07 - Step One: Introduction / Dr's Opinion / Bills Story (p1-8)

0:01 well good evening my name is herb and i'm an alcoholic perhaps even good morning for some of our international guests please join me in prayer for an open mind god please set aside everything that i think i know about myself my brokenness the 12 steps and you for an open mind and a new experience of myself my brokenness the 12 steps and especially

0:55 please join me in the serenity prayer god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference well at long last we're going to be looking at step one truly beginning in the step work as i've indicated it's really important i believe to you not to me but to you that you really embrace the set-aside attitude whether you use these words or not that's your choice you'll notice that this particular prayer has not a reference to the 12 steps it's

1:40 my generic prayer for anybody who's just interested in a spiritual path regardless of whether it's connected to the 12 steps i do believe at ten years of sobriety that it was the suggestion for an attitude shift letting go of my prior experience letting go of my prior knowledge being open to being delivered to a place that i don't control i don't anticipate i don't expect and i'm asking you challenging you inviting you to pray that prayer

2:26 some form of it or whether it's just a positive affirmation and it's not necessarily a prayer depending on your old belief system to have an open mind and open heart knowing that it's beyond my capability it's beyond each of your capabilities to actually make it so open open sufficiently willing and open and we don't know where we're blocked and we don't know how we're blocked and we don't know that we're blocked the model that i use that's come to me after three different journeys through the steps of what a human being is now certainly i have lots of

3:12 philosophical background i studied to be a catholic priest for seven years in a monastery a monastery that was based on a particular philosophy the the greek philosophy of aristotle i'm sure that's where part of my organization came from in terms of human development philosophical the underpinnings of many thinkers over history then i studied psychology which actually reinforced this model i didn't know it at the time and then i did the steps progressively i didn't know that i was doing them progressively i came in february 21st 1984

4:01 if you're paying attention then this sunday is my 37th anniversary yeah that's wonderful it's great it was a real gift because i didn't know that i was alcoholic i didn't join aaa and i didn't decide to quit drinking i stopped drinking to support my wife's recovery because the hospital asked me to that was february 20th they asked me to stop february 21st is my first day without alcohol the story between then and my first meeting of aa three months later is a story for a different day but that did begin my journey

4:47 when they asked me to quit drinking to support her recovery not because they knew i had a problem they might have suspected it but they never mentioned that that really that willingness to attend the hospital program that willingness to listen to their suggestions and to take the actions that they suggested even though i didn't know why and what they were talking about and what the reasoning was behind it normally things that i would have really challenged and then as i got into the program in alcoholics anonymous

5:34 i got a sponsor because they said to i was willing to do that i attended meetings because he said he wanted me to do that i thought i worked the steps when he said work the steps read the big book and i did it on my own without any help from anybody else because don't you know i'm reasonably intelligent fairly well educated and i read english quite well thank you he never offered help i never asked for help i did a fourth step that was an autobiographical fourth step a script my story no analysis no in-depth no insight just a story that i thought was true

6:22 and i did my ninth step on that basis i'm saying it this way because i really want you to get that i had a very feeble start people in the sense that it wasn't didn't have any substance to it i worked all the 12 steps in my first year of recovery and i did not change and i went to a meeting every day and i called my sponsor every day every day for 10 years and i went to step studies and i went to book studies but then the first time i worked the steps was with the man who asked me to uh do the doctor's opinion which is

7:09 what we're going to do tonight and i finished the steps based on his specific direction out of the big book i had no further experience with the first step i had no experience with steps two and three i had a big experience with step four can talk about that some other time i believe that's when my spiritual awakening started i didn't know it at the time i finished those steps and i was radically changed it took 12 months after i finished the ninth step i was aware i became aware not during but after i finished the ninth step i became aware that i had been radically changed

7:55 radically at the root level radix is the latin word and i stayed with that for about three years until i had other problems and i decided to go through the steps again this time the man gave me what i consider to be different instructions or at least i heard them differently with regard to step one addiction and i saw that i have a problem of the mind an obsession that is a delusion we're going to spend a month on it so you don't need to know what i'm talking about or learn what i'm talking about or record what i'm talking about you will have an experience of going through the big book and looking at

8:40 what bill says about the problem of the mind the insanity that bill means not the insanity that you hear about in the 12-step rooms but what the big book says about insanity the defect of the mind the inherent defect of the mind of an alcoholic and broadening it to the audit and then the third time i went through the steps three years later 1994 this is the man that at 10 years of sobriety gave me the set aside attitude and prayer and introduced me to the second half of step one unmanageability

9:27 i had no clue that unmanageability was separate from addiction i had no knowledge of what unmanageability meant i had no understanding of how it manifests in our lives and i got all of that that journey through the steps and we'll spend a month looking at that we'll be in step one for about two to three months as we go through the big book looking at each aspect of what i've just illustrated there on the powerpoint what's wrong with my body that's the doctor's opinion what's wrong with my mind that's bill wilson's experience what's wrong with my will power i do

10:13 what i don't want to do and i don't do what i want to do that's a summary of unmanageability that's a summary of the spiritual malady that's the crucial problem addiction is not the problem take a breath addiction is not the problem the big book suggests that supports that in a couple different areas i think it's page 64 and page 102 it says bottles are only a symbol alcohol is merely a symptom of our problem the real problem is unmanageability the real problem is the spiritual malady bill supports that in the big book you haven't looked at this yet but

11:00 you may want to between now and next week if you're interested on page 64. bill says from resentment stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have been not only mentally and physically ill notice body and mind that's the addiction problem we have been spiritually sick that's the unmanageability problem when the spiritual malady is overcome unmanageability we straighten out mentally and physically maybe that's why when we looked at step 10 where it says we entered the world of

11:45 the spirit bill says we're placed in a position of neutrality with regard to our addiction but we're not cured of our unmanageability we have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition so step one is the foundation bill uses that metaphor beginning in step two i'm introducing it here because it's a wonderful concept and picture or graph in our minds on page 47 in step 2 bill says willingness is the cornerstone

12:32 to a spiritual arch through which we walk to a new freedom he hasn't suggested prior to that that there is an arch and or a foundation to that arch so we read between the lines as a big book literalist and fundamentalist in the best of senses if we're building an arch there must be a foundation oh if the cornerstone placed on the foundation is step two it's probable that step one is the foundation he carries that image into step three where he calls step three the keystone the stone at the top of the arch that holds the entire

13:17 arch together on page 62 or 63 and then he continues with the metaphor in at the conclusion of step five on page 75. now we have walked through the arch the spiritual arch to freedom there's a set of promises there well if we've got a foundation and we've got a cornerstone and we've got a keystone and now at the end of the fifth step we're walking through a built arch what are the building blocks bill doesn't talk about it but i'm in a deductive reasoning mechanism when

14:03 i'm looking at the big book this way trying to figure out a completion oh maybe the building blocks are the building blocks of step four resentment and fear and dishonesty as manifested in our unhealthy sexual behavior because those are the three major components of step four that model of body mind and will serves us really well in step one to understand step one it will serve us even better in step two and three to really understand and experience step three and then as i have an overview and perspective on the

14:48 entire process building the arch and walking through it that model will hold for each step but all of the steps together and i'm spending some time on it because i will be referring to it regularly maybe each workshop will be talking about body mind and will may be focusing on one component or the other but still that's the model i'm using i mentioned that addiction is not the problem that's correct but it is a problem the professionals today talk about substance and or process and you can see several listed there

15:33 of substance addiction of course alcohol drugs and food everything else there and there's a hundred others are process addiction we'll look at the doctor's opinion and now there's some science that indicates there's a problem with the liver of an alcoholic the liver doesn't process alcohol like normal people it's pretty clear that it's genetic and it's pretty clear that the other addictions including the substance addictions of drugs and food might be a genetic problem having its roots in brain chemistry or brain organization certainly the process addictions are brain malfunctions although there's

16:19 not a lot of science and and confirmation of that as i understand it so this is one of my favorite cartoons that i plagiarized from the new yorker magazine from probably 50 years ago i just i don't read the new yorker magazine i happened to be in a doctor's office when i saw it probably and when i was attempting to communicate some of the work in in the step journey it came to me pathetic herb in the bondage of addiction i couldn't see that until in fact i saw the bondage of addiction after doing the steps two or three times

17:06 i saw the problem of the body and i saw the problem of the mind but then at 10 years of sobriety as i mentioned i saw the problem of the spirit i saw the problem of my will i saw the problem of unmanageability and bill calls it the spiritual malady and it's every bit of bondage in fact bill calls it the bondage of self we're powerless over alcohol substitute the word addiction this group here is open to anybody with a addiction problem or a possible addiction problem but it's also open to anybody without an addiction problem because unmanageability has a dash

17:52 before it it's not i'm powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable of course when i'm in my addiction whatever it is my life will be unmanageable but here i am 37 years sober and today i'm totally convinced that on my own power my life is unmanageable i saw it in technicolor at 10 years of sobriety and i had been clean of alcohol mind altering anything for 10 years unmanageability was in technicolor as i said before i did what i did not want to do and i didn't do what i wanted

18:38 to do despite my knowledge and despite all of the spiritual awakenings i had had prior to that moment i had a problem with my body that's clear it's an allergy an obsession dr silkworth says we're going to spend some time looking specifically at the doctor's opinion tonight he's a psychiatrist dr silkworth is an md with the specialty training in psychoanalytic theory he wasn't very good at it that's why he had to go to work for towns hospital in new york he couldn't get a successful practice

19:25 together for whatever reason i don't know the background but he's a very qualified man a medical doctor with a psychiatric training so we called them a psychiatrist and he ran the drug and alcohol treatment program of towns hospital it was a general hospital with a department that silkworth ran and his conclusion as we'll see in his own opinion is entire abstinence for an alcoholic of course that's not going to be true for a food addict you can't have entire abstinence that's why we have several discussions about the difficulty

20:11 of the different addictions i look forward to hearing from the process addiction people especially the people in al-anon what's the what's the parallel phenomenon here what's the parallel vocabulary to use and it's interesting it's the first level of an experience with powerlessness what does that mean powerless we you see it it's in the title and we we we would we could uh mouth it regularly oh i'm powerless people places and things people say thoughtlessly when you examine that it makes no sense people places yes places really what things really what

20:58 no we're powerless over our addiction we're certainly powerless over people we're certainly powerless over circumstances pay attention to your vocabulary what does powerless mean in order to give it some juice pick a different word we become brain dead to powerless the word is used so often like the word love i love coffee i love my dog i love my wife i love my children i love driving i love my car those are 15 to 20 different definitions of love what does it mean and we become brain

21:44 dead to the word because we use it so often in so many ways powerless no choice the doctor's opinion says once i put it in my system no choice but bill says well if that were the only problem then just stop and of course we are very capable of stopping regularly we stopped for a weekend we stopped for a week we stopped for a month we stopped for a year we stopped for 10 years but the mind has a very similar defect to the body

22:29 bill calls it insane he doesn't mean psychiatric and psychological again set aside please i'm going to challenge you in in the discussion on dr silkworth to really set aside allergy what does it mean craving what does it mean insane what does it mean it doesn't mean what's in the dictionary the big book has a unique peculiar completely separate definition of those words part of it what we'll look at is an obsession

23:14 our mind is defective in that it's vulnerable to a thought and that thought is an obsession the problem with the thought is that the content of it is a delusion it's a lie and of course we have frank buckman who was the lutheran minister who started the oxford group who created the six steps that helped those people who were in the organization of oxford group first century christianity conversion orientation to have that transformation in their mind and in their personalities that's what bill wilson had the experience of the six steps as we've mentioned from

24:01 the unpacking of the forwards last week but the real problem was sourced by dr uh young carl jung because he said to roland hazard go find a spiritual experience he didn't say a religion he actually didn't say a relationship with god he said go find a spiritual experience and we'll look at deeply what does spiritual malady mean we've already looked at what the spiritual experience and spiritual awakening mean

24:49 addiction is a problem it's the problem that brings us into a 12-step program a problem of the body and a problem of the mind as i mentioned it's not the problem it's a symptom of the problem the real problem is the spiritual oops is the spiritual malady let me see what we're doing here it's a problem of the will power the problem of the spirit the problem of power lastness in the substance and process addiction only 1 out of 10 people in north america are alcoholic 9 out of 10 process alcohol quite readily

25:36 and about 5 out of 10 people are connected to that 1 out of 10 people i don't know how what the percentages are of addicts or gamblers or sex addicts or whatever but it's a percentage see the reason that bill was able to say in the first paragraph in the first pres in the first forward to the first edition at the last line our way of living may have its advantages for all because unmanageability is the human condition unmanageability is the human condition 100 of each human being has unmanageability as at least i've

26:21 understood the big book's description of unmanageability so let's take a look at doctor's opinion he talks a problem of the body the problem being a physical defect that has an allergy the sign of the allergy is the phenomenon of craving that leads to compulsion he says the only conclusion is entire abstinence let's see what he has to say i'm going to be looking at now the big book page by page and i'll be just commenting on my

27:06 highlights we'll spend a couple weeks on dr silkworth's opinion and this aspect of step one just for your purposes assignment between now and next week because i'll be unpacking next week some different material is still with assignment three on the body to read pages 17-23 that's number three in the assignment list but i also have an additional assignment that came to me over the weekend as i was reviewing my notes because there's a

27:52 wonderful description of progressive alcoholism i believe it's in the chapter to the wives pages 108 to 110 pages 108 to 110. there's four different kinds of progressive deterioration of people with an alcohol problem read that for information certainly but also perhaps for identification the assignment talks about looking at step one from the 12 and 12. you have a couple weeks to review that it might be interesting we'll be in step one for at least a month month and a half two months three months

28:38 maybe depending and then for next week take a look at the list of uh questions 20 questions for addiction now it's not the 20 questions that you're used to from one of the universities back 50 years ago i've taken that and made it my own based on my knowledge and my experience and some other other people's opinions about addiction it has filled the 20 questions but they include drugs alcohol food and behavior so it includes all the substance and the process addictions

29:25 i believe it's on page uh page seven or eight um page six there it is i have a note page six take a look at that for identification purposes take it slowly it's not a set it's not a test to get correct it's not a test to pass a percentage no it's a prompter for you to identify whether or not you have an addiction and whether or not it's the one you think you have i'm saying in the set-aside attitude if you're an alcoholic and you've got a year or three decades it doesn't matter set it aside that you're an alcoholic

30:11 are you or have you been misled all these years let's take a look at what does it mean to be an alcoholic what does it mean to be an addict and then take a look at and complete at some point certainly before next tuesday or thereafter maybe over the next couple weeks the body worksheet on page seven in the way of life document

30:56 so back to the doctor's opinion the first question i asked people after they've read this and highlighted it what's the doctor's opinion and i get like a deer in headlights oh oh it's just it's the title of the chapter or yeah i know but it is leading us to believe he has an opinion quite frankly there's more than one opinion in it but his primary opinion is what's up on the powerpoint chart that we have a disease he was a pioneer one of the first professionals to diagnose as a medical doctor that alcoholism is a disease that

31:42 there's something wrong with our bodies that we have an allergy what's an allergy an abnormal reaction to a substance that's the dictionary an abnormal reaction to a substance i'm allergic to fresh fruit thin skinned fresh fruit how did i discover that at age 30 i ate a fig my eyes closed my throat closed i couldn't breathe and i threw up the next week i washed it because i liked figs up till age 30. the second time i tried it after washing it very thoroughly my eyes closed my throat closed i couldn't breathe and i threw up

32:28 i have not had a fig since and i did not go to figs anonymous i just had an experience that was awful and i stopped i have an allergy to counts i don't have to know a cat sit been in a room i don't have to see a cat i don't have to have pictures of a cat if there's been in a cat in the room i will have an eye problem watering a throat problem i can't breathe and i'll be very uncomfortable so i try to avoid being around cats not a problem for me i didn't know that i didn't know at age 43

33:15 looking back over my shoulder at that point in the hospital when they asked me to do this autobiography of my relationship with alcohol i was able to connect the dots i've had two 502s drunk driving arrests and a single car crash that put me in the hospital overnight with 48 stitches in my head due to alcohol well those that all happened over increments of five years i had never pieced them together until i did that once i start i cannot stop on roman numeral 25 xxv

34:02 bill in writing this preface to the doctor's opinion he said this is going to be a medical estimate of the problem he calls this book a plan of recovery i love it that it's in blue i relate it to a plan like an architectural plan a blueprint this is a textbook as we saw from the roman numerals this has precise directions in it based on my experience like a textbook does and bill calls it a plan of recovery like a blueprint at the beginning of the letter dr

34:48 silkworth says these alcoholics i've come to see are hopeless he had a horrible experience with alcoholism nobody got well in town's hospital they restored themselves a little bit they rehabbed a little bit they had lots of different kinds of treatment programs the final time that bill came in in december of 1934 what his fourth hospitalization in two years one in 1933 and three in 1934 september november and december in the course of this third treatment

35:34 he got some ideas about a possible means of recovery he's talking about the oxford group now here's the plan of recovery he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics and pressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others the one thing i ask of you when you complete not if you complete when you complete this workshop is that you make a commitment to yourselves that you will help other people do this work these steps out of this big book so that they can find the freedom that you will inevitably find in december does it matter how long you've been

36:20 sober and how many times you've done the steps and even whether you've done the steps in a workshop or out of the big book before each time i did it i had a new experience each time i did it i broadened the my ability to see that i don't see and i deepen my relationship with the light he uses the term at the end of that paragraph recovered as we did from the title page i point it out just because it's there not because i have an edge about it but i like people to understand that the big book talks about recovered that's why it says in step 10 we placed in the position of neutrality

37:07 not an issue anymore we're not fighting it we have no inclination with regard to our addiction we're placed in a position of neutrality here the grace we are placed it's not because we did anything although there are some preconditions on page roman numeral 26 xxvi he calls it a remedy for thousands and then it was a short letter so bill makes a comment because he asked him to write a longer letter later on which is on the next page but bill comments this is bill's writing about the doctor's opinion he says that

37:52 we must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind that is very logical for a psychiatrist be talking about the mind underneath that psychiatry degree and experience and training is the medical training so he's talking about the body and then bill in his poetic style captures what does that mean we're mal-adjusted to life in full flight from reality outright mental defectives i know that doesn't apply to any of you you're the paramount and the mecca of mental wellness and spirituality that's why you're here

38:40 our bodies are sickened as well this is bill's comments now a physical factor if you don't have that real understanding your understanding of addiction is incomplete he says the doctor's theory is that we have an allergy well he's it's a theory it's not science he's not doing a calibrated study he's not doing a statistically significant conclusion here as we would today evidence-based no he's just processed hundreds of people and he said there's something wrong with you people once you start you cannot stop on roman numeral 27 he talks about alcohol and drug

39:25 addiction bill in fact had some drug problems and you'll see that in his story maybe we'll get to it tonight and maybe we won't dr bob clearly was a pill head he wrote his own prescriptions he was alcoholic but he used pills in order to be able to steady his hand so he could do surgery i don't think i mentioned that dr bob was a surgeon medical doctor he ran the practice in the hospital in akron ohio you he was a very skilled and highly reputed medical doctor as well as surgeon

40:15 on roman numeral 27 it says the doctor realized that some form of moral psychology all right he's a psychiatrist he's talking about philosophy and psychology as it was known in the day mostly based probably on freud but then he watches his language because this is 1939 and he's a scientist he's got to be careful about any connotation to spirituality god and things of immaterial so he says the powers of good that says that's a euphemism for god or a higher power synthetic knowledge this is the knowledge we've acquired learned by humans

41:04 we have ideas and we put them into practical application see knowledge is really important as i didn't say when we saw the model of body mind and will the mind is what makes us human no other sensient reality has the ability to self-reflect to know that they know to stand outside themselves to transcend themselves and watch themselves no other sensitive reality to the best of our knowledge has that ability the other component makes us specifically human is our willpower there is no other sensitive reality that has free choice now the reason that the will is there under unmanageability

41:49 is an indication that we don't have free choice in some areas we certainly don't have free choice with regard to our addiction but bill speculates and i'll show you and you can make up your own mind about it whether you have free choice with regard to managing your own lives successfully on your own power to be free from physical craving for liquor and this often requires a definite hospital procedure here he's using craving as the dictionary would use it craving is a desire for something uh a feeling about

42:36 wanting some relief in the morning when i get up in a in a in a mild way i have a craving for a cup of coffee i love my coffee i have one cup of coffee i don't have any more coffee after that i don't want it i don't need it but when i first wake up one of the first thoughts that i have is about brewing up the coffee that's not the craving that dr silkworth is talking about he's using it here as the dictionary would use it in the next line he uses it the way i want you to hear it and then make up your own mind as to whether my interpretation is accurate

43:24 we believe and so suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol the action of whatever your addiction is substance or process is a manifestation of an allergy when i eat figs i can't breathe when i'm around cats i can't breathe that's an allergy an abnormal reaction to a substance that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class he's using now a phrase unique to the big book phenomenon of craving well what does he mean by that keeping that as an open question right now

44:09 because i want you to see it from the context of the big book great phrase here frothy emotional appeal seldom helps seldom suffices fear and anger and cajoling and parenting and police and employers frothy emotional appeal seldom helps sponsors listen up don't be invested don't want it more than they wanted that was one of the cautions this man gave me that took me through the steps the first time he said herb i will work as hard as you do but i won't work any harder i hope you get it i'm not invested in

44:55 your success and i'm not responsible for your failure you are this message that he delivered to me had depth and weight i knew that when i first heard him for five minutes in the meeting i had never heard anything or been attracted to anyone in the way that i was to him because he was grounded in a power greater than himself and had recreated his life now he knew nothing about him other than the feelings i had the magnetic force that pulled me in that direction and it was a very unique experience at the very bottom of that page bill said uh dr sukuwa says

45:41 men and women drink essentially because they like the effect by produced by alcohol some people tell me they don't like the taste well i never met an alcohol i didn't like the taste of but i really drank for the effect the the the sense of relief that one drink that first drink was like oh i can breathe at a conference or at lunch with a client or at a dance or at a social event or at a party or even at home the tensions were just that first drink it was magical and it was magical on

46:27 february 20th i had my last drink on february 20th i took my boss to the airport we had a drink before he took off then i picked up the kids and i went to the hospital that might have been the reason they asked me to stop drinking they could smell it men and women drink essentially because they like the effect the sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious i never did they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false and i could never have understood that until actually i did this work at four years of sobriety i didn't know that i didn't know and i had not connected the dots even in four years of sobriety

47:13 i thought i was an alcoholic because of the drama that i gave you the shortened version of a little bit earlier 502s and drunk driving accidents and blackouts and problems at home and problems at work i thought i was an alcoholic because of problems no anybody who overuses anything will have problems my alcoholic life seemed the only normal one and here's a wonderful line that we use especially in unmanageability restless irritable and discontent the tension in our lives is why we use the addiction to

47:58 narcotize that tension to ease that tension so that we can feel nothing or we can feel good everything's better than feeling that tension and alcohol gives us a sense of ease and comfort i've had a sense of ease and comfort since i did this work in 1988 four years sober up till then i was still restless irritable and discontent for four years without alcohol because i hadn't replaced it with a relationship with power a conscious authentic effective relationship with power and then it was very mild

48:44 but it began the process as i mentioned three different journeys through the steps over the next few years after this now here's here's the doctor's use of the phenomenon of craving phrase after they have succumbed to the desire again to have a drink the phenomenon of craving develops do you hear the sequence here there's no craving here until after this person he's referring to takes the drink so he's not talking about the craving from the dictionary he's not talking about the emotional he's not talking about the desire for he's not talking talking about the habit

49:30 of he's not talking of the want for he's saying this person has taken the drink then the phenomenon of craving develops so my understanding it's not phrased this way in the big book but that it's a biological problem that it's a chemical problem when i put the chemistry of alcohol into the chemistry of my body it mixes in such a way that a trigger is pulled and a new substance is developed it appears from some of the stuff i've read that the liver produces acetone and when the acetone gets into the cellular structure the cellular structure demands more

50:16 acetone i'm not sure it's true but it sounds great it explains that chemical trigger once i take a drink intending to have two i will have 22. the problem that masked itself for me was that it didn't happen every time i i call myself a periodic alcoholic every bit as a alcoholic my wife was a chronic alcoholic especially the last 10 years she had to drink every day and every time she drank every day she got drunk and passed out i i just thought that was a disgusting lack of self-worth and self-care he said from his high

51:03 chair this is repeated over and over until there is an entire psychic change this is the whole point of spiritual awakening that psychic change that puts us in a position of neutrality once that has occurred i'm easily able to control my desire for alcohol in fact i have none and haven't had one since february 21st 1984 the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules oh we're not cured we have a daily reprieve because our life is unmanageable we have a spiritual malady none of that's here but that is certainly my summary of my experience

51:56 at the very bottom if you have any doubt about my interpretation the last three lines they took a drink a day or so prior to the date then the phenomenon of craving it once became paramount the sequencing is critical here most people don't diagnose it probably as carefully as i am doing but it's really important that you know this one of the two components there are two components that make me an addict the one is when i start i cannot stop the other is when i stop i cannot stay stuck the first is the problem with the body the second is a problem of the mind we're focused on the problem of the body let's stay there

52:41 once i start i cannot stop the problem with me is i could go to lunch and have a drink and go back to work i could have a couple drinks after work with the guys and then go home i could have a drink when i got home and have dinner i could go a day a week a weekend a month without a drink if i had a good reason to do that not a problem but i always started again and that was the problem i did have the body problem i did have the craving problem but it was periodic as i said it becomes more elusive then these men were not drinking to escape on page roman numeral 30. they were drinking to overcome a craving

53:29 beyond their mental control that's not poetry this is the doctor's opinion this is a medical diagnosis he's saying it's not a mental control it's not an emotional issue it's not a willpower issue it's not a knowledge issue it's a biological issue the phenomenon of craving is so ruthless that some commit the supreme sacrifice i believe that suicide he gives us many different types of alcoholics here at the psychopaths the emotionally unstable unwilling to admit the delusional person in the manic depressive

54:15 he doesn't make any comment about that because what he's really interested in is the next line this fifth example the types that are entirely normal i put myself in that category entirely normal in every respect except the effect alcohol had upon them there is one symptom here it is now the doctor's opinion no choice they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving this is not a thought this is not a feeling this is not an emotion the phenomenon of craving is a

55:00 biological mandate a biological imperative once i pour black ink into a eight-ounce glass of clear water i will have black water the mental image is startling and yet totally revealing of what we're talking about here once you start you cannot stop what's your experience look at your history do a bullet point autobiography like i did if you have any doubt about your particular addiction or about any particular behavior substance or process this phenomenon

55:48 may be the man maybe this is his opinion the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people and sets them apart as a distinct entity it has never been by any treatment which are familiar permanently eradicated the only relief we have is entire abstinence most chronic alcoholics are doomed hopeless and you've heard the statement i'm not sure exactly what it would be called what happens to a cucumber when you put it in a court of brine after a while it becomes a pickle how soon after you take the pickle out of

56:33 the brine put it on the windowsill in the sunshine does it restore itself to becoming a cucumber yeah that would be never once a pickle always a pickle they said that in the hospital i mean they have to speak that way to us knuckleheads but i've never forgotten it what an image once an alcoholic always an alcoholic i was an alcoholic at 12 years old when i took my first drink a story for a different day but i lost control immediately and i drank like that for the next 30 years my wife was not she did a good catholic irish girl from chicago she didn't drink she was 21 she had taken the pledge she began drinking we met that was we had that in common she never

57:21 had a problem with it until she was probably 30 35 years old and then she crossed that invisible line not my experience my first drink was the invisible line but she progressively then became a chronic alcoholic where i had been a periodic alcoholic right from the get-go what is the solution so maybe phenomenon of craving is a doctor's opinion but maybe he has another opinion listen to this about a year ago i met this guy everything looked good but he was an alcoholic i'm summarizing roman numeral 31

58:09 he was hopeless it says no hope but he accepted the plan outlined in this book and he completely changed oh that's an opinion from his observation and then he gives us a second story another hopeless situation hiding in a barn he says maybe moral psychology would help but i doubt it see he's a psychiatrist trying to help this guy and on the next page roman numeral 32 he said this guy became sold on the ideas contained in this book look at that final paragraph another doctor's opinion read the book

58:58 and remain to pray very brave of him i'm not sure that might not have been added later what you may or may not know is that in the first edition and for very many printings of the first edition dr silkwood never put his name on his letter you can go and see it in the first edition page one started with the doctor's opinion and then once bill wanted to print the the big book again in 1941 he had the insight that perhaps only alcoholics

59:44 should write the material that's in the textbook and so he put the doctor's opinion in roman numerals at that point the doctor was willing to sign it because it had become rather accepted alcoholics anonymous as well as his medical association had accepted the alcoholism as a disease so as you can see from the powerpoint there's only three excuse me two two um important issues here with the doctor's opinion his formal opinion based on the letter is that we have an allergy that's a it's a metaphor it's not

1:00:30 science it's just an abnormal reaction to a substance abnormal meaning normal people don't have the reaction to alcohol normal people don't have the addiction compulsion with regard to drugs normal people don't have the addiction compulsion with regard to food or pornography or sex or relationships or anger or fear or gambling or work or exercise those are all addictions and addiction repetitive behavior over which we have no control which leads to negative consequences my definitions not official but the real key to the doctor's opinion is his definition his very unique use of the word craving

1:01:15 he doesn't mean it mentally he doesn't mean it emotionally he doesn't mean it even centrally in the body he is referring to a cellular chemical reaction to the chemistry of alcohol or the chemistry of drugs or the chemistry in food i don't know the biology of it he's talking about the phenomena of it an observable phenomena means an observable scientific evaluation evidence once i take a drink

1:02:03 i will inevitably take another and if not that day maybe the next day and there's where some confusion might come in let's take a quick look at bill's story because that was part of my suggest my suggested reading i asked you to look at pages one through eight because it's bill's story of his disintegration due to alcohol that progressive deterioration in his life due to his progressive relationship with compulsive drinking and you can see that on the first page his grandfather

1:02:49 the person who raised him his mother's father had warned him we got problems in our family with alcohol in fact that was probably the problem with his own dad bill's own dad was probably an alcoholic strong warnings and prejudices of my people but bill had a inferiority complex it's very clear from reading his biographies and autobiographies i fancied myself a leader as a quite frankly armchair psychology he was overcompensating for his awkwardness and his for his sense of inferiority his mother and his father both left when he was 12 or 13

1:03:35 and left him with the mother's father so he by today's standards has serious abandonment issues of course it's related that in high school he had no musical talent but he was so aggressive and dedicated fiercely that he learned an instrument and became a leader of the band he had no athletic ability he was very long tall ungainly awkward and yet he became captain of the football team and the baseball team he had this tremendous drive to be number one and i'm quoting him

1:04:22 the head of vast enterprises you can just see and feel the grandiosity of the ego there well during his stint in the surface he got unleashed into alcohol through parties and going overseas and when he came back his problems were connected to alcohol he went to school because he wanted to succeed law school he finished law school barely he passed the exams barely he was drunk when he was there but he got out somehow with a certificate that he had completed his law degree he never sat for the bar because he got interested in wall street

1:05:09 and of course this is the roaring 20s and he and lois couldn't get any real traction in the city this is how entrepreneurial and inventive and creative he was way ahead of his time he said well if i go to where they making stuff the factories i can find out what's on the market for next year and what might be successful and we can invest in those companies before anybody knows about it and he would send reports back to wall street and he became really rich a millionaire actually as a result of getting paid for his information but also because he was able to purchase stocks at a very low price and the market was really crazy

1:05:56 in the sense of going up rather rapidly so he and lois took off to motorbike around the countryside now these are not harley davidsons of today and the wonderful quality motorcycles that you see on the road these are mechanical rattle traps that spread oil all over the place and the parts fall off but he and lois take a motorcycle with a side car and if you've seen the picture it's funny it's funny as heck in the sidecar lois is driving that'll tell you something about her she's an in-charge woman and she's taken her boy out to the east

1:06:41 coast to make some money amazing story it's a wonderful story and he did page page three he was so good that in fact he was able to play golf most of the days but that was because he liked to drink it said he became jittery in the morning it's beginning to affect him now the stock marshes crashes and bill's problems and his drinking crashed and he got fired but he still got his thing together so it goes to montreal eastern canada gets another job and gets fired and he wasn't employed again for another five years hear the deterioration the progressive deterioration read the story from the point of view of identification

1:07:27 what did he think like what did he feel like what did he act like how did he drink what was the outcome and try to compare by identification not by difference because obviously there's a lot of differences but the dynamic of the way he thought the way he felt the way he acted and the way he drank liquor ceased to be a luxury it became a necessity he's drinking bathtub gin this stuff will really kill you i thought i could control it there were periods of sobriety gradually things got worse they lost the house they lost the job he says at the bottom of page 5 i saw that i

1:08:12 could not take so much as a drink i made lots of uh promises the bible in his home in new york has 12 dated entries of his promise to lois of quitting signed and dated he was very sincere and each time he came home drunk no fight whatever was i crazy begin bill bill's beginning to tell us what he means by insanity here look at the definition in embedded in this sentence an appalling lack of perspective he's not talking about psychiatric he's not talking about psychological and appalling lack of perspective there's something

1:08:58 the problem with the way he thinks he has a mental defect the remorse horror and hopelessness page six a terrible sense of impending calamity i thought of suicide but the mental fog settled down gin a lot of geographics there on page seven a lot of drugs gin and sensitives from the doctor his brother-in-law happened to be lois's brother was a physician lois brother was the one that got him in town's hospital in september excuse me in 1933 i'm not sure exactly the the month but then god i'm back in the

1:09:43 hospital three times in 1934 he was trying to get sober he went to dr silkworth he went to towns hospital 1933 once september november of 1934 armistice day that's the veterans day by our standards the celebration of at that time the end of world war one self-knowledge would fix it he said coming out i now know myself better and he drank again he talks about a ski jump here the deterioration and the pace of it it's a wonderful mental image

1:10:29 i returned to the hospital and he hears in in november he hears from the doctor outside the room talking to lois that he's going to die or he's going to go into an asylum with a wet brain that means a brain so saturated with alcohol that you lose any awareness of reality and probably the eventual loss of your motor functions and then eventual loss of your life he knew that undertaker or asylum a devastating blow to my pride you see he's hopeless and he's helpless cornered at last but he drank again no words can tell of the loneliness and

1:11:15 despair i found in the bitter morass of self-pity this is bill's bottom here on page eight quicksand stretched around me in all directions he's a poet but try to imagine it you're out in the mojave desert for you not in california that's a very large desert in the middle of california and assume that you're there in the middle of the desert alone and on the sand and that sands all quicksand and any direction you go you're going to sink in up to your thighs but you gotta pull your leg out and go forward someplace in order to save your life and that's an image of how we were stuck

1:12:01 in our addiction or still are if in fact you're here because you are still having a problem with some form of substance or process addiction quicksand stretched around me in all directions i had met my match i had been overwhelmed alcohol was my master the word surrender is not in the big book it certainly doesn't apply to step three as i'll make very clear when we get there but it certainly applies here complete defeat this is where bill is now coming to a place of his bottom this is where bill is finally surrendering he stepped from

1:12:47 the hospital a broken man armistice day his last debauch but now he's writing this in 1938 preparing for the big book and he can say in retrospect i was catapulted into what i like to call the fourth dimension in a different place i believe it's on page 25 he talks about rocketed into a fourth dimension same image catapulted into the fourth dimension that fourth dimension being this world of the spirit the invisible the immaterial and i was to know happiness peace and usefulness he's sitting writing this in 1938 he's

1:13:32 four years sober happiness peace and usefulness a way of life he calls it here that phrase as i've mentioned is used 20 times with regard to 10 11 and 12. well stop there because the rest is his being brought out of the ditch out of the darkness into the light the next eight pages will talk about his rehabilitation and we'll look at that when we come to step two please join me in the serenity prayer god grant me the serenity to accept the

1:14:17 things i cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference