Bob D. AA Male Disk #1

**Bob** (0:01)
Morning, my name is Bob, and I'm alcoholic. Well, last night, I pretty much told a lot of my story, some of my story, and qualified as a person that's either, either is alcoholic or has some level of mental illness beyond anything psychiatrists have ever heard of.
I am, I am the guy who talks about in the beginning of chapter four. It says if there's two things it talks about, if when you honestly want to, I mean, really, truly, you really mean it this time. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. Entirely is, it's a little extreme, I think, don't you? Entirely, I mean, I could, you give me, I can quit drinking, you give me enough medication. I do like Dr. Bob did with the high-powered sedatives every day for 17 years in order to ward off the obsession to drink. I can do that.
But I can't quit entirely. And even I, and I always come back to drinking eventually. And then the other thing is says, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take. That's always been true of me. It always starts something in motion. I can't control it. Every time I start to drink, I can't not drink without developing that yearning to get higher. I can't get enough. And if you can't get enough, you're always going to have too much, right? If you can't get enough. Because there is no, oh, this is good now, point for people like us. So I have this deal, and it says, then that's the bad news, and here's more bad news. It says, if that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. I remember sitting in a treatment center up in Maine. I was up there in one of my, people in AA told me it was geographic. I thought I was fleeing the state to avoid prosecution. And I was at this treatment center, and there were a group of trustees from Thomaston State Penitentiary that were in AA, brought a meeting into the treatment center. I had never seen anything like that. And there was a speaker there who I'd been, by this time, I'd been to a lot of AA meetings. But you were those people, the do-gooders. You know, it looked like you might have had a martini too many on the golf course, said something embarrassing to your boss, and went to AA for better business connections or something. You'd look just, you know. But there was a guy speaking from the prison who was the first person in AA that I ever started to connect with. He was an outlaw motorcycle guy. He was covered with tattoos. This was not when tattoos were fashionable. This was when only convicts had tattoos, right? And he had shot a cop. He was part of this outlaw motorcycle gang. And I started, you know, when you're secretly weak and pathetic and scared all the time, you like people like that. Because you could drink, I'd drink with him. Because he'd have your back, right? I like to drink with people like that. And I drank with a lot of them. And so I'm listening to this guy because he had long hair and a beard, and I had long hair and a beard. I was sort of leftover from Woodstock, I guess. And I...
He started to talk about his drinking and his drug use, and I started to identify. He started getting real personal. He said that he'd go out on a run, and he said one time, he was getting pissed with this guy just about to death. And the next morning, he came to and he was cowering like a scared little boy. And he needed a drink and he needed it quick. And I'm just like right with this guy because I used to come to like that. And I thought, oh, my God, this guy's like me, this tough guy's like me. And it was amazing to me. And then he talked about ending up in prison, going to his first AA meeting, and how AA helped him to find God. The minute he said that, it's like this, I remember sitting there going, Oh, no.
Oh, what have they done to him? Not him. He's a friend. Oh, my God. They've turned him into a sunbeam for Jesus. Oh, my God. Not him. He's cool. Not him. Oh, God, I felt sorry for him.
I remember thinking, I'd rather die than be like that. And I almost did. I almost did.
And I have a problem with God. And I thought that I was unique. I didn't understand that by nature, we are God-resistant people. And we all have, even religious people, like clergy, who you'd think would have God quick. They're God-resistant. They can't connect. There's something that they don't understand that seems to block them. And so a lot of us give up. A lot of us become atheists or agnostics. And it's not that... I'm not really an atheist or an agnostic. Here's what I really am. I am the kind of guy, by nature, that if I just suspect you don't like me, I'm going to not like you first, right? And I heard, as a little kid, they told me... the nuns trying to straighten me up, you know, told me stuff about God, like he... They told me he could see in the dark. Oh, that's hideous. I mean, I do my best work in the dark. That's not good.