The Gathering With Roger B.

#87 A Design for Living - Part 1

• Roger B.

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This part 1 of a series of 3 Everyone has a design for living or plan if you will. So there is a fundamental question as I struggle with life and my circumstances, what is my response? Try harder, double down. Or consider my plan has failed me. How do I assess that and where do I go from here? The collapse of my self-reliance turns out to be  a break through to a new Life!

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Roger alcoholic. Today, August, what day is it? October. October 11th, 1978, is when I got sober. Actually, a more accurate description is that's when God came and got me. And I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe that stuff at all. So I'm going to give you a little backstory so you understand. The theme of this is the design for living, which we all have. Agreed? We all have a design for living. We all have a philosophy. Some of us have a faith. The question is not, do we have one? The question is, how's it working? And I have a, you'll hear me use this word beast. That voice in your head that's always trying to cut you off at the knees, that's always telling you you need something to be afraid of and worry about. That's the beast. Some people say that's the voice of your addiction. That's the ism. It doesn't matter what you call it, but I identified it when I was going through the book and it described fear, didn't it? And it said, it's an evil corroding thread. Our lives were shot through with it. It. They turned it into an entity. And I went, that's the deal. That's the beast. That's the beast. That's the thing that's trying to kill me. And I have to understand that what this, my mind is generating, isn't me. I'm the one that can recognize the crazy idea. But the problem with our addiction is delusion. It doesn't let us see what it's doing to us. Well, it's doing it to us. And we think we got it under control. Well, I can handle this. It's good. I can do this. I'm fine. I'm fine. And so this when we look at our fourth step and we look at these flaws in our character, those didn't, those weren't caused by drinking. I had those from the time I was about eight years old. And I I wined and dined them. I fed them and I practiced them. That was my design for living. One of the early messages I got as a little boy was, no one's got your back. You better figure this out. And what that turned into was I'll do this my way, which was a death sentence. But I didn't know it. Because the sanctuary in the beginning, the first drug was what? Approval. If I could just get an attaboy, if I could just get my dad to say, attaboy, love you, son, whatever. It just wasn't there. My dad was the alcoholic in the family, and my mom was the alanon. And so there wasn't a lot of emotional or any kind of support, really. It wasn't violent, it was just an emotional desert. And I I gotta I gotta give some credit to my mom. The reason I'm here is because of Al Anon, not because I went to it, because my mother went to it. My dad was the drunk, he was a hirner executive, so they don't have problems with drinking, they have problems with nerves. And about once, twice a year, my dad would go to the nut house to detox. And we had a family friend, Esther, some of you knew Esther Hall, and uh she was just as bad a drunk as my dad. And they'd end up in there usually about the same time. And then when they got or started organizing the revolution, they'd get booted out. So my dad got booted out, had Esther one time, and someone brought an AA meeting to the unit. And Esther got all the pamphlets, his AFU, 20 questions, all that stuff. She read it and ran to my mother and said, I know what's wrong with Don. And she drank for two more years. But when my mom read that, she went, This is what's going on. This is what's going on. And if you've grown up with this, you know, addiction makes your families very small, very contained, because we don't air our dirty laundry in public, right? So when we hit the porch, the front porch, and we're out in the fresh air, we look really good. In the house is crazy, just crazy. So my mom started going to Al Anon Tuesday and Thursday. And my dad said, Where are you going? Not telling. And she'd come home and go, Where have you been? Not telling. And my dad thought she was having an affair. But she was going and they said, keep it to yourself. And she did, and she learned what to do. And she sat him down, said, Look it, I know you're drinking, just drink. Because there's nothing I can do about it. And you're gonna drink until you either die or you want some something different. So that uh precipitated, took about six months. I'll never forget it, because I had three brothers and sisters and all alcoholics. My mom's dad was an alcoholic. She had four alcoholic kids, an alcoholic husband. Not fun. But I was in the living room, my dad was drunk in the corner in the chair, and he started crying. He said, Mom, will you call Hazelin? And she said, Call yourself. And we saw mom as the wimp. And when she did that, it was a drop the mic moment. It was like, who is this? Right? And that's how this started. My dad got sober in 68 at Hazelnut. And uh one of the reasons I'm here is because of that. The other one was because I was totally unteachable and unreachable. And my dad, if you have children, you know how hard this would be. My dad was watching me. I was a musician. I had I was running and gunning. And uh he watched the whole show, and he never once said anything about my drinking. He never once said, You may want to get that checked out. You might want to consider trying this A thing I'm doing. He didn't say anything. But his demonstration was so loud, no words were necessary. You know what I'm saying? He changed, and it was obvious because I was his bartender. Growing up, I thought my name was Get Ice. Get ice, got it. And I learned how to make drinks the way he liked them. And I watched what Percocet and Scotch did to him. I watched him in the end game, drinking Scotch, chasing with peptobismal, because his stomach was all torn up. He lost half his stomach and a third of his intestines from drinking. So that was those were two really important points in my life, what which I didn't recognize the importance of at the time. Why would I? I don't have the consciousness to even understand what's going on, but I can see the change. So I just did it my way. When I got to the uh doctor, I was talking before the meeting with someone, and uh when I got to the doctor, I didn't go to the doctor for help. I went to the doctor for a prescription because none of my drugs were working for this back pain I had. Now it's a it's a funny picture now, and if you've been around well, you know this. My story is exactly the same. My understanding of it keeps evolving. The importance of what happened and when it happened. So I got a design for a living, and it's I'll do this my way, and it's based around dishonesty. I'll do whatever I need to do to get what I what I need to get when I need to get it. This is called external referral. And the culture we grew up in, we're taught it's out here. Success is out here. Get a car, get a job, get a college degree, make a bunch of money, find someone to live with, find someone to divorce, I don't know. Just find someone, damn it. Find something to what? Fill the hole. And when you do this, if you were raised in a in a part of the culture that says you need goals, you need goals, damn it. Well, okay, so the goal is college degree. Want to get my college degree, then I will be sanctified and I'll be able to get a good job. Then I get the college degree, and the hole doesn't get filled. And what I I think I must need a master's, right? I must need a PhD, and I spend 15 years in college. This is me, this is a sponsee of mine. But we all have goals, right? The beast says we need goals, and the promise is when you get this external picture looking right, you won't feel this way anymore. What way? Empty, incomplete, broken, unlovable, full of fear. Fear and shame drive this whole thing. Fear and shame drive the whole thing. I didn't know I was in pain. I had no concept of that. I I I had a rather intense personality, and uh because I was driven to get my my needs met. And if you were between me and my goal, whether it's for the day or for the year or the week, then we got a problem. So I'll give you an example of this is external referral. It's it's the success, the answer, the peace, the joy, the harmony, the happiness is out here. And what we learn from our 12 steps is no, it's in here. And the beast never says, look inside. It says look out there. Look out there. So here's what it sounds like. I uh I was a musician and I had a bunch of ratty apartments, and this came to me, uh, you know, if if I just had my own house, then I'd be okay. And then I'd be fine if I just be a property owner. Right? So the goal is I gotta make$50,000 to qualify for the loan. And the beast all years tell me you're never gonna do it, you're never gonna do it, but I did it. I qualified for the loan. Not the biggest loan I wanted, but I ended up with a little downhouse. And when you achieve that external, there's a rush, isn't there? That feels good. I did it, this is wonderful. And then it fades. For me, it's a 60, 90-day fade. And then the it's it's like MSG going out for an oriental dinner, and you go, you're there, and you go, I can't eat another bite. And you're driving home and the MSG kicks in, you go, I'm hungry. Right? I'm hungry, damn it. So here's what the beast says you need a house, I get the house. And it feels really good for a couple months, and then it comes back. And it comes back in the form of a question. There's something missing. You're damn right there is. I wonder what it is. I think it's a woman. I think I need a relationship. Yeah, that's it. Then you'll be happy. You know this. We can always find volunteers. But, you know, it's the it's the it's the old saying, the odds are good, but the goods are odd. You attract what you are, right? I'm not gonna attract a healthy person. So I find her. It's more like capture release that I do, but I find her because this this is what's missing. And then for 30, 60, 90 days, we're loving on each other, and this is really good, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I love you. I love you too. And then we're down the road with this a little bit, and I'm looking at her, I'm going, did something change? And she said, No. I said, but I'm feeling like there's something missing. You too? Yeah, me too. Of course, she's like me, driven by the external. So, what do you think is missing? I think we need a commitment. Let's get married. That takes about a year, and we'll get a bunch of free stuff. It's good. So now for a year, I'm satisfied because I'm on the way to the goal. I get the goal, we get married, and it's really good. For about 30, 60, nine days. And then it starts wearing off, and I'm going, we're having the conversation again. Do you feel it? She said, I do feel it. What's missing, do you think? Baby. You're not surprised. Come on. Of course it's a baby. So we launch on this edition, and we get the baby. And it's really wonderful. But I was holding my boy who's back there. I was holding Zach, and I looked in his arms and I said, I'm never ever gonna do what my dad did to you. And I meant it. But I couldn't maintain it because I had a disease, alcoholism. So now we got the baby, and I'm holding it. You can't take this back. This is not returnable. Things got real right now. This is a commitment for life, and so this is good, and then the empty comes back. You feel it? I feel it too. You know what? This damn condo is too small. When I got it, it was for me, and now there's three of us. So, what do we need? We need a bigger house. That's what we need. Gotta work more, make some more money. You can chip in too. We'll qualify, we'll get a big house. Big to us, right? So we get the house. Another goal met. And then the empty comes back. Damn it. The empty's back. What do you think? I'm thinking, not another kid. How about a dog or a motorcycle or a boat or something? And it just goes on and on. It just goes on and on. I've done I've done retreats for men that are older like me, and they have 30, 40, 50 years. And you throw this external idea on them and they never got it. I have a guy sitting with me in a direction session just bawling. I wasted my whole life chasing all this stuff. And now I got it when I'm empty. So, what it turns out is that's a God-sized hole. And all those things that we think of as problems and the calamities that we create with our addiction, it's really God calling. The problem is I can't read the mail. I cannot read the mail. And I don't know that my program's failing because I can't admit that failure, because that would confirm my shame. I'm a piece of crap and I'm never going to be worth anything. So I can't admit that I don't know what's going on. So what do I do? Double down, try harder, double down, try harder. Don't tell anyone how afraid you are. That would be a vulnerability we couldn't stand. So the beast presents this scenario where you can never see what it's doing to you and you can never get well. Because you're thinking it's all out here. If I just had the right combination of things, you know, if I wasn't so screwed by life, if I could just catch a break, you know, that was my, I'll do this my way. So after I couldn't get the satisfaction from my parents, I tried my peer group, I tried school, I tried achieving, overachieving, then I tried underachieving, just because I need some damn attention. I I'm I wanted to be a solution, but I found it was I was really effective at being a problem. There was a scene. How old are you in sixth grade? Twelve? Something like that? So this would be 1951, too. I'm in sixth grade. And uh in those days, I don't know what they do now, the teachers would always say, ask your questions. There are no bad questions. And I thought, we'll see. And there were bad questions, you know. I I'll never read that. I'm in American history, and I raised my hand because I've been reading some stuff outside some native stuff, and I said, Why don't we ever study the genocide of the American Indian that we did? And that was not the right question. And I found with every teacher I could find that spot. That's not the right question. That's not the right question. So I became a problem. And so there was a meeting called. Five offended teachers, the truant officer, the principal, the school psychologist, all there, mom and dad. Dad's a big exec, and he's got to go to this meeting about Roger. And my dad was not very subtle, which I appreciate now. So we're in this meeting, they're all going around the room telling my parents what a loser I am. And and they think I need to be under psychiatric care. And I'm thinking, I'm watching my dad. I don't know if you had this with your parents, but my dad had tells what when he was getting pissed, his neck would start turning red. And I'm he's sitting over here and I'm watching the neck turn red, and I'm thinking, here he here he comes, he's gonna get him. He's gonna get him. And he goes, Well, for Christ's sake, we put him on the bus at eight in the morning. Can't you handle this? The answer was no. So the end result of that was I had to go see a shrink to be in school. And when we were walking out of that meeting, I was I can see it right now. My dad had a gray suit on with a white shirt, and I was looking at the back of his neck and thinking, son of a bitch, no one's got my back. More, I'll do this my way. It just kept getting reinforced. I can't catch a break. And I also don't notice that I can't make it happen. I can't get what I say I want. Which I really don't know what I want. I just know this isn't it, right? So that's the package. So I go to this guy named Murray, and he he was he was a weird-looking guy. He looked like uh the stereotypical FBI. He had a gray suit on, skinny black tiny flat top. But I noticed something unusual about his office. The whole wall behind him was all dope pipes. And so I started telling him my first acid trip, and he gets this little smile on his face and he starts nodding. And I'm thinking, Murray and I are gonna get along just fine. So I did that until I I would I was deemed palatable. And uh so these things are happening, they're shaping me. And what my response is, my reactions are all isolating. I'm just curling up in a ball because no one's got my back, and I'm gonna have to figure this out my way. And then I found out when I was about 13, I had a a knack for music, and I started playing professionally when I was 15. And now something really interesting happened. Get on stage. That's my office. You're out there, and I'm safe up here because I'm running the show, and I can get a reaction, I can get some applause, I can get some interest. And I'm thinking, this is really cool. I didn't know it was false adulation, I thought it was real, right? Because it was feeding that that need, that emptiness, that longing to be loved, to be acknowledged, to be affirmed. So this is the this is where the magic hit. So they say, we're having a party after the house, after the gig. Would you like to come over? I'm thinking, rock star party, rock star party, of course. Because I have this little piece of my personality I can blow up really big when I'm on stage. It's called a persona. And but when I get off stage, I become me again. So it takes about an hour, hour and a half to get everything in the van and drive over to this house. I come to the house and I walk in like this, and my head's down. Because I can't make eye contact when I don't. Why is my head down? Because everyone in that room, everyone in that house is better than me. They're smarter than me, they're more attractive to me, they're more articulate than me, they're more desirable than me, they're more everything than me. And I have a drink. And I don't mean one with veggies and stuff in it. Just give me a drink. And I get a water glass and I fill it with whiskey. And by the bottom of that drink, my head comes up. I can start looking around. I have another one of those. I get another one in me, and I can start talking to Andy, which isn't really why I'm there, but it's a start, right? And then I'm three or four of these drinks in about 40 minutes, and I run across Susan, and I have an out-of-body experience, and it is this. I can speak on any topic for any length of time. No information required. And I've got her, because it's really why I was there for the girls, and I'm going off about the drag coefficient of a Spanish sparrow at 10,000 feet with a six-ounce twig and a three-not headwind, and I'm getting her my thermodynamics thing, and I'm literally standing next to me and going, go for it, go for it. This is amazing. It was just I tapped into the eternal truths, you know. And I'm looking at her and I'm going, she's impressed. And she's thinking, psycho. But it looks like impressed to me. She was. She was impressed enough to run away. So now the room that I was terrified to walk into 45 minutes ago, now I'm looking around the room, I'm on my fifth or sixth drink, and I'm going, you know, there's a lot of love in the room. My brothers, my sisters, there's this beautiful thing. I'll have another drink. And I'm maybe eight, ten drinks in this thing. I've been there maybe an hour and 15. Now the same guy was terrified to walk in because all you were my superiors, and you were all judging me too. I knew it. You're doing it right now. And I'm leaning up against the wall with a good load on it, and the beast says, What are you doing with these losers? Let's get the hell out of here. That's transformation. That's the transformation. That's the same thing that the provinces are talking about, the same thing of the spiritual transformation they're talking about, but it was of a dark variety. But I didn't know it because it was one of the first times I ever felt comfortable in my own skin. And our doctor's opinion talks about having an abnormal reaction to alcohol. It's not abnormal if it's the only reaction you've ever had. I didn't know that was abnormal. I thought it was liberation. I thought my IQ went up about 80 points. I grew four inches, I'm bulletproof and irresistible. I don't see a problem here. I see a solution. And of course you do. You're laughing because you did too. And then we go take the ride. And we're talking about consequences externals. Because of my external referral, I think everything is happening to me because of you. Right? Cops with quotas. I'm in the back of squad cars frequently. And I think it's because they're looking for me. And they've got the who it's not fair to park a cop car out in front of a bar. I mean, Jesus. But I'm in the back of the squad car significantly and quite often. It never occurs to me to ask myself this question is there something I could change in what I'm doing to not end up in these squad cars? No, it's the cops, it's them. It's them. It's the narrow-minded people. They just don't understand. They just don't understand. And I'm a victim. And all of us play this card to a degree because the beast uses that to promote our descent into hell. If I'm a victim, I gotta wait for all of this to change before I can be okay. Have fun. Ain't gonna happen. I need you to change, I need them to change, I need the institutions to change, because I need to catch a break. And I'm not catching one here. As long as I'm a victim, there's no chance of my recovery. Metaphorically, I'm like on the cross saying until all of you get come before me and admit your wrongs and your harms, I can't then benevolently grant you forgiveness and come off my cross. It's never gonna happen. And so what happens with that little boy growing up, all of that is emotional and psychological pain. I'm suffering. I'm suffering, and I don't know it's suffering. I think I'm just kind of intense. And I'm rather driven and focused. That's code for closed-minded and stubborn. So I ran it as far as I could run it, and then it starts not working. Then you got to start being the chemist, mix and match, and try some different combinations of things because we give up a tolerance. And I can't, I can't see that my plan is not working. I think it's just lacking the right inspiration or the right amount of alcohol or animal alcohol in some drug or something, right? I don't know what's going on, but I'm desperate for an answer. But I'm looking in all the wrong places. So I end up in a doctor's office. Not because I wanted help, I wanted a prescription. And he did some lab work. We had some really unproductive chats. Imagine the picture. This is uh about 76. I'm I got hair down on my waist, my skin's green and yellow because I have uremic poisoning. I don't know about that. And so in those days, stripped under you and with the doctor being a minute. I'm sitting on the exam table, and the doctor walks in, doesn't even shut the door, doesn't even introduce himself. And he says, How much do you drink? And damn, that's personal. But I know the answer to that question. How much do you drink? Because that's what we do, isn't it? We turn the interviewer into the interviewee. Well, doc, how much do you drink? They do they're defenseless against this. And he says, Well, you know, I might have a beer on Tuesday night watching the game, and maybe a cigar and a cognac when I take my wife to the country club on the weekend. I said, Me too. I drink twice a week. I'm thinking Monday to Wednesday, Thursday to Sunday. You just didn't answer the right question. Right? So we do some lab work, and it turns out this was a distended liver, and and I'm I'm bleeding internally. And he says, Whatever you insist you're not doing in the quantities you're not doing it in, you have about 12 to 18 months to live. If you're a low bottom, you'll understand this reaction. My reaction was relief. This is gonna be over soon. Because I've been throwing everything I had at it for 28, 29 years, and nothing worked, and I was just done. So I left, I thanked him, and my goal was dead by 30. Let's go. And I was dedicated. So by the end of this thing, I had not filed taxes federal or state for five years. I had about$10,000,$12,000 worth of bad checks in town. I had warrants in six states. It was kind of interesting driving west. I had restraining orders going both ways against my ex-wife. I had abandoned a family with three kids under the age of eight. And I'd done some entrepreneurial work with a motorcycle gang around some control substance stuff. It was a it was just deliveries, you know. I owe them six figures because when I got drunk and high, I got very generous with their profits. Now, if if you're not affiliated with a a criminal organization like this, think of a pyramid as the top is a president. Sometimes they have a sergeant of arms, sometimes they have a treasurer, and then everyone else is a soldier. And the deal is I'll take a bull for you and you take a bull for me because we're brothers, right? Yeah, that's the deal. But that pyramid is held in place by fear, actually terror. So I come in, what happened to Chuck? And everyone's quiet. Chuck's not coming back. And when you stepped out of line, you were not a brother anymore, you were an example. You violated the code, you were an example, and you disappeared. You didn't get fired, you didn't get kicked out of the gang, you disappeared, you got dead. These guys owed six figures. So that's what I'll do this my way was. The throughput on that, 28 years of that. I went back to drink until I didn't wake up. I stole a book from my dad's house. He was in AA, he was very active, he had those blue books everywhere. And I thought he's not gonna miss one. And you probably have had this experience, some of you anyway. Um, I didn't really read it. I started with a table of contents. There's four words, that doesn't apply to me. There's a doctor's opinion. I've already got one. Bill's story, I should probably look at that because he's one of the founders. And I read about a page and a half of that and not happening. There's a solution. That's terrifying. That's terrifying. The great fact is this what? We've had deep and transformative experiences that have changed our whole life and the way we interact with people and things. That's booky, because I don't believe in God. I'm a devout evangelical militant atheist. I'm not having any of your G O D stuff because I got a treatment of that when I was a kid that didn't work, right? So then we got more about alcoholism. I don't need to know more about alcoholism. I know everything I need to know. I know nothing about alcoholism. I know about inebriation. I don't know anything about the disease concept of alcoholism, right? We agnostics, that wouldn't apply to me. I'm an atheist. I mean, this is my brilliance, right? I don't need to read this damn thing. It doesn't even apply how it works. Let's see. How does it work? That's terrifying if you start in the middle. They spend 60 pages to get you through the first two steps to get you to the three pertinent ideas to make a decision to go forward. So I don't have any of the backstory. I don't have any of the internal reflection. I got nothing. So I'm not doing that. Into action, that's five through 11. That's not going to apply to me. They're talking about written inventory. That's admissible in a court of law. I ain't doing that. And I'm not doing a fifth step because I've been abused and used and run around by a bunch of naughty people. Bad, bad actors. And if I tell you this, my story, my fifth step, that will put me in a place of vulnerability that I won't be able to recover from. Because you'll have an edge on me. You'll have leverage. And that's not going to work. Six and seven doesn't work because I don't believe in God. Eight and nine, I do believe that I hurt some people. How do I know that? I have depression. I have regret. I have remorse. I have a whole bunch of people I don't want to run into. Ever. So I'm thinking about it. And I'm thinking about Billy, this this guy, uh, we got loaded one night and he passed out. And I took his car and sold it to a dealer for some dope. Then we come two in the morning and he goes, My car's gone. I said, What? Yeah, my car's gone. What are we gonna do? Let's go find it. Let's drive around and look for it. We couldn't find it. Well, we'll have to file a police report. Notify your insurance company. Yeah. Right? And we get done with all this thing. I'm thinking that's probably what they call a harm. Sealing someone's car. And they're lying about it. So I take him through this whole process. And he gets a check from the insurance company. Nice check. And then I go, damn it, that check's worth more than the car was worth. I think I did him a favor. Let's call it even. No need for that. Right? And on and on. Six and seven. You ready? Entirely in all? Those two words bug me. And I don't believe there's something that can prove what's wrong with me. Because it wasn't just that I had regrets, I thought I was regrettable. It wasn't just that I did bad things, I thought I was bad. And there's no escape from that. So I got this package and I'm drinking to not wake up. And it's not fun, but one night I passed out on someone's couch, face down. And when I came to, it was all dark, and I had my eyes open. I thought, oh, you died. Good job. And then I realized I was just passed out on the couch with my face in the cushion. So I'm drinking in the biker bar because I drink with imp impunity there. No one can touch me there because our band was a house band. They had a club, a dance club, and a stand-up bar, and we would fill the place for them, and they they loved it. That's how I got to know them in the first place. So no one's allowed to mess with me. And I'm drinking, and this is uh October 10th. Andy and I were talking about this yesterday. And uh I threw a shot back and it came out my nose. That's not cool in a biker bar. It one, it burns, and two, it's humiliating. So now I'm staring at the bar because I have to get this in me. It's that I'm gonna die if I do, and I'm gonna die if I don't. And I'm thinking, I don't I can't lap it up like a dog. That's really humiliating. And I'm thinking, well, napkin, soak it up, suck the napkin, then why is he eating a napkin, right? This is a fraction of a second. And then my alcoholism comes to my rescue and says, clearly, the indication here is an amphetamine deficiency. And I always had a handful of speed, not because I like speed, but you have to stay awake to drink. So I took a handful. I didn't take one. You don't I do who takes one of anything, right? I'm in the right room. God, one? I've never had a two-aspirin headache. I've had a four-aspirin headache regularly, but anyway. So I throw this bead in my mouth and I take a swallow and I can't swallow it. And I walk out of the bar, and my flop was about two blocks from there. And I started crying. And I hadn't cried since I was a little boy because I was taught early, men don't cry. You suck it up. Don't let anyone see that. Men don't cry. And I cried. 28, 29 years of pain and suffering. I just started crying. I couldn't stop. I went back to the flop I was living in, and there were two guys living with me, and they're both one's dead for sure, the other one is either dead or in prison because they were drunks like me. And I just said, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna kick, and you guys need to babysit me. And I gave them the instructions and about keep me on my side and don't let me jump out the window. And if I turn blue, call the EMP and that kind of stuff. And those guys sat with me 24-7. I think it was for about five days. I was their entertainment. Robbie, come in here, he's doing that crappie flop again. Speaking in tongues and hallucinating, you know, it was grand time. I was their entertainment. I came out of that. This is the insanity of the beast. I came out of that. And the first coherent thought I had, well, I'm sure not going to AA. I'll do this my way, which is what I've been doing for 30 years. I can't even see the problem. That's the delusion of this illness. I can't even see it. I come out with a statement that got me there. I'll do this my way. I don't have a way to look at that and say, well, how's that working? You know, you're laying in a pool of your own blood, you can't walk. How is that working? It's not. But I don't have a solution. So I I'm here's another thing I'm suffering from. We were talking about this before. I I think I have a drinking and drug problem. Clearly I do, but it's not the problem. Our book talks about the main symptom of a much bigger problem. Now we're talking about spiritual malady, which I can't have a spiritual malady because I don't believe I have a spirit. But that's what it says. And I got placed in a position of neutrality. I didn't see the other part of the step for a while. Your life's become unmanageable. You know why? Because you're the damn manager. And you know why? Your design, your plan for living has thrown up all over you. It's destroyed everything of value in your life and a bunch of things that weren't of value. Because if you were in my life, you got used up. And when you were used up, you were discarded because you no longer had anything for me. I had a sponsor once who said, you know those gray shapes in your life? I said, Yeah, I said, those are people. Because the only time you became three-dimensional in color is when you had something I wanted. Or you're bringing something to me. So that's the uh how the journey started. That's what is the first step? We admit we're powerless over alcohol or drugs or whatever you're powerless over, and that your life's unmanageable. It's unmanageable because you're powerless. What the first step is saying is your self-reliance has failed you. I'm powerless, but I'm not helpless. And it takes a while for that to come online. Because what is good, the unpacking of all this is a slow operation of opening the mind and the heart to a different way of perceiving things, a different way of responding to things, and a different way of thinking. George Bernard Shaw has a great quote. He says, All progress requires change. No argument. I don't think anyone here would argue that. But the rest of the quote is a downer. And if you can't change your thinking, you can't change anything. And the hardest thing we have here to do is to change our thinking. I don't change it. I observe it, and then I practice the opposite of the thinking. And whatever this power is, you can call it God, you can call it Yahweh, you can call it whatever you want. Doesn't matter. It's not particular about what you call it. It's very concerned that you call it, because the power will only come in at my invitation. There's no coercion in this. I gotta say, help me, some form of help me. And so, in retrospect, what happened was this power took care of everything that I couldn't take care of. And I was placed in this position of neutrality. I was not awake. I was back in the club's plan, and some very curious things happened. Um, my wheelhouse, free drugs, free booths, available women. That's 90% of my four step right there. And I nothing had any attraction. I go in the dressing room, there'd be a pile of coke. Hey, look what we got. I said, Ah, pass. You say, Can we buy a drink? And I said, Sure. What do you want? I said, I'll have a club with a twist of lime. That's not drinking. I'll see you later. It just, there was no, it was a phenomenon. I couldn't explain it, but I was having an experience of it. This thing is not talking to me. I thought, well, shit. My dad had 10 years at that time. I couldn't even fathom 10 days. I assumed this was just going to go away, and I'd wake up one day drunk. It wasn't. It didn't go away, but it was like looking back, it was like God was holding me by my ears, and I was right up here in my mess. But he took away the obsession to drink, took away the need of that, and left me with the unmanageable part of my life, which was 95% of my life. The lying, the dishonesty, the manipulation. And he's in retrospect, he was he was like he was saying, I'm gonna send you some angels. You're not gonna recognize them. Some will have four legs, some will have two legs, and the angels he sent me didn't I didn't see as angels. I saw as irritants. So I'm this 30-year-old guy with two minutes of sobriety, with hair down his waist. I live in black leather, and I start going to meetings. They're old people. They got gray hair, no hair, 20, 25, 30 years sobriety. And it's like, I can't even relate to this. So this is my new fellowship, my new, my new posse. These are the people growing up, this is the people I'm gonna walk with the rest of my life. Jesus. I can't relate. I can't relate. But in retrospect, those guys love me. They didn't like me. They loved me. And they tolerated me because they knew if I left, I was gonna die. They knew much more about me than I knew about me. And that's the process. This design for living, this thing that we come from has got to be pierced. I've got to see the failure of it before I can even start to proceed with the other ideas. And if I if I just think I had a drinking problem, then I think that's solved. And then a couple three months later, some of you have had this experience, it's not so fun anymore. Why do we relapse? Well, the doctor says when we're not drinking, we become restless, irritable, and discontented. Because it's not showing up the way I need it to. It's still there, the external referral. Thinking through my answers out here. And they said it over and over, your answer's in here, kid. And I'm going, yeah, whatever. But they were right. And they they love me, but they loved me the way I needed to be loved. I was, I know it's hard to imagine, I was rather disruptive. And I like to swear and throw things, and if anyone mentioned any synonym for God. And so I came back and they sat me down and said, This is Charles and this is Robbie, and they'll be keeping you in your seat tonight. And by the way, you have nothing to say. And to me, that's just a challenge. We'll see. And I got up to start my rant, and they grabbed me by the belt and pulled me down. I said, These guys are serious. I still tell, I still tested them, but they were, it was, it was the beginning of this love that I couldn't recognize as love. And then the other one, this I'll just wrap this up, this part. Um one of the old timers, we'd have a coffee break. One of the old timers comes and says, Hey kid, how you doing? You know, his crusty old World War II vet. And I look at him like my array, and I said, Well, you guys seem to be big on this rigorous honesty. Would you like to know the truth? And so it's just an asshole. And he says, Yeah, that'd be refreshing. And so I said, I get my act going, I get my lip quivering. Well, I'm depressed and I have low self-esteem. And he goes, You're an asshole. That should change. First thought, you're dead after the meeting. There's gonna be a car accident, you're getting run over. Second thought was good point. Good point. I won't admit it to you that it was a good point, but they put it in front of me. You're not changing. That's why you're miserable. You're not changing. And that's how it was. They just spoon fed me this stuff. I'll tell you about it later how we got there. But this is the failure. I gotta be able to cop to the failure of my design for a living before I can accept a new plan. This is what we call our bottom, colloquially. Our bottom. I can go no further. I cannot take another step, and I'm completely out of bullets. No ideas left. I've run everything up and down the flagpole, and there's nothing I can do. So, thank you for listening. I'm gonna turn it over to Carl. He's gonna try and sell you something. Here you go, Carl.