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Source: Michael S – Firing Line Group – Dallas – 2009-07-18.mp3 File: michael-s-firing-line-group-dallas-2009-07-18.mp3 Duration: 00:52:10
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I am an addict. Truly blessed to be here and I'm a recovered addict. I don't suffer from any of the things, any of the symptoms that make me a using or active addict today. I don't suffer from the mental state that precedes the first one and a body that isn't satisfied, a phenomenon of craving. And I got that way because I did the work of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I continue to do so through the power of God and the help of a sponsor. I am currently on my amends and practicing 10, 11, 12 to the best of my willingness. And I was just talking about amends. My sponsor said a guy like me with the amount of time I have has way too many amends still left to be made. And hopefully this isn't recorded, but he's a bastard. No, he's right. I get to a place in recovery. I've had many of these journeys, these experiences that are spiritually and spiritual in nature that allow me to think I'm above it all and that I'm cured and well. I'm well, but not the way I think I am. And I stopped doing the things I knew didn't need to be well, those daily actions. But I did them today and I've been doing it pretty consistent.
My recovery date, the date of my journey that began was January 15th of 2003 and I'd lost the power of choice. So I didn't pick that day. I thought there would be many other days that I had what we call bottoms. So in other words, what I'm getting at is I don't have a hard drinker or a hard drugger's bottom. That's just not the case. And I tell you a little bit about that, but I'm going to read something real quick out of the big book. It's almost similar to what you read tonight, but I find this useful sometimes. I was kind of inspired to read this before I speak. And this is on There's a Solution, page 29. It's the last two paragraphs. It says, Each individual in their personal stories describes in his own language, from his point of view, the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what actually happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Hope is that many alcoholic men and women desperately in need will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, Yes, I am one of them too. I must have this.
So I'm going to talk about my story tonight. I don't know a lot of you. There's some that I do know. But I'm not from Texas. I don't know if you've picked up on that yet, but I'm actually from Maine. And we have a great saying in Maine, Come to Maine on vacation, leave on probation. So if you're ever up there and you're active, be very, very careful. So I'm going to talk about my story. I love to talk about the big book and all that work and get fired up and get everybody going and talk about the spiritual revolution that's going on in [unclear] and Alcoholics Anonymous and even in NA. I really like to talk about that, but because a lot of people don't know me, this is really my first major speaking engagement since I've been here.
I moved here about seven months ago. I got married, and I work for a great treatment center. I travel a lot, so I don't get to go to a lot of meetings around here. I get to go to a lot of meetings in other places. So I think it's just appropriate to talk a little bit about my story and how I ended up here in this moment talking to you, because I don't think you really appreciate where I am today if you don't know where I come from.
So I'll tell you about my first experience with alcohol and drugs, and that was at six years old. I don’t even think they sell it in the state of Texas. It's called Coffee Brandy. My friend Nikki L. came down here when she was active, and she called me up and was like, Smitty, they don't sell Coffee Brandy, and she was devastated. But that was my first experience, and it was spiritual in nature.
You see, what was set in motion then was the effect produced by alcohol. Now, my mother gave me that drink, and I didn't think that she gave it to me in any malice or meant harm or any of that stuff. She probably thought it was funny, right? But my life changed from that point forward. Now, I don't know if I had the phenomena of craving or any of that other stuff going on at that young of age, but I can tell you that I remember the effect produced by alcohol.
I'll tell you what I started to do at a young age. I started to do things for the effect produced by it. If I got into a friendship with you and we played video games, we did whatever we did. If I read a book, I did it all for the effect. If it didn't give me the effect I was looking for, we weren't hanging out. I wasn't watching that movie. We weren't playing that game. I started to really have a lot of judgment. I think judgment is the one thing I need to lose. I'll get a little bit later into that, but I started to judge. When I started to judge and look around me in the neighborhood I grew up in, I'll tell you about that neighborhood and the people that are around me, the people that I was judging.
You see, there was a lot more value and a lot more importance based in being cool than it was being smart. I grew up with a single mother. My father was an absentee. He was never there. Everybody in my neighborhood was really like that. There were no lawyers or doctors. The people that were my heroes weren't Michael Jordan or Dominique Wilkins or Wayne Gretzky or any of that. It was the people on the corner hustling and doing the things that they were doing.
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A friend of mine who had some older brothers, and I just love the older kids, he would talk about these brothers that he had in a way that I never felt that way inside, the way he described it. I didn't feel that way about my own family. I thought there was going to be something wrong with me. When I took that effect that I got from alcohol, I remembered the way I felt connected to everything around me. It's with the promises. It really was the promises. I didn't even realize that's what I was looking for. It was that ease and comfort. I started to come at life with that mind and those type of goals.
You hear a lot of people, and a common theme in Cocaine Anonymous is, I never wanted to grow up to be an addict. I never wanted to grow up to be an alcoholic. I never wanted to do that. I did. You could call me a product of my own environment. I did. I didn't know what that meant and what would happen to me doing that, but that was my ambition. At seven, eight, nine years old, that was my ambition. I acted that out in many other ways, snorting Kool-Aid, which is horrible. We don't have Kool-Aid snorters in here. What was it, the little Smarties? I'd crush those up and try to get right inside from the sugar. The phenomena of craving would take over. I would do it again. I was like, that burned really bad. Let's do another one. Maybe it'll work this time even better.
That's what started to happen with me. I was very ambitious. I wanted to do those things. I was very fascinated with what we would call the drug game. Fourteen, fifteen years old, I was drinking and drugging and had those ambitions. I got what I wanted. I started selling weed, got hooked on benzos. I loved, at fifteen years old, I was just so strung out on benzos at fifteen years old that I would wet the bed. It was seizures, that type of stuff. I was really a mess at fifteen years old.
My story has a lot of consequences, I guess we could call them. When I first came in, I thought that's what made me alcoholic. I'll describe to you some of the occupational hazards that I had. That's all they really were, were occupational hazards. They didn't make me alcoholic. I learned on or addict later on. It was my direct relationship with those substances that made me that way. I thought that the consequences would just get bad enough that I would stop.
At fifteen years old, there was no need to. I was having fun. I had a lot of friends. If you were in the drug game, for some reason, when you had things that people wanted, you seemed to have a lot of friends. I started to live that life out. By sixteen, seventeen years old, I had crossed some sort of line. This is a cocaine anonymous meeting. I like to talk a little bit about my relationship with cocaine. That's really where that journey had begun and to continue to cultivate, so to speak.
I remember the first time I ever did crack. I was dabbling in some coke because I was dealing weed. That's just what people had, other stuff. I started to do some lines and smoke some coke. I got really strung out. I hung out with this woman. She was twice my age. I would stay up all night with her and her friends. They were shooting coke. We were smoking coke. Her son was little. He would be up going to the bathroom. I was seventeen. I was only five or seven years older than he was. I must have looked like a kid to him, hanging out with his thirty-five-year-old mother, forty-year-old mother. He had to know what I was doing.
At that point, I really liked the whole trade weed, sell weed to get cocaine. I started to do that. Power of cocaine was like the power of Phenomenon of Craving. It was like power of POC. I'd do one line. I got that, especially when it came to cocaine, the Phenomenon of Craving.
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It sucked coming down, though. It was good that I was a benzo addict. Except for when you get too strung out on benzos and you do lots of cocaine, then you just wouldn't come down. I'll tell you where I got with my relationship with cocaine. I'm from Portland, Maine. New York City is not that far from there. There was this kid. His name was Jujay. He was a Latin king. He was from New York City, the time of Rutgers Island. He was probably ten years older than me.
I started selling crack cocaine for Jujay. We'd be out, red tops, blue tops, yellow tops, all of it, doing coke, smoking. He'd have his girlfriend half-naked, walking around the house. I'm like, man, I love this life, right? Big thing of crack, and we're just chopping it up and smoking it. The funny thing about Jujay is that I had a relationship with him years after this, but he was so nuts. This kid, about five years ago, someone ripped him off. He's still living in Portland. Someone ripped him off, and he killed the guy for $100.
Out and just rolled up and just was like, bang! Shot the guy, right? In broad daylight. Just did not give a fuck. I'm thinking, when we were doing that, of course, we were long-lost friends or brothers or something, doing all that. I started to get involved in a lot of illegal activities that would soon wind me up, with a lot of people hating me, a lot of people disappointing me. My mother would be like, her idea of me being well, or stopping drinking, if you just go to school, if you just get the right job, you get the right girl, you just line all these things up, then I would be okay. I would try.
I try, and I really wanted to be happy. I didn't want to do those things, because I didn't think they would equate happiness. The life I was living seemed to be the one, the only normal one, as we talk about in the big book. At 17, 18 years old, I started to get in a lot of trouble and was arrested. What started to happen is that I got so beaten down by me, I started to just not give a … I'd rob people for $10.
I robbed someone for $10 one time. They were like, can you go up to the store? I just took off with their money, I'd be gone. That's where it started to happen to me. I crossed that line, and I tried to stop. I don't think everybody in here, and I could be wrong about that, has done jail time, but what started to happen to me, when I would stop using and drinking and drugging, it was like doing time.
It was like doing time, until the next one. If you haven't been to jail, and you've got that experience, you've been there. You've been to jail, because that's what it's like, doing time. At 19 years old, I started to use IV drugs pretty heavily. I ripped off a lot of people, was shooting a lot of drugs, and people were not happy with me. Years before that, 15, 16 years old, I just had thought I was the man. I was so delusional, to give you an idea. I had a physique like Paris Hilton. I'm 6'3", 160 pounds, I have sunglasses on, walk around in a cane.
In my apartment, my mother's house, that I was holding her hostage at, I'd have the family tree. You ever see The Godfather? The family tree would be me at the top. All this stuff, my consigliere, my capo. I remember one kid, he got sober, he said, you know what, you told my buddy you were going to make him your capo. He said, he came downstairs, he said, Mike S. is fucking crazy, he's talking about making me his capo.
So at 18, 19, this reputation, I had my best friend at that time, was in prison for making a phone call, he threatened his girlfriend in Massachusetts. He got picked up, and this is a very important part, because this is where things really started to change for me, because I was left without my crew. So my buddy calls his girlfriend, he threatens her, leaves it on the, what was it back then, the answer machine. Right? So he leaves it on the answering machine, the feds come and arrest him at his job.
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He calls me up like, I can't wait to get in front of the judge. The judge is just going to throw this out like, oh, I threatened my girlfriend. Well, it's a federal offense because it was over state lines, right? And when he got in front of that judge, the judge, first offense, that he hated his family. His family was very, his father had killed somebody back in the day and got, basically got off the self-defense and was very, they'd sold a lot of weed, which is very strange.
They never really got into high drugs, but they would sell a lot of weed. So they, when they got, I would assume that when they got him, they were just going to smoke. So they gave him two years in prison for threatening his girlfriend, a federal penitentiary. And so when he went to the feds, I was down, it was like without my defense, right? Me and him would just go and we do a lot of, you know, I was never real, and my wife was asking me about this, but I wasn't, you know, I wouldn't be like considered, I guess, a badass. I was very unpredictable.
Like, you didn't know if I was going to steal from you or like hit you with something. Like, I didn't really care. And I don't know if that's sociopathic, but I, I, I hurt. I mean, I physically, it's funny, but I physically like, and I stole a one, one of men's like, I like physically have hurt some people pretty bad that I'm very ashamed of. And this was around that time when my buddy went to the prison. And so he goes to prison. And it's funny, is the thing at that time that would be the worst thing to ever be called would be a snitch, right? A rat. So this rumor and gossip got around that I was cooperating, which wasn't true, which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It was absolutely the best thing because now I can, I'm not trusted. No one will sell to me. I have no place to go, right?
My, my, my, my life is unlike people actually showed up in my house with guns in my mother's house with guns waiting for me. And I would, you know, I would hide out and do every day. And I think I had like maybe one or two people that would talk to me. So at 19 years old, I got arrested by the DEA. And yeah, it was pretty pathetic. What circumstances that got me ended up getting me arrested by the DEA. You know, I was down at, down at the high school hanging out and, uh, you know, got caught. The principal pulled me in and strip searched me and found, found drugs on me. And then a month later, DEA came, DEA came, knocked on my door. And, uh, one of them actually turned out as funny as some people know this, but one of the DEA agent actually turned out to be a dirty, dirty agent. And some, some of my like valuables that I had that I actually stole from people actually got stolen that day. I went into jail and no one would ever like break, really break. And I was just very, and he was looking at it cause they came, knocked on my door. I have no shoes on.
And I'm such an arrogant muck that I say, come inside. I have a triple beam, cocaine, right? And weed behind my door. I was so arrogant. I would, I had like my bureau behind the door. So it would close. And on top of the bureau was all this. So when we walked in my room, you close the door, it would cover everything up. So I'm like, go ahead, get on my shoes. And he's going through my baseball cards. I get strung out on baseball cards. I get, I get on a run and I'm like, dude, you go up and get like me some baseball cards, box, I'll give you some dope, man. Like straight, like I had people like that would go in and they would just steal all kinds of baseball cards. Dude, I got like a Hakeem Olajuwon card, man. What are you going to give me for it? I'd be like, dude, bring it over. You know, I just get, I get so strung out. And so he was like going through my shit and I, I go to jail and this girl, charity actually bails me out. And it's funny as I made her amends cause she used the bail money.
I got the bail money like a couple months later, six months later, I was trying to give it back to her. And she's like, that was her name, charity. I said, charity, either take the money. It's going to a charity either way. So you can take it and it'll go to you charity. I'll go put it in another, you know, but she she bailed me, she bailed me out. And, um, and I just got a real bad run. My girlfriend left me, had this girlfriend, uh, you know, from, from 15 years old, she left me, everything was just gone. Now nobody around. And, um, I robbed the, my, I just, I made amends for this recently too. A kid gave me a bunch of Dilaudid and I, uh, ripped them off.
Um, and before that, the backup, I had some bouts with, again, you see some people get sober and they get happy. I'm not one of those people. I am totally like, that is part of my problem is like, so I don't have a drug or an alcohol problem, a drug, alcohol problem. Stop by using drugs or alcohol, right? Take it away. It's gone. See, my problem starts when I get, when I get sober. So I started to go into detox. I had no place to go. It's a good place to hide out, get some meds. And so I'd go into detox, going out patient. And I did that three or four times and, uh, just chronically. And I'll tell you what, the furthest thing from my mind was AA.
They take, go to AA. I'm like, okay, yeah, AA is going to be good for me. There was no CA up in Portland at that time. It's, it's pretty popular up there now. Or God was even further
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than that idea. Like there was, you couldn't take my, what I thought were my problems and say, oh, the solution would be God. And it's all like, I walked up in the meeting and said, yeah, that'll work for what's going on. Right? Like it doesn't, you don't get there from where you are when you're that, but you just like, you're like, if I just get more money, if I just have this, you know, I, I do this position and say, you know, it would be, it would be everything but those two things. I would never have put that together. And so my story starts to become one of absolute ignorance. I had no idea. And they had told me, and they even read the big book and the guy that came in to do the meeting who I realize now almost killed me. Uh, but you know, I, he was doing like six and seven is weird thing. I don't know if they do this down here.
This weird thing was six and seven. He's talking about like him fixing his own defects and I don't know what's going on. And you know, I just, I'd never put that together. And so I ripped this buddy off for Dilaudid. I walk up the street and, um, and there's this girl sitting on the steps that I know. And I've been to the house, a party there, drank there, did all this stuff there. I said, Hey, what's going on? Like, can I kill time? Anybody ever do that? Rips him off. I'm like, all right, I got to act like I'm going to get rid of this stuff. And so the enough time we'll laugh so I can come back, have a good story and punch myself in the face or do something to make it look like I got robbed or whatever. You know, I was so just, Oh, deceitful and dishonest.
And, and I was the type of guy would just like, I would hang out with you and you would have something that I wanted. And I would just, I would, you know, smooze you, wind you down, you do whatever I did to get that from you. And as soon as I could get the opportunity to get it from you, I would, I would take advantage of that. I mean, I was, I would steal, if I went in your bathroom, I would steal the cologne. I'd be like, Oh, Calvin Klein. All right. This is mine. I would steal everything. I love taking stuff. That's not mine. Right. I even did that in sobriety, which we can talk about if you want. No. How humbling is that when you're absolutely stone cold sober going to make amends? Right. I was, you know, when you're fucked up, you can say, well, I was high in your mind. Right. I was messed up when I did that. You know, when you're absolutely stone cold sober, it's a different thing. So I go rip this guy off, run into this girl and she's like, Hey, like, where have you been? I'm like, Oh, things are good. I like went to this rehab deal. And she's like, that's funny. You know, married with my sister. I said, yeah, marriage is great. She says she's sober. She's been sober like five or six months. She's, you know, Charlie. And I knew Charlie by his reputation. Like he was like out, like doing, he would do break-in burglaries. I don't know if Doug knows anything about that at all, but he would do this type of stuff. And he, you know, I, that was just never my game. You know, I like to rip the people that did all the work, the burglars, I would rip them off. Yeah. That was the type of my, my deal. So I have no clue, you know, phenomena crave and mental state that, you know, you hear a lot like the first one gets you drunk. The first one gets you high. That's, that's not the case that, you know, for a guy like me, it's the mental state that precedes any of that. The thinking that goes along with that. So I'm in this, have no clue that what I have is alcoholism and drug addiction. I have no clue what, where my, the condition that my spirit's in, have no clue. And, you know, I couldn't stand being in my own skin. I never thought about killing myself only when I was sober, only when I was sober, I would like get dramatic and be like, you don't love me and like act all out. Like maybe a good reason to go out and get screwed up. Right. But I had, I got stone cold sober and wanted to die. And so if you feel that way, when you get sober, what are you going to do? You're going to treat that very quickly.
And so I'm in that mode, ripping this guy off. She says, Charlie, I'm like, Charlie's an asshole. I don't like Charlie. I've never met Charlie, by the way, never talked to him, never had any, but I'm don't like Charlie. Right. Of course, I think this, right. I'd like to think that people like I did all you CAA people, I would think at you when you call me out. But anyway, so they're coming back for a meeting. You should come up and hang out. So I go up there and there's a couple of people from AA there and they just leave. Like I'm totally jammed. Like my knees are buckling. Right. I'm like, Hey, what's going on? I do the recovery thing too. Right.
Cause I thought like I had gone to rehab that I was like at this, I was above them. Right. Again, never wanted to fit in, always wanted to stand out. Right. So they want to take me to this meeting next month. So I agreed to go to this meeting. I shoot up some drugs. We walked to the meeting. Of course I go on the back and it's in this wet shelter of it's a wet shelter. There's a detox. It's like a public detox in Portland. It's a wet shelter where people, if you drink, you can sleep there and stay there. And so it's in this wet shelter that been by many, many times.
And, um, and I sit down and she leaves me in the back of me. She says, I'm going to go tanning. I'll get you after the meeting. I'm thinking like, I know that I'm the most important person in here
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because I'm a new guy and you're going to leave me here. And, um, what was funny is, and I still, I do this as a meeting. I go to around here and, and, and they do this and I, this is why I don't like to agree with it is there was someone that said about, Oh, she got a treatment and they said, Hey, I was told by the people in treatment to come here and ask for a temporary sponsor. And these like, there was like a kid. There was like 14 who was sober. Um, and there was all these other people and they just went off on this lady. Like, cause I was going to raise my hand until like temporary, you know, temporary sponsor, temporary sobriety. They just went around. I was like, Holy, where the hell did I end up? Right. I just, you know, they just went off. I was like, I guess I'm not going to raise my hand. But of course I'm all nice and happy and jammed in the back and, and, um, you know, feeling, feeling nice and comfortable. And so I, um, I leave the meeting and I don't know, you know, what starts to happen is that because of that place of ignorance, I started to go like, hang out. They just call me up every day. These people doing 12 step work. I don't know what they were doing. Right. Um, it's, Hey, come up, hang out. I had no place to go.
Had absolutely no place to go. So I start hanging out with these, uh, these AA people and they took me to a couple of sober parties. Right. Um, and what, and this is, this is funny. This is even funnier is the last time I used, this was, this was, I got sober the first time, 12 days before my 21st birthday. I'm, I'm, you know, this was eight, nine, nine years ago. And that tells you where I was at 12 days before my 21st birthday was May 1st of 2000. And I'm like April [unclear], I was at a sober party and I raided the medicine cabinet. People in recovery don't like to take drugs. I took the drugs, the Vicodin, went out and started talking about spiritual principles with them all. And so, um, and I stayed and I stayed sober from that, from that point forward. Um, and I got into AA, um, that, that I knew of then, you know, uh, I guess we call it open AA, contemporary AA, whatever it was. There were a lot of people working the steps at 12. I didn't know what, what steps were stairs. I didn't, I had no clue. It was not like, I didn't know that was even, you know, AA attendance, God steps to get spiritually fit, like was the furthest thing from my mind. I just started going. Cause people wouldn't shut up. They'd say, get a sponsor.
So I got a sponsor. Um, and I started to do, do some, I took some action. What I started to do was do it someone else's way, really. And I got some results out of that. Um, I got some results that were good. I started to feel a lot better. So I had an experience with the God, God that I didn't believe in God. I believed in me and that was about it. I believed in drugs and alcohol, and that was a power greater than myself. But I just started to believe because you guys believed and I took some action, got down on my knees and started to take some steps. And I started, you know, I hung out a lot with the fellowship and I got really high off the spirit of the fellowship.
Um, and that started like the shine on things for me just started to wear off. Right. Um, and I am truly blessed. I ended up, uh, self-seeking, uh, on a, uh, on a female. I ended up in August of 2000. I, I went with my friend Meredith, um, and Charlie became a very good friend of mine. I'm very pivotal part of my recovery. So I'm self-seeking on this girl, Meredith, not Meredith. She's actually one at 12 step me. And so if you don't think you can help another person from the opposite sex, you're wrong because she 12 step me, but it was her friend. See, I'm considerate. I was self-seeking on, and we went up to Farmington, Maine. And so I walk in this day and I thought I had like the solution. Like, you know, I started to realize that, you know, I didn't come to AA or CA to stop using. I came because I couldn't stop using, you know, I started to realize that it wasn't for people who needed it or wanted it. It's for people that do it. Right. And so I had this very profound spiritual experience. I had resulted just taking some actions. And so I walk, um, I go up to this man, walk into this room and there's like seven people there. It's a big book meeting. I've been to big book meetings. I know all about the big book, right? Cover to cover. And, um, so I walk into the big book meeting and, uh, it was called chapter two and it was in Farmington and the guy named Don P. helped, uh, spawn this meeting and Jerry E. started to help this meeting get going. I didn't know that then they would mention Don Jerry's name at some point during the, during my course of time there.
But what ended up taking place is they were reading, it was named chapter two. Conveniently, they were reading chapter two and the guy started going through the big book, breaking it down. His name was Paul. And I thank Paul about two years ago for this because it changed my life. Um, so Paul starts going through breaking it down. He got to end right, right above the paragraph that I read actually. And a light bulb went off. You see, I had been doing steps and I would actually be like, Oh my, he does the steps out of the big book, you know, like I didn't, I had some secret way that I was doing them that was made up by these guys that are really
[00:30:03]
like cool, but they were like, they were type of people that were like, come over and paint my fence, you know, that type of shit, it was just like, you know, you're going to work your way, you know, self, you know, worship your sponsor and then you'll be alright, right? Human power worshipping. So, but he got to this part and he said, further on, clear cut directions are given showing how we have recovered, followed by 43 personal experiences.
I was like, whoa, clear cut directions, I mean, my buddy Garrison says this, you know, I always fancied myself a smart kid, I always thought, I was like, I could, why haven't I ever seen that or heard that or anything before, I'm sure it was read, and a light bulb went off. I was like, holy shit, the steps are in the, it's from this point forward they're going to show clear cut directions, showing how we can be recovered. I was like, that was just news to me. And so, I went back down to Portland and I've been there, I said this, Doug laughed at this, but this is true, you know, I've been doing the work out of the big book before it was ever popular, really, like it was, it was like bad, like there was one, there was like three big book meetings in all of Portland, all, the whole state of Maine, there's maybe six or seven now, but I mean, it was bad, like there was one, the one big book meeting was called Big Book Step Study and I went to it in Portland and I walked in and there was a guy, they were doing it right out of the big book, talking about the sex inventory, talking about things that he was doing, he did sober, that I was currently doing sober, and I was blown away, I was just blown away. And I was like, eh, maybe a little bit too drastic, right? There were people going there from my home group and they were like, you gotta come check, when you left that meeting, when you wake up and you've been doing contemporary AA that long and you walk into a big book meeting, you actually feel like you're not even sober, you're like, I'm not even sober, like I'm not doing what these guys are describing. And so I left, I was in a halfway house, kicked out of the halfway house, Stone Cold Sober, right, wreckage, how can you go back to someone, ah, I did it, sober, I got kicked out of the halfway house sober, and I was working at a call center, lost that job, living with my buddy Anthony, who by the way was locked up in the psychiatric ward, forensics unit, he was criminally insane, had changed his life by doing some work, and then, you know, started resting on his laurels as well. So I, at a year clean and sober, was removed, I was self-seeking like crazy, on date lines, acting out really bad sexually, and I thought it would be a good idea, and Anthony thought it would be a good idea as well, is that if, and I got saved, you should know that I got saved, that we could, he got a Mercedes given to him, very nice, someone gave him, because he was a boxer, gave him a Mercedes, if we would use that Mercedes and work for an escort service and bring all the girls to God. So that's what we started to do at a year sober.
Yes, that was my solution, and it was a viable solution, trust me, for about two weeks. And I got, I started doing heroin shortly after that, and I thought if I just don't drink, everything will be okay, you know what happens, next day I'm drinking, next night or wherever it was, I'm drinking, ended up back in treatment, and the grand jury indicts me in two weeks for robbery, you know, all this crazy stuff, and I move away, and I'm on a relapse. No clue there's a warrant out for my arrest, for I tried to rob a drug dealer, they don't like that, even though they're selling drugs, they don't like it when you try to rob drug dealers, FYI. So I'm on the run, drinking, drugging, trying to hold a job together, trying to do, you know, the appropriate thing, I thought, and self-will, self-will all through it, right, just willing it away, and I actually 12-stepped this girl I was dating, drinking, she went to a meeting under my suggestion and called me and said, everybody knows you here and they miss you, and I would like call people up and say, hey, like I'm done, like drunk, I'm done, let's go to a meeting, I'm ready, and they would show up and knock on the door, and I'd be like, I'm not here, and I convinced myself I wasn't there, while they're knocking on the door, like I'm really not here, I missed him coming by, and I was just absolutely crazy, and it was pitiful, it was absolutely pitiful, it was pitiful and crazy, pathetic, pathetic would be the best way to describe it, and so that's the most scariest part, is like not knowing if you're going to make it back, I had no clue, that's why I say I lost the power of choice, I did not know I was going to make it back, and that was in 2001, drank and drugged, 12-stepped that girl, got really miserable, started selling a lot of heroin, a lot of people started dying, one person did manslaughter, she wouldn't
[00:35:02]
snitch me out, and I got really, really bad, checked myself into a methadone clinic, was there for a little while, checked myself out of there, drank, drank, drank, and it was not a night that was that different really, this won't surprise anybody, now that you know my story, I'll get to the January 14th, 13th, where it was right around that time, I was out with a couple of guys, one I had grown up with my whole life, and the other guy, and he's still amazed, I think he might have alcoholism, that it was my last time I drank, but it was with this guy John and Tommy, and we were sitting at the strip club, loved the strip clubs, and what ended up happening was an experience of a spiritual nature, voice came over me, said Mike go back to A, work the steps out of the big book, you'd be a lot different, and that's what happened, and I don't know when I came back, was it the next day, it was very foggy, I started the self-will, it's funny as a newcomer, I forgot to mention this earlier, but when you ask for help, you hear a lot, you always hear any lengths, and this is how sick I was, if you said, my sponsors asked me if I was willing to go to any lengths, and what I heard was, does that mean sexual favors, that's where my mind's at, it was always sexual favors, I won't get into what those look like from the podium right now, catch me on a different day, but it was, no, so I come back in, I start to really, I'm just crazy, stealing, stealing packs of cigarettes out of people's cars, I would take the back road, let's just say I don't smoke anymore, but I would steal their cigarettes, and wander around to take the back road, and they would show up, they were like their kids, and I'd be like, oh I feel so guilty, I'm stealing cigarettes, and just a grimy dude, even sober, just straight up grimy, like halfway, kind of like, trying to go through the motion, my buddy dies, my buddy Eric dies, he froze to death, I spoke at his funeral, and I was still, I was balking at my four step, like I was, I didn't want to look at my own mistakes, right, the fourth column, and so I balked at that, he dies, I spoke at his funeral, hit another place in my recovery, where it was, I just said, and this is the one thing that I couldn't lose, that I think stops people from ever getting clean and sober, and it's the thing, if you're new in here, great, you're in your first year, great, but there's some people in here in their last year as well, where I was starting to leave, like I was saying before, I was leaving AA, didn't realize I was leaving, but the one thing I needed to lose was self-reliance, my judgment of everything around me, it's the one thing that I think that you need to lose, that I gave up at a year sober, self-reliance, I said, I don't seem to know what I'm doing, you guys do, you say do this, focus here, I say I got to get a better job, a better relationship, better this and that, I just want to feel okay, I just want to be happy, right, if I could just line it all up, but you say, come over here and finish that work, and all that other stuff will take care of itself, now, I don't know how many times I've heard it, and it's got a part of my own story, is once I did that, everything straightened out, you're looking at somebody that had sixth grade education, never drove a license, never got on a plane, never did anything, couldn't get off Munjoy Hill, which was where I was from, I would try to get to Boston, I'd end up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, buying crack cocaine, getting heroin, you know, like, every decision I made, I was just like, I always felt like I was just a bad, you know, run of luck, I would just chalk it up, it's just like, I'm just the way things are going to be, if it's raining on me, it's raining on you, and I had never put together this, this work, would ever change the inside, to change everything on the outside, and make everything seem different, and so what happened at a year clean and sober, is I said, my mind is trying to kill me, why can I not put down and write this stuff out, why can't I do that, I mean, it's very simple, right, but every time I go to do it, why do I get tired, why do I get something else I've got to do, I said, my mind is trying to kill me, my mind, I said, you know what, I'm just going to do this, and not even think, and just go, and so I wrote my four step, you know, one part of it, for 13 hours, straight, just strung out, right, in the four step, I had a buddy of mine stayed up with me, that same kid that was 14 years old, sitting in that meeting, and so I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and I did the four step, and the fifth step, and I was part of this, you know, chapter two deal, and I was doing that, and I was about to make my amends, and then I copped a resignment at this big book group, and I went over to that big book step study, the people I thought were too drastic, and I joined that group, and they said, you know what, we know that you've got some knowledge, you need to do it this way, we know you've done some of that work, but let's just go back through it, why don't you take me through
[00:40:00]
the steps up until that point, my first, my sponsor Seth, who I had for four years, and I did some, I humbled myself, and started to do the deal, with Seth, and went back through the work, within like six months, and I've done the work three times, and the last time was, really, I've done it three times to hopefully finish once, does that make any sense, because what we like to do, is like, once I make a couple of amends, and do this stuff, and say some apologies, pay some money back, is to say, well I'm just above it all, I've had valid experience with God, I'm above it all, I don't need to do this, no one in my group holds me accountable, because I place myself in a position where I'm better, right, and I take that, it's mine now, and then I start to get sick again, right, the ego, it just starts to reconstruct, and so, I like to say that I've had a powerful experience as a result of the work, nine and three quarters, right, that's what we should be saying, well nine and one twentieth, or whatever it is where you're at with the work, right, but I like to sometimes say I've had a spiritual awakening as a result of that work, and if you haven't had a spiritual experience yet, or even a spiritual awakening, you're asleep, if you're not awake, then you're sleeping, and I sometimes have to remember that, sometimes I can fall back asleep in different areas, and the people I work with, they're asleep, and I got into a place where I did this work, and I would go, and I would just hang out with people like in the solution, I wouldn't want to go to those meetings, man, they're murderers and all this stuff, right, which is partially true, right, but where am I at with that?
I challenge people in there, I challenge you, because when I started to get some great results in my life, is when I started to go into those sick meetings, and not even say anything, just hang out, and watch people, and people started to watch me, and what started to happen is just amazing, amazing stuff, you can change, we have enough power to change those meetings, and at least be helpful to the guy that needs it, because they're not going to know about here, that he's going to go ask somebody, or she's going to go ask somebody, hey what about the firing line group, oh they're crazy, they're up there, they're evangelists up there, they're fundamentalists, and all this stuff, right, so she's never going to know, and he might, or she doesn't need it, but they might, and they're never going to get here, unless they see Doug's face, or Don's face, or whoever's face, and say, they seem pretty nice, I remember them, that guy belongs to that group, and so I challenge you, if you're sitting around, like I did, three, four, five years into this deal, just sitting around with the choir, hanging out with the choir, don't fail to know the rest of the congregation, to check it out, just try it, once a week, make a commitment to some sick meeting, that you feel sick, right, not doing it your way, and go in there and hang out, just hang out, get to know some people, and so I started to do this stuff, I got a GED, I got all this stuff, right, I got all this stuff, I end up in Texas, all this, you know, just powerful, powerful stuff I could bore you with, I'll tell you about, I'll wrap up with a couple of things, I'll tell you about currently, the last real amends that sticks out in my mind, that currently did, I told you by actions, I was violent, I did a lot of stuff, I got in a fight with this guy, and his girlfriend would jump in, and she jumped on my back, and all this stuff, I smashed out the windows, they had a small baby, you know, in the car, I smashed out the windows, I did all this crazy stuff, right, so there's this website, I'm not going to mention the website, just out of not violating any outside issue, but I end up on this website, looking for like high school reunion people, just out of curiosity, like I wonder how people are doing, right, so I go on this website, my buddy Mike, who I told you about, who went to federal prison, he's living out in California, he's on there, right, so we contact each other, so I go on this profile, and this girl, the one I was talking about, jumped on my back, she had a child, and had broken up with this kid, she had died in a car accident, I had owned her amends for breaking her car windows out, right, so I go on her profile, now I didn't know, like there's my, you know, other dot coms out there, that you don't know whose views your profile, but with this website, if you land on it, they'll say that you visited, so the next day I get an email, and it's this girl's mother saying, I noticed you visited Darcia's page, and do you have any memories to share with her daughter, I'm like, oh man, oh god, why, right, I owe this girl amends, all it's going is amends, amends, amends, amends, I've done graveside amends, I've done amends to ex-girlfriends, I've done all kinds of amends, and if you want to know what amends sound like, it's knock, knock, knock, hello, ding, dong, writing a letter, it's all that stuff, going to the grave, so this is one of those graveside amends, I thought I would just end up back in Portland, and I would make this amends, so, do you have any memories to share, so I said, Darcia was a very, you know, I was very honest, but I said Darcia was a very nice young lady, she did, we had our, you know, ins and outs, but I always remember her smile, and that's something I always remember her face, very pretty girl, so something along those lines, and she asked me back, would you, you know, we start a little conversation, it goes back and forth a couple of times, and I said, well I owe, I emailed one of them, I said, I owe Darcia a favor.
[00:45:04]
And she used my back like, what kind of favor do you owe her? And I came out, I owe an amends to Darcia, I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous, this is what I'm doing now, I harmed Darcia, I did this, you know, she says, I said, I owe her some money, can I give you the money? She says, I don't want the money, I can do the whole thing. Oh, you can take the money and go in her charity, and she says, you know what, her daughter's birthday is coming up, why don't you get her daughter something, or a gift card or something.
I said, tell me what you want me to do. I said, just tell me and I will do it for them, for more money than what I had to actually owe, it was a couple hundred dollars. So I got her Toys R Us gift card, and sent it to her. She, a little while later, emails me back and says, we got the gift card, thank you so much, I hope, she was very concerned about me, like, I hope it does what you need. That night, I had a dream, Darcia came to me in the dream, she comes to me and smiles at me, and it was like, the smile said something, but she didn't say anything, and it said everything is okay between us.
My hairs stand up right now as I'm telling you that, that is real, that's what happened to me. And it's such a powerful, powerful experience, because I had harmed her, I could have harmed that child, I could have done many, many things, and I had never thought I would hear these stories from the podium and say, I guess it could happen, and it happened to me, it was absolutely amazing. And a couple of things I want to wrap up on is, I'm really big in the practice and the principles and all my affairs, and I got the opportunity to really do this at being outside the other end of work.
As I said, when I started to understand how to master resentment, outgrow fear, live a sound saying, sex ideal, and start to bring God through situations, and that power is remarkable, and does things like that, amends to you and for you, and you get to, I started to, I went back to school, because of my financial status, I got some free money, I like to shop, so I went over by where this methadone clinic was, and I was shopping, a kid got on the bus, and I just was like, I got to talk to this guy, I knew he was going methadone, we just started shooting the shit, and we talked a little bit, got off, I said, I'll get you some lunch.
And he comes out, he was in N.A. down in Connecticut, and he'd been relapsing for many, many years now, it was like six or seven years, and he just couldn't seem to get by, I said, you know, I'm in recovery and all that, gave him my number, probably like six months later, my phone rings, I pick it up, and it's this kid, he says, do you remember, I said, of course I do, he says, I think I'm ready, I said, alright, where are you, and he gives my mother's address, he lived downstairs from my mother, I said, my mother lives upstairs from here, he goes, get out of here, I said, yeah, and he's just totally freaked out.
Right around the same time, I took this intro class, and there was this kid from New York in that class, and we had to do like an icebreaker, where you would sit down with a partner, and you'd introduce each other, and you'd say, this is so-and-so, he likes this, and takes like long walks on the beach, and Sagittarius, and all that, right? So I get up, I do this, and about four or five months later, the kid's sitting in this young people's meeting, and he B-lines, he sees me at the meeting, and he just B-lines it for me, he goes, I knew it, I said, what did you know, he says, I could tell by the look in your eyes, you got this thing, will you take me through the work?
I had no clue that I would sit down with this kid in an intro class, five months later, which he dropped out of the class, never failed, had this whole lawsuit going on in the school, he was a handful, you never get the ones that you want, right? And started to, you know, work with this guy. And the last story I'd like to tell, before I wrap this thing up, is about my friend Charlie, the one I told you about, the one I hated, who I became friends with, and Charlie was a very committed member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Charlie would make a commitment to go to the prison, up in the main state prison, every week, and bring a meeting in there.
And he'd call, you know, he first started doing it, loved it, and about two years later, he's kind of like, I'm not getting anywhere, I haven't helped anybody, Mike, I don't know what I'm doing, am I doing it right, should I do a big book, should I bring him through the steps, I mean, Don did that, Tom does that, what do I do, you know, he just, you know, just trying to figure it out. And I went to this retreat, and Matt just came, my friend Matt, who just passed away, he drowned sober, this guy drowned sober, just popped in my head, he was there at this retreat, he just, my friend Matt just drowned last week, but he was there, Charlie, me and Charlie went there, this retreat, and it's a weekend that our group did.
So after the weekend, we're like, oh, that was a great weekend, you know, went through the work, and got to see it, and we want to go get something to eat, and we stop over, and it's this Bonanza, I don't know if they have that down here, but Bonanza is just packed, it's the last day it's going to be open, it's up in Augusta, Maine, the capital of Maine. And so we're like, we're not going to eat here, we go across the street, this other place is closed.
So me and Charlie and two other people start driving down this back road, and they don't have like Sonics in Maine, where they come out and deliver it, but they had like this old school diner, and we're like, that looks so cool, let's like pull up and get some food,
[00:50:02]
and so we pull in, and we decide to go inside, and we're eating, and we're being men, and we're saying things that are inappropriate, I'm sure, and the checks come out, and there's four of us and three checks, and someone got Charlie's meal, and the waitress says, someone bought your meal. And I'm thinking, the first thing I think of is, some woman in here thinks Charlie's better looking than me. I know he is not, right?
And then Charlie goes, what if a guy bought my meal, like, what do I do then? Like, I don't know, let's go, we're like, I don't know, he says, we want to know, like who bought your meal? And she says, no, the person wants to remain anonymous, we're like, why? She says, wait a second. She comes, goes, comes back two minutes later, and she says, the cook got back, and he was up at the prison, and said he used to bring a meeting in there every week, and he just wants to say thank you, and instant tears.
I'm crying, the kid across from me is crying, the other, Charlie and this other kid are like, what the hell just happened, it was such a powerful, powerful experience, had nothing to do with me, it was Charlie's work that I got to be a witness to, and that's a wonderful, wonderful thing, is we get to be witnesses to others, right? We get to talk about this power, we get to do this work, and go through some pain.
You know, it talks about being amazed, and I don't know about you, but I've been amazed at some real painful, uncomfortable shit in my life, and so, it doesn't mean that I'm going to be happy all the time, on most days, I'm spiritually fit, and I ask you, if you're new in here, if you haven't done that work, there's definitely a spiritual revolution going on, you know, we need your help if you're the real McCoy, find out if you're alcoholic, if you're an addict, ask somebody else for help, have them bring you through this work, experience this, get woken up, and help us carry the message to people that need it, in the prisons, in the jails, I mean, that's where Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous is badly needed, is I ask you to do that, because we definitely need the help, and thank you.