Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 796 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: david-p-first-ca-talk-and-recovery-journey-ca-2011-archive-796.mp3 Duration: 00:45:54
============================================================
Hi, everyone. My name is David P.. I'm a grateful, recovered addict and alcoholic. And I've never spoken at a CA meeting. I've been to CA meetings, but I've never spoken at a CA meeting. I've done a decent amount of speaking at other fellowships, and I enjoy speaking because I've been given the gift of gab. But if there's anything that you don't like that I say tonight, you can blame Dave. Anything that you find helpful, yes, it's his fault. Anything that you find helpful, you can thank me.
And I could not believe – I remember in 1985, I got separated from the bucket of poison I was pulling into myself viciously in 1985. I did not come here willingly. I don't know if anybody else – you guys walk through here like just decide one day I need to spruce up my life, get a spiritual experience, maybe just lose a few pounds, have some hair grow back or something. I got separated viciously from what I was doing because of an immense amount of pain and suffering that I was causing other people, and I was going through myself. And I remember going to a CA meeting in 1985, and I did not feel as though I fit.
Now, here's the crazy thing about my addiction, my alcoholism, my proclivity to consume things that will not enhance my life, is the fact that 95% of the things that I put in me dollar-wise and volumetrically was cocaine. But I find myself in other fellowships kind of hiding out. 1985 was a year of change for me. I got separated and I ended up getting part of the way to getting free. I wasn't going to get free until 2004. And I find – I remember the day – was it March in Barnegat that we talked?
Right. And he told me that you guys used a big book. And I was like, that's not the CA I remember. I thought, I've got to give this a try again. I've got to make a round trip back here because I had kind of thrown myself back into the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that had gotten me to a place that I had never been before. And let me just tell you a little bit about my story. I don't want to focus too much on what it was like, but I want to make sure that I qualify for these rooms.
I did not get introduced to the mood and mind-altering substances until I was 12. And that was about as long as I could go. I mean, that was just it. I didn't know I suffered from a spiritual malady at 12. I just knew that when I tried this stuff, what happened was I no longer felt as bad as I had felt for what it felt like my entire life. A friend of mine rolled up on me on – it was just an absolutely beautiful Monday afternoon.
It was the summer of 73, and I was out on my swim apple cart with like $2.25 in my pocket, looking to have a great time. And my buddy, Richie, rolls up on me and goes, do you want to get drunk tonight? I mean, do you want to get beer tonight? And I thought to myself, yes, I do. I want to get drunk. This is what I want to do. What do I got to do? He goes, give me two bucks and meet me down by the river.
And I gave him my two bucks. I had like $2.25 for the whole summer of 73. And I'm willing to give up two bucks. I had never drank before, but I wanted to. I don't know why I wanted to, but I was irritable and discontent at 12. I didn't even know what irritable and discontent meant at 12, but I was there. And that night, I had like two and a half beers, and I got free. I got free of Dave. I was on my way home, just dancing. I was so happy. I didn't get caught.
Nothing happened. I woke up the next morning. The birds were chirping. I was back out on my swim. I went and found Richie. I said, let's do that again. Now, I come to believe that it's abnormal for a 12-year-old to want to do it again on a Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. to go out and get drunk again. You should not want to do that, right? Unless you're me. And I wanted to do that. That was what I was craving that morning. I wanted to do that.
He looked at me steadfastly and says, no. And you ever have those quizzical thoughts go through your head? Why is he saying no? Did you get caught last night? Did you get in trouble? Do you not have money? Why would you ever say no to that? I didn't drink again until I was 15. And then I found a lot of other mood and mind-altering things. I was off to the races at 15. Someone had rolled up on me on a Thursday and said, we're going to the field after Friday night.
Do you want to come? I said, yes, I do. They go, what do I got to do? They go, give me $10 and we'll get you a six-pack and a pint and some pie. I'm in the game, right? And I had a blackout that night. You ever do so much stuff that it takes a couple of days just to straighten out? Next morning, my mother is leaning over the bed going, you could have died last night from what you did.
[00:05:01]
And I was like, yeah, I promise not to do that anymore. And I'm thinking where I can do that again. I went through a process from the age of about 15 to almost before I was 24, where I would go through a period of using something. Dave told me I could talk about anything up here. Everyone shaking their head yes? All right, good. I went through a process of using everything in abundance. So there was a great hashish flood of 76.
Anybody that old? So I smoked blonde hash all summer until the walls were dripping. That's what you do when you're me. You don't have a little bit and go, that's enough. My eyes have turned the color of his shirt. I'm not going to smoke anymore. You smoke until you can't breathe. That passed because whatever that ship was set sail. And then what happened was some guy showed up with sheets of LSD. So nine months and 500 hits later, I'm going, wow, that was fun for what I remember.
And I went through this whole iteration where I would try all these different things. And it's very, very inconvenient to go to school or to have a job during this period. Because I have found, no, really, it ruins the high. Why would you ever work or have any responsibility when you can just, like, go do this, right? So at the age of 15, I'm dropping out of school. Now, I have, like, I want you to understand, I spend a lot of time listening to other men and women in the rooms talk about their experience and reading different books, books that are comments approved literature, comments that are not comments approved literature, and on my exploration and my journey, right?
It's important to realize that knowledge doesn't avail me anything. I can understand the chemical composition of a molecule. It ain't going to keep me from selling things to get that molecule, right? I can understand what's going to happen to me when I do that. And it's not going to prevent me from doing that. I do these things no matter what. I have a drug of choice, right? Excedrin's my drug of choice, right?
I got tested when I was 14 in school. I only tell you this is long since past. I had to go to these California tests. Anybody remember California tests or you're all too young for that, right? That's when the nation were testing its young, right? I was the second smartest person in my county. I had all that intelligence. I would go on to do enough PCP to think I was the antichrist, trying to figure out how I'm going to end up ending the world from a room at my mom's house in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Knowledge of how bad these things are has never stopped me from doing them. I was not ignorant. All those brain cells are missing now in action, in case you're wondering. I'm no longer the second person in any room who's the smartest guy. I can understand this thing. People can tell me and teach me all they want about alcoholism, drug addiction, my spiritual malady, and the reality for me is that when I get out there, all that will fall by the wayside.
The knowledge won't avail me because I have the experience of returning, 17 years separated from everything, right? So it's inconvenient for me to work. It's inconvenient for me to have a job or to do anything during this period. And what I found that I was very good at was being a full-time criminal. And that's a terrible job. There's no health benefits. And when I was 18 years old, I owed this guy from Rhode Island a bunch of money.
And I was coming off of that four-month PCP run, and I just couldn't take it anymore. You ever get to the point where you just can't take it anymore? You just think something's got to change. So I decided to change time zones, right? And I moved to California. And I got to California with my buddy who also owed this guy some money. We didn't want to pay him. And we had no money when we got to California, so we lived under a bush.
You ever live under a bush right before you got here? You shouldn't really live under a bush after you get here, right? But if you live under a bush before you got here, it's okay. And I lived under a bush in San Diego on Mission Bay, and I would go downtown and give plasma twice a week, right? And it would cost me $1.50 on the bus, and I would get $9, so I would net $7.50, right? And it was $79, and I was happy.
Because I could live under my bush, I could buy no-frills bologna, no-frills bread, right? And I could eat. It would last for like three days under the bush. There's no refrigerator under the bush. And me and my buddy were happy.
[00:10:00]
We'd buy the no-frills cigarettes, and we'd hang out, and we'd listen to a radio, which we'd buy batteries for. And I had no money to do anything else. And slowly my body started to fix itself, and slowly my body started to change, and I started to get healthy again, and my eyes were no longer like all sorts of weird, and my thoughts were straightening out, and I was pretty sure I was not the Antichrist.
And what happened was I got separated from everything. And life was okay, and I felt comfortable to some extent. Like, this is where I wanted to be, this is where I wanted to live, this is how I wanted to do it. And we got some odd jobs, right? After his girlfriend moved out, we got a cheap apartment. And things started to change a little bit, but the reality was I had a spiritual malady. I didn't know what it was, right?
And I didn't know how to address my spiritual malady. So I'm kind of hanging out, and I make a decision that I've got to come back to New Jersey. And it's been about a year out there, and I literally was at the point where if I just stayed another month, I would have been able to go to college, and I could have gotten my GED and gone to college for free in California. So I have to come back to Jersey.
But this time I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to hang out with all those drug addicts. I'm going to hang out with normal people. And I get a job, and the job's good. If you work a job, they actually pay you, usually. And I start putting money in the bank, and this is working out well, but it's not happening fast enough for me, because I'm uncomfortable with myself. So I get a second job.
I'm working two jobs now, and I'm putting more money in the bank, and that feels good, right? It feels good to put money in the bank and not be a criminal. I get a third job. I'm running out of hours to work. I'm working at the airport on weekends and at nights. I'm working in a theater on weekends. I'm working a full-time job in Morristown. I'm doing a lot of stuff. But suddenly I've got several thousand dollars in the bank, and what do I come up with? A plan.
You ever come up with a plan in full-time addiction? I came up with a plan. I was going to buy a small amount of drugs, and I was going to sell it. How bad can it be? I am now doing okay. That would be the start of the end for me. I bought some marijuana, and I sold it, and it worked. I bought more, and I sold that, and it worked. I started to find that working full-time interfered with my criminal pursuits.
Then I found a very good connection for cocaine. I had an experience with cocaine earlier, but I never really had a good connection for cocaine, so I never really did a lot of cocaine. But when I found I had a good connection for cocaine, I found that I was a much perkier, I was a much happier person. I could move fast, I could talk a lot, I could hang out. I didn't have to sleep a lot. I could just hang out with you.
Can I come by your house today? I'll come by your house today. You're not going to work for another couple of days because I'm going to keep you awake. How are you doing? And I did that. I would go to people's houses, and I would ruin them. There was this really nice couple that I knew lived not too far from me, and I would show up on a Wednesday night, and I'd go, would you like to do some lines? And they'd go, sure.
You know, on Saturday afternoon, I'd be going, well, I've got to go now, and they're like, please leave. Hey, this is working out pretty good. I found that this stuff, for some reason, worked for me. I mean, it really seemed to work for me. But I want to tell you, I went through the first step in the first two days. I knew that when I started, when they took the beast out of the cage, that cage was not getting closed until that beast was happily satisfied.
And it was going to throw me around that cage like a rag doll until it was happy, and it didn't matter what I wanted. And I didn't care, right? Because I figured, someday down the road, I will control that. That's not what happened. I started to hear things scratching in the walls. I went for a period, and I worked my way down the criminal organizations. You ever do that? You ever lose the good criminals and get the bad criminals because the good criminals don't want to hang out with you anymore?
Things were getting pretty bad for me. And I found that I was really starting to have to put things aside. I had a set of morals. I had been raised well, but I had a set of morals, and I had a set of processes that were solid. And I didn't feel like I needed to follow those as much anymore because they would interfere with what I wanted to do. And slowly but surely, things started to go by the wayside.
My health started to go by the wayside. My relationship with anybody else started to go by the wayside. What happened for me is that it didn't matter whether or not it was Thanksgiving,
[00:15:03]
and I told you I was going to be there. Well, I'm in Pennsylvania. Sorry, I'm busy. I'm in New York. Or I'm hiding in my closet, thinking that the police are coming to the door at any moment. And it got bad, and then it got worse, and then it got terrible, and then I started to believe that I was a defected unit. And I started to believe that what was happening to me was that I was realizing all my worst fears, and I knew for a fact that I was not going to make it, and I knew for a fact that I was different than you, and at some moments I was better than you, and at other moments I was horribly worse than you.
And I came very, very close to throwing it all away. There was a guy who owed me $15,000 from Maryland, and one of the people that I worked with said to me, well, you're going to kill him, aren't you? And I was like, yeah, I'm going to kill him. Right? And I knew in my mind I wasn't going to kill him. Right? But if I didn't, these people would see me differently. Right? And I was at that kind of jumping off point for me. I weighed 135 pounds. I don't weigh 135 pounds anymore. I've put on 100 pounds since then. I was as yellow as a Ticonderoga number 2 pencil. I had Hepatitis C. Right? And I was insane. And I decided that I can't live like this anymore.
I can't live like the guy who's going to… I'm not going to be the guy who walks in and pops this guy. I'm not going to live like that. Right? And I've got to separate myself because I can't live like this. I spent the last year and a half awake anywhere from 3 to 5 days, pass out from exhaustion, eat one meal at a diner, and go out and do it all over again. The year and a half like that, I'm going insane. Right? I am literally going insane. And I show up at my mother's house and I say, you know, I think I've got a problem. She goes, oh really? I think I need to do something about it. She goes, that's good.
And I pick up the phone and it's a Friday afternoon. And the old people in this room will remember that we used to have a thick book at our house called the phone book. And the first half would be white pages and the second half would be yellow pages. Right? And I looked in the white page section for medical stuff. And I came across a number and I called it. It was like 4.30 in the afternoon on a Friday. And I was ready. I was ready to give up. Right? Have you ever been ready to give up?
And I was like, I was ready to give up. And I called and this woman answered. She goes, oh that's wonderful. I said, no, I'm really sick. I mean, I need help. She goes, that's terrific. Okay, well what should I do? She goes, why don't you call me on Monday? We're closing now. And it was like a rehab or something. I don't even know to this day what it was. I'm like, ma'am, I don't think you understand. I'm going to be dead by Monday. She's like, I can't help you. I'm like, okay, well I'm going to do what I've always done. I'm going to white knuckle it. Have you ever white knuckle it? Have you ever just, I'm going to make it alright. That's what I was going to do.
And the first day I, you know, when you come off of a serious alcohol, heroin, cocaine addiction, you should not just quit cold turkey is what I found out later. Alright? You know, I had just, I'm not bragging, I had an unlimited amount of drugs available to me. I consumed as much as I possibly could. I didn't end up in the rooms because I ran out of drugs and it became hard. I had literally an unlimited supply. I was literally dying and I was 23 years old. And I cold turkey'd it and the first day I could not sleep, I could not eat, I couldn't keep food down. I would literally run for the bathroom and vomit from the entrance of the bathroom and make it into the toilet on the other side of the room.
And that's how I felt that first day. And the second day I couldn't stop eating or sleeping. And the third day I woke up I felt halfway decent, ate and slept. And the fourth day I think it was, I think it was the fourth day I woke up, and you know what I said to myself? I got this thing licked. You ever say that? I got this thing licked. I got this thing licked. I got this thing licked. Two and a half hours later I had a glass of white wine in my hand. And I'm going to tell you something. White wine does not solve my problem. White wine just annoys the beast. Right? That's like sticking a stick through the cage of the beast. Hey, how you doing? A little white wine for you? Ha ha ha.
Beast goes, I'm unlocking the door now. Unlocks the door and off I go to 23rd Street in Manhattan where I send my buddy out with a couple hundred bucks to get me some pills because I had come up with a new plan. Right? There's nobody at the end of the phone book who's going to help me. White knuckling's not working anymore. I'm a defective unit. My plan now is I'm going to die. Because that's the only way out of this nightmare. Nightmare is end. This is not ending.
I give him a couple hundred bucks. Send him out. He comes back with a bag of Placidils and Tuminals and everything else. I said, here's a couple hundred more dollars. That's not going to be enough. Go out and get some more. We're going to have a party back in Jersey. He goes, great. Give him a couple hundred dollars. He leaves. I eat the whole bag of pills. He comes back. He goes, where's the first bag? I said, I don't know. I don't remember anything from that point on.
[00:20:14]
I ran into him about two years after that experience and he told me what it was like driving back from Manhattan with me that night. You know, blasting skyways, sparks, you know, whatever. But I do remember waking up in the emergency room in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And I learned that gravity, I learned the scope of gravity. You ever take so much stuff that gravity is, you know, it may be the weakest of the four forces in physics, but it is the strongest when you've eaten like a handful of Tuminals.
It just comes up and slaps you onto the ground. I woke up in this emergency room in Trinitas Hospital, Elizabeth, New Jersey. It was March of 1985 and I was not dead and I was pissed. I was pissed. You ever been pissed? I was pissed. My plan had not worked. I had gone to my friends, drugs and alcohol. They had not solved my problem. Again. They weren't working anymore. I had come up with a new plan.
So I look around this darkened emergency room for something to end my life with. Something that's fun, right? Something that's sharp. I don't want anything sharp. That hurts. I want something fun, like another bottle of pills. What I find though is a bottle of Benadine solution. It's a big bottle. It's like a quart. And I drank that. I tried drinking that. And I drank the whole thing. It tastes really nasty. You ever drink Benadine solution?
That was my second plan of the night. It wasn't working. It was all over my face and my shirt. I looked like a fool. So I had to come up with a new plan. The new plan was I was going to nonchalantly walk out of the hospital, get back out there and find some more of my friends to end the scene. So I burst through the door into the brightly lit fluorescent hallway from my darkened emergency room little cubicle thing. I made it across the hallway. I was holding the wall for support. I was covered in Benadine solution. I was having trouble. I'm going to nonchalantly walk out of here. It's a good plan.
Unfortunately, even though I was looking down the hallway, there's these big beautiful glass doors at the nurses station, right? There was a cop there. Cops are annoying when you're trying to nonchalantly walk out of the emergency room to kill yourself. They do things like stop you. So I had to come up with a new plan. So I make a beeline for the crash cart. I grab the rubbing alcohol. I douse the cop in the rubbing alcohol. And then I go for the matches in my pocket to set him on fire because I figure if I set him on fire, he will not pay attention to me trying to nonchalantly walk out of the emergency room.
Listen, it's a plan. You got a better one, right? He didn't, you know, it was probably like a slow motion jerk fest for this guy. He's probably watching this idiot covered in Benadine solution trying to, I mean, what do I remember, right? You know, trying to uncork the rubbing alcohol. I don't know. I just remember the next thing I remember is he has his knee on my throat, right? And he's trying to force my head in between the tiles on the floor. And it just wasn't working. It hurt.
And they put me in four point restraints because I was insane. Alcoholism, drug addiction, cocaine, whatever was available, I was insane. I didn't try to set fire to a cop and kill myself. That falls into the nonstandard, non, that's atypical behavior. The moderate tempered drinker, right? The occasional marijuana user doesn't find himself trying to emulate the local law enforcement. So I'm in four point restraints trying to chew through my wrist because I had once seen a wolf chew through his paw to get out of a trap. I'm trying to chew through my wrist so I can get out of my four point restraints. I found out 20 years later when I was talking from the podium that if I'd actually successfully chewed through my wrist, I would not have had a hand to undo the other straps with. I hadn't thought about that until 20 years later. I was insane.
So I got sent to a locked ward, surprisingly enough, right? A psychiatric hospital. And they're like, you're insane. And I take the, they had like a, I don't know, a 40 question test? I mean literally every question was yes. I had to answer one no. So I said I never drank in the morning. It was never a morning for me. It was just like one long party, but I never drank in the morning. I answered 39 out of 40 yes. They're like, that's not normal. I said, really? How much did you use? I don't know. This? Really? Probing and prodding me to see why I'm still alive. It doesn't matter what I used. I started out with a spiritual malady. I started out with irritable discontent. I was disconnected from God. And the reality was no one had ever disconnected me from God. No one had ever come into my house and killed my parents in front of me.
God was never bad, right? There's just something about me. I get disconnected from God at 12 years old and I'm trying to set fire to a cop and kill myself at 23. Right? That's not normal.
[00:25:03]
So 30 days later, there's all these charges and they're unhappy with me. And they found guns and hand grenades and money and cocaine and stuff that you're not supposed to have according to the federal authorities. And, you know, I was in a psychiatric unit and they go, you're not insane. You're a common, ordinary drug addict. You've got two choices, prison or a drug and alcohol unit. I said, can I think about that? Right? Because I'm thinking. I'm trying to come up with a new plan.
I finally said, you know, the best plan I can do is go to that drug and alcohol ward and not have to deal with this crap and maybe I can figure something out. Just buy some time. So, you know, I get up to that drug and alcohol ward and there's a guy there who had two years clean. And he came and he 12-stepped me. He was a counselor there. But he had two years clean. He talked about the bikers. You know, he talked about the guns. He talked about all that crap. Right? But I want to tell you something. I've come to realize that it does not require you to be a biker or a criminal for me to understand that we're of the same ilk. That we've suffered from a common problem.
I'll give you an example of how bizarre everything is for me. Right? This guy 12-stepped me in 1985. Right? 2005. I'm in Philadelphia at an arbitration and my attorney's with me for two and a half days. And at the end of the two and a half days, he's sitting across from me. Right? And he's talking about, you know, how I've been doing. He's about five years older than me. I'm 50 right now. Right? So he's just about 50 at the time. He's talking to me and he goes, do you want a beer? We're at a Chinese restaurant. I said, no, I don't want any alcohol. I don't drink.
He goes, oh, why not? I said, well, it's been a problem for me. I'm not an alcoholic. He goes, oh, do you mind if I get a beer? I said, go right ahead. He gets the beer. I'm eating my noodles. And he says, you know, I got drunk once in college. And I woke up the next day. I had a hangover. I said, I'm never going to do that again. And I never have. What? Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? I mean, noodles are hanging out of my mouth. You had a little pain and you didn't work through that? Your entire life, you've missed the opportunity of wallowing in your own urine and feces. I mean, this is what I'm thinking, but I'm not saying it. Right? So I'm not that person. Right? I'm not that person. Right?
And then I have a friend who's a roadie. He's with bands and stuff. And I would take him out on a Wednesday night. We'd go to this place in Elizabeth. We'd watch a little sports. And he'd say, I'm going out for like four drinks. Right? And I'd have that secret weapon. I have a couple of grams in my pocket. Right? I'm going to ruin his night. Right? So at like 11 o'clock where he's going, I've had my four drinks and I want to go home. I'm going, let's go to the men's room. Right? Because I want to go to Staten Island. And I haven't been asleep until Monday afternoon. It doesn't matter. You got a job. I'm unemployed. Right?
And sometimes, I get him to Staten Island, but most of the time he'd go, I have to be up tomorrow. And maybe he had two more drinks and a couple of lines. And he was a heavy drinker. But he was not a drug addict and an alcoholic because he said no when it mattered. His life was more important than what I could put in my pocket. I'm not the lawyer and I'm not the roadie. Well, what the hell am I? Right? So I'm about, I've come back in 04 and I'm about a year and a half sober and I'm down here on Long Beach Island. And it's like, I go to this, I want to say it's a Wednesday night meeting up in Bonnegate Light. And I walk to it. It's about 20 minutes from my house.
And about 10 minutes earlier, 5 minutes earlier, I just get my coffee and my cookies and I sit down and I look at the table where the speaker is and it's just perfectly coiffed. You know, mid-50s, socialite with silver hair and a blouse with a neck up to here and pearls. And I'm like, oh, for the love of God, get me a criminal. Right? I don't want her. Right? I said, well, if I get up and leave, she'll be, you know, I don't want to do that to her. Right? So I'll just, I'll sit here. I'll be good to her and listen to her story. And she started to share. Right?
And she started to talk about her experience with alcohol and she started to talk about her first step experience. And I'm sitting there going, okay, it's not painful. It's not painful. I'll listen a little while longer. Right? Second step in how she got with God. Turn her will and life over to the care of God. I understood that. I got that. I got that. She starts talking about inventory. I'm going, she's pretty good.
She starts talking about inventory. She starts talking about drooling down about the character. It's not the service crap, but where it comes from, where the fear comes from. She gets into 5, 6, and 7. She starts talking about 8 and 9.
[00:30:02]
Now I'm thinking to myself, I want to go hang out with her. She gets to 10, 11, and 12 and I go, I, I, I love her. Do you know what I found out that night? I found out that I am a, I am a silver-haired socialite. With a, with a high-neck collar, and, and that's who I am. It doesn't matter whether or not, you know, that person sitting up at that table is driving a Harley, you know, or a Prius. It doesn't matter.
I have a common problem. Right? But I don't get that the first time into the rooms. You know what I do? I come in, it's 1985, they have been shoveling money at the rehabs. Right? I'm in there for 110 days between the psychiatric hospital and the rehab. Right? And they're like, okay, well, we think you, you've got it now because your insurance just ran out. You know, you can leave. You know, here's your $110,000 N.A. basic text, you know, see you later.
Try not to kill anybody. And I just wanted to stab the guy right in the eye because I didn't want to leave at that point. I didn't do it. Right? I didn't do it. But I started going to meetings. See, I thought that the issue was if I went to enough meetings, by osmosis, your spirituality would enter me. Right? It was something about meetings. I'm going to 90 meetings in 90 days. That's what I hear. 90 in 90. Do 90 in 90.
Link arms, hold arms, you know, the fellowships are all different. It was very confusing. Right? And I'm doing 90 in 90. I get 90 days under my belt. And that night I go out and shoot some heroin. Right? The coin wasn't enough. The keychain fob wasn't enough. The meeting makers make it wasn't enough. I go out and shoot heroin. You know what happens? It does the same thing to my body that it had always done, but it didn't solve my problem.
My problem was unsolvable with chemicals. My problem was that I was suffering from a spiritual malady. I came back into the rooms the next morning, the next evening. I raised my hand and I said, I'm Dave and I have 91 days. And for 17 years I didn't talk about that. And for 17 years I came around, well not the last 5 years, I was pretty much absent the last 5 years, but for like the next 12 years I came around these rooms and I hung out with a few people and I wanted what you had, but I was unwilling to do the work.
Right? Unwilling to sit down with a book and do step work. I had gotten a sponsor and I had written 100 pages on a 4-step that I brought to my sponsor and he said, go write some more. And I was like, he was an attorney. I'm like, screw you. Right? And 100 pages doesn't cover it. You haven't even read it and 100 pages is not enough. And I made a conscious decision to do meeting makers make it. And after about 12 years I wasn't making meetings anymore.
My life had gotten amazing. I was hanging out with you people and what you guys had was enough to drag me along. You ever seen a person with 20 years in the rooms and he looks bitter and old? That was me at 12. My life was amazing. I had the wife, I had the dog, I had the house with the white picket fence, I had the amazing job. My legal problems had gone away. I didn't even have a record. This stuff is unbelievable.
What do I do? I abandon meetings because I don't want to talk about that time that I went out and I realized. Five more years go by and I'm going to tell you something. It is awfully difficult for me to live without a spiritual solution. I started to become the most selfish and self-centered person you'll ever meet. And I started planning a trip to Switzerland to go to a needle park. I never went. But I ended up planning a trip to Arizona on a business trip and I got a bottle of white wine.
And all I did was poke the beast. The beast was very unhappy with me. It had been sleeping for 17 years. But it had been waiting. I didn't go back out and start actively using. But what happened was I find out that the addiction that controls me is not one of me actively using. It's the spiritual malady. I am the single most rotten person you will ever meet. I am rotten to my employees. I am rotten to my wife.
I am rotten to my children. My children do not want to hang out with their father. That takes a lot. Two years of that, my wife has a suggestion. She says, I want a divorce. I said, okay, what can I do? She goes, why don't you try meetings again? And I came back into these rooms and I decided it's not about meeting makers make it. Because I have personal experience that I almost died. I wanted to jump off the Driscoll Bridge at day one back in the rooms.
At day 90, I wanted to jump off the Driscoll Bridge. Every day was a battle with suicide. And I was not drinking. I was not shooting heroin. I was not snorting cocaine. There was nothing going in my body. No antidepressants, no nothing. And I find this guy at my home which is in lower Manhattan. He's half my age. And I talked to him after the meeting. His name was Jared. He was a wonderful man. And his life is falling apart.
He's working for just about the worst stock brokerage unit that's ever graced the annals of Wall Street.
[00:35:01]
They're ripping off European clients. His wife has left him for another man. He's barely making rent. And he's got a smile on his face. And he's celebrating one year. His sponsor was taking him through the steps. And I wanted what he had. And I asked him to sponsor me. And I was either going to get what he had or I was going to wipe that smile off his face. And this kid, half my age, could have been my son, started taking me through the steps.
They told me to take the big book about cocaine anonymous and read page 62 and 63 every day. We would get down and start doing some writing. And that's what I started to do. And I found out in the first step about cocaine anonymous. And in the program of cocaine anonymous, it's the exact same thing. There are two parts. There are two questions embedded in that. And if I'm going to admit those things, you know what admit means?
It means come and reconcile with the absolute truth. What am I going to admit? I'm going to admit that when I start, I start, that I cannot tell you with any certainty what's going to happen. That's the powerlessness. That when I consume something, I'm off to the races. I'm going to tell you I'm going to go home at 11 o'clock. I had a friend of mine who used to buy cocaine for me. She'd buy a gram of cocaine.
I'd call her two weeks later and say, what are you up to? She goes, not much. I said, no, I just got a new batch. She goes, oh, I have a half a gram left. You should meet this lawyer that I know. No. I'm like, I can't say that in my life. Because I started taking LSD and for nine months I took 500 hits. Right? I start, I don't know what's going to happen. Right? I could tell you I'm going to have two drinks and have two drinks that night.
But that's just a random event. The truth be told, I'm admitting the truth. The second part of that is if you separate me long enough. I'm separated from everything. I've got an amazing company. A multinational that I created with a couple of good partners. We're in two countries. We've created this. I have nothing. I'm the major shareholder. I've got a loving and caring wife. I've got great kids. Separated.
17 years. I pick up. I cannot successfully stay separated. First step. End of story. There's two parts to it. There's two admissions I have to make. I have to make those two admissions. I belong right here, right now. Right? I've got to come believe that PowerGrid and myself is going to restore me to sanity. And I've got to tell you something. That I had a very, very, very difficult time with that.
And the best, the absolute best I could do in the first pass through this is that I had to get out of the driver's seat. Literally, that's the only phrase that kind of worked for me. I could not do this. And I'm a guy who's running, you know, everything. I'm in charge of payroll. I'm in charge of this. I've got to do that. I've got to do this. And all of a sudden I've got to let God take over. I don't know who God was and I've got to let God, I've got to let, I've just got to get out of the way.
And that's the best I could do the first time around, the second step. And I'll tell you what happened for me. Is that I would not get a second step until I did a seventh step. When I want to turn around and ask God to take over my character defects and remove them from me, I've got to have a loving and caring entity available to take that crap away. Because nobody wants that. Right? The stuff that I've done in my inventory, the stuff that I've uncovered, the stuff that I want to be free of.
Right? I've got to have a loving and caring God to take that away. And I'll tell you something. The second step, first time through, couldn't do it. I've been through the steps several times now, all the way through, and each time the second step has meant something different for me. As well as the first step. And I've returned my will and my life over to the care of God. And what happens for me is that I've got to have a little faith.
And I begin to learn that faith sometimes is just shutting your mouth, and this is just for me, and the first time through, just shutting my mouth and making way for what's going to unfold. Right? I've got to stop masterminding this. And a lot of the process of the third step for me is on 62 and 63 in the big book. It's about how I try to organize all you people to fit me. And then the fourth step, I wanted to do a fourth step.
For the first time in my life, I want to do a fourth step. It's taken me 20 years to get there, just 19 years to get there. I want to do a fourth step, guys. And I sit down with a beautiful leather-bound folder and my favorite fountain pen with my favorite ink, and nothing's coming out. It's not until I sit down with other alcoholics that I find, you know, we're sharing at a diner and all of a sudden it comes to me, oh, crap, and I flip over the diner mat and I start writing.
Because it comes to me when I'm having a spiritual interaction with another alcoholic. It doesn't come to me when I'm thinking. Thinking hasn't done me a lot of good over the years. I fought my way into a psychiatric hospital, and I fought my way into drinking and doing drugs again. And I shared this inventory with my sponsor, Jared. It was like a Tuesday night in the office, and we stayed late, and, you know, nothing happened.
You're supposed to share your fifth step, and you're supposed to get this, oh, you know, Bill Wilson talks about the damned of emotions will burst forth, and that didn't happen to me. I walked out of that place absolutely positive. I was one of those people who were constitutionally incapable of getting free. And the next day I'm going through, I'm coming through the Trinity Church graveyard in Lower Manhattan, and it hits me, and I physically feel lighter in my shoes.
And the fifth step is taking hold, and I want to do six and seven.
[00:40:02]
My sponsor made me write for six weeks on six. It's literally a paragraph in the book. I hate him to this day. And I really, no, no, I don't hate him to this day. But at the time I honestly, this is what I was thinking. I honestly thought that he was slowing me down because I was catching up. That he had to finish his steps. This is what I'm thinking. I don't say this out loud, though, because I'm afraid.
No, I don't want to say anything like that. And when we come to the seventh step, I finish my six, he goes, okay, go do your seventh. And I walk into Trinity Church, and I hit my knees, and I am not a religious man, but this just happens to be right there, and it's a beautiful place if you ever get a chance. And I give God my list of defects as I know them at the time, and I walk out, and I'm free for about 38 seconds.
And it's a springtime day, it's 2005, and a beautiful woman walks by in a dress in Manhattan, and lust returns. Oh, Christ. I have found that God has absolutely removed my character defects from me. I am free from 99% of my character defects 99% of the time nowadays. And it stays that way because I stay active in helping other alcoholics. Trust God, clean house, help others. Those are three parts of what we do.
We turn them into 12 steps, but those are the three parts of what we do. I cannot choose one and two. I cannot choose one and three. I cannot choose two and three. I cannot choose one out of those either. I have to do all three. I have to keep my house clean. I have to be willing to help other alcoholics. I get into eight, and I sit down, and I do my inventory again, and I pull out all the harms that I did.
And there's people who were not on my resentment list, who I had harms against. There were people who I got even with. I get even in active alcoholism or drug addiction. I get even. Well, that guy pissed me off, so I slashed his tires. So he's not on my resentment list. Oh, a harms list? Okay, let's do a harms list. And there comes out the eighth step, right? And I got a list of people, and I'm making my amends, and I'm going out, and I'm talking to family members, and I'm talking to people that I've hurt, and I'm making direct amends wherever possible.
And, you know, I'll tell you something. Not all of them went very well. And I don't think I did them that well the first time around, right? Amends since then are things that I have a much better structure in doing. My first sponsor wasn't as structured as my subsequent sponsors are. But when I made my amends to my mother, and I had been very good to my mother ever since 1985. Whenever she needed money, I'd give her money.
I tried to make right all the things of the past, but when I sat down with her in 2005, and I made direct amends eye to eye at the kitchen table, we both broke into tears. And any lingering stuff I have that my mom passed, and I woke up the next Saturday morning, and all I wanted to do was bring my kids to see my mother so she'd be happy. That's not the kind of stuff that I expect, right? I had people who did not want to talk to me.
I had a partner who I approached multiple times, and he would not meet me for coffee or listen to what I had to say. He knew that the last thing he could do was piss me off, right? Okay, it's not my place to impose myself on him, right? And the hardest thing that I got in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and in the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and in this program was doing 10 and 11.
I had a very hard time with that. And it's not that I didn't believe in God. The more and more I just absolutely believe God is. God has worked in my life, has always been there for me. I have seen God work in other people's lives in these rooms. I've seen them get free. I've seen them become new people and change and treat others better. I've just had a hard time with 10 and 11. Not that I didn't want to do the work.
I'm just like an ADD. I can't stop moving until I fall asleep. Move, move, move, pass out. And I agonized over this. I didn't want to talk about this for years. But what I did was, the first time I was doing a Big Book workshop, I got to 10 and 11 and I was like, I really don't have that much to offer people. So I went out and I went on a mission. I started to query everybody. What does your 10 and 11 look like?
What do your disciplines look like? And they would tell me. And some people you'd think would be this amazing disciplined person were like me. And other people who you'd be like, oh, they're really quiet in meetings. And they like to have this solid 10 and 11 experience. I'm like, okay. And I'm taking it all in. I'm asking questions. And I'm starting to integrate 10 and 11 into my life. And you know, what happens is guys start to find me appealing.
I start to have a message that other people want to get. And they start to ask me to sponsor them. And all of a sudden, 12 comes alive in my life. And I am changing. I am caring about others for the first time in my life. I'm not selfish. I'm not self-centered. And for the most part, I'm always trying to help others. And it's in the caring of the message. I don't know where this leads me. I don't know where my journey takes me. I no longer have inordinate fear, right?
I lost most of my money and I ended up losing most of my business in 2005, a year and a half into the steps, right? A year and a half coming back. And, you know, I'm going, okay, God, fear of financial insecurity will leave me.
[00:45:03]
When? Right? I'm hitting my knees going, when's this going to end? And I was like, every day, welcome to some new pain, have this. Let's see if you can grow from this. And the funny thing was, when I finally accepted all that pain, everything changed and it turned around. And it's in carrying this message that I get free. It's in doing the third part of the three parts that we do, right? Help others.
And it doesn't require me to help just addicts and alcoholics. If there's somebody who's struggling, who's not in our program, I am there, whether it be a couple of dollars, whether it be a shoulder to cry on, or whether it be to give some advice or some help or some guidance in areas that I don't normally know. And I want to thank you for inviting me and I leave six minutes for anybody to tear me apart.
So I'm done.