is a very short time. Some of us die at 40, at 30, at 20, at 50, at 60, at 70, 80.
But I'm not going to be alive at 104. So, at least half my life is over. And the insurance companies tell me 3/4 of my life is over cuz they got me died at 71 years and 9 months and 3 days.
That doesn't matter. And when I pay those premiums, I'm betting against them. And I keep paying the premiums.
They keep building bigger buildings. They must be winning more than I don't know. I don't know.
So I have come to understand that I have got a short time. I want to be as happy as I can. I want to know enough as soon as I can.
I want to get a feeling of comfort as soon as I can. Now people think I hear people say, "Well, that's more of a thinking you're going to die soon." No, no, no. It's free.
It It frees me It frees me from being able to justify distraction. The distraction of I want, I need, what's going to happen? 90% of everything I've ever worried about in my life has never happened.
98% of the things that I thought if I got I'd be happy. When I got I wasn't happy. And I spent most of my time, my life wanting or worrying.
Seek him. But not God. see what's going to make me happy.
I've never had it. I don't know what it is. I never had a sense of that until I came onto this step, too.
And they said a power grain. I thought sanity is no problem for me. See, I had that videotape.
I still have it. See, I'm not nuts enough to be able to stand up here and tell you in my case, I just drank too much too often. Other than that, I'm a nice guy.
As soon as I stopped drinking, I became a nice guy. I've been happy and comfortable ever since. That has not been the way it is for me.
So, based on that idea of I never argue with insanity. I pay that tape. I know I'm insane.
I know I was insane. You know what it says here? Just a little something.
What it says? Sanity. Now I can see they were right.
They said you don't stop. You're going to fly. Sanity is defined as powerless of mind.
You have no alcoholic soberly analyzing destructive his destructive behavior. Whether the destruction cell on the dining room furniture or on his own moral fiber can claim soundness of mind for himself. If we literally replay the secret portions of our lives in our minds, how could we argue with soundness of mind and the fact that we did not lose or not have soundness of mind?
I mean, I can't understand that. I mean, it's just that simple. It's just that simple.
I mean, I look back on my living my drinking career in my living career prior to and during drinking. There wasn't anything sane about that. The guy that keeps putting his finger in that mask when that little girl just had to do it once and never had to do it again.
The guy that did that over and over and over and over and over again. The guy who promised himself every time, I won't do this again. and meant it.
Do you know during my drinking career and my if you would have given me a lie detector test when I said to me I won't do that again that test would have shown that I was telling the truth and I did again and again and again and again and again and again and again each time in between the doing it again. I promise I wouldn't do that again or I want not to do it again. I pray not to do it again or hope not to do it again.
I did it again and again and again. I can't argue with this. If it were in it doesn't trouble me.
That can't be soundness of mine. So I don't argue. I mean that I never found it difficult.
And yet I sometimes people want to make these big deals about I don't like this insanity part. I don't either. But it was you know if I had a choice maybe I wouldn't have been.
But nobody ever told him he had a choice. You know, I didn't go through that uh that line, that production line, you know. Well, you want a little on Saturday?
No, I pass on Saturday. I'll take some comfort instead. I just I just was insane.
Maybe. I don't know. I don't know that I was It's not a legal term and it's not a medical term for me.
It's a feeling just like that bottom was a feeling. It's simply a feeling. And if you have that feeling, that's all you got to have.
You don't have to argue or think about it or need anymore. The third step and we're just going to this is an overall view folks. This is not a study and we're not going to I mean this may not this may not be what you wanted or what you expected and this is all that I'm going to do.
The next guy going to read the book here. We all underline and that's fine and I don't mean to make light of that. Those are wonderful.
You know the book study groups are wonderful. This is just what we're doing here today. We're the net result of this hopefully is this that somebody in this room who has not taken the steps will do so before they leave alcoholics anonymous.
That's to my purpose of being here that if just one person tries before he leaves or she leaves to do this and stays that some good will have come from this. And I'm just trying to demonstrate through my experience what happened to me and how easy these things are to encourage somebody who's a week sober or 13 years over and know secretly they're not going to be here much longer to try it cuz it doesn't hurt. That's really what this is about.
So don't be disappointed that we're not reading all these things. You can do that. I do what this lady does.
I underline and I write. I write notes in these books. Now, some of these things are written 15 years ago.
And when I see what I wrote, I know how crazy I was. It was so important that I write something down. And then years later, I look, I said, "Wow, you weird." But at the time, it was like finding a pearl.
And I tell my people, where I come from, this is your book. Mark it up, write it up, diagram it, underline it, write in the foot arrows, do anything you want. It's your book.
It's your book. And I my this is not my book. I got so many pro books.
When I go to talk conference talking, a lot of places I go, give me a big book and they put a cover in and I just grab one of the whole pile. My book's falling apart. I mean, it's like some raging maniacs been tearing at it.
Well, that's exactly who's been reading it, I'll tell you. Step three is the easiest thing in the world. It's painless.
Painless. If you can stop arguing about what God looks like or who he is or she is or what it is or what religion it is and is just a force of good. And you know that force of good has somehow touched the people around you.
And they have told you he's available to touch you too. All you got to do, very simple. All you got to do is make a decision.
Period. It's the end of the step. Simply make a decision to turn your will and your life over the care of God as you understand him.
If I were writing this book, I would have added here's how my three third step would have read. Now, if they ever asked me to do this, this is what I'm going to do. and they never will made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood him or didn't understand.
Now, what's the big deal about making a decision for perfectionists? We resist that because we think that that means a total surrender and we know we're not capable of making a total surrender cuz we've never been able to make a total anything. That's not what it says.
This is just make a decision to try make a decision to try to try what? Be perfect. Nonhuman to be godlike.
No way. Make a decision to turn our lives and will over the care of God. His care.
That's all. You know what that says? Decide to let God help you.
Now, what's so big? What's such a big deal about that? Now, why is that so hard?
Why do people like me resist doing that? That's all it says. That's what it means.
I made a decision to turn my life and my will turn my life and my will over to care of God that says I decide God help me. I work so hard about that. Why did I resist that?
Why did I talk about I'll be a door man. I won't be able to make any decisions and I mean the people will step on me and I'll be like a you know just go ahead and slap me. I turn my will my care god.
I mean, I really thought that I argued when I was a newcomer. You would have hated me as a newcomer, too. I almost died because of that.
See, I almost didn't make it in alcoholics. See, I'm not I I've done more I made more mistakes in alcoholics than I should have and still stayed alive in AA cuz see, I came in here with a lot of misconceptions and bad motives. I really did.
And when they started talking about it, I remember arguing with some old-timer that if I turn my life and will over the care of God, I won't even know how to dress in the morning. I'll ask God, "Well, what suit should I wear?" And God, should I go to work today or shouldn't I go to work? And he looked at me like I was not.
And I was. But the truth of the matter is, it's very simple. made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understand him.
This force for good, this force that has helped the others. Please help me and I'll try to do what's right. That's all it is.
I'll try to do what's right. And I don't know what's right for you. And the person next to me at the meeting doesn't know what's right for you.
God knows what's right for me. And God speaks to me. Now, don't get scared.
This is not spooky stuff. God speaks through me through my conscience. I know what's right.
I always know what's right. When I do something that turns my insides, I can't kid myself. I know it's right.
I'm married. To have an affair is wrong. If I want to have an affair, I should be single.
I can have all the affairs I want. But before I came into alcoholics anonymous, my wife was married. But I always felt the pain of the contradiction.
No matter what I called it, infatuation or love, I always felt the contradiction here. I knew it was wrong. If I don't love this lady and I love this lady, I should leave this lady and get that lady.
I keep both. Try to balance that for a while. See how much spirituality results from that.
I know that I can't be into pornography and grow spiritually. I know there can't be any spiritual growth through watching X-rated films. I don't have to have God tell me that.
I don't have my sponsor tell me that. I feel that in my guts. I know what it feels like.
I know to create a false sense of excitement and perversion. Well, it may be, I don't know, exciting, but it's gut-wrenching cuz it's secret. I know it's wrong.
You know, it's contrary to mature normal growth in any sense of spiritualism. I don't need anybody tell me that. That's how God speaks to me.
I know I'm not supposed to steal. I know there's nothing spiritual about slapping your wife. I need to tell me that.
I got something called conscience. God speaks to that. I refuse sometimes to listen to that.
I mean, I don't hear it. I just refuse to listen to it. And when I turn my will and care, my life over to care God, it's very simple.
I'm going to try the best I can. I'm going to try with your help not do that. And sometimes I do it, so I'm going to do it.
Not necessarily these things I've just talked about. I mean, you know, I pick these things to in a dramatic way to drive home a point. I don't mean to limit and to focus on that kind of stuff.
And I please understand that sometimes it drives home a point. Sometimes not such a off the target point cuz those are some of the things that seem to bother people like me. The inconsistency of living a life.
Now, when you turn your life and care and will over the care of God, as you understand, doesn't mean you never do those things. Doesn't mean you won't be tempted to do those things. And it may not doesn't mean that you sometimes will not or you'll refuse to listen to that voice and you'll still do them.
You know why you're going to do that sometimes? Cuz you're not God. You're a human being.
You're a human being. Human beings don't have the power of God. God is all good.
God is all just. God is all loving. God is all knowing.
I'm not and never will be. And maybe you will, but I've never known anybody that's turned out godlike. So when you if the resistance to turn your life will care of God, it's because you feel that then you'll never be able to do those things or if you do those things, it'll all be for not.
But silly. Remember, I think very simply, the third step is very simply. I decide today based on the life I've led and the power I've seen here to ask that power to take my life and help me.
That's all to help me try to live better and try to hear the voice of my conscience and try to muster up enough strength to follow it. 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. >>