Reflections on Change, Longevity, and the Role of Alcohol in Recovery

- Hi everybody, my name is Robert, I'm an alcoholic.

Nice to be here.

Thank you for asking me to share.

Glad that I could do it.

Vincent, my favorite.

Thank you for coming out.

He took me out to dinner tonight,

so he's my favorite for today.

Mike, thanks for coming out as well.

Anybody in their first year?

Anybody in their first two years?

First five years?

All right, we have one person in their first five years.

Okay, wow.

What's that?

Anybody online?

Oh, John, how long you sober?

Four years?

All right, welcome, John, welcome.

I'm glad to be here.

It's nostalgic for me.

I was thinking about Chuck tonight,

who started the group a long, long time ago.

And Chuck and his wife.

And just thinking about how things change.

Things change a lot in AA.

Things change in life.

And everyone's involved surprised me a lot.

I remember how big this group used to be,

how enthusiastic this group is.

You guys are quite enthusiastic still.

But I just remember, in my mind, it was 300 people.

But it wasn't that big, apparently.

It was maybe 100.

But I just remember the enthusiasm for Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I think about setting up the chairs in that hall

and tearing it down and the commitments that people had.

Because it was an offshoot of the group that I grew up in.

I got sober in the Pacific group,

where Chuck got sober.

Chuck was in my class.

And I got sober September 7th of 1980.

And I haven't had a drink since then.

I'm a little, I had somebody I sponsored

tell me they've been smoking pot for several years.

And then a guy I sponsor with long-term sobriety,

double-duty sobriety,

told me he'd been doing crystal for the last six months.

And it doesn't surprise me, that's what we do.

It doesn't surprise me, but it still surprises me.

If you've been around for a while,

you know what I'm saying.

You just don't get used to it.

And you don't get used to Chuck going out.

My sponsor, Art, had 39 years of sobriety.

And he went out on crystal meth.

And he never did crystal.

But he did it at 39 years of sobriety.

And he died sober.

He got sober, and had two years of sobriety,

and then he died of liver cancer.

So it's a mixed emotion in AA that we stay sober.

Things are changing, and I'm not so sure I like change.

There's nobody who's new, but I'm an alcoholic.

And there's nobody who is new.

I wouldn't give this talk

if there was anybody who was new in the room.

But I was at a meeting last night,

and I go to this meeting, and the woman gave a great talk.

37 years sober, and she gave a great talk.

Really great experience, and just great stories.

But there was something to miss with her talk.

Talked a lot about drugs.

And I am a firm believer in singleness of purpose.

The name of our group is Alcoholics Anonymous.

And the problem with her talk

is I didn't identify with her story.

I identified with some of the interesting stories

about sobriety, but they were more entertaining

than growth inspiring.

And you know what I'm talking about.

But it's a question and answer I was telling Vincent

about this earlier.

It's a question and answer meeting.

So she speaks for 30 minutes, and they ask questions.

And if you weren't watching for it,

you kind of missed the fact she never talked about drinking,

although she talked about drinking.

When she talked about drinking, she used the word alcohol.

She used the word Alcoholics Anonymous.

She talked about sobriety.

And then somebody asked her a question.

She said, "No, you mentioned that alcohol

"always led to you doing drugs.

"Can you talk a little bit about your drinking?

"I kid you not."

I'm gonna paraphrase.

She said, "Well, alcohol really wasn't my drug of choice."

And I went, "What are you doing at 37 years,

"abstinent, speaking at an AA meeting?

"You might as well get an overeater up here

"and talk about not eating flour or sugar for 37 years,

"if you're gonna say it's all the same."

For me, and then I'll get off my soapbox in just a second.

It's this change that I see, right,

that's really driving me crazy.

I drank, and I'm an alcoholic, and I sucked down bourbon

and 7, 7-7 was my drink.

My first drink was beer and champagne.

I was 12 years old.

I got drunk, and it did something for me

that nothing has ever done.

Sex doesn't do it.

I smoked some pot along the way.

I took whites along the way.

That's about as much drugs as I did.

And it didn't do it.

Now, pot made me high,

which is very different than having a cocktail.

And here's the difference for me.

At 12 years old, when I got drunk,

that booze went down, and it hit inside of me,

and I said this to myself at 12 years old,

"Oh my God, this is what it feels like to be normal."

Pot never did that.

Pot made me hallucinate.

Pot entertained my brain.

Whites just, I don't know what whites did, we just took 'em.

But pot would just take me into la-la land,

and I could just kind of sometimes hallucinate

and stuff like that, but alcohol made me feel normal.

And I said that to myself at 12 years old,

"Oh my God, this is what it feels like to be normal."

Now, what really had happened to me

is I was a very anxious kid.

I had a lot of emotional problems.

I won't go into details, but I'll just tell you,

I sucked my thumb, and I wet my bed 'til I was 15.

And there was sexual abuse,

this is not being recorded, is it?

Huh? - Yes, we can.

- Yeah, it just nicks it.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

There was sexual abuse that happened to me as a boy,

and so there was a lot of stuff that I was filled

with a lot of turmoil and angst and anxiety

and sadness and depression and awkwardness

and just felt different, and my head was always talking to me

and, "Why did you say that?

"Nobody likes you," and all that stuff.

But when I drank, it all stopped.

And all that anxiety went away,

and I felt happy for the very first time.

I remember laughing and going, "Oh my God,

"I loved what alcohol did for me."

So I'm not an alcoholic in the sense that

if I stop drinking, everything gets better.

That's not me.

I stopped drinking, and it goes back to the way it was

when I was 12 years old.

The anxiety, the talking in the head.

I know if I drank today, I know exactly what I would do.

I would get drunk.

I would get sloppy.

I would get emotional.

I would call you and tell you what I think of you,

and every resentment I've ever had at you,

I went, "And you and you and you,"

and then I'd get the gun out of my nightstand,

put it in my head, and blow my brains out

'cause I know exactly what that drinking's gonna lead to.

That's gonna be day after day after day,

and day after day, I'm gonna say today

I'm not gonna drink.

I'm gonna get my shit together.

I'm not gonna drink.

I'm gonna go to a meeting,

and I know at five o'clock, I'll just have one.

I'll just have, I just need to take the edge off,

and then I would go back out to drinking,

and I know what it will look like 'cause my alcoholism,

and I heard this when I was new, and I thought it was BS.

They said your alcoholism continues to go on

even if you stop drinking,

and I said, "Somebody's making that crap up."

There's no such thing, and I gotta tell you,

I'm sober 44 years, and I feel like my alcoholism

is worse than it was when I came in.

I don't know how to explain it.

I can just tell you that if I went to drinking,

I would get on the phone, tell you how I feel,

and then walk in the bedroom, put a gun in my hand,

blow my brains out.

That's alcoholism, right?

But when I drink, it all just used to go away.

So what happened is I got sober, and I got sober,

and you've got, many of you have heard my story,

so I'm not gonna bother with all the details,

but I asked this girl to marry me,

who I dated on and off, and we weren't dating at the time.

She was dating somebody else, and you know how we are.

I don't want you, but dammit,

I don't want anybody else wanting you either,

so why don't you marry me just so somebody else

can't have you, even though we're having sex,

but I'm also having sex with him, him, him, him, him, and him,

but you won't mind, will you?

And she just said to me, she goes,

"Robert, you're an alcoholic."

And I said, "Oh, come on, Eileen.

"You haven't seen me in months."

She goes, "Robert, you've been drinking

"since five this morning."

And I said these words, and it really should be

one of the questions on our 20 questions card.

I know you guys probably have it, and it's back there.

This should really be a 20 question.

Or really, it needs to be written by us, right?

That's written by John Hopkins Hospital.

I think we get in a room, and we write out real questions

about whether you're an alcoholic,

'cause if you say these four words

when somebody asks you about,

or confronts you about your drinking,

you don't need to answer anymore.

One will do.

I got a one 20 question card that will cut it.

If you say to somebody these four words

when they say, "My God, you're drinking all the time.

"You're an alcoholic."

And you say, "But you don't understand."

You're an alcoholic.

The only people that say that are alcoholics.

That's the only people that start off,

but you don't understand.

And that's what I said.

But Eileen, you don't understand.

We're water skiing, and everybody knows

that you water ski when the water is like glass.

You don't go out there when the wind is kicking it up

and you got waves.

It's no fun.

You go when it's glass.

So at five o'clock in the morning,

if the water's like glass,

that's when we all get up early,

and we go early in the day.

But everybody also knows that drinking

and skiing go together.

Nobody skis without drinking.

You need to be relaxed when you ski.

And she's looking at me like you're crazy.

And I had all kinds of those explanations.

Like if you're drinking on a Saturday morning at 10 o'clock.

Alcoholics drink before noon.

We say before noon.

Other people say before five, right?

But I, if I'm outside and I'm mowing the lawn,

that's not alcoholism, that's yard work.

And every guy knows if you're mowing the lawn,

you have a beer to go with it.

And I got more and more of those rules.

If it's Christmas morning,

and you're opening Christmas gifts with the family,

totally okay to have a bourbon and seven

while you open up your Christmas gifts at seven o'clock.

Because you're celebrating.

And I would have all these rules to explain to people.

Because alcohol does something for me

that nothing has ever done.

It makes me feel normal.

And that's really all I ever wanted.

I just want to feel normal.

What I really want is all these emotions

that I don't know how to handle.

I'm not an, I don't like emotions.

When I, when Nate said, you know,

sponsors just tell me about your emotions,

I thought, if my sponsor at 44 Years of Sobriety said,

just call me every day and tell me what you're feeling,

I'd have to kill him.

I'd say, oh no, we're not doing that.

I'm not telling you what I'm feeling.

Because at any given moment, it's like,

what's the point of living?

Might as well just end it now.

Shoelace broke, one more, nothing goes my way.

Can you, it was the other day, what did I do?

I laughed at myself because it came out of nowhere.

I, what was I doing?

I did something in the kitchen.

I did something in the kitchen and I knocked something over.

And it was like a cup of coffee

and it knocked all over the counter.

And I said, you know, God, can't just one thing go my way.

44 Years, can one thing just go my way?

Because I was frustrated.

And so what I do is I blame God.

And that has been my MO since I was a kid.

If it's not going right, you blame God.

It's his fault.

'Cause he's supposed to keep everything going so I could,

it's bad enough living without the challenges

of spilling a cup of coffee, right?

So when I drink, I get to a point

where I don't feel all that stuff.

And that to me feels normal.

And then I have moments where I can experience happiness

or glee, but the problem is, is I don't stop drinking.

'Cause once I start it feels so good, I wanna keep going.

And I don't understand when I'm drinking

that as a mental obsession and a physical allergy to alcohol,

I get the mental obsession and I ended up in a bar

and that's where I drink.

And I'm in that bar every night pointing out

all the alcoholics 'cause this guy's in here every night.

And I would do it all the time.

Alcoholic, alcoholic, alcoholic.

And it never dawned on me.

The only reason I knew these people were in there

every night is 'cause my ass was in there every night.

So what happened is I got sober and I was pretty miserable.

And nobody's new, but if you're a couple years sober

and there's actually nobody two years sober either,

I think our youngest guy is John

with four years of sobriety.

If you're miserable, John, I'm just talking to you now,

I wanna welcome you to AA.

I was really, really miserable

around two years of sobriety.

I was in the Pacific group, I had a sponsor,

I was sponsoring people, I'd done an inventory,

I'd worked the steps, I'd been making amends.

I've been doing what we do here.

I still do the same stuff.

Nate, thank you.

Yeah, I hate it when I go to a meeting

and I'm the oldest guy in the room.

I go to a meeting a lot of times,

I'm the oldest guy in the room

and I think, where is everybody?

They're not dead, they're not all dead.

There were 52 people in my class.

We had a class banquet at our one year anniversary

and I have a picture, there were so many people,

we have two pictures, we had to split the group up.

There were 52 people in 1980, we had a dinner, a banquet,

to celebrate that we'd all gotten sober in the Pacific group

and we'd all turned one year sober.

So just from the Pacific group, 1980, 52 of us.

I can count on one hand how many of us still go

to the Wednesday night Pacific group meeting

and that number is one.

I'm the only one out of 52 people

that continue to go to that meeting.

Many of them are dead.

Some of them gone out, Chuck, and others.

And it's, sometimes I get this feeling

every once in a while that comes over me.

Have I overstayed my welcome?

Had they, were they gone?

Did I not get the invite?

Did bus take me to the next location?

But that's just my thinking.

I remember I was, oh geez, 27, 27, 28 years sober

and I was sitting in my chair, I come home from work,

it was a Monday night and I was going to,

at that time my home group was Monday night

adventures in sobriety.

I left the Pacific group when I was around 18 years sober.

I got a resentment.

People think I got a resentment

because I didn't get elected secretary, which is not true.

I had left the Pacific group

'cause I felt lonely in the group.

I did not feel a part of the group.

I'm actually having that same feeling again lately.

And it's not them, it's me.

It's always me.

The feeling's always me.

It's my willingness to tell the truth about who I am.

But I was at home, I was meditating.

I had just done 86, 87, 88.

I was sitting in the chair meditating

and the thought came to my mind, you know what, Robert?

You're not really an alcoholic.

Not really.

You got sober when you were 24.

You had a lot of emotional problems, a lot.

And you've dealt with that stuff.

You've come out of the closet crying out loud.

You stopped dating men and women.

You stopped drinking.

So you solved the problem with the lawsuits you were in.

You're not stealing anymore.

You're not embezzling money.

You go to work every day.

You've solved all these basic living problems

and you've emotionally grown up.

So it wasn't really alcoholism.

You were just immature.

You're not really an alcoholic.

And I said, oh my God, I'm not really an alcoholic.

So it's Monday night.

I always go to the Monday night meeting.

That's my home group.

That's where my sponsor is.

So I go to the Monday night meeting

'cause that's what you do, right?

Your feet carry you.

And I go to the meeting and I said, Armando,

I said I was sitting at home today.

I was meditating.

I got done meditating in the middle of meditation.

Actually, I realized I'm not an alcoholic.

And I'm really here in AA, really kind of by mistake.

He looked at me and said, what are you talking about?

He said, Robert, I've never seen you drink,

but I've sponsored you for 15 years

or whatever the case may be.

You're the worst alcoholic I have ever sponsored.

I didn't like that answer.

So I went to my best friend at the time.

I said, you know what, I just, I do.

He goes, what's up?

And I said, I just, I'm not an alcoholic.

It just came to me today when I was meditating.

I'm not an alcoholic.

I came here for emotional growth.

And I said, and I'm in the wrong.

He goes, what is wrong with you?

He goes, do you understand your alcoholism is alive

in trying to talk you out of leaving AA?

That you're in the middle of an alcoholic episode.

You don't even know it.

And I said, you're wrong.

You're wrong.

I can never trust my thinking.

I really can't.

I'm 69 years old, 44 years sober.

And I still can't trust my thinking.

My thinking at times, if it's about your life,

I have a perspective about you that I can have about me.

By trade, I'm a psychotherapist

and I can talk to clients and I can listen to them.

And I have an uncanny ability to diagnose people.

I had it since the day I first got trained.

I remember I had a supervisor

and he'd been practicing psychotherapy for 30 years

and he would give me his client.

He said, I need you to see this client.

I, for the life of me, can't figure this out.

And they would come in for a 30 minute session with me.

And I'd come back and I said, this is the problem.

It stems from X, Y, Z.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

This is what the issue is.

He goes, oh my God, I've been seeing this guy for a year

and never saw it.

How do you do that?

And I just have, that's a skill I have.

I have this diagnostic skill.

I can talk to somebody, figure out what their problem is

and do boom, boom.

I cannot do that with myself.

Not for the life of me.

I can do it for you.

Listen to you for 45 minutes and put it all together,

but I can't do it for me.

And I heard something when I was new.

You get a commitment, you call your sponsor,

you go to a meeting, you do the steps,

you get on your knees, you say your prayers,

you put into your life this thing called a program

so that on the bad day when you wake up

and you are absolutely 100% convinced

you're not an alcoholic or your home group

is treating you poorly, poorly.

And they are so wrong.

You put your shoes on, you put your collared shirt on.

I believe in wearing a collared shirt to an AA meeting.

I wear a collared shirt when I go to a meeting on Zoom.

I was taught to do that.

You do whatever you want, but that's what I was taught.

Wear a collared shirt when you go to an AA.

I put a collared shirt on, you go to the meeting,

you put on good clothes.

You let your feet walk you into the solution

'cause your head ain't going to.

And if you've got a habit long enough

of calling your sponsor or calling an AA member

or checking with a friend, I tried to see it last week.

I happened to be in my doctor's office getting an allergy

shot and I had just come from having my oil changed

in my car that drive all the way from Burbank

all the way to Beverly Hills.

By the time I had to pee so bad, it was crazy.

So I said to the nurse who knows me,

I've been going there for years.

Hey, can I absolutely go use the restroom?

So I went there to use the restroom

and I peed just straight blood.

And I went, uh-oh.

And I freaked out 'cause you walked up to her

and I said, this just happened.

Can you tell me who I need to go see?

And she said, yeah, we'll take care of this.

And so then they sent me to the emergency room

and I drove myself to the emergency room

and I'm sitting in the emergency room

and I've told no one, I told no one what's going on.

And then my head said, this is not a good idea.

You need to call someone.

So I called my best friend 'cause I'm in the habit

of telling people what's going on.

And I said, do not come over here, do not come over here.

He goes, oh, I know how inappropriately independent you are.

He goes, I remember when you got a cactus stuck in your eye

and you drove yourself to the emergency room.

He goes, I won't come.

I said, okay, good.

He goes, well, what's going on?

I told him.

So because I've been doing it for so many years

in AA of picking up the phone and calling someone,

even when I try not to,

I'm being overridden by past behavior.

And it's this habit I've gotten into.

So when I was two years sober,

I was sitting in the Pacific group

and I was feeling really bad

because I just was feeling miserable in AA, miserable.

I've been doing all this stuff, but I was miserable.

And if you think about it, especially for the new people,

they come in here, we really don't have a lot to offer them.

We just say, don't drink.

We don't even tell them how not to.

And we say, just don't drink and everything will be all right.

And that's not really true, really not true.

I wouldn't give this talk if they were in here,

but this is not really true.

It's not gonna be okay.

We've asked them to give up the only thing

that at least for me, makes it tolerable to live.

And now they're gonna be like just out of their minds.

And so we tell them, come to a meeting.

We're gonna go have fellowship afterwards.

Call us, meet us early, stay late.

We try to roll them to come in so we can comfort them.

And then they're gonna talk and talk and talk and talk.

And now we're gonna listen.

Yeah, yeah, get a sponsor.

We guide them along the way and we do that.

But I'm in this meeting Wednesday night feeling just,

all these people in AA are happy, happy, happy,

happy, happy, and I am not getting it.

And the guy gets up to the podium and he said,

you know what?

He goes, I'm the kind of an alcoholic.

You tell me, just stop drinking, everything will be okay.

That don't work for me.

That has never worked for me.

Because I stopped drinking and after a while

that tension starts to come and all that 12 year old stuff,

is what he was saying, starts coming again.

The anxiety and the crazy thoughts and the tension

and the pressures and I just can't take it

and I need to take a drink.

And people don't understand, well meaning people say,

just don't drink and everything's gonna be okay.

He said, and it's not, and they don't get it.

They don't get it that alcohol does something for me

that makes living tolerable.

And if you're like me and you're sitting around AA

for a couple of years and you're miserable,

I wanna welcome you to AA, you're my kind of an alcoholic.

And that guy was cleansing and I went,

oh my God, I've been in the group for two years

and I finally heard somebody who understands my alcoholism.

And I remember and I think my sobriety started that day.

My shoulders relaxed and I said, I belong here.

I thought I had to be happy 'cause I was sober

and I was miserable being sober.

And I thought somebody understands me

and it made the huge difference in my sobriety.

All of that is why I am a huge component

that in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,

we talk about alcoholism and the recovery from alcoholism.

We talk about alcohol because that identification

is what allows me to stay here.

If I didn't hear that, I'm not sure I would have ever stayed.

I kept thinking I was doing something wrong

and he made it and he made it understandable terms

that AA is a very slow, we've heard it.

It's a million dollar program and nickel at a time, right?

And it takes a long time to get better, right?

And it's because it's just not that you walk in the doors

and everything's okay.

I drink because alcohol does something for me

that doesn't do it for anybody else.

And my sobriety has been slow sobriety.

I remember I went down to talk to Clancy about something

that came up my sobriety and it was actually about,

my girlfriend said to me that you're gay

and I said, no, I'm not.

And I got really, that was a bad day.

And I made an appointment to go see Clancy.

My sponsor said, why don't you go see my sponsor?

So I went and saw him and I told Clancy and he said,

you know, Robert, I don't know of anybody.

I said, well, I'm sleeping with men

and I'm sleeping with girls, I have girlfriends.

I've had three or four in AA already.

And he said, I don't know of anybody, Robert,

can live in that kind of conflict

where you live in that kind of anxiety

and conflict all the time.

And he picked up a phone and he called the therapist.

And he said, I want you to go see a therapist.

I got a great therapist for you.

And, will you go? And I said, sure.

And I said, I thought you were against therapy.

He goes, not at all.

I said, well, I've heard you in the podiums.

He goes, what you've heard me say to the new person

is come here and do AA.

Don't go to therapy 'cause a new guy will do anything

but the 12 steps of AA to solve his alcoholism.

And he said, but you've done an inventory,

you're sponsoring people, you got commitments.

I see you in the group, I sponsor your sponsor.

He tells me about you, you're very involved.

You've done the deal,

but this is something that's not gonna get resolved.

You need some outside help.

And he goes, and the book talks about seeking outside help.

And I went and it was very helpful,

but not really, it didn't solve the problem.

What solved the problem was me taking the third step

for five years of sobriety.

I was in therapy for three years.

It's actually why I'm a therapist today

because I found it profoundly life-changing for me,

but it didn't solve the problem of me dating women

and sleeping with men.

But I took a third step for when I was five years sober

and I gave God my life.

And I said, I will stop dating women.

You direct my life.

I surrender myself to you 100%.

You go, you take me where you want me to go.

I'm willing to do anything you want me to do.

And my life has never been the same.

It's been absolutely different.

Not an easy life.

Not an easy life in any sense of the imagination.

And if I had a choice,

this is probably really controversial, not in here,

but it'll be out in the real world,

about being gay or being straight,

I take straight every time.

It's an easier life.

It's an easier, easier life.

I always wanted a wife.

I wanted kids and it's just not in the cards.

And, you know, when I was a boy,

men marrying men was not a possibility, right?

That came later on.

Well, I'm too old now to have kids

and I'm 70 years old, I'm not gonna have a kid.

But it's, for all a lot of other reasons,

it's a very difficult, lonely life and I wouldn't choose it.

But this is the cards that I had been dealt.

And I tried to make the best deal with God I could,

and to have the best life I could

with the cards that I was dealt.

And sobriety has been amazing, right?

It's very slow.

A lot of my character defects took a long time to go.

I have a couple minutes, so I'm gonna wrap up.

The light's not on just in case.

I am watching, but it's not on.

I'm gonna stop early.

But I wanna talk a little bit about sobriety,

I think I have already,

about the challenges that come along your way.

And it's not always easy.

I had a lot of difficulty in the work area.

Very, very difficult.

I had a boss who seemed to work against me.

They eventually fired him,

and they were putting me on the chopping block.

They were gonna fire me next.

And luckily I developed a piece of software

for the company or university that I worked for.

And so when they said, "We're gonna fire him,

"and you're gonna transfer this application to your unit."

That unit said, "We're not taking it

"unless you bring him with it."

They said, "Well, we're firing him."

They said, "Then don't give us up.

"We don't want it, 'cause we know nothing about it.

"You're firing the only guy that has knowledge about it?

"Does it make sense to us?"

And they said, "We don't want him."

"We don't want him anymore."

So I remember my boss, they transferred me,

and my new boss said, "You know what?

"Apparently you're a failure."

And he goes, "You got 12 months

"to bring this up into production,

"or I'm firing your ass."

And I said, "I got news for you.

"It's not me, but I'll prove my point."

And then seven months later, I said, "I'm ready to go.

"I'm ready to take the university live."

And he goes, "What college?"

And I said, "All seven."

"What? No, no, no!"

And he got all freaked out.

I said, "Ah, now who's got a little squirmish?"

And I developed the software application,

brought it up for the whole university,

and I had a really incredibly successful career

in an area that I'm not trained in.

But along the way, my boss just kept saying,

"You're the right guy for this job."

And I remember at one point when they moved me over

to this new department, they had said to,

everybody in the new department said,

"He's not gonna be our supervisor, is he?"

And my boss said, "No, no, he's not.

"He's just gonna be a colleague among colleagues."

And about a year after, he said,

"Okay, you're now gonna be their supervisor."

And I went, "Oh."

It was such a hard job,

and he would give me all the hard people.

People had gone out on stress leave.

He goes, "Wow, I'm making you supervise them now."

I said, "Why me?"

He goes, "You're the only one that can handle."

And I had a really successful career.

And it's just because, the reason I'm talking about this,

I went to Armando one time, and PeopleSoft,

it was a huge software company, and they came up to me,

and they said, "We wanna hire you,

"and we're going to offer you three times

"what UCLA is paying you."

I shouldn't say who I work for, but they're paying you.

"And you're gonna travel the world.

"You will become a household name in education,

"what we're gonna do."

And I said, I like the idea of that, right?

Household name.

So I went to my sponsor, and I said,

"I think I'm going to work for PeopleSoft.

"They're gonna pay me three times what I'm making.

"I'm gonna travel 50 weeks out of the year."

I said, "I'm gonna make more money than I've ever made."

And he said, "I don't think that's a good idea.

"I'm gonna tell you not to take the job."

"You're trying to hold me back from success!"

And my sponsor said, and I believe in this,

my sponsor tells me something to do it, I do it.

I don't argue, right?

This is the closest I got to arguing with Armando.

He said, "Robert, stay at this job."

And I said, "Why are you trying to hold me back?"

He goes, "I'm not trying to hold you back,

"but your life is here in LA.

"Your life is in Alcoholics Anonymous.

"You sponsor 30 guys.

"You can't just leave them."

He said, "God will take care of you, Robert.

"You do God's work.

"I promise you the money will be there."

"Armando," he said.

So I had to tell PeopleSoft no,

and then I just, and then I, you know,

then I just, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then my boss kept promoting me.

Well, you know, what happened is, you know,

I had a reputation at UCLA of being a real hard-ass,

a mean guy, and they had a going away party for me,

and 175 people from the campus came

that have sit down lunching for me,

and they don't do this for anybody,

and then they roasted me, right?

And they had seven people get up and roast me,

and oh my God, the first person gets up and goes,

"Well, well, well, you all don't know this,

"but this guy's name is Mr. No.

"You call him and the first words out of his mouth were no.

"No."

And the whole, you know, we had a great time.

And I had to tell 'em myself,

I had a great time in that retirement.

I said, "You know what, I loved working here in the end.

"It all worked out, it was great."

And I said, "I only crossed the line one time with my boss."

And I said, "He gave me one more thing to do."

And my boss started laughing

'cause he knew what I was gonna say.

"He gave me one more thing to do."

And I said, "I had just had it."

It was one of those days, and I said,

"Why don't you just stick a broom up my ass

"and I can sweep the floor as I go around the office?"

And the whole room died laughing, right?

And my boss was just laughing, and he got up last.

And he goes, "Oh yeah, he said that."

That one goes, "I'll never forget it."

He goes, "It's a great line, I'll never forget it."

But it was very successful in my job.

And then I also was a psychotherapist.

And so that whole area worked out.

My family relationships have been restored.

I played golf with my sister's husband.

A lot of good things have happened in sobriety,

but it's been very piecemeal.

I have struggled, as we all struggle,

with being miserly with money,

being a pinch penny, with overspending,

with debting, getting out of debt.

And I don't do it anymore.

I just pay the credit card off

when it comes to the end of the month.

I don't play that game anymore.

I pay my taxes.

I was just working on my taxes today,

which I didn't wanna do.

But a beautiful Saturday, but I did them.

I go to meetings, I show up, and I say I'm gonna show up.

I put a coat and tie on.

I have a commitment in every meeting I go to except for one.

One night a week, I don't have a commitment.

That's Friday night.

My commitment, though, is to go to fellowship afterwards.

A lot of nights, I don't wanna go to that meeting,

but I go because everyone's expecting me

to go for fellowship, and I go to fellowship.

So I guess I have a commitment.

AA works for me.

AA has been the guiding force of my life.

It's given its structure.

It's given it discipline.

It's given me a purpose for living, something I never had.

I wanna thank you for asking me to share.

I wanna say hello again to the group.

I love this group.

It has a very, very special place in my heart,

and I hope to see you again soon.

Thank you.