Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 823 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ralph-w-experience-strength-and-hope-in-cocaine-anonymous-ca-2008-archive-823.mp3 Duration: 00:48:35
============================================================
My name is Ralph W. and I'm an attorney. Hello Ralph. Thank you, Tom, for asking me to come out and share and thank the group for asking me to come out and share my experience, strength, and hope tonight. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. That's a milestone. Congratulations to all of you who took chips. Congratulations to the people who took 30, 60, 90, 6 months. And then I want to do the most important thing I can do tonight.
I want to welcome our new friends to the Fellowship of Cocaine Anonymous. Welcome home. I want to let you know if you smoke dope like I smoke dope, if you did some of the things I did, been some of the places I've been, probably the best step you can take from the cradle to the grave. I don't say that because you guys asked me to come out and share tonight. I don't say that because I'm standing behind a podium and it's the right thing to say when you get behind one of these podiums.
I say it because this program, this process, and this power that I got introduced to has been working in my life like nothing else I've discovered. You know, I'm not standing up here tonight because I'm a nice guy. I don't do this thing out of virtue and I don't do it because it's chic to be sober in 2008. I do it for my life and I started out doing it because I was desperate and I've grown into doing it because I like the life I live today.
And if you're sitting out there right now and you're in a real dark place, if you're sitting in here right now and cocaine has been doing to you what it did to me for so many years, I want to welcome you to a fellowship of men and women. I want to welcome you home. I want to welcome you to the land of starting all over again. And it's a good place to be. You know, I've been doing this a couple of summers.
You know, I get inclined to say I'm not going to share a lone drunk or log. I just want to share about recovery. But, you know, believe it or not, I remember being new to the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous like a lot of you guys were sitting out here tonight. I remember a speaker coming out and standing in front of the group somewhat like I am tonight. He was dressed pretty nice and his hair was combed and his eyes were bright and he was stringing sentences together pretty well.
And I remember thinking to myself that night, I know this cat ain't been where I've been, I know he ain't felt what I felt, and I know he ain't done what I've done. What can this lame tell me? So it's real important that I let you know that the man standing in front of you right now is not the same one that stumbled into the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous October 11th, 1986. I'm going to share with you in a general way what I used to be like, what happened to what I'm like today, in the hopes that somebody sitting out there will be thinking like I was thinking that night.
Man, I used to do the same thing. I used to feel the same way. I'm more important, I too want to have this thing. I grew up in South Central Los Angeles and I'm one of six boys. I grew up in a little two-bedroom apartment. Moms and pops stayed in one room, six boys stayed in three bunk beds in the other room. Earliest memory of my old man was he was an alcoholic and I didn't want to be like him. My father wasn't abusive and my father wasn't violent.
My father was an absentee drinker. And every other Friday you knew he wouldn't show up at the house with a check. I had a kid in the neighborhood who would feel like it was his duty to come tell my family how my old man had been performing up at the pool hall the previous Friday or Saturday night. And I would feel ashamed and embarrassed. Those are feelings I'm familiar with from a real early age. Pops got put out the house when I was eight or nine years old and moms proceeded to raise six boys by herself.
Don't know about you. And it's a lot of people in there. Jim, I'm glad you came up in here. I need somebody with gray in their hair right about now. You know, because, you know, we got a lot of young friends in here. I don't know if a lot of you guys can identify with some of my story. I'm a guy, you know, I'm a product of the 60s. You know, I grew up in the 60s and I grew up in the 70s. You know, and I don't know about you guys, but I always had an idea about what an ideal family was.
And in the 60s, ideal families were depicted by TV programs. They ain't running them right now. They got the reality shows and I don't know. When I grew up, you know, they would show ideal families. Father knows best, Ozzie and Harry are my three sons. Leave it to Beaver and Beth that was not jumping off in my house. When you're grown, you get something that's called perspective, and perspective works like this.
You got a mom that raised six boys by herself. She was on welfare. She didn't have a high school education. She put herself back through high school. She put herself through college. She worked two jobs. She took in clothes that she washed and ironed for other folks. And when you're grown, you look back on your life and say, damn, I had a hell of a mom. Look how she sacrificed to raise her boys. But when you're a kid about 9 or 10 years old and you're coming home from school on a Wednesday afternoon and you hit the front door and Mom's is in the living room with an ironing board up and a rag on her head, you don't feel proud.
You feel ashamed and embarrassed. And if your name is Ralph, you retreat into that fantasy world. I've lived there much of my life. Biggest prison I've ever lived in is the prison I live in sometimes, even today. And that's the prison of what I think you think about me. See, I don't know what you think about me, but I'm trapped in what I think you think about me. And I'll do whatever it takes to shape and form them all your opinion around.
I'll whine. I'll dine. I'll woo you. I'll con you. I'll bully you. I'll manipulate you. I'll buy you. Please like me. Now, I don't particularly have to like your ass, but please like me.
[00:05:03]
You know, so I'm growing up like this, man. And, you know, I don't want you guys to get the wrong impression. Some of you guys might have heard about this. You know, I grew up in South Central. I grew up in the heart of Washington. You might have heard stories about it. I wouldn't have changed the way I grew up for anything in the world. I'm not an alcoholic and I'm not an addict because I come from a broken home.
There's somebody in here sitting in here right now that had both parents in the house. I'm not an addict because I come from South Central Los Angeles. Most of y'all sitting in this room don't come from my neighborhood. I'm not an addict because I'm a poor brother from the ghetto. And, you know, look around the room, you know that ain't the reason. I'm not an addict because I'm a short guy. There's some big guys in the room.
I'm not an addict because we grew up poor. There's somebody in here that grew up with a silver spoon. You know, I'm an addict for two reasons and two reasons only. One, when I take one, I can't tell you when I'm going to stop. Two, when I sincerely don't want to start again, I start again anyway. I'm bodily and mentally different from my fellows. That's it and that's all. The rest is my story, and my story goes a little bit like this.
Every one of you guys had me in your classroom. I was always student body president and a class president. I was a straight-A student, teacher's pet, played ball, made all-stars. Outside, I should have been okay. Inside, I've always felt like if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me. Straight-A student, teacher's pet, would have traded it all in if I could have been cool. Because in my neighborhood, it was a whole lot more currency placed on cool than smart.
You know, the cats who was cool was in the bathroom smoking cigarettes, shooting dice, taking quarters from guys like me that brought extra quarters with them, and they knew how to talk to girls. You know, and girls were a mystery to Ralph. You know, if you go to meetings a lot, you know, you'll hear a lot of things, and you'll hear a lot of common themes shared from podiums and Cocaine Anonymous. One of the common themes you'll hear from a lot of our members is they never felt like they fit in.
And that's not a part of my story. I'm a little guy. I like a lot of attention. I've never been interested in fitting in. I've always wanted to stand out. And as a result of that, I achieved and I accomplished some stuff coming up, you know. I share with you guys I was this teacher's pet, straight-A student, class valedictorian, all those things, man. You know, but I was shy and I was introverted. And so I'm growing up at this time, and I'm an ambitious young guy.
You know, I grew up in the 60s. It was a turbulent time. It was a changing time. I was caught up in it. I did a lot of working in my community. I was active, you know, and I had a bright future in front of me, and I'm not going to be my dad. I'm not going to make my family ashamed of me. I'm not going to let my kids know who their father is, and they'll be proud of me. I'm not going to be the one, you know, I used to go to the father-son banquets with Mom.
You know, that's not going to be me. I make people proud of me, and I make people know who I am. So I'm growing up, man. I'm going to fast forward through this. I'm growing up, and I'm a regular kid. I'm doing what it is that I do. I hear in the room, you know, when I came to Cocaine Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, this is the first place I came where folks try to out-bottom each other, you know, and I thought my story wasn't cool enough because, you know, I started late.
I look around the room right now, and I know a lot of you guys started. You all were doing shit way before I started, you know, because I'm in high school. I still ain't doing nothing, right? I'm on a fast track to success. That's the kind of guy I am. I get a girlfriend at 16. Ralph with a girlfriend at 16 don't mean the same thing he means with some of you guys. Ralph with a girlfriend at 16 simply means this.
I ran with a crew of dudes that went with the same group of girls. One of my boys broke up with this girl. I waited a little time to pass. I told my other boy, look, I want to go with her. He went and asked her, came back and told me she said yes. Now I got a girlfriend, right? Ralph don't know what to do with girls because Ralph don't do girls. Check this out. This is my official girlfriend, right?
This is my official girl. I've had little girlfriends before, but this one knew she was my girlfriend, right? This is me. You know, this is me. I call my girl, and if you ask her at that time, who do you go with? She say, Ralph, you know, this is my official girlfriend. I would call her on the telephone. We used to have them old rotary phones. The seventh number said come around, and fear would set in when that seventh number went around because I knew what would happen when she answered the phone.
You got to talk. It's the telephone, right? And I now know conversation for my girl. I just hang up on her, right? I just click over and over and over. This particular night, I go out on a double date. You know, an older partner of mine that's driving, him and his girl in the front seat, me and my girl in the back seat. We go to a drive-in movie. Plastic cup of rum and Coke comes to the back seat this particular night.
I drank that rum and Coke down, went down real warm, rushed back to the top of my brain. All of a sudden, Ralph's hand started doing things they had never done. My mouth started saying things that it never said I'd arrive. Alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself. I had the courage to do and to be and to say things I wouldn't do, be, and say without it, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. The big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, talks about me in lots of places.
It starts talking about me in the front of that book. New Friends, there's a chapter in the front of our book called The Doctor's Opinion, and in that chapter, there's a lot written about Ralph. And there's a line that jumped out at me, and there's a line in there that goes like this. Men and women like Ralph drink essentially for the effect produced by alcohol. First time I read that, I recognized it.
Some of you guys in here might be drinking that scotch and be like, ah. I'd be like, ugh, but I like what it did when it went down.
[00:10:02]
I'm not overnight alcoholic. I understand we talk about this disease being progressive in nature. That first night I drank, I didn't get pissy drunk. Didn't throw up all over myself. I got a buzz. I got a warm, tipsy feeling. I kissed and licked and sucked on my girl in some places I had never done before, and I was cool like that. I was cool. You know, alcohol worked for me for a time, and that's how my drinking stayed for a little while.
I used to drink when I went out to parties. What youngsters were drinking at that time? Some Tyrolia, Annie Greenspring, Boone's Farm. You know what I'm saying. You know Tyrolia. And I'm cool. I go to a party. I didn't have the courage to ask a girl to slow dance and grind in the corner. I'm like, ooh, this alcohol is cool. I graduated from high school in 71, and I graduated to higher education in every sense of the word.
71, I'm still just drinking to go out to parties. But in 71, I also got introduced to some nonaddictive marijuana. By the end of 71, I'm drinking and I'm smoking herb not only to go to the parties on the weekend but to get ready for the parties during the day on the weekends. By 1972, I'm drinking and smoking herb after class when I get out of class. By the end of 72, I'm drinking, I'm smoking herb, I'm selling herb.
By 1973, I'm drinking, I'm smoking herb, I'm selling herb, I'm doing other drugs, I'm doing it on a daily basis. Couldn't have told me there was anything wrong with the way I was living. Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous talks about at a certain point in my drinking career, I won't be able to tell the truth from the false. And the way that that works for me is this. Isn't the way that I'm doing it, isn't that the way everybody does it?
Why would you be young with a bright future with a little bit of money? I was getting financial aid. Didn't chase the women and getting loaded come with the territory. In those days, man, if you came over my house and I couldn't offer you something to drink or something to smoke, I wasn't being a good host. And if I went over your house and you didn't do the same for me, not only weren't you being a good host, I wasn't coming over your house no more.
For what? You know, roll out here tonight. You know, one of my spouses was kind enough to roll with an old guy tonight. You know, me and Rob came out tonight and, you know, and she called me. I'll be at your office at such and such a time and it's going to take us about an hour and a half. You know, and that's not the way I would think in the old days. I got to go all the way from Carson to Dana. That's about a three or four joint trip.
You can measure time and distance by how loaded you could get from point A to point B. Man, that's just the way that I'm rolling, you know. And I don't mean any offense or any disrespect to our young friends. I'm not talking about new friends, but I'm talking about young friends. But I'm glad I grew up at the time I grew up in. You know, I don't know nothing about a little ziplock like this. Jim, three-finger nickels, four-finger dimes, no stems, no seeds, copping 2.5 pounds of herb, you know, to $125.
Going to concerts. I'm giving charges and selling, you know, all the way over here. I'm giving charges to you. We got gas masks working. We got cylinders, you know. My idea of a good time is a bunch of people sitting around like this, you know, the music all the way blasting, TV all the way down, room dark, you know, and we just up in there. And every now and then somebody's head will come up. Man, I'm fucked up.
Yeah, my kind of party, you know. That's the era I came up in. You go to a concert, you don't even have to know your neighbor. You just pass and shit. You know, and I don't know if it was a simpler time, but it seemed like a simpler time. In 2008, you got to worry about sexually transmitted diseases, practicing safe sex. You got to worry about AIDS. In those days, man, I'd go to a club. I'd have a one-question interview for a girl.
You get high? If not, next. I don't need to know your sign, your mama's name, where you work. I don't need to know. Let's get to the basis of this relationship. Do you do it the way that I do it? Some kind of way I came through school, man, and I started working as a counselor for L.A. City Schools, and even though I had the kind of job that should have allowed me to acquire what normal people did, I never did that.
I never did. Snapshot of Ralph's life, this is when drugs and alcohol was working. I buy a car, I make exactly three car payments, then come find me. Come find me. First time I had a car repossessed, I had to call LAPD. You know, I want to report a stolen car. I ain't made a car payment in nine months, right? I want to report a stolen car. They do what they do. No, Mr. W., the rightful owner, just pick that shit up.
You know, the next two times I didn't even trip. I already knew, right? I'm the kind of brother that never had a problem balancing a bank book. Payday, I got money. Two days later, broke. Zero. No problem balancing my bank book. You know, I stayed in a career from 1976 to 1979 without paying rent. A couple of bathroom features about the disease I suffered from, and one of them is this. I can't see my relationship with drugs and alcohol until I'm free of it.
I can't see what it's doing to me when I'm in the midst. So some of the things that are crystal clear to me now, looking back in the rearview mirror of experience, were not at all clear to me when I was going through it. One fact stands out real clear to me about the days when I thought that drugs and alcohol was working. I used to go to work for two weeks to live for two days. That's it. I worked to get loaded you know and I can't tell you the hour I can't tell you the day at a time I can't tell you where I was or what I was doing when drugs and alcohol ceased to be a luxury for me and became a necessity I can't tell you that
[00:15:00]
it did happen to me and I had a long time of doing some things man you know I have a lot of friends who can come up here and they can share real elf on me and they can remember You know, their memories are better than mine. They talk about when they got loaded, it filled that hole in their gut. When they got loaded, it made them feel. You know, and they talk about, you know, and they can give you the reasons and the whys and the…
You come from a time that I came from and you were square determined not to be a square, you know. That's just the thing to do. Everybody did. You don't come up in the 60s and 70s and not get low. That's just the thing to do. My grandmother, you said something that I never understood until I came to the room. Trouble always starts out like fun and it was just big fun when I was doing it, man. It was just big fun.
It was the way that it was. I'm at a major university. I'm with people who are really going somewhere. You know, at the time that I started snorting cocaine, it wasn't nothing about people running up the cart. You couldn't have told me it was going to take me on the journey it took me. You know, it was a status drug. You know, if you don't have at least a C note, don't even think about it. You got to know a dope man, you got to go…
That's the era I started out in. Now you might hear me mention smoking the best herbs. You might hear me mention smoking some hash and some hash oil. You might even hear me mention eating on some mushrooms. You may even hear me mention snorting some of the best blowskis. But the moment you hear me mention hitting the pipe, you'll know I'm coming to the end of my story. Right? So I do the deal. I go through, you know, and I'm in life, man, and you know, and things were working pretty well for a goddamn round.
You know, I've come through this major university, I started working in a profession, and I started doing some things. And if you're anything like me, like I told you, I can't tell you when it happened and when that day came to me, for me, when drugs and alcohol ceased to be a luxury and became a necessity. But it did happen. I'm one of these guys that plays the regret game in the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous.
I'm one of the ones that sits around and see, I used to be one of them people that'll look at somebody like, Tom, if I ever get like that, I quit. I look at my man right here, man, you need to quit. And the big book talks about seeking the Lord companion. It wasn't long before I became the Lord companion. You know, the regret game in Cocaine Anonymous, it goes somewhat like, you know, I like to tell a story.
It kind of illustrates it. A story about a little boy named Johnny, you know. You know, that goes, if I only knew then what I knew now, right? But it's a story about a little boy named Johnny, and Johnny had a habit his father frowned on. Johnny used to like to play with himself. Father goes off to work one day, comes home early, little Johnny's bedroom door is closed. Opens little Johnny's door without knocking, sure enough, little Johnny's in the bedroom masturbating.
Father looks at him and says, son, I thought I told you if you keep doing that, you'll go blind. And little Johnny stopped and looked up at his dad and said, well, daddy, can I just do it till I need glasses? You know what I mean. I like that story because it reminds me of me in the life, right? I see you going down, you going down, you going down, I'm just going to do it till I need, you know. And the book talks about seeking the Lord.
And I can't tell you when it was that I wasn't the one, you know, because I used to come to places. This ain't the first time I go to work in suits, you know. These days, though, you won't see me in the same one tomorrow that I was in yesterday. And I can't tell you, man, that shit just flips overnight. Seem like it flips overnight. I was the guy rolling in, dressed like I am right now, pocket full of money, copy.
You jump up to give me a torch. And seem like overnight, I'm the one jumping up, asking you, can I get you, you know what I'm saying? I don't know how that happens. You know, but I'm doing the deal, man. We don't have enough time for me to tell you all the things that should have been signs along the way that maybe you got a problem with this. I got married in 1980, and I had a bachelor party the night before my wedding.
Saturday afternoon in April of 1980. Bunch of guys went to the bachelor party. None of them are getting married the next day. All of them have since enough to go home at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm still at my bachelor party till 7.30 in the morning, right near my brother's. They pour me in the bed at 7.30. They give me up at 10 o'clock for my 1 o'clock wedding. I ain't slept. I just laid on top of the bed.
I'm toe up. Toe up. Just laid on top of the bed, right? They give me up for my 10 o'clock wedding. I'm supposed to say my own vows at this wedding. I show up, and I wobble in there, and my then-wife-to-be looked at me wobbling in, and she looked at the preacher. She said, scratch your own vows. Said a regular on his ass, right? So now my lines are cut to two words. We get in there. We get into the ceremony.
It gets to me. I get ready. Say, I do. I do. I do. I do all over. Passed out. I've not taken a wedding picture to this day. Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. New friends, if you're anything like me when I first started coming to these rooms, although
[00:20:03]
I recognized most of the words people were saying in the rooms, the way they used them was not the way I used them in my everyday walk around vocabulary. Folk were talking about a psychic change and this phenomena of craving and this allergy of the body, and I needed some of the people who had been around to help me with some of that. But the first time I heard pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, didn't need no help with that one.
Folk like us don't need a dictionary for pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I lived pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization up close and personal, and I lived it over and over and over again. See, I'm the kind of father and I'm the kind of husband who remembers sitting on my living room couch, wife coming out the bathroom real fast, pulling her pants up, going to the dining room table, picking the purse up off the table, clutching it real close to her as she went back to the bathroom.
And I feel this talk because nobody was in the house but me and her, but it got like that in my heart. I'm the kind of father and I'm the kind of husband who remember coming home and sticking my key in the door. And I open my door and my wife and two-year-old daughter sitting there and they're crying. And I look over here and homeboy sitting in my seat with a gun pointed at my stomach talking about I want my money, right now.
Fellas, let me holler at you for just a minute. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I always had a lot of fears and a lot of doubts about do I have what it takes to be a husband, do I have what it takes to be a father. Because if you're in the life, your track record already gives you the answer, right? Because what's the father's role and what's the husband's role? To protect and to provide.
And it's a cold-blooded feeling, fellas, laying in bed with a woman night after night after night after night, knowing not only aren't you protecting, knowing not only aren't you providing, you're the one bringing the wolf to the door. See my house got broke into several times. A couple other times I had some guys step to my wife. And each time I knew what had happened. I pretended to call 77th Division and I knew.
I was just playing a game with myself, because they had told me, you're going to give us our money or we're going to come up in there and get it. I'm the kind of father and I'm the kind of husband you remember sitting on my back porch. Two-year-old daughter coming outside, pulling in my coat. Daddy, daddy, that's my piggy bank. I remember stopping and giving her a little shitty grin, don't worry, baby, daddy's going to put some dollar bills in here for this change.
And I wasn't raised to be stealing from my daughter. And I wasn't raised to be stealing from my wife. I was a dope fiend with no tools of recovery, and I did what it took to get what I needed to get. First time I hit my wife's purse, if you would have hooked me up to a poly, I would have passed. When I said to you, I'm not stealing this money. I'm just going to take it and I'm going to replace it before she knows it's missing.
And I'm in. Because I don't steal. And I really don't steal. You know how it's strange how the line keeps changing when you're in the light. First I don't steal. Then I don't steal from nobody that I know. Then I don't steal from family. Then I know I don't steal from my daughter. And the first time I went in my wife's purse, man, you couldn't have told me. I'm going to replace this money before she knows it's missing.
And she had some money up in there, and I'm out smoking, and I come in, and I looked at that purse for a minute, and I said, I'm going to take this $40 out, and I'm going to replace it before she knows it's missing. And I took that $40, and I went back out and smoked it up. And I came home looking for some more money, and she had moved the purse. I couldn't believe I had hit the purse like that, so I didn't really look that hard for it.
And I said to myself, I'm going to replace this money before she knows it's missing. They wrote that book of ours, the big book of alcoholics and nonies. And they wrote it in 1939. A couple of gentlemen that got together in 1935. And they did some stuff, and just imagine all of us around and nobody sober, don't know nothing about sober. And these two guys got together, and they stumbled upon something.
And in about four years' time, they measured almost 80 people, but they said 100 to round it up for when they wrote the book. And so it was about 100 people, and they sat up here, and they said, let's talk to some people and let them know what it is that we've done. And they wrote that book. And they published that book in 1939. And in 1939, imagine this. They knew Ralph W. was coming. And they draw some lines in that book that describe, I'm going to replace that money before she knows it's missing.
Two weeks after I said that, and the first time I hit that purse, the same scenario presented itself. Been out working, got some money, gave my old lady some money, I'm out smoking mine up. And I smoke my money up, and I come home again, just like two weeks before. And that idea that I'm going to replace this money before she knows it's missing, the book described me. It talks about, we don't know why, but the alcoholic will be unable to recall with sufficient force.
Pain, suffering, humiliation, weeks, even days ago.
[00:25:02]
That idea about replacing the money, when I came and looked for the purse this time, it got replaced by a new idea. I said, last time I took $40, came back looking for the purse, and she had moved it. This time, I'm going to take all the money out of the purse, and that that I don't spend up, I'm going to sneak it back in the purse. And I didn't deliberate so long before I hit the purse this time. And I was off and running, hitting my wife's purse on a regular basis.
She go to sleep with it up under the pillow. You know, I've been doing this thing for over 21 years, and I still love going to meetings. I love going to meetings for lots of reasons. One of the reasons I love going to meetings is I can talk shorthand at a meeting. I can drop something on people at a meeting, and they'll understand. I'll say something like, you know what it's like when you're out smoking, and you come in, and that feeling is on you?
You know what it's like to lay in bed with that feeling on you, knowing that money is just an arm's length away? Right? Because my wife is sleeping with the purse up under the pillow, and I'm sprung, right? And I'm laying in the bed, and you're laying up in there, and I let her lay up in there, and I let her sleep, that real regular breathing setting, and I let it set in for a while. And I crawl out my side of the bed, and I come on her side of the bed, and I come out real slow, put the purse in front of me.
I creep out the bedroom door. I creep out the front door. I jump in my car. I close out the driveway. I'm gone. It's Wednesday. I come back Monday. Did that one too many Wednesdays, came back one Monday, a notice on the screen door. The rest of your stuff is at your mama's house, suitcase on the porch. I put out my house. I'm now my dad. And over the course of the next year, after I got put out my house and went to stay at my mom's house, my five brothers got put out their respective homes, and all of us ended up at my mother's house, and we damn near killed.
Six of us, smoking. There was days we couldn't come up with $5 between us. And when I first got put out my house and went to stay at my mom's house, my ex-wife thought it was something salvageable about this piece of man that she married. And she used to bring my daughter over on Saturday afternoons so we could keep a father-daughter relationship. And I wanted to be a father to my little girl with everything in me.
I really did. I really, really, really did. I wanted to take my girl to Disneyland and Magic Mountain. I wanted to take her to a movie on a Saturday afternoon. I wanted to walk up the street with her little head in my big hand, take her to the store and buy her ice cream. I wanted to sit her in my lap and read stories to her. I wanted to tuck her in bed at night and get a good night kiss. I wanted to get the look from my little girl that I've seen men in this fellowship get, the look like, this is my daddy and this is my hero.
And the best I could do on those Saturday afternoons was 30 minutes, 30 minutes, tell my mom something like, I'm going to the store to buy Rae some ice cream. I disappeared. It'll be Saturday. I sneaked back on Sunday night when her mom was picking her up, and I could remember some of them long Sunday nights, man, sneaking my head around the side of my mom's house, tears flowing. And I remember, man, seeing them two heads in the car and the headlights backing out the driveway.
And I'd be thinking through the tears, there go my life backing out this driveway. Heard a lot of people share they were scared of dying out there. That's not a part of my story. I was never scared of dying. I was scared I was going to keep waking up to the same old thing, Monday the same as Tuesday, the same as Sunday, the same as Christmas, over and over and over again. And I'm so glad God don't make misery come.
And on October 11, 1986, I got miserable enough, and I got tired enough, and I got directed to my fourth program of recovery. And I went to the Harbor Light Center on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. Two days after I went to the Harbor Light Center, they took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And a gentleman came up into that room that first night that I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And my life changed. When I went up in the Harbor Light Center that October of 1986, I was full of remorse and I was full of regret. And I was full I'd never be able to forgive myself for the things I'd done and what I had become. I only shared with you guys the tip of the iceberg. I didn't share with you when I got put out of my house and went to stay at my mom's house. I started stealing out my mom's purse.
Didn't share with you when I got put out of my house and went to stay at my mom's house. A check came to one of my little brothers in the name of R. W.. All of us are R. W.. Smoked it. Didn't share with you when my grandmother gave me $200 to buy her plane ticket to the family reunion. If it wasn't for my mom, my grandmother never would have saw Atlanta, Georgia. Didn't share with you the first time I tried to get sober.
My ex-wife got me a job at her job. I stole $1,600 from them, ruined her reputation in the industry. Didn't share with you a lot. Suffice it to say I had a lot on my tip when I came. And I was full. I'd never be able to forgive myself for the things I'd done and what I'd become.
[00:30:02]
Took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And a guy was standing up in front of the group. somewhat like I am tonight. And he was sharing about taking from the job, and he was sharing about taking from the family. And I remember looking at him and thinking to myself, yeah, you're sharing about doing scandalous shit, but you look scandalous. You should have been doing that shit. I'm different. You all ain't going to hear my business. And the speaker seemed like he was reading my mail and knew I was in the room. He dropped something on me like this.
He said, if you're sitting in this room right now, you are not responsible for your disease, but you are responsible for your recovery. And you have just now tapped into a source of power much greater than yourself. And you don't have to drink, and you don't have to use, no matter what, provided you are willing to fulfill some conditions. And he caught my attention. And that speaker that night went on to say, this is the only club you can be a member of, where the worse off you are when you get here, the better off your chances of staying. And I got the message of hope at that first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I went to. He described to me what I suffered from, did it in a strange way. A lot of people have been talking at me, and a lot of people have been talking about me, and they have been telling me about myself for a long time. Couldn't hear. This cat was talking to me, talking about himself, and never seen anything like it in my life. Don't know about anybody else in here, but I learned some stuff about me this last time.
I had done the program four previous times before I came here to stay. And this last time, some different stuff was going on with a guy named Ralph. Those other times, I was serious each time I came into the program of recovery. I was serious about staying sober. I was serious about staying sober. I was serious. I was so serious, I'd sit at a meeting, and when you guys would laugh at the speaker, I'd look at you like, ain't nothing funny. What's up with that, you know? And I thought that if I present serious, that meant I was serious, you know. And I kept getting loaded, kept getting loaded, kept getting loaded. And this last time when I got back, I brought something different to the table. This last time when I came back, I was no longer just serious. I was committed. Committed is what I do. Serious is how I feel. I felt I was committed to do whatever it took to stay sober one day at a time. And that came from my own experience, man. I don't know about nobody else up in here. If tonight's speaker, if you're looking for the speaker tonight that's going to scare you in the recovery, you need to get another speaker. That's not my story. That's not what it is, and that's not my message, you know. I told you guys when I thought I was in my heyday, I used to do some everything. And the way they used to look at me at the early stages, man, sometimes people used to look at me the way I was doing it and be like, god damn, Ralph, ain't you scared of overdosing? I'd be like, scared of overdose? I'm scared of the deadly underdose. You better put some more shit up on this pipe. So the message of fear is not the message that holds an addict like me. The message that the book talks about is a message that's got to have depth and it's got to have weight. And the message tonight's speaker brings to you that's got the most depth and the most weight is you looking at a guy who at 33 years old and giving up on life. You looking at a guy who at 33 years old and not answering anybody's 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock wake-up call to go to work in so long, I no longer thought I was employable. You looking at a guy who at 33 years old didn't know where his family was living and didn't know what school this little girl was enrolled in. You looking at a guy, man, who graduated from a major university in this country and my job at the end of my getting loaded was taking the trash out for a 21-year-old dope man hoping he'd give me a hit. You know, I was sleeping in the back of my mother's garage and I was eating lemons off a neighbor's lemon tree for breakfast and I descended into a real dark place.
I come from one of them real dark places. I had a lot of things that I'd achieved, a lot of things that I'd accomplished, some things. And if you smoked dope like I smoked dope, that just means you have a lot to lose and I lost it all. And guys like me don't get second chances. You know, when me and my brothers, there's four of us in this program and from the neighborhood I come from, I could remember a time when everybody knew the W. boys in my neighborhood. We were the first boys off our, we were the first guys off our block to go to college. You know, my mother was proud of us and it seemed like not too many years later, everybody on my block knew us again. This neighborhood wife was like, get their asses up out of here, you know, and that's what it descended to.
I come from that place. I come from walking the streets at three or four o'clock in the morning with nowhere to go. I come from that place. I'm that kind of smoker. I come from rooms like this with people like you, but the rooms I was in didn't have no electricity. The rooms I was in had some room temperature water in the refrigerator. The rooms I was in, they didn't say keep coming back when you run out of money. It's like, get your goat smelling ass up out of here. The rooms I was in, man, every now and then I'd hit a lick and at the end of the night when it's all gone, man, I just don't give up. I try to think something up in your head. I know you know something about me.
I know it's something we could do. Be a girl that I always kept with me, right? And she dropped something on me at about 2.30 or 3 in the morning. Ralph, come sit at the bus stop with me. I'm going to try to turn one. And every now and then she'd get lucky and I could remember her parting words to me as she looked back when she was getting in that car. Wait here for me, man. I'm going to bring you something back. And I knew it was drag, but I waited another 45 minutes anyway, right? Because I knew what was waiting on me when I went in. A visit from the enemy.
Your conscience. Come visiting late at night when all the dope and all the money's gone. Sleeping on your mother's living room floor. What happened to you? You used to want to be somebody.
[00:35:04]
What happened to you? You used to get up and go to work in the morning. What happened to you? You used to want to be a father. What happened to you? And I didn't know until I made it to these rooms that you guys got business from that same enemy. And I stumbled into these rooms, man, in a real broken condition. I came up in here in a real bad way. Book talks about being badly mangled, you know, and I came in here in that condition. And they'd be in 71 years sober and you look at guys walk up in here, trust me, new friends. When you look at, yeah, man, it might be easy for you. You coming up in here, you've been doing this thing.
Check this out. I didn't come up in here walking toward the light. I came up in here running from the fire. And if your ass is on fire, this is a good place to be. This is a good place to start. And that's how I came up in here. And I learned some stuff about myself. I learned some anatomical stuff about a guy named Ralph. When my ass is raw, my mouth closes and my ears open. When my ass starts healing, all of a sudden my mouth starts running and my ears start closing. And my ass was tenderized enough this fourth time I came back that my mouth stayed closed long enough for something to come in. Something to come in. What seemed like a slender reed and what ended up coming in was the grace of God. And I didn't know it at the time, man. That word was not in my vocabulary when I came up in here. And I got a whole lot more than I bargained for. You looking at the happiest and you looking at the most blessed man in the fellowship of Cocaine Anonymous. And you couldn't tell me that when I came up in here. I came up in here, man, in a real, real, real, real, real, real, real bad way. And they used to say stuff to us that I didn't believe when I came. They used to say, let us love you till you can love yourself. Didn't believe that one. No way. How you gonna tell me you'll love me? I stink. If you turn your back on me, I'm not able to go up in your purse right now. How you gonna tell me you'll love something like me? And that was before I knew what happens in the rooms of Cocaine Anonymous. That was before I knew what happens when the God in you reaches out to the God in me. That was before I knew that in Cocaine Anonymous we specialize in loving unlovable people. And you loved me and you nursed me back to health. You gave me a way out.
You described to me what I suffered from. There's something physically different about me. It seemed like you invited me to diagnose myself. And if you come up in here with that ass raw condition that I came up in here, I started taking everything personal, but in a good way. It seemed like the speaker was talking directly to me. Ralph, don't take my word for it. You know, there's something physically different about me. Don't take my word for it. Ask yourself, how many times did you say, I'm just gonna spend 20? What happened? Whole paycheck. How many times did you say, I'm gonna stop over here at my boy Tom's house for a minute. What happened? Whole paycheck. How many times did you say, oh man, I'm gonna just stay for happy hour. What happened? Ralph, did it happen once?
Did it happen twice? If your name is Ralph, every two weeks from 1979 to 1985, whole paycheck. My experience, not Bill Wilson, not Dr. Bob, not Robbins, not Jim's, nothing. My experience abundantly shows me when I take one anything, no matter where I have to go, what I have to do, who I have to see, no matter how great the wish or the necessity, my body takes over and I have to have another. Old timers in AA say, Ralph, it ain't the caboose that gets you, it's the engine.
It's the first. It's the first. And smokers identify with the phenomena of craving better than anybody else. I ain't never took a hit and deliberated over, oh, shall I have another? You better pass me the goddamn pot. You better pass me that goddamn pot. You know. And I got a friend that say, when I get up in one of them places, talk about the phenomena of craving. And the book talks about situations that arise out of phenomena of craving. You know, phenomena of craving, that's what this is talking about. And it's in my experience. It shows up in my life, shows up in my life. When I take one, I get stuck. When I go up in the spot, my friend says the invisible seatbelt comes out. I'm there. I ain't moving. Okay, Ralph, smart guy. If it's only my body, how do you explain stone sober? My car seemed to drive to the dope house on payday.
Second part of this disease, the mental obsession, the obsession that somehow someday I'll be able to control and enjoy this magic potion I discovered all of me. Where the hell is that coming from? Control and enjoy. Check this out. Anytime I was controlling, I wasn't enjoying it. Anytime I was enjoying, I damn sure wasn't controlling. Why am I stuck on that idea? I'm stuck in some idea that we could piece up, you know, give my man the money and he going to come back with the shit.
I can't get loaded because of my body. I can't stop because my mind refuses to accept that fact I'm powerless. Third part of this disease, spiritual malady. And in the big book, I'll follow synonymous. It says, Ralph, if you work on the spiritual, the mental and the physical are straightened out. That's what we do in the room. And don't get scared. Don't get scared. Don't get scared. That's what
[00:40:01]
we do in these rooms. If you're sitting in there right now and you think this program is just about not drinking and just about not using, you're shortchanging the program and you're shortchanging yourself. I'm not knocking physical sobriety. Don't don't get me wrong. If you just don't drink and you just don't use, you might stop going to jail on the weekend. If you just don't drink and you just don't use, you might make it home with your whole paycheck. If you just don't drink and you just don't use, you might make it to work on Monday morning. What this program has to offer is a whole lot more than that. What this program is really about is about obtaining and maintaining access to a source of power that does for me what I can't do for myself. What this program is really about is about obtaining and maintaining access to a source of power that can do anything but faith.
This program is really about, you know, you go to a lot of meetings, you hear a lot of people share and they talk about it and sometimes they make it feel dry and sometimes they make it feel scary and sometimes they make you feel overwhelmed and sometimes they make you feel intimidated. Folks talk about the process and they talk about the work and they talk about what the hell is that way I live. See the program of Cocaine Anonymous, it ain't just steps on a wall. The program of Cocaine Anonymous, it walks, it talks and it shakes hands and it's got a face on it. It's got a face on it.
You want to see the program of Cocaine Anonymous? You want to see what this program is really about? Take a look around this room right now. What the program of Cocaine Anonymous is really about is about taking people like us, drunks and boozers and dope fiends and child abusers and wife abusers and strawberries and tricks and failures as parents and failures as kids, broken down pieces of men and women who don't have dreams and goals and hopes anymore. This program takes people like us and it sticks us together in one room and I stick one hand in your hand, another hand in God's hand and guess what?
We pick up our beds and we walk out of these rooms as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, employees, employers, role models in our community. This program is about growth. This program is about change. If there's going to be any changes made in my life, it begins and it ends with me. I'm not tonight's speaker because Justin and Tom called me and oh man I got to go out there and do this.
You know I remember man when I came started coming to meetings and I asked this dude in my program how long do I have to go to these goddamn meetings? He said you have to go to meetings till you want to go to meetings and I ain't had to go to meetings in 21 years. They're the highlight of my life. They're the high point of my day. You just entered into something that you don't even know you're a part of. Anywhere, anytime, any place I go, you get to be part of this. You never walk alone again.
You never walk alone again. I came up in here and I thought I was a grown man playing a bit and you know and I didn't know nothing about it. I was a little boy playing a bit. Men in this fellowship they've grown me up. They've nurtured me. They've given me something. They've given me something I wasn't expecting when I came up in here. I just wanted to learn how not to spend a whole paycheck every two weeks and I got so much more than that. I started out taking baby steps. My sponsor called them self-esteem building paths and they were easy achievable steps that I set for myself. I started out in the recovery program. It was my fourth one. I had left the others early. I said I don't care what happens. I'm staying in this recovery program the duration. I'm staying at least 90 days. I stayed 120 days. I said I don't care if I get extra duty. I don't care what happens. Every other program I went in, I was interested in getting passes and going out on the weekend. I'm staying here and I did that.
I said every meeting in the house, I'm going to every meeting in the house and when they don't have meetings in the house, I'm going to outside meetings and then I went to every meeting in the house at the Harbor Light and on the days we didn't have meetings, at 12 noon, I went to the old Prince Arlano Club and at night, I went to the 9604 South Figaro Arlano Club and I was introduced to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cocaine Anonymous was in its infancy when I came and when I had about six months sober, I got a whole group of Cocaine Anonymous, the fellowship that I crammed. Fellowship I crammed. And at six months sober, I found the secret. Found the secret if you want to be up in here.
You know, we got a truth. There's a symbol in recovery. Circle, triangle inside and that triangle of unity, recovery, and service. I ain't going to give you no long perimeter on recovery in the next couple of minutes, man. I'm going to invite you to taste this thing for yourself. I'm going to invite you to get on this journey for yourself. I'm going to invite you coming from this guy right here. Check this out. I'm not a guy to do something because it ain't but I do it because it's fun. I do it because it's free. I do it because it's better than nothing. I ain't never been the way I am right now and I want to invite I am so grateful for my life, just like it is right now.
Just like it is right now. I'm one of the ones, man, that come up in here, if you're sitting in here a new friend, wondering, God damn, when is it going to be my turn? Some of you in here have been in here, been in a program several times. Some of you are wondering like I was wondering.
[00:45:01]
I bullshitted myself so long, I don't even know when I'm bullshitting myself. about that. Don't worry about that. You know, it ain't important how I feel. What's important is what I do. And I got out of that. Because I've never been a guy that's been interested in what I'm becoming. I've always been a guy who's been interested in what I could convince you of. I ain't never been interested in telling the truth. I've been interested in convincing you that I was. I ain't never been interested in being honest with myself. I've been interested in convincing you of who I am. And for the first time in my life, under the lash of cocaine, I came up in here sweet and reasonable, man. And I started taking Vegas Steps. You know, and I got into the fellowship first. I got into the fellowship first. And I started going to meetings. And I started going to sober dances. And I started going to conventions.
And I started doing that other secret to this feeling. Getting on campus. Man, 90 days, they said, people started going out and sharing. I don't have nothing to share. I share what I did to get to 90 days. You know, and I started shooting. And in the end, days started turning into weeks. And the weeks started turning into months. And the months started turning into years. And one day, I found myself walking down the aisle with another woman. And she found me worthy to share life with her. And I've been married for the last 14 years on this program. One day, I found myself in the hospital with a little girl being born. And I got a 12-year-old girl at home that's never seen her daddy loaded. And one day at a time, she never will. That two-year-old daughter whose piggy bank I was going to Thanksgiving, we were up in San Francisco with my ex-wife.
A two-year-old daughter of mine is a first-year law student at the University of San Francisco. And the miracle of it isn't just she's a first-year law student at the University of San Francisco. The miracle of it is that for the last 21 Christmases and the last 21 birthdays and the last 21 every days in between, daddy's been with me. That's cocaine and wine. And what I like the most about that power that's given me the power to do that, he ain't telling me don't discriminate. He's still in the business of putting babies back with their moms. He's still in the business of putting fathers back in the house. He's still in the business of putting families back together. He's still in the business of putting men and women back to work. He's still in the business. I guarantee you. You take one step, Fellowship of Cocaine Anonymous will take two with you. God will take however many it takes. You can just enter the family that you don't even know. First name, whatever your first name is, last name, Adam. Anywhere in the world you go, you'll never walk alone again. I am so grateful. I always wanted to be important and to do something significant.
And I can think of nothing more significant. I can think of nothing more important than being a participating member of a life-saving, life-changing experience that is Cocaine Anonymous. You'll never hear me say, I don't know why I'm sober. I know exactly why I'm sober. I get a blessing so that I can be a blessing. Recovery for me is a gift from God. What I do with my recovery, that's my gift to God. My name is Ralph W. and I am an Anonymous.