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Source: Bryson J – Kentucky State AFG Convention 2021 Bryson J. – Los Angeles, CA – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bryson-j-kentucky-state-afg-convention-2021-bryson-j-los-angeles-ca-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:53:22
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I'm going to do a reading and I'm going to time myself so I don't keep you all too long here. My name's Bryson and although I may look like it, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon and I always have to say that right up front because people will sit on the edge of their seats clenching, waiting for the moment I start talking about my drunk-a-log or my sobriety story or whatever because someone made a mistake because they didn't control the convention and they got the wrong guy.
I say that and make that joke because that's me and that's how I think and that's the nature of this disease for me. So I love what you all say when you came in. I came in in November of 2001 and that was my second time in. I want to let you all know, I learned to tell the truth in this program and that's all I pray for. I never know what I'm going to say when I come up here and talking to the other speakers, I want to thank the committee, I want to thank Olivia for inviting me, it's super great.
Thank you, Olivia's been a great host and the speakers are great. It's great going last. The bad news is sometimes on Sundays there's three people in the room looking at you, kind of groggy looking, but this is beautiful to see. But talking to the speakers, it's all the same thing. We don't remember what we said, we don't know what because we're just here to say whatever in the moment. I've always just prayed that my higher power just lets me tell the truth.
And so I came in, I guess it would have been 2009 or something when I came in, I'm sorry 1999 or something when I came in and you know it's weird, Al-Anon didn't work, it's weird, some of you don't know this but Al-Anon doesn't work sometimes. Let me lay out my experience, strength and hope from that period. I would go to one meeting a week, I didn't get a sponsor, I would read a little bit of literature, I wouldn't call anybody and then I promptly, 13th step, the woman in the meeting started dating her.
I mean I don't know what happened but Al-Anon just failed me. And there's nothing more dangerous than like a super smart Alec Al-Anon with a little bit of information, no recovery, unleashed on the world for another couple of years. It's a lot of amends to make for that period in there man, that was a good time. But yeah, I live in Los Angeles, California, y'all can probably tell from my accent that that's where I was born and raised.
It's weird, y'all got a weird theme going, I actually grew up in Arkansas, that's where I'm from, so it's really wild that two of the speakers, three of us were within maybe four hours of each other, so it's kind of a weird thing. But that region breeds a special kind of alcoholism, let me tell you. And what was said, that people don't talk man, it's so funny, I hate social media and I love it because it's the only way I find out anything that went on in my family.
And I don't even find out about it from my family on social media, it's like second, third thing and they're like so-and-so's talking about so-and-so, you're like what? So that's kind of my piece of that. And I want to say to everybody, it's really funny, some of y'all have heard my tapes before, don't worry I'm going to try and be nice today and not cuss a bunch and do all that. But I laugh about it because it's like Sunday morning and I'm like well that's good, that way there won't be anybody here to have a business meeting about this after it's over.
And Livia can stay in the district and in Al-Anon, that's good. But I want to share that because I had a really interesting experience where, I'll just mention it down below, last time before the lockdown happened I was sharing at a Los Angeles, like a district, Southern California Valley Al-Anon conference. And it was like Friday night at like nine o'clock or something, which is late for me these days, and it was like round up and I had a bunch of my friends, it was actually an AA conference, I was the Al-Anon speaker, which is always a weird thing anyway, and so it was a bunch of my friends who are double winners, we use that term in California, double winner if you're an AA in Al-Anon.
And so a bunch of my friends there from AA and man I was caffeinated and rolling and everybody was egging me on and I just, like it was unbelievable, there's no telling what I said. I think they released the tape, I'm pretty sure. They did not send me a copy of my CDs.
[00:05:03]
And so I was down there greeting and at the end and everybody coming by and everybody came through and whatever and one of these nice little, we have this, I go to meetings in Hollywood a lot and all the young people there talk about Valley Grandma Al-Anon, they talk about Black Belt Valley Grandma Al-Anon, it's definitely like looking around here, it's always an older demographic, everyone's like my age or older, and so it's really funny that this little lady came up to me and she's like, I just want you to know, I really enjoyed your talk, but some people, your language might have turned some people off and so a newcomer might come in, hear what you said, and they might leave and not get the message.
And I said, thank you, and I understand and I smiled and she went on through the line and of course I'm an Al-Anon so for me, I've got a good month that I'm going to get to just think about that and feel horrible. And I had made reference to, actually one of my favorite jokes is like, if you want like a really, really terrifying hardcore band name, like if you're like a punk rock or a metal band, you shouldn't make any, you should just call yourself Al-Anon Business Meeting.
That's the most punk rock terrifying thing I can think of in my life. And so I said that joke, I said, oh, you're an agnostic front, how cute, I'm an Al-Anon Business Meeting, and so everybody, like Los Angeles is a punk rock town, everybody laughed and so anyway, as I was walking out, you know, getting with my buddy and I was like, man, that lady, yeah, wow, gosh, I really got in the moment or whatever and I was just feeling horrible about myself, or getting ready to at least, and this girl comes up to me and she's wearing like a black t-shirt, tattoos all over and black hair, and she comes up and she goes, hold on, and she stops me and she's like, and she was a huge fan of that band, Agnostic Front, not Al-Anon Business Meeting, but, and she's like, she's like, I come to these things and I never feel like anyone's talking to me, and she's like, everything you said hit me, I love it, thank you, I never feel a part of, and you know, and that helped me so much, and my buddy with me, you know, started laughing, he's like, there you go, and you know, and I just want to say that like, you know, if I say something, you know, like I always say, it's like, take what you like and leave the rest, I don't speak for Al-Anon, I speak for me, and my unique experience, the feelings are all the same, you know, when I came in, I thought, oh, I don't relate to these people at all, and the truth is, is that in 10 minutes, I heard people that I had nothing in common with share everything inside my heart, broke me wide open, y'all broke me wide open, and so I just call that out because I realized after that, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Al-Anon is not like, I'm a middle-aged, white, straight, middle-class, moderate man, it's like, Al-Anon isn't just for me, Al-Anon's for everybody, alcoholism, and I thought about it, I was like, wow, you know, she's right that someone might leave, and I'm like, yeah, but you know what, someone might stay, someone might hear their story, and so I realized, like, oh, I have to sit in a meeting sometimes and hear people talk about stuff that I don't necessarily agree with, but I just, you know, adherence to the unenforceable, I show up, I smile, I say thank you for sharing, you know, and it's a beautiful thing, so I just realized that, I was like, yeah, man, whatever I tell, whatever story I tell, hopefully I make people smile, hopefully you transmit, and they hear the love underneath it, they hear the feelings, they hear the feel that underneath this cowboy drag that I put on, that there's a heart that feels just like every one of y'all, and that is heavily affected by the disease of alcoholism.
So, but man, I love alcoholics, I love, it was said last night, I love everyone who says, you know, when they identify and say, and I love an alcoholic, man, yeah, I don't think I loved anybody but alcoholics, actually. That was an amends to me, too, is that I got so focused on the loud and flashy, crazy people causing all the trouble that I forgot sometimes the quiet people, so Avalon's allowed me to have just friends who don't create chaos, you know, or at least create it in a different way, in my case. I said to somebody this weekend, I always like to say it, I say that one of my biggest things was that, you know, people say, oh, he's a mean drunk. For me, I was a mean sober. I was, you know, I was thinking about it, I was planning it, manipulative to the level you cannot imagine, just like that's, and that makes me feel worse, because I didn't have the excuse, I was drunk, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew what I was doing, sort of, because I was affected by the disease of alcoholism. I actually want to get this for a second, I, so just so there's something conference approved in my pitch, I love the reading understanding ourselves. I'm not going to read the whole thing, because I got
[00:10:10]
an ego and I want to tell my story, but it's amazing to me when it says, we go through this, it says, we who care most are caught up in the behavior of another person. We react to an alcoholic's behavior, seeing that the drinking is out of hand, we try to control it. We are ashamed of the public scenes, hell, I was causing them, I was half in those, but we try to handle it in private. It isn't long before we feel we are to blame and take on the hurts, the fears, the guilt of an alcoholic. I believe that I'm affected by the disease of alcoholism. One of the symptoms of alcoholism is an uncontrollable desire to drink. I have every other symptom. When I went to open AA meetings, I was like, oh, God, right? Here we go. All our thinking becomes directed at what the alcoholic is doing or not doing and how to get the drinker to stop drinking. This is our obsession. Obsession, man. You talk to alcoholics, they talk about that drink and feeling it and that obsession. Man, that's, you know, she was always that for me, right? Here's one that will crack you open. Watching fellow, by the way, I want to say to the newcomers and to people who are in AA, it's beautiful. I jokingly say welcome to the graduate program, that's what my sponsor said, teasing them.
Because the first time I ever met somebody in AA, I went to an AA meeting, I walked up outside and my friend, my friend Stephanie, and she's like awesome, just amazing, crazy, alcoholic and drug addict. She goes, this is my friend Bryson, he's an al-non. And the dude next to her goes, I effing hate you people. And I was like, welcome to the room. So good. So when alcoholics come into this program, I always remind them what we already know. Watching fellow human beings slowly kill themselves with alcohol is painful. Amazing, right? And says, you know, we try to fix everything, make excuses, tell little lies to men, damage relationships, and worry some more. This is our anxiety, obsession, anxiety. You listen to open AA pitches, that's what they're talking about all the time. Sooner or later, sooner, the alcoholic's behavior makes other people angry. Definitely soother for me, if I think about it. And it says, you know, we often want to strike back, punish, and make the alcoholic pay for the hurt and frustration caused by uncontrolled drinking. This is our anger. God, I'm angry. Self-righteous, dominating, all that, man, that was me. The meanest, I cause way more trouble. Today in my relationships, I cause way more trouble than any alcoholic drinking or not, with just my brain, you know. When good sense tells us there's something wrong with the alcoholic's drinking and thinking, we still hide what we feel and what we know. This is our denial. Yeah. Perhaps the most severe damage to those of us who have shared some part of life with an alcoholic comes in the form of the nagging belief that we are somehow at fault. We may feel it was something we did or did not do, that we were not good enough, not attractive enough, or not clever enough to have solved this problem for the one we love. These are our feelings of guilt. If I get caught up in telling crazy stories, understand that all of these characteristics, all these feelings, the steps are what heal us. The traditions keep us from killing each other and breaking up the whole program, but the steps heal these feelings. If you're having a feeling, call somebody, work the steps, do that, take that to your higher power. And this is the one that got me. I couldn't read this thing without crying for years. We have turned to Al and on and have often done so in despair, unable to believe in the possibility of change and unable to go on as we have before. We feel cheated out of a loving companion, overburdened with responsibilities, unwanted, unloved, and alone. That is half my disease right there in those three words. Unwanted, unloved, alone. Before I came to this program, that defined my life. The second half is right here. There are times when some of us can act arrogant, smug, self-righteous, and dominating. That's the other half. We come to Al and on because we want and we need help.
We come to Al-Anon, however, because we want and we need help.
[00:15:00]
That's why I came to Al-Anon. I did not want to be here. When the best outcome of your life is to end up in a church basement on Friday night, that is not like what you planned. You're young, thinking like what your cool life's going to be. We share in a general way, keep the details out so y'all can't judge me, or at least try not to. I'm sure y'all find some way, just like I do, but that's a joke.
My part's not a joke, for sure, because I judge the hell out of people, and it's a character defect I work on constantly. How it was, what happened, what's it like now? Like I said, I grew up down south, and man, when it started, it was good. It was best case scenario for me as a kid. I love the story about being out in nature, and dirt bikes and shotguns, and yeah, man, that was my beginning. For me, horses, it's a big deal.
When I could start remembering things, probably around three years old or so, until about six or so, man, it was good. I grew up in a rodeo family, and it was amazing. My parents got a divorce, and until I was 35 years old, if you'd ask me if my parents' divorce affected me, I'd say, no. I love that I'm fine and okay. That's such a beautiful thing, because that was the way I was. I realize now that I just scabbed up.
I just had a scar over my whole heart. People say, did you grow up in alcoholism? I didn't think I did, but as people say, you shake an Al-Anon's family tree long enough, an alcoholic will fall out. For me, I had a lot of them. I had a great aunt. My grandma would load me up in the car, and we'd go looking for her at the beer joint. We didn't have alcoholics. Alcoholics is a self-defined disease, and nobody was diagnosing themselves as an alcoholic, so I guess we didn't.
I can tell you that people's drinking bothered me, and I can tell that people's drinking bothered the people kind of a generation above me. I sort of identify … My home group is Hollywood Las Palmas Sunday. It's an adult-child focus. We read from the book from … See, that name is horrible. The book is called From Survival to Recovery. It's amazing. It will blow your mind, even if you don't think you're an adult child of an alcoholic, but it's so hard to say, because when you say, we read from, from survival to recovery, it's a nightmare.
I hate the way they named that one, but anyway, I'll write about that. I should write an email to WSO about that. And the recovered answer is, well, next time they write a book, you should volunteer, and you should send a story, and you should tell them what to name it, right? I was in a business meeting one time, and a lady was griping that the person … Our money had gotten stolen out of somebody's car, and they were like, well, you should take it in every night to your house, and I turned, and I was like, that's a great idea.
I said, would you like to volunteer to be the treasurer? And she, it was weird, she had no more ideas or motions to make after that. I was a simple question. I wasn't trying to be mean or nothing. I just was like, well, you should set the tone for that. But that's what they did to me, man. Service, man. I'll get back to my childhood in a minute, my family, put a pin in that. Service is a big deal, man.
I've been every position, man. I, yeah, man, like the group rep, the district rep, go to those weird, you know, drive like an hour and a half to wherever that meeting is, and I've been an … Oh, it's so hard. An AMIUS, an al and non-member in alloteen service, amazing, amazing. For those of you who know, I didn't know this, you're just supposed to shut your mouth and be there, make sure the meeting's safe.
It's a hard one, man. For an al and non, just to let kids sit there and sit in silence for 15 minutes and ask if anybody wants to share like 12 times, it's a spiritual lesson right there, man. I was the snack lady at the Monday night Church of Chimes meeting with a friend of mine. We were the snack ladies, my friend Paige, and I made a lifelong friend with that, man.
[00:20:01]
It chokes me up. I mean, Paige, you know, I'll tell you a great story about being the snack lady and making the coffee. There was this wonderful woman there, and I, man, I describe myself as a low-bottom al and non. I was a screw-up. If y'all ever feel bad about your program, just literally think of me. Just be like, I am doing better than Bryson did. I want you, I seriously, if y'all are writing an inventory, just anything, man, whatever this is, I know he did something worse.
I got up on one. It's like Arkansas and Mississippi. Thank God for Mississippi. We are grateful for Mississippi, Lord, let me tell you what. So yeah, that's another, y'all brought me here because you knew I wouldn't be fancy about Kentucky. That's what it was. They were like, oh, we got one guy from the West Coast, but we can bring him in and he'll be cool because he knows his place. But I'll tell you, this is a great story about how you're, it's a disease of perception.
My thinking was warped by the disease of alcoholism. I would show up, you know, for me, I was showing up early. I was showing up early to this thing because I was probably 10, 15 minutes early to the meeting and get everything set up and get it going. But if you make the coffee in one of those giant 1955 coffee makers, it takes like 20 minutes, 30 minutes to do it. And so I would show up and almost every week, this lady would have put the water in the coffee maker and it would be set up and going.
And I was like, how dare she? How dare she shame me like that? She's telling me I'm late. She's telling me I'm late. She said, I'm like, well, if you'd have been here, I wouldn't have to do that. And I got so mad at her. And my friend was like, maybe she just wants coffee at 8 o'clock or whatever, 7 o'clock, whatever. And I was like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Maybe it's not about me. Okay, cool. Thank you.
And thank God I didn't say something to her, but I know, man, I had to just be like vibing her when I got there. Like, oh, I'll put the coffee in. First thing. But anyway, but that's the way my brain, and that service will teach you that stuff, man. You get to be the secretary of a meeting. You get to say, thank you for your feedback. Thank you for sharing. That's a great idea. I'll consider that at the next business meeting.
You do all those things. You learn, man, you learn humility. You learn just to show up. For me, I learned consistency. Consistency is a superpower. And program taught me that. Everything had to be instant for me. I wanted it right now. Program taught me, no, it's cool. It's cool. I was talking to one of the newcomers here, and I said, during the countdown, around the countdown time, and she found out I had 20 years, and she just kind of looked down like she was bummed out.
Like, oh, 20 years. And I was like, yeah, I know, I should be fixed by now, right? But as they say, it's like, I get to do this. I get to do this for the rest of my life. I get to come to places where I don't know anybody, which would normally have been a nightmare for me, and normally would have had to create some kind of chaos or scene to make sure that everybody knew where I was and all. And I get to just come and have people hug me and love me and tell me their stories and save my life.
So, yeah, so there was alcoholism in my family. There was definitely Al-Anonism. My mother was in program for a little while and self-diagnosed herself as suffering from this part of the disease. And all I know is, the way I describe it is that I don't really have to know how this works. I figure things out for a living, and I don't have to figure this out. The steps are built, super simple. I figure if a bunch of goofy alcoholics could do it in jail, we could probably do it, you know, out in the real world without, like, a threat of a life sentence on us.
So it was made for that. So simple program for complicated people, and Al-Anons, man, we are complicated. There's a lot going on. Busy. So I don't know how this stuff works, and I don't know exactly how the disease of alcoholism affected me, but I know just like if you have something wrong and they give you an antibiotic, well, you might have had some sort of infection. If you get better, that might show that, you know?
And so for me, that's how it worked for me. I worked the program, worked the steps, so thankfully I didn't have to know. I am mad, though, that this wasn't, you know, that I wasn't made more aware of it. It's one of my biggest regrets that I didn't know about this program, because people just thought I was crazy for the whole first part of my life. People just thought I was crazy, because I wasn't drinking.
I needed to stay sober so I could take care of everybody, and so I could be self-righteous. That was the real deal, is that I could point the finger at you, because y'all were doing
[00:25:04]
what she was doing, he was doing, and I was so mean to alcoholics, man. So when I was young, I basically felt that common feeling. I didn't have the manual. I felt neglected. I know now from asking my family and people, talking stories, that I didn't suffer like, you know, like financial hardship, but I felt like a lot of times people just sort of forgot about me, and that's how I felt. I certainly took that on probably harder than it was.
But again, disease of perception. I didn't know a little kid. I made up all kinds of stories. When I did my inventory, my fourth step, I discovered that a huge part of one of my resentments against somebody never happened. The timeline did not work out, and when I spoke to people, I realized that I had made up something in my young head at probably seven or eight years old that was untrue, and I had operated on that until I was almost in my 40s.
So that's the gift of inventory. People are so scared of inventory. I always tell people, it's like, people go, oh, you know, I don't want to open that closet. All that stuff will fall out. It's like, it's not a closet. It's a backpack. You're wearing it. Start taking stuff out of it. That's all inventory is, is everything you do, every time you do it, it's just lighter. Nothing's going to fall on you, and even if it does, there's people here to hold you up and dig you out, and that's the way this works.
That's why we don't do this on our own. It's not a self-help program. You know, I was self-destructive. Why would I think that I was going to help myself? You know, I needed a program, I needed a higher power. For me, that worked in that way, because I had left my higher power. It's wild, man. 14 years old. Something goes on around then, but around 14 and early teens, I was just like, cool. I grew up in a religion that did not work for me.
It was my grandparents' religion, and it was handed to me and delivered to me, and the message that I got was that your higher power loves you and wants to kill you, and I could not live with that. I had a Sunday morning God, and my Saturday night life did not fit that, and so I just was like, well, I have to cut a line between those two things, and then gradually, there was just no God. I was doing it for myself.
You know? Amazing, just hearing the speakers and how much of the same stories come up. I swear, I didn't copy this, but at least that is my story, and so for the next 20 years, I just didn't have a higher power, at least one outside of me. I made people my higher power. I made things my higher power. I had a lot of higher powers, but it just wasn't anything around like what people would call a God or that type of higher power, and so it's funny, not coincidentally, a few years after that, man, I started having anxiety, so much anxiety, so much fear.
I was sure about this because 12-step programs, I was never diagnosed. Like I said, I'm from Arkansas, so we don't have mental illness or addiction or any of that stuff. I sure don't talk about it for sure, but I became scared to drive a car to the point where I couldn't drive a car. For eight years of my life, I drove a motorcycle because it felt more in my control. Talk about the illusion of control.
That was my illusion of control, and so I was in a meeting a couple years into the program, and a guy said that he would have anxiety attacks, and he would be in a room, and he would think that there was not going to be enough air to breathe, and that he would just freak out, and that after he started going to a 12-step program and going to Al-Anon, he didn't have that anxiety, that fear anymore, and I realized like, oh, yeah.
I realize now that the effects of alcoholism weighed in on me, and by the time I was in my late teens, man, it was on me. By the time I was 20, it was crippling, and I was crippling fear of everything, scared of everyone and everything, and low self-esteem, unwanted, unloved, alone, and so for me, I started to seek other esteem, and for me, that was always her, whoever she was, you know, and there's an interesting thing with alcoholics.
They attract a lot of attention, man, so they take a lot of attention, which is great because then you can kind of just slide along, and they have strong opinions, so you can be like, I don't know. Until I was in Al-Anon, I didn't know what color I liked. I didn't know what I wanted to eat. I didn't know a lot of things. It was whatever you wanted, whatever, what do you want to do, and so alcoholics make that really easy because they have a lot of ideas, and they want to do stuff.
Let's go do it, and it's like, woo, exciting. And they want to do so, let's go do it. And it's like, woo, exciting. And for me, so that deflection of that, so that other esteem
[00:30:00]
that if she was cool or pretty or whatever it was, smart, and then if also people wouldn't be noticing me, and then they needed me, man, needed. Love was conditional. I had unconditional love from my family, and I know that, but I did not understand unconditional love. I could not feel it until I got into the program. And anonymity is what did it. I came into my first meeting, and they didn't know me.
They didn't know what I did. They didn't know my last name. They had no idea how cool I was. And they would, you know, they would just give me a hug, and I was important to them, and it was a huge thing. So basically, my disease exhibit itself is, like I said, I would need to be doing something, human doings. I had to help people. And so for me, I was the one always taking care of people. I was sober.
I was running, fixing all the problems, and doing all that, and going, nothing for me. My career suffered. Financially, I was a wreck. Everything in my life just fell apart slowly over that 20 years, and it's the story everybody gets. I was important to tell, because a lot of times people come up to me later, and they go, oh, that's my story. I should always include this. A big part of my thing, still sharing in general ways, I would say I was a big supporter of the arts.
A lot of people don't know that a lot of what I was doing was actually supporting the arts. It was very specific sort of art that I supported, and so I tended to be a huge patron of dance, the dance arts. And because I had kind of a weird ego, I couldn't just support regular dancers. I had to support exotic dancers. And so for me, and so anyway, as a wonderful girl, she's sober now, which is a miracle.
And we got in a relationship, and it was just the classic story that everyone tells, and it's just all of it, obsession, anger, guilt, denial, and just more and more and more me giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and but she wasn't an alcoholic. She didn't drink, you know, that much, and she didn't, she only did drugs when she worked. She worked five, six nights a week, but that was all that. And so finally, I got to the point where, so funny, so I was, I work at home, and had an office in my house at the time with a back entrance, and this woman who worked for me came in, and she came around the corner, and I was in my chair at my desk wearing boxer shorts and big fuzzy slippers and a wife beater t-shirt and just bawling, just crying bawling.
And she came in to her desk, which is next to mine, and she's like, oh, okay, so she's talking to me, and she's like, okay, so, oh, here, so she pulls out a paper, and she's like, you're going to go here tonight, Little White Chapel in Burbank, you're going to find Beverly, ask for Beverly, and here you go, go there tonight, and I went to that meeting. And like I said, it didn't take, I got some relief, I got out of that relationship, but it didn't stick, and it didn't work, because I didn't work it.
It works if it works, you know, that goes both ways. It also doesn't work if you don't sometimes, and so for me, I was released back into the wild, super dangerous, super self-righteous, even more self-righteous than before, and I got unavailability, in the unavailability Olympics, I just kept up in the bar. I just, every year, I had to do better. Every relationship, I had to seek more and more chaos, and for me, the amends to the people that I was in relationships with, in my relationship today, my amends is that I'm honest, which is intimacy, and that person knows who I am, I know who they are, neither of us tries to change the other, it's just, is this okay, is this not, then we can continue this.
It's like we do in a meeting, it's like, this meeting doesn't work, okay, then I have to do something, but I can't change everybody in this meeting. And so I would only be in relationships with people that couldn't close the deal, because I couldn't close the deal, so I had to have somebody that had something wrong, so they couldn't close the deal. So the way I like to say it is that I went to the desert out in California with a woman
[00:35:06]
who was my gay sober friend, and at the end of that weekend, she was not acting really gay, she was definitely not sober, and we were no longer friends. And that started a whirlwind that for about six weeks went on at a weird frenzied pace, she was engaged to someone else, just everything that you could, every red flag that you could be like, oh, don't do that, like any one of them would have worked.
In the literature it says learn more about alcoholism, that's a big one, that's a big one. Alcoholics taught me behavior modification. I said the other day, Al-Anon is the only program where you can just keep doing what's killing you, and we'll just let you keep coming back. You don't have to stop. You can just come for 20, 30, 40 years and do it, and we're just like, keep coming back, man. And if you go to AA, they're like, you need to at least not be drinking right now in this meeting.
And so, hell, I'm probably slipping during this pitch. So I learned from alcoholics the behavior modification. Old school Al-Anon, I love it, because old school Al-Anon, you get an old school Al-Anon sponsor, you will learn to change your behavior. You need that. Dating plan, I heard dating plan this weekend. Yeah, dating plans, that stuff works, man, you don't want to do it. But get clear about what is your emotional sobriety, and stuff will change, man.
And then also, you will need God for that. That's not going to happen with you. You've got to change. That's an inside-out job with outside help from a higher power. So anyway, what happened is that I bought this woman a shot of tequila after eight years of sobriety. That was a great decision right there, because I didn't know anything about alcoholism. I didn't know that I was loading a gun and pointing it at myself.
I had no idea. I was just like, that's a great idea. Let's have a shot of tequila. Here we go, bam. And that thing they talk about, where like, oh, your disease picks up right where it was at the end. That is true. Like the next week, man, and she describes it too. It was just like off and running. And so here's this little hurricane, tiny hurricane happening around me, and I'm amping it up. And after about six weeks, she's like, you're scaring me.
This is a woman who's already deep into a cocaine addiction, drinking, partying, wild, and it's like, you're scaring me, Mr. Al-Anon. You need to go get help. You have a God-sized hole in it. And she had a lot of program. She's like, God-sized hole in you, and you're trying to fill it with me and everything else. So I went back to that Tuesday meeting that I'd gone to. And I always tell this story because I was ashamed.
I had ghosted on everybody. I hadn't done it right. I had failed. And here I was, humbled, walking back in. And the biggest relationship in my life that this program has healed is my relationship with men. I now have intimate relationships with men in a way that I never had, and it's amazing. I have some of the best friends in the world. And that informed my relationship with the opposite sex. It allowed me then to have a romantic relationship because it was modeled with a sponsor and with all of you, how to be a human and show up and just be myself, and not make a different version of me for every person in this room, which is what I did.
I didn't know who I was, so I just would adapt the shape and color of whatever was happening. And so this old guy, John, came up to me that night at the end of the meeting, a big, tall dude. And he came up. And in my mind, I think I was just wincing like a dog that's been hit a lot, that was about to get hit, because men were always hard on me and rough. And John walked up, and he said, hey, how you doing?
And I said, good, but not good enough. And he said, well, it's glad to see you, glad to have you back, and gave me a hug. And that changed my life. He didn't shame me. He didn't tell me I was wrong, didn't tell me, well, you should have done this, well, you shouldn't have done that. He just was glad to see me and welcomed me back. And that allowed a crack that I could crack the door and get in there and get into Outlaw.
I then found my way to a meeting that's my home group now through the pandemic. There's probably about 150 to 175 people on it every week. There's normally about around 100 people in it every Sunday. It's that adult child meeting. I call it the Island of Lost Toys. It's in the heart of Hollywood, just right next to the portal to hell at Hollywood and Highland. And it collects people who need a lot of help.
And it also helps them get well.
[00:40:00]
That meeting saved my life. People are honest. They're open. I can't talk about it without choking up. I'm of service to that meeting. I recently pulled back from service a couple years ago because I had become an old timer, and they had all started to listen to me too much. And I was exerting too much authority in that meeting. And I need to shut my mouth and let some young people take up. And I've done that.
And so I'm still around. But I love that meeting so much. And I still make it out to the Valley, some of those Grandma Black Belt Outlaw meetings. I always joke, you hear my pitch from a long time ago, and it's like, all these old people were in the meeting. They were all younger than me now. Jesus. Perception. But that meeting means so much to me. That meeting's taught me that someone else's higher power's not my business.
And my higher power's not their business. I have a loving God of my understanding as outlined in the traditions and the steps. And it's none of my business who or what you worship. And it taught me so much about that. And it taught me to be there. That Al-Anon Declaration matters no matter what. No matter what that person sounds like, or looks like, or acts like, that hand of Al-Anon has to be there.
And all kinds of people need Al-Anon. It's a huge thing, man. Huge lesson. And so for me, that was a big deal, for me to just show up consistently at that meeting now for 20 years, wherever it goes. I learned to date, like I said. I learned to be in a relationship. I healed my career. I healed Al-Anon, gave me everything. It's not about cash and prizes. But turns out, if you just show up and are consistent and kind of live a nice, whatever you think is good life, things kind of work.
They surely work better than when you're just trying to run everything. That third step is a pretty amazing thing. A friend of mine's new, and he called me talking about the third step recently. And he was like, yeah, that whole, that turned my will in my life. And that turned, he kept saying that, and he kept saying that. And I was like, hey, man, there's a part in there that you've got to catch. And he's like, what?
I said, the care, to the care of a loving God. I never let anybody care for me. I let Al-Anon's care for me. I let you all love me. I let you all hug me. I let you all love me. I let you all hug me and tell me. At the end of this, I'm going to sit up here, and you all can come up and hug me. And no matter how horrible I did today, you all are going to say nice things to me and compliment me. And I can accept that today.
In the early days, I described it as like someone putting like an ice pick between my eyes. I would just wince. And I would deny, no, no, no, no. My sponsor told me, oh, that's not humility. You're telling somebody you know better than them. That you know that you're not good, and that they're wrong. So you don't say, no, no, no. You don't do that. You look them in the eye, and you say, thank you. It took me a couple years before I could just say thank you to a compliment and not deflect it.
So these are all things that I learned from working the steps, from listening to my sponsor, working with other people, being of service. So I learned that I could be honest with you all. You do a fourth step, that's big. You do a fifth step, you can walk through walls. Because you can tell all your bad stuff to somebody. And they go, great job. I love you. And you get to hear that. You get to hear, I love you.
Great job. Friend of mine from AA, I was talking to him. I was all worried about early recovery. And he's like, man, you're fine. Do your fourth step and figure that out. So I don't want to spoil the movie for you all, but we're all OK. You're all fine. It's fine. It's fine. You're not going to bring anything up. My favorite thing, my friend showed up. He said when he did his fourth step, he showed up.
And there's this legendary, crazy, crazy AA in LA named Chris Davis. I mention his name because he says his name. Chris Davis. He said he walked in, and the guy had three televisions on. And he was sitting there, and he's coming to do his fifth step, and he's all nervous and everything. And Chris is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. And he's like, I'm going to do the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he goes, well, did you kill anybody? And the guy goes, no. He goes, oh, this is easy. And he just sat down. And the reason that worked, I realized, was like, oh, yeah, the three TVs and whatever. It's like, whatever. This is a project. Just do it. Just do it. Steps. Just do it. Just do it. Steps. You'll do the steps wrong. I work the steps haltingly, badly. Every time I do, every time I touch a step, every time a pencil or pen touches paper,
[00:45:02]
I get better. I recover. So if you're in Al-Anon and you're not working the steps, like, I do it. I do it. You know, it took me two years to do my, it took me two years to do my fourth step. That's my experience, not my recommendation. It's like pulling a Band-Aid off for two years. So, but man, it sets you free. It's an amazing experience to do. But I'm kind of running a little on time. I didn't talk to my dad for probably 10 years, maybe, something like that, a good 10, 15 years.
Certainly didn't talk to him about anything. All I wanted in my life was I wanted my dad to respect me and tell me he was proud of me. My dad's not an alcoholic, but he's a cowboy and a farmer and pretty closed-lipped about things. He's a good man. My perception was wrong about him. My perception of what happened when my parents divorced, my perceptions of what he did in his life were 100% wrong. And through the program, I got to say that I get to do what I want.
On Father's Day, I told my dad, Dad, I love you so much, and I'm proud of you. And he said, me too, Bryce. And that was a huge, huge thing. And then that next year, he started to say he loved me on every call. And now my dad says, I love you every time we talk. And we talk about the stuff that he can talk about. And it's opened up over the years, and it's gotten better and better and better. Not because he changed, because I changed, because I cleaned up my side, because I reached out to him, and I gave him what I wanted, and it came back to me.
A huge, huge lesson in that, man. Now my dad, we have a great relationship, and I love him so much. And so I was able, like I said, I was able to learn to modify my behavior. I was able to see red flags as not a parade, but as red flag warnings. I was able to be a person who you could date, you could be in a relationship with, possibly even be married to. I stopped sleeping with people's best friends and sisters.
I've got to bust myself on that. But I was a horrible boyfriend, I was a horrible friend, I was probably a pretty shitty son, and Al-Anon taught me to do all that stuff better. It just helped me change my whole life, man. So I ended up meeting a girl in recovery, and we're friends for a long time. And then we were both single for a while, and I was talking to a friend of mine in recovery. And I said, man, I want to go out with a girl named, like, Anna Lee.
And he said, well, maybe you should ask Anna Lee out. Revolutionary thought, because I would never in my life, in the third step, I have to take the third step, because my idea of my life is never as good as God's idea of my life. I will never choose for me. Think about it. I hate myself. I look at my fourth step, and you go, man, you behaved like you hated yourself. Well then, why would you want to choose your own prize?
You can pick anything in here. Oh, I'm going to get the person with the worst idea in the world to pick my prize. No, I want somebody who knows what's good to pick my prize. My higher power knows way better. My higher power has a dream for me bigger than any dream. I choke up because my life is so good. I have everything I ever wanted. Actually, I don't. I have stuff I never even knew I wanted. I have things I didn't know.
I have things I don't know to want, and I appreciate them. I'm grateful every day. So I asked her out, and she said yes. We disagreed about what our first date was, which is totally fine. We had conflicting dating plans. Our timelines were different. We negotiated that successfully. I shared exactly who I was, which at that time was better than maybe 20 years ago, but still a lot of rough edges on there.
And she shared who she was, and I was able to accept that she owned cats, which had been a deal breaker for me. We blended our household of pets. I was able to decide that I wanted to marry her, and I called men in the program about it and asked them how to do it. At Al-Anon, y'all taught me how to go to the dentist. Y'all taught me how to go to the doctor. Y'all taught me how to fix my finances.
[00:50:00]
Y'all taught me how to buy a wedding engagement ring. Y'all taught me how to make a decision. And now, the hardest decisions in my life are actually easy. I struggle more with whether or not I'm going to go get frozen yogurt than whether or not I'm going to do some crazy career move or to get married. It was so natural and so easy, and I feared it for my whole life, because I was doing it alone, and I was doing my idea.
I didn't have a god. I didn't have y'all. I've been married now. I've been married 10 years. And those damn Al-Anon business meetings taught me how to argue and how to disagree with somebody and to love them. I have a friend who got 24 years, went to a party two weeks ago, and she and I have fought like cats and dogs over stuff in business meetings. And I think probably if people in those meetings saw that I was at her birthday party, and we were just hugging and loving each other and talking about how much we meant to each other, they would not understand that we can disagree.
It can bug the shit out of me that she says goddess during her prayer. And I don't have to worry about it. I can just be like, man. And she taught me so much. I love her to death. I love her more than some of my close other program friends, because we were able to disagree. I was telling a story. I was at a meeting with a woman named Harriet, longtime California Al-Anon NAA. And she said, I was at a meeting, and I shared that my husband was sleeping on the couch.
And somebody came up at the break and said, oh, I'm so sorry. Your marriage is in trouble. She said, my marriage is fine. He's just sleeping on the couch. She meant that we can disagree, but this thing is not going to end over that. I don't have to make some big decision. We can be mad. I can have a feeling. I think we were talking the other day. I said, having a strong feeling and not acting on it, just sitting with it, is a superpower.
That ought to be a Marvel movie of a person who can just be like, what does that guy do? That guy does nothing. That guy is watching somebody board the plane the wrong way, and he is just right here. You can be big in this crowd. Let me tell you what, I'd go pay to see that. I'm married, and we use the traditions in our house. That's a big one, man. That's a big deal. Seventh tradition. First, what are we doing here?
Unity. What are we doing? Use those traditions. Use the traditions in your career. My god, it blows people's minds when you show up with an idea from the traditions. People are baffled. So much can be learned. The bottom line is just, man, just please keep doing what I saw you all do this weekend, which is show up, welcome people, love them in that special way we talk about. Work the steps. Get a sponsor.
Recover. You are saving the world. You saved my life. I will never repay you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you.