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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 807 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: johnny-s-spiritual-surrender-and-fellowship-in-cocaine-anonymous-ca-1992-archive-807.mp3 Duration: 00:47:27
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Mr. Blazing… Yeah, my name is Johnny S.. I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic. Hi, Johnny! Hi, everybody. Happy birthday, Craig. Thank you. Thank you. Gosh. I guess for… I'll start off by saying for those people that are listening to this on tape at some other time, that we're all here. It's a beautiful… We're out in the mountains. It's a beautiful sunny day. It's about 95 degrees. We're sitting around a campfire, although it's a little warm.
We're completely naked. Yeah. It's the truth, isn't it? Yeah. All right. We're a very close fellowship. We're men and women who have lost their legs. We don't need them. We have horses. But it's wonderful to be here in particular. This is exquisite. It makes it almost hard to think and talk. It seems talking almost seems pointless when you're sitting here. I mean, just all of us sort of being together.
I heard… I walked by somebody and they were saying how nice it is to be here. I walked by somebody and they were saying how nice everybody was here today. And they are. It was nice sort of wandering up the path. You know, I spent my first five minutes of the ride sitting there agonizing over the fact that I couldn't… You know, I just wanted to be Wild Bill Hiccup or something. Like, take off with this horse.
And I'm sitting back there going, well, you've got to be in a line. You've got to be in a goddamn line, you know. That's right. Yeah. I got a lot of lines all over my face. Anyway. Anyway, nothing. Lots going on in my mind today. Craig told me I should only talk for about an hour and a half. So… Oh, you guys aren't cold, are you? They're going, how about a five minute talk this time, Johnny? Let me look at my watch to give everyone that feeling of security that I'm actually going to stop on time.
Let's see. Utah. Utah. I told someone in Los Angeles that I was coming to Utah. And people have the funniest impressions of Utah. Isn't that true? Maybe it's like… I don't know quite what to make of it. The person that I told I was coming to Utah told me… They said the only thing they knew about Utah was that they had a law on the books that women were not allowed to have sex in the back of ambulances.
And apparently that's the truth. And I asked her, what if she was dead? I only say that to let you know that I'm a sick human being. Who's getting well. Who's getting well. You know, there's a lot of talk in the fellowship about whether we're recovered or we're recovering. I don't do much talking about it, but I always think of… I always think of whenever I hear that, I always think of this ex-girlfriend of mine told me she came home from a meeting once and she said that she had the funniest experience because she had been coming… walking out of the doors of a meeting and she looked down and in the bushes was this man.
And he was just lying there drunk. He couldn't get out of the bushes. He was like, you know, trying to get out, but he was just causing himself more harm than good. And she and another girl walked over and pulled him out of the bushes. And they're laughing, you know, because there's this drunk in the bushes and they're cruel people. And they poked him out of the bushes. And he apparently lived around the corner and he was trying to get home.
And she said, you know, it's too bad we didn't find you an hour and a half earlier. We could have taken you to this meeting we just went to. And this guy goes, meetings, meetings, I went to those meetings. And she's like, she said, really? He said, yeah, I went for a few years. I was sober for a few years. I was clean, I was sober, I was doing great. I was working those steps. She says, really? She said, well, what happened?
And he looked at her and apparently he sobered up for that one moment. And looked at her and said, I thought I had it licked. I thought I had it licked. I've lost a lot of friends in this last couple of years to the disease. I've lost a lot of friends who have died, who have gone out, who have lost everything, who had been sober for a length of time around here.
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The one thing that seems they all had in common was they thought they had it licked. And that's a good thing for me to remember. It's a good thing for me to remember because all that means is I'm living in my head. And I'm believing what my brain tells me instead of my heart. On the way up here, I blew up here sitting next to Mickey. And we go way back and we're old friends. We were yip-yapping about important things, women, and priorities in life.
And he was telling me about this person he knew that had told him, given him a piece of advice that has been sitting in my stomach ever since we talked about it. And I'll tell you why. What it was was this person had told him that when you walk into a room and you look around the room and you see her, or in the lady's case, when you see him, that the best thing you can do, you know, when you know, you see him, you see her, and you know.
You know, you know, those antennas go up. You know, the electricity darts across the room and you just know. And she said the best thing you can do is to turn around and walk out and never go back into that room. You know. And we were laughing about that. But the fact of the matter was it sat wrong for me, you know. And I said, no, you know, because it seemed devoid of something, you know. Because that's not the way I live my life.
I mean, I, you know, whether it's seeing her or seeing it or having a dream or having a passion, you know, I happen to believe that I'm alive and that I'm here for a reason. And I'm a great believer in following my heart. And it doesn't always work out. And a lot of times you end up heartbroken. You know, I talked to someone recently who went to a doctor. And the doctor told this woman that she had to do some certain things in her life because her blood pressure had gone up and she was getting very sick.
And the only thing that had happened in her life was she had broken up in a relationship. And he said, I want you to know something. And that is the expression people die of a broken heart is true. It comes from reality. You can really die of a broken heart. But that's only if you don't do something about it, you know. I guess what I started thinking about from talking that day on the plane with Mickey is the thought about, is that I'm here.
I'm here in Cocaine Anonymous. I'm here sitting in between these beautiful trees on this mountaintop with this fire and these horses. And I'm here. And I'm here feeling connected and wonderful and in love with the people I'm with right now because I've learned through working the 12 steps of Cocaine Anonymous to trust in my intuitive self. And that kind of advice would have been good for me maybe when I got here because I always went by my head.
But I feel as though I've come too far not to trust my heart, not to trust my gut. I had the experience a couple years ago, a year or two ago, to go to the Crow Reservation in Montana to do some speaking. Actually, I went with a friend of mine. We got to spend the weekend in the Wolf Mountains. And it reminded me of all this. What happened was this. After spending the weekend with these kids, and these kids were great.
They were just really tough. And they were up there because they'd been sniffing too much whiteout and gasoline. And when they could all put their money together, they'd get some cocaine. But they were really stoic, really stoic, until you sort of get them alone in the forest there. And they'd start telling me stories. It was a wonderful experience because I got to shut up for a while and listen. And after this weekend, the men that put on this weekend took my friend and I and said that they wanted to take us to a sweat ceremony.
And we said, great, that sounds terrific. Now, I didn't know what a sweat ceremony was. But I didn't want them to know I didn't know what a sweat ceremony was because that's my nature. That's old thinking on my part. Somebody said, hey, you want to take one of these, Johnny? You just chop it up and you stick it up your nose. I go, sure. I've never seen that thing before. And as you're doing it, you're going, will I be going up, down, sideways?
Well, that's how I felt about this sweat ceremony because I got there.
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And I got behind this man's house. And what it was was there was this little domed room, right, with the blankets and skins covering it and a little doorway and a dirt floor and a hole in the middle. And in front of this domed room was this raging fire, which I wish we had right now because I'm freezing my ass off. And in the middle of this big raging fire were these lava rocks. And I'm sitting there and it was hot there.
As opposed to here. And I just want to think about these lava rocks for a while. Should have brought some, put them in my pockets. And what they told me we were going to do was the four of us were going to get naked and we were going to put these lava rocks in the hole in the domed room. And then they told us we were going to go out and get these chokecherry branches and tie a rope around them so we had a nice stalk of chokecherry branches.
And we were going to beat ourselves with them in this room where we'd pour water over. It was like, I'm claustrophobic. I'm claustrophobic to begin with. I mean, I had to have an aisle seat on the plane with Mickey today. And, you know, I start to pant. And the idea of the four of us going in this little, you know, domed room, getting naked, beating ourselves with chokecherry bushes was not really appealing to me.
So immediately I started to make jokes and, you know, try and figure out if I could change my mind without losing face. And then they started making fun of me. So I knew I couldn't do that. But finally I was resolved to going in and everything was going to be OK. I made that decision. Just when I made that decision, we were about to go in, six more guys show up. And all of a sudden I'm in this little domed room with ten naked guys I don't know.
And I'm beginning to panic. I don't like it. I'm feeling uncomfortable. I want to get the hell out of there. Right? But what happens is they start to do the ceremony. And the first thing they did was they reached down and got some water. And they started to pass the water around. And I took a sip and passed it on. And everyone took a sip of this water. Thank you. And then we blessed the water. And then we all reached down and touched the earth.
And we blessed the earth. And as we were doing this, I started to realize, OK, I know this. I'm getting into the moment. I'm getting into the here and now. And then we blessed the air. You know, because it's so, you know, you forget. If you don't, if you can't breathe, you can't breathe. You know, if there's no water, you die. If there's no air, at least we wouldn't freeze to death. But there's no air.
Just as I started to feel a little better about this thing, the guy said, what he said was this. And now we're going to be grateful for the pain and discomfort we're about to experience. And I go, excuse me, pain. And as I said that, the flap went down. It's pitch dark. I'm in this tight little room with these naked guys. I'm going, what kind of pain are we talking about? The guy starts pouring this water on these rocks.
Now, I've been in steam rooms before. It didn't bother me. So that I felt that the flesh was going to peel off of my bones. In about two minutes, I was in so much pain, I couldn't believe it. And all of a sudden, the guys around me start beating themselves with choke cherry bushes, which heats up the thing more, but pushes the air to the guy that's not beating himself, which is me. So it's all coming at me.
I feel like I'm Johnny Furnace here. And I'm beginning to panic. I'm beginning to hit this wall. I'm beginning to freak out. And I'm thinking, I got to get out of here. But all of a sudden, I don't know where the door is. I can't see. I know if I start to jar for the door, I'm going to fall in the hole with the goddamn lava rocks and burn off something that I might need later. And these guys, all of a sudden, and I can't breathe.
The oxygen has been taken up by the heat. And I'm trying to breathe. I'm panicking. I feel like I'm going to die. It really was a horrible thing. Then they say, if you can't breathe, lie on your stomach, and on the bottom two inches of the room is air, and I'm thinking, I'm going to lie on my stomach in a room full of ten naked guys I don't know, who are beating themselves with chokecherry bushes.
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I said, I've said that to people before, but I've never been told that, and, sick bunch. I start to really freak out, I start to really freak out, and what happens is I realize there's nowhere to go, there's nothing to do, and I feel like I'm going to explode, I wanted to cry, I wanted to cry in there, I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, they were all chanting, and I didn't know what to do, and I just hit this wall of fear, this wall of anxiety, this wall of rage, all at once, and all of a sudden I think, I can't, I don't know their chants, I don't know their prayers, and all of a sudden I started to say the serenity prayer, and I started to go, God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the curse to change the things I can, God grant me serenity, and I start to say this over and over, and all of a sudden it occurs to me that I have to make a decision, and what I have to make a decision is this, I have to make a decision to trust in God, to trust in this intuitive voice that I've been given as a result of the work in the 12 steps of Cocaine Anonymous, I have to trust in that completely, I have to abandon myself completely to that, at this moment where I feel that everything is lost, the other decision I had to make was I had to make a decision to trust in these 10 strangers, these 9 strangers, I had to trust in these men that they had brought me here not to harm me, but that they had brought me here to take me on a journey, so that I would experience something that had never occurred to me before, that I would experience something that I needed to experience, that I would get closer to this voice within me, and I sat there and I made those two decisions, and all of a sudden I found that I could breathe again, all of a sudden I started taking deeper and deeper breaths, all of a sudden I realized that it wasn't quite as hot as I thought it had been, that my skin wasn't peeling away, all of a sudden I found myself sitting back up and beating myself with these choked cherry brushes, I started to beat myself, but in a fashion where I felt as though I was healing, something that needed healing within myself, whatever it was, whether it was my fear, whether it was my anxiety, whether it was my choice, whether it was my childhood, whether it was my adulthood, whether it was the harm I had done and the harm that had been done to me, I was beating it, and I felt good, and I felt connected, and just as I felt most connected, the flap flew up, and cool air came rushing in, and a bunch of these guys that had done it a number of times, like went tearing out, tearing out, you know, because they had obviously hit their own walls, my friend who I had gone up there with, who was making fun of me, frankly, before we went in there, he tore out so fast he got rug burns on his knees from the carpet right outside the dome, made fun of him for about a month, but in a spiritual way, I stayed in there, I didn't leave, I stayed in, and about two or three of the other guys who had been there before stayed in, and we all sort of looked at each other, and I saw them look at each other in reference to me, and I knew what they were thinking, because I knew I had been there, and what I thought about at that moment was you guys. I thought about being new. I thought about how I felt when I first got here, when I was this lost, angry, scared young man who had been doing drugs and drinking since he was 12 years old, 14 years old, who had attempted suicide four times. One time I had taken 45 Nembutal and was in a coma for four days because I knew life was never going to get any better. The guy who burned down his house because he was too drunk and too fucked up to throw paper in the garbage instead of sticking it up the fireplace while he was being told he was going to burn down the house. The guy who used to have relationships that turned violent in about a week because he cared so much. The guy who used to take letter openers and dig into his arms to see if he could bleed to see if he was alive. The guy who would get in motorcycle accidents. The guy who would run away whenever pain came around. He came to these meetings, and he felt scared, and I felt lost, and I felt like there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and I came here, and you guys said, take a cup of coffee. We have the blessing of the coffee here instead of the water. I said, take a seat in a meeting. We've got a little group of meetings instead of a domed room. I said, say the serenity prayer when you feel lost instead of the Indian chants. I came here, and you guys told me that all I had to do was surrender. All I
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had to do was give up all my old ideas, and I'd be able to breathe again. I thought of you guys when I was in this domed room. That's what my experience was coming to this program. Now I heard somebody talking before the meeting about how she slips every 90 days and comes back and slips every 90 days. When I was new, that was my experience too. I was a newcomer who came. Let me put it this way. After being around this program for a year, I heard them read Chapter 5. I heard them read Chapter 5 at this meeting, and it used to drive me crazy because it was like, it was Chapter 5, Chapter 5, Chapter 5. I used to think, what's the matter with Chapter 8? Chapter 3 for a change. I always want originality.
No structure. Just give me something original. I realized why they read Chapter 5 all the time in Southern California. It was so that one day I would listen to it, and that day I listened to it, and I heard them say that half measures availed us nothing. That's all I'd ever done. Heard them say that the result was nil until you let go absolutely. I'd never let go absolutely. I had all these deals, had these deals with sobriety. I'd stay sober as long as my dog didn't die, as long as my marriage worked out, you know? Had all these deals. And they said, if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. I had never been willing to go to any length for anything. And sitting there on that day, I realized that there were two kinds of members here. There were the players, and there were the fans. And the players were the ones that set up the chairs. They're the ones that make the coffee. They're the ones that greet you at the meeting. They're the ones that give you their phone numbers. They take you to meetings. They listen to newcomers say the same stuff over and over and over again with passion. They're the ones that work all 12 steps of Cocaine Anonymous. Then there are the fans. They're the ones that come to a meeting. They take a chair. They take a cup of coffee. They take some literature, but they don't read it. And they work the first three steps and stop. Or they work the first step and the 12th step and stop. I was a fan. I was coming around here, and I was a total fan. And I made a decision that day that I was going to die. I was not going to make it around here. That I had not seen the light come out of my eyes that I'd seen come on in your eyes when you've been working this stuff, when you've been doing this stuff. And I made a decision that day to sort of do this stuff. And I became committed to working the steps, and I became committed to being of service. And I stuck around for a while, and I stuck around in another 12-step program for about six months. And after six months, I was working the steps, but I still didn't feel connected. You know what I mean? I didn't feel as though I had planted myself. But that didn't surprise me because I'd never planted myself anywhere, you know, because I was so busy trying to see what everyone was going to do for me that I never took the time to see what I could bring to anything. That concept had never occurred to me. And what happened was this. I went to a meeting, and it was an AA meeting where they were going to talk about cocaine. They were going to talk about drug addiction. They were going to talk about snorting lint out of a carpet. They were going to talk about putting blankets up over window shades. They were going to talk about, you know, knowing that the police were all around you, even though you were in the middle of the forest somewhere, even though you were in the middle of a, you know, you could be in prison. Anyway, that's what that meeting was going to be about. And we got together, and it was really exciting. It was a great meeting. It was all these drug addicts, and it was like this underground hush-hush kind of meeting. And at the end of the meeting, they decided to take a vote. And the vote was going to be whether to call this meeting a new program and call it Cocaine Anonymous.
And at the end of the meeting, they took the vote, and they voted it down. They said, no, this is an AA meeting, and we're not affiliated with anything else, and AA is AA, and they were right to do it, even though I voted wrong. But it was a secret ballot, so don't tell anybody. But after the meeting, a bunch of us got together and said, okay, this is Tuesday night. What are you all doing Thursday night? And Thursday night, everybody got together in the same room, same bunch of people, girl named Veronica, sat at the table, took the ballot, hit the table, said, hello, my name is Veronica. I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic.
Welcome to the first Cocaine Anonymous meeting. Cocaine Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other. They may solve their common problem and help others to recover from addiction. You could hear a pin drop. Somehow, I knew that I was home. I knew that I had something that I could bring something back to. See, I had six months sobriety already. I was an old timer. I had all the answers.
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People would come to me and say, Johnny, how do you work the fourth and fifth step? And I'd say, well, you know, I don't really think you're ready to work the fourth and fifth step. I said, let me get back to you on that. And I go and find out how to work the fourth and fifth step. I do it quickly. Then I go back to him and say, here's how you do it. Here's what you do. And I take him through it. And what was interesting to me, what I learned really quickly was when I did my fourth and fifth step, I didn't get that thing. I always wanted steps to be like a Valium. You take a Valium, 20 minutes later, you get that feeling, that thing. Or Quaalude, 20 minutes later, you're in love. I always wanted the steps to be that way. It didn't work that way for me. But what I found was when I was working it with this guy, and when he did it, and I saw his joy, I got that thing. It just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I got that feeling, that feeling of connectedness, you know? The feeling I have right now. I think there's an animal back there.
A little, ah, a little rodent. How nice. How spiritual. Let's stomp on it. When CA was about a year old, we had about 23 meetings or something like that. We were having a lot of difficulty trying to figure out how to, how to, how to get it organized. You know, how to get the literature done, how to work the steps, you know, how to do everything. Because we would always argue. And so what we decided to do was to do something like this. We decided to go up into this retreat, this Benedictine monastery. All the representatives from all the meetings went up for this weekend, this Benedictine monastery. And it was a very interesting, because everyone was fairly new, so it was 23 recovering people bouncing off the walls, trying to work out literature and chips and things like that. But what happens, like what would happen with this, is even though right now we're cold, I mean, you know, we all had the sugar from the pancake mix, so most of us are going to be getting depressed in about five or six minutes when we come down from the pancake syrup. You know, even though there's all this stuff going on, it's probably going to snow on us any minute, somehow we're never going to forget this. Somehow we're always going to have this in common for some reason.
Probably if it had been a sunny day, it wouldn't have been as memorable. But because if it had been a sunny day, we wouldn't all have to be as close as we are right now, would we? You know, we're all keeping each other warm here. And that was the case there. It was so much conflict and so much confusion that there was something so powerful about it. By the end of the weekend, we were all together and we were all having a meeting, just like this meeting, but it was in the graveyard overlooking the Benedictine Monastery in the high desert in California. And the sun was coming down and it was a beautiful day.
It was just gorgeous. And they had a little statue and the sun was shooting its rays through the statue and they were just shooting out from there. And it was exquisite and it was a sharing meeting. We're all taking our turns and everyone was sharing their gratitude and their love. And this is a group of people who, you know, we're such a funny group. We sit here and we talk about gratitude and we talk about love. We're people who have murdered people, raped people. We've been raped. We've been molested.
We've been beaten. We've been ignored. We've been hurt. We've hurt people. We've lived painful, vicious lives. And I've never met so many kind, loving people in my life as I've met here. And that's what I felt that late afternoon in this meeting. And we were just so connected. And there was such a purpose that we all experienced together. And my friend Lionel, this guy I had driven up, he was a new friend of mine. And I had driven up with him in his car and he still had some of the money left from the old days. And so he was driving a Rolls Royce, which is now long gone.
And he had all these coats. He'd keep all these coats because when he'd drive people to the beach and stuff, they'd all have them. Anyway, he went down to his car and he got a whole slew of coats and he handed them out to people. And he was very new, actually. And he put on one of the coats that he always wore. And just when this girl, this girl Pia, who was around in the beach, she was sharing this really sensitive, heartfelt thing, this very personal, heartfelt thing. And we were all listening. We were all feeling very connected.
And all of a sudden Lionel reached into his pocket. And all we heard was him say, oh, no. And he pulls out this giant bag of cocaine. And nobody knew what to do. There's the whole service structure of cocaine anonymous could have been wiped out in a flash Everybody was sitting there staring at this bag. Somebody suggested we take a group conscience Someone suggested that we sell it maybe the monks would like it
[00:30:03]
It was it was you could you could hear a pin drop No one knew what to do with this thing So we started to discuss it because we were the service organization. We had to discuss everything into the Ground, And Just When Everyone Was Discussing It, A Big Breeze Came Up, This, This Sun Was Like, Just Going Down, Red Was Shooting Through the Sky, and Lionel Turned Around, Grabbed the Bottom of the Bag, and Started Waving the Bag, and All of a Sudden This White Powder, Went Flying, Flying Through the Air, All Over This Cactus, All Over the Desert, and Everyone Got Quiet, and Everyone Got Sort of Weepy, and It Was Like We Were All Sitting There, and It Was Like We Were All Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend, Individually, Many of us might have gotten screwed that day, as a group, we were so powerful, as a group we were so united, as a group, it was a surrender, the greatest gift I've ever been given here, in Cocaine Anonymous, is the gift of surrender, as I stayed sober longer, as I worked the steps, I started to understand, why I didn't believe in any of this God stuff, never occurred to me, the reason I didn't believe in it, is because I could never feel it, I could never experience it, all I ever had was this brain of mine, brains like a computer, I'm told, a computer works by, you stick information into a computer, and if you want an answer, you go to the computer, ask it a question, and based on the computer, put into the, based on the information put into the computer, it gives you an answer, the heart's a different thing, this computer always gave me the wrong answer, I couldn't hear my heart, I couldn't hear my intuitive self, I couldn't hear my God consciousness, because it was blocked, it was blocked with resentment, it was blocked with lies, it was blocked with sex stuff, it was blocked with the wreckage of my past, it was blocked with my life, my entire life was nothing more than a blockage, so that I would never have to experience who I am, what I am, what I really am in my heart, as I started to work the steps, Cocaine Anonymous, I started to experience, it was like a spiritual Roto-Rooter program, you know, a cleansing of the heart, and all of a sudden, I started to hear that voice, I'd be fighting with my then wife, and I'd be screaming at her, you don't know anything, you're an idiot, you, you, you, you, you, you're absolutely right, and I'm sorry, and I'd be like, who said that, what is that about, I didn't realize that was a spiritual awakening, I thought spiritual awakenings was when the sky opens up and a hand comes through or something, you know, I thought, I get spiritual awakenings in LSD mixed up all the time, I didn't realize that apologizing, when I don't want to apologize, is a spiritual experience, I didn't realize that telling the truth, when I don't want to tell the truth, is a spiritual experience, I didn't realize that doing something nice for somebody, and then not telling anyone about it, is a spiritual experience, but I started to do these things, and I started to experience a freedom, because all of a sudden, I started to like being alive, my obsession with suicide, suicide was always my way out, I always felt a certain freedom from suicide, because it was my friend, when all else failed, I could always die, it disappeared, all of a sudden, that seemed insane, I'd sit there and I'd go, that's crazy, some newcomer would go, I feel like killing myself, and I'd go, what for, and I'd go, I'm saying what for, that's my best friend he's talking about, it's a spiritual experience, not wanting to die, wanting to do these things, I started to want to do the things I was only doing because you told me to do them, but I would do things because you told me to do them, because somehow, I got this light that went on, that told me, Johnny, you're insane, you're insane, and you have to take these people's word for it, you have to trust that these people are here to take you on a journey that you've never been on, you've got to trust somebody sometime, and this is your time, because all else has failed, I experienced something, I heard about resentments, and I would talk to people, I started sponsoring people, and people would call me up, and they'd have these little petty, piss-ant resentments against people, and I would sit back on my high horse, and I would tell them, let's look at the book, and let's wish these people well, and pray for them, and do all this stuff, and it was so easy for me, so easy, and I was so cocky, and then one day, I had given
[00:35:00]
a dog, my dog, Sweet Pea, to a friend, I couldn't keep this one dog, because of circumstances in my life, and I took about a year to find a house for Sweet Pea, Sweet Pea was a dog that I found during a thunderstorm on the San Diego freeway, running down the middle of the freeway, and I had to stop in the fast lane of the San Diego freeway during a thunderstorm, and I opened the door, and this dog, like, jumped into the, it was like, if she doesn't come in, she's a dead dog, there's nothing more I can do about it, and this dog jumped in, flew over me, laid down in the seat next to me, and put her little head on my lap, this was Sweet Pea, she was lovely, and I found a home for her with a friend, who had another dog that she took great care of, and had a big yard, and really, just seemed like the perfect home, I saw this friend a few months later, and I asked how Sweet Pea was, and my friend said, oh, Sweet Pea, well, Sweet Pea had been digging up my lawn, and wasn't really getting along with the other dog very well, so I took her to the ASPCA, I said, you what? So I took her to the ASPCA, I said, what do they do? She says, well, they find a home for her, I said, what if they can't find a home? She says, I don't know, I guess they put her to sleep, I couldn't believe this, I just freaked out, I ran to my phone, I ran to the phone, I called the ASPCA, because I wanted to run down there and pick up Sweet Pea, I called them up, and they look up her file, and they come back to the phone, and they say, I'm sorry, Mr. S., but Sweet Pea was brought in by the people you said brought her in, but they were told we don't look for homes for dogs over the age of five, and Sweet Pea was six, and so we told them to take the dog back and find a home for her, otherwise if they sign the paper and give us a donation, we'd put her to sleep, and they signed the paper and gave us a donation, so I'm sorry your dog's dead, and I saw red, I just saw red, I saw revenge, I saw violence, and I ran back to the table to find this girl, I was gonna kill her, I was sober for a few years, and I was gonna kill her, you don't do that to a dog, and I went nuts, she had the sense to leave, before I got back, I drove around for a while trying to find her car, finally I drove home, I started hitting walls, I started just crying, screaming, finally, I was so insane, I called my sponsor, and I told him what happened, and I told him what I was gonna do to this girl, I had worked out these inordinate plans to seek revenge on this person, and he starts to tell me about what it says in the big book, he starts to give me the same talk, See, everyone's trying to fix the tape recorder now, right? Sorry, I'm only screwing with you, only screwing with you, we're not really naked, the girls are wearing boots, I had to listen to him tell me the same advice I had given to so many people, I had to listen to him tell me that I had to pray for this person, that I had to see how I could be of service, that I had to, he told me that he wanted me, he wanted me to call her up, let her know that I couldn't work with her anymore, because we were of different minds, but that I wished her well, I told him to screw off, I told him no way, I was crying, I said no way, I wanted to hang up on him, I thought, forget this advice, forget that I've given it, I don't care, I'm not going to do it, this is bullshit, this is different, she killed my dog, and I finally hung up on the guy and I said no way, sorry Howard, I can't do it, and I hung up the phone with him and I picked up the phone to try and track her down, and I picked it up and I called her up and she answered the phone, and I'm crying and I found myself saying to her, I want you to know that I can't work with you anymore, but I want you to know that somehow I'm going to understand this thing one day, and that I wish you well, and that I hope you get everything you need for yourself, and I really mean that in my heart, and I couldn't talk anymore because I was crying, and I hung up the phone, and all of a sudden I understood what I'd been doing all these years, all of a sudden I understood
[00:40:03]
I had gone insane, I had gone insane in sobriety, and that my sobriety was completely a jeopardy, and all of a sudden the red had gone, I still felt the sadness, I still felt the remorse, I still felt the anger, but I didn't feel the resentment, I didn't feel the insanity, I no longer needed vengeance, you see I'd worked these twelve steps, and I'd had a spirit of awakening as a result of these steps, so I had a place I could go back to, and that's my heart, I have this intuitive voice that I trust, that doesn't always keep me away from hurting, I thought that's what this was about originally, to keep away from hurting, I've had a hurtful year this year, this year has been in many ways very painful for me, a lot of things have not gone my way, in relationships, in work, in finances, in a lot of ways, things have not gone my way, but I've never lost the trust in that voice, I've never lost the belief in that voice, I don't believe that things have to go my way, I believe that when I see her across the room, when I see it, when I have a dream, I got sober to feel passion, to experience my dreams, to be willing to risk everything, and when you risk everything, sometimes you lose, and it hurts, and I have to be willing to risk hurt, that's surrender too, I have to be willing to risk bleeding a little in the heart, I just can't hold on to it too long, my sponsor said to me once, he said, my sponsor sounds like Elmer Fudd, he's this old guy, everything I never thought I'd find in a sponsor was this guy, and he's been this magnificent angel sent to me, and he once said to me, he said, Danny, he said, sometimes when you're floating on the sea of life, he said, life will throw you a cinder block, he said, I suggest you don't hold on to it too long, sometimes I want to hold on to it, sometimes I don't, the thing that was most profound that I learned this year in my sobriety, I was given as a gift of a little story that was given to me, I had the opportunity to speak at another Indian reservation in Wisconsin, the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, these people were so generous and so loving and so kind to me and my friend when we went up there, and I was given this little story because I was finding myself hitting my 10 year mark, I was hitting 10 years of sobriety, and I was getting the what's it all about, which have nothing to do with blessing the earth and blessing the water and being in the moment, I had forgotten that for a moment, you know, I had forgotten that.
And they gave me this story, and the story was about this Indian brave, and this Indian brave went hunting one day, and he went out into a setting probably very much like this, and it was a beautiful hot day, just like this, and he wasn't freezing his butt off, and he went out hunting and he came upon an evil spirit, and he ran back to his horse and he got his bow and arrow, and he took the bow and arrow and he shot the arrow at the evil spirit, but the evil spirit turned into an eagle and flew up and deflected the arrow, so the brave ran back to his horse and he got a spear, and he got a spear and he was about to throw the spear at the eagle, but the eagle all of a sudden turned into a panther and ran at the brave and knocked the spear out of his hand, so he reached down and he got his knife out of his belt, and he pulled out the knife, but before he could stab the panther, the panther turned into a snake and slithered under his feet, and he looked at the snake and he screamed at the snake that the snake was a coward, that the evil spirit was a coward, that if he had any courage at all, he would approach him as a man and he would turn into a man and he'd fight him fair and square, so the snake instantly turned into the form of a man, and the brave ran at this man and threw his arms around the man and started to squeeze the man and try and kill the man, and all of a sudden the man turned into a thousand tears and melted into the ground, and the brave walked over to the pond that had been formed by the thousand tears and looked into the the shiny part of it, and all he could see was his own reflection.
If there's a gift that's been given to me this year, it's the reminder that when it comes down to it, as powerful as this is, being here with you all, sitting around a campfire, being out in the woods, when it comes down to it,
[00:45:03]
the gift I've been given here is the knowledge that it will come down to me and the man I see in the mirror. It will come down to me and this voice within. If I keep the path clear, I'll always be okay. I'll always be connected. When the path gets cloudy, when I wander off the path, all I have to remember is to simply gently wander back to the path. It's not a bad thing. It happens to me. It happened to me this year.
I found myself lost in the thicket, only to remember that I wasn't lost in the thicket. I was just a few feet off the path. All I had to do was simply wander back to the path. Wander back, wander back to where you guys were. The reason I come here is so that you remind me of the path, so that you remind me that it exists, so that I can see in your eyes when I forget that it's true, that this little thing that we hold our sobriety on, this little dream, this little piece of magic that we throw all of our faith in, this little piece of passion, this little piece of dream, that without it, we'd all be in the street somewhere instead of here together.
I have to remember it's here, and I have to cherish it, and I have to cultivate it, and I have to appreciate it, and I have to appreciate that you remind me of it. When I look in your eyes, I see me. And when I see you look at me, I know that you see me, and I see you, and that somehow there's this connection that is more powerful than cocaine, more powerful than alcohol, more powerful than molestation, more powerful than any addiction, the power of our hearts, the power of that God consciousness, and I'm so grateful for it, and I'm so grateful that every time you hug me, every time you kiss me, every time you shake my hand, every time you smile at me, you remind me of it, and you give it to me, and for that I am forever grateful.
And I hope everyone enjoys the ride down as much as I enjoy being here and plan on enjoying the serenity of the ride down. And if they let us, let's just take a real ride some other time. Thank you. I love you all.