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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 865 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: leon-recovery-journey-and-the-steps-in-cocaine-anonymous-ca-1992-archive-865.mp3 Duration: 01:03:59
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Hello everyone, my name is Leon and I am a strange alcoholic, and I'm also a recovering carpet doctor. First of all, I'd like to thank God for giving me another day clean and sober, and I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me out, it is a privilege and honor to be able to share my experience and hope, and as I sat down there and I was waiting for 8.30 to come, I felt like, you know how you feel when you just hopped your dope and you're on your way home, and I mean you just got this tension, you're just ready to get started, and then they started making all these announcements, and it was like getting home with the dope and you're ready to go and you open the door and your mother's there.
I'm glad mom is gone so I can get my head, you know, I'd like to welcome anyone that's new to the fellowship of Cocaine Anonymous, and assure you that this program does work, and for me I found the program of recovery outlined in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, and for that I'm real, real grateful, for by the time I got to the program of Cocaine Anonymous I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that if you had told me to strip down or run down the street butt naked and you'll never have to hit that pipe again, I would have stripped down and ran, I was so tired, you know, I heard a story when I first got here that kind of, it relates to how I was when I got to this program, you know, and it's a corny little joke, but I'm going to tell it anyway, you know, there was a story about this lumberjack that lived in the woods with his pet raccoon, and you know, they lived in the woods all alone, and they were doing a lot of drinking together, and the raccoon got a little horny one night, and he looked over at the lumberjack, and he told the lumberjack, I'm horny, and I want to get some, and the lumberjack looked at the raccoon and said, well, you better take your ass outside, because you ain't getting nothing in here, so the raccoon went outside, and he looked all through the forest, and he couldn't find a female raccoon anywhere, so what he ran up on was a female skunk, and she looked at him, and he looked at her, and she said, daddy, are you willing, and he hopped on because he was willing, and pretty soon he fell off that female skunk, and she looked back at him, and she said, what's wrong, daddy, did you get enough, and he said, I don't know, but I had all I can stand, and to this day, I don't know if I had enough drugs and alcohol, but I know I had all I can stand, and I'm real glad that they have rooms like Cocaine Anonymous for me to be directed to, and today I understand that it's only through God's grace, you know, who saw beyond my faults, and saw my needs, and directed me to the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous, you know, and I'm one who believes in the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and I will talk about that book, because that book is giving me a way of life that has changed my life, and has taught me how to live within this world, comfortable in my own skin, and for that, I'm real, real grateful, and the book talks about that we should share in a general way what I used to be like, what happened, and what I'm like now, and I'm one of those that talk about a little bit of what it used to be like, because there's somebody probably sitting in this room saying, you just don't understand, you know, you don't understand that I want to quit, but I can't quit, and I understand, because I have been to that place where I wanted to quit, and I couldn't quit, and it's progressive, first it starts off, somebody says that I should quit, and I said I don't need to quit, then it went to the point where I thought I should quit, and I tried to quit, and couldn't quit, then I really wanted to quit, and found out that I couldn't quit, then I figured out I just can't quit, what am I going to do but keep going on, and I came in the rooms like this, and what you guys gave me was some hope, you know, my story is like most of the stories that I've heard, you know, during this convention, and most meetings I go to, I am a real alcoholic, a real addict, you know, a simple description
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given in the book, it said that sometime during my drinking career, or my using career, I lost total control over how much I drank, or how much I smoked, you know, I was not a lying person, I hit the pipe, I started in somewhere about 1978, I think it was, and the last time I hit the pipe was in 1986, so I have just a little bit of experience in that area, I was born and raised in a small suburb just outside of South Central Los Angeles, Compton, California, you know, my father was an elementary school teacher, my mother had her college degree in home economics, and she took up that career as a home engineer, she stayed home and raised the kids, and took care of the house, and I grew up in one of those households that I like to relate it to, the leave it to beaver syndrome, you know, I don't come from an abusive family, there was no cursing, there was no drinking, there was no real partying, you know, my mother, you know, she was up in the morning, and she had her hair done, and she had on a string of pearls, just like Mrs. Cleaver, and she woke us up in the morning, and we all came to the kitchen table and had breakfast as a family, you know, my father always wore a tie and a sport coat, you know, she walked everybody to the door and gave them that kiss on the cheek and sent us off to school, you know, but this thing just started off wrong for me, life just started off wrong, you know, it was like a flying saucer, just like said, hey, there's a good house, let's drop this nut off there, and they let me out, you know, and it was all wrong from the very beginning, you know, because I was born blonde hair and blue eyes, I mean, I look just like Kimmy on Lassie, you know, so naturally, I didn't fit into this family, you know, they weren't like me, you know, and, you know, what I'm trying to say, I just didn't feel like I fit in from the very beginning, you know, I have those kind of, that kind of parents that spent a lot of time with me as a child, you know, we sat down in the living room together, and they read books, and we took turns reading, I knew how to read before I got to kindergarten, I was a cub scout, a boy scout, my father was a cub scout, master of the scout master, you know, what it was is that he was able to do everything, he was perfect, and in my eyesight, you know, in my mind's eye, I had to be like him, and I just knew I couldn't be like him, you know, he just did everything, and I just felt so inadequate, you know, I just didn't fit in, my sister was different, you know, she was outgoing, and she was real intelligent, and I didn't feel like I could measure up to her, and I have two younger brothers, you know, they got along fine, and I was just always out, but, you know, what happened is I went to school, elementary school, and, you know, I suffered from the ips, you know, if I lived with Billy's family down the street, I'd probably be better, you know, if I had a blue tent seat instead of this red tent seat, I'd probably be happier, you know, if God had gave me those blue eyes and blonde hair, I would be okay, you know, it took me a long time to know that that wasn't the solution, I came in the rooms like, yeah, and I see all these handsome guys with blonde hair and blue eyes, and I know it ain't the answer, you know. Well, anyhow, I went to school, and what I did is I tried to imitate the guys that seemed to be living that type of life that I liked to think that I wanted to live, because they seemed happy, you know, and usually it was the kind of guys that my parents wouldn't let me hang out with, you know, the guys that wore their baseball hats on backwards, you know, the guys that wore Levi's and Converse tennis shoes, and my parents shopped at Sears robots, and I wore Sears double reinforced knee jeans, you know, the ones with the three-inch cuffs so you can grow into them, and so here I was real unhappy trying to fit in, and what I did is I imitated people, I cursed like people, I walked like people, as soon as I got out of the house, I turned my hat on backwards, turned the cuffs inside, you know, and, you know, open up my
[00:10:03]
shirt, take off my t-shirt, I always had to wear a t-shirt, I hated that, you know, and what happened was that I just tried to imitate, and it just didn't work, you know, I'm gonna get real quickly into why I started drinking. Women drove me to drink, because, and it wasn't that I didn't, you know, that I didn't have any girlfriends, because even in the first grade, I had more girlfriends than any guy in the school. I was in the first grade, I had a seventh grader girlfriend, an eighth grader girlfriend, a sixth grader girlfriend, I had a lot of girlfriends, the only problem was none of the girls knew they were my girlfriends, because I had never said anything to them, you know, you know, I'm one of those guys that if she looks good, I like the way her name sounds, and she even smiles toward my direction, you know, in my mind, I made her my girlfriend, and I would end up hating her when she got somebody else, because you fellas would always take them away from me, you know, because you would talk to her, man, and what happened by the time I got to junior high school, man, life sucked, you know, I mean, it was just totally unfair, you know, I wasn't in the right family, I wasn't the right color, I didn't have a girlfriend yet, and I had to get one, I know if I get one of those that I'll be alright, and so what I used to go to was that little sock hop we used to have in the gym, you know, take off your shoes and dance on the gym floor, and every week I would go to the gym with a mission on mine, getting that girlfriend, and every week I walked straight into the gym, I'd go straight to my spot on the wall, boom, I was there, man, holding that wall up, and I would gaze across the room, you know, and I would pick out the prettiest girl there, the real vision for you, then I would say I'm going to ask her to dance next week, and next week I would come back and I would do the same thing, and I always left that dance with tears in my eyes, feeling dejected and rejected, with that alcoholic pride that I hadn't even started drinking with, they just don't know who I am, and I would swear I would never come back to that dance, and I started thinking about suicide then, and I'm real glad that I found alcohol, because I was on the way to that sock hop, just one more time, I'm going to try it one more time, and outside that sock hop, some of those guys I wanted to be like, you know, they were outside and they were in the little huddle, and they called me over and they asked me when I got there if I wanted something, and when I looked in their hands, they were passing around a bottle of Ripple, and I looked at that Ripple, and I looked at those guys with those smiles, and I said yes, give me some, and they gave me that bottle and I drank it down, I remember it had a tingle when it hit bottom and my stomach got all warm, then something happened, my skin tone lightened up, my hair straightened out, my seniors double reinforced jeans turned into Levi's, my voice got deeper, my eyes turned blue, and I felt cool, and I strolled into the sock hop, with this new walk I had and this new voice I acquired, I walked up to the prettiest girl in the school, and I said sweetheart, would you like to dance, and she gave me that ladies look, you know when you guys start off at the shoes and come up to the head and say no thank you, and she said no thank you, but see alcohol gave me the courage to ask her, and also gave me the wisdom to tell her where to go, yeah you ladies probably ran into my type in the bar, you said no not this record, maybe the next one, and I said bitch what the fuck you come here for anyway, But you know what was so amazing about that was that uh, I didn't feel rejected.
I didn't feel like I was the one that lost out. She's the one that lost out, you know.
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The hell with her, plenty of fishes in this sea and I'm going to get my share and I strolled over to a couple. other ladies, and I got a few dances. But what I remember the most about that night was I got my very first three slow dances. My head went right to work. I said, a couple of swallows get you three slow dances. I wonder what the whole bottle is getting you. I'm going to make sure I find out, because I'm getting with these fellas next week.
And what happened was that I got with them, and I got really toasted, man. I felt better than I ever felt, and I was probably looking better than I ever looked in my own eyes. And I walked up to a girl in the dance, another one, another real vision for you, and I opened up my mouth to ask her to dance, and I threw up on her shoes, my shoes all the way off the floor. You know, when I got to Cocaine Anonymous, they talked about get a sponsor.
And when I got here, I said, I don't need no sponsor, man. I'm grown. I don't need nobody telling me what to do. You say, read that book, I'll read the book. You say, go to meetings, I'll go to meetings. What do I need a sponsor for? And it was put real simply to me that a sponsor is someone who shares their experience, strength, and hope with you on how to stay clean and sober. And the guy who was talking to me said, you probably got a sponsor that day that you threw up on that girl's shoes.
I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well, didn't somebody come out there and help you out when you were throwing up? I said, yes. And I came to realize, yes, I've always had sponsors in life. Somebody that I look to to share their experience with. And I had a sponsor that night. He said, man, look, what you need to do to smoke a little bit of this marijuana. Then he gave me some suggestions and directions on how to roll and smoke a joint. And I listened.
Because he had experience in an area that I had no experience in. And that's what they said that a sponsor is in Cocaine Anonymous. Someone who has some sober living experience, and hopefully someone who has the message of Cocaine Anonymous that's contained in the 12 steps. Somebody will walk you through those 12 steps. Because I come to believe the 12 steps is like a treasure map. With the treasure, then a happy, joyous, and free life. And the 12 steps are those places that you got to go to get to the treasure.
Now, and if you have a map to lead you through the jungle to a treasure, and you ain't never been in that jungle, you might eventually find the treasure. But along the way, by never being in the jungle, you might stop to eat a piece of fruit over there that looks real good. And it's poisonous like a sick dog. And you might take a swim in that little stream that looks so quaint when it's full of piranhas.
But if you get a guide, a sponsor, someone who has already walked through what you're going through, then you have a better chance of getting there without getting bit in the ass on the way. I got a few sponsors, okay. Well anyhow, so I got this sponsor that night, and he told me about marijuana. And I started experimenting with marijuana and drinking that wine. And you know, all of a sudden, like Bill said, I became a part of life at last.
And you know, there was intervals, hilarious. I started to have a good time. You know, the real thing really happened. I got a girlfriend, and she knew that she was my girlfriend. Being a real addict, you know, if one is good, three is better. And then I did that. And I went through junior high school, and I started to feel like I was a part of, you know. And I figured if I could be cool at the stock house, I might as well be cool at school. And that became routine, getting high before I went to school.
Taking a little bit extra so you can get high during nutrition. By the time I got to high school, I had graduated from AM radio to FM radio. And from wine to straight gin, nine decks and all the weed I could smoke. And I loved it. You know, I tried a couple other things when I was in high school. The offender vendors, the second all, the true and all. I even tried that angel dust. I just didn't like getting naked on people's roofs.
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Angel dust was probably the only drug I quit by sheer willpower. But I found out that I liked speed. I didn't like nodding out with the downers and stuff. You know, I tried Quaaludes. I OD'd the first time out, you know. I took nine of them. I slept for like three days, you know. And it was awful, you know. And I had those kind of parents that go in strict denial, right? I had to come up with something good and I told them I got drunk, you know.
They said, well, don't let it ever happen again, you know. I never took a Quaalude after that. Also in high school, I was introduced to cocaine for the first time. Back then, in LA, they used to, old guys used to call it getting your head froze or something like that. And it came in a little piece of foil, you know, and it cost $10. And what the old guys, some of my sponsors did, said, well, you snort it up your nose, you put some on your gums, and then you save a little bit to put on your ladies later.
I never saved a little bit to put on the ladies later. But what I knew about this stuff was that it was gone within an hour. Within an hour, I didn't have no more cocaine. It cost $10. And back then, $10 was big money, you know. You could get a four-finger bag of weed for $10. That would last at least two days, you know. So, you know, financially-wise, it wasn't worth me doing this cocaine thing, you know.
So I just started doing wine and gin and some decs and selling weed out of a hamburger stand. And then I kind of got into a disagreement with the LAPD. They didn't think it was right that I sold weed out of a hamburger stand. And what happened after a few arrests, they offered me free room and board. And so I found out, I could see that I had a real problem here. And my problem was that LAPD was screwed up, and I needed to get out of this city.
So I took a scholarship to hire, drink, and use courtesy of the United States Navy. That's where they pay you to drink like a man, and I did it well. I experimented with a lot of other things, the psychedelics. And I took those on a daily basis. I was a dental technician. They have good drugs in dental. Cross the hall, the guy worked in pharmaceutical. So we got high. We got high the whole time we were there.
My Navy career, I never got on a boat. It was just one total big party. Today, I know God was looking out, you know, because I was transporting drugs and all sorts of things while I was in the Navy. And, you know, I never got arrested. You know, through God's grace, I did get out with an honorable discharge. And I also, by the time I finished the Navy, I had gotten two PhDs. One had been a pitiful, hopeless druggie, and the other had been a pitiful, hopeless drunk.
And I came out, I stayed in Washington, D.C., and I sold drugs for a while. And then I came back to California. I got a job at a major utility company. I started making real good money for the time. And it was one big party, you know. My roommate, I had a roommate who worked for the liquor department for a grocery store. So I did the trash run. If any of you worked at stores, you know about the trash run.
That's when a person who works in the store throws out all the goods in the trash, and you go pick it up. And so we were pretty well stocked. I was still selling weed. And what happened, I was hanging out in this club, and I bought some cocaine one night from a waitress. And the waitress went back to the bartender and told the bartender that I had bought some cocaine. And I had been sitting at this bartender's bar for a little while, you know, and she said, well, I didn't know you do coke.
And I said, yeah, I do it occasionally. And she asked me a real stupid question. This is 1977. She said, have you ever played baseball? So I started telling her about my little league career. And she said, no, that ain't what I'm talking about. She said, if you take me home with you, I'm going to teach you how to play baseball all nine innings.
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And I was curious, so I took her home. And what happened was, is that she pulled out a gram of coke, and she pulled out a little shaker bottle. She poured it in. And I thought that she had just totally screwed this stuff up. And then she cooked it up. And when it rocked up, she cut it in four pieces. She put a quarter on the pipe. Then she started sharing her experience, strength and hope with me. You know, turn it now, pull a little faster, hold it.
And what happened is, she became my sponsor, you know. She sponsored me for a year. She shared a lot of experience, strength and hope with me, and on being a dope dealer of that type. I met those kind of people. I did some things that I'd rather not talk about in the open crowd. You know, I carried guns. I worked after hours. I cooked for rock houses. You know, we had a ball, as long as I was with her.
She was a mule for some big guy. Used to fly it all across the United States. We were never without coke. It was all right. I used to use up all my vacation days at the job. And sometimes it's not show up at all. They thought that it was a problem. To me, it was no problem. I make more money doing this. What happened is, this girl got real, real sick. She left the state. And she left me with a gorilla on my back.
And I had to survive. And so what I first did, you know, I tried to do it on my own. You know, I went into community service. I started providing that drug to my community. I became one of my better customers. Then I became my best customer. And then I became my only customer. And even though I had a job that was paying pretty good money, it still wasn't doing it. And so I went into getting a part-time job.
I went into furniture sales. I started selling my furniture piece by piece. Then I went into discount furniture sales. That's when I started selling your furniture. And finally, where it took me to was my last recession with the pipe. And that was a professional carpet cleaner. Cat litter smoked a lot of it. You know, I did it with a flashlight, but naked. It was disgusting. I saw where my life was just going totally downhill with this stuff.
And I was just, you know, I was just, you know, I was just, you know, and a couple of buddies of mine said we used to be so-called high rollers. We were going down, and we were down at the bottom. Whereas we saw that cocaine was the problem. And we decided that we were going to quit. And so we tried various ways. They talk about some of them, chapter three, the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. We tried the beer experiment, just drinking, smoking weed, no coke.
That worked for a while, for a year about. What happened is I tried. I tried mailing my check home. I tried buying groceries first. I tried giving my money to other folks. You know, none of that stuff worked. Finally, me and these guys got together. We went on a weed and alcohol maintenance program, and we had our own meetings. And what we would do was talk about some of the dumb stuff, or some of the scandalous stuff that we did while we were under the influence of cocaine.
As we drank and we got drunk, but we didn't get high no more. And we thought we had it lit. And the story I'm going to tell this, and I'm going to try to get into how I got here, is that they always got me on the time that I was sponsoring my girlfriend on the pipe. I was a torch man. And she had a jury curled, and it lit on fire because the torch caught the grease, and her hair was on fire. And it was two o'clock in the morning.
And the first thing that came to my mind is if I tell her she's going to drop this damn pipe. I mean, that's the very first thing that came to my mind. And it's the only thing that's stuck in my mind. And I didn't tell her her hair was on fire. What I did is I took the pipe out of her mouth and I walked it across the room. And I gently set it down and I came back and I said, your hair is on fire.
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And we put her hair out. But what they used to get me on, man, they said, man, I ain't never seen nobody as cold as you. Because it wasn't that. She said, well, because I took it out of her mouth before she finished the hit. And she said, can I have another hit? Because I missed that one. And I said, oh, it's my turn on the pipe. So that's what it was like for me. I stopped hitting the pipe. I stopped sorting cocaine.
And I just drank. And I smoked weed. And I was miserable. alcohol was no longer doing what it used to do for me, you know, I would go out on one of those missions, you know, still trying to get another girlfriend, and I would look across that bar, and I would pick her out, say, after this next record, I'm going over there and ask her to dance, first time I have a drink, I would have a drink, and I would say, well, I just need one more, and I'd go over there, and after the third drink, it's like, I wouldn't dance with that bitch, no way, then I would come home and do some more drinking, and cry about how lonely I was, you know, nobody loves me, my life is a wreck, why am I like this, and what happened is, I finally got another girlfriend, and I was going to fix her, because she was hitting the pipe, and so I started back up again, and in a matter of a week, I was just as bad as I was in the past, and that was towards the end for me, because what happened was that the job was tired of my stuff, you know, they were tired of this punctuality problem, they were tired of this absenteeism problem, and I had been suspended numerous times, I had been threatened with termination numerous times, and this time, they sat me down, and they said, if you're late one more time, within the next 12 months, or if you're sick, in the next 12 months, and miss a day of work, we will no longer require your services with this company, and I argued with them, what do you mean, I can't be sick, what if the doctor says I'm sick, you know how we do, you know, and, because you know, I knew I was going to be sick, and I knew I was going to be late, and I knew I was fine, so my head said, well, the hell with it, they're going to fire me anyway, I'm going to burn up some of my insurance before I go, so that's how I got the cocaine anonymous, through one of them two weeks of a couple of two day follow-up hospitals, when my company kicked out about $15,000 for the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, they taught me how to come to meetings, and through God's grace, rooms like this, and 12 steps of cocaine anonymous, I have now found the necessary to take a drink, smoking that non-addictive marijuana, and hit that deadly bass pipe, since I first walked through the doors of Cocaine Anonymous, June 23rd, 1986, and for that, I'm eternally grateful.
And when I got in the first room of Cocaine Anonymous, there was a room something like this, because they had a big Friday night meeting at that hospital, and I was the blackest thing in the meeting besides people shooting Jaguars outside, but they made me feel real welcome, just like you guys did this weekend. They all reached out and they told me welcome, they asked me if there was anything they could do to help me, they gave me phone numbers, they told me to make a lot of meetings, they told me to get a sponsor, they told me to get a big book out for Harlem Phenomenon, so I read that book the first night I was in the hospital, started after stories in the end, went to the table contest, found out about the first black man that got sober, because I didn't know no black people got sober.
When I got here, I hadn't heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, I hadn't heard of Cocaine Anonymous, and I'm sitting in these rooms, and what the fellowship looked real good to me, because you guys were smiling, you were happy, people seemed to know each other, and they were all friendly, and by the time I got here, I didn't look like I do now, you know, by the time I got here, I was riding a bike, a motorcycle, I looked like a reject from the Hell's Angel, and I smelled like one too, you know, I had a mohawk haircut, my beard was like four or five inches longer, with a braid down the middle, I wore a big knife, motorcycle boots, jacket with fur tails hanging off of it, little buttons you wouldn't want your mother to read, and I was used to people crossing the street when I came down the sidewalk,
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and these little old ladies and people were just hugging me and saying, welcome, welcome, we hope you keep coming back, you know, and the fellowship looked good, and they always made the sitting on the first row, and right in front of us was the 12 steps, and I looked at the steps, and I said, step one sounds okay, step two, that means somebody in this room is crazy, I wonder which one, better keep my knife on, you know, I looked at step three, it says God in there, and I had no parts of God, and then all of a sudden, when I saw that step, I heard you guys talk about God, when I got here, I was a blatant agnostic, borderline atheist, I just didn't want to read enough to be a real atheist, you know, and then, like I said, you know, I never knew anybody got sober, people like me die in jail, or they die, you know, I have friends die of this disease, and I knew a lot of people that was in jail, nobody stopped, and here you guys were talking about God, and I looked around the room, and I didn't see no black people in here, and I thought I had stumbled onto one of these white coats I saw on 60 Minutes, it's like, when are you guys going to bring out the Kool-Aid, you know, and I remember, I got up, and I left the room, and I went back in, and I saw my counselor, and I said, hey, some people in there trying to brainwash me, he said, take your ass back in there, because your brain needs washing, so I went back in, I sat down, I made a decision that I was going to work all the steps except the one that said God on it, I read how it works, you know, it didn't make sense, but I read it, you know, I could recite chapter 5, part of chapter 3, and then they would always say I make 90 meetings in 90 days, I said, that's it, it's a meeting, all I have to do is make a lot of meetings, and that's what I left that hospital with, meeting directories, the willingness to go to a lot of meetings, and I left that hospital, and I made 270 meetings my first 90 days I was working an 8-hour job, because they told me to make meetings like I drink and use, I drink and use every day, every night, and I made my meetings like that even just a day, I'm not saying that that's what keeps me around here, but I heard an old timer say, well, a newcomer asked him, well, how long do I have to go to these meetings, he said, well, you just keep going to these meetings until you like going to meetings, then you don't have to go no more, so I kept going to meetings, now I like to go to meetings, and now that I don't have to go, I go anyway, you know, well, anyhow, so I'm making all these meetings, man, I'm going to meetings all over, and I'm sitting up front, because that was something that they told me to do when I was in hospital, because they told me if you sit in the back, you could be distracted by a pretty pair of ankles or something like that, so I try to get close enough to see the speaker, I always thank the speaker, the little things that they teach you in those hospital programs, and after that, you know, I'm glad I went to that many meetings, because that's 90 days of sodriety.
IRS wanted me to make amends right away for $22,000, the two girlfriends I had were both acting up, old timer at the podium embarrassed me, and I was still feeling all alone like nobody cared, the job suspended me, the ones that said they were going to fire me if I was late, I was late, coming from a meeting, I told them I'm coming from a meeting, I'm trying to get sober, don't you guys care, I'm trying to straighten up, they said, look, man, we got people that have been working here for years, and it's already straight.
[00:40:01]
And I couldn't see that they did me a favor by suspending me, remember, they told me they were going to terminate me, I said, they suspended me, and I went, man, I was, I mean, I was burning, and I ended up in front of a bar, and I had no intentions of going to that bar, and I ended up in front of that bar, and it hit me, I can't drink. And I came up with another recovery program, I like to call it Uzi does it, I decided I was going to buy an Uzi, I'm going back to my job, and I'm going to kill every sucker I see.
And I got on my motorcycle, and I went to the gun shop to buy the gun, because I had the money, and they have this law where you can't buy a gun right out, you have to fill out the papers, you have to see if you're a nut, and all of that sort of stuff, and I couldn't get the gun. I was sitting on my motorcycle trying to figure out who can I borrow a gun from, and I just glanced down at my watch, and it was like a 3.20 on a Sunday, and automatically by going to that many meetings, I knew where a meeting was, it started in 10 minutes and was less than 10 minutes away, and I ended up in that meeting.
And I walked through the door, because I thought meetings was going to fix me. By now I should have known, but I went to the meeting, and I thank God I went to the meeting. And I walked through the door of that meeting, and today I know the purpose of home group, where people get to know you, get a chance to know you, know your facial expression, and one of the guys came up and he asked me, how you doing? And I gave him that newcomer answer, I said, I'm fine.
And he looked at me again, and he said, man, really, how are you doing? I wanted to open up my mouth and say I'm okay, and all I could do was start crying. I mean, I was screaming, not all over the place. And men like me don't cry. And he took me out back, and he opened up the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, and I remember my head said, what in the hell is that book going to do for me? And he asked me if I read it, and I said, yeah, I read it. He said, well, do you mind if I read something to you? I said, no, go ahead, and he read it. And the part he talked about was in Chapter 5, and what it says is resentment is the addict's number one offender.
It kills more addicts than anything else. When harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit, the insanity of alcohol, the drugs return, then we drink again. That's what it says in the book. By now, you can tell by some of my language, I don't normally speak like that. I've never said, Bob, I have a resentment against you. I use other words that mean the same thing.
And that's the way he read it to me, in a language that I could understand. He said, hating them is going to kill you. Let me tell you how it's going to kill you. Because as long as you are hating someone, and you can hate them bad enough to hate them, the obsession of alcohol or the use could come back to you, and you're going to use again. He said, this is a promise in this book. The book will tell you, you will use again. And he said, unless you find some way to take care of that anger, you're going to end up getting loaded again. And they said, do you want to go back to where you were? And I said, no.
He said, well are you willing to do anything not to go back to the way you were and I said yes. And he started me off in my first inventory and I thank God that I ran into that guy when I ran into that guy. You know and my first inventory was not like the one in the book and today I have nothing against any inventory that's not like the one in the book because that one was enough to defuse the anger long enough for me to be introduced to the people who took me back to the book. And it was in the book that I found out that I suffer from a disease of the threefold nature. I have an allergy of the body coupled with the obsession of the mind and the spirituality.
Simply step one says that I'm powerless over cocaine and the reason why I'm powerless is
[00:45:05]
because I have a physical type allergy to cocaine. Once I take a Hit, Something Happens in my Body that Causes me to Fade, Just One More, Just One More, You know, I have a friend that describes it as like having an itch, you know when you have an itch and you try to scratch it, and the more you scratch it, the more it itches, that's how it is when I take a hit off that pipe, and they say that's an Abnormal Reaction, because an Allergy is an Abnormal Reaction to a Chemical or a Food, and they say when a person has that Craving, they place themselves in the Class of Being an Addict, it says it never occurs in the Average Tempered Person, I said Average Dope Smoker? But you know what, when I was able to get clear enough, I could remember people like that, we'd be sitting there, there'd be a pile of Coke on the table, they would look at their wives and say, oh, I gotta go, I gotta go pick up the kids, and they would leave, wouldn't ask for a hit on the way out, they'd just get up and leave, now if it was me, you could have the kids, matter of fact, how much would you give me for one of them, so I understood that I do suffer from that Craving, and they say the only way to relieve myself from the Craving, in the Doctor's opinion, is Total Abstinence, I won't crave one more if I don't take the first one, it ain't the caboose that kills you and the train runs over your ass, it's the damn engine, it's the first one, it ain't that last eighth, that last quarter out, it's that first hit that gets you started, and I could see that, and they said it's a physical Craving that they can't treat, it's like eating a box of Ex-Lax, there will be a physical reaction, and you're powerless over it, and looking back at my own experience, every time I take a hit, I get the Craving, and I'm powerless over it, then they talk about the mind, say when it comes to the mind, the addict has this great obsession, somehow, someday, I'm going to be able to hit this pipe and not spend all my money, and we try every imaginable way to do it, for some reason, my head told me, well, if you just put $400 in your pocket, put the other $2,000 in your sock, you ain't going to spend it, sounds real silly, right? I did it countless times, when they told me about step 2, and I remember they said somebody's insane, it was explained to me, that's the insanity, that we come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore to a sense of sanity, because when it comes to drugs and alcohol, my mind does not have the ability to think straight, it will come up with a lie that I will believe, it even talks about I got selective amnesia, you know, like, I went there last week with all my checks, and I smoked all of my checks, I felt real bad, I crawled around on these people's floor with my flashlight butt naked, they talked about me like a dog, they told me don't ever come back with my disgusting ass again, and payday come, hey, I forgot all about that, I'm back at the same rock house, and they say that is a form of insanity, and you know when a crazy person can't get a crazy person well, it's like that commercial where they had a guy laying on the operating table, and he's reaching over for the scalpel, going to do his own operation, and for me to try to change my own mind is impossible, which led me to, yes, I am powerless, if I stay on step 1, knowing that I'm powerless, it ain't enough to keep me sober, which led me directly to step 2, I had to come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, and that's where I thought I was going to have problems, because you guys talk about God, and I identify so much with Bill, you know, I just have a problem with organized religion, or I did, I no longer have that problem with it, still not a church person, I always told myself, the only reason you go to church, or when I had a choice whether I should go or not, I told myself, I only darken the doors of a church for two reasons,
[00:50:00]
one was a funeral, another one was for a wedding, and I got those two mixed up, you know, I called them both the death of a man, you know, one physical, and that's the way I look at it, you know, and I went, you know, and they were talking about this God thing, and I'm glad I got with the people that took me through the chapter, through the agnostic, because it talks about if you be an addict, and they describe it again, a person who cannot stop once they get started, or a person who once they get started, they can't control it, you'd probably be suffering from a disease, which only a spiritual experience will conquer, and they said, don't be disconcerned, you know, if you have a problem with your belief system, and then the chapter to the agnostics, it was real simple, they told me all I have to do is be willing to believe in a power greater than myself, and today is real simple for me, because I know I haven't made a tree, I ain't made a butterfly, I didn't decide that bears hibernate, and birds migrate, I know something created those things, something had intelligence to do that, and whatever that is, it can do something that I can't do, and that's a power greater than me, today, to keep it real simple, I call that power God, and I started off with that willingness to believe that that power could help me, because I chose to believe, and ask, and do certain things to get closer to that power, and I did the second step, which I was willing to believe, and then the third step, I made the decision to turn my will over to the care of that power, because apparently that power had more intelligence than I had, because all I had to do was look at my life, and know that I ran my life on what I thought and what I felt, and my life was a total disaster, so I became willing to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of a power greater than me, and my power was that creative intelligence, and I said if it could create a blade of grass to break the concrete in the sidewalk to grow up toward the sun, surely that power had more intelligence at running my life than I do, and they told me the action of step three was to do step four, and then the second time I was introduced to step four, I was introduced to the one that was in the book, and in the book I was able to see through what we call a four-column inventory that most of my resentments are of my own imagination, most of them, and most of my resentments are based on fear, and one of my biggest character defects which I know a lot of you, I speak for myself, have is that we all have ESP, we think we know what you think about us, and my biggest resentment was against my parents, you could have told me they weren't the worst parents in the world when I grew up, and by doing that four-column inventory I could see that my parents did the best they could with what they had, and what I was able to see truly in that inventory that my parents were damn good parents, and I was truly blessed to have them, I could see that in my inventory that I write down who I resent, why I resent them, how that resentment affects me, my ambitions, my self-esteem, my pride, my sexual relationships, my personal relationships, my security, then I write down what part did I play in it, where was I selfish, dishonest, or afraid, and by doing it that way I was able to see the truth, truth that I've never been able to see, you know, just like those little girls that I used to hate because they wouldn't be my girlfriend, well honestly I hadn't asked them, so how can I hate them for doing something that they didn't even know that they did, and I was able to let go of a lot of my warped thinking, and through that inventory I was able to go through and take a look at my fears, was able to see why my relationships don't work, I was able to find out about a lot of character defects that I run my life on, and I was more than willing to ask God to relieve me of those things.
What I'm trying to say is I went through the steps, and when I went through the steps what I got was the 12 step promise, and that is I had a spiritual awakening as a result of those steps, and with that spiritual awakening I have a, there's a book called New Pair of Glasses, I look at life differently, I look at people differently, and since I see things differently I'm able to feel different about it and act different about it,
[00:55:08]
and for that I'm real, real grateful. You know my sobriety has been up and down, you know they said it was like a roller coaster, and I'm not going to deny that, but I know the more you ride the roller coaster the easier it is to take them dips, you know you don't scream so much when you ride it over and over and over again. You know my sobriety has been a series of spiritual awakenings, that six months coming from a meeting I brought aside a pickup truck at 50 miles an hour, and I can remember, I've been in motorcycle accidents before, and I can remember one time getting up ready to kill this old lady for scratching up my motorcycle, but this time you know I laid in the street, and it was the strangest feeling because I looked right in front of me and I saw this tennis shoe and I thought to myself, hey that's strange, that looks like your tennis shoe, but it can't be because your foot's in it.
What happened, my leg had snapped and my foot was laying right in front of my face, and you know what, I got this strange feeling like everything's going to be okay, there was no fear involved. And see by then I had worked some steps and I had faith in a power greater than myself, and you know the doctors said that I might not walk again, I had fractured my back and totally destroyed a knee, and I had the strangest feeling that everything's going to be alright.
You know and I found out about Unconditional Love because it wasn't those people that I grew up with, it wasn't even a lot of relatives that came and saw me during that time, it was the people of this fellowship that brought a meeting to my room in the hospital on a daily basis, it was those people that picked me up and brought me to meet, it was those people that sat through and told me it's going to be alright.
And today you know I understand that sometimes we go through things, and if we get to the other side that there's a reason why we went through them, so we can share with somebody else, and God seems to know that I've been through some things and he put those people in my life, and I was able to sit through somebody else, two other people matter of fact, that got hit by cars and were told that they would never be able to walk again, and all three of us are walking again.
You know today I understand that my life was a total shambles and it had nothing to do with God. When I come to find out the biggest part of my disease is my spirituality, my separation from that God. See because I believe that today I believe that I am God's greatest miracle, I believe each one of you are God's greatest miracles, and that there's a reason and a purpose for everybody being here. See because there's some personalities in this fellowship that I probably couldn't warm up to if I was pre-mated with them.
But see my book gave me a way to look at everybody as one of God's children, and for me to hate another one of God's child is for me to hate God's work, and for me to hate God's work is to say God you don't know what you're doing, and see for me to say that is for me to think that I am God one more time, and that got me in so much trouble. You know I believe that the program, the Cocaine Anonymous, is outlined in the first 164 pages. That's my belief. The book said it gives clear cut directions later on followed by 43 personal scores.
That's somebody else sharing how they applied the program into their life. You know, I follow to the best of my ability what's outlined in that book, and I'm always pleased with the results. You know, the biggest one that they talk about, 12 Promises, and for those of you that don't know, those are the 9 Step Promises, that you will know a new freedom and a new happiness. You know, if you're painstaking about this phase of our development, and I come find out that all of those things have come true for me.
You know, most of my amends have been of the financial variety. Like I said, I did pay our IRS that $22,000. I got a settlement for the motorcycle accident.
[01:00:02]
I come to find out. I always heard that money won't fix you, and I was one of those go just give me some money and let me find out, well I got enough money that I thought would fix me and it was not the fixer, you know today I know God is, you know my life is nothing like I always dreamed it to be, it's much, much, much better, today I have a very large extended family, today I always have a place to go, today I always have a purpose in life, and today I get the greatest joy of watching somebody new come into these rooms and change, and that's some of the promises that are talked about in Vision For You, to watch somebody come in and change, and get that sparkle back into their life and sparkle back into their eyes, you know, I don't know, that weight got me jambled, you know I always know there's three pitches, you know before you get up to the podium, you say okay this is what I'm going to say, and when you get up here this is what you actually say, and when I sit down I'm going to think of all the stuff I should have said, but it really doesn't matter, you know I'm just real honored to be here, you know I want to thank all of you, especially EW, you know he personally kept in touch with us, and getting us out here, and I don't know I just want to wish that anybody that's new, don't sell yourself short, you know the fellowship is fine, service work is great, making meetings is great, but you need to do all three of them to have a full and complete sober life, the circle and the triangle says unity, recovery, and service, you know one of the first things you hear is that people who go out say they stop going to meetings, then you see some people that make meetings all the time and they get loaded, they ain't work the steps, then you have those people who say they work the steps, because I find it real hard to believe that you can work the steps and not get in service, I find that real hard to believe, you see this is a high that just keeps going and gets better and better as time goes by, sobriety gets better as time goes by, and I remember the first time I got that first good blast on the pipe, you know when my head was ringing, oh man, I couldn't wait to share it with somebody, hey man you got to try this, you know and this is how you do it, and that's the way I feel about sobriety, if you have that spiritual experience or that spiritual awakening of the type that I have had, you can't wait to share it, and you want everybody to have it, today I know that everybody wants it, because one of the conditions is you have to want it, because if everybody who needed it was in this room right now, you think you're complaining about smoke now, I don't know, I'm going to close up with this, you know I'm still not what I want to be, and my mother will tell you I ain't what she wants me to be, but I just thank God I ain't what I used to be, and I'd like to invite everybody to take a walk with God, and meet you at the steps, thank you for allowing me to share.