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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 816 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: max-g-max-g-at-pnr-convention-boise-ca-2002-archive-816.mp3 Duration: 01:09:33
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I really want to thank the committee for asking me to do this and I want to thank everybody who had any kind of part in putting this convention on. I had a wonderful time myself and it's good to say thank you very much. So yeah, I'm an addict, an alcoholic. Anybody know what the difference is between an addict and an alcoholic? You can see from the back, a couple sugar packets, right? Alcoholic? Does that. Drug addict? You can relate to that, you're in the right place. My really good buddy Donny, one of my oldest friends in the world, been clean and sober around a decade now, told me that joke and I'm like a lot of other people, I get, you know, terrified coming out to do this no matter what and a little humor always kind of helps me relax. It's really an honor and a privilege to be here this morning. It's another Sunday morning, you know, and I'm not trying to stave off what I did Friday night and Saturday night. I woke up this morning, actually the birds woke me up and they kind of pissed me off for a little while. When you're an addict like me, you know all about the birds pissing you off first thing in the morning. So I was remembering what I heard somebody else talking about this weekend and an 11 step workshop about the beauty of being able to hear some birds and that kind of thing and I think it was the 11 step workshop. I might have been in the gym last night, I'm not sure. I'm pretty tired but I woke up feeling good and you know it's 10 a.m. and before I got here I would have been running for a couple of hours already and deeply grateful to not have to go through this stuff that I just have to go through to just get out of bed this morning. I want to say that I love the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe in the program of action that it so clearly outlines. It's changed my life, it's changed me as a human being and I'm continuously amazed that an old sod in New York, stock speculator and a proctologist were able to put this thing together, you know. That's just amazing to me. It's an honor to stand before you as an addict, somebody who's recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I don't say that because I'm all that and a bag of chips. I say that because that's what this program has to offer. I'm very happy that I have a place to come to on a daily basis and take care of myself and try and carry the message to the addicts who are still suffering. I'm also glad that I have a format to follow and what it was like and then what happened and what it's like now because those early founders found that that's the way to gain somebody who's new or nearly new how to gain their trust.
I'm hoping that some of the people that were here last night who are new or nearly new are here again this morning. You went to bed sober and haven't gotten loaded yet this morning. I always hate talking to people like 20 years and saying, go to meetings, work the steps, get in a spa, read the book. It really works. It still seems like I'm preaching to the choir, but we have a tradition around here, the fifth one, that I have a primary purpose and that's to carry the message to the addict who still suffers. My experience has been for the most part with people that are new, but sometimes it's people that have been around for a long time. If you're an addict like me, sometimes you have a mind that just forgets everything.
I've got this forever clever mind. It's like a steel colander and stuff just goes right through it all the time. Drugs work the same way. They always wear off. I was left to myself and I found that recovery will wear off, so I need to do this thing daily. I'm grateful that it works that way. I was born in Brooklyn. I grew up in a family that gave me all the
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love I could ever want, all the support I could ever want. I never went without. I'm deeply grateful for that. My folks flew out here and there was a point a few years ago where they had to make that difficult decision of saying, we love you, but you have to go. You can't be here. You have to go live back on the streets where you just were. It really moves me a lot and it speaks of what this program has to offer, I believe. They flew all the way out from New York just to say I love you and spend a little time. I'm really grateful for that. I love you guys. Thank you. I had all this love and all this support and none of it ever really quite sunk all the way in. I've just been listening to people speak all weekend and just relating across the board. I never really quite felt all the way comfortable inside of myself doing what I was doing wherever I was doing it. I had those feelings like I never ever quite fit in. I could never really match up to you.
The one that I didn't really know until I got here and I started doing some of the work was that if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me. I could never ever quite put a finger on any of these feelings. I just didn't feel right. I'm so glad that I got here and I continued to do some of the work to be able to identify some of this stuff. I never had the thing of like, I just don't feel adequate. Pass me that joint. It was never a conscious thing.
It was like, I got low because this shit felt good. That's all I knew, man. It was like, this feels good. I'm going to do it some more. I was a big believer in the bathroom. Favorite room in the house. Long before I even started getting loaded, I would go in the bathroom and I'd pick up a book and start reading. I'd sit in there for three or four hours and just read. My mom would be like, are you all right? I'm sure she thought I was doing something else in there other than reading. Wrong fellowship for that. I loved that quiet, like I'm all alone in here and no one can really mess with what I'm trying to do to change the way I feel. Folks are my first real big escape, but nothing quite worked like that first beer that I drank. I don't know exactly why I drank it. Today I was like some hunches, you know, uncomfortable as a kid, teased by other kids, didn't want to be a kid, saw adults sitting around drinking, smoking a pot, laughing and having a good time. I liked to hang out with them when that was going on because it was fun. The devious mind that I have, I waited and I plotted and I planned and it took a couple years, but I finally got my opportunity and I stole a beer out of the fridge. I think it was something really quality, like a black label, some really good stuff there. I snuck in the bathroom. It's my first experience of being in bathrooms for a long time. After that, I drank it and I got off. That thing that makes me different from normal people happened. Felt good. Felt really good. All those weird little childhood feelings of just like this kind of sucks went away. I got off and I loved it pretty much immediately. I kind of stumbled around the house and this euphoric buzz and then that wore off and I puked my guts out. Because I have this disease, I noticed at the time, I went back and I got another one immediately. It just kicked off this long 20 year run. The first illegal drug I ever did was LSD. I was nine. Today, I look at nine year old kids and I'm like, what the hell was I thinking? Dude. Yes, I moved out to California. I say dude now sometimes. You might hear that said once or twice. But man, I had a great time. I spent all day tripping my ass off, hanging out with my grandpa. He's kind of old, stoned out
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alcoholic guy. He was just sitting there all kind of buzzed out and I'm laying on the floor watching it melt all buzzed out. I didn't know it then, but these were hits that were supposed to be split between four people. I felt that shudder. I've heard other people talk about that. I didn't know. I said, I'll take this. Sure. My oldest friend Donnie stole it from my dad and we decided to take it. I loved it. Closest thing I found to a spiritual experience before I got here. Later that night, I took the second hit. I'm nine years old and I'm running around on like, I guess the equivalent of what like eight people should have been taking. There are no consequences. I didn't get caught. I loved it. I started smoking pot pretty much right after that. I'd heard drugs were bad, but my experience was nothing bad happened. This feels good and I want to keep doing this for a long time. Smoked pot pretty much every day for 20 years. I started getting into, started taking pills and I liked things that made me go down primarily. My grandmother was dying of lung cancer and was living with us and she died and they were giving her morphine and liquid morphine and I went in the bathroom and stole the bottle and drank a little bit and that was, that was the best thing I'd ever found. And I was not like one guy who, I totally do not relate to the concept of drug of choice. I never even heard that term before I walked into a treatment center. And I looked at the woman who asked me that like blankly. I'm like, what the hell is that? I was a mixer. I like to put about four or five, six, seven different things in my body at once and see what happened. That was the way that I drank and I used. I got into pills. I was a medicine cabinet bandit. I had the coffin flushed down to a science. You know, you walk, go to visit somebody. Can I use your bathroom? You know, go on there and open the medicine cabinet, you know, rifle around and like may cause drowsiness. All right. Do not take with alcohol. Oh yeah, right. You know, I'm going to be doing some of that. And I just take shit and find out what happened later. You know, took all kinds of things that I probably shouldn't have taken. And like that, you know, and so I'd finished, you know, rummaging through and take some of this, some of that and put it all back very carefully. So, you know, in case they open it up, you know, it was all in the exact same spot and flush the toilet to close the door.
There'd be no, no noise. And I did that a lot. I was first stop I made in somebody's house. Can I use your bathroom? And went on and on like that. I was a big believer in psychedelic drugs for a long time. Took an awful lot of them. It was not uncommon for me to wake up and like take five bits of liquid acid and smoke a joint just to get to the bus stop to get to school. And it's, you learn some survival skills trying to like pay attention in homeroom while you're coming on to that shit, you know, sitting there and the professor's lecturing with a meter stick or something. I'm just, wow, man, you know, are you present? Barely, you know, that kind of thing. Did my first line of cocaine in the bathroom of high school. A really good friend of mine, Chris, who I got tragically killed many years later, went out of there and went into gym class. And darn near pulled a Len bias on myself playing basketball. I was, I was so amped up. I was like practically passing the ball and running and catching it myself. I mean, I was, I was gone, man. I was like, this is great. But it was like this, you know, really expensive thing and hard to get. And, you know, it was like in every once in a while kind of thing. And by the way, I do not identify myself as a cocaine addict because my personal belief is that, that like maybe somebody who's new might go like, oh, well then like I can shoot a little heroin. You know what I mean? I'm a drug addict. I'm an alcoholic. The thing that I love about CA is that when I got here, they said, we don't care whatever it is you're doing, we want to help with your problem. The freedom from all mind-altering substances is very appealing to me and I love Cocaine Anonymous for that and the people that welcomed me when I first showed up in the rooms because they were like, we don't care bro, we don't care whatever it is you're doing, whatever it is you're killing yourself
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with, we have a solution to that, just sit your ass down and pay attention. So cocaine was not a real big easily accessible thing, there was tons of pot and tons of acid and all kinds of pills because everybody has a bathroom. I did that for a long time and it all kind of culminated with getting poisoned by something I thought was some kind of psychedelic drug and running around the house naked and riding on the walls and my folks having to literally hold me down on the floor and literally sit on my back and that kind of thing because I was out of my mind, literally.
I couldn't speak, I was just like grunting and saying like weird words and it was a scary thing and so I figured that, acid is a problem, but I can drink, smoke pot and I did that for the last couple of years of high school and somehow I got into college because high school was all about being high, that was all it was for me. You see, I'm a drug addict, I'm really smart, even though I've done some really stupid shit in my life, I'm really smart and I know how to play the game.
My whole thing is if I'm interested in it, I'm going to do really well and if I'm not interested in it, I will do just what I can to get by. That was the way, that was my coping mechanism. My life coping skills in high school were vizine, dentine and cologne. That's what I needed to get through each day man, you know what I mean. It was like get the rat out and take the reek off and chew some gum. That's how I survived, trying to sell a little bit of that and hooking up with friends and making all of my friends because I always had a bag of pot, that was how I earned my friends.
By the time I graduated from high school, it was my seventh overall school and my second high school. It was like every two years I had to move. What I found was as soon as I got to the new school, there were certain people just like us, I could spot us sober a mile away and I could spot us loaded a mile away. I'd walk up and they got the big boots and the torn Levi's and the bandanas around the leg and all that David Lee Roth crap and the leather jacket and smoke and I'm like those are my people. You get high? Yeah, I get high. Best of friends immediately. We had something in common. That was just how I related. I related by getting loaded with people.
So I moved out to Santa Cruz, California to go to this wonderful university there. I moved out there in 1987 and I finished my bachelor's degree in 2001. That doesn't sound like one of our stories. I went through five years and I was in a class and a half away from graduating and could not get it together for all of those years. College was great. I did all those things that a college student is supposed to do like snort speed and study. Crank, there's a nasty drug. Burn a hole in your head, tears running down my face and then what the hell did I just do?
It would hit me and this is great for the first day and four days later when everybody's a cop, it wasn't so much fun. They're out there and they're looking in and here they come and all that. How can I make this stop? Did all the keg parties. I used to have this sticker that said my parents think I'm in college. That's what I did. I ran around the Redwoods and I got loaded. The progressive nature of this disease was really starting to come on. I didn't know it at the time. I know it today. I thought I was that tolerant. That was my word for it back then. I've got tolerance. I can party more than you and I can drink more than you and I can function better than you.
I'm the guy at 5 minutes to 2 a.m. who's got enough together to walk into 7-Eleven and deal with those lights. I can handle that. I drive better when I'm drunk. If I'm not drunk and shit, I'm all, oh my god, I have a few drinks. I'm like, whoa. Take the edge off. I'm a better driver this way. I can deal. I took great pride in being able to out-party people. Some male ego thing going on there. I did all that stuff that I had to do to feel normal. Looking back on it now, I can really see how those first 2 beers when I was 9 was not what I needed to get the desired effect when I was 20.
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The way this disease works really blows my mind because it's so sneaky and it's so subtle. It crept into my life and just started taking a hold of all these things that I like to do, like make art, play sports, cook food, go dancing, all those things. It just kind of stole it all the way, but so subtly I actually thought I was making a decision to not go do these things anymore. A pattern was like, this is fun, and then take some drugs or drink and say, wow, this is even better.
Then after a while, I was like, well, it's not going to be fun unless I have this stuff to go do that. I was like, well, I need to get this stuff in me just so I can even think about going and doing that. Why bother doing that? That's too expensive. I'll just sit at home and have a party by myself. Not a bar drinker, costs too much. Drink of choice was like, what's on sale? Not particularly picky, and that's the way that I went through those 5 years of a wonderful opportunity to really improve myself and develop my mind.
It got out a lot. I graduated and went on this long series of one job being slightly lamer than the next, pretty much. I did this, and I did that, and I moved around, and I tried to pull off this dream that I had of being able to drink and use the way I wanted to use and still kind of come up in life. I'd see people with new cars and mountain bikes on them and boats on them, and I'd be like, wow, how do they do that? How do they pull this thing off? I'd watch friends get married and buy houses, and I would just scratch my head, and I couldn't figure it out.
This went on and on and on, taking as much as I could whenever I could every single day, and just existing like I heard somebody else talk about. I didn't really have much of a life. Everybody I hung out with did what I did, or else I thought people that didn't were lame. I started to kind of get a glimpse. I wasn't really progressing, so I was noticing the houses in the places that I lived a few years earlier were a lot nastier these days. I'm living in these places, and I'm looking, and I'm like, this place is a dump.
My life is kind of slowly going downhill, but I really can't quite see. I can't figure out what the problem is. I'm thinking that my main problem is I'm just not earning enough money. If I can just get enough money, then I can afford all this stuff I like to do, and I can buy all that shit. It just started falling apart, and I started figuring that the town I was living in was the problem, and I started moving around. I would move and hang out somewhere, and I'd end up with myself again doing what I needed to do, and it would fall apart up there.
I would just pretty much run my life into the ground, and then go home for the holidays and recuperate for a little while, eat a bunch, and sleep, and bathe, and that kind of thing. I'm kind of like, all right, I'm feeling a little bit better, and I can go back out and try this, what I now understand to be a desperate experiment all over again. Every year it just seemed like a notch would go, I would just drop a notch, and worse things would happen. A longstanding joke from when I first showed up is, I just thought my life was in a slump. Anybody have that feeling? I'm just in a bad spell. This is going to pull out. It's going to be fun again.
It didn't end up happening until I got sober, but it was starting to go downhill. When I was in high school and I first started getting into drugs, I needed to educate myself. I was a smart dude. I wanted to know what the hell I was taking, where it came from, what it did to me. I read every available piece of literature I could. This is all stemming from reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I read that book, man, I read that back page of all that shit those guys run around carrying, and I went, yeah, that's what I want to do. I don't think normal people read that book and have that, yeah, I want to run around with enough shit to kill 30 people at all times.
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I was using like that and going on like this, and I tried pretty much everything I could possibly find to get my hands on, and things that I couldn't find I looked for, and I did all that stuff. I always swore that I'd never do heroin, and I'd never stick a needle in my arm. Swore it, deathly afraid. You see where this is going, right? It means I'm going to be getting sober pretty soon. You'd be able to talk about picking up the pipe, and you're like, cool, here comes recovery.
A friend said, hey, I'm ready to get some heroin. I went, cool. I like to snort a little bit of that. I was just going to try it. Here is my forever clever mind. I'm just going to try it once and say I've tried that. A month later, I'm still trying it. I'm looking at my friend who's shooting it, and he's shooting this little teeny thing, and I'm snorting this big old thing, and I'm just not getting off the way he is.
Another absolutely stellar, brilliant, fine-tuned state of mind thought process is, I know, I'll save money if I start shooting heroin. Honestly, I can remember that thought clear as a bell today. It took me six years to get that needle out of my arm. Like I heard somebody else say last night, I really wanted to stop. Within a year, I wanted to stop with all of my might, and I absolutely could not.
That just reinforced what a piece of crap that I am, and what a loser, and I'll never amount to anything. I'm like, you can do all these things, but you can't even stop doing this. You're just so lame. All that shame and that stuff, it just weighed so heavy on me. I really started getting into things that caused me a lot of guilt, and guilt was starting to pile up really heavily. I'm spending all this money just trying, at this point, just to not be sick, and I made another career choice in my forever clever mind.
I said, you know what? I'm going to start camping. I'm going to save some money. I don't have to pay rent. I'm going to start camping. Being somebody who's done a lot of mountaineering and backpacking and that kind of thing, I had all the gear, so I'm like, cool. I'll come up in the world, do this for a couple of months. That did not happen for me. My life went downhill really fast, because all of a sudden, I had some extra cash in my wallet.
I didn't have to go for bills or rent or that kind of thing. I migrated to the middle of a blackberry bush, which I lived in for quite a while. I was like Brer Rabbit, this big old thorn bush, and I lived in there. That was my little spot. I forgot skills like eating. You've got to be pretty loaded to forget to eat. I never drank water, so it was like water and beer. I didn't brush my teeth. I didn't get a haircut, and I didn't brush it. I certainly didn't bathe.
My idea of laundry was wearing clothes and using somebody's clothes in their backyard. I'm losing weight fast, and I'm looking worse and worse. My friends I used to have a good time with. The thing was going on like, what's wrong with Max? What's going on with him? Then I started that thing I love that the big book talks about so clearly, leading that double life. Doing my very best to put on a good looking outer shell, even though I'm dying inside, just to try and fool people, so they won't know how bad it is.
Even people that I like to get really loaded with, I was embarrassed to tell them how I was getting loaded. I ended up living on that bush for quite a few years. I'd go home for the holidays and try and pull myself back together and go back and do it again. It was getting bad fast. I was actually able to stop on many, many occasions. I could not stay stopped. I would go through five days with no sleeping, the diarrhea and the vomiting and all that crap.
Then I would be like, well look, you stopped. You can stop anytime you want to. You can shoot a little heroin socially on a Friday night. Friday night. And that would just kick it all off again. I had no idea what I was up against. I had no idea that I had this disease, that once I start, I don't stop when I want to. It was just brutal. I used to trip out on people that would smoke rock. You guys
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be sitting there, right, and like lips all blistered. and swollen and cracked, and you're doing this thing. I'm like, you guys are messed up. I'm trying to find a rig, and you guys are like, you guys are messed up. I just look at you guys and couldn't relate, and that was going on. I was really feeling loneliness, like that chilling vapor just settled over my life. I couldn't be around anyone, and man, I was just alone, alone, so unbelievably, painfully alone. It crushed me, and every morning I'd wake up, I don't want to do this again today. I don't want to do this again today, but I just felt so bad, and I had this mental obsession just ruling my life that I would go and do it again, and then like, you're such a loser, you did it again, and all that kind of stuff for years and years and years, desperately trying to stop, trying everything, therapy and moving and reading inspirational books and all that stuff they talk about on page 30 and 31. Man, I related to that big time. When I got here, I went, oh yeah, I've taken a trip, not taken a trip, like absolutely, I've tried all that stuff, and finally, I ended up back in New York just trying to pull it together one more time, and my family just intuitively knew what was going on with me and had a little mini-intervention, and with my forever clever mind, I came up with my program. It drives me nuts when I hear people say, I'm working my program, because my program gets me loaded. I believe in the program of the big book, of Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe in it with all my heart, because that's what I've found for me, my experience is that's what's helped me stop using it and say stop one day at a time. So I had my plan. I'm going to go to a couple of meetings every once in a while, pretty much to get everybody off my back, but I can drink, because that's okay, I can smoke pot, because that's like green and organic and God and shit, and I can do all that, and I'm really sneaking around and trying to hide it a lot. I can remember sitting in the back of meetings, and I am just miserable, miserable, and I'm not doing anything to change it. I'm not doing any of the work. When I heard my first bunch of meetings, I didn't even hear a kid, I heard like muah, muah, muah, muah, muah, muah, it was like Charlie Brown's parents, man, that's all I heard. I would get there, the second the meeting started, and the second it was over, I was out of there. Go back, the meeting was great, run to my room and drink a pint. I just so did not get it, and this ended up with a second professional intervention, and I agreed to go into a treatment center, which was back in New York, and I went in there trying to be a little like a star pupil.
I figured, and this is why I relate to Bill's story, it was that self-knowledge, knowing what's wrong with me is going to really help me. I did everything they wanted me to do in there, except I was like shooting heroin and detox, because they didn't want me to be doing that in there, and I was kind of doing the pill shuffle in there, and I smuggled a rig through the whole thing. But what happened was, there were these H&I meetings that were coming in, and they planted the seed of hope in me. I didn't really necessarily know it at the time, because I haven't drank in ten years, and I go, bullshit, can't be done, no way, look at you, got to watch, you've eaten today, it's obvious, and you're far too happy. But I started to think that just maybe one of these people weren't lying. But I got out of this treatment center, they told me everything I needed to do at that time.
I learned everything I needed to know, how to stay sober, in there. They told me to go to a meeting every single day. They told me to get a sponsor and work the steps in order as fast as I could, and as honestly as I could. They told me to read the book and pray, and maybe think about getting a service commitment. I did none of that, because that guy over there in that treatment center, this guy needs a sponsor. That guy's messed up. That lady, she needs to work steps. I've been to college. I'm a smart dude, I can figure all this out. And I would read the book. They're like, read the book, read the book, read the book. I'm like, alright, I'll read this stupid book. I open it up, and it's like, war fever ran high in this little New England town. I'm like, I'm dying here. What
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the hell is this, man? War fever. I'm like, oh my god. I do not relate. This is not for me. This is not for me. I was trying to do this thing myself, was the problem. So I got out of there, and I got loaded within an hour. Fled New York, because New York was the problem. Went back to Santa Cruz, which was suddenly the solution. Had been the problem just a few months earlier. Moved back into my bush. The rats had moved out at that point, because I wasn't around for food and stuff like that. But they came back to visit. That's when I really started to understand, because I'd had a little bit of stuff pumped in my head about the progressive nature of this disease. I was watching. I knew how much I was doing before I went in this first treatment center, and I could not believe how much I was doing against my will from that point on. Started breaking into houses, ripping friends off, and that's really good for your self-esteem. Doing all these awful, terrible things that I hated doing. From the outside it might have looked like I didn't care, but I'm an addict.
I have a huge heart, and I cared. I wanted to do the right thing. I just couldn't do it. There was this thing ruling my life and crushing me. This went on for about six, seven months. The last bunch of years in there are really hazy. I sobered up and it was like, it's the 90s? I was like, wow, what happened to the 80s? It was just this big blur through the end of the 70s and the 80s and the first three quarters of the 90s. I'm sitting in the woods. I haven't bathed in about a month. I'm eating a burrito a week, and I have to wake up with two needles in each arm just to not be sick. What I needed to not feel sick at the end, and I just say this because it's not like I'm all bad-ass addict or anything like that, but just so maybe somebody who's new, who's coming in here just crawling. To me, it speaks to the power of this fellowship. I was doing like seven grams of smack and four grams of coke and a fifth of booze and an eighth of weed and a big handful of tranquilizers every single day just to not feel sick. It had long stops and stopped being the party. It was like, I'm just existing here, man. All that stuff going in through my system one day. I'm sitting in the woods. What happened was I felt something shift in my heart. I felt something move, and the feeling behind it was like the honeymoon's over. I knew I just could not do this anymore.
What came out of my mouth was something that I had never said in the kind of desperation that I said at that time. I'd done a lot of like, God, if you get me out of this, I promise I'll never. A lot of praying to the porcelain God and that kind of thing, but this was different. It came from my soul. I'm like, God, please help me. I remember all those people in HNI talking about, they asked something greater than themselves for help. God, please help. This is before you guys taught me to watch out what you pray for, right? I believe God called the cops. God, please help. The cop showed up. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it was funny. I saw him. I'm walking on these railroad tracks and I saw him, a little cop, way in the distance. He's standing there. Cop pose. I can see the sun hitting his badge and his belt buckle. It was like I was in a dream. I believe today that God just kind of walked me right up to this guy. I snapped out of it when he threw me in the back of the car with handcuffs. All of a sudden, I was like, come on, officer, can't you just let go? I promise I won't do it again. I'm starting to renege and all that.
So I sat in jail. Jail is a good place to think. My first 30 days, I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I could lay on the floor like a pile of laundry. That's about all I could do other than crawling into the bathroom. I was ready to do drugs that were just going to come out of another man's asshole. You know you got a problem when. I'm ready to do this shit. They need to put me in there. I'm ready to do. I made a deal with myself and my heart that when I get out of this sentence,
[00:40:00]
that I was going to get a sponsor and I was going to work with Seth and I was going to go to a meeting every single day. If I don't like what happened at the end of the 12-step process, I go out and I drink and I do this again. I made that deal to myself like in the core of my being. Blind faith. I was offered the opportunity to get bailed out of jail. Even at that time, I don't know why, but I said, no, I need to sit in here. I knew myself well enough to know that if I got out real easy, that it wouldn't just be too easy and I wouldn't pay the consequences. I knew I needed to hurt. I knew I needed to get that stuff through my thick skull. So I did all that and I got out and I got on treatment center and once again, they told me to get a sponsor and work with Seth and go to meetings. This time I did that and my life has changed unbelievably from that point on. I hate the 90 and 90 concept too. I drank and I used every day and I need to be hanging out with us every single day. In my first 90 days out of this treatment center, I went to probably 250 meetings and in those 90 days, I worked all 12 steps. I feel very fortunate that I fell in with some people that hammered on me about reading the book with a sponsor. One of them is here tonight and I'd probably be dead if it weren't for that man.
Thank you. I fell in with a bunch of people that believed in working the steps and they believed in working them fast and not screwing around with this thing. I can remember my home group is the carpet cleaners. It's a men's meeting and that meeting has been a huge, huge help to me and continues to be to this day. I can remember sitting in that meeting and for the first time in my life, admitting I didn't know how to do something and saying, you know what, I have no idea how to stay clean and sober. I have no idea how to live without putting something in my body. How do I do this? Can you guys help me?
And there are about like six dudes who were just, they made recovery look so cool to me. They had their problems, so they'd come in, they'd talk about their problem one week and they'd come in the next week and talk about the solution they found by working the steps around that problem. They were laughing all the time. They looked good. They dressed well. They had nice jewelry. I hated them. I hated them. I was uncomfortable. I was miserable. I wanted to get loaded every single moment of every waking day. And I believe that also speaks to the power of this, this, this fellowship and this program is that as much as I wanted to, I learned that I didn't have to, that I didn't have to do what my brain told me to do. These guys, they were like, it's so simple, bro. Just, just, just hang with us, do what we do and you will get what we have. And I wanted what they had. The whole concept of being happy, joyous and free was pretty appealing to me. So I got busy with the steps, you know, and, and, you know, I learned that the first thing I have to do for me is, is, is know in my innermost being that I have this disease. That, that with, with that knowledge that like in my gut feeling that, you know, I'm never ever going to be cured of this thing. I believe that I've recovered from where I was at, but I will never ever be cured, meaning that I can never safely drink or use again for the rest of my life. How do I do that? I hang with us every day, you know, but that I learned that was the first step in recovery. And then as long as I could, you know, fully concede to my innermost self, then I might be able to admit that I'm powerless. And that's what I did. I learned that lack of power is my problem. And that as a result, my life is unmanaged. I've been sleeping under a bush for years. I've been in jail. That was not a big stretch for me to come to that, you know, realization. I did struggle with the second step, however. Now I can tell you that I used to punch myself in the face to go to doctors to get painkillers. Normal people don't do that shit.
You know, I'd stand there and look in the mirror. That's not good enough, you know, and just stand there and punch myself repeatedly to get a nice big swollen head and to go get like, you know, some kind of pills, you know, and, and I'm like, I'm not insane. I'm talking about, you know, Once, while taking care of two young children back in New York, I had drugs shipped to me FedEx, you know when it positively absolutely has to be there overnight, that kind of thing.
I had it sent to me and I didn't have a rig. So in my forever clever mind, I manufactured one.
[00:45:03]
I took a Dremel, bought a basketball inflation valve, and I sharpened it up, and I'm trying to jam this thing into my arm with no veins left, and I'm responsible for like a two-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. And that memory still kind of hurts a little bit. I'm grateful to God that nothing happened. I didn't kill myself, or I didn't overdose. But it's that kind of willingness I had to go get loaded.
And I'm struggling with, what do you mean I'm insane? It was pointed out to me that it's not the stupid shit that I did out there when I was getting loaded. It's the fact that I kept believing I can get loaded successfully. I would buy that lie every single time. That was the insanity of this disease. There was this thing that happened in my mind, this curious mental twist that would come over, and I'm like, you know, the thousand previous times this did not work and ended horribly will be different this time.
I've heard it expressed as insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, or for me, knowing what the results are going to be and doing it anyway. That was the insanity of this disease, and that I would be restored to this sanity through a process. My understanding is that I would come to believe this thing. Like I think I'm sane today, but I look back on how I was thinking six months ago, I was insane, but I thought I was sane then.
And that goes all the way down. So I'm sure as sane as I think I am now, somewhere down the future, I'll look back and go, dude, you're nuts. So I believe in the process, and that's pretty daily for me. I'll get a PG&E bill that will drive me up the wall. I'll go to a meeting and be reminded that I have heat and I have a house, and it puts all my stuff back into perspective. I kind of get brought back to a good, healthy perspective on life.
I believe that's a big part of sanity. The biggest part of being sane for me is that when those thoughts occasionally still do come, is that I don't believe a lie. I know that I can't, and that I better do some other things around it or else I will. I love the third step. I love the third step prayer. I'm a big believer in it. The first two I could look back on my history and I could learn some things about myself, but now I can really start moving forward.
And it was daunting because it was pointed out to me that the entire effectiveness of this program rests on how well I will do and continue to work this third step. That's some big stuff right there. I think what happens to people who have been around and done the work and then go back out is that maybe they're forgetting. Maybe they're trying to run their thing on their own. I don't know. I've had brief moments of that and it's hurt pretty bad.
I do my best to get out of my own way. The bondage of self, man. I'm my problem. I'm selfish. I learned that the selfishness was going to kill me and that I must be rid of it. One of the many times the book talks about musts. And it also says that God helps with that. And that has been my experience. The longer I've hung around here and been involved in service and done my best to turn my life and my will in my life, my thoughts and my actions over to the care of, is that I care a lot more about other people these days.
I'm not completely self-obsessed all the time. Now, it still happens an awful lot. I frequently will wake up thinking about myself. If you ever see me doing something nice for somebody, I'm thinking about myself. That's what I was taught to do. It was like, go out and help somebody. Get out of your own way. That fourth step scared me until I'd done it. And I got the relief that it offered. The whole column thing, the big book lays out.
It's so simple. It's not a big deal. If you're new and you haven't done it, it's not a scary thing. It's pretty simple. It's the four columns. The who, what, who am I pissed off at, what it affected in me, and that kind of thing. And then the fourth column is, the one thing that I never, ever considered before I got here, is what's my part? What's my part? I believe that the principle behind that, courage,
[00:50:00]
it takes some courage for me to look at, what's my part in this? I was a victim before I got here, and I'm not a victim today. I have a role in every single situation I put myself into. So I shared all that with my sponsor. I did the resentment list. I found out that these things kill more of us than anything else, and I better learn to process these things, or I'm a goner. I did the fear list. I took a good, hard look at my sexual inventory, and I found out why I push people away, and why I get involved, and all this stuff.
I learned an awful lot. I took stock of myself. I looked at the stuff I wanted to keep and the stuff I wanted to try and get rid of. I shared it all with my sponsor, and he laughed. Pissed me off, man. I'm reading him all this stuff, and I'm pouring my heart and my soul on it, and he's just cracking up, got tears in his eyes. I'm like, a-hole. He's like, no, bro, I'm relating. He did exactly what the book says to do.
He shared his experience with that. I went, wow, you're really sick, man. Immediately I felt a little bit better. I had that huge sense of relief. It was like dropping that big old backpack of weight. I started to feel like, wow, there's some hope for me here. That was the first real big drop of all this guilt and shame and fear and remorse that I'd just been carrying around unconsciously. I didn't even notice it was gone until I put it all out in the light.
I learned about what my defects of character are, and I was taught I had to learn that seven-step prayer. I learned the prayer, and I said the prayer, and I thought, well, I'll be gone. I don't know if anybody else thought that. Like, cool, I just said the prayer, and they're gone. Cool. I know better than that today. That's right. It's stuff I get to work on for the rest of my life. The edges haven't rounded off, and I've changed, and I get to claim a little progress in all those areas.
Honestly, for me, up until this point right here this morning, there are a couple that I've asked with an awful lot of willingness that have been removed and have not come back. I was going through this period of seeing couples walking around, and I'm single, and I'm hating couples. I see people walking down the street, and I hate you guys. You guys suck. Look at them all. They're together, and you all are happy and sweet.
I'm going through this, and I'm not liking the feelings behind it. I'm hating it, because it's hurting my stomach. It feels bad. It's nasty. One night, in utter desperation, I asked the God of my understanding for help around this. It all came up, and I could really see it clearly, like the whole big ball of envy and self-centered fear and jealousy and all that nasty stuff. I asked God to remove it.
I leaned forward and puked my guts out. This whole big knot in my stomach just kind of came out. I don't know if your God is going to make you puke out character defects. That's not what I'm saying. That happened to me. This thing came out of me, and I literally felt it come out. It hasn't been there today. I see people together, and I'm really happy they found somebody, that kind of thing. It's just been this huge shift in me.
I don't know. God's pretty powerful. I believe that God can do anything. It's just me that's a weak link. So I made that big long list in the 8th step. I love what the book says. I was talking about this with a friend last night. It's so clear in the 8th step about what to look for. There's all the real big gross stuff like I stole your TV and abused your trust. Then there's all the real subtle things we can do.
We're trying to be all nice and that kind of thing and get our way. If I'm honest with myself, that list is everybody I've ever met in my life, pretty much. If I'm really getting down to it, it's everybody I've ever met. It's really fun. I was working with Sponsy. The exact same thing happened to me that happened with him. It's cool. He said, well, I've got about 30 people on the list. I'm thinking, right.
I heard your story, man. There's more than 30 people that you burned. Sponsy said the same thing to me. Let's look at this again. Two days later, he said, I've got 190 people now. That's what I like. It's like getting in there and looking at the stuff and the process that this offers. I got the big long list and I set out absolutely willing to make amends to any of them. I was really starting to feel the relief that the steps were offering.
I learned that the harder the amends, the bigger the payoff for me. The more I'm going to grow, the more I'm going to get out of it. What an encouraging thing to strive for. The first one I had to make, my sponsor, he was like, I want you to start with some easy ones.
[00:55:01]
Just kind of get warmed up and get into it. The next day, my mom called and said, hey, we're coming into town to come visit. Oh, man. I told my sponsor, it looks like God wants you to do the hard ones first. I was so glad that I sit up front and I pay attention to meetings. A really good friend of mine was talking about this trap that I almost fell into of having three people in the room at the same time and making amends to all of them at once.
He was talking about that he burned these people individually and he needed to make an individual amends. I found myself going there. I wanted to do one big dope fiend, take the easy way out shortcut. Yeah, well, I was wrong for doing this and that and the other. Cool, I killed three birds with one stone. I remembered what he said. I'm forever grateful that people show up and share their experience of working the steps.
Because when I got to that step, I remembered that here's a trap and here's a solution to it. I didn't do that. There's still some that I have to make, but I have the willingness to make them. God just hasn't put them on my path yet. I've had old girlfriends find my name in the phone book, like other people were talking about, and got to clean that stuff up. Pretty much everyone that I set out to clean up my side of the street did not work out the way my brain told me it would.
It's filled with fear. They're going to kill me. They're going to shoot me. They're going to throw me out. I don't ever want to speak to you again. I found the vast majority of my experience with these has been that we started talking. People started sharing their stuff that they did as well. We had a real healing around these relationships. I'm really grateful for that. I love the 10th and the 11th and the 12th step.
That's stuff between page 84 and 88. I do not believe that, for me, if I'm actually looking at that stuff on a daily basis, there's no way I cannot change. It's absolutely impossible for me not to change. If I'm catching myself when I'm wrong, immediately, instead of waiting until that night and blowing the whole day, if I'm looking at stuff immediately and I call another sober member and I clean that stuff up and I ask God for help around that stuff, I can't not change.
I cannot not change. If I'm seeking to improve my conscious contact with my guides, I understand through prayer and meditation. I'm a big believer in both of them. That wasn't before I got here. I use meditation every once in a great while. I do it daily. Sometimes just for little short moments. Sometimes I get really nice long moments of quieting my mind. I love the word improve in that step. It was pointed out to me that if I worked those first 11, I'm going to have a spiritual awakening.
As a result of working those, I had one. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought it would be like the big sky is part and the beams of golden light come down and the angel choir, and all that. It was what the book talks about in the back in the appendices. It was a learned process. It wasn't like the big bolt. It was the educational variety. Still, it continues to happen to me today. I was having a great rap with my brother Nick on the ride up.
We just get spiritual awakening. When I wake up in the morning, the day isn't done. I got a whole lot of stuff to do from the second I wake up. I'm awake these days, and I get to try and do the best job I can with my life. For me, it's about trying to do just the next right thing. I'm a different human being because of it. Service has been huge for me. I got a coffee pot commitment really early on for my men's meeting.
With all that self-centered fear and stuff like that, it pissed me off one night. I had a great plan to throw a whole bunch of LSD in the coffee pot and be the person with the most time in the room. That kind of thing. I was hoping for 15 minutes left in the meeting how the shares might be. You know, what I started to learn from that is that this is one of the greatest gifts that this fellowship has to offer.
It's a chance for me to get out of myself, start worrying about some other people, and build some self-esteem. I don't know about you guys, but I was resentful of myself more than anybody else combined on my fourth step list. I hated myself.
[01:00:00]
And I Have a Good Healthy Love for Myself Today, And Service Has Been Huge, Huge For Me Around That, I Really Believe In It, I Try and Do The Best Job That I Can In Whatever It Is I Am Doing, It Is A Special, Special Thing To Be Able To Give Something Back To This Thing That Has Absolutely Saved and Changed Me, Saved My Life, Changed My Life, I Am Always Going To Be In Debt, Because The More I Do, The More I Get, The More I Feel That I Owe, And The More I Need To Go Do, It Is A Vicious Cycle, So That Has Been A Really Big Thing For Me, So At Like Six Months, I Had Worked All These Steps, I Sat In Jail For A Little While, 90 Days Of Treatment, I Powered Through This Stuff, And I Got The Basic Simple Kit Of Spiritual Tools, Since Then I Have Worked Them With Another Sponsor, And These Days I Work With Other Guys, And Every Single Time I Take Somebody Through The Steps, I Learn Something More About Myself, I Get A Deeper And Better Understanding Of How To Apply These Principles In All Of My Affairs, And I Try And Get A Little Bit Better At Doing That All The Time, I Am Being A Product Of H9, I Am A Big Believer In H9, I Spent A Lot Of Time Doing That, Because Detox For Me Is The Problem Eraser, I Will Lay In The Couch Saturday Afternoon, And Say I Am Too Tired, That Pizza Made Me Sleepy, I Don't Want To Go, And Everyone Is Going To Say Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram, Going On, And I Will Just Show Up, I Will Just Show Up Like What You Guys Told Me, And I Will Walk Out Of There Like I Don't Have A Problem In The World, This Is A Killer, You Know, The Guys Sitting There With Their Foamy Slippers And Their Eyes Going Different Directions, And They Are Shaking And Sweating, And Man It Puts All My Stuff Into Perspective, And Every Once In A While, You Know I Meet Somebody Like Two Days, And Then I See Them A Couple Years Later And They Are Still Continuously Sober, And They Have Worked The Steps, And They Are A Sponsor, And They Have A Sponsor, And They Are Sponsoring People, And It Is An Amazing Thing, I Honestly Believe That We Have The Power, We Have The Power Through What We Have Been Through To Reach Out And Grab A Hold Of Somebody Who Is Just Like On The Verge Of Death And Save Their Life, I Honestly Believe That, Because We Can Gain Their Trust When Nobody Else Can, And We Can Show Them How To Do This Stuff And They Can Get In Touch With The Power, You Know, I Honestly Believe That, I Think It Is A Very Very Special Thing, I Don't Think Anybody Here Has Ever Done Any H9 Work, Any Of That Kind Of Stuff, You Know, The Seed Was Planted To Me, Those Guys Back There Never Got To Know That That Seed Took Root, You Know, And I Planted Myself In The Very Fertile Soil Of CA, And I Am Growing Man, It Is Good, I Got Stuff That I Have Learned How To Pull The Weeds Out, And They Are Coming Up Around Me, And It Has Been A Beautiful Ride, And I Am Looking Forward To More, I Am An Addict, I Like More, You Know, And So This Shit Feels Good To Me, I Like Some More Please, I Never Turn Anyone Down Who Asked Me To Sponsor Them, Sponsor Gay Men, Sponsor Women, I Don't Care, I Never Know Who Is Going To Have The Willingness, The Ones That I Think Do, Usually Don't, The Ones That I Am Like, That Guy Ain't Going To Last A Day, Ends Up Sticking Around, You Know, I Got A Bad Judger, And All That Kind Of Thing, So I Never Turn Anybody Down, Because I Was Taught That I Never Know Who Is Going To Stick Around, And How Many People They Might End Up Helping, And You Know, You Can Count The Seeds In An Apple, But You Can Count The Apples In The Seed, And That Had A Big Impact On Me, Hearing That, And It Has Been A Pleasure To Watch It Happen, You Know, To Watch A Fellowship Grow Up Around Me, And Watch People Get This Thing, And Run With It, You Know, Just Like The Book Talks About, See Everything That I Ever Questioned In This Beautiful Book Of Ours, I Have To Agree With, I Questioned It, I Didn't Believe It, And I Don't Question It Today, And I Do Believe It, It Is A Magical, Ever Changing Book, Every Time I Read It, There Is Something New In There, There Is Something Different In There, I Am Like, That Wasn't There, I Have Read That Like 80 Times, You Know, I Will Go Through Something, I Will Shift, I Will Grow Spiritually, I Will Read It, And It Will Make Sense To Me, All Of A Sudden, Words That Just Went Right By, And All Of A Sudden There Is Something New, So I Love Reading It, I Love The Way It Is Written, I Cannot Believe That Those Two Guys Put This Thing Together, I Honestly Believe There Is Another Power Going On With That, You Know, By Far And Away, The Most Important Relationship For Me In My Life Is My Conscious Contact With My God, That Is Why I Am Sober, Because I Have A God, You Know, It Is Not That I Do All This Stuff, I Do All This Stuff To Stay Really Close To That Power, You Know, Very Little To Do With Me, It Is Us, And It Is God, That Is What I Believe, It Has Beautified My Life, It Has Enriched My Life, And It Has Been Like Ever Widening Circles, My Little
[01:05:04]
Sister Called Me Up One Day, Do You Think I Am, I Said I Don't Know, Why Don't You Go To Meeting, See If You Are Late, And She Struggled Around For A Little While, And She Showed Up Here And She Got Sober, You Know, She Did The Work And She Got Sober, And My Life Is Not Attractive Before I Got Here, Nobody Was Calling Me Up And Saying, Hey, Is There Room In That Bush, You Know, And People Call Me All The Time, You Know, I Put Myself Out There And I Get A Lot Of Calls From Old Friends, And They Say, You Know, Hey, What Are You Doing Man, What Are You Doing With Your Life, Because Man You Have Changed, Because I Don't Really Necessarily Get To See It, You Know, The People That Know Me, I Am Like, Growing Up I Never Ever Expressed Any Feeling I Had About Anything, Ever, You Know, It Was Like, I Don't Know, You Know, I Couldn't Articulate It, I Didn't Want To Talk To Really Anybody, I Just Kind Of Liked To Be Quiet In The Corner For The Most Part, Or Else Like Acting Out Like Uncontrollably, You Know, And I Have Learned, Excuse Me, I Have Learned How To Do My Best To Speak From My Heart Around Here, I Have Learned How To Walk Into Difficult Situations I Don't Like To Be In And Tell The Truth, I Have Learned How To Be Compassionate For Another Human Being Here, Big Stuff For Me, Really Big Stuff For Me, You Know, I Learned How To Stand Up In A Meeting With My Heart Racing And Sweat Running Down My Back, My Palms All Clammy And Say, You Know, I Am Having A Really Rough Day, I Am Scared And It Doesn't Feel Good, But I Am Glad To Be Here, You Know, That Kind Of Thing, And It Is By Other People Who Are Doing It Before Me, You Know, I Think That This Whole Recovery Process Is Like Elephants, You Know, I Am An Old Stoner, I Like Those Nature Programs, You Know, And I Think It Is Like Elephants, You Have Got The Oldest Elephant Matriarch In Front, Right, And In Age, They Line Up Right Behind Them, You Know, And They Hold On To The Tail Of The One Right In Front Of Them, And They Use The Collective Wisdom And The Old Age Experience, And I Honestly Believe That Is How This Whole Thing Works, You Know, As One Person Following The Next Little Bit, You Are A Little Far Down The Path, How Do I Get To Where You Are At, You Know, And Hey Bro, Come On, I Can Tell You How To Get Right Here, You Know, And That Kind Of Thing, It Is Very Special, It Is Wonderful, It Is A Beautiful Thing, I Feel Honored And Privileged To Be Part Of This, You Know, It Is Truly A Blessing In My Life, I Want To Thank Each And Every Person For Being Here, I Have Had A Wonderful Time Getting To Know You Guys And Deepening Some Already Existing Friendships, It Has Been A Wonderful, Beautiful Experience This Weekend, It Has Been A Wonderful, Beautiful Experience Getting And Staying Sober, Even Though The First Part Was So Unbelievably Uncomfortable, It Is A Lot Better Now, So If You Are New, If You Are Fairly New, Working The Steps Is Like Putting Brand New Tires On A Car That Ain't Got New Tires, That Is What I Was Taught, You Can Get From One Place To The Next If You Are Just Not Taking Nothing, But If You Work The Steps It Is Going To Be A Lot More Comfortable Ride, A Lot Smoother, Handle Corners A Lot Better, Bad Weather Can Come, It Doesn't Totally Affect You, This Thing Really Works, My Opinion Goes Way Beyond Just Not Taking Something, I Really Believe This Is A Program For Living, Designed For Living And That It Works And There Is Just So Much Evidence Of That Right Here And Out There In The World, I Believe That God Got Tired Of Watching Us Die, And Put Something Down For Us To Recover, And It Has Been Sweeping The World For A Few Decades Now, And I Feel Honored To Be Part Of It, I Feel Honored To Be Able To Speak Here Today, Thank You, God Bless You.