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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 801 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: earnest-m-earnest-m-recovery-story-recovery-in-the-rockies-xvii-ca-2006-archive-801.mp3 Duration: 01:17:09
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To introduce to you, Ernest. Is that from Oakland? Oakland? Good morning, my name is Ernest and I'm an addict. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, let me adjust this thing. I'm not afraid to put it close to my mouth. First of all, I'd like to thank a loving God who brought me a long way. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to share in this wonderful opportunity. And the reason why I'm standing here is because all of you are a part of me.
A large part of me. And hopefully I'm just a small part of you. When I came to a meeting of Coke and Anonymous and I joined the fellowship, and I said, my name is Ernest and I'm an addict. So I really want to thank everyone for the part they played in me being able to be here, be here, leave here, be here, leave here, be here, leave here, be here, leave here, and to continue to be able to come back.
I met some extraordinary people here. I met a guy with a name like Sasquatch. You know? Really, really nice guy. Big beard, biker type guy, may have that big wallet with the chain on it and whatnot, but the big book tells me we'll meet a host of new friends. Because we are people who normally would not mix. We're mixing it up, baby. We're mixing it up up in here. You know? We are mixing it up. Briefly, I'd like to qualify.
Is there anyone here, the people who have less than 30 days, can you go ahead and stick your hands up? Yeah, there's enough people here to sponsor you guys. And those of you who have more than 30 days and don't have a sponsor, there's enough people here to sponsor you guys. I've come to find in recovery that somehow there's always enough. I kind of like went to the back of the line a little bit when the buffet was there.
When I got there, there was a plenty. So there's always enough. There's enough steps to go around, enough love to go around, enough friendship to go around. It wasn't always like that. My name is Ernest. I was born in 1956, Miami, Florida, Dade County. To a Mrs. Grace D.. And to a gentleman by the name of Willie M.. Both of which whom I've never seen in my entire life. I was raised in eight different families, white, black, rich, poor, Filipino, Italian, the whole nine yards.
So I guess you can see, there's a bucked up dude standing in front of you. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. You know, at the beginning, I was a happy child. I was raised in a foster family, and the woman's name was Miss Mabel Phillips. And she had raised 75 foster children before me, and I knew what love was. She loved me. And I was going to enroll in kindergarten. However, the government decided that she had gotten too old to take care of us, and they moved us.
And that's where the story changes. I was taken to another family to stay there for a brief period of time, and it was the bounce around move. And me and my little sister, who's one year younger than I am, went to another family. And in that particular family, I was first exposed to the disease of alcoholism, which I knew nothing about. But I did know that when people drank that shit, it got real crazy.
So our house was a mirror. And when I say a mirror, it means this side mirrored this side, you know. And what happened for me was my foster father would hide his bottle in this half of the house. My foster mother would hide her bottle in that half of the house, and we'd watch him trying to find hers, and she'd try to find his, and we'd watch people put water in bottles and carry it on, you know. And I may have said something that you said, you know, I'll never be like that.
You know, it was a violent family. At one point in time, my foster father went and got a gun and pulled it on me and told me, I brought you into this world, and I'll take you out. Well, he never brought me in. But he surely might take me out. You know, I was taught at an early age to keep things to myself. You know, when I was a young child, I got beat. And when I say beat, I don't know if anyone here is old enough to know what a cat of nine tails is.
[00:05:01]
It's like a device. It's like a Cleon device, as a matter of fact. And it's leather woven. Big leather straps are woven together to make a handle about this big, and it becomes about that long. And off of this thing comes nine different pieces of leather with a knot tied on the end, and they're all different lengths. And when somebody just cracks you with it, you get hit like nine times. And you get up, you know.
So anyway, that was what was used on me. I was also like a child slave. When some people look at me, they think I lifted weights and whatnot. This is the result of, as a kid, just carrying a bunch of buckets of water and all that kind of stuff, you know. And by the time I was 12, I was stronger than my father was. And one day he went to hit me, and my hand went up, and it caught his hand. And I looked at my hand catching his hand, and my brain said, let go.
But my ass said, no. That's what we call a dilemma, you know. And that's where the gun situation came in at. But prior to all this happening, some other things happened. In this particular family that I was raised in, I had some foster brothers. And my foster brother was like 6'4", and I was like 5'6". And since they always received a check from me, they would always remind me that, you know, here's a check.
All we get is $140 a month for you, you know. So I got, my value was $140, because I heard that over and over and over and over again. Especially outcalls, we like repeat things. And over and over again, you know. Am I qualifying? Okay. So what happened? What happened for me was when I had to go to school, and we had to get our pictures taken, I had to put on a 6'4 suit with work boots on, and go to that school and get my picture taken.
And you know when all the kids are sitting on the bench, I'm kind of hiding there with them. And then I got to go up in front, and the whole class is looking at me. And I got these work boots on, and I got this suit on. The pants are like crumpled all the way up to my knees. And the sleeves are like down to here. So I guess you can see I didn't have very good self-esteem. You know, they were the type of people that when it came to wearing, now they call them jeans.
Back in the day, they called them dungarees. And dungarees, for those of you who are around 50 or greater, dungarees were those work jeans. They were those real work jeans. And my alcohol, it was this new device that came out. It's called iron-on patches. Now, if you can imagine a drunk person ironing on a patch. You know, I always wished that they would take the patch and put it on the inside, you know, and iron it on.
But no, no. And the hole could only be that big, but they put a patch on that big, you know. And that's when that stickum stuff, you could peel it off and put it on, you just iron it, you know. And I have all these jacked-up patches on my pants. You know, and I had to go to school. I was a pretty healthy kid. I was a pretty healthy kid. Kids didn't want to make fun of me, but they did. You know, and even when they didn't, my imagination made me believe that they did.
You see, and we were poor. At least I was. And they had these little plastic combs, and the combs were like 15 cents and whatnot. And they had teeth in them, and since I didn't get a haircut too regularly because my foster father tried to give me one, and the device fell off and he made this skunk stripe right down the middle of my head, and I had to go to school like that. That was one more humiliating experience.
These things went on and on and on and on and on, and I became a very introverted person. At some point in time, my little sister, I would notice that we would sit at the foot of the bed. I would notice when you look back, I'd see my foster father's hand go like that. At a corner of my eye, I didn't know what was happening, you know. But what happened to her was she got molested, and something traumatic had to happen to her because at 9 years old, she ran away.
She ran away from New Jersey to North Carolina. They located her in North Carolina, and they brought her back. When they brought her back, she was just a different person. She was just a different person, and I can remember seeing the hand go like that. Something else happened in that particular family. One day, there was a guy that came home, and he was 23 years old, and my foster father allowed him to take my little sister out.
I'm looking at this guy with this beard, and I'm wondering, you're too old.
[00:10:01]
You're too old. And she came back. I stayed up, and I know I was up until about 2 o'clock in the morning. She didn't come back 2 o'clock in the morning, you know. But when I woke up eventually, she was home, you know. I don't exactly know what happened, but I have an idea in my heart and soul what happened, you know. Back when I was around 7 years old, I too was molested, you know, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.
So I learned how to keep secrets. I learned how to keep secrets. And from my understanding today in the program of Cochlear Anonymous, I only have a secret compartment that's very, very, very, very small. And if I overload that department, something's going to give. And it's me because I've never seen the 12 steps give. I started accumulating these secrets and keeping these things to myself and whatnot.
And the foster family wanted to move to North Carolina. But prior to moving to North Carolina, something happened. And that thing that happened was that little sister of mine at 11 years old got pregnant and had a baby. And at 12 years old, I can remember, I didn't even know what pregnant was. I thought she was fat, you know. They told me when her water broke that she was going to have a baby. And I was like, what?
We all jumped in the car and ran her to the hospital, and they put her on this little gurney, and she went through these double doors. And my little sister now is 49 years old, and I haven't seen her since. You know, I miss my sister, you know. I have two other sisters who we weren't raised together. And through this particular program, we've been able to establish and form a relationship. It's been gradual, but still we're forming a relationship.
Back to me. I left that family, and they were going to go to North Carolina, and I was a very, very angry person inside. And before I got to the program, I didn't have any device to be able to control myself. And I knew that if I went to North Carolina, way down in the south, and I'm a black guy from the north, it just ain't going to work. You know, there were certain things I wasn't going to put up with.
Yet I knew there were some consequences to be paid. It was on the news all the time. You know, I was born in the 50s and came up in the 60s. Life was a lot different then. And so because of that particular decision, I had made a friend. I made a friend in school, and he was an Italian kid, and his parents loved him so much. They loved him so much that they said, we will take Ernest. They didn't take me because they loved me or because they cared for me.
They took me because they wanted their son to be happy, and they would do anything for their son. And so once again, here I am in a situation where maybe you can relate to, that I wanted to be loved. I desired love so bad in my life that I could taste it. I knew what it looked like in other people, but I hadn't experienced it. And if I had experienced it, it was very, very brief moments. And maybe those brief moments was when I smiled or I laughed or I forgot what life was happening.
And so they told me something extraordinary. They said, Ernest, we're going to love you just like you're one of our children. I believed that. They said, as a matter of fact, all the money that the government gives us, we don't really need it. We're going to put it to an account, and when you get older, we're going to give it to you. You know, I was a football star. I was a basketball star. I was a track star.
You know, I, like the gentleman who spoke last night, I was a 12-letter man. As a freshman, I played every sport, and sports are what kind of saved me in my early life. When we played football, if you were the best player on the other team, I'd put your name on my helmet, and my job was to try to completely destroy you right in front of your parents, where they'd want to run out on the field and say, oh, my baby, my baby.
You know, you know, you know, you know, you know. And I was very, very serious about inflicting something on that behind of yours. And it didn't matter if you were my teammate. You know, it didn't matter if you were my teammate. You know, they took away the most valuable player trophy from me because I inflicted that on a coach. You know, but nonetheless, I hadn't taken a drink or a drug or anything, but there's certain things that are manifesting.
There's certain behaviors that are manifesting. Anger is manifesting. You see, self is manifesting. And as I'm going through these films, I'm in an Italian film, Now they're drinking Chateaubriand, drinking wine and all these wonderful things and we're sitting down at tables where there's like four sets of forks and three plates and five glasses and not napkins, you know, not paper towels, but napkins, cloth ones, whoa, you
[00:15:04]
know, antipastate forks, little bitty forks, you know, and, you know, and I'm on the upside of life, you know, however, you know, there's no love there, you know, in New Jersey it snows, it snows like hell and it rains like hell, and sometimes the snow and the rain get together and they really mess everything up, and you get this coat of ice on top of the snow, and they told me they love me like they would their own child, and they had me outside building a structure in the snow while everyone else is inside, and I'm trying to convince myself that these people love me, and I don't know if you know what creosote is, but creosote is something they put on the telephone poles that makes it brown so it doesn't rot, you know, and we lived on a ranch, and this ranch had paces and trotters, which are a particular type of racing horse, they're the ones that pull those little bikes behind them, and they put me outside, and it was a hot day, and I'm painting this creosote on, and as I'm painting it on, at the end of the day my skin starts coming off, my skin starts coming off, and now instead of being brown, I'm pink, I'm pink here, I'm pink here, I'm pink everywhere, and they wouldn't take me to the hospital, you know, and because I love them, I didn't insist upon going to the hospital, and I was a very, very, very, very good athlete, and because my foster father, who rarely spoke to me, said, Ernest, why don't you just go to a school nearby, to please him, and that's what I did, because I wanted love. My foster mother was driving a car one day, and I guess she got a little tipsy, and she flipped the car over, got thrown out the back window, and she survived, and still I said to myself, I'll never be like that. As I went to college, I learned something, something that was born within me, and it was, I am the exception to the rule. I can achieve something when no one else could, and I call that today willpower, you know. If we had to run a hundred miles, and the next guy was next to me, I knew that I could run a hundred miles and one more step, just that one more step, and I believed in me with all my heart and in my soul, and I was in-god-damn-vincible. That's all there was to it. Bring it, and I'm taking it, you know, and I had that attitude in work and in play. I got to college. Now, oh, let me back up. There was a beautiful girl, there always is. Her name was Sheila D.. Sheila D. to this day was so fine that my god, you know, she'd make me go back to milk and cookies, make you want to suck your thumb, and Sheila, Sheila, I didn't know what to say to her, and we passed these little notes back and forth, you know, when you're young, do I love you, do you love me? Well, most kids were doing that. I could not put pen to paper. It was just in my mind. It was like, Sheila never knew it, so I found out where Sheila lived, and where I went to school, I was very spread out like it is here, and I found out where Sheila lived, and she lived about 20 miles away, so I got on my trusty 10-speed, and I was hitting it, right, and I found Sheila's house, and I just drove one way past Sheila's, and I kept going back, and my inspiration and my hope was just to be able to see Sheila, look out the window, and say, there's her, and it didn't happen.
You know, I never told Sheila that I loved her, you see, that I was infatuated with her, you know, and therefore, I'm keeping more stuff inside myself. I don't know how to love. I don't know how to be loved. I don't know how to express myself. I'm driven by 100 forms of fear before I even take anything. I'm in college. I'm playing football. I changed the wardrobe up a little bit. I thought that would work. The wardrobe didn't work because my mouth didn't work, you know, and there were all these pretty girls going up and down and all over the place. I didn't know what to say. Shit, Terry wasn't there. He couldn't help me. I didn't have a clue as to what to say. I didn't have a father. I didn't have a brother. I didn't have anybody to give me some information. Today, I look out in this audience and I say to myself, man, I have just tapped into a power greater than myself.
Look at all the love in here today, you know. So anyway, there's a wine. For those of you who have been around for a little while, there's this very expensive wine that was called T.J. Swine, Mellow Days and Easy Nights. Now, T.J. Swine, I don't know if you've heard of him, T.J. Swine was magical. It was magical for a guy like me who was, you know, a 12-letterman in high school and all that stuff. I'm playing college football and all that and I don't even have a girlfriend. Something's wrong with that picture. T.J. Swine straightened it out. So what transpired for me was, you know, T.J. Swine has to be served cold, you
[00:20:01]
know, otherwise you don't want it to lose its bouquet, you know. And I'd say, you know, a good bottle of T.J. Swine probably ran you. Now, mind me, you had to save your money to get something like that. So I'd say it was about $2.40 with tax in New Jersey. $2.40 plus tax, you know. So anyway, I got this T.J. Swine. It's nice and cold. I'm drinking this stuff. I got my pinky out, I think. Yeah, my pinky's out. As I'm drinking it, it's like a little antenna goes out, you know. I have found, as the big book says, that magic elixir because now I'm able to speak French to the women. Parlez-vous Francais, baby. You know, I'm able to speak Italian. My walk has changed and my talk has changed and now I have some confidence. And I'll tell you, it came into play when I was walking. I'm not going to say I was loaded, but I was primed. I was primed. And I was walking through the college campus. I had a little step, you know. I was feeling kind of good. I was picking my feet up like a Clydesdale. I was, you know, feeling good about it. Head was bopping a little bit, kind of to the side, you know, like I had my hand on a stick shift. Yeah. And I saw this girl and her name happened to be Candy. And I said, I believe you want to meet me.
And she said, yes. God damn, that's it. That's it. Sheila, move out of the way. I had found something that worked for me. I had found something that made me believe in me, you know. And TJ Swan did for me what Ernest could not do for himself. However, there's a major problem with TJ Swan. TJ Swan cannot be taken by itself once you become a sophisticated drinker. So let's add a little bit of ganja. So now I'm doing the ganja TJ Swan thing and I'm balancing it out. I'm becoming this mad chemist and my head has got to be right. Because I can't start speaking Russian. You know, I have to speak Italian and French. Okay.
Never studied either language. Right. So what happens is I'm moving right along through college and life is good. Life is good. I'm watching some people do this and do that. And is there anyone here who did acid? Anybody who did speed or methamphetamines? Anybody who did hash? Four-way windowpane? Orange sunshine? Quaaludes? Valiums? Hey, that's what I'm talking about. Welcome to Cocaine Anonymous. That's what I'm talking about. You know, 41 years ago, when I came up to read, our first step says free from cocaine and all other mind altering substances. So I don't have to come here and stick to their traditions. Would say, you know what it says, that little disclaimer. If you have a problem with anything else, we like to talk to you after the meeting, but don't bring that shit up here. You know, and I had a major problem with that. But today I don't because that particular program, which is Alcoholics Anonymous, gave birth to a program called Cocaine Anonymous and it saved our lives today. So my hat goes off to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm drinking T.J. Swann. I'm taking mescaline. Yeah, I left that one out, didn't I? That's right, mescaline, yeah, you know. I'm taking all of this stuff, you know what I mean? And I'm performing. Yes, sirree. Not only this, let me tell you, I have to tell you ladies some of this stuff. I've got to be honest on this program. Some of this stuff was like Viagra, before Viagra came into the market. You know what I mean? It was like, you drink enough wine and whatnot, boy, hey, I'm like a Ferrari. You know what I mean? You know, I'm getting down. I mean, how can you lose with the stuff I use, you know? And so I am the S-H-I-T and I know it. Now, can you imagine that? That sounds like ego to me, doesn't it? That's a major problem with this disease, you know? A legend in my own mind. Legend.
Yes, sirree. That's right. So as life progressed, as life progressed, I had a job. I was working for a terrible company. I owned a business building, in-ground swimming pools, hot tubs, koozie salariums, and I'm playing semi-pro football and I'm full of life and I'm in the fast lane and I'm going down to Atlantic City. Anybody that's been down the Atlantic City Expressway, their speed limit was like 90 miles an hour. It was like the Autobahn.
So in order to be Big Willie, which I am, I got five grand across the front, my partner's got five grand across the back, and we've got a quarter pound of weed about this big and it was 55 bucks and we're rolling. We're rolling. Like that gentleman said last night,
[00:25:01]
see, our stories aren't too different. I had arrived. I got bank and dank. Yes, sirree. And maybe a little bit of crank, you know? Yes, sirree. Life is good. And somewhere in there, somewhere in there that I don't know, I crossed an imaginary line. I crossed an imaginary line. And I don't think I crossed the line into heavy. I think I went straight to chronic. And I didn't know what chronic was. It wasn't what they call it today in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Chronic is lifelong. And before I knew it, I had this lifelong disease and I was hauling ass down the fast lane. Not a care in the world. Bullshit me. Bullshit you. Yes, sirree. I don't have a problem. That money can't fix. Except there's one problem. I don't have any money. I don't have any money and I've lost my honey. Yes, sirree. So moving right along the line is that I've got a job and I'm the guy who's going to the bar and we're cashing our checks in the bar. Some guys cash their checks in the bar. You know what I mean? We cash checks in the bar and I'm home by nine. Doing good for an addict. You know? And then I'm home by ten. What comes after ten? Come on. You know the steps. Eleven. All right. Then I just forget twelve. I'm home by one thirty.
Got to get home before the bar is closed. Can't. Don't have a lie for that one yet. You know? Man, I'm not even making it home. I'm not even making it home. See? And I can see the importance of step nine and the importance of step eight when I make that list of people I had harmed. When I don't come home and they're worried about me. You know? But I'm into myself. Damn. Is that in the big book? Yeah. It's on page sixty-two. Don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody that self is a problem because I didn't know that I didn't know long before I got here. And so life went on and I started doing this and I started lying on top of lies and keeping secrets on top of secrets. And this disease progressed and progressed and progressed and progressed. And I came to California because I guess my wife had gotten a boyfriend.
Damn, I guess I wasn't home. Somebody had to do something. So she got a boyfriend. And I got this bright idea. And the bright idea told me to make them both hold hands and kill their asses. And there's a bridge in Trenton, New Jersey, which is where I'm from. And the bridge says, what Trenton makes, the world takes. And I don't know if you know, there's a wine called Champale. It was a wine called Champale. Well, that was made there on the Delaware River. You know, it was made part from Washington's urine as it came down. Yeah.
Yeah. That's what it's made from, you know, but it gets you loaded, you know. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I went to any lengths. That's right. I went to any lengths. I've drank beer with cigarette butts in the cans and all that stuff. One day I picked up and I know I'm deviating, but it's OK. It's OK. I picked up a bottle of urine. It was, you know what I mean? I know what that shit tastes like. I know what it tastes. It tastes bad. It tastes bad. You know, you know, I mean, we have to go to any lengths when we're doing what we do. You know, I call it being a slave to the grind. You know, we're no matter what. I just got to do something else to make something else happen. I've got to make something happen.
I, I, I, I, I. So, I drank a urine specimen, you know. Didn't have any alcohol content on the bottle. I put it down. I believe, I believe that if I could get a load off that urine, I'd probably drink the rest of it. You know, there were cigarette butts that went down my throat and all that kind of stuff from parties and, you know, and there's all this stuff all over the place and you're looking for something to ingest and there goes a butt.
I knew it was a butt. Tastes nasty. Tastes nasty. A cigarette butt that's been marinated. You know what I mean? Where the fuck the smell's up like that? You know, you know something's wrong, you know? What the hell? You know? So, anyway, I'm progressing this disease. Are you with me? I'm getting bad, you know? And I haven't got the coke yet. Damn. You know? So, anyway, I come out to California and when I get out here, I had to leave. I had to leave.
As a matter of fact, I'll tell you, you know, that inside, in the big book of Alcove synonyms, it says, inside every man, woman, and child lies the fundamental idea of God. So, when I'm contemplating, like, taking them both out, a voice, maybe the voice that told you don't spend your rent money. Remember the voice that told you don't spend your rent you know, that's money for the kids, don't do that. That voice told me to leave.
And that was one of the few times I listened to that voice. So I got on a plane, 40,000 feet, I'm Bob Marley in the bathroom, and I'm in there fanning, I got the fan on,
[00:30:02]
and I'm flushing the toilet, hoping I get the smoke to be sucked in with that high pressure toilet, you know, and people are knocking on the door, I open the door, the smoke comes out, I don't know how I didn't get arrested, I told myself, keep your composure, remember I'm the hundred, the million to one man, keep your composure, I turn around, I go down the aisle, and I'm laughing at everybody, okay, that's not enough, you know, see, I had a disease, a disease told me go back in the bathroom, I went in the bathroom and repeated it over and over again, I think that's the necessity of having step two, you know, came to believe with power greater than ourself can restore us to sanity, it's insane to be doing that, but I'm also under the grace of God, and I don't know it because I didn't get locked up.
So I get here, and I'm caught up in myself. and somewhere in the big book, it speaks about selfishness, self-centered, self-seeking, self-pity, I believe it's in how it works, but I'm not going to tell you, okay, it speaks about that, and woe is me, all this stuff that I've done, but all I can do is blame everything on her, I'm out like jumping Jack Flash, boy, I'm all over the place, jumping around here, jumping around there, and I'm blaming her for everything, I did not have a tool, I didn't have a sponsor, I didn't know how to keep the focus on myself, and all those issues that happen, when I was a child, started coming forward, they started coming forward, like throwing a pebble into a clear lake, now the ripples are starting to come to shore, I went back to New Jersey to see my daughter, and her mother told me she'd meet me at the airport, and she didn't come, so I was at the airport, dressed Californian style, shorts, and I ended up at a shirt with big flowers on or what, but I knew I had some shorts on, it was cold as hell, I got back there in January, the wind's blowing, snot's flowing, and I don't have a jacket, and no one's there to pick me up at the airport, so as life goes on, I call someone, I get to the house, we were married on New Year's Day, and New Year's Day, I knew that if we were going to make it, that we would probably do something on New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve, she was trying to find a way to get out of the house, and I knew in my heart and my soul that that was that, so I went and got a job, I went and got a job, and I came back there, she had told the landlord to not let me in, so now I go all the way back to New Jersey, I'm homeless, it's in the cold, I'm just Californian style, so I got a little job, and working for the Job Corps, so I'm working for the Job Corps, and the Job Corps needs somebody like me, I got skills, so this is how I got to Utah, in 1985, they sent two people from every Job Corps, from every state, to a place called Clearfield, of course I brought my ganja, I brought some wheat out here, I colored one of those trees out, those gold trees, I bring some out here, I'm in Clearfield, I take two drags off, and I'm lost, I'm lost right away, and that's my story about Clearfield, I end up being in a little city called Ogden, and then they got these little bottles about this big, and I'm like damn, and they're telling me something fabulous, like you can bring your own bottle in, hell, in New Jersey we always wanted to bring a bottle in somewhere, they'd kick your ass out if you brought a bottle in somewhere, and here they're saying bring it in, bring it in, bring it in, oh lord have mercy, bring it in, so I bring it in, everybody else goes back to Clearfield, I stay there, I'm getting blasted and what not, and the next day a young lady was nice enough to be able to take me all the way back, she was selling fruit on a little fruit stand, and her and her daughter took me back to Ogden to Clearfield, and this is God working, as life moves on, I get involved with this thing called cocaine, there's no weed on the streets, and this girl I went to college with is at this club, and I'm riding, I mean I got money, property, and prestige, and I'm down low, and I mean the ride is tight, I mean, going on, going on, money, property, and prestige are diverting my ass right now, and so she says to me, Ernest, Ernest, can we get a ride, of course you can get a ride, I've smoked a little bit of dank, and I can speak French and Italian, so what she says to me, she brings her girlfriend with her, her cousin with her, it's always somebody's damn cousin, and so what happens is we end up, she says, well Ernest, can we get some of that, and the crack was sold in these little capsules, and I'm like, damn, that's a lot of money for something that small, so anyway, being the guy who I am, I get some, being the dope addicts they are, they smoke it, I'm like, I'm trying to get in where I fit in, and they got their backs to me throwing shoulder blocks, and they smoke this stuff,
[00:35:03]
I ain't have a clue what I just bought, but what happened to me was, one of the women came over to me and whispered in my ear, and she said something that was a life changing experience, and without having even tried rock cocaine, I went to Harlem, and I brought nine hundred dollars worth of this stuff, and I said, if she said she's going to do that, I'm going to make sure that we never ever run out, so I'm telling you the truth, this is the obsession, not having enough, I've got to make sure, I haven't had any sex in a while, my French is getting a little raggedy, my Italian is off the chart too, so what happens is this right here, as I get involved now, the sex thing is askew, damn, the big book has that in there too, does it have that in there too, yeah, it tells me we need a total overhaul in that area, so what's an overhaul, shit, break it down and rebuild it, brand new, throw all that shit away, right, so anyway, what happens is I get, I'm really caught up now, I am caught up, I'm twisting and loving it, I'm broke, busted and disgusting, and the next time it's going to be different, I hope you can relate to what I'm saying, I'm lying to myself, I mean, I'm spending the rent money in my pocket, and I have good intentions, because that money has gone long before I got it, as a matter of fact, the money was gone ten years, ten years, it was gone, ten years before the money was gone, ten years before I got the money, see, this disease had a grip on me, and they told me it's a progressive illness, I don't know if it progressed in you, but it progressed in me, and I like that gentleman right there, I mean, my knee, the foot, the ankle, the fibula, it was all up my ass, it was all up there, I put my foot up my own behind, and was willing to go to any length to take it further, that's the life that I led, and what we call in the rooms is we call it incomprehensible demoralization, incomprehensible, beyond understanding, and so, therefore, I am in a room with people who comprehend what I'm talking about, I gave myself permission to do some terrible things to myself, and not only that, I had a five-year-old daughter, who someone made me save some money, I flew her out from New Jersey, three thousand miles away, and I built just a little lean-to house, and I was so proud of it, and my disease said, when she was sleeping, Ernest, go to the next town, and it was one of those nights where it was so dark outside, that you could not see, just couldn't see, and she kind of woke up, and you know how the urge is going, the physiological allergy is kicking in, and my stomach is flipping, and I'm like, shit, man, I got to go, and she wakes up, she goes to sleep, she wakes up, she goes to sleep, and I said, you know something, the next time she goes to sleep, I'm out the door, and I was out the door, and I told myself that I'd be right back, that's what I told myself, a five-year-old kid, three thousand miles from home, and I'll be right back, I didn't get back until five o'clock the next afternoon, and I don't know about you, but this particular disease that I have has no feelings, I lose my capacity to have any sort of concern for another human being, and all I could do was say to this child, you know, I'm here, I'm here, that wasn't enough for me to stop, that didn't even move me, she went back home, and her mother didn't allow her to come out for years, my disease progressed, I ended up being in the Bay Area, and I'm staying awake at nighttime, walking on the streets, and I'm looking for jobs in the daytime, and then I go to sleep afternoon in a park somewhere, and then I stay awake at nighttime, I'm homeless, you know, I went from being a very successful man to being homeless, speeding it up a little bit, I went as far as I could go, I called my boss's wife, and I told her that I had lost my soul, and she knew what I was talking about, so she told me to come over to her house, and I went over to her house, and they were into sweats and all this kind of stuff, and they started burning sage and everything, and the house was filled up with sage, and I'm filled up with crack, and I'm looking on the ground for any white thing that I can smoke in her house,
[00:40:00]
and I didn't drop anything in her house, you know, by the way, anybody here ever taste cat litter, that green stuff underneath the sink, sheet rock, anything, go down the street, just like a chicken, you know, that's me, you know, I'm not a businessman, I'm an addict, I go to any length of smoke, any length of smoke, my, as this disease progressed, I kind of knew I was in trouble, but I still kind of bullshitted myself, because I had for so long believed in me, in me, I was familiar to one person, and on the last run that I was on, I remember my boss had turned around, and he had gotten into a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, and we used to ride around the job with the tailgate open, and it was beer and everything, and people would be doing lines while we were on the construction site, and all of a sudden, he's talking this crap about, I got three days, and he's looking like, yeah, no, you guys, I got three days, and he was a white guy that was so red, that was incredible, he was red, he was red, I don't know if his neck was red, but that guy's face was red every time he put a beer in, you could see the little red veins popping out through the red, boy, he was red, and he's talking about AA, and then he comes to work again, he's talking about seven days, I'm like, I'm not even tripping, seven days, what the hell is that, you know, and then, oh, the big one, 30 days, he can't stand himself, he cannot sit, now, he's not red, he's kind of pinkish, right, his eyes are kind of clearing up a little bit, and he's talking a little different, you know, I'm just checking this out, so he kind of tells me where this place is at, you know, he's telling everybody where this place is going to these things called meetings are at, meetings, the hell are those, you know, you know, I'm the million and one man, look at the size of that muscle, you know, so what happened was, I got that dose of incomprehensive demoralization, I knew I was a superb athlete, weighing 205, and now I'm 148, and I'm thinking I'm still 205, and he says, Ernest, you can run across those two lanes of traffic, prove to yourself that you can just man up and go across there, I picked up one foot, and I was like, I couldn't run, I couldn't move, I was disgusted, I was done, and there was the building that he had spoke about, so I walked down this long lane, this long dirt road, and I go into this meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I sit my ass down, and I'm in an all-women's meeting, I don't even know it, and I'm going to tell you where the love is at, because the love is everywhere, I'm a black guy, in an all-women's meeting, in a very nice neighborhood, I don't belong there, an older woman tells me to come here, and she says it with compassion, so I don't feel embarrassed, you know, and she takes me out to her van, and she takes me to another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm sitting in this particular meeting, I'm thirsty as hell, I don't know the coffee's free, now I'm listening to these people talk about all this crap, and I just want to hear, is someone here smoking some dope, so I see this guy, I'm zeroing him, he looks like he's an addict, he looks like he's one of us, as a matter of fact, I know he's one of us, so after the meeting's over, I kind of like, move this way, and move that way, and I'm kind of humble right now, you see, and I ask him, listen, did you ever do crack?
And he says, yeah, and he said something to me, it was from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the guy didn't even have a year, and he says, are you willing to go to any length? Yeah, oh yeah, I'm willing to go to any length, you know, but when an addict says yeah, there's a little asterisk next to that, you know, so yeah, I'm willing to go any length, And if you don't know about an asterisk, it's like saying but.
But means forget everything you just said, and what I'm getting ready to say is what I really mean. So here we are. We're getting inside the vehicle, and he wants to stop at this pay telephone to get to this detox center. And so once again, he says, listen, I'm going to ask you one more time. I said, listen, yeah, but just let me go get my stuff. He said, oh, hell no. Either you're going or you're not.
And he just put it, this is a newcomer talking to me. You know who I am? I'm Ernest, I speak French and Italian, fool. So he takes me to this place. I'm not going through any DTs or delirium tremors, but I'm eating my ass off. So these people know that this guy ain't drunk. So they tell me I got to leave.
[00:45:01]
God is kicking in. I get to a BART station. A BART station is like a train station, a stop. And I asked someone. They gave me directions on how to get to a detox center. And with my several degrees from college, I couldn't figure out how to make a left and a right. I needed help. And with my accounting princes, anyway, I had holes in my pockets. My fingers were going around like this, like two little helicopters in the corners of my pockets, digging holes like I was drilling for oil, and I'm trying to find 10 cents to make a phone call.
I don't have it. a woman comes off the train, she walks past me, and I said, as honest as I could be, ma'am, I need ten cents to make a phone call to see about getting into a detox center, and she told me that she was an Alcoholics Anonymous, and she gave me the money, I had the number written down on paper to call, and I'm calling a gentleman at the location where I have to go, and he tells me, go to Monument Street, Monument Street is like go to that back wall, make a right, and then make a left, I'm good with the right, but the left is off, I do not have the capacity to remember that left, a gentleman comes off the train, I'm asking him, sir, how do I get to Monument Street, I'm trying to get to a detox center, he tells me that he's an Alcoholics Anonymous, and he pulls me to the side like this, he pulls me to the side, so I can see the angle, the adjacent way, and he said, turn right there, I get to that center, and there's people there who are playing dominoes, and biz whiz, and all this stuff, and then there's a group of people over here who are looking in these books, and they're calling all these different treatment centers, and I inquired about this thing called a treatment center, I might want to run one, so what happens is, for some reason, God has kicked in, he already got me here, so he's flowing, except I'm the last one to know he's flowing, God is doing his deal, something tells me to hook up with these people over here, I've already seen dominoes and all that kind of stuff, what's in those big ass binders, and people are calling all over the state of California to get into treatment centers, and they're constantly going checking in, checking in, checking in, to see where they're at on these lists, so I get involved in the list thing, I'm like an addict, I don't get one or two, I get about 20, there are 20 places to go, I don't know where the hell any of these places are at, but I'm going, boy, because they got something over there, so anyway, besides, I'm in pain, my back hurts, my feet hurt, my wallet hurts, my pride hurts, I was going to say my self-esteem hurts, but I didn't have any of that, so I get into the Salvation Army, and the Salvation Army was a program at that particular time that had no 12-step program in it, nor did they really encourage you to go to a 12-step program, you know, it was more like, you know, it was a Methodist thing, and like, you're asked to be to church on Sunday, you know, and then, if you really want to kiss some ass, you join the choir, you know, I ain't had enough of that, I ain't had enough of those bullhorns on the corner, use the word of truth and the light, and all that stuff, I really had, you see, the spiritual malady existed a long time ago, all these different families I was raised in, all these different religions I was raised in, I had not found a God of my understanding, I found a God of, well, hey, there's some stuff on the wall, these are the rules we do here, you know, here's a Hail Mary, boo, boo, boo, boo, you know what I mean, I tried that one, you know, I wasn't too familiar with it, because I came from the gospel, hey, you know, now everybody's sitting down in order, you know, and then I try a little bit of Islam, okay, you know, pray, this way, that way, I ain't feeling it, you know, I ain't feeling it, and then the guy tries to talk to my girlfriend, because they could have more than one wife, oh, we've got a major problem here, Nassar, you know, I can't deal with this, then I go to a different church and whatnot, and my Sunday school teacher calls the police on me and says I tried to break into her house, I'll never be Presbyterian, I got a major problem with God here, I got a major problem with God, because God took me away from my mother and my father, God took me away from my sister, what had God done for me, better yet, what had I done as a kid to deserve all of this, we got a major problem with God, you see my point, spirituality exists, and I don't even know it, and up to this particular point, I'm talking about me, myself, and I, and every day I wake up, me, myself, and I are giving me suggestions, me, myself, and I wake up before I do and then take a vote, all right, what is Ernst going to do today, it's unanimous, Ernst is going to do whatever the hell we tell you to do, and bam, that's it, okay, all right,
[00:50:21]
don't pay your rent, Ernst, it's unanimous, bam, you know what I mean, so what happens is I'm in, yeah, me, myself, and I, they still exist, they're right under the surface as I stand here today, me, myself, and I, boy, they want to put my ankle up there, they want to readjust my colon, you know, so what happens for me, what happens for me is that I eventually get into a treatment center, the Salvation Army and whatnot, and I'm full of rage, and then they don't have any, any 12-step program, so they have these big carts, and they put these carts on scales, and they weigh them, they're called brick and brack carts, and they got like 900 pounds on the scale, and I got a runway, I got a runway that's like 200 feet long, and I get behind this cart, and I'm yelling, bad brakes can't stop, bad brakes can't stop, and I do this all day, every day, if you're in my way, you are run the hell over by 900 pounds of, and so the Salvation Army is run by people, majors, and generals, and colonels, I damn near ran the major over, he dives into the mattress pile, as a consequence, I come in at 9 o'clock when everybody else comes in at 4, they want to tire me out because Ernest's ass is not even going to eat, we're going to put his ass to bed.
Somewhere in line, God's working, they send a person into the room, some H&I stuff, anybody here do H&I? You people came into that place, and you told your story, and I heard some shit that was worse than mine, I said, oh my God, sweet Jesus, they need to put some cuffs on that guy, you know? But the guy that was talking was not the guy, the guy that was telling me the story was not the person sitting in front of me, there's a conflict here, you know, and he's talking about some serenity prayer and all this other kind of stuff, I don't know what he's talking about.
So, moving right along, some people come in, and these people got like 6 months, and I want you to know for the newcomer, when people have 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, they all of a sudden, they're telling these stories, and they say they got 4 months, I'm like, shit, and somehow, me being the egotistical person, my hand went up, and I'm eating, my name is Ernest, and I'm an addict, oh, the pressure, all the lies, all the everything.
It's like air was let out of a balloon, I could breathe. I had told the truth. What a mistake. Happened by accident. Happened totally by accident, I cannot take credit for that. I don't know what made my hand go up in the air. I just wasn't going to be last. You know, we always want to be first. Damn it, I know you want to be first too, I know you want to be first, right? So what happens for me is this, is that they allow 5 people to go to a meeting.
And I go to one of these meetings, and I said something profound. I said, you know something, I feel like I'm in the fog. I never heard that expression before, but it wasn't new. And when everybody clapped, I said, shit, let me run the meeting. You know what I mean? Let me run the meeting, man. You old folks need to get out of the way. Traditions up there, that needs to be changed. Some changes need to be made up in here.
For real, for real, you know what I mean? And I'm the one to do it. That's right, that's right. That's how I felt. All you old timers that were talking all that, smacking all that, let's update this program. These are the 90s. Let's get it rolling right. I never understood that traditions would protect the group from people like myself. To keep a healthy group, so that when a new person came in, that they could get the same chance that I have today.
I didn't know that then. As a matter of fact, I didn't know nothing. All the information I had was worthless. It was worthless. You know what I mean? I had information like, if you run out of Brillo, take an extension cord, take all the copper out, put it on there, put some crack on it, smoke it. That's the kind of information I had. Anybody need that information in a 12-step program? I don't think so.
Then I'm sitting in the room amongst all you wonderful gentle people and whatnot, and something happened. I had to leave that program and whatnot, and I end up going to outside meetings. People talk about plug-in. I'm plugging in, baby. I'm plugging in. I go to this meeting called Trask. Oh, my God. I got white guys with swastikas on the side of their head, boots that look like they should be something on a, some sort of heavy equipment operation.
Heavy equipment operator type thing.
[00:55:01]
Big chains and all this stuff. Spikes around here and around there. Necks, you know, piercings and all this stuff. Oh, shit. All of a sudden, I had been restored to sanity. And I got up. I had 92 days. And the big book said we were people who would not normally mix. And I have to go back there simply because of the fact that those group of people, those bikers, those truckers, those people, they put me in a van and took me to my first convention.
See? See? That was for our group purposes one ultimate authority, loving God, expressing himself. And I had to live that. And all the things that my imagination came up with were not true. And the big book of alcohol is not. This tells me that my imagination has to be fired because it always makes some shit up and it's never good. That's all I know. It's not from God. It's bad stuff. It's bad. It's always bad.
So as I'm progressing down this road, see, I'm rolling. I'm doing good. I got two years. I'm ready to make some changes up in here now. I got the language down. It's a language of the heart. And I got it down. So every newcomer that comes in the room, I buy them the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I tell them to read the first 164 pages. And since I didn't have a sponsor, I didn't read it myself.
But that's what you people said to do. So that's what I do on a regular basis. You mind me? The money's building up. I have nothing to spend money on. I'm not buying dope. I'm going to a meeting every day. Rain, snow, hail, or snow. Ernest Martin must go. I'm going. I got a bright idea. I sponsored myself. I made a lot of sense. And what it told me was this. They told me. See? My mind told me. It said, Ernest, you've been going to meetings for two years.
You need a balance. You need a balance. Made sense to me. I didn't seek counsel. In this program, if you're a part of the we, then we seek counsel. That's why we have sponsors, to seek counsel. That's why we have friends, to seek counsel. And what happened was something devastating. I never knew what a balance was. I put all this money in my pocket, and I went to San Francisco. And I got off, and it dawned on me what a balance was.
It meant that I missed Sheila. Now, I'm not loaded anymore, and I don't know what to do. The only thing that worked for me before, and I looked, and there was, you know, there's parts of town where you say, don't go over there. Well, see, I said to myself, Ernest, do not go over there. And there she was, dressed about that big, about as big as a belt buckle, a big belt buckle. All the way around. I had made a decision to turn my woman over to care of that belt buckle.
And so she never came on this side of the imaginary line. You know, I didn't come on her side. She never came to where I was. And since I didn't know what to say, from when I was a child, all I could do was what I did. And those two years of sobriety went down because I had no tools, because I sought no counsel, because I didn't have a God in my understanding. I had a resentment with God. And therefore, I was marinated.
And I want you to know what marinating is. Marinating is when you go out on Friday, you spend all your money on Friday and Saturday, and you come back to the meeting on Monday, broke, busted, disgusting. And you raise your hand, your thumbs are burnt down to here. That's what it is. And you do that over and over and over and over and over again. That's why step two is necessary. And you do that for about three years.
And the people in the rooms are seeing you. And I had a sponsor. And my sponsor told me he got out of his car as I'm practicing this disease. And you know what he did? He did what the big book says. He showed patience and tolerance. He walked up to me, gave me a hug, and said, we miss you. He got in his car, and he left. And another time, he got out of his car, and he told me there was a chair in the rooms for me.
That's enough to mess your high up. At least, if it's not enough to mess your high up, it's enough to throw your eyes out of focus while you're looking on the ground for something you didn't drop. You see, so there was a gentleman in the rooms that told me he paid a high price for a low life. I didn't fully understand what he meant, but I do now. See, it was never getting high. It was getting low. Where can I go?
That's what it was. I came back in the rooms more dead than alive. My thumbs are burnt down to here. The disease had got me to a point where I turned the torch upside down and it burnt me all the way from here to here. It took off all the black meat and there was white meat there and the heat had cauterized it to a point where there was no blood. I could smell my own self burning. I had two choices.
One was hold the smoke in.
[01:00:01]
The other was blow the smoke out. That's being in the grip of a progressive illness. I come into the rooms, and my thumbs are burnt down to here, and they're cracked and everything. And I'm hopeless, and I'm useless. And that's how I had to be when I got here. I had to be hopeless and useless, and I had to have that despair. And I came in, and my sponsor once again started working with me. Except, I don't know about you, I wasn't used to working with a sponsor, I didn't want to.
This guy would drive up, he would do some book work, I'd be hiding behind the window. When the hell is he going to leave? He'd pull up in the driveway, then he'd back up to the front door. There was no escaping my sponsor. He loved me until I could love myself. My sponsor did something extraordinary for me. He said, Ernest, you know something? He said, I don't mean to take your inventory. Very careful about us alcoholics and addicts, we're sensitive people.
I don't mean to take your inventory, but it seems like, you know, like you just go out a little bit, and then you come back before too much happens. And you do this over and over again, you know? You're a smart addict, he told me. I thought about that. I said, damn. Is it good to be a smart addict? You know? And he said something to me that sticks with me today. He said, I believe you suffer from a lack of faith.
I was like, oh, shit. So now I have another problem. The first time in recovery I have to ask myself a question about this thing called faith, which is required to successfully do the program of recovery. So nobody's looking. I'm a very proud man. I don't speak French or Italian as well anymore. And I'm in my little studio. And I have the big book of alcohols open. I have a dictionary open. I have the Bible open.
And I'm looking at what faith is. There's one problem is I can memorize what it is, but I don't have it. The big book says knowledge is not enough. This is my dilemma right here. I know what it is, but I don't have it. So nobody was looking. I got on my knees. If you people had been there, I couldn't have got on my knees. Nobody was looking. I got on my knees and I said, God, I need faith. I had followed some directions that my sponsor had previously given me.
Most of us, when we get here, we don't pay our bills. I didn't pay my cable bill, telephone bill. No bill. I'm just like, there's nothing. He tells me, Ernest, you make a good living. Get the cable turned on, get the telephone turned on, get the PCD turned on. I owe these people all this money. Turn it on. The big book says you will suddenly realize that God is doing for you what you cannot do for yourself.
See, I need to show me God. Show me. And I was shown. And I knew that it had nothing to do with that. So I'm flicking the cable box and I don't even have a TV and the numbers are flipping and switching. And I'm like, oh, yeah. I go down to my neighbor and she's in recovery and I grab her phone. I plug it in and we got dial tone, you know, and the lights are coming on and everything. I mean, I lived this.
And the big book said this is the way of faith that works. So now we get involved in the steps. And the steps are maybe like some of the newcomers here or some people who've been around for a while. I got this fear of the fourth step. Well, it's required that I come in here that has some problem with fear. You know, that's part of the deal. You know, it comes with me. If I don't have no fear, I don't belong in here.
You know, because the big book tells me I'm driven by a hundred forms of fear. Am I behind what's being driven? I mean, I was being driven, you know, and I didn't know that. I didn't know, but I was always the last one to know. But since I was in with you people, you people knew that I didn't know. So you had some patience with me. And you said incredible things to me when I came to. We said we will love you until you love yourself.
And I knew that everybody in the room as an individual didn't love me, but I knew the group loved me. And the love I was looking for as a child, the love I was looking for a child was present. In this room and many rooms all over the world like it. And I had a major problem with religion. So I came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. The group became my higher power. I trusted the group.
I trusted the people who had been around for a while, who shared the program of recovery, not their opinions. And not only did I that, but I watched what they did. I progressed in the steps. I got to step four. Oh, my God. I'm in major trouble, Nassau. The fear is here. The fear is here. I take a guy outside who's been around for a while. You know what he does? He tells me some of those things he would never tell anybody else.
Through him doing that with me, he gave me hope. And when he gave me that hope and he shared a part of his life with me, I was able to complete my fourth step. I thought I was still a genius. I'm doing an autobiography.
[01:05:00]
There's columns I'm going. I can't figure out. I'm going. I'm writing a story. My sponsor saying, write a list. He said a shopping list. I still couldn't write it. So what do you mean? You know, what do you mean? Did anybody here like that? And I mean, we wrote an autobiography and all that craziness there. You know, that's not what we're supposed to do. So I'm moving right along. I start writing a list.
And when it comes to step five, I'm very, very fearful. And I do my fifth step with him. It takes about six hours. And I'm not sure what I want to tell him about this molestation thing. But my sponsor had gained my trust because I come in here and I don't trust people. He gave my trust through step one, step two, step three, step four. He gave my trust when he got out and he walked up to me and gave me that hug.
He exhibited that patience and tolerance. He gave my trust. He threw me in the back of that little freaking Honda Civic. And I'm squished up like this. You know, and took me to some freaking AA rally somewhere. You know, he gave my trust. So I took a chance and I shared with him about the molestation issue. And he shared with me. Something happened, you know. I'm feeling pretty good about this fourth step.
And all of a sudden, I knew. I knew that I had done what God told me to do. Because my sponsor told me. And he put it to me like this. He said, Ernest, have you done step four? I said, yeah. He said, well, God. Here's what God says. He said, you are going to enter into a contract with God. And God says this. If you made a decision to turn your will and life to the care of God as you understand him.
Then do step four. If you haven't, then you haven't made a decision to turn your will and life over to the care of him. Which means you haven't come to believe the power of bringing self-restraint to your sanity. Which means, where's the guy? You're fucked. That's the deal. That's the deal. So I did it. And I knew I had accomplished something. Because now I have taken an action in the program. I have put pen to paper.
Then it tells me to go home and spend an hour of quiet time by myself. And here's a sentence that just blows me away. And it will continue to blow me. Thanking God from the bottom of my heart. Where is that? How deep is that? How grateful am I? How grateful am I? It speaks about some stuff about being rocketed into a fourth dimension. Because I have never felt like this before. I'm feeling good. We progress through the steps and what not.
Some major things happen. Some idiot in the room asked me to be his sponsor. Oh my God. Once again my hand goes up. Yeah! Oh my God. I called my sponsor and I said… A guy asked me to be his sponsor. He said, what did you do? I said, yeah. He said, take him through the steps. He said, take him through the steps. Did you hear me in the back? Take him through the steps. That's what he told me. Because my sponsor doesn't give me his opinion.
He takes me to the book and he says, here's where it is. Now, if I've been restored to standing, I have a choice. To do it or not to do it. So as I progressed through the steps, some things have happened for me. Some wonderful things have happened to me. That child that I left. When I got a place, I got a two bedroom apartment. One for me. A bedroom for me and one bedroom for her. So when she decided she was ready to go.
When she decided that she was ready to go. To come out to see me. That I didn't have to get ready. That I would be ready. You see. And so I fixed up her room. I brought her new furniture. And I had my little furniture together and what not. And we interacted on the internet. And her mother who was very, very religious. And is still very, very religious and what not. My daughter said, I can't take this shit.
So she ran away. But she had all kinds of email addresses. And my sponsor who she had met. He emailed her. People in the fellowship were emailing her. And all these people she knows because she used to come out. And she knew their faces. And she knew their spirits. And I told her in the email that I was 19 one time too. That I know exactly how it is. So she comes out. And she's now home. The program of recovery is now taking a twist for me.
Because now I have a 19-year-old daughter who's hot to try. My plan is for her to go to culinary arts school. Because that's what she said she wanted to do. Her plan is B-O-Y-S. Boys. Primary purpose. No dad wants his daughter with any boy. What the hell do you need a boy for? You know what I mean? Watch some TV. So anyway. She gets pregnant two weeks later. After she gets out. Two weeks later. You people had taught me so much in this room.
And in order for me to keep it I got to give it away. And by that particular time I had about nine sponsors.
[01:10:00]
And we're meeting all the time. And we're going through the book. And they're teaching me some stuff. Because I'm a forgetter. I guess that's why the book says remember. You know. So what happens is I have a choice. And my sponsor told me that recovery is being able to change in the moment. In this situation. Where I no longer want to crush somebody out. I do what the big book says. I pause. I give God time to come in.
Poof. The situation is totally different. So the way she said to me, dad I got something to tell you. I was like oh no. She tells me what it is. And I go into first person plural. And I say what are we going to do? And from that point on we've had a wonderful relationship. My granddaughter was born out here. I mean she was born in California. And now she's five years old. My daughter has grown up. And before I come up here I called my daughter.
I asked her to pray with me to be able to do the best that I could. She's not even an addict. She doesn't even drink. The shit that came out of her mouth was awesome. It was awesome. And she just felt like it was so special that I would call her and ask her to pray me through this. She wouldn't let me pay for her trip out here. She came out here and she brought my granddaughter with her. For her to see me.
I'm pop pop. I'm pop pop. Not crackle pop, but pop pop, you know. And it came from you. You people did that. How do I ever repay that? How do I ever repay that? Is it possible? Yes it is. The 12th step tells me what to do. How long do I do it for? For as long as I'm black. That's a long time. That's a long time. You know. You know. We're told. The big book says that there's a long period of reconstruction ahead.
And the reason why I share that is because you people share some devastating situations with me. The big book speaks about absurd and tragic things. Absurd is when you turn around and you smoke some angel dust. And you're cutting your lawn with a butcher knife and everybody in the neighborhood looking out their windows and oh my God. Look what I'm doing. Tragic things is when you leave your kid like I did.
And God puts them back in your life. He's still a show me God. I learned something in this program. I learned to practice principles in all my affairs. And the process of practicing principles in all my affairs. One thing happened. I had a choice. I had big God, little problem, or big problem and a little God. I have the choice. The promises have materialized in my life. Something else special happened.
You know. The spirit of sacrifice. The spirit of sacrifice means that I don't trip about it. You know what I mean? It's something that I want to do. It's that altruistic thing they talked about in the doctor's opinion. The giving of oneself. You know. That's what this program is all about. It's about giving. It's not about taking. You know. And this particular committee here has given us. I don't know about you.
But it's given me a wonderful experience. Somebody took me 10,279 feet above sea level to see a lake called Mirror Lake. Off the chain. I got to see something that was 1,000 years old that hadn't changed in 1,000 years. God couldn't work it. I got to see that. Another gentleman. Right here. The little guy with the hat on. You mind if I stand up? You know. Rene. Rene is my sponsee. Rene has read something in every meeting he possibly can.
I love that guy. He gave me the opportunity to give back, and he gives back freely to us. Before I shut my mouth, I would like for the members of One Puff, Two Tough Fellowship with Oakland to please stand up. They drove here. They drove here. They drove here. The red light came on in the van that Greg was driving. Now, when the red light comes on, you're driving through the desert. You've never been through there before.
You all of a sudden start thinking about God a little bit You know To all the people here who are new to the program cocaine and armors. I want to say to you welcome home and That you never ever have to live that way again unless you choose to Because now we have choices One of the most important things that I did without knowing that I did it was I?
[01:15:01]
out of the me and into the we. And if you've got a problem, go to the steps on the wall, any meeting you go to, and it does not say me, myself, and I. And if you ever feel that God told you something, tell on yourself. If it's selfish, if it's for you, God didn't say it. He just didn't say it. Get a sponsor. I'm going to tell you to read the big book, I'm going to tell you to go to any length. I stole my first big book, right now I have it upstairs, it's about 55 pieces, but I still have it, because I couldn't throw it away.
I smoked crack on it, I put Brillo's on it, everything, the book is jacked up. But the print isn't, the part you read isn't, you know. Once again, I'd like to thank the committee here, and can everyone here please stand up and thank the Rockies Committee for all they've done for us. And last but not least, this committee has also selected some dynamic speakers. These guys were off the hook. Can all the speakers and workshop people please stand up, stand up please for us, please.
The principle behind step two is hope. I hope that I've been able to share my experience and my hope with you, and that those of you who are going through trouble and hard times can understand that that's exactly what you're supposed to go through, so that you can freely give of what you've found. Thank you. My name is Ernest, and I'm an addict. Thank you. Thank you.