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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 810 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ken-c-ca-recovery-in-the-rockies-xv-main-share-ca-2004-archive-810.mp3 Duration: 01:08:52
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Okay, I'm Ken C.. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. And excuse my sniffles, I've got the worst head cold I've had in years. So, I've had a really interesting weekend. Last night was the earliest I've ever been to bed in twenty years ago in a convention, you know. I just could not hang. I want to thank Terry and the committee for inviting me up here. You guys have had a lot of my friends come up here over the years, and all I've ever heard are really good things about it. And, oh, I have some stories to go back and tell to some of my friends about some of the stories I've heard about their behavior while they're up here, too. And I heard there's photographs, so some of my friends are going to be really willing to open their wallets to keep me quiet, probably. But, you know, it's always fun. I've been to conventions, you know, from London to Costa Rica to Hawaii, and it's just one of the greatest joys in sobriety is to go out and meet new people and see new faces and make new friends and reestablish old friendships. And, you know, and to come up here and get to play golf with the guys on Friday and then on Saturday with Neil and Johnny and Terry again, I mean, we just had a great time. You know, it's a great time, and you guys live in a beautiful place. And, you know, I'd like to thank Connie for her talk on Friday night, and Ronald, I'll say Ronald, be nice, for his talk last night. He gave a beautiful talk last night. And, you know, my sobriety date is February 3rd, 1983, so I'll be 22 this coming year. My first 12-step meeting was a Cocaine Anonymous meeting on January 14th, 1983, and CA at the time was about six weeks old, give or take. And it was group number one, and there was about 35 or 40 people in the room, you know. And it's funny that Connie was talking about the animal drugs, because in New Year's Eve 1969 in my house, at the time I was living in Columbia, South Carolina, and a guy came over and we were going to party, and he said, do you want to do some of this? And he had a big old fat syringe and it was filled with that stuff, you know. And I just stuck out my arm and he hit me with that stuff, and it was like moonwalking in about five minutes. And I learned from that point on that if you want to get from point A to point Z, you put it in a syringe.
And that's it, bottom line. So I've ended up shooting windowpane and, you know, you name it. There isn't much that I haven't been able to fit into a syringe over my years. I mean, I'd cold soak stuff and beat it with a hammer, soak it through cottons 18 times to see how clean I could get it, you know. What's a little cotton fever or little plastic scrapings from a Coke bag in a syringe? You know, it can't hurt you.
Now, you know, just to back up a little bit, I'm not one of these guys who came here, you know, one day and woke up and said, you know, my life's a mess. It's unmanageable. Maybe I need to go check into the, you know, rehab. Maybe I need to go check into Salvation Army. Maybe I need to go get sober. You know, I woke up one day and some friends of mine had said they were going to take me to a meeting. I'd met them the night before for dinner and they said, if you're really sick and tired of your life, why don't you come to us with a meeting, you know. And up until that moment, I had no desire to stop taking drugs. I had no desire to stop drinking. I still wasn't even sure when I was going to go to that meeting that that's what I wanted. I was living in a stolen car with stolen money. I had nowhere to go. I had no friends. My family had pretty much given up on me. My sister told me she, you know, she wouldn't even bother to spit on my grave. And, you know, and I ended up in a meeting at Cocaine Anonymous, you know, sitting in between two very crazy people, you know, stuck in this room, listening to a speaker talk about making millions of dollars and losing millions of dollars. And now he was making millions of dollars again. And I'm sitting there with about 40 bucks in my pocket, counting Rolex watches, thinking, boy, I'm in the wrong place. What am I doing here? You know? And then what happened is they opened up the meeting to participation. And this crazy looking guy, he reminded me of Kramer. I mean, he had this black hair that was all over the place and he was tweaking a little bit. And, you know, and he talked about that he had just relapsed after nine months, you know. And he was, he was, we didn't, I didn't get sober when crack was out. It was still freebase, you know. And he talked about smoking base and he talked about being locked in his house and doing the carpet crawl. And, you know, he was one of these guys like me who put tinfoil up on the windows and poked holes through it so the peepholes were really
[00:05:03]
tiny. And I related to everything he talked about because, you know, at less than not even a day sober, all I know is what my experiences are. So he said that he ended up sharing a little bit and then he said the one thing that changed my life. He said that the reason he was back in a meeting was because this is where he knew the hope was, you know, that this is where the hope was. And as I look back on it now, I realize that, you know, coming in there, now you got to realize I'm six foot six. I was living in a stolen Volkswagen Rabbit, you know. I slept in the front seat. I had towels for blankets and you did not roll over because the stick shift hurt, you know. And to say the least, you know, I had no idea where my next meal was going to come from. So when he talked about hope, you know, it turned on a little light like maybe there is something here that I need to listen to and pay attention to. You know, I used to take this Volkswagen and drive it up into the hills in Hollywood and I'd park it in a desolate area and I'd hang towels in the window in case anybody came by and rousted me that I could have like a second to get my act together. Like I'm an ex-rock and roll hippie living in a stolen Volkswagen Rabbit. How hard is it going to be for me to get my act together if somebody knocks on the window, you know? And, you know, and I heard what he said and I went up to him after the meeting and introduced myself to him and I thought he was some like little Hollywood Boulevard street urchin dope addict and he invited me to his house for a party in Bel Air the next week, you know. It turned out he's like a big time world famous plastic surgeon and it's like what I said with Toon the other day and when we were messing around, I guess it was Thursday, I said, you know, this is the place where we normally don't mix, you know. I wasn't hanging out in South Central when I was getting high and he wasn't hanging out on Sunset Strip, you know. And yet today I love him as, I mean, if you told me 21 years ago that I'd be standing up and hugging a six foot four big black gangbanger and kissing him on his cheek because I thought that what he had shared was beautiful, I would have said, you're out of your mind, you know what I mean? And yet it seems like the most absolutely normal thing to do, you know, absolutely normal thing to do. And my cold doesn't allow me to think clearly. You know, and just to back up a bit, you know, I come from an alcoholic family, you know. I come from Greenwich Village in New York City in the late 60s, you know.
I started getting, I started drinking when I was 13, you know. We started stealing stuff that we thought was wine, but I don't think the wine ever had a relationship with a grape, you know. It was one of those kind of screw top things, you know. And the more Boone's Farm or Manichet, it didn't even matter, you know. If somebody said it had alcohol in it, we didn't care what flavor it was, what the name of it was, you know, you just drank it.
And then I progressed to cough syrup and carbona. I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with carbona, but it was a very powerful clean fluid that worked well in the bottom of a mayonnaise jar with some toilet paper. And I was a big sniff head for a couple years and then started smoking, you know, smoking whatever we could get our hands on. They said it was pot, but it smelled like oregano. But that was life in the 60s, you know. I mean, that was it. You know, as I said, I came from this alcoholic family. My mother was a six foot two, beautiful, tall woman, and I watched her wither away from the disease of alcoholism.
You know, by the time she was 40, she'd had a kidney removed, she'd had a lung removed, she'd gotten cancer in her lungs, so she decided they took out one of her lungs, so she decided she'd cut down from four packs to two packs, you know. That was her alternative method of surviving cancer. And she was dead by the time she was 47, you know. And for you guys to think 47 is old, wait until you turn 47 and think, man, you know, when I turned 47, it was a shock, the reality of how much life my mother walked away from. You know, she had flipped her car in a drunken stupor, rolled it, broke her neck and back in six places.
And she was living in Tucson at the time, and I was high as a kite on Quaaludes and cocaine when they called me. And I went down there, and they had her in a halo bed with screws in her forehead with blood trickling out of the screws to keep her stable. And the only way I could communicate with her was she would blink her eyes because she was totally paralyzed from the neck down, and she lived for about three weeks, you know.
My stepfather was a full-blown alcoholic. Last time I saw him, he was riding off with the nomads down in Tucson. And, you know, we'd gotten to the point where we pulled guns on each other, you know. I mean, it was serious. We had a really loving relationship. Whose pistol is bigger, you know? And so the one thing I was never going to be was I was never going to be a drunk. And when I started getting high and hanging around Greenwich Village
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and flashing peace signs and being a little hippie 16 years old, you know, it was the juicers against the heads, and there's no way I'm ever going to grow up to be a juicer, you know. And then, as I said, 18 years old, I started shooting dope, you know. It didn't matter that we drank, you know, six packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon by 6 o'clock in the afternoon and bottles of Jack Daniels by midnight, you know. The concept of the disease or of alcoholism never really hit me. You know, I love the fact how I hear people come up to the podium and talk about how they drank because of their issues, you know. I drank because I like to get fucked up, you know. I drank because when I was 13 years old and I got drunk, it made me forget everything, and I wasn't old enough to know I had issues, you know. I wasn't old enough to know what issues were until I was deep into my 30s, you know. And even today, I don't relate to anything as issues because I believe all my issues are character defects based on self-centered fear, you know. So I love to get high. You know, I had the opportunity when I was a young man, you know, I got caught breaking into a rock and roll concert and got asked to work on the show because they said, oh, you want to get in, you know, come lift a gear. And by the time I was 19 years old, I was snorting cocaine and heroin off of gold records traveling around the world thinking everything my parents told me was a lie. And this is what real life is about, you know. And I had done things by the time I was 21 years old that my parents had never done, you know. And it just began this progression of I worked in a place in a situation where we were drinking Heinekens at 10 o'clock in the morning. We were snorting cocaine at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We were smoking pot from the minute we woke up, you know. It was like, it was a lifestyle. It wasn't like we were like, you know, social drinkers. I still to this day don't understand that like what I was never a social drinker. I never drank to be social. I always drank to cop a buzz. And the later the day got, the more important the buzz began to get as being just getting fucked up, you know. And, you know, when we talk about that line, somewhere in 1977 I started to get like really out there, you know. I mean, because as I said, my favorite thing to do was to inject. You know, I was a nightmare with injectables. And, you know, I was working for this big band and out on the road and doing all this stuff. And, you know, I would carry syringes everywhere I went. I carried Kahlua and vodka in my suitcase to make my coffee taste a little better in the morning. And I got fired by a practicing heroin addict. Can you believe that? Because I couldn't do my gig, you know. It's like, what do you mean I can't do? You know, I'm showing up like everybody else is. But, you know, it's the quality, not the quantity of work that you do. And, you know, and it's funny because when you guys read chapter, not chapter five, when you read Who's an Addict and it talks about the psychological addiction, you know, back in the early 70s, Time Magazine did this whole piece on cocaine and it's psychologically addictive. And we all laughed about it because when you were slamming coke, you knew it was addictive. I mean, there was like nothing about it. I mean, one of the first nights I slammed was, you know, when I first started getting high, you bought coke in little tin foil packets that were $10, you know, and it was like a quarter gram or so at best, a dime. And I was, at the time I first did coke, I was strung out on black tar heroin. And somebody gave me this and said, oh man, this is like orgasmic if you do this stuff, you know, all that bizarre sexual crap. And I did this and thought, what a goddamn waste of money that was, you know, because I couldn't get through the black tar. And then one night, we did a little thing and ended up with about a quarter ounce of coke and said, well, maybe we'll party with this, you know, and there was myself and my roommate and we started doing it. And I was living in Atlanta at the time. And, you know, about three or four hours into it, my friend starts freaking out. He's like, turn down the stereo, turn off the stereo, turn off the lights. I'm like, what the hell is going on, you know? And he started to do the peeking out the window thing, you know.
He's like, there's cops behind the car, there's cops in a bush in the backyard. I'm like, dude, you're out of your mind. Total paranoia. And when you want to talk about the addictive quality, we came down at the last shot of the evening and it was mine, you know, and it's about four or five in the morning. We'd split everything up and we got into a fist fight over the last shot and I ended up squirting it out on the floor because I wasn't quite addicted yet, you know. And sure enough, as soon as the fight was over, we're on the phone trying to find somebody who's awake to get more, you know. We made up really quick because, you know, had to get more.
And first thing, as soon as the next day when the sun comes up or when we came up, not the sun, because the sun was up long before we, he takes me out in the backyard and is showing me the broken twigs in the bush. I told you they were out here.
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You know, and I thought that was just, you know, complete insanity. I'm thinking he's just nuts. That's all it is. Now, it didn't matter that about six years later that I'm peeking out the windows, I'm living in the house. that has no power, no water, I'm pissing in milk jug bottles, you know, I'm peeking out of windows like crazy, I'm seeing guys with rifles running around the backyard. So what does any smart coke addict do? They call the cops and say, there's people with guns trying to break in my house. And they show up, they show up and say, you know, we don't see anybody. Now you've got to realize, I did not look like I look now. I had hair that was almost as long as Terry's, I had a mustache probably until 1990, and I don't have nice straight hair like Terry, I have like pyramid sphinx hair, you know. I used to beat people with it when I would go like this. And, you know, and it's like one o'clock in the morning and here I am answering the door with that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed look on my face. And they said they couldn't find anybody, so they left. I went back to doing what I was doing, which was shooting coke and taking Quaaludes, and I'm sitting on the bed watching the doorknob turn. Then I think that they're hiding in the dirty laundry basket. I saw a slit in the screen and thought they'd gotten in when I wasn't looking. So what does any self-respecting drug addict do? I call the cops again and said, they're in the house. So they decided to save a little time and they just take me to jail, which they did. But knowing that they were coming, I figured I've got to get rid of all the drugs, so I shot everything that was left in the house. So by the time they took me to Fulton County Jail, I'm like tweaked beyond belief, you know. And that was just like the beginning of the insanity.
You know, that's the scary part. That's the real scary part. And that's the way I live my life, you know, for a long time. You know, as I said, I worked in the rock and roll business and we were treated well. We used to have this motto that the very best was barely good enough, you know. We thought we were just way too cool. And I had finished this one tour I was working on and went back to Atlanta. And I had this friend who was the first guy off the streets that I knew that had made it. You know, he had a 911 Porsche, he had a house out in the country, you know. And he had made it from selling drugs. He was one of these guys that had double hefty bags of cash buried in his backyard out on the farm and stuff. And he invited me out to his house to party. And he said, you know, come on out, we'll do this. And we did. And he walks out in the kitchen and he brings out this wax cheesecloth thing and it was one giant rock, you know. It was like a kilo of coke that was red cheesecloth. I don't know how else to explain it. It's wax and fucking hatchets with a machete on it and it pops open and it's all just big old Peruvian stuff.
And he goes, go ahead, do as much as you want, you know. And he was my kind of guy because he had a brand new box of 100 clean syringes and he said, you know, we're all going to do it. And I'm sitting in his kitchen table and I do this little hit and a spoon, you know, and I get the nice little rush and I'm thinking, oh, that was okay. And he goes, how was that? And I said, well, it wasn't quite what I was looking for, you know, being the greedy guy with all the free coke in front of me. He goes, oh, do as much as you want, you know. So I had just done this shot a minute or two earlier and I dipped the big old butter knife into this pile and dropped it in the spoon and did this other shot. And I turned around and I got this syringe in the glass and all of a sudden my hand starts going like this and it's like, oh, and I'm like, okay. And I put the syringe down and then I'm sitting there and my feet start going like this and it works its way up. And pretty soon my show and the biggest problem was my head was moving in the opposite direction of my body. So I'm like tweaking and, you know, the train is coming and it's like, and these guys start freaking out, you know, sweats just pouring down my head. And they take me in the next room and they put me in a rocking chair right in front of this air conditioner and they put towels wrapped in ice and wrap it around my neck to cool me off. And these old farm houses in Atlanta had all this floral print wallpaper on them. So I'm sitting in this rocking chair, just like tweaking, holding on, white knuckling. And this floral paper is like turning into a big acid trip. You know, it's all melting together. And I realize I'm starting to get tunnel vision and the tunnel is starting to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And it gets down to about the size of maybe a silver dollar. And I'm just sitting there holding on thinking, man, if I lose this spot on the wall, I'm going to die. You know, if I lose this, it's over. Because I was close to blacking out. My heart's like 200 beats a minute and I'm just really holding on for dear life. And then finally that rush breaks, you know. Now these guys are in the other room shooting coke. They hadn't been in to check on me in like five minutes. I could have died for all I know.
And I go walking back in and they go, are you okay? And I said, that was fucking great, you know. And from that day on, every time I shot coke, I shot coke looking for a grand
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mal seizure, you know. And the worst part of it is if you'd be in the back of the house and you'd do it and you'd forget if you locked the door. And then you're crawling on your hands and knees while you're having a seizure to go see if the door's locked, you know. And that's the way I lived for probably five more years. You know, the last five years of my using. I couldn't get a job. You know, my jobs were minimal at best, scraping around.
It got to the point where, you know, as I said, tin foil on windows and peeking out the holes. And then I got into seeing space people. You know, I had two kinds of space people that would come and hang out with me. And I had these tall guys that had hoods and red eyes. And they would stand like about six feet on the other side of the window and not move. So I'd stand there through the little blinds and just stare them down, waiting to see who's going to move first. And then I had these other little guys. And they were little. They were only about this big. And they scampered. You know, they were the rooftop guys. You know, they would like run from chimney to air conditioner vent. You know, like little trolls or something. And one night I went out and tried to chase them down. And one of my neighbors saw me and threatened to call the police. And, you know, I used to never tell people that I used to see space men, you know. And then I was in a lockdown on a panel one night at the VA. And this guy came up to me and goes, man, I'm so glad that you talked about that. I thought I was the only guy that saw those people, you know.
So one person relates. You know, that's all that matters. And, you know, in my last year of using, as I said, you know, I had gotten in one of those cocaine fantasy relationships. You know, I met this girl on a job. And we did some blow at work that day. And it ended up she lived down the street from me. And a week or so later, we got together and we had a little bag of cocaine. And we were snorting it and drinking some wine. And she said to me, do you know how to shoot cocaine? And I went, oh, God, do I know how to shoot cocaine?
And our first date was sitting around her house shooting cocaine. Three weeks later, I moved in. Four months later, we were married. And I forgot to mention she was a bisexual that was into bondage. And now when you're shooting cocaine, that's a fun weekend. You know, it didn't matter how much you did. Even if you couldn't participate, it was still fun to watch. And then we got divorced four months later. So we had like this 10-month relationship that if probably we hadn't done cocaine, it probably would have been about five years. But we compressed everything because we never slept, you know. And our weekends consisted of going to the Rite Aid or whatever and buying those almaden gallons of crappy white wine, Polaroid film, a bag of Quaaludes, and, you know, go buy an ounce of cocaine.
And that was how we started out our week. And when it all ran out, the party stopped. We rested for a day or two and started all over again. It was a crazy, crazy deal. And when that relationship broke up, well, it was funny because I got married on June 21st and on June 22nd, I went on tour. And by the time I got to Detroit, I'd already had my wedding ring off and hide it in my pocket and out playing the game. And she was already at the Coke dealer's house giving it up for free Coke. So obviously, by the time I came home, there wasn't a lot really left to happen. And when that relationship broke up, I was pretty much beat up and I ended up doing a geographic. Now, I've done maybe five or six geographics in my life, never knowing that they were geographics because I was just looking for a new place to go and hang out and get high. You know, I didn't realize how much wreckage I was leaving behind me and how much lack of life I had at the moment. It just seemed like the best thing to do is go somewhere new and try all over again. And that's the greatest thing about the disease of alcoholism, you know, that it keeps trying to trick us to tell us that something different is going on than what's really happening. And I ended up down in Tucson where my sister lived. And, you know, I did good for a few months. I drank a little light beer and smoked a little light pot and didn't get into anything too heavy.
And then I was working at this huge rock and roll nightclub and met some of the little local dealers and started telling them rock and roll war stories from the 70s and they were impressed that they would pack my nose. And my sister is a diabetic so that made things really easy for me. And it took about a year, a year and a half before, you know, I was stealing and being absolutely insane. And my last couple of months of using when I was still down in Tucson was I ended up going from this one bar that held about a thousand people and it was a party scene to I ended up managing this biker strip joint that you could fit in this room. Probably half this room would hold the joint. And I couldn't even get the dancers to go home with me at night no matter how much free drugs I offered
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them because I, you know, I wasn't there. You know, my idea of a good night was I had a bucket of ice cubes. I had a big thing of hot water, a thing of cold water and I would take my Coke and I'd lay out the shots for the night and I'd time it and I'd look for that grand mal seizure. And as soon as I would do a shot, I'd get my 44 Magnum and I'd crawl on my hands and knees to the one bedroom and we had these horizontal blinds and I'd take this pencil that I had behind my ear and I'd push the blinds so that, you know, I was afraid you'd see the tip of my finger, but I didn't think you could see the tip of the pencil.
So I'd peek out and when I was sure that that room was secure, then I'd crawl to the other room and secure that room. Now, it didn't matter that I lived in a gated, guarded condo complex where nobody got in or out, but the fear and the insanity of the cocaine just took over and I knew it was going to take over. Why else would you have a loaded gun on the dining room table, you know? Because you've got to be prepared. And then as soon as the rush broke, I would start again and just do it until everything ran out. And I mean everything ran out, you know? I ended up, I was selling drugs to the Bonanno family and I had gone broke and I had one connection still left with these guys and I set this guy up and I took him off, you know, on a Coke deal and just stole this car, took this money and loaded everything up and ran back to L.A. And I had no idea what I was doing, you know? And we talk about one day at a time. My life back then was about one hour at a time. You know, I'd wake up from parking that car up on the road and I'd drive to a 7-Eleven and I'd buy a big old cup of coffee and a big old muffin in a newspaper and I'd go to the park and I'd just sit there and I'd eat this muffin and I would read every word in L.A. Times because I had nowhere else to go, you know? I had no friends left. I maybe had one or two people that were like slight acquaintances. I had no idea what I was going to do from hour to hour. I had no idea what I was going to do. And I still would not say that drugs and alcohol were my problem, you know? It was just bad breaks and misunderstandings and if only they understood or did it my way, everything would be okay, you know? And as I said, I finally got a hold of one friend of mine and he said he'd meet me for dinner and we showed up for dinner at Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood and he said, a friend of mine is coming and he said, this guy is my sponsor. His name is Charlie and I went, what do you mean he's your sponsor? And he went on to tell me that he'd been in A.A. for a year and a half and that he had 90 days and Charlie showed up and they just sat there and talked to me, you know? They just talked to me and I wouldn't say they really 12-stepped me or did anything weird or hammered big book stuff on me. They just kind of said, if you're sick and tired of the way you're living, come to a meeting, you know? And they took me to that first meeting that I told you about, you know? And I showed up there and as I said, I was scared to death, you know? And after the meeting, this gentleman, Tom, came up to me and he gave me my big book and he said, he said, I want you to go home tonight and I want you to read Chapter 3 more about alcoholism. And my friend who took me said that as long as I was willing to stay sober and stay clean, that I could sleep on his couch, you know?
And I went back to this guy's place and I read more about alcoholism and Tom said, if you have any problems with the word alcohol or alcoholism, you can substitute cocaines, cocaineism, heroin, heroinism. Today, it would probably be crack or crackism or Vicodin and Vicodinism or something. And, you know, and I went back and read it. Now, I grew up with a stepfather who was an ex-marine drill sergeant. The day I met him, I walked out of my bedroom to open up my Christmas presents. My mother slept on a fold-out bed in the living room.
He was in bed with my mother. She had picked him up from prison the night before where he just got done doing 3 to 5 for armed robbery. Now, that was my introduction to my soon-to-be new stepfather, you know? And, you know, and he was one of these guys. I was a 6'4", scrawny little 14-year-old and he was going to teach me discipline, you know? Because I'd been fatherless since the time I was 4 years old. So, this guy was going to teach me discipline.
Now, here's a guy that was in the joint for 3 and a half years lifting the whole time who was as sick, crazy, badass as it was and he continued to just pound the crap out of me on a semi-daily basis to the point where I've had my nose broken, my fingers broken, my feet broken, my wrist broken by this guy. You know, my mother would come home and find me on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, you know? It was just insane, insane stuff.
And his favorite thing was that I was going to grow up to become a piece of crap, you know? That I was useless, I was never going to amount to nothing, I was just going to grow up to be a piece of crap. So, by the time you're 31 years old, living in a stolen Volkswagen rabbit and don't have any money to eat on you start to believe that maybe you've grown up to become that piece of Crap that your stepfather always told you you were gonna be you know And what happened is is when I read chapter 3 by the time I got to the end of the second page I recognized that I had the disease of alcoholism. There was no ifs ands or buts it didn't matter that I was a drug addict
[00:30:03]
It didn't matter that I never thought about myself as an alcoholic It didn't matter that I was never without a bottle of Jack Daniels or a bottle of Stoli or always something to go to sleep with. You know, it didn't matter that I drank all day long constantly, as long as I could get my hands on it. What happened was that I identified with all the feelings. I identified with everything about the controlling your drinking and using, trying to manage everything. Then I went on to the story about the jaywalker running out in front of the bus. I don't know about you, but when I shot things like Nebutals, that's like jaywalking with a freight train because you OD on that stuff and you better get out of the way of the train because you're going down. I think Tune was talking about last night about the guy OD'ing in his house. I was with my wife at that brief time and somebody had given me the kind. You know how every now and then somebody goes, oh man, this is the stuff. This is the kind. This is Ty White. This is the real deal. I said, yeah, okay, she gave me the shit. I went back and you girls don't need as much as us guys, so I naturally did the hog line for myself and gave my wife the little line. I went in the bedroom and hit her up with this stuff and the phone rang. She answered the phone.
I went and fixed my stuff and came into the bedroom for her to help me. She was laying in bed blue, stopped breathing the whole thing from this little tiny line of this white Ty dope. I'm thinking, holy shit. Into the bathtub with the cold shower and walking her around, giving her mouth to mouth, the whole thing. It was just like she was gone. The minute she started to breathe, I went back into the kitchen, emptied out half the syringe and hit it and almost died. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that she probably needed to go to the doctor or go to the hospital. It just mattered that I needed to get high.
When I read chapter three, it hit me. It hit me that I suffered from this disease because I had thought that I just had a drug problem. People were telling me as early as 1972 that I had a problem with drugs. I would say, so what? I like it. I went home one time. I was invited to be the godfather for one of my mother's sisters. I went home with tracks on my arm showing off. I had green shoes to wear to church, green Pumas thinking I'm cool. They took me out shopping so I would be presentable and bought me long sleeve shirts and tried to get me to at least comb my hair a little better. They would tell me, you've got to clean up your act. I was having way too much fun. It didn't make sense to clean up my act. As I continued to read the big book, there used to be a lot of things that I don't hear anymore. One of the things was, get into your program recovery with the same enthusiasm that you used to go and score. Terry knows what the 405 in L.A. is like.
I used to drive two, two and a half hours one way on the 405 to go score the good stuff. Yet, we don't want to drive 20 minutes across town because there might be traffic. I had nothing to do so I was told to go to meetings every day. I went to two and three meetings. As Ronald was talking about last night, people used to surround us. I would stand on the sidewalk out in front of a meeting hardly knowing anybody and people would say, what are you doing? Where are you going? What are you doing? Come to us, the juniors. Come to us for coffee. I would go there and have no money and people would buy me stuff and take care of me. I just had to jump right in. There was another great line. They used to say, if you kill yourself before you're five, you're probably killing the wrong person. It takes a little while to get to know who you are. I figured, if I've got to get a sponsor, he has to have more than five years because I don't want him to kill himself in the middle of working the steps. I'm going to have to go find a new one. There was this guy back on the west side. His name was Big Al. He was about six foot four. He was a body builder.
He was buffed out. He had this beautiful, tall, blonde girlfriend and a red 944 turbo. I thought, he's got what I want. It's better than my Volkswagen Rabbit. I asked him to be my sponsor and it didn't work out. We were just from two different worlds entirely. Then my friends started suggesting about going to men's stags. I went to a men's stag one time and I had no idea. I didn't know anybody there. I was sitting down next to this man and he struck up a conversation with me. He said, I have another meeting at my house this week. Why don't you come by? He took me over or invited me to his house. It was another men's group. I went up there and I met the man that was going to become my sponsor. He was this guy and he had his big book. It was underlined in five or six different colors ink. Whenever he would talk to me, he would say, it suggested that or it's been my experience.
He never tried to control my life. When I told him that I was lonely, which would equate to lustful as a newcomer. I was lonely and wanted to date. He said, just be careful.
[00:35:06]
Two newcomers dating is like two garbage trucks meeting head on and I'm not here to clean up your messes. Why would any newcomer heed that advice? I went out and got 13 step by a girl that had nine months to my 90 days. We did our deal for a while and we're actually still friends. I went to her 22 year birthday party last year and one of the miracles. This gentleman, any time I asked him a question, if he didn't know it, he would send me to somebody that had the information. He would say, I haven't had this experience before but my friend John has. Why don't you call John and go sit down with John? That's the way we were dealt with. We were handed around to people that had the experiences for us.
When it came down to doing the four step, I love the shirts that I see that Mr. Brown should get his ass kicked. When I first wanted to do my inventory, I had this concept in my mind that I was going to write this great rock and roll novel. I had all these stories from the early 70s. Put it this way, they made a movie that you guys probably saw that was part of my life that I was involved in. There's actually been two movies that have been part of my life that I was involved in. I thought I had great shit. I could do this and make it a book. My sponsor in his grand wisdom knowing my ego said, oh no, no, no.
You're going to make columns. You're going to go like this. Stop. Just like a telegram. They're going to be short, brief, and concise. I was like, but I don't want to do that. He goes, nope, this is what you're going to do. The only thing I want you to do different is I want to put your name on the top and I want you to put the three secrets that you were never going to tell anybody on the bottom. I went ahead and I did that. I didn't like doing it. I actually did write another inventory the other way just for my own purpose. When I went to share that with them and do my fifth step, I ran around the world for years under aliases. I had fake passports, fake driver's license. I've been everything from Christopher Robbins to Ken Kelly to you name it. The first time in my life as an adult, I put my name on the top of this thing and I shared with him this inventory. It was me being 100% honest as an adult human being for the first time in my life. At the end, I told him these secrets that I thought I was going to take to my grave. He didn't give a crap. He said, so what? Let go of this stuff. That was the freedom. Ronald was talking about the big book last night and Kelly was reading the promises last night. I was in a meeting one night and this old timer down in LA got up and he was talking. He was going, the first set of promises in the big book offer this. I'm like, the first set of promises? How did I miss these? What are they? Where are they? I went up to him afterwards and he said, it was about the fifth step and it's on page 77. It talks about the bridge back to life, the beginning of the spiritual experience. There's a whole list in two paragraphs there, the beginning of your life once you take a fifth step. When I got sober, I had 90 days when I did my fourth step. I wanted to do it. I ran around. I was a hustler, a liar, a cheat, a thief for years.
My sponsor told me that if you want to put new furniture in your house, you got to get rid of the old furniture. I wanted to do a house cleaning. I wanted to clean it up and start this new life and start out on a clean path. I was excited about doing my fourth and fifth step. We used to have competitions with the guys I got sober with, like what step are you on? Where are you at? What are you doing? We tried to keep up with each other.
That sense of freedom that I got and that sense of belonging, over all the years that I've been sober, I've seen more people go out over the fourth step than any other step because they don't want to get in touch with that self-centered fear. They don't want to get in touch with their old behaviors and old ideas. We come in here with such old ideas and such old belief systems. It's amazing. Like I said, I came in here thinking that I'd grown up to become this piece of crap because I was told I was a piece of crap.
We come in here with all these old ideas from parents and from adults who didn't know anything about what they were doing and they were winging it and established our lifestyles with these old ideas. We fell for it. I don't know if you guys know how they train elephants, but when they have an elephant and they're trying to teach him how to work over in Asia or something, they have these elephants dragging huge logs around and doing stuff. When they're babies, what they do is they tack them down with a little rope and a little wooden stake. The elephant has no idea that he can pull up that little wooden stake. When the little baby elephant tries to pull and he can't quite do it, he just believes that, okay, he's tethered.
Now, when the elephant grows up to be this giant elephant, they tether him with a little tiny stake and a little piece of rope because he believes that he can't go anywhere. The belief system they've established for this elephant is, you're stuck. You can't move. It doesn't matter that he can pull down an entire forest with his weight behind him, but his belief is that he's
[00:40:05]
stuck. That's what happens to us. We get in these positions where we get stuck based on old ideas and old beliefs. Ronald gave such a great talk last night about the big book and steps. For me, I'm a huge believer in the 12 and 12. I work the 12 and 12 more than anything else these days. I've done book studies with a lot of people and a lot of stuff. For the last five or six years, I've totally concentrated on the 12 and 12. My sponsor carries the 12 and 12 with him everywhere he goes. My sponsor has 30 years. You've heard a lot of mention of Johnny Siegel over the last couple of days. Johnny and I got sober together. He had about three months more than I did, four months more than I did. We were close for a lot of years. When Johnny died, it sent this ripple effect. When Willie O broke into Johnny's house and found him dead, I was the first person to get the phone call. Let me tell you something. It was a shock to find out about somebody who was of the same time period who had happened what had happened. It made a lot of people take long, hard looks. There were so many people who had gotten lives, so why do they need to go to meetings anymore? They've gotten families. Taking the kids to soccer practice was more important than going to a meeting. All of a sudden, you saw all these old-timers back in meetings, hardcore all the time. It freaked them out. I don't say this in disrespect to Johnny. What I say is that when he was using, the ego got to such a point that he couldn't raise his hand and go back to a meeting. His character defects had gotten so out of control for him and his behaviors had gotten so out of control for him that that was the only answer. I thank God that I stayed sober long enough to see this and then pick up the literature again and re-read it with a new pair of eyes. When I picked up 6 and 7 again at 15, I saw things I never saw before. I learned that one of the things that I've realized over the years is when you guys, a lot of people, I'm not going to say you guys, when people do their first 6 and 7 step, you know, okay, I'm entirely ready. Well, what does entirely ready mean? Okay, I got down on my knees and said a 7 step prayer. Well, what does that mean? Does God come down with a big ice cream scoop and all the character defects are gone? It doesn't work like that. If you read in the 12 and 12, it says that this is a daily thing. You know, in the 12 step, in the 12 and 12, Bill wrote that we pray for our character, he says shortcomings, we pray for our shortcomings to be removed on a daily basis based on the cause and conditions of the day that we pray. Now, what I've learned is that over the years that I have to be conscious of what my character defects are. I'm arrogant, I'm selfish, I'm sarcastic, you know. There's a point, and I don't know how many people up here have gone through it, but there's a point at about 12 or 13 years of sobriety where people get a lot of know-it-all-isms, you know, and spiritual arrogance, you know, and you get into this whole thing about I know everything, I know, you know, you can't tell me anything, you were talking about it last night, old-timers doing it. And, you know, I have to be so aware of what my behavior is that I have to pray about it out loud on a daily basis based on the causes and conditions of the day before, and the causes and conditions of the day before are usually recognized by doing a 10 step, you know. In the later years of Bill Wilson's life, when he would, in his writings, he talked about that the two most important things for long term sobriety are inventory and meditation, you know, inventory and meditation, which basically means 10 step and 11 step, you know. It doesn't say, I remember there was a period in my life where I wanted to learn how to meditate, and I went to my sponsor, and I said, you know, what's the deal? And he said to me, he goes, well, tell me what the 11 step says. And I told him what I thought it says, and he goes, no, that's not what it says, go get the book. He made me read it out loud, and he says, it seeks to improve our conscious contact with God on a daily basis. You know, I've gotten to the point in my life where I would get up in the morning, I'd make some oatmeal, I'd sit at the dining room table and eat my oatmeal. I'd like, say the first step, the second step, the third step, I'd say the third step prayer, I'd say the The seven step prayer, and the whole time I'm just thinking about traffic on the freeway going into downtown LA.
There's no conscious contact. It was just acting as if, because when you're new around here, people tell you act as if. People tell you, like Toon said last night, coffee pot can be your higher power.
[00:45:00]
I was told that the ocean could be my higher power. You know, I grew up in this German, Lutheran, Swedish home where I was sent to church every week in an itchy wool suit so my mother could sleep off her drunk from the night before. You know? I had no desire to be of church. And when I got here, and they told me, a power greater than myself, I could deal with that. Because when I used to take acid, I would go sit out in the woods and meditate, you know? And basically all I was doing was looking for that tunnel vision crap from taking too many psychedelics, you know, and trying to find that Timothy Leary way of a better life through psychopharmaceuticals.
And I'd seen Star Wars a bunch of times, so, you know, the force thing made lots of sense. And to this day, if you ask me what my God is, don't bother, because you're not going to get a pretty good answer. But what I do know is that there's a creative intelligence in the universe much more powerful than anything I can do. You know, and it talks all about it in We Agnostics, you know? And what happened is, you know, developing that relationship through meditation. And just to back up a second, when I started to redo the seventh step again, and I went to my sponsor and was talking about character defects and shortcomings, he goes, I want you to do something. He goes, I want you to go back and I want you to read the seventh step, and I want you to count how many times the word character defects are in it and how many times the word humility are in it. And what I found is that the seventh step isn't about character defects. It's about gaining humility. You know, and two things that it talks about in the 12 and 12 is that without a solid third step, there's no effectiveness to the AA program. And then it talks about that without humility, all things are lost, because the entire AA program is based on the whole purpose of the steps is for you to find enough humility to allow yourself to have a life run by a power greater than yourself. You know, and it's the greatest struggle of all mankind. You know, and, you know, and the other amazing thing, too, in step eight, there's this line that says, even though we have done great harms to others, the harm we have done ourselves is even greater.
That through our past, we have done deep emotional things to ourselves that below the level of consciousness has developed violent emotional twists in our lives. Now, we get sober and we forget about all that stuff, and then all of a sudden these things come up a little while after a little while as we're around here, and that's when we think we have issues. You know, that's when we think we have stuff that goes on. And, you know, and what happens is that as I've been able to work through these things over the years, I've realized that so much of it is just based on self-centered fear, you know, self-centered fear and the desire of not getting what I want and not being able to hold on to what I got, you know, and that it creates all this anxiety in my life and all this discomfort in my life. What time did we start? I didn't even look, but…
I remember that part. But anyway, back to meditation. It says that we pray and we meditate. It doesn't say we pray and we think about meditating. It doesn't say we pray and we meditate occasionally when we feel up to it. It says that we pray and we meditate on a daily basis to improve our conscious contact with God. Now, I've heard old-timers stand up and go, well, I can't meditate because my head's too busy and I just don't can't get it together. I'm like, well, wait a second. If you can go learn how to play golf, if you can go learn how to ride a motorcycle, if you can go learn how to ski, why can't you take the time and energy to focus on how to learn how to meditate? It's a taught, learned experience. And as Bill said, long-term sobriety based on inventory and meditation. Now, I don't know about you, my life's pretty good. I wouldn't be here if my life wasn't better than what it was out there. If I had to take the time to learn how to pray and meditate to become a better human being than the person I was yesterday, then I'm going to take that time and energy to try to do that. Because with meditation comes the clarity of mind and clarity of soul and clarity of body that allows me to see what my behaviors are that are blocking my path to God. What my behaviors are that hold me back from becoming a better person. Ronald said it clearly last night. He goes, my only job today is to show up and do the next right indicated thing and not hurt anybody. And if I can do that, I've had a pretty good day because that's not the way I used to live my life. But how do I stay aware of what my behaviors are that are hurting other people? Through my desires and through my selfishness and through my control issues and all that other stuff that are so subtle.
There's not one of us that haven't had all our desires removed. Desires are a God-given
[00:50:01]
thing. But when the desires get out of control, be it lust, be it greed, be it envy, I mean, that's the kind of stuff that we have to work on so that we don't continue to hurt other people and therefore hurt ourselves. Because every time I hurt somebody, all I'm doing is really hurting myself because when I go home at night, I'm the one that has to sleep with my behavior. The best pillow is a clear conscious. And when I'm living a life that's clean and on a right path, I rest well. I sleep well. I'm at one with myself and at one with the people that love me. Life's just a miracle.
I still to this day go to five to ten meetings a week. And I enjoy it. I love going to meetings. I love seeing new people come in. I love seeing young people come in. We were talking about it yesterday. When I got sober, the average age was about 31, 33, most newcomers right in there. And now it's like 21, 22. If I'd have bothered to listen when I was 21 or 22, who knows how different my life would be. You know, my sponsor has this line, he goes, when you learn to ride a bicycle, you learn to ride a bicycle for life. When you learn how to swim, you learn how to swim for life. When you come to AA, it's good for about a week and a half. And that's why we keep going to meetings. Because self gets in the way.
And when self gets in the way, all things are lost. All things are lost. We talk so much about this as a spiritual program, and yet we continue to character assassinate the people who could save your life. You know, gossip and innuendo and character assassination about the old timers or the newcomers, you never know. And that one person might be the only person in this town who could save your life because he has a shared experience. So get off of that stuff. It's useless. It serves no purpose other than to boost your own ego and make you feel superior, you know. And every fellowship has it, not just CA, not just AA. We're an incestuous bunch of mentally ill human beings. So we have to do the best we can with what we've got, you know. And what we've got are the 12 steps that tell us how to live our life, you know. And what works and what doesn't work based on what the old timers' experiences are. You know, I've had the opportunity to go to Dr. Bob's house and, you know, it was just incredible, you know. It's like when, I forget who it was, was talking about Johnny. I guess C-Dub maybe mentioned it about passing the light, you know. And my idea was when I was at Dr. Bob's house and I was in tears almost the whole time I was in the house, this little old lady came up and patted me and go, it's okay, honey. It happens to everybody, you know. And I'm just like bawling, you know.
And I was in the downstairs basement buying my Dr. Bob coffee cup and Dr. Bob ashtray and Dr. Bob, you know, this, T-shirts, you know. And I looked over in the corner and there's this bushel basket full of chunks of rocks. And I said, well, what's that? And she goes, oh, the back porch got rotted and we had to knock the whole back porch down. And that's the foundation from the back porch. And I went, really? I said, can I have that?
She goes, yeah, I guess, you know. And I'm like over there loading my pockets with these chunks of rocks, you know, just stuffed out to here. And, you know, and I still have one small piece left because I've given away all the pieces over the year to birthday presents to people. And when I got back to L.A., I read this interview with Scott Peck who wrote the book, The Road Less Traveled, which was a very important book for me to read when I was new. And they asked him what he thought was the greatest event of the 20th century.
And without missing a beat, he said, the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, which Toon so graciously called the granddaddy of all 12-step programs. You know, the most important event of the 20th century. That's huge, you know. And what I realized was when I was at Bob's house, it's like where the rock hit the pond, you know. And everything started from there. I'm just a ripple. You know, I'm a ripple. You know, my son is never going to see me drunk.
My son's never going to end up in a pool of blood on the floor. My sister's son is never going to experience the stuff that she went through with her abuse in her life. You know, the chains of our families and the disease have just been broken, you know. All we have is this good life and this positive energy and this God consciousness coming to enter our lives because of these two old strange birds that met in Akron, you know, because Bill decided to walk to a phone booth instead of a bar. That's huge. And we're all but a ripple. And we have to be conscious that that's an important responsibility to be a ripple,
[00:55:05]
you know, because one thing that you say can change one person's life forever. I never realized that responsibility. You know, there was a woman who came up to, are you here? I used to be on HFC until I got tired of Only Insanity, which is the email group, you know. And she had gone through a crisis and I had never met her. And I sent her an email personally off to the side. Never met her. No idea who she was. She came up to me the other day and shared how important, how important that was. I don't even remember what I wrote. I don't know. But one thing I said changed her life. I was in Tucson one time, or not Tucson, Phoenix for a convention. One of my friends was doing a workshop and I stood up to ask him a question.
And I identified with my full name, which I do, because I am Ken C. and I am an alcoholic and I want people to know who I am and how to find me if they need help, you know. And I got done and I was in line to thank the speaker and I turn around and there's a guy about tune size, big biker, like walking with determination towards me. Locked on me and I'm thinking, what the hell is this? And he goes, you're Ken C.? You're Ken C. from Venice? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, I've been trying to get sober for years, man. He goes, I was in the penitentiary and somebody gave me one of your tapes and I've been sober ever since. You know, the first time I was taped at a convention or something, I thought, oh, this is cool. My ego just went, pshh, never realizing the responsibility, you know. And I don't even know what talk it was or what convention. This guy dragged me around like I was this puppy for the whole convention. This is my sponsor. This is my wife. This is my best friend. This is the guy I told you about. This is the… I'm like, that's our responsibility. One thing you say to one person on any given day can change their life forever. So make sure that what you're telling them, you have the experience, the God consciousness, or the loving spirit behind your words. Because if you come from a place of ego, if you come from a place of ego or self-centeredness, you might destroy this person's life. You could kill this person. This is a disease that kills people, you know.
I've lost track of how many people I've seen get buried over the last 21 years of my life, you know. I've completely lost track of how many people have gone out and used and disappeared from my life that I used to hang out with on a regular basis, you know. Because it kills people. You know, it's like Danny says, jails, institutions, and death. Now, what part of that don't you understand? You can die in recovery because you're not working a program.
You might not take drugs, but you might stick a gun in your mouth. I've seen guys with mansions and Lamborghinis eat a bullet because they thought they had it going on and that everything was okay. And they never took a look at their character defects, and they never established a personal relationship with a power greater than yourself. It doesn't talk about that we just kind of believe in God. It says that we develop a personal relationship with a power greater than yourself. Now, I don't know about you, but I like living. I've been around the world sober. I've had a good time, you know. Two and a half years ago, I had some surgery, you know. And I was in ICU for a couple of days after the surgery because it was serious stuff. And I had a, I crashed. And they called the code on me. And I had an out-of-body experience, you know. I was sitting on the ceiling in the emergency room.
Or not sitting, I was just kind of floating, looking down on everybody. And to this day, if the head doctor that ran the code came in and talked to me, I would know exactly who he is because I heard his voice. Never saw his face because I was on top of him looking down. But if he came in, I know exactly who he is, you know. And I thought I was going to die. You know, they all thought I was going to die. When I was first diagnosed, they told me I might be dead in 90 days. Now if you don't think that gets your attention, that gets your attention. You experience terror unlike anything you've ever seen. You know, they tried to get me in operation with the best surgeon in the world today and it was next to impossible. My doctors couldn't get it. Two of my doctors couldn't get it. Nothing was happening. They kept telling me just call this guy, call this guy, try to get in to
[01:00:02]
see one of his associates. just try to get in the office no matter what. My sponsor took me to a men's stag and I was sitting on the couch and one of my friends said to me, what's going on with you man, you look freaked out and I went on to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor three days before and I was talking about the doctor and trying to get in to see this doctor. The next day my phone rings and he goes, did you meet Marcel who was sitting on the couch next to me?
And I went, no. He goes, well he's this newcomer, he's got like 30 days. He went to school with that doctor. He said, he can get you an appointment. And it just so happened that on that same day I was able to make an appointment to go see an associate doctor. So I walk into the office with my sponsor and from the minute I was diagnosed when I left the doctor's office, the first person I called was my sponsor and he said, I'll be at your house in an hour and a half and I'm taking you to a meeting.
My sponsor came with me to every doctor's appointment I had, brought a tape recorder so he could tape the doctor because he has Parkinson's disease so his mind doesn't work much better than mine was at the time. So he would tape it and so we knew everything. So we walk into this doctor's office and I check in and all of a sudden we sit down and this woman comes out from the back and she goes, are you Ken C.?
And I said, yeah. And she goes, I just hung up with Marcel and he told me who you were. She goes, I called Dr. Black in New York and Dr. Black wants the other doctor to call you when you're done, when he's done talking to you. So I saw the doctor and he excused himself and he went out. He comes back in and he said, well I just talked to Dr. Black in New York. He's going to be back on Sunday. He's going to see you on Tuesday.
He's going to operate on you two weeks from today. Now I went through the surgery which put me up for quite a few months. I called this guy Marcel. I tried to thank him. I tried to take him to lunch. I tried to take him to dinner. I was like, dude, what can I do? How can I help you? This was a guy, mansion in the hills, drove race cars for fun, had everything you can imagine, right? Newcomer. I got out.
I went to a nighttime meeting about three months later and my friend Jerry walks in and he goes, did you hear about Marcel? I went, what? He goes, he OD'd and died. Now why I was at one meeting in my life out of 21 years, never met the guy, never saw his face, never shook his hand, why he was in my life to help me go through this and why he's not around, I have no idea. If he walked in the room and talked to me, I'd know exactly who he is.
But if you don't think God doesn't put angels in your life around here when you need him, don't character assassinate the angels. You never know who it is. You know, Kelly saw me right after my surgery down in Palm Springs and I was supposed to go up to Portland that year for world service. And my sister and I, who's a black belt down on, had a complete falling out when she came to LA to control and manage my hospital room.
My sponsor and my best friends weren't good enough, you know. She let my cat out who was lost for two weeks. She broke my teeth. You know, it was like, so I finally threw her out of my hospital and said, please don't come back. So to say the least, we had a little rift and I saw Kelly in Palm Springs and she said to me, you know, I was driving home from Portland just playing the CDs that I bought and I listened to this Koanon talk and I thought, I know what she's talking about.
She goes, it was your sister. Now, my sister didn't tell me that she was doing the Koanon talk. I wish I had more water. It's my security blanket. That's not a request. It's just a note. And Kelly said, you've got to get this CD. You've got to listen to this CD. So I bought this CD and I put it in my car for about three weeks. Now, this is my sister that wouldn't spit on my grave and who I had thrown out of my hospital room.
Now, one day I finally said, okay, I'm going to run errands this morning. I'm going to listen to this CD. And I listened to this CD and I've heard my sister give her talk before. I spoke in an AA meeting where she was the Al-Anon speaker. And for the first time in my life, I was about 13 or 15 at the time, I heard a whole other perspective of the family alcoholic life that I'd never heard before. I heard about abuse in her life that I'd never heard before.
And I was like, how did I not bother to take the time to say what happened? How was I not caring enough to want to know how the disease affected another person? So I listened to this tape, to the CD, and I'm on my way to my men's stag.
[01:05:00]
And I'm sitting in this parking garage with just tears coming down my face because I couldn't believe how I let a resentment get in the way of something so special as another person in recovery. Because I thought I knew better, because I wanted it a certain way, because I wasn't willing to be a little more open. And listening to that tape opened up the doors for us to start communicating again. Now we've never been best friends because I left when I was 16 and she was 14.
But we email and we write each other and we talk about God and we talk about recovery and we talk about the steps. And if Kelly hadn't told me about that talk, I would have gone on holding on to this resentment for who knows how long. So if you don't think there's angels around here, they're everywhere. I'm a very grateful human being. I've seen people die. I've almost died. I've seen people, I've introduced friends who've gotten married and have kids that are now in college.
I've had life happen around me that I would have missed if I kept drinking and using, if I'd stayed alive, if I'd lived long enough. And if you think the gifts are about money, property, and prestige, you're so wrong because all it is, it's about love. It's about finding a love in your life that you never had or that you were denied or that you're totally unconscious of. It's about love and friendships and relationships and peace of mind and serenity.
And today I have so much peace of mind and so much serenity and such a great life and so many beautiful friends all over the world, all over the world. When I got here, there were two people left I could talk to, period. Today I get about 100 emails a day from people all over the place. It's incredible to get to come up here with Ronald and to see Terry and to hang out with the people that I've known for years, Jimmy over there and C-Dub and people.
It's such a gift. It's a gift that we're all here to participate in this life that we would never have had. There's no secrets around here for the newcomers. When I got here, I was given a meeting directory and a big book. Nobody like gave me a secret meeting directory and said, those other meetings in that other book, they're for the losers, this is where you go. Nobody came up to me and gave me a green book and said, that blue one, we just give to the guys that we don't think are going to make it.
I got the exact same set of tools that every other person has gotten here. It's all about honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. When you work a good strong third step, you're beginning to really see the path. If you want to see miracles in your life today, just be a miracle. Just open up and be a miracle. Thanks.