Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 806 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: johnny-o-palm-springs-ca-convention-speaker-recovery-humor-and-service-ca-2007-archive-806.mp3 Duration: 01:16:07
============================================================
This is a speaker meeting. We suggest that you relate to the feelings being shared so that you may better identify with our stories and relate them to your own feelings and experiences. If you are new to Cocaine Anonymous, we hope that you hear something that makes you feel comfortable enough to come back. And tonight, it is my pleasure to introduce Johnny O. from Studio 7. Hi, my name is Johnny O.. I'm a grateful cocaine addict. Sober today, contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank my higher power, which I choose to call God, for allowing me to wake up this morning. That in itself truly is a blessing. First off, I want to thank the committee for having me out here. It's always an honor and a privilege to be asked to speak at a meeting of Cocaine Anonymous. It's also the highest honor that's been bestowed upon me in Cocaine Anonymous to be here for the 25th anniversary of Cocaine Anonymous.
And I want to thank Dave, Robin, my sponsor Ralph, and I just want to give them a round of applause for putting on a great convention so far. I'm a little nervous, so just bear with me. Cocaine addict is at the beach and a genie appears and says, you got three wishes. Cocaine addict says, OK, for my first wish, I want a bundle of cocaine that every time I take a toot from it, it magically refills and that I can never lose.
Says, that's it? Says, yeah. Says, OK. So, boom, he's got this little vial and it appears and, you know, he takes a little hit off of it and it magically refills. He says, now I can never lose this, right? He said, yeah. He goes, what's your second wish? He says, I want another one just like it. A bunch of sick smokers up in here, man. Who let you all in here, man? Well, people do not laugh at that, you know.
And as one of my spiritual gurus in the program, Shelly Weiss, used to say, you know, the reason we're all here is because we're not all there, you know, so. You know, I brought a car full of people out here. You know, I was always taught that showing up empty handed to a meeting, I might be doing something wrong. You know, and two of those people are our convention virgins, you know, so this is their first time out here.
So welcome, Juliet and Brandon. You know, I hope you guys really, really get something out of this. And I hope everybody that's new here, if this is your first convention, I hope you really find something really powerful here this weekend, you know. And I don't usually wear a jacket and a tie. You know, usually what you say to Johnny, I want a jacket and a tie. So will the defendant please rise? You know, and I share my last name, Johnny O., with you in the spirit of anonymity and the traditions on anonymity.
I'll get more to that later. And that probably doesn't make sense if you're real new. You know, my sobriety date is January 1st, 1997. My sponsor's name is Ralph White, and I've got two home groups. My first home group is down on 155th and Crenshaw. Okay, I had two double shots earlier, so bear with me. I might have to change my date. Thank you. Okay. My first home group is on 155th and Crenshaw, the Never Too Early Workshop with Ralph and Ronnie and Strange.
And we go through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous line for line through the steps, not all the way to 164, to about 103 or the end of working with others, and we do it all over again. It takes us about 18 months or two years to go through there. You know, and I've only been going to this workshop for about two years, and in November of this year, that workshop is going to be celebrating its 20-year anniversary.
You know, so I want to give it up to those guys for…
[00:05:02]
My second home group is at 12355 Moorpark Street in Studio City. It's a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. We've got a few of us here. It's a noon meeting, and as my buddy Alonzo calls it, the no visible means of support meeting. It's a morning meeting for many people there, and a lot of actors, grips, electricians, you know, people in the industry, you know. And I heard, yeah, because there's like 80 people at this meeting, you know, standing room only, and you just look around, and you're like, doesn't anybody have a job here?
And, you know, I heard a birthday cake taker say one time, they said, I used to come to this meeting regularly, and then I got a job, and the whole place… And then one of the greatest lines I've ever heard at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, somebody yelled from the back row, how'd you do it? There's meetings there all day. There's a 9, a 1030, a noon, a 3, you know. I mean, it's, you know, and they're all, you know, they're not as packed as the noon, and I've heard it said that the 9 o'clock is unemployed, the 12 noon is unemployable, and the 3 o'clock, they're totally screwed.
So… See, and I go to meetings there, and I don't get really grateful, because I go to meetings in Studio City, where cats are rolling up with 90 days of sobriety with a brand new Range Rover, going, look, man, the promises are coming true. Nice. Nice. And as my buddy, Kenny Bob, says, you know, I hope your head explodes in a loving and spiritual way. Chances are, you're a cocaine addict. If you got a grip of money, but you find the sleaziest motel room that you can find, proceed to take every piece of furniture, put it up against the door, take that comforter off the bed, put it over the window, lock myself in the bathroom with my dope underneath my tongue, hovered over the toilet, so that when the ninja SWAT team comes rappelling down the roof, I am going to swallow my dope and flush the pipe down the toilet.
You are not going to get me for paraphernalia or possession, you're only going to get me for under the influence. Chances are, you're a cocaine addict. If you swallow your dope and flush your pipe down the toilet because you heard a car door slam four blocks away, might have slightly overreacted. Might have slightly overreacted. Chances are, you're a cocaine addict. If you're in that motel room and you stare at that beam of light underneath the door for like 45 minutes, your heart rate starts coming back down to normal, breathing starts to normalize a little bit, and then I hear a twig snap outside, and there we are right again, you know.
I'm a driver. We got any drivers here? You see any drivers? I'm a driver. I'm a driver. I'm a driver. I'm a driver. I'm a driver. We got any drivers here who used to smoke and drive? You know, we got a few, man. I lived in Hollywood. I lived at 1435 North Curzon, right over by Sunset and Curzon, over by the Guitar Center, man, and I used to drive around Hollywood. The problem with driving around in Hollywood is that even at four in the morning, there's some fool out walking their dog, you know, and I got the lighter rigged, so we got, like, an eight-inch flame on the thing, and, you know, we're getting, like, an infrared signature from spy satellites, you know, just not a good look, you know.
So then I moved up into the San Fernando Valley, driving a little more elbow room up there, made my way up to, like, Santa Clarita.
[00:10:00]
I remember driving. I drove to the top of Mount Wilson, okay, over Pasadena, you know, where all those antennas are up there. I was like, man, if I could get there, I don't know where that is, but if I could navigate up to there, we'd be all right. Got myself some dope, went up in there, man, and hiked down about 10, 15 minutes down, nobody around. Take that first blast, and here come the Apache helicopters, man.
Shotguns cocking, radios, Rin Tin Tin, you know, throwing my stuff everywhere. Like I said, I want to welcome our new friends to the Fellowship of Cocaine Anonymous. This is where I got sober. I wasn't an alcoholic until I had about 18 months of sobriety in Cocaine Anonymous, you know, because drinking just isn't a huge part of my story, not that I'm not an alcoholic, but, you know, it's just not a huge part of my story, so if you're new here, you know, if you're new to cocaine, C-A-A-A-N-A-fucking-A-triple-A-S-A, you know, anything that's got 12 steps attached, I'm probably a candidate, sadly.
You know, I'm a member, in addition to a member of Cocaine Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I also go to Al-Anon every now and then. You know, I'm not really a member over there. I don't really do any steps. I just go in for a little triage after she leaves, you know what I mean? Oh, my life is over, man. I'm going to stay here for three months. All right, I'm better. I'm out. I'm not going to make any Al-Anon jokes, but you do need to know somebody to get in over there.
Member of Debtors Anonymous, too, which I just started at 10 years of sobriety. Man, you want something. You know, I will shout from the rooftop that I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic. I ain't going to tell you that my dough is all screwed up. And when I went in there, they said, Johnny, how much money do you make a month? I don't know. How much money do you spend a month? I have no idea. I got no clarity on my money, and I've gone over there to work on some of those issues.
You know, and then I start to trip out. I start to think about all the 12-step groups that are out there, and then I wonder, you know, the ones that I haven't been to, and I start thinking. I go, Do they got a smoke break at Nicotine Anonymous? Do they serve snacks at a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous? At Marijuana Anonymous, is the snack person called the Munchie Guy, you know? Or is that taboo? You know, do they say, Let us love you until you can love yourself over at Sex and Love Anonymous?
And at Masturbators Anonymous, do they have a greeter? No thanks, man. You get the chin nod. Hey, welcome. And at Procrastinators Anonymous, does the meeting directory read, Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. You know, when I was new to the program at Cocaine Anonymous, wasn't a whole lot funny going on in my life, man, and I really needed the humor here, you know, and I hear people sometimes criticize people that are funny and stuff like this, and you know what?
And I'll get to some serious stuff and some real stuff, but you know what? I really needed to hear the laughter when I came into the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous because I did not think that anything happy was going to be jumping off jumping off anytime soon. And the big book insists that I be happy, joyous, and free here, you know? And if I'm not sober and happy, I'm doing something wrong here, you know?
[00:15:03]
Because I don't know how long I'm going to be sober and miserable before I get a case of the fuckheads and take off and split, because it's your guys' fault and you ain't acting right, you know. And I've been in and out for some time. Like I said, you know, I got ten and a half years of uninterrupted sobriety now, you know. I'm truly grateful I've been at this convention for ten years since I had about eight months or so, you know.
Have I sponsored anybody in the crowd here? I'm not really sure. I know I sponsored Brandon for a little while, but I've got like the Andy Warhol variety of sponsees and they stick around for 15 minutes and then I don't know where they wind up. And I go and do panels. And I saw a guy, I do a panel, a Cocaine Anonymous panel at Wayside Supermax at the 600 block up at NCCF up by Magic Mountain. And I saw my boy Oscar up there, man.
Hadn't seen him in a while. I said, hey, how you doing? You know, in the blue jumpsuit. And I haven't heard from you in a while. So I'm not really sure where any of these guys are. You know, they're on the side of the AA and CA milk carton, you know. Have you seen me? We have digitally aged Johnny O's sponsees. Here's what they did last seen, 1998. Here's what they look like now. You know, and I have a nearly perfect track record in sponsorship.
Just about everybody's gotten loaded. I have my boy, Travis. Travis was shooting some recreational hair on behind the wheel of his pickup truck. Had a minor fender bender with a woman in a brand new Mercedes Benz. They got out. They exchanged information. All that driver's license, insurance, registration, all that stuff. Everything was cool. Got back in the car. At the next traffic light, he rear ends her again.
It gets better. At which time, he flees the scene of the accident. These are my guys. And the What Was I Thinking Award of 2000. Had a sponsee of mine that was on cops in a high-speed pursuit throughout North Hollywood, which is sort of an oxymoron if you've ever been on Lancashire. You know, and he drove back to his mom's house where he was staying. And had about, you know, 37 squad cars, four helicopters.
And, you know, they stick the dog on it. But it was one of those like, oh, if I don't make eye contact, they're not really there. I got one of my guys. It's, he's ready to start his brand new 12-step program called On and On. And hey, Mike, how you doing? Well, let me know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, put the phone down, make some coffee, come back.
Oh, he's still going. A little Energizer Bunny newcomer. A lot of guys declare themselves non-alcoholic, not drug addict. Where's the first place that a person goes who declares himself as a non-alcoholic or a non-drug addict? To the dope spot. You know, I am going to go prove, you know what, I don't, you know what, I really don't think I'm a real smoker. And I'm going to go and prove it to you. Watch.
Normal people do not do that. Just FYI. You know, and like when Bill was trying to get the first few people sober, and he was having a real hard time with it. And he was getting really frustrated. And Lois came to him and said, you know what, you didn't get loaded through all this. You know, I want to create a website for my guys. It's called HowsThatWorkingOut.com, you know. Just send them to the website.
It's got sort of like the 20 questions, you know, whether you're a cocaine addict or not, you know. And if they answer a couple wrong, it's got a little pop-up window that says, well, how's that working out for you? Little hearing tests, you know, maybe my voice saying, I want you to call me every day. I want you to go to a meeting every day.
[00:20:01]
What did he say? Do my own thing, call when I can. My hearing wasn't real good when I came into the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous. You know, I remember, you know, my vision wasn't real good, so I used to call my job and be like, I can't see myself coming into work today. Like I said, I never really drank that much. My old man was, my old man drank a lot. I don't know if he's an alcoholic or not. My parents are 82 and 81 years old.
They've been married for 58 years. They're still married. I was born in Garden City, Long Island, New York. I was raised in a small town in New Jersey called Mahwah, which is about 25 miles northwest of Manhattan. Grew up there from the age of 5 to 24, you know. And if you've never been in New York City, you know, New York's got kind of a little bit of a bad rap of being rude and stuff like that. I love New York, you know.
And went to school in New York, hung out in New York, bought a lot of dope in the park in New York. And if you've never been to New York, just to illustrate a little story for you, there's a tourist walks up to a cab driver in Manhattan and says, excuse me, can you tell me where Central Park is or should I just go fuck myself? Anybody that's been to New York knows exactly what I'm talking about. Like I said, I don't know if my old man's an alcoholic or not.
He drank a whole lot. He came home. He was a rager. Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous has a very radical definition of what it is to be an alcoholic. Heard this from Steve B. It stuck with me, man. At the bottom of page 20, top of 21, I'm paraphrasing, it says there's a certain type of hard drinker who may die a few years before their time, but given a good enough reason, he can stop or moderate. Which tells me, you know, if I got a buddy of mine who's drinking and smoking and tore up and in the hospital and dying from this disease, liver out to here, lips all burnt up from smoking on an antenna, maybe some track marks on his arm.
You know, laying up in the bed, you pull a doctor off the floor and you say, this is my buddy Jim. He's dying from cocaine addiction. What would you call this guy? If he's dying from cocaine abuse, what would you call him? That doctor's going to say, oh, he's an alcoholic. He's an addict. You know, dying from drinking, dying from smoking does not make me an alcoholic or a drug addict. Just makes me a hard user.
You know, one of the greatest definitions, the two definitions that I know of whether I am or whether I'm not, you know, is when I take one, I can no longer determine how many more I'm going to do, how many more I'm going to have, especially the times when I set out just to do a 20. Second part is, despite the necessity or the wish, I can't leave it alone. Stone cold sober, I make a decision to pick it up again.
You know, as Ralph says, you know, we got to those 20 questions, are you an addict? The book's got two, you know. And, you know, when I heard the doctor's opinion, I thought it was just that, an opinion, you know. And I heard that up when I was up in Warm Springs, up at my first treatment center. You know, and then I heard that, you know, I got a physical allergy, session of the mind, I got a spiritual malady as well.
First part of that disease, a physical allergy, I thought I was a smart guy, I've been to college, I thought an allergy meant itchy eyes, runny nose, you know, and abnormal reaction. I take one and I got to have more. Second part of that disease, you know, the obsession of the mind, where crowds out every other thought in me, you know, and trying to explain obsession of the mind, like what Strange says, you know, he's trying to describe the taste of a banana to somebody that's never tasted a banana.
You know, we understand that here. And then the third part is a spiritual malady. If drugs and alcohol were my only problem, if I removed drugs and alcohol from the equation, I should be fine. But I'm not fine. You know, because normal people say, well, you got a problem, why don't you just quit?
[00:25:05]
My problem is staying quit. I know some guys that I'm jealous as a motherfucker, you know, that just that are quitters, man, you know, they quit. They ain't got to come to meetings. But you know what? They also don't have what we have here. You know, and that's a really beautiful thing that we have here. You know, I've got a friend of mine who's allergic to mushrooms, the real mushrooms, not that y'all are sick.
This section right here, especially. Bunch of smokers. She goes into anaphylactic shock. She's got an EpiPen that she carries on her. She has mushrooms. She can die. Throat swell up and stop breathing. We went out to this place, this restaurant called 4 and 20, which is like the great, you know, great stoner restaurant over on Laurel Canyon and Riverside. And and she ordered like this mushroom bacon cheeseburger, but minus the mushrooms.
And it came out to have mushrooms on it. And the way and she said, I can't have mushrooms. I specifically asked for no mushrooms on this burger. And the waiter said, well, just let me take it for you. And I'm going to go take it. I'm going to bring you out a new one. She goes, no, you are going to leave this hamburger here. You are going to go cook me a new one and bring it out here because I'm afraid the chef's just going to scrape the mushrooms off.
And I'm going to die in the back of this shit ass restaurant here with this really bad rug. The chalk outline is going to look horrible, you know, and that's how serious she is about her physical allergy. But I think it's the car I'm driving, the job I'm working, the girl I'm hanging with. My disease will tell me everything other than what it really is. You know, I. Growing up, I was the youngest of six kids.
Oldest was a brother, four sisters in between. Like I said, I'm 40, so I grew up in the 80s with older sisters, man. And they were like, I think I read every issue of Cosmo ever in the 80s. You know, I knew more about heavy flow days and water retention and multiple orgasms than any 15 year old should know, man. And if Cosmo is your favorite magazine, I'm not going to be a little trashy, you know what I mean?
And, you know, and I'm like, man, it's crazy. You know, I. And back in the 70s, you know, I mean, things were different back then. We didn't have any. We didn't wear seatbelts. We had no child seats. You know, I mean, my old man would come home and handle his business, man. We were we were acting up. He'd take his belt off and whack us all around. And I was happy I was the smallest one, you know what I mean?
And duck and cover, you know, and there was no child abuse in 1970, 1971. Handling your business. You couldn't sue your parents. Hi, Larry H. Parker. Yeah. Shit's changed. You know, and that's just handling your business, man, you know, and that's that's all I really remember. And my dad would it was no like, you know, he'd come home raging, drinking. And I just saw the ugly side, man, made a good living, though, man, always provided for us, man.
And I didn't really see that until I got till I got sober and got some clarity. I had a my first girlfriend when I was about 16, 17. You know, that relationship like, oh, baby, I can't live without you. We're breaking up and got the butter knife to, you know, kill me. That relationship didn't go very well, and we went on for like two years. And I remember one one afternoon I was going to we work together at this concession stand.
And that's what you do when you're 17. Yeah. And and we had broken up and the parents intervened. I was going to work anyway. And my sisters are like, oh, no, you ain't going. I'm like, oh, watch me. And we had a little minor physical confrontation there. I wound up going, locking myself in my bedroom and turning the stereo up all the way, cranked to the point where my sister ran downstairs and blew the fuses in the fuse box, called the police on me.
[00:30:04]
And six or seven of Mawa's. finest showed up to pay me a visit, and we proceeded to have a little battle royale in my bedroom, and I left hogtied, screaming profanity, I was doing like my Linda Blair impersonation, you know, on the way out the door, hogtied, going down the stairs, which in and of itself is a bad thing, but my sister just happened to, one of my sisters was having a wedding shower that morning, as guests were arriving, hey, I was going to ask you how your little brother's doing, but he looks pretty shitty, so, get that boy in some leather restraints and then we'll talk, you know. Senior year of high school, 1984, 85, I spent two months in a lockdown psych ward, you know, take your shoelaces, no mirror, they had like one of those metal plates for mirrors, you know, and when I left there, I needed to get high, I had not drank a drop of alcohol or touched anything, 18 years old, late bloomer, when I got out of there, straight laced kid, real shy kid, didn't say a whole lot in high school, you know, never want to repeat high school ever again, you know, I knew like three kids, man, just really awkward, you know what I mean, just like, you know, like just, no, not it, you know, couldn't pay me to go back and do high school all over again, so when I got out of that lockdown psych ward, I contacted the local stoner who lived a couple of streets down, I was like, dude, you got to get me some weed, he was like, Johnny, oh, you, I was like, just shut up and get me some weed. My entrepreneurial spirit kicked in very quickly and realized that we could buy in quantity, divvy it up and make a little bit of dough, go over to Nyack, maybe go into the South Bronx, go over to Tappan Zee, you know, and quickly escalated up to hallucinogens, a little purple micro dot mescaline, anybody remember that? Again, you could buy those for a dollar a piece, sell them for four, seemed like a good idea at the time. Remember being in the South Bronx, getting pulled over by two different police cars, 30 seconds apart, man, you know, so I'm playing in this rock and roll band, we're over at my guitarist's house, his name's Keith, we're hanging out, it's 1985, we're 18 years old, we're watching, we're eating pizza and watching Faces of Death, you know, which is the movie where there's, like, actual killings and stuff, you know, when you're 18, it's, come on, it's, you know, it's the testosterone thing. So, we're over at his house, there's probably six or eight of us, and his dad asks us to pause the movie and go help him with some yard work and move some stuff from the backyard up to the front curb so that the trash men can pick this stuff up. I carried an old garden hose out, and I had a bag of probably 30, 40 hits of mescaline down the front of my shorts, I didn't have any pockets, so as I'm carrying this garden hose up to the front, it rubs up on my shorts and this bag of mescaline falls out onto the front lawn. I don't notice, none of my friends notice. We go back in, we're watching more TV, and the dad comes in and says, about an hour later, he goes, I found a bag of purple little pills on the front lawn. Anybody claim them? Oh, hell no. Nobody gave me up. Like a good pre-drug addict in training, we had a separate stash of mescaline. We all dozed, went over to the drummer's house down the street. About an hour later, we're coming on. Brian Proctor's mother comes and interrupts band practice and says, Keith, whose house we were just at, you need to get home immediately. Your mom is having a bad trip and she's on the way to the hospital and your dog is dying. For reasons yet obscure, she found this bag of 30 pills. I don't know
[00:35:13]
what she did. She ate a handful. Still don't know to this day. Maybe she poured them in the trash. Some spilled out. Dog licked them off the floor. Purebred German Shepherd named Trooper, who everybody loved in the neighborhood, and that dog died. Now, I love dogs. When I came home as a newborn, we had dogs in the house at all times. I'll get to more of that later. Ladies and gentlemen, I am five months into my drug career, have not touched a drop of alcohol. Bill's story, Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a one-line paragraph that says, ominous warning, which I failed to heed. Like I said, man, my hearing wasn't real good when I was 18. Can't tell me anything, you know. Fast forward, the world owed me where it was mine. Like I said, my dad made a good living, man, and I didn't have to work for a whole lot, you know. I left my parents' house at the tender age of 24 years old. Tear in my eye. Moved out to California because my old man had put everybody through school, and the deal was that we were going to pay him back half when we got out and got on our feet. And my old man, all he ever did was stress the importance of an education, education, education. And I remember I was going to Seton Hall University for accounting and transferred to School of Visual Arts to study photography, which went over like a fart in church with my old man. So he pulled the plug on my education, man. I was not eligible for financial aid, you know. Both barrels, moving to California. Got my first resentment, you know. So I move out to California, man, and I'm still not drinking a whole lot. I get introduced in a work situation to cocaine, smoking cocaine. Really crazy story that I usually save for a men's tag, and, you know. And I remember, where do I sign? I am ready to give my soul to cocaine, rock cocaine. Where do I sign? Moved up to Los Angeles to pursue my career in the arts. Like I said, I'm living at Sunset and Curzon. There's a 7-Eleven, a body shop, a Speed Freak house, and then my apartment. And I used to be peeking out the window at this Speed Freak house, and everybody was crazy in there. You could hear everything that went on. And I remember they'd be like, you know, 4 o'clock in the morning. Look out, he's got a knife. I said, she? And I remember thinking, man, those cats are crazy. The hell was that, you know? Slightly on edge. You know, I would buy in increments of $20, you know, and buy in the lie. And then I would walk back. There were about six apartments in this complex. And I'd walk back in at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning. And I was really worried what you thought about me. So I would stop at the 7-Eleven and go buy a Snapple. So that when I walked into the apartment complex, I'd be like, da, man. God damn, am I thirsty. This is my fourth one of the night, man. Because I was convinced everybody was like, oh, I should, you know, just a little bit of self. Wound up, disease is progressive. Wound up selling everything in the place. A buddy of mine turned me on to pawn shops, you know. Place looked like a Grinch who stole Christmas. That's where my bass amp used to be. You can see the little marks in the carpet, you know, from the casters.
That's the dust imprint of where the stereo used to be. Got to go. And again, I went to
[00:40:08]
three different pawn shops throughout Hollywood because I was afraid what this guy would think about me. He might think I had a cocaine problem. Hey, you again? Hey, tenth day in a row. What do you got for me today, you know? And it got worse, you know what I mean? He'd be like, how much you give for me for this, you know, cell phone from 1974, you know? And with a hand crank on the side. Had like a rotary on it, you know what I mean? It was just not. So things got really bad. I was all sucked up, all tore up, man. I was weighing a buck and a quarter. I could do a hula hoop with a Cheerio. I'm about 175 now. Do the math on what a buck and a quarter looks like on me. Called my sister, cried, told her what was going on. You know, and what's up with all these people that are like, well, just, you know, they call up and they're like, just try not to use today, you know? Man.
Wound up my insurance from my job. I got fired from my job. And I remember the day that I got fired, two of my best friends fired me. I was working in a restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Wilshire. Nice place. Two of my best friends fired me because I was stealing money. People would pay cash. I'd delete $20, $40 worth of stuff on there, man. Pocket the dough. Two of my best friends had to fire me. And I remember as I sat in my car in the parking lot on my way home saying, now we can really get high. Ain't got that job I got to show up for, man. So, because, you know, I had been smoking before work, after work, sometimes during work, you know. So I wound up, they had insurance from that job. It only covered a three-day detox. Needed a little more than that. I remember calling a couple places around and I wound up calling Yolanda up at Warm Springs, which I affectionately call Warm Springs Resort and Spa. If you've ever been there, it's a very posh county facility, you know. And Yolanda told me it was a 90-day inpatient program. And I remember thinking to myself, man, that's an awful lot of time. You ain't got like a 28-day? Because I'm busy.
I got a lot on my calendar, man. Don't you know who I think I am? And I was willing enough to go. Last thing left in the apartment was about a 27-inch color television, which was too heavy for me to carry up until that day. Man, we got some real smokers up in here, man. My people. You know, and it's sort of like, you know, when the car flips over and the kids are pinned under and the mom picks the car up. You know, that was like, you know, I'm like, oh, we're going to rehab today, baby. TV's got to go. Through the yellow pages.
Where's the first damn pawn shop that's going to open up, man? And went and got a little bit of dope. And then my friend came and picked me up. And here we are traveling up the fly freeway up towards Magic Mountain. And I'm doing some controlled blasting in the front seat of the car, man. You know, and the problem with that is that the big rigs can see down into the car. Now, I don't know about you all, but you know that LAPD has undercover big rigs, right? Break a one-eye, break a one-eye. I've got Johnny O'Meara marker 3-1-0-3-1-0.
Lay the spike strip. Lay the spike strip. That paranoia, man, you know. I just want to tell you one thing. Don't get high in Griffith Park, okay?
[00:45:01]
It's a gay cruising area. No, I didn't know that when I started getting high. high there, man. Had I known that, it would have been cool. But you know what? I was like, I just knew if everybody was gay trying to pick me up, I'd be all right with that. Not that I'm all right with that, but I'd at least know why everybody was making eye contact with me, like 60 motherfuckers. Because when you're gacked out of your mind the way I'm gacked out of my mind, man, I'm like, that's a CIA, DEA, FBI, LAPD, NSA. Because I got like $60 worth of dope on me. There's like Pablo Escobar, Johnny O. I surrendered to a police helicopter making a U-turn over by the observatory. Middle of the day. I got one of those little bullets, you know, with the powder. This is when I was still doing powder. I'm sorry. You know what I mean? You know, the little bullets, you did a little measured hit. It was good for clubs. But here I am up in the bushes, up in Griffith Park. And this police helicopter, it's the middle of the day, makes a U-turn and starts coming back, man. You know what I mean? Oh, here they come. But I do one of those dope fiend surrenders where I throw the dope as I throw my hands up in the air. I give up.
Police helicopters like over the horizon. And I got to find that dope. There's no other dope on the planet. They seized production that day. We got to find that dope. Half a gram. Four hours looking in the bushes, man. Sun starts going down. That don't stop a smoker like me. Go down to the Rite Aid, down on Sunset, down by CBS. Buy myself the cheapest flashlight I can buy. Boost me some D-cell batteries. And we're going back up into the park, man. We got to find this dope. And when I saw the, you know, I wound up hitting the pipe up in there, too. When I saw the fires in Griffith Park a few months back, I was like, man, it must be a new generation of smokers infiltrated the park. So while I'm up at Warm Springs, you guys came up and did panels. And I heard the message. I heard the message of Cocaine Anonymous. You know, I saw this gleam in your eye and I knew you guys weren't full of shit. And I knew you guys were just not lying to me. And I remember somebody told me when I was new, they said, you know, and this kind of hurt my feelings.
They said, if you're new, you are not important enough for us to be lying to you. Don't they know the newcomer is the most important part of the meeting? And I heard the message, man, you know, and I wound up getting loaded two weeks out of there, man, you know, and I just wasn't done. I don't know how else to describe it. I wasn't done. I wound up going out to Desert Hot Springs, which is right across the freeway from here, probably about seven miles from here. And, you know, Palm Springs and Palm Desert are real nice. Desert Hot Springs is just a shit town, man. It ain't the end of the earth, but you can see it from there. If anybody's from Desert Hot Springs, I apologize, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. White trash town, everybody on the county, everybody, you have to have at least one broken down car in your front yard. But in addition to that, you need to have one major appliance broken down. Dishwasher, refrigerator, stove. It's like there's a war on. Can't we use some scrap metal drive going on here? God damn, we build like aircraft carrier out here and start hanging out with some, I'm up in this dope house hanging out
[00:50:01]
with some gang members that have been thrown out of South Central Los Angeles. I ain't making it up. Who took one look at me and were like, man, who let this guy in, man? This guy's a cop. Patting me down for a while. I'm like, man, I'm just a smoker, man. Relax, man. Finally gained their trust. I'm living in this house with no electricity, boarded up windows, candlelight at night, summer of 1996. My girlfriend Juliette and I went and did a little power walk probably an hour or two hours before this meeting out in this heat. It reminded me of what it was like. Just imagine being on foot, walking through the desert, heart beating out of your chest. It hit 120 degrees that summer. Smoked out.
So I'm living in this house. Problem with hanging out with gang members is there's always a rival gang. Rival gang decided to pay us a visit one early morning. They poured gasoline around the house. They lit the house on fire. There's only one door to get in or out of this dope house. And as everybody proceeded to shuffle out the door, they emptied a clip into the house. I'm having a cocaine coma on the front couch. And I remember having a moment of clarity. Thank you, God, for not allowing me to be one of the first cats out the door. Police and fire department were 300 yards away. Nobody showed up. Borrow a line from Steve B. He said, this is the lifestyle I'm not sure that I can give up. Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous talks about second paragraph of We Agnostics where it says to live a life based on spiritual principles or to die an alcoholic death is not an easy choice for a guy like me. You ask a normal person to play. Like I said, I'm 40. I'll update myself.
Play a little Monty Hall. Let's make a deal behind door number one. We've got a spiritual life behind door number two. You can die an alcoholic, drug addict, death, normal person. I think about my sister Kathy. She's going to say, let's see that alcoholic smoke or death. That's the big liver and lips all burnt up. And my mama won't talk to me no more. I'll take spiritual principles. That's a no brainer for a normal person. But I'm a real smoker. I'm the kind of guy that's going to go. Can I get back to you on that one?
You know, there's an Albert Einstein quote and they use an AA and CA. The definition of insanity is do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I take it to the next level of insanity. You know, in the old timer say, you're going to you're going to get loaded. You better play the tape all the way through. I'm the kind of smoker plays the tape all the way through. Sees me living in the park, getting shot up in a dope house going, well, not bad. They didn't hit anybody. They might have just been sending a message. There's certified mail for messages. You know what I'm saying? So the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department had about all the fun that they could take.
See no problem when you start shooting, everybody starts shooting back and you force the police and Sheriff's Department to take action. And they raided 13 addresses simultaneously on the at the end of August, right around this time of 1996. A lot of people left in a real
[00:55:01]
hurry. Some like this and some like this, you know, and and there's one dope dealer. They had this little dog that they left behind who sat in the front yard of their house and waited for them to come home. And they weren't coming home. And this little dog sat there and go around knocking over trash cans throughout the neighborhood. Started following me around. Like I said, I love dogs. I was raised with dogs, but I'm smoking. I'm busy. Got a lot on my agenda. That's a full time gig, man. You got to go out, get your hustle on. You know, I had a 1987 Nissan Sentra that had about eight minutes of drive time on it, you know. I had blown the head gasket up on that car, man, that don't stop a smoker of my variety.
When I finally got that car fixed, I told the mechanic, I said, I might have I might have cracked the cylinder block or the cylinder head. He goes, man, you melted the block. I've been a mechanic for 12 years. I've never seen nobody melt the block before. You ain't seen nobody smoke like me either, you know. That pride that we got, you know. So this little dog's following me around, this little 31 pound Bassett Terrier mix, man, a hot dog, crazy. These big olears. Starts following me around, man, because I'm on foot now and this dog's on foot. She's just following me, man, you know, and I'm like, man, I can't shake this dog, you know. I remember being on a bicycle. I'm not really sure whose bicycle it was, but I was on a bicycle and I'm riding across town to go to the new dope spot and this dog is chasing me, man. And she's got part terrier, man, you know, that indomitable spirit of a terrier, man. And she's just like, just chasing me, man. I'm like, I like your style, you know. And then I'm over in the park one day and animal control rolls up on me and it says, hey, is that your dog? And I'm like, well, that depends. What'd she do? I mean, if I got to pay fines and shit, I don't know, I ain't going to, says that if that isn't your dog, we're taking that dog and we're taking it to the pound, man.
And it's like I said, it's a white trash town. There's like a zero adoption rate at the animal shelter there, you know, and this dog's going to get put down. And I, at that moment, I said, yeah, that's my dog. And a few weeks later, I named her Vampyra. She looked like a little bat, all black with big ears. Got a little red collar that I boosted from Vons, you know. Start following me around, man. We're both on foot, you know, because when you're homeless, you got to have a dog, right? That's just the rule of being homeless. You go down to the county office, you fill out your homeless paperwork, you know, congratulations, Mr. Olson, you're now officially homeless. Here's your collar and your leash. Go down to window number four and we'll give you your dog. And you know what a dog says to a homeless person, right? This is the longest walk I've ever been on. Are we there yet?
Start going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. They didn't have any Cocaine Anonymous meetings out there, Desert Hot Springs. A woman by the name of Lorraine came up to me. My dog's in heat now. And like I said, we've got a white trash town, so we've got like 17 dogs following me, you know. None of them are fixed, you know. Beautiful woman by the name of Lorraine who had 15 years of sobriety saw me at this noon meeting and she came up to I mean she said, are you new?
What gave it away? That's not exactly a vision for you.
[01:00:01]
She told me about this guy named Herb who ran a no-kill animal shelter about five miles out in a place called Sky Valley in Desert Hot Springs where they didn't put any of the animals down. They let them live out their natural lives if they didn't find a home. She said, he's a sober guy, he takes in newcomers to the program Alcoholics Anonymous and he'll give you a place to stay and a job. Sounded pretty good to me.
My calendar's pretty free here, you know. Introduced me to that guy about two, three nights later, wound out and stayed out at this place called Save a Pet in Desert Hot Springs, California, spent a year out there. Ended up putting nine months together. This time in sobriety, haven't changed my date yet. This woman, Lorraine, took two minutes out of her busy day and she helped somebody that was new to the program Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous.
She changed the course of my life forever. Just one degree on the compass, she changed me, but in one year, five years, ten years, fifteen years, I'm in a whole different spot than I would be. You know, when I had about five, six years of sobriety, I spoke at a meeting in Palm Springs and I invited Lorraine to come and hear me talk, told her she gets a lot of air time from the podium in LA. And I went up to her after that meeting and I said, Lorraine, I said, I got to ask you one question.
If I didn't have that dog that day, would you have said anything to me? She said, absolutely not. I know what God spelled backwards is. I don't know about y'all, but my God doesn't speak to me in thunderous, roaring voices. My God doesn't speak to me in burning bushes, lightning bolts at my feet. My dog, my God, yeah. My God speaks to me. Little stray dogs would say, hey, man, you take care of me, I'll take care of you.
Because I always think I know what's best for me, man. And when I had this little dog around, I'm MFing her the whole way, man. Can't have this little dog around, I'm busy. And God's up there going, man, what an MF. Reminds me of this story, because I always think I know what's best for me, this story of I'm living over in Miracle Mile and 6th and Cochran. Car alarms going off for three days in a row, 20 minutes at a time.
First day, I'm going, you know, but it's not just the car alarm going off, it's like somebody's like, you know, fucking with the chirper, you know, it's like, whoop, whoop, whoop. You know, and I'm like, oh, I work from home, you know, and I'm like, first day, I'm like, man, that's a sick child of God, needs to be prayed for. Second day, I ain't that spiritual, I'm like, shut the F up out the window.
Third day, we're going to box, okay? I'm not like, you know, some big guy or nothing, man, we're going to box. And we have the door open, comes storming outside, it's a 90-year-old woman with the chirper in her hand, who said to me, my car has been getting broken into, I had to buy a car alarm, I don't know how to work it, can you help me? I punched her in the face right there. You guys are sick. No, I didn't.
One more time, man, where God's just up there going, man, what a douchebag, look at him, man. I used to hitchhike around the Coachella Valley, I want to give a shout out to all the gay men that gave me a ride, because there was nobody else picking me up, you know what I mean? It was the summer of 96, it was the gay 90s, and you're either gay or 90.
[01:05:04]
Anybody that spent any amount of time out here knows exactly what I'm talking about. You know, my moment of clarity came, man, at the end of the summer of 1996, in August, and I saw all these little kids running around, little backpacks, man, back to school. And I remember thinking to myself, man, how did you get here from where you came from? The whole world is passing you by. I got 13 nieces and nephews, I ain't got any kids of my own that I know of, you know, and all I could see were the faces of my little nieces and nephews, man, and the whole world passing me by, and I'm smoked out.
I'm at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, they do non-AA related announcements, a gentleman mentions the CALA convention is going to be at the Riviera Hotel starting today, and I had been in the Valley for three months prior to that, and I remember thinking to myself, man, my sponsor Barry and Bob and those guys, man, I wonder if they're going to be there. I love those guys, man, and I came out to this convention, and I paid the 15 bucks or whatever it was in nickels, dimes, and quarters, and I came in here under, just hoping I was going to see somebody, and within five minutes I saw Rico Cruz, one of my counselors at Warm Springs, and I knew I was home.
Ten minutes later I met Barry, Bob, and all these guys from the Valley, and Ricardo, and Lee, and all these guys were out there, man, all the guys that love me. And I felt like, you know, Dorothy waking up in the Wizard of Oz, man. All of these guys that had come and done panels at the Warm Springs when I was up there, man, and you guys were still there. I've been coming to this convention ever since.
I was describing the countdown to my girlfriend Juliet, and I cried twice telling her about the countdown that's going to take place tomorrow night, and what a great event that that was. And what a great event that that is. And what a great event that this whole convention is, and this is the greatest honor for me to be up in here with you guys. You know, went through the work, you know, Clancy talks about the steps are a series of actions that we don't believe in.
We're not asking you to believe in anything here, we're just asking you to do it. You know, the steps work independent of my knowledge or belief. Gravity works the same way. I'm not going to be doing a two-hour workshop on gravity anytime soon, man, but you know what? I know it's working. You know, I'm real busy, real active in HNI, hospitals and institutions. I got four panels a month that I do, two of which are in jail.
Been up to CMC, California Men's Colony, and San Luis Obispo speaking to a room this size, two-thirds of the room convicted murderers, the other two-thirds of the room life sentences. I'm sitting in the on-deck circle ready to go up to deliver a message of hope. I might have to rethink my pitch. Because my pitch consists of when you get out of here in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, comma, these guys are leaving feet first.
And I get really grateful, man, when I get to walk in and out of jail all in the same day. I am the liaison for Cocaine Anonymous Jails for the San Fernando Valley to get cleared. You know, if you want to get cleared on that list, man, please come and see me. It's a really powerful experience. You know, last November, I was back in Mahwah, New Jersey, visiting my parents, and had to make amends for that dog that I had killed and that woman that I had put in the hospital, man.
And what I failed to tell you was that the dad had come looking for me that night that had happened, saying, the line was, I'm in the vending machine business, I know how to break kneecaps, where is he? You know, people watch Sopranos and they see all that stuff in Jersey and they're like, ha, ha, ha. You know, that stuff is for real. And I got to go make an amends there and make this right. This is the one, you know.
And I call Ralph, my sponsor, and the last intelligence that I had on this guy is that he's a raging alcoholic.
[01:10:00]
And I don't know about you, but my resentment only feeds after 21 years. It does not subside. And Ralph said, do not give them any heads up that you're coming. Just show up and knock at the door, man. Tell them you're a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, and you're here to make it right. And I came up and I was blubbering and crying and I told them who I was. They remembered. And they said, you know, just keep doing what you're doing, kid.
And I called Ralph. You know stuff that you've heard a million times before, but it's just like you never heard it before. He says, congratulations, Johnny. You might be the only example of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous he ever gets to read. Powerful. That little dog, you know, hadn't been able to walk for two years. She had arthritis in her neck. She had a little doggy wheelchair, couldn't get around.
He used to carry that dog outside to do her business five times a day, man. 31-pound dog, not a little teacup Yorkie. Had to put that dog down the weekend after Thanksgiving last year, you know. And the program of Cocaine Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous and you guys showed up. And I knew that I just needed to clear up that wreckage, that other dog incident, before I could let my own dog go. You know, if you're new to the program of Cocaine Anonymous, I want you to ask God to show himself to you.
The whole reason they wrote the book is for me, for you to find a power greater, be introduced to a power greater than yourself. Tell you a little story about an ex-girlfriend of mine, Maria. She's a sober member. It was her birthday. She had lost her mom a couple of years before. Never felt any connection with her mom. Kept telling her, keep praying, keep praying, keep praying. She just wasn't feeling it, man.
Her five-year sober birthday was also her natal birthday. Brought a dozen long stem roses that had fallen over in the car and broken. And one of them was just broken and was hanging there. And I showed up to her place with 11 long stem roses and one broken rose. And I noticed this really weird expression come over her face. And I asked her, what's going on? And she says, when I was a little girl, about 10, 11 years old, I drew a bouquet of flowers for my mom.
That was up on the refrigerator for about a year. And in that bouquet of flowers, I broke one of the flowers. Just like this one is broken. And this morning, while I was in the shower, I asked my mom, if you're here with me, can you show me a sign today? Ask God to show himself to you. I want to close with, I told that story at an outdoor sober living house, man. And there was a shooting star that happened behind my head that people told me in the thank you line.
That story keeps kicking my ass. I'm going to tell you a little story. This is a story about the third step that I heard from Steve Border, one of my favorite speakers in AA. I heard him up at Warm Springs. I had about 45 days of sobriety and my head almost exploded when I heard this story. It's about the third step and it goes something like this. Cocaine addict is coming home from work. He's all tore up, man.
He's got something in his hand. He says, what's that? He says, this, this is sobriety. And he says, well, how much does that cost? He says, well, how much you got? He's feeling like, you know, in a little bit of a mood. He goes, how much you got? He goes, I got about $50. He says, for you, sobriety is going to cost you $50. Sobriety is going to cost you your car. He says, if I give you my car, how am I supposed to get to work in the morning?
God says, you got a job. Sobriety is going to cost you your job. And he says, if I give you my job, how am I supposed to pay the mortgage on my house? God says, you have a home. Sobriety is going to cost you your home. He says, where are my wife and my kids supposed to live? He says, you have a family. It says, God, if I give you all those things, what good is my life? God says, exactly. Sobriety is going to cost you your life.
And that dope addict is just at that magic point of willingness, man, where he says, OK. And he gives him his money, his car, his job, his wife, his kids, and his life. And in turn, he's given sobriety. God looks back at him with loving eyes and says, let me give you your money back.
[01:15:03]
It's never your money ever again. It's my money. You're going to spend it for me. I'm going to give you that car back. It's never your car ever again. It's my car. You're going to pick up newcomers with it. Give you that job back. It's never your job ever again. It's my job. Give you that house back. It's not your house. It's my home. Give you that wife and those kids back, but judging by your behavior, they never have to speak to you ever again.
And I'm going to give you that life back. It's never your life ever again. It's my life. And I think that's a deal that every one of us cut with God in the third step. So it's the highest honor for me to be out here. And I love Cocaine Anonymous. Thank you very much.