Hi I’m Bob, an alcoholic. To get this retreat started, I’d like to tell you a little about how I found the Twelve Steps. I met the man who became my sponsor in a beer joint. He was an ice man, delivering ice to this joint. In those days, they used to bring in the ice and put it in the cooler. When he finished, he’d come around and sit alongside of me. He never once talked to me about my life, how bad off I was, or what I was doing wrong. But I heard through the bartenders and the owners of this joint that he used to be like I was, but he had changed. And, then, there came a time when my life crashed. Even though I had only known him in the bar, I yelled for help. He put me in the hospital where they strapped me to a bed and filled me with paraldehyde. And that’s when my life started. The only reason I’m telling you what happened is so you’ll know that I belong in this Twelve Step Program of Recovery. I didn’t know that right away, of course. I thought my life had ended instead of just begun. I spent three-and-a-half months in Cleveland, Ohio, working with my sponsor. Every day, when he got through with his work, he would bang on my door and away we’d go. He didn’t call me, he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go, he’d just say “Let’s go” and away we’d go. I’d go with him to drying-out places, to meetings, to Twelve Step calls, and everything. I was along for the ride. I had no idea what I was doing, other than not drinking. After three-and-a-half months, I had to leave Ohio and come out to California because my wife was sick. For the next two-and-a-half years, I remained the same sober as I was drunk. I thought the name of the game was going to meetings, staying sober, and doing the best you can with what you have. But I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know the disease of alcoholism. They never talked about the disease of alcoholism in meetings. For a long time, I couldn’t identify anything in my life or in my behavior with what they were saying in these meetings. I didn’t know what was going on. I just didn’t know. But I kept going to meetings and I kept hearing about things that didn’t relate to my life. People would give their drunkalogues, or talk about how everything was cool since they joined the Twelve Step Program of Recovery, or talk about how they had the good life or whatever. I struggled with finding the good life. I was really fighting the world. All I had was me because I never gave no prayer to no God at no time. See, I wasn’t hooked up at all. I was fighting, denying, and doing things I shouldn’t have been doing. I couldn’t couple up the way I lived with why I was in a Twelve Step program. I just couldn’t do it. But I kept going to meetings. And I would hear them say, "Go to more meetings," "Stay sober," "Read the Big Book," "Put the Steps in your life," and so on. I had a sponsor. At the time, I thought I could listen and do what he was telling me to do. We would sit for hours after hours after hours talking about the Steps. All of that time, one thing was missing out of my mind. A sense of a power greater than myself. At the time, I hadn’t even begun to realize that I was a power. That came later. In the meantime, the disease of alcoholism was being displayed in my life, at my work, in the way I drove my car, in the way I talked to my wife. I would get mean, mad, and hostile. I figured I had the right to do what I was doing because I was sober. I figured being sober was what it was all about. Now I know that I was the same sober as I was drunk. In fact, I was worse. Every day, sober, I would get stronger and do more damage. I didn’t know that this was the disease of alcoholism. That’s what was happening to my mind a long time ago, and it’s still there. My mind controls me. It talks to me. It tells me things. I listen to it. When I’m sober, I think I have the ability to not get mad, to not look at you cock-eyed, to not hate your guts. And it isn’t so. That’s the way it is with the disease of alcoholism. It’s a mind-controlling disease. Back then, because I was sober, I was able to work steady. I started acquiring things. Trouble was, the more I got the meaner I got. The disease was progressing. My mind had greater strength and I thought I had greater control, so I never gave a desperation prayer to no God at no time. I didn’t have one. I didn’t even know what it was like to pray. All I had was a sponsor who was a Step man and a God man. He was always talking about the grace of God. That was his life, though. That’s what he used. That’s what he did. I thought I could do what he said because I listened to him. I thought, "This is good stuff." But there was no way I could do what he said or did. The disease wouldn’t let me. I was still angry inside. I was still carrying that chip on my shoulder. I was still fighting the world. I was looking at a world that was just as ratty as it was when I was drunk. I would go to a meeting and hear somebody talk about what they had lost. Now they’re sober, now they’ve put the Steps into their life, and they’ve got a good life. And I’m thinking, "This is wonderful stuff." And I leave the meeting. But I don’t leave the meeting with that guy. I leave the meeting with me, and I’m still the same. So here I am, back in the same world. I know this world sober and I know it drunk. It’s the same world. It hasn’t changed. Not a bit. Now when I came into the Twelve Step Program of Recovery, I heard about the Steps right away. I had a sponsor who pounced on me. But the disease of alcoholism kept telling me I was going to be all right. But I wasn’t all right. I thought that if I kept going to Twelve Step meetings, I would eventually become a winner. Well, it never happened because I wasn’t a winner. I was the same sober as I was drunk. Right from the word "go," as soon as I got to California, I was picking up babies, making Twelve Step calls. Someone would call me up because I was going to meetings and was sober. "Would you make a Twelve Step call on somebody?" Now what kind of Twelve Step call could I make on somebody? The best I could do was take them to meetings with me, which I did. But I’m still doing everything the same way I did before. I think staying sober is the best I can do and staying sober is what this program is all about. That’s not what it’s all about. My head is wrong. My mind is wrong. I mean well and I’m sober, but I can’t do well. I don’t know why I can’t do well. I try to figure out how to say things. I try to look at things and people to figure out what’s best. How do I respond when somebody attacks me? How do I respond when I’m on the freeway and somebody tries to run me off the road? What do I do? What do I do? I don’t know what to do. So I do what I think is best and that behavior is the same thing that brought me here. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know how to not get mad. I don’t know how to not do the things that make me sick inside. I look at my wife like everything she does is wrong. She says something and it makes me mad. I want to show her she’s wrong, and I don’t know why. This is the disease of alcoholism. I don’t care who you are. I think you’re at fault. You drive your car wrong and that entitles me to think that you’re all wet. I can watch a guy park a car, and I’ll think, "Isn’t that terrible? He doesn’t even know how to park that car." How he parks his car hasn’t got a thing to do with my life, but what he’s doing upsets me. I think it’s okay to get upset, it’s okay to burn and boil because of other people’s behavior. When I’m like that, everything I look at is wrong. I’ve got something happening to me, and I don’t know what it is. It’s the same thing that would happen to me when I was drinking and getting drunk. Here I am sober and now it’s the same thing again. I can’t stand people. I’ve got a dissatisfied mind. Nothing pleases me. Nothing. In 1954, I bought a brand-new Mercury, right off the showroom. First I think, this life is wonderful. Here I got a brand-new car. I’m really doing well. And then I can’t even drive the thing. I try to drive and I get mad. I get mean. People blow their horns at me and I think, "Don’t they know who I am?" Of course, they don’t know who I am. And I get mad about it. And it bothers me, but I don’t know why. We have to talk about the disease of alcoholism. If my disease isn’t treated by the program of recovery, I’ll do the same thing today as I did yesterday. My disease will make me restless, irritable, discontented. I’ll find fault. My mind is hurt. My mind is injured. And this mind is in me. How can I think that the name of the game is staying sober when I’ve got a mind that can’t be satisfied? The disease of alcoholism centers in the mind, not the body. On page 23 of the Big Book it says, "it would be pointless and academic to talk about the troubles alcohol produces if we never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body." You see, alcoholism has nothing to do with bottles, bars, or alcohol. I got a mind that tells me you’re wrong and I’m right. That’s not alcohol, but it is alcoholism. In the Big Book on page 60, it says, "The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." I am always in conflict, always arguing, always fighting something or somebody even when my motives are good. But I don’t think that’s me because I’m sober. I think I’m a good guy. I’m sober. I’m buying a house, a car. I’m helping my wife. I’m helping my neighbor. But in the next minute, I’m ready to kill you. I don’t know what that is. I can’t put it together. I’m always against you. I’m always against everything. I don’t care what it is, I’m going to find fault with it. I’m going to look at you, and I’m going to find fault. I’m going to tell you everything about you that I think is wrong with you. This is how I think, and it upsets me. That’s the disease of alcoholism. I think I can change something and make it right, but I can’t. I think I can do it because I think it’s you that’s not right. I don’t know that it’s me. I’m a self-talker. I’m sober, I go to meetings. I’ve learned about steps. I found a God, and I even pray to God. But I still talk to myself. My mind talks to me and tells me how things should be. When they are not that way, it bothers me. I have a mind that tells me exactly how wrong you are. I listen to this mind. This mind is where the disease is. This mind is what I brought here. This is the mind that I drank with, and now I’m still talking to myself the same way I did when I was drunk. "I don’t like this." "I don’t like that." "This should be different." “That should be different." This mind is a self-talking mind, but it talks with power. It tells me what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. I want you to behave. I won’t accept you for who you are. I just won’t do it. I want you to change because I want you to change. It’s like this with my wife, the same way. When I look at her, I want her to do different than she does. But she doesn’t know this, so she doesn’t do different and I get upset. She can’t do different. How could she? I’m the one that thinks she should do different, not her. And I can’t accept this. I can’t even look at it. This thinking affects every part of my life. When I’m working with a guy, I don’t think he’s doing a good job. I figure, "He’s dumb. He’s nuts. He doesn’t know what he’s doing." And it bothers me. It upsets me. It’s the same thing when I drive my car. Why can’t I drive my car without driving your car? Everything you’re doing in that car is wrong, the way I look at it. This is the way I live in all of my affairs if my alcoholism is not treated. In the Big Book on page 85 it says, "We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition ...." Today my spiritual condition is not very good. I still can’t drive my car without driving your car. The Steps are not numbers, they are a way of life. The program of recovery is not about whether you go to a lot of meetings or no meetings, or whether you do a lot of praying or no praying. Even those things don’t stop the disease of alcoholism. They do not stop the disease. But I don’t know this. I figure if I go to a lot of meetings, I can handle things a little better. I can be more careful. I won’t blow my lid so hard. I won’t get so mad at somebody. And the next thing, you know what happens? I get madder than I ever got at somebody. My mind is a power that I use, but it’s not a higher power, a power greater than me. It’s my power. For my whole life, even after I joined the Twelve Step program, the same power controlled my life. It was me. It’s my mind. It’s the way I think. I get restless, irritable, and discontented. Dr. William D. Silkworth, in the Big Book, talks about how "men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontented, unless they again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity"(xxvi). What he’s telling me is that this alcohol was treating my alcoholism, and I didn’t even know it. Alcohol created a world I could live in, a world where I wasn’t finding fault, where my mind said everything was cool. There wasn’t a fight going on because I was fogged. Alcohol was taking care of my disease. After I got to the Twelve Step program and I quit drinking booze, how was I going to handle the same mind that brought me here? What am I going to do with this mind? I went for two years in this Twelve Step program fighting everything and everybody, every day. I lived in the same world drunk as I did sober. Nothing really had changed. I’m restless, irritable, and discontented. Not because of alcohol but because of alcoholism. I didn’t know that my yesterdays, whether I was drunk or sober, are my todays and my future, all the time. I’ll do again the same things today as I did yesterday. If my alcoholism doesn’t get treated, if I’m without a program of recovery and this here power they call God, I’m going to have to do everything again, and again, and again, and again. I kept looking backwards and I kept looking forwards, thinking that I was going to get better if I went to more meetings, if I got a sponsor, and if I did more Steps. I thought, "I have a long way to go but, after so many years, I’m going to be okay." Now that was the disease talking. What my mind is telling me isn’t real. It isn’t going to happen that way. I don’t have a long way to go. I have only the now, only the moment I’m in, right now. I’m an alcoholic with alcoholism. There’s no such thing as tomorrows because I am sick today. I do damage today. It don’t kill me tomorrow. It don’t kill me yesterday. It’s killing me now. The disease of alcoholism has to be looked at. It has to be considered. What is the disease of alcoholism? It’s an alive thing. It’s an "ism," not a "wasm." You can’t treat it until it’s gone. You can’t say, "I’ve gone to ten meetings this week. I’m okay now. Now I can do anything I want." You can’t do that. Why? Because the moment you do the same thing you used to do, you’ll get the same result. Now that’s a hard nut to swallow, but it’s in the Steps and it’s the truth. If you don’t think so, look at your track record. Look at today, this day, today. Is there anything that went on today that upset you, that you didn’t like, that you wanted different? Is there anything that you thought of today that makes you feel guilty or uncomfortable? Did you answer somebody the wrong way and then later on wish to heck you never answered them that way? You must ask yourself these questions. These are questions I never wanted to consider. I always put the blame elsewhere, thinking I was entitled to behave the way I did because I was sober, I was a member of a Twelve Step program, and I had a lot of years in the program. My mind was always saying, "They’re wrong. I’m special, and they didn’t treat me the way they should." This behavior could have occurred at the airport, a restaurant, anywhere, maybe with someone I loved. This is the disease of alcoholism. It’s still in me. It’s never cured. As I read before on page 85 of the Big Book, it says, "We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities." Return to top