Bob D. AA Male Disk #3

**Bob D** (0:00)
See, I know, if I start making that a piece of business, I'll stop drinking diet soda. There's no doubt in my mind. Am I willing enough to take the action? And sometimes I'm afraid because things like this, I get a dependency, I get a sense of security in things, right? And there's security in the familiar. The Irish say, the devil we know is better than the devil we don't.
When I was a little kid, there was a TV show on called Rescue 8
There's this one particular episode, it's funny, I remembered it after I got sober. And these, uh, Rescue 8 was a show about these two paramedics that worked out of a firehouse, and they would go out on distress calls. And this one episode, they get to a scene, and there's this cute little girl, and her arm is wedged up into a vending machine, and she's hysterical, and she's crying, and her mother and father are there, and they're trying to get it out, and they can't get it out, it just hurts her, trying to pull the arm out, and she's stuck up in there. And they're, they don't know what to do, and now the fire trucks are showing up. Now the firemen are pulling chainsaw, or they're pulling saws, and they're pulling torches, and all this stuff off the trucks, and they're talking about cutting the door away from her arm, around her arm, and this is just freaking her out more. And the one paramedic's watching all this, and he kneels down next to the little girl, and he says to her, he says, sweetheart, do you have something in your hand? And she says, uh-huh. What do you got in your hand? She goes, a candy bar.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:38)
Will you let go? No, it's my candy bar, it's my candy bar.

**Bob D** (1:43)
She will not let go of this candy bar. He doesn't know what to do, so he backs her off. He walks away, comes back about two minutes later, kneels down next to her, he says, sweetheart, I'll make you a promise. I promise you, I will give you two brand new candy bars if you'll let go of that one.
And she says, really? And he says, I promise. And because she trusts, she lets go of the candy bar and her arm slides out of the vending machine. We all got candy bars, don't we?
I don't hang on to destructive behavior because I'm destructive because I have an illusion of value or security. And I work with a lot of guys with a lot of stuff. And we're not bad people. We're scared, vacant people, desperately trying to secure our own lives. Whether it's pornography, hookers, gambling, eating disorders, all the other things that seem to predominate themselves once alcohol has put the rest, the gossip, the judgment, the anger, the rage, all the stuff that seems to plague us, the depression.
We don't do these things because we're destructive. We do it because it's defective defense mechanisms that we've used for years, some of us, and we don't know anything else. The thing is, do you trust that there's two candy bars waiting for you? See, you don't know, do you? You don't know until you let go and pull your hand out of the vending machine that you can even have your hand free enough to receive the other two candy bars.
Let's break, and we'll come back at 7 o'clock.
My name is Bob D and I am alcoholic. Gift for recently burning your life to the ground.
You won't get that anywhere else.
AA is different. We all come in here big shots and work our way up to servant.
Father Ed Dowling is quoted in saying in Step 6 and the 12 by 12 that it's, Step 6 separates the men from the boys, and I understand what he means by that. It takes a perseverance with Step 6 with these defects of character. But the step that frightened me the most and was the almost at times created such anxiety in me, I wanted to bolt out of AA was really Step 9
And I remember being new and listening to people talk about men's, and I'd just be horrified. I would just think, oh my god, they can't be serious. I remember listening to some self-righteous guy one time in a meeting said, and I paid back all the money. And I remember going, oh no. Oh no. Oh my god, in my head, I started thinking, oh my god, if I had a good job and I worked for 50 years, I don't think I would make enough money to pay it all back. Because I lived, I was a criminal. I lived as a stealing was a way of life. I mean, I don't think there were years and years where I day didn't go by that I didn't steal at least once or twice. I was a chronic shoplifter. I had this scam that I pulled two times, three times daily, two times at least for years. I'd go into a restaurant or a bar or a laundromat or a gas station, and when no one's around, I'd pretend like I was putting coins into the cigarette machine, and then I would start banging on it like a crazy person and screaming that I'd been ripped off. And I'd do that until the manager would come out and open the machine and give me a pack of cigarettes. I'd do that a couple of times a day. That's how I supported most of my cigarette habit.