#93 The Doctors Opinion Part 1

Part 1 

If you are living with or have been effected by someones addiction. You are, and have been, effected. Why do they act the way they do? Don't they care? What about our marriage and the children? What is going on? This is what William D Silkworth, the treating physician for Bill W. (one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous) suggests is the problem. We have a 3 fold illness, body, mind and Spirit.

Chapters

• 0:00 Recovery As Process, Not Event
• 2:30 Big Book Purpose And Early AA
• 6:40 Sponsorship, Fellowship, And The Book
• 12:20 Attitude, Powerlessness, And Fear
• 16:10 Doctor’s Opinion And Trust
• 21:30 Allergy And Phenomenon Of Craving
• 28:10 When Plans Change After One Drink
• 33:00 Why Self-Knowledge Isn’t Enough
• 37:40 First Step: Powerlessness Made Real

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Part one. Roger Alcoholic. Good to be with you. Last Saturday I celebrated 47 years of continuous sobriety. And that is a result of what we're going to be talking about and a slow application of that. Our recovery is a process. It's not an event. You come in where you are, and then we progress out of that with these new ideas. And when you examine the steps, it should become pretty apparent the steps aren't about drinking. They're about your thinking. They're about your consciousness. It's about where you're coming from, right? After we admitted we were powerless over alcohol or powerless over our thinking, there's no talk about drinking. It all is reflecting on and asking me questions about where I am at. So before we get all the way into this, um I'm gonna I'm gonna, some of this is gonna be new and some of it's gonna be review. The forward to the first edition. The reason it's important is because it really tells you what the whole intention of the book is, the whole intention of your recovery program. So we have Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. Recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body, not cured, but I'm not crazy anymore, and my body is healing. Or as crazy. So, to show other alcoholics precisely how we've recovered is the main purpose of the book. So I have a do-it-yourself book. I have I have everything I need to get sober and get a new life and thrive in this book. Now, we have a lot of emphasis on sponsorship and fellowship, and that's all good and it's all useful. But when they wrote the book, there were three meetings in the world: New York, Akron, and Cleveland, and the total number in those three meetings was going in and out of about 70 people. And Bill, one of the co-founders, thought they ought to see if we can put this our ideas down in print, and if we could help someone through the written word, through the printed word, right? And they had a lot of weird, they had a lot of unspiritual ideas about this. The vision was we'll make millions of dollars, we'll open a chain of hospitals, we'll get all these people. That's not what happened. But again, I start out doing one thing, and I think I know what I'm doing, and God says, no, here's another thing. This is what this is about. So they wrote the book. And there was a couple of really useful uh reinforcements of the book, Jack Alexander and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and they started getting some publicity about the book, and it's they started having responses. And that's one of the reasons they had the book, because we couldn't send you out. There were 12 guys in New York. I mean, and when you hear Jimmy Burwell talk about it, he said, most of us didn't have a car for four years. I mean, we couldn't we were so busted up. So it turns out in my story, this is this is what I did. This is how I got well, because I was unteachable, I was obstinate, I was closed-minded and argumentative. And when I finally uh gave it up, I said, well, I'll have the book sponsor me, because I don't want one of you crazy guys sponsoring me. So to them, to you and me, the drunks, we hope these pages will prove so convincing, no further authentication will be necessary. We hope after you read the book and do what's in it, you won't be able you won't have to drink anymore. That's the authentication reference. Here comes the family. We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand. Everyone talked about understanding. The alcoholic. Many do not comprehend the alcoholic as a very sick person. And besides, we're sure our way of living has its advantages for all. And there's now over 212-step groups in the world, they're all using the same thing: nicotine, hoarding, emotions anonymous, over eaters anonymous. You can be addicted to anything. So that's the underlayment to this. And it's important because the steps, if you're, for instance, if you're a faith-based person, you have a religion that you practice, this is not going to interfere with that. My experience is that it will enliven it, it'll turn as illuminated, it'll light it up for you. And uh there's all kinds of people out there with all kinds of background suffering. Suffering. I uh I sponsor an Anglican bishop. So imagine this frustration. You're leading the church, you're leading, you're in the podium, and and you're preaching, and you're counseling, and you don't believe anything you're saying to the people that you're helping, because it's not alive in here. So it's important to find a way to address this um problem. And the problem is my thinking's screwed up. The one thing that will stop you from getting this is your attitude. If you're belligerent, if you're in denial, you want to fight about it and argue, your mind is closed, and you won't accept the concept of a power greater than yourself, whatever you call it, is irrelevant. But I have to acquiesce. I need additional power because my will, my thinking, and my actions have produced nothing that's useful. In fact, my thinking and my actions have produced frustration. Deep frustration, concern, and fear. Fear alternating between fear and terror. Am I gonna get the call? I'm like, he left here and he's drunk. Should I call the police? What should I do? Right? So, the doctor's opinion.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

And feel free to either follow along or you can just listen because you'll have the book. You can read it on your own as well. But if you want to follow along, we're on Roman numeral 25, XXV.

SPEAKER_00: 6:40

We of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan of recovery described in this book. Here's another important thing. Every time you see we in this book, it's the people who wrote the book. It's not we in the meeting. I got a meeting and we have a we there, but everyone there is not doing the recovery program. Some are just sober curious. Some are just talking it and not doing it. So it's important because this is their testimony. The power we have in these fellowships is our stories. The stories of what worked, what didn't work, and how I got to where I am. So, for instance, you'll be directed to go down the possibly or an aeronon. And what you're gonna do there is you're gonna find people that are have dealt with what you're going through right now and they're fine and they're through it. And you get to ask them, how did you do that? How did you do that? And so we need to be clear the we isn't necessarily the we in the room, it's the we who wrote the book, okay? So we start with the doctor's opinion because we figure the people reading it will have more respect with the doctor's opinion than ours, because we've kind of blown our credibility along the way. Just saying. So, what is the most damage that's been done in your lives with the addict or alcoholic you're living with? Trust has been destroyed. Hasn't it? Hope hasn't been destroyed. You're here. But trust has been destroyed. Will I ever be able to believe what they're saying? Will I ever be able to trust that they're gonna go where they say they're gonna go and come back when they say they're gonna come back? Answer is yes. Convincing testimony must surely come from medical men who've had the experience with the sufferings of our members and have witnessed a return to health. Well-known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcoholic and drug addiction, gave Alcoholics Anonymous this letter. This is William D. Silkworth, the attending physician for Bill at Towns Hospital. Note. So we know the guy's prominent. He's a big deal. Towns Hospital is treating addiction. There weren't hospitals in the United States treating addiction. The treatment for addiction prior to this book was incarceration. You're showing up drunk again, we're throwing you in the tank. If you became what they called a chronic inebriant, they'd put you in an asylum. And then when you got out, if you kept doing this, after a certain number of reoccurrences, they'd lobotomize you. They'd destroy the frontal cortex. That was the treatment. There's a uh Chinese saying, the man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, the drink takes the man. That's 4,000 years old. That describes my addiction perfectly. In the 1200s, the Catholics were killing the drunks because they thought it was demonization. They thought you were possessed by the devil. In in a sense, we were. But it's not terminal, right? So this is why this is so important and impactful to this guy. Also, notice the hospital is treating drug addiction and alcoholism. Two different things. If we all did heroin for a month, we'd have a hundred percent addiction rate. So Jen sets up an experiment, and we got 30 people in here, and we're gonna drink for a month. We got all the waivers signed, you can't leave. There's gonna be a bar here, you're gonna be fed, and what we want you to do is get up in the morning and start drinking and drink until you're done with the day. When that's over, and Jen comes in and says, Okay, the experiment's done. Out of the 30 people, three of us are gonna be saying, Oh, it can't be a month. I meant my my my love here. I'm we're getting engaged. Come on, what's happening? Because that's the abnormal reaction to the substance. And I don't know I have an abnormal reaction because that's the only one I've ever had. The reason it's different is because Towns Hospital was formed around World War I. And what would happen as a soldier, you get a fuel pack, and in the fuel pack is morphine. So if I get wounded out on the battlefield, I scream for the medic, stab my leg, and I scream for the medic. He comes, I get triage to the field hospital. If I'm lucky, where I get more morphine because they stabilize me, they get me to the coast, need some more morphine. They get me to England so I can get my surgeries. Now they're gonna ship me home across the whole ocean, back to New York. More morphine, more morphine. When the guys showed up that were wounded, they were morphine addicts. So he started treating them, and along the way, he discovered this other thing. These guys seem to have a little problem with drink, some of them. And they come in here and they don't respond to the normal treatment, the talk therapy, the exercise, the vitamins, the self-knowledge, the information. And they walk right out of here and they and they walk right across the street into the bar. It's baffling to me. So we're gonna find out about this guy. He's he's pretty profound. And if he would, if Bill would have presented at any other hospital, we wouldn't be here. But that doctor had enough humility to say, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'll see if I can help you. Right? And Bill was in there three times. So he was a relapser. So here's the letter. To whom it may concern. I have specialized in the treatment of alcoholism for many years. In late 1934, I attended a patient who, though he'd been a competent businessman of good earning capacity, was an alcoholic of a type I had come to regard as hopeless. That's the that's the diagnosis. You're hopeless. Have you known anyone that had that diagnosis? There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. I had an uncle. 88 years old, never been sick a day in his life, and came home from grocery shopping with his wife and fell down the kitchen. She got him up and he said, I just got dizzy, whatever. And uh about an hour later he fell over again. So he killed an ambulance, took him to the hospital, they did some tests, they did an exploratory surgery, it was full of cancer. And they just had to sew him up. There's nothing we can do for you. Hopeless. Hopeless. So that's Bill's diagnosis. You may have diagnosed a person in your life as hopeless, but this is the doctor. This is a well-informed opinion. In the course of his third treatment, he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. This is in Bill's story. His one of his drinking buddies visited him in the at home, and he got sober in the Oxford group, was the Christian movement. And he shared that experience with Bill. And that was the first time Bill knew there was a way out of this. Because Ebbie was his drinking buddy, and Ebby was 60 days sober. And Ebbie was like, Bill, he can go a couple hours without drinking. So Bill had this example in front of him that was undeniable. My example was my dad. My dad was the alcoholic in the family, the first one. Four kids, all alcoholics. My mom was an L Anon. And uh I was his bartender. And I watched Scotch and Percocet take that man out. He was a civil engineer with an international reputation. Good earner, good provider, hell of a worker, uh, brilliant man. And I watched him get to the point where he was drinking Scotch and chasing it with pep tabismo. And then in 1968, he ended up in Hazelnut and got sober. And he remained sober until he died in 96. So we all have to have an example. We have to have someone that demonstrates to us, and I relate to that. I relate to that. I relate, not to what I'm hearing these old guys talk about in the meetings, but I'm relating to my experience. I know who my dad was, and he's not that guy anymore. And I knew he he got this thing in this A outfit, and I stole the book from him, so I'll say those blue books all over the damn house. I figured I'll do a little exploring on my own. Which was fruitless. But until you meet someone who's had an experience you've had, you'll hear yourself either here, nodding or laughing, or here nodding and laughing. Right? That's the truth. You recognize the truth because the truth is already in you. Okay. So as part of his rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing upon them that he must like must do likewise with still others. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. This man and over 100 others appear to have recovered. That's different than being hopeless. And note this these men and their families. The term you've heard it probably if you've been around at all in recovery, home group. Home group. That's because all the meetings at the beginning were in people's homes. And the families met, they all met together. It was 15 years later or so that Lois said, We need our own program. Bill's wife. So anyway. The powers in the story. So now Bill has who's hopeless has recovered. Then he went on to say, I personally know scores of cases who are of the type with whom other methods had failed completely. These facts appear to be of extreme medical importance because of the extraordinary possibilities of rapid growth inerate in this group. They may mark a new epoch in the annals of alcoholism. These men may well have a remedy, an understanding, and tools for such situations. You may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves. There's the trust restoration, right? Very truly yours, William D. Silkworth. Now, there's three stages of this. He's hopeless, he appears to have recovered, and then you can rely on anything they say about themselves. That's restoration, that's transformation. He was here and now he's there by practicing a few ideas and gaining a different understanding of his condition. It's humorous. In the first printing of this book, he cited Dr. X because he didn't want to put his reputation completely on the line with the endorsement, because he had, you know, I hope this works. And I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what I've observed, but I don't want to help myself quite yet. And then after it was a success, he started signing his name. Well, human. So that's the first letter. Here's AA's response. The physician who at our request gave us this letter has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement, which follows. Second letter, next page. In this statement, he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe. That the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. New idea. What do you think suffered alcoholic torture means? It means I don't want to do what I'm doing and I can't not do it. I am tortured by that. I see what's happening to me, and I'm absolutely powerless to affect any change in my I'm hurting people I love. I'm hurting people I love. I've abandoned a family, my first family, my wife and three kids under the age of eight. I left. It was the most horrible experience I've ever had. Took years to get over that and to deal with my kids and the amends process and all that. But if you would have been there, it it would I was saying, I can't handle this, I gotta go. But it was really my alcoholism saying, I can't handle this, I gotta go. We gotta get out of here, Rod. Come in, because my alcoholism became my lover, my counsel, my guide, my higher power. Right? And it didn't happen in a week, it happened over 15 years. So, new idea. The body of the alcohol is quite as abnormal as the mind. Something happens when I drink and I don't know what it is. We're gonna later call this the phenomenon of craving, right? That's the difference between me and the average or temperate drinker. I put a certain amount of alcohol in my body and something kicks in, and I don't know what's gonna happen next. Because now I'm off to the races. So, this is a new idea. There's something wrong with my body. It did not satisfy, I'll put it in the first person, it did not satisfy me to be told that I couldn't control my drinking just because I was maladjusted to life, that I was in full flight from reality, or were out was outright mental defective. These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us, but we, the people who wrote the book, this is their testimony, are sure that our bodies were sicken as well. In our belief, AA's belief, any picture of the alcohol which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete. How do I test that? I look at my my drinking career, we call them careers, in my history, right? And I ask myself, where does this torture show up? How does it manifest? And and an easy example is I I go into the bar and I have a burger and a beer several times a week, and I leave. Nothing happens. But then I walk in one day and I order my food, and then Charlie walks in, and he says, Oh, I'll buy a round. I said, Oh, I'll buy a round too. And then Butch walks in and he buys a round, I buy around, Charlie buys around, it goes like that, and the next thing we know, they're flashing lights. Time to go home, boys. I don't know what happened. If you would say that's a phenomenon of craving, I would say, no, I just changed my mind. Just going with the groove. I'm just in it, you know. Another one is when your plans change, um, like we're gonna go, we're going to a wedding. And my wife's very uptight about me drinking. She says, Please don't drink at the wedding. Will you please make a deal with me? Won't drink at the wedding. Of course, uh, whatever, I'm fine. I won't drink. No problem. But I get there and it's an open bar. And I'm going, it's free, for God's sake. What could what could possibly go wrong? So I have a couple drinks, and she says, You said you weren't gonna do that. Now I get pissed at her for calling me on my stuff. Now I got a resentment for feeling this, and I end up drunk. By the end of this thing, we're arguing about who's gonna drive home. And I've ruined her day, her evening, the whole deal. That's the phenomenon of craving. It changes my plans and it tells me, I call this the beast. The beast tells me, no, this is your idea. It's not never my idea. So they're trying to introduce me in the next paragraph. The doctors theory we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion as to its soundness may of course mean little. But as ex-problem drinkers, we can say that this explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account. I go to drink with a plan, and the plan changes after I drink. I have a drink, and it's like I've the alcoholics here might be able to recognize this. But for me, it was like, I need a drink, but that's not what my brain said. I'm thirsty. And then I start drinking, and it was like nothing would quench the thirst. It was like it wasn't even hitting my throat, you know. I'm just going, come on, man. Right? So I've got to take this apart for myself. Allergy. Abnormal response to a controlled substance. Who has allergies here? What do you got?

SPEAKER_01: 24:02

Tree nuts.

SPEAKER_00: 24:04

Peanuts? Tree nuts. Nuts. Tree nuts, any old damn nut, right? So what happened do you have an anthylactic reaction? Yeah, okay. You everyone know what that is? Yeah, okay. So you stay away from peanuts. You don't need a 12-step program to stay away from peanuts. Because you've had the experience of almost dying. Epinephrine in the you got an epipen? Yep. Yeah, of course. And that's epinephrine to to reverse the allergic reaction. And if he doesn't get that pen in his thigh and get and then get to a hospital, he can be dead in 20, 30 minutes. So I never thought of it as an allergy. But when I look back on it, the abnormal response was always there. So because Evan, right?

unknown: 24:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:56

Ethan. I was close. It was a knee word. Ethan doesn't go, well, God, it's been three months since I've had peanut butter. I think I've had a I've been six months. We've been doing really well. I think a bag of nuts. Maybe if they were coated, maybe with chocolate, I wouldn't have a problem. He doesn't do that. I do that for 15 damn years. Maybe it'll be different this time. It's never different. It's only different in this sense. It gets worse. And because in the beginning, I started drinking when I was 14. In the beginning, it doesn't present as a problem. It presents as a solution. Because this little boy that I was, growing up in this family with active addiction, there was no safe corner. It wasn't physically violent. It was just an emotional desert. There was no guidance. There was no comfort. There was no affirmation. And when I got that first serious drink in me for the first time, I felt comfortable in my own skin. I can do this. And out of that I fashioned my mantra for my life. I'll do this my way. Because now I found the solution to hell with you guys. I don't need you. And everything that was deficient in me in that moment disappeared. My inferiority, my self-consciousness, my fear of what you were thinking. It just was transformative, like the book. It transformed me. My IQ went up 80 points. I became 6'4, bulletproof, and irresistible. I mean, I don't see a problem here. It was my confidence and my confidant. So it was the ruling power in my life. But I didn't see it as that. I thought I just discovered the answer to my living problem. So this is a big idea. You're not just crazy. There's something different about your body. My mother did not have that problem. So I go to Canada a few times a year to work, and she'd always say, get me some vodka at the border. And I'd get her a pint. A pint. And it would last a year. If we're laughing. A pint couldn't get me out the driveway, right? That's normal, temperate drinker. She didn't have the phenomenon training. So this is starting to give me an understanding. Not that I'm a victim, but I'm different. Physiologically, I'm different. Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as altruistic plane, we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged. More often than not, it's imperative that a man or woman's brain be cleared before they're approached, as they then have a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer. So they've introduced me to the doctor. They've introduced me to his observation of Bill's recovery, which to him was a phenomenon. I know this has happened because I'm observing it, but I don't know how it happened. I don't know where the switch is. I know what's wrong with these guys. They're crazy and they come from a really dark place. They're liars, they're manipulators, they're thieves. They steal your time, they steal your love, they steal your hope. But I don't know how to switch them over. Because what they got to get to is humility, prayer, meditation, helpfulness, forgiveness, charity, kindness, right? I know where I gotta get them. These are just values, morals, or principles. But they're the operating software that we come from. So as a boy, I came up with I'll do this my way. So I'm I'm the God. My world is Roger centric. Everything revolves around me, and I gotta determine is it the threat or is this something I can use? Do you have something I want? Then I'll get it out of you. And when I get it out of you, I will then discard you because you have nothing to offer anymore. Your love, your body, your money, connections? What is it? What is it? And the other side of that is maybe you'll fix me. That's what I'm missing. I'm missing a relationship. That's what I need. I need a woman. I'm absolutely crazy. And if you are attracted to me, you have to be like-minded. So I was really good at establishing relationships. I couldn't keep any of them. Because they're based on a false premise. You're gonna fix me. You can't fix me. But it was it was a tell that I couldn't read. There's something missing. Maybe it's you, maybe it's the money, maybe it's the record deal, maybe it's this or that. It's all out here. No, it's all in here, it's all in here, and that's what the Steps do they turn me to self-reflection? Where are you at with being powerless? And now that you go, oh, I'm powerless over alcohol. Yeah, for sure. But then the other half of that is my life's become unmanageable. I don't want to own that part. I want to blame. The reason I'm this way is because of my parents. It's because of that gene pool. It's because I wasn't loved right. I wasn't affirmed. My dad was transactional love. If I did what he liked, I was a great guy. And if I didn't do something he liked, I was invisible. My mom was shame-based parenting. You're either good or you're bad. So it's when I look at that first step, it was much easier for me to powerless over alcohol because it was obvious. When you start realizing there's a problem, and then you tap the brakes and you realize you have no brakes, that's the point of departure. I'm gonna I'm just gonna have to ride this. Because alcohol was always the answer for me. I never associated any of the consequences I got in my life from drinking. Because drinking was my savior, drinking was my friend, drinking was the solution. So it was cops with quotas, it was narrow-minded people, it was people who didn't get me, right? I was a musician, and I started playing professionally when I was 15. It's a very small world. There's a Greek word called persona. It means mask. And I had a mask. Every one of us is wired socially, social instinct, security instinct, sex instinct. We all have that. The question is do I deploy the instinct in a healthy way or does it run me? When you're in fear and shame, the instinct's running you. Example, social instinct. What are you looking at me like that for? What's he thinking? This is one of the gifts of our addiction. We're mind readers. We can, I can just look at you and know what you're thinking, and I make up a whole story about it, and I have a reaction to it. It hasn't even hasn't even happened. It hasn't even happened. But I don't know that. Because this thing, your mind, is not you. The human brain is just a computer, and it's running off the five senses: sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch. That all comes through part of your brain called the amygdala, which is the fight, flight, or freeze response. Then that message, I measure the threat level, that goes to the phonal cortex, and we start, it starts pulling up examples. We've had this happen 133 times. We've had this happen. We know what this is, we know what this is, and then we react to it. We don't know what it is. Because we think we are the thinking. And later on, when you get in recovery and you hear yourself going, that's a stupid idea. Well, who's observing the stupid idea? This is the formation of the idea. You have a you're not a body and a mind, you're a spirit. The body and the mind are the vehicle for the spirit. I didn't have any concept of that starting with. So I have to get an understanding. So this is the beginning of an understanding. The example of Bill in the hospital, that's redemptive, and that provides some hope. If this guy, Bill, can do that. I had that diagnosis. Maybe I can do it. And then they dump the allergy idea on me. And later on, when I understand that and the phenomenon of craving, I can start making sense out of why I was doing what I was doing the way I was doing it. Part of that shift in consciousness, in mind, in attitude, it's a mystery. It's a total mystery. So what happens? We bang into something. If you're lucky. And I had uh I had stolen a book from my dad's house. I'd read it a bit, and uh I was not too impressed. And I really didn't read it. I read the table of contents. What the hell do I need a forward to? That was ridiculous. The doctor's opinion. I've already got one of those. Bill's story, I should probably look at that. I get a page and I fin, not me. Right? There's a solution. That scared the hell out of me. You know what their solution was? A spiritual experience. I gotta solve my problems. I can't. I don't go with this God idea. Then it says more about alcoholism. That doesn't apply to me. I know plenty about alcoholism. I know nothing about alcoholism. I know about inebriation. Then it goes to how it works. That'd be a good place to start. No, it's not. Because you have no context. The doctor's opinion in the first 59 pages, so about 65 pages, are all to get you and I to capture the first two steps. Am I powerless over the substance? Am I powerless to produce the life I want? Everyone is here because the failure of their satisfaction to achieve the life they want. My life's become unmanageable. Why is it unmanageable? Because I'm the manager. Whether you're alcoholic, alan, whatever, we're calling the shots, and our life is the manifestation, or the karma, if you will, of the choices we make and the actions we take. And I don't have a way to act differently or think differently before I get here. So I'm just repeat and rinse, repeat and rinse, repeat and rinse. Alcoholic torture. And it resides in my thinking. So the conclusion of the first step is the failure of my self-reliance. And creates a necessity of the second step. I got to find a power that I can live by and can live through me to solve my problem of powerlessness. The second step doesn't say I have to believe in God. It says I have to believe that I'm not God. Powerless. So for me, the second step was really simple. It was just, I'm willing to believe in the possibility. I say it was really simple after a suicide attempt. Put a pistol in my mouth, 18 months abstinence. And that God came and got me. The night I stopped drinking, I went to the doctor and I got that hopeless diagnosis. And he said, after three visits, whatever you're doing in the quantities you insist you're not doing in it is killing you. You have kidney and liver damage, that's a distended liver out the front. The reason you're throwing up blood and peeing blood is because your organs are banged up and they can't process the toxins in your blood. And the reason you're green, gray, and yellow is you have a thing called uranic poisoning. Another sign of kidney function or liver damage is reverse tolerance. So I drink, I had an enormous capacity for drinking. I get pulled into the hospital and I blow a number, and the guy looked at me and said, You should be dead or unconscious. And I'm sitting there having a conversation with him because you build up tolerance over use, right? So he said, That's killing you. And I was at the end of this. And I my internal response was relief. This is gonna stop. I think I was about 28, 29 years old. And I went back to drink till I didn't wake up. I'll do this my way. This is the conclusion of that. I hadn't filed taxes federal estate for five years. I had a divorce with restraining orders going both ways. Unfit father couldn't be with my kids. Um bad checks in town, warrants in six states. And I'd done some work with a motorcycle gang around a delivery service I had, and I owed them six figures. That is what I'll do this my way did. I was not a victim. I couldn't blame anyone for that because I made the call. I'll do this my way. And that was the exact conclusion of my way. So I concluded, because of my pristine intellect and my keen logic and reasoning, that the only way out of this is to die. So I went back and I was drinking that bar, and uh I threw a shot back and it came out my nose. I probably none of you go to biker bars, but it's a tough place. High-level testosterone, okay? Uh the women look like Green Bay Packers. I mean, it's it's really something. And first thought is, God, did you see that? Because that's embarrassing. The other thought is, I gotta get this off the bar into my mouth, because I'm at the place now, I'm gonna die if I drink, and I'm gonna die if I don't drink. So I'm imagining this is fractions of a second. I can't just go down and start lapping the whiskey off the bar. That's really not cool. So I'm thinking, I could soak it up with a napkin and I soak the napkin. That's more subtle and quite creative. And then my alcoholism comes to the rescue and says, We've diagnosed the problem. You have an amphetamine deficiency. Amphetamines are stimulant drugs, they're uppers. I always had a pocket full of speed because you got to stay awake to drink. So I took a handful of speed, not one, not two, a handful, and I couldn't swallow it. And I walked out of the bar and I started crying. I hadn't cried since I was a little boy because I always thought men don't cry. Suck it up, be tough. And I was crying 28 years of shit out. And this is my first step. The thought came through me. Hear the difference. I didn't come up with a thought. The thought came through me. I'm done, I'm toast, I can't do this. That was the admittance. The first step is about admitting, allowing in a new idea. And uh, it's 14 miles east of here, down on the south side. I was living in a flop with two other guys, and I came home and I announced I'm gonna detox, you need to babysit me. Fifteen years of drugs and alcohol, lots of it. Um and I gave him some instructions, keep MSI, don't let me bite my tongue, don't let me jump out the window. If I turn blue, call the emergency, right? Just little hip, helpful hints. And uh those two guys, one is dead from drinking, the other one is either dead or in prison, because we're all the same. Sat with me. Those two guys took shifts and they sat with me 24 hours a day. And my recollection is it took about five days before I came to my senses a little bit. And the first thought was, well, I'm sure not going to AA. I'll do this my way. That's the insanity of alcoholism, because I can't reason it, I can't even figure it out. Excuse me, you just got done doing it your way. You're bleeding to death, you're dying. Perhaps another alternative that I couldn't even see it. But I was held in that position, safe and protected from the obsession about drinking. And I say I told you I was a musician. I went back after that break, and I was working in the clubs, and it was free booze, free drugs, and available women, which is my story. And none of it had any attraction. I wasn't tempted at all. I was placed in this position of neutrality, and my interpretation of that years later was God will do for you what you can't do for yourself. And the truth was, everything that I couldn't handle, the drugs, the alcohol, the women, was removed. But it was like, it was like, it was like whatever this power is, was holding me by my ears, and I was right up to here in my mess. And he said, that's that's my part. I'm gonna send you some angels, and you listen to them, and they'll do the rest for you. Those angels were old World War II vets and the meetings I started going to, not originally, but later on, and that's how the process started. I'm done, I'm toast I can't do this. I didn't equate that with the first step. But it was the admission of my failure and my powerlessness. And in that moment, as that breakdown happens, I break through to another realm, another possible another set of possibilities, which is this God idea. I had I was 10 years sober before I could say God. It was just beyond the pale for me, because I had concluded about God what I was taught as a little boy in church. It was inaccessible, and I had a God that I couldn't give myself to. I got, is God love? I like that idea. But is it the other God too, the punished?