Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 868 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bob-c-baseball-bob-c-at-recovery-in-the-rockies-ca-1993-archive-868.mp3 Duration: 01:00:11
============================================================
It'd be okay if I just sit. This looks like a sitting thing. My name is Bob C. and I am a very grateful member of Cocaine Anonymous. Hi Bob. Hi Bob. And I'd like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to do some service work here today and it's really good to see everybody again that I met the last time I was here, whenever that was. It's always good to go places and to see the friends that I've made in all the different states that I've had the opportunity to be at CA conventions in. There's a lot of love and a lot of gratitude when you get around people that you've met before and you see how people grow. It's really something to come to a place like, it's a very small place, Salt Lake City, and yet they're going to have a world convention, they're going to have a regional convention.
They've had this convention on a regular basis for, what's this, the third or fourth? Fourth? And there's a lot of really, really good people here that really care a lot about Cocaine Anonymous and I have a lot of gratitude for Cocaine Anonymous. I've done a lot of service work for Cocaine Anonymous myself and I think the service work that I've done basically has just helped me become part of the only family that I've ever really felt close to.
My family was not one that I cared to spend a lot of time with because they're all completely drunk to this day. So Cocaine Anonymous gave me a place to go at Christmastime and a place to go at Thanksgiving. We have dinners and things like that. Although I live in Everett, Washington now, I come from Portland, Oregon, so it makes me a Portland Trailblazer fan. I'm sorry. The real basketball fan. We're real blessed to have you here.
That's why we call them the Portland Trailblazers. Great nice girl here. You know, I've always wondered about that. When I was 22 years old, I never turned it down very often myself. I don't know why everybody thinks that they should have turned it down, but oh well. It's my opinion. I thought we didn't have opinions. I do. Cocaine Anonymous does and I do. This is a, you know, this place, when I came here last year, I remember one of the things that I remember the most is I talked in a park next to a freeway. I couldn't even hear myself talk. It was really bizarre. And I remember just before I stood up to talk in front of everybody, I went into the bathroom at that park. I don't know the name of it.
And there was a derelict drunk sitting on the toilet when I went in to go to the bathroom, masturbating furiously. And he looked at me and said, What are you looking at? And I went, Jeez, buddy, get a grip on yourself. Of course, he was already doing that. And I, you know, my thought was like, isn't it amazing how we can be absolute derelicts, but we still got that fucking ego. No matter how bad we are, but what we get caught doing, we got to protect ourselves. I had the same thing happen in Mill Valley. There's a big, huge, I think there's about a 600 person lockup treatment center. Most of it's been state mandated by court systems and such. And I remember going there about a year ago and there was a, I saw these guys that were walking around and they like didn't have pants anymore.
There was like just threads hanging on them and they weren't the kind that you go buy for designer purposes. And they had like, you know, their, their t-shirts were whipped to shreds and everything. And they'd walk around and they just strutted. They strutted everywhere they went. They're in a six month lockup treatment center for screwing up probably everything in their life. And they still got that ego. And I just go, Jesus Christ, you know, and they joke all the way through every part of the meeting because they don't need it, I guess. When I got here, I took it real seriously. I came to Cocaine Anonymous sometime around the middle of December, 1986. I went to treatment on October 31st, 1986 and haven't found any, had any reason to take any of that non-addictive marijuana or drink any beer or take any other mind altering substance since, since that day. And I don't believe relapse is an option. I don't think you have to relapse, but you do have to take it seriously. And it's a tough program. It's not, it's not easy, but geez, you know, I'll tell you part of my story, but it comes right down to it. It was really hard trying to figure out where I was going to come up with those drugs anymore. The credit was pretty screwed
[00:05:01]
up just about everywhere. So what I usually did is I'd find people that I could sell cocaine to and I'd sell them a quarter pound or a half a pound. And then I was your buddy for quite a while. You had a real hard time getting rid of me and I'd stay there for days. And you know, and so like, I was like your permanent fixture once I'd sold you something. And I don't have to do that anymore today. And to me, you know, the program about spirituality is about your attitude. And my attitude was really, really bad. The world owed me a living.
The world owed me a family. I was brought up a Catholic, so I always had a lot of guilt. Everything that ever happened in my life was due to God punishing me because I never did right. And you know, for me, for me to change my spirit, which I like to use the word spirit instead of spiritual, because when we put the UAL on the end of it, for some reason we all get screwed up and we start thinking about all the stuff we were brought up to believe in. And we all seem to have so much problem with that, or a lot of people do, including myself. And so, you know, I took the spirit that I had. And I've been called Baseball Bob since I've been sober. You don't get called Baseball Bob because you're your average Joe Blow individual. I was nuttier than a fruitcake. And every meeting I went to, I talked about umpires. And I was wearing a baseball uniform for six months. I mean, every meeting. And every meeting, no matter what the topic was, I talked about my resentments against umpires. Umpires were the problems in my life. I've since learned that the problem with umpires is they're just like alcoholics. They never listen to you, and they're always right. So that's the problem with umpires. And that took six years to figure that out.
And, you know, it's a good life going to meetings. And it's a good life that I've learned at meetings. I've never had the things that I've got today. But, you know, I grew up in a family where no one ever told me they loved me. I don't even remember anybody in my family giving me a hug. I just, I honestly do not remember that. And I even went through a long period of therapy where I talked to people about, to a therapist about that. I just really don't remember that. I don't think they did that. I don't know how my mom and dad ever had any kids. I mean, jeez, you know, you'd think they'd hug once in a while.
They must have just got drunk and accidentally laid on each other once in a while. I thought every, my mom had a kid every ten years. I've got a ten year old, a sister ten years older than me and a brother ten years younger than me. And they're Catholics. So go figure, you know. I don't know. But um, so I don't, you know, and I don't think they practiced birth control. They didn't have to. They didn't touch each other. So as a consequence of that, I've always been real shy. Always been really, really shy. I went to eight grade schools and two high schools and I was always the new kid. Always looking for the acceptance of other people. And you know something? It's terrible to grow up that way. It's just terrible.
I'm uh, 42 years old and I've never been able to tell people I love them until the last couple of years. I learned that at Cocaine Anonymous. That's why I'm so grateful for this program. When I didn't love myself, I'd come to meetings and I'd do the best I could to tell people the truth. And uh, and even when I told things that probably people didn't want to listen to, they told me they loved me anyway. And uh, and I needed that. So it's like they say, they loved me until I could love myself. And uh, you know, I, I always uh, you know, when I was in all those different schools and everything else, I never had a chance to have a girlfriend because, you know, to me, when you're really, really shy, you like need everybody else's acceptance. So you can try to be a big shot. So I used to do that by telling stories. And I'm sure that I'll manage to tell a couple of stories here today, but you know, and I'm a natural born storyteller. When I get into telling stories, I become that person. When I tell a joke, I'm a Swede or I'm a Polack or I'm the truck driver or I'm the black person or I'm the, you know, whoever I'm imitating. That's what I just become that person. Um, and that's like, I'm like a chameleon and I'm also a salesman, which is just perfect. You know, I learned how to tell all these stories and everything else. And I take advantage of being able to be a storyteller and wanting to be the center of attention. And I do really well as a salesperson. And when I got here, I was a carpenter at the shipyards. Every day I used to come home and my clothes were completely covered with black residue of oil from the oil tankers that we worked on in the shipyards of Portland. I worked 80 to 90 feet in the air. And you know how we used to use, well, I was one of those just like you guys. And sometimes I hadn't slept for three days and I was working 90 feet in the air over the top of other people's heads that they would have only known. And there were times when I did drop planks that were eight foot long, a hundred feet down, and they just missed people's heads. And, uh, you know, it just doesn't have to be that way. Um, I used to have to take my clothes to a different
[00:10:02]
laundromat every week because there was so much tar and residue in my clothes that I screwed up the dryers. So when other people put their clothes in the dryers, I'd screw up their clothes. So they saw me coming and they said, get out of here. Don't be coming here. You're doing your clothes anymore. And now about half the time I wear a suit. I'm not sure that's progress. Um, but I know how to tie a tie now, which is really something, you know, I never thought I'd ever do that. And, uh, and I make a very good living doing something that I really care about. I work with energy conservation and I go into companies and I teach people how to conserve energy electrically. And then I get power companies to help pay for the programs. That's a really good job for a guy like myself. And, uh, I've worked for four years to get in this position. Sometimes it didn't seem like I'd ever see the end of the tunnel, but they taught me, taught me things in cocaine anonymous. Um, I always gave up before I got what I wanted when I was a kid and all the way through until I got sober. I never completed anything. Um, I never completed high school. Um, then I tried going to college and I never completed college. Um, I tried, uh, you know, going to different trade schools and, uh, I tried all kinds of different things, but something always got in the way. Usually it was resentments. And, uh, and I really believe what the book says about resentment. Resentment is the number one offender. I believe that you're running around with a lot of guilt and a lot of resentment today that you probably haven't done very much step work. And those steps really do work. Uh, that's when you begin to get the gratitude of the program. My, what I call it, what I think spirituality is, is having an attitude of gratitude. You know, some people have it so simple that every time they feel really bad, they just remember where they used to be and it becomes instantly a better day because the way it was for me was, it was terrible. Um, my first drunk was Listerine.
Doesn't that sound tasty? I drank a whole bottle of family sized Listerine and I was the cleanest drunk in town. And, uh, me and three of my buddies went over to this girl's house and for the first time in my life I got a kiss. I said, fucking, Hey, this is great. I wonder what happened if I drank some whiskey. Maybe I could get laid or something, you know? And, uh, so I thought alcohol was a really good answer in my life. And I, you know, I don't remember the warm feeling and I don't remember the first time I drank beer and I don't remember the first time I drank whiskey. And I don't even remember how those alcoholics remember that first drink. I just, you know, I just don't, I don't remember that.
Don't even think I remember my first line. I just always did it. The first time anything was ever offered to me, I did it. I don't know about you guys, but it's like, you know, as soon as I found out that if you could smoke pot and you didn't jump out the bathroom window from the fourth floor of the building, like they said in all the, all the, all the propaganda they gave me back when I was in high school, when you smoke pot and you're going to go crazy and you'll be a heroin addict the next day. And when I found out that all I did was giggle a lot and laugh and want to eat a whole bunch, I said, shit, this is, they'll probably be lying about all that shit. And this bar, all that stuff is probably pretty good. So I ate LSD on a daily basis for probably five years. I ate LSD as many times as I could, usually about five times a week. Cause you have to actually take a day off once in a while or you can't get off anymore, which is the same thing with cocaine, but that never occurred to me. Um, I remember one time eating LSD on a horseback ride. I was thinking about that on the way up here in Sacramento and I had eaten about three or four hits at LSD and we were riding around Folsom Lake in Sacramento and we'd rented these horses. And of course being from Oregon and being a, having an exceptionally large ego and never wanting anybody to know that I don't know how to do something. The guy goes, who knows how to ride a horse? Oh fuck yeah, I'm from Oregon and I never even been close to a horse before. So they put me on this big mare who was supposed to be really frisky and uh, you know, and I'm going, oh shit, you know, after I'm up there and I'm on acid too. So God, I'm in great shape.
I have no idea. Like how do you make it back up? You know, I don't know. What do you do here? And I started rolling a joint naturally and I have the whole bag of pot in front of me and the horse is doing the same thing it was doing up here today and it let loose of the reins and the goddamn horse decided to start running. I didn't know what to do. I lost my pot. That really pissed me off. And then he just kept running. All I could do was hang on to the horn on the saddle and it was going along. I ran underneath this branch and a branch hit me right there. And the next thing you know, I'm laying on the ground flat on my back and the horse stopped about a hundred yards in front of me. I swore that horse was laughing at me. So, you know, if you're scared to get on a horse, I still remember my butt still sore from that. And that was 20 some years ago. And that's the kind of thing that I always did on LSD. I actually tell you the truth. I had a million good times in LSD and I can't sit here today and say that every time I ate drugs, I didn't have a good time. I did drugs for years because I had a lot of good times. And, you know, In the beginning, we were great. We'd go out in the woods all the time. I loved partying in the woods.
Boy, I'd come back beat up sometimes, though, from laying in the fire. And then walking into the trees at night when you go out to pee and you're hallucinating so much from all the LSD that you run into the tree, you know.
[00:15:02]
It was a great life, wasn't it? And that was my life for years, until I found I hung up at about 25 years old. a party monger. You know, I never dated in high school. I think I went out on three dates. I was scared of women, painfully shy. And one day I was drunk and this woman took me home and did my jury, so to speak, and I said, geez, if I get drunk a lot, maybe I could like get to know women. And somebody, somehow, somewhere, I learned a trick about asking people about themselves, asking lots of questions about another human being, and they kind of didn't like you. And, you know, they write lots of books about picking up girls. I've never read one of those things. You really, the best advice anybody could ever give you, whether you're a salesman or whether you're trying to pick somebody up or you want just somebody to like you, is to have an interest, an honest interest in another human being.
So I'd go to places and I'd get drunk and I'd ask people questions about themselves and they'd talk about themselves and they thought I was the most interesting human being in the world. And I spent most of my life doing slam, bam, thank you, ma'am stuff because what had happened is when the alcohol wore off the next morning, I didn't know who the hell this person was. I can't even really say that I did a lot of the ones that, you know, you wake up in the morning and you want to chop your arm off, coyote stuff. There were a couple in the end, but I just woke up and I didn't know who the hell they were.
And that scared me. How did I end up with this person? I don't remember cocaine really too much. I suspect that, I remember a guy came back from Peru, his girlfriend came back from Peru and she had filled up one of those Tipper Roll, or not Tipper Roll, those Robert Burns cigars that got the screw on top. And she stuffed it all the way full of cocaine and she put it in her private type area, which kind of enthused me. And he gave me some of this stuff and it was so goddamn good. And I thought, geez, that stuff is amazing. And all I remember about it, I don't remember being impressed about it making me think better or making me feel better. What it did more than anything else at 22 or 23 years old was it seemed to make me more sexually potent. And like, what happened? Because in the end, I could slap that fucker around for a week and it wouldn't do anything. And I don't know, cocaine did for me what I could not do for myself. And like people that fantasize about wanting to go back and use cocaine again, I say I remember that like it was yesterday.
Which makes me wonder whether they really did a four step or whether they really did a first step to think about that. Because what cocaine really did for me is it made me entirely broke. It made me really, really, really lonely. It made me not be able to go out to the bars and be with the people that I thought were my friends. Because all I could do was be by myself. I got rampantly paranoid. I was so paranoid. I mean, you hear millions of paranoid stories and I know that some people have heard mine and they're as crazy at least as most people's. It was like usually my curtains were thumbtacked to the walls. And then they're, you know, because if you went outside, I could see little bits of light coming through the curtains. So blankets went over the curtains and they got thumbtacked to the walls. And then, you know, I had coke cans in front of every door, you know, empty.
So if they opened up the door, I could hear them coming in because I was always locked in the bathroom because the bathroom is such a romantic place. And I'd take all my cocaine into the bathroom and I'd use it by myself. It took a progression of years to get into this position and I don't really want to talk about all that stuff today. But, you know, I do want to talk about the paranoia that I felt and what I imagined everything. Somebody was always after me because I'm so important. You know, the narcs are going to sit outside my house for a fucking week while I try to use that goddamn quarter pound and wait for me to use enough of it so I won't go to jail for as long. Doesn't that make sense to you guys? It made sense to me. And it was just a great life. I never ate. I never went anywhere.
I never went dancing. I was a really good dancer. I used to meet a lot of people by teaching them how to swing dance. Country rock was big in those days and couldn't do that no more. I'd go to the bar. I remember one New Year's Eve I went and I paid a ten dollars cover charge, which was a long time ago. Ten dollars cover charge was pretty big in those days. I paid the ten dollars cover charge and decided to start selling cocaine about four thirty in the morning. We got out of the van finally to go in and have a couple of drinks and I didn't even get a New Year's kiss. I never left the fucking van all goddamn night long and everybody else had just been coming out to the van and I just kept using cocaine. See, that's not what life used to be about for me. It somehow just got a little bit out of hold of me. It did seem to make me, it counteracted being drunk. As I got
[00:20:03]
older I always pretended I wasn't drunk because my relatives were all drunk. I don't know if any of you did that, but my relatives were drunks and the way they acted was absolutely deplorable for me and I never ever wanted to act like them. Never. They were disgusting. They fell down all the time. They broke furniture all the time when they fell down and they slurred their words and they hit each other. They only showed up at Christmas and Thanksgiving and I just was glad that that was the truth, but how in the world could you do it on Thanksgiving and come back four weeks later and forget what happened on Thanksgiving? They did it every year. I hated it. They did things like hang me upside down from the clothesline with my pants around my knees to embarrass me in front of the little girls next door. I hated alcoholics. When I went to treatment I wasn't real happy when they told me I needed to take this big book of Alcoholics Anonymous into my room with me and start studying it because I was an alcoholic and I'm going, what are you talking about? I'm a cocaholic. I'm not an alcoholic. What are you talking about here? So I spent most of my life trying to get over that and the day came when the alcohol wouldn't allow me to meet girls anymore because I started to slur my words like my relatives. In my brain I could hear myself slurring my words and it was the most disgusting thought in the world. I never wanted to act like that.
So when I heard myself slur my words I used to leave wherever I was. I wouldn't allow myself to be like that in public. What a waste of alcohol. Pretending that you're not drunk when you are. The day came when I didn't seem to be able to. One of my old dates. Bob. Oh that was the sheet, never mind. I think so. I used to pull the wool over my eyes. Oh never mind. Now I forgot where I was. Bad. So what happened with me is the alcohol had caused such a problem in my life as far as being able to go out and participate in the Friday night and Saturday night activity at somewhere around 30 years old. I'd been using cocaine a lot but it wasn't a problem. It was a problem. Of course I was still in denial but it was $25 at a time. It was $50 at a time. It was $100 at a time. I made reasonable money at the shipyards. Every problem in my life was always equated to money. If I couldn't pay the rent then I was in bad shape. Somehow I managed to always pay the rent every month and I could just barely keep my head above water. I spent every extra dime I had on drugs and alcohol. But the more I got into cocaine to use to get over alcohol, I believe I used cocaine in the manners that I did because I wanted something to allow alcohol to work again. Cocaine would counteract the down and I could talk like a motherfucker. I mean you give me some cocaine and I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to hear about everything and then some. I'll tell you how to save your wife and I'll tell you how to save your marriage and I'll tell you how to save your kids and I'll tell you how to go to school and I'll tell you how to deal cocaine. I sold so much cocaine and I'm quite sure you guys would have sat there and listened to me because you wanted my cocaine. So I usually had willing audiences around until the day came when I realized that I really didn't care about these other people anymore. They just kind of got in the way and I started having trouble selling cocaine to make any money. In the typical life I became my own best customer. It became very difficult to put deals together. I was selling large amounts of cocaine. I knew drug dealers for a number of years. I'm sure none of you hung around with drug dealers. When I came here everybody was a drug dealer and everybody sold kilos and after they stay sober for a while the quantity of these go down. Have you noticed that? But the thing about it is whether they used a quarter of a gram or a quarter of an ounce or a quarter of a pound they always ended up in the same damn place at one time or another or we wouldn't be at these meetings. I had a serious addiction problem, serious cocaine problem. When I locked myself in that bathroom I'd stay there for days and I was just terrified. Remember the terror of paranoia? Knowing that there's somebody out the door to get you and every time you opened up the fucking door he was never there. Jesus and those invisible tree cuffs. Oh man.
God I wanted to catch those guys. I couldn't collect unemployment. I had a mailbox. I had a parking lot with mailboxes. I don't know if you have mailboxes here in Salt Lake City but we have mailboxes. You put the little flag up to take your mail and such. To collect unemployment all I needed to do was fill out the little card just like probably every state and put it in the mailbox and they send you a check. I couldn't do it because I had to leave the house to do that and I was so paranoid that they were going to get me when I came
[00:25:00]
out the door. I couldn't collect unemployment. That's pretty worthless. You're too worthless to collect unemployment. That's where my life came to. Just before I took a job at the Geographic I was five months behind in my rent where I'd lived for four years. They never kicked me out because I was so honest that no matter what I ever did I always got back on top. The addiction got worse and worse and worse and worse and I kept, it's going to get better next week. It's going to get better next week. Well I'll make it up on the next batch and I'll sell this quarter pound and I'll make some money back but then I always took the profit and then some to use for myself and it was always going to happen the next week and it just the next week never came. I was going to get a handle on this using too much pretty soon and it never happened. Pretty soon my friends were disgusted with me and they never came to visit me anymore. I had a completely different clientele of people. I sold pot for years and I had to quit selling pot. I don't know if you guys have ever noticed but have you ever noticed that people that sell pot or people that buy pot and people that buy coke are usually two different types of clientele. The pot guys kind of sit around and go oh wow man let's smoke another joint and then the coke guys are going get those guys out of here. Geez what do they want my coke. It's just a different kind of guys. They don't get along. So I quit selling pot because it was too hard to deal with the two kinds of people coming over to the house all the time. Plus my drug of choice was cocaine. The only thing that ever made me money when I sold it was pot. I didn't seem to be able to sell too much pot or use too much pot because I sold 25 or 30 pounds a week and that would be pretty difficult to use up that profit. But it didn't take me very long to start biting into that and I started using the pot money to pay for the coke money. The pot guys were pretty pissed at me for a while there because I was seriously behind. I remember the first time I made a bad deal and I used a quarter of an ounce of cocaine. No it wasn't a quarter of an ounce it was a half ounce of cocaine. He only gave me two ounces and I used a half ounce myself. He came over to get paid a week later and I just looked terrible. He was a really really large biker dude and he talked me into selling kilos for him. He came over to get his money and I didn't have the half ounce and I didn't have the money. I did something that was really bizarre for a cocaine addict. I figured he was going to kick my ass anyway so why not do something really weird and tell him the truth. I told him that I don't know what's wrong with me but I started to use this stuff about five days ago. I just slept for 36 hours and I don't know what happened but I used all that half ounce and I don't have the money for it. You know what he did? He didn't beat me up. He said Jesus Christ Bob I've been selling cocaine for 12 years and you're the very first person that ever told me the god damn truth. Now here's another pound and make sure that doesn't happen again. I was just going oh man. That's what the insanity was no matter what I did. I was the golden boy of dope dealing. I couldn't make any money.
Made them lots of money and never made any money for myself. I always paid my debts. When I got here I didn't owe any money for dope. I was $55,000 in debt to credit card companies and credit unions and every other damn thing. In that case my story is just like everybody else's. I finally came to a point where I never used with anyone anymore because people would take my inventory and I didn't like it. They told me that I was really screwed up and I was getting off the scheme. Then I wasn't the guy that I used to be because I never went anywhere anymore. I had trouble showing up for the baseball games. Umpires actually had to drag me out of the Schultz, the Porta Potty, whatever they call them here. I'd go in there during the second inning and they'd have to come over and beat on the thing after the three outs to get me out of there so I'd go back on the pitcher's mound and keep playing. I have a trophy at home that I keep. All my baseball trophies are gone except for one. I keep this one because it reminds me of the way I was the year that I quit. It's a trophy that says that I'm the co-MVP for the baseball team I was on. It's the best season I ever had in my life and I was totally out of control.
Some days I hadn't slept for two or three days and I was out there playing. I was an unconscious baseball player. My theory was that if I could play baseball and play it good then I must not be a total cocaine addict and I was okay. My life was to try to get out of my paranoia enough to go to the baseball hitting booth every day of the week and I'd hit for two hours. I could hit a ball better than anybody I ever met in my life. But sometimes I couldn't throw the ball over the plate because I couldn't tell where I was landing. That's how screwed up I was. I cussed so much at my teammates and so much at the umpire and so much of the people on the other team, I outbatted everybody on my team by over 200 points that year. What that means, for those of you who aren't baseball players, is like, they do batting averages by how many hits you get for how many times you've been up the plate. I was batting over 700 that year. And the next highest guy on the team was batting
[00:30:00]
about 510. But by over 200 points, I beat the next highest guy. And the team rule was every year we gave the MVP trophy to the guy. that had the highest batting average. They wouldn't give it to me because I was such an asshole. So they wrote co-MVP on it and gave one to everybody on the team. And I look at that trophy and it makes me smile because I had to quit a team a couple years ago because everybody yelled at each other so much I couldn't stand being on the team. That's a big change. And I don't yell at my teammates. And I work with other people. I try to help other people now. I don't yell at you and I don't expect you to yell at me. If you do yell at me, I will request that you don't yell back at me again because I really don't like that very much and I don't deserve to be talked to that way. Today I know how to ask for a job. I had the best job I ever had in my life. And the company that I was working for two years ago gave me an ultimatum. They told me I had 30 days to perform or else they were going to fire me. I sold something they didn't want me to sell and I was so successful at it. It was a conservation job. They didn't know what it was and their ignorance said quit selling those things. And I sold a quarter million dollars worth of them in just a few weeks. You know, when they told me to quit selling them, instead of feeling really bad, I felt bad for one day. For those of you in early sobriety, when something goes bad, do you ever feel like maybe you're terrible for like two months, maybe even longer because of the guilt and shame that we carry around in us? Well, the guilt's gone and the shame is gone. And I work really hard. And I've learned through Cocaine Anonymous and The Steps that I'm a good person. I care about myself today. Enough to not let people abuse me. Because if you're going to continue to abuse me, I won't be your friend and I won't be around you. And I'll tell you that. But you're entitled to your opinion. And that's what I've learned through the traditions. When we have trouble at business meetings and people yell and scream and holler at each other, Jesus, you know? What it really comes down to is all you can do is you state your opinion, they state their opinion, and quit arguing about it, vote on it, and whatever that is, it's a group conscience, right? Then go out and help make it happen, even if you don't agree. I've had to do that many times since I've been sober. The same thing happened in real life when this guy told me to quit selling that. Instead of quitting and running away or hitting him or something like that, I said, well, I wrote a resume up and I went to visit some contractors in Seattle and I got offered 13 jobs in 14 interviews. I didn't even know what to ask for. But evidently, what I had, everybody wanted. And that's an ego, it's a confidence thing. It's a thing that happens with time. You can say that time doesn't mean anything. I find that most people who say that time doesn't mean anything don't have very much time. I understand where they're coming from because I've felt that way before. But if you do stay sober for a time, you're either going to get really miserable or you're going to do something about it. Either way, you're going to learn how to stay sober a lot longer than the next guy. You can learn even from the people that don't maybe work the steps because you can learn about their misery. I've learned a lot from coming around Cocaine Anonymous. It's my family. It's my life and it's where I learned how to love. I'm forever grateful for it.
In 1984, I came to a point where I never left that bathroom. I locked myself in there for weeks. I can never catch that. You know that paranoid, the guy, you've ever used in the bathroom, you guys? They got that extra lock and shit. And they always have a frosted window. You know, that frosted window in the bathroom, you know, the little light is always going by it and the shadows are going by and there's always somebody out there. I could fuck, I jump up and rip open the window. I never catch that guy. I came to a point where I actually took five gallons of sand from the shipyards and put it out on the ground outside my window in the bathroom so I could see his fucking footprints and prove that I wasn't nuts. And I remember thinking, God damn it, when I jumped up and I ripped open the window and I was using again a few days later and he wasn't there and I looked down and there was no footprints.
I went, Jesus, Bob, you're absolutely nuts. But then I could hear this noise up on the roof and my super cocaine hearing saved me. You know, you could hear a cat walking four blocks away and this guy had crawled up the tree next to the house and he was on the roof looking at me and that's why I could never catch him. I figured that out, you know. See, my magic mind, I could justify anything because that meant I could keep using the cocaine.
I brought a quarter pound into the house one time, brought it into the bathroom because I was absolutely convinced for the 9,000th time that they were out there. My mind told me that if I used enough of the quarter pound, when they did come in to get me, I could one, flush it down the toilet. Every good cocaine addict flushes their cocaine. Or it was also a real good reason to sit over the toilet and use for three or four days at a time.
And what I was thinking is if I used enough of the cocaine in the bag, when they came in to bust me, I wouldn't go to jail for as long. I wouldn't have as much cocaine. That
[00:35:04]
was perfect cocaine logic for me. But this particular time I had the hot water on inside the, you know, I always ran the water too because that guy that was outside the window also could hear me and there isn't cocaine. This is a complicated subject, isn't it? And the hot water was on so there was like humidity in the bathroom and all the cocaine started to stick together. And since it was sticking together, I had to figure out how to get it because I was a nasal guy and I wasn't a baser. Basers were addicts. I didn't want to be an addict. And I had the cocaine laying on a mirror on the top of the baseboard heater trying to dry it out. And I spilled a lot on the floor. And I used to just like, I never used a razor blade anymore. I crunched it into my hand and went, hold on to the flusher and put the bag back up. And I'd sit there and I'd do that over and over and over and over again. And every time the rush would quit and my heart would quit pounding enough, I'd do it again. And I lived that way for, I don't know, you guys. I don't know exactly what CW is talking about. I just don't remember about three years. I remember little teeny bits. I remember, I think people came to visit me at times, but I didn't want too many people in the house anymore because I didn't want to share. I didn't want them to see how I used. And this particular day, I spilled so much down on the floor and on the baseboard heater that, you know, you can't take your hand off the flusher. So I was naked. No, just like Leon, I have to take all my clothes off when I use cocaine. That's just the way it is. I have no idea why I was paranoid walking around naked. And but I picked my foot up and I put my foot on the handle of the flusher because in case the cops came in, you had to be able to flush the toilet. Right. And then I get down and I put my face down onto the floor and I started the cocaine and I passed out. And which used to happen quite frequently in those days. And I just kind of like ran out of energy to stay awake anymore.
It was probably a four or five day run. When I woke up, I had my arm laying on a baseboard heater. I had bubbles, big, huge puss bubbles that big, about two inches off the back of my arm. There was puss running down my arm, down my back. And I got up off the floor. And it's like my whole life came in front of me. And I looked in a mirror, the one in the bathroom over the sink. And I looked in the mirror and it scared the hell out of me because I didn't recognize that person that looked back at me. There were two pupils, no blue to my eyes at all. And my skin was kind of on an orangish green. I believe it's because of jaundice because I didn't eat anymore. I had a big jar of peanut butter. I'd go and take a finger load of peanut butter for like Cheech and Chong for for sustenance about every two or three days. And after a five day run, I'd go to Wendy's and I'd buy a drive up window fillet of fish or a chicken sandwich or something because you could buy it really fast and throw them the money and they'd throw it out and you didn't have to stop and look at them. So nobody could see how bad off I was. Buy a bunch of mirror and go back and do it again. This day I looked in the mirror and my cheeks were caved in. I weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds. Right now I weigh 210, 215. It was terrible. All my ribs were sticking out. I had this burn on my arm that didn't even hurt. And I just went, Oh my God.
There's a guy doing the addict's prayer. I sure could use some help because I don't know what's wrong with me. Got up off the floor and tried to take a shower and I couldn't. I couldn't even wipe it. At that point I couldn't even wash the smell off me. I stunk so bad. Hadn't been on a date for probably two years. And God, it was terrible. I got up off the floor and went to the veterans hospital and they locked me in an isolation ward and swore off cocaine for the rest of my life. I remember the story I told the doctor. He asked me how this had happened.
And I said, well, you see, there was this guy, you know, and like he was from Colorado. I hadn't seen him for a number of years. Yeah, that's the ticket. And, uh, and I just came up with this story about this guy from Colorado coming to visit me and he'd come into the bathroom after I'd done taking a shower. And of course the shower floor was wet. And naturally when we started to like wrestle, my feet went out from under me and my arm landed up on this heater and like the electricity in the heater, I couldn't get my arm off the heater. And like the guy's just shaking. He said, can I see your nose for a second? And he looked up my nose. What, what, what are you looking at?
You know, I was at the veterans hospital about two years ago and I got to read my file. It was hilarious because this guy said that this guy was a serious cocaine addict and he really needed some help. They never told me, you know, wouldn't have done him any good anyway. I got out of there and
[00:40:04]
I went back to my house and swore off cocaine for the rest of my life. And 23 hours later I was using again because by then it had begun to heal and it hurt so bad that I used to cry all the time and it wasn't because I was lonely and it wasn't because I didn't have anybody to love. It was because the pain hurt so bad from my arm. I don't know if you've ever been burned, but oh my God, it hurts. I didn't just burn the skin. I burnt the meat all the way to the bone.
And it took a long time to heal. If I wasn't just brushed up against somebody in a bar, I had to drop the one knee because it hurt so bad. I went from being able to hit the ball as hard as anybody I've ever met to barely able to hit it out of the infield, which made my average go up, but didn't do much for my ego. And every time I swung, it hurt so bad. So I moved to Alaska. I don't have any drugs or alcohol up there. And I hit a very serious bottom, very serious bottom.
And things were terrible in Alaska. I played on the best softball team I ever played on. I started a business and I didn't use cocaine for a year. Unfortunately, I brought Bob with me. And I started to fight. I had a roommate that he kind of like became a Klingon and he moved into my house for a while and I tried to get him to pay me some rent. I even gave him a job for $10 an hour cash working for the company I'd started. Once he found out that I only wanted to pay him $5 an hour and the other $5 was going to pay towards his room that he was staying in my condo that I'd rented, then he didn't want to work for me anymore. So I tried to kick him out and he took a shotgun to me and asked me to leave my own house. In Alaska, people are very macho.
I would say Alaskans are much more macho than even the way I was raised to be. And boy, it hurt to be standing outside that house. Almost Christmas time, it's cold in Alaska, very cold. It's probably 10 degrees below zero and I'm standing out there in a pair of cutoffs with no shirt on and I'd been kicked out of my own house by a guy with a shotgun. Now to me, that's still a pretty good move because I didn't really want to try to take on this guy with a shotgun. But all my friends gave me crap about it, that I'd been kicked out of my own house and I burned about it for about a week and I took a baseball bat to the guy and I broke his arm and his leg. I started calling my friends in Portland saying, I don't know what's wrong with me but I don't make any sense anymore. I'm not doing cocaine but every time I drink, I fall down and every time I drink, I get in a fight and every time I drink, I get in a car wreck and every time I drink, I swear my words like my relatives and I don't know what happened. I know today that the cocaine that I used in order to drink, when I took the cocaine away, unfortunately, or actually the way I look at it today, fortunately, when I used cocaine for all that period in order to drink more, I also gave away any chance I ever had of drinking in a normal fashion because if you take away the cocaine and you're used to drinking a six pack every hour, what the hell is going to slow you down from drinking a six pack every hour and what the hell is going to counteract that much alcohol in your system so fast. I drank straight shot behind every beer and I got in a lot of trouble and I came back to Portland and after I'd done that thing to that friend of mine and first thing I did was get my shipyard job back and they bought some cocaine about a month later and I was right back where I started from and it was a terrible, terrible place that I came to. I remember being in Park Rose or Park Rose, which is outside of Portland, in an x-rated motel room by myself watching those movies and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been able to do that with another person. How do they do that?
How do they do that? I was so lonely and it was at that point I realized this room was really bad. They didn't even have any toilet paper in the goddamn john. They just forgot to put it in, I suppose, and so they got those white towels they always have in hotels and I'd taken the white towels out of the bathroom and I was using them to wipe my butt because there was no toilet paper and when I went to the bathroom in those days because of non-eating and the health that I I was in, the health condition I was in, I used to crap big clots of blood. I would assume I probably had ulcers. I don't really know, you guys. I was very sick. And the toilet, there's towels laying all over the floor with stains of crap and blood all over them. And it was at that point again, I looked in that mirror again. This was two years later. I
[00:45:01]
looked in it again. And I'm going, here you are again. There's that guy. I can't see him, and I remember this guy that had quit once, and he used to play on my softball team, and he'd gone through a treatment center, so I called him up, and I said, Steve, I don't know what's wrong, but I can't do it anymore, I really need some help, and he said, in perfect Twelve Step fashion, if I quit talking so fucking much and listen for a second, you might be able to help me, and he talked about this treatment center down in Eugene, Oregon, and that they, it was a pretty neat place, and they had nice stuff, and they had some workout stuff, and I was a pretty good jock at one point, and I thought maybe that might be an option, and go back to being a jock again, and there was about 60 people there, and half of them were women, and I thought, jeez, I haven't been with one of them for a while, that could be interesting, and they had good food, and I used to like to eat, until this recent problem with cocaine, and so I ended up going down there, he told me he'd be my sponsor when I got out, and naturally with my big ego, I thought, jeez, I'm so bad they're going to make a commercial out of me or something, and he said, no, no, no, Bob, that's not what a sponsor is, and when I got out, he wasn't a very good sponsor, because his program was based entirely upon religion, but he had been through a treatment center, and I went down there, and I showed up there with Halloween, great day, just a great day, because everybody in the treatment center was dressed in a God damn Halloween costume that had over 10 days sober, and the ones below 10 days sober were wearing pajamas, you know how they do that shit, so you won't run away, because you're in your pajamas, so I looked around, and I'm going, what is going on here, these people are crazy, this is a serious day, I'm giving up using for the rest of my life, these guys are all dressed up in costumes and shit, you know, guys were dressing dresses with hairy chests hanging out, you know, no bras on, and I'm going, oh, man, the doctor was dressed as Dracula Marx, the lady that took a blood on my arm, see how toxic you are, was dressed as Dracula, you know, I'm going, man, I don't know what's going on around here, and I woke up a couple days later, and I remember giving my friend a hug the night before I left, and he asked me what I was thinking about, because I'd been sitting in a room after I canceled my appointment to go down there for the third or fourth time, and he came up to me and said, Bob, you look really weird tonight, what's going on, I'd just turned down cocaine for the first time in my life, I came around the room, and I'd been watching people come in for three days after I'd sold that cocaine to my friend, and it was different, all of a sudden, I was sitting on the other side of the room, looking at the other people, and looking at them, and thinking, what's going on here, and my friends would come in, and they'd be happy, it's pay day, they'd take their paycheck, they'd go to the bank, they'd come over to my friend's house, they'd buy a half a gram or a gram, they'd go into the bathroom to use it, because it's such a social drug, and then they'd come back out, and their whole attitude had changed, and they couldn't look me in the eye anymore, and they couldn't even talk to you, and they'd leave and come back an hour later and buy some more, and it didn't seem like a very good lifestyle anymore, and it just didn't work for me anymore, and the terrible pain and the loneliness, I knew that I needed to do something, and my friend was right, and I needed some help, and it didn't seem like a very good option, but it was the only option that I knew of, and what if he'd give me a pill to make me better, and my friend Don came over, and he looked at me and said, you're going to do something really weird, I can see it in your face, you're not going to hurt yourself or nothing, and I said, no, I don't think so, but tomorrow I'm going to drive down to Eugene, and I think I'm going to put myself in a drug treatment center, and he said, well, jeez, Bob, I think just about anything would be an improvement, and I also told him I didn't think I'd ever be the same again, and in 30 days I'll have seven years sober, and you know, I never have been the same. The treatment center taught me how to tell the truth to the best of the ability I could when I was in the treatment center.
I've got my first step on tape, and it's a little different than the one I told you today. Fucking A, man, I sure used a lot. I was real grandiose, but the thing about it was, probably for the maybe second or third time ever in my entire life, I cried. I cried when I saw old Yeller when I was six. Poor dog. And I cried when I gave my first step, because at the end, I told about my life, and I told about my parents, and I told about how I always felt terrible about myself, and how I never could tell people that I cared about them, and even when they told me they cared about me, I usually ran away from them, because they told me that they cared about me, and I didn't believe them. These people must be crazy, and that's why I ended up single my whole life, because I could never believe that anybody cared for me. So like, a 36-page first step, 30 of it was about when I was a child, and how I always had all this guilt and shame, and six pages were about drug addiction,
[00:50:02]
because you know that drug addiction really doesn't mean shit. Yep, I'm a drug addict. I already explained that to you guys. The thing about the steps is the first 30 pages, why in the world did I have to use that cocaine? Why did I have to drink like that? Why did I give up a long time ago, and that I couldn't be a normal person and be able to function in life without being hired in a kite? Why did I need that extra exhilaration to make me feel like I was a person? And that's what the steps are about, you know, just as powerless over cocaine. The second part's the important part. My life was totally unmanageable. I never had any idea. I never had a clue, and I never had a game plan, and I didn't know how to get there, and they gave me a game plan at the treatment center, and I didn't like it. I got to go to these meetings every day. I went to some meetings. There was a bunch of derelict N.A. guys sitting around tie-dyed in Eugene, Oregon. It's like nothing but tie-dyed T-shirts. I mean, half, they're still hippies, and I mean, where did they come from? I thought hippies were dead. When we'd go to these meetings, and there'd be candlelight meeting with 30 people, and 28 of them would have tie-dyed T-shirts on, and I went, fuck, Jesus, this is what I got to do for the rest of my life, go to these meetings with these goddamn derelict N.A. guys, and there was nothing wrong with them. It was my own attitude, and the attitude is what I needed to change. I needed to learn about my resentments. I needed to learn about my number one resentment, which was against God.
God was always teaching me a lesson. God gave me a lot of really good stuff. He gave me a pretty healthy body. He gave me a pretty healthy mind. He gave me the ability to get up in the morning and go to work every day and accomplish just about anything I ever wanted to. Unfortunately, when I did drugs and alcohol, I usually didn't get up in the morning, and sometimes I hadn't even been asleep for two or three days at a time. I was a bad employee. I was a bad friend, and it was a very empty life. I go to work every day. I make more money than I've ever made before, if that's important to anybody. I bought my first home this year. I wasn't even looking for one. It just became an option.
If you go bankrupt like I did when I first got sober, there really was no option. I sat down with a lawyer and my sponsor. We went over everything, and we realized that I had to pay twice as much as I was making at the time because I'd been fired from my job that I'd had for ten years. We came up with the options that I had towards trying to figure out how to get on top of my finances, and it really was not possible if I ever wanted to have a place to live again in the next ten years. We went bankrupt. Nobody will rent you a house because you have bad credit. Nobody will rent you an apartment. Nobody will let you buy a car. I walked around with a lot of shame for a long time over that. Every time somebody told me that I couldn't have a loan to get my life back on the road again, it used to make me so mad. Then I'd go, well, wait a minute. Eventually, that stuff is going to be off my credit report. That's the key. It's okay to look at the bad stuff, and it's okay to take an inventory of where you're at, but the second half of the problem is to take a look at your gratitude list and realize that, hey man, I don't have a hangover today. I haven't had to use any cocaine for almost seven years. I haven't had a hangover other than emotional hangovers from relationships. Those son of a bitches will kick your butt, and they're just as powerful a hangover as I've ever had, and they last for months sometimes.
But see, those don't last that way no longer either because I've done the internal work on them, and I have a sponsor, just like they told me in treatment. I have a sponsor. I go to meetings. I work the steps. I read the book. I did everything they told me to do in treatment. What magic. I stayed sober. Geez, I wonder how that happened. If you can't stay sober, which part did you decide not to do? Really. The steps are there, and there are many people that I care about a lot around here. I've known C.W. for a long time. I know that place where he came from, and I remembered when he could only talk about superficial stuff, and last night I saw C.W. cry, and when I got here, if you cried and you were a man, you were a fucking pussy. And I cry when I see McDonald's commercials with old people in them. I mean, Jesus, where did this come from? And the thing about it is, it just amazes me. I watch movies now. I don't believe this, and it doesn't even have to be a good movie. Anything moving at all, I'm crying, and it's just okay. And you know what? I like it. I like this life, and I have more friends than I ever had before. Do you know what it feels like to come from Everett, Washington, and come to Utah, and have some people ask you to come and talk at a campfire in front of everybody on a beautiful mountain? When I used to hang out in the bathroom by myself all the time, for weeks and days and months
[00:55:02]
and months and months, and to have all that shame, you know, I think I'm a bad person. And to remember when I first got here, and I was afraid to say anything at the meeting, just like almost everybody is, because everybody's afraid to talk in front of people. It's the number one fear in the world. Death is number two. People would rather die than talk in front of people. I mean, Jesus, that's sick, because if you don't share your emotions with other people, you'll never get any real friends. I think that the program, to me, is about an attitude of gratitude, and trying to remember where you came from. I want to get all the resentments out of my life on a daily basis, take an inventory at the end of the day, and try to figure out what I did today, and what I harmed, and if there's anything I can do to make that better. And keep on top of it, because damn, I don't want to have to do another four-step as big as that first one again. That was a piece of crap. Jesus, that was a lot of work, all those resentments from 38 years, or whatever it was when I did my first step. There was lots of resentments. If you've got a lot of resentments today, you don't have to have those, because they take up way too much space in your mind. When you've got a lot of resentments in your mind, it's hard to get the good job. When you've got a lot of resentments in your mind, it's hard to have a good relationship with yourself or other people. And if I run around with a lot of guilt, I might as well be loaded.
So I do real simple stuff. I have a terrible memory. I use way too many drugs. My memory sucks. I refuse to try to tell people what year something happened, because I don't know. But you know what? If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. It's just so much simpler to live this way. It's just so much simpler. I didn't really know what we were going to be doing today, and I'm just glad to be here. It's great to ride a horse and not get knocked off on the ground. I seem to see somebody that's really afraid to get on a horse, ride all the way to the top of the mountain, and then she was riding with no hands on. Did you guys see that? No. But that's the kind of stuff that happens when you go to meetings. You see people's conquests, and you see people get over their inadequacies, and you see people get past their relationship problems. It doesn't happen in one day. It doesn't even happen in four years or five years. It happens when you're willing to do enough work in order to make that part of your life better. I put the relationship stuff on hold for a couple of years, and I went to work every day. I worked as hard as I could, and boy, I'll tell you, there were times when I wanted to give up. But somehow I now have this ability to look back to the way that I used to be and realize that even though I may not be doing what I really wish I was doing, and I may not be making the kind of money that I'd like to be making, and maybe I don't even have a place to live. I had a job where I was living in the attic of my parents' house for an entire year at 40 years old. My dad's an alcoholic. I watched him every day steal money out of my mom's purse so she could go get drunk. But my dad's the alcoholic who drinks every day, and I'm just his son, and I'm not responsible for him. And I learned, and I got closer to my father during that year, and every week I went to Seattle, Washington, and I stayed in a hotel room by myself, and I was real lonely. And what I remembered was, I remembered where I came from, and maybe I'll never be successful. I worked there for almost a year before I sold anything. That's really tough. I'm an addict and an alcoholic with a perfect mind and a perfect attitude to think that I can't sell anything and, oh my God, I'm a terrible person. But every night I took my inventory and said, no, I'm not a terrible person. Even though today I felt so bad that I could only work for one hour instead of eight, it's okay to only work one hour instead of eight, because you feel so damn bad you wouldn't have done a good job anyway. And at least you work one hour. And that's the key, to look for the positive thing in every day. It's a beautiful day and a beautiful place. What I did is I just said, hey look, these guys are willing to pay me to stay in this hotel room and pay all my expenses, and if I never make another dime for the rest of my life, and if they fire me tomorrow, at least I will have tried as hard as I can and used this opportunity as best as I can because I think this is the opportunity that God gave me. And that's a strange thing, too, because I was an atheist when I got here. And I took the opportunities before me and I bought a new house this year. I bought a new car this year. The real estate agent that sold me the house, I kept her. And, you know, it's just a great life. It's like I really want to give everybody a pep talk, and I wish I could give everybody what I have. I have a will to stay alive, and I have a will to live my life on a daily basis without resentment, without self-pity, and without guilt. And when I'm done with this life, whether it be tomorrow or today, or 40 years from now, I want to be able to look myself in the eye before I die and say, God, man, it was good, and I did the best I could
[01:00:01]
with what was left. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks, everybody.