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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 860 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: steve-s-service-work-recovery-in-the-rockies-1994.mp3 Duration: 00:30:03
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Oh, I have great turnout. You know, when they asked me about a month ago, when I said I was coming, they asked me if I'd do a workshop, and I was actually asked first on hospitals and institutions, because that is actually where I've put a lot of my service work. I really feel it's best to give back where you came through and got it. And, you know, part of my service work has, it's always been a great part of me. And, you know, I'll share a little bit where I grew up in an alcoholic family. My father was an alcoholic, and I swore I'd never be like my father. My father also was a doctor and a professor of 16 years of college. My mom was a professor. And it was instilled upon us as young kids that schooling and education was where it was at. You know, you wouldn't make it in life unless you had that. But yet, the mixed feelings or signals I got at home when my father would come home drunk and kind of, I won't say really beat up on my mother, but, you know, push her around when she'd try to take the beer away from him and stuff. And, you know, I identified with my father. At five years old, I used to go to the bar with him, and he'd set me up on the counter, and I'd get to drink seven up, and I'd watch him shoot pool until, you know, all hours of the night or whatever. And I can remember at eight years old, my mother sending me with the wagon down to the bar to bring my dad home, and I, you know, I tried to drag him a couple blocks in the wagon to bring him home. And I thought that was neat. You know, what it gave me was an attention. You know, it made people look at me, and I was always the professor's kid. I wasn't Steve. I wasn't anything else. I was the professor's kid. And it made me feel important. It made me feel part of, you know.
My father quit drinking in 1972, and I went to meetings with my father. You know, and I was either his son, I was his driver, I was anything but an alcoholic. There's just no way. And, you know, all this time, my mother kept saying that I was just like my father in every way, and I would argue with her. You know, and that went on right on through high school. My father quit drinking in 72, and he died of manic depression in 1985. And, you know, the first couple years, he went to some meetings, and later on, probably in about 78 or so, we went to a couple after I was out of high school and that. But he really never grasped the program. He was so educated that nobody could speak above his level, and he just couldn't listen. You know, I got introduced into C.A. at Lucas County Jail. I'll never forget it. I'd been arrested for 38 counts of aggravated trafficking, but I didn't have a cocaine problem. You know, and previous to this, my wife had thrown me out of the house, and when I got arrested, you had to get points to get verified if you could leave on, you know, an O.R. or get a sheriff's release or you were staying if you didn't have a place to go. And I didn't want to stay. And I knew I couldn't have him call my wife because I knew she'd tell him that I wasn't living there. So I figured I'd have him call Mom. Mom would, you know, tell him that, yeah, I lived with her. And at this time, you know, that's a little over five years ago, she had almost 30 years in an alien on. And when the counselor talked to her on the phone, she said, keep him, he's got a drug problem. You know, and it pissed me off. And they put me on the fourth floor in a clean, sober living module, suite 12, I like to refer to it as, you know, in my little cubicle. But when I got introduced into that, I went to a first meeting, and it really wasn't a C.A. meeting per se. It was something run by them, you know. But it was the first place that they, you know, it took them like three days to break me down to admit that I had a cocaine problem. I didn't want to say I was an addict, but I could say that I had a cocaine problem. And I also, once a week, a guy came in, his name was Pook, and it was a black guy. And, you know, he'd come in dressed in really, you know, matching shoes, scarf, hat, I mean, everything. He had ten gold chains on, five rings on each hand. And he comes in to represent C.A. for H&I, and it, you know, explained that he had been sober at that time probably, that was a little over nine years, and what the program had done for him. And we used to go back to the dorm and laugh, and I know we took bets on, you know, how much he was selling, and, you know, what he was doing and focusing on. What he had, the exterior, is what told me what type of person he was, because that's all I knew.
You know, and I couldn't listen to the feelings that he was sharing. You know, I remember telling him, though, that, because, you know, being a class clown and an idiot, you know, I disrupted the meeting a couple times, and he asked me if I was really serious about staying sober, and I didn't have a good answer to say yes or no. But I was so arrogant that I told him, I said, I'm going to be doing this someday, you know, I'm going to take over for you. And he laughed. He thought that was real good, you know, and he says, I'll
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wait for you. And, you know, I couldn't surrender yet. I got out on an O.R., and I used again and again and again, and I went to court, and I went through sentencing. You know, and most people would be real grateful, because my sentence was three to fifteen. They were suspended, and they gave me thirty days' work release. You know, and I thought, well, I was still pissed. You know, I went to meetings, but I had no idea on how to conceive something in my life that was trying to help me. And this judge actually was trying to help me.
And on the twenty-seventh day of work release, because I could not deal, and we had people come up to the, you know, in the work release to do a meeting, and I remember that it was a female, and I couldn't listen. You know, I blamed it on everybody else that they were disruptive of the meeting, and that's why I couldn't share, because they just wanted to get out, and they weren't there for the right thing. You know, but these people kept coming back, and no matter how rude the people were in the room, they kept coming back, and I admired that. But on my twenty-seventh day, I didn't admire it enough, and I went AWOL, and I went out and I used that night. And I came back in the morning with my tail between my legs, and I tried to use some of them numbers, but it was too late, you know, and when I went in, they said, come on in, there's no problem, you're okay, and I came in, they locked me up again and put me back in the county jail instead of work release, and then they proceeded to send me to prison. They reinstated my full time, you know, and I guess this is where service work kind of hurt, because where I was at in the prison, it was too new, and nobody really came in from CA. We had a guy by the name of Reverend Brother Bob or something, and he was a great guy. He had some real spirituality, but I remember him sticking his hand on my head, and he had me recite something, you know, he's cast out the demons of drug addiction you'll never use again, and I fell into that, and I thought, wow, great, and I found out that didn't work, and I got out of prison, and I was real happy to get out, and I didn't use for almost six months, or just a little over six months because of the fear of going back to prison, you know, and I went to meetings, and I listened to people, and, you know, I picked out some people that were, I considered to be winners, and they looked clean. They looked like they were doing things in their lives, but my ego and my pride kept me from revealing how much I hurt, and every time my hand went up, it was either my wife or my job. If those two things would leave me alone, I'd be okay, and you know, a couple guys got me active right away and told me, they made me coffee personnel at this meeting, the first CA meeting I went to, and it worked out real neat because my mom lived two blocks away, and that's the only reason I went to that CA meeting first because it was so close to home. It was at a church that I knew, and I could identify, and, you know, I walked there because I didn't have a driver's license when I got out, and when they made me coffee guy after the first week, they picked me out, and you know, well, you're going to make coffee, and you've got to be here an hour and a half early, and I said, well, this is neat. I can come here, start the coffee. I can go over and try to work a relationship with my mother. You know, when I was in prison, my wife refused to talk to me. You know, my mom was about the only one of my sisters, and I used to get real mad when nobody would write to me, and no one would accept my collect calls, and I didn't have a program to take with me to prison because I wouldn't listen. I was unwilling to listen to people that were coming in and volunteering their time, but you know, being a coffee person was my first service position, you know, and I took it as an honor. You know, people laugh, but I'm telling you, I was proud as could be to be the coffee guy, and when I went back out, I was real pissed because they took that job away from me. They told me I had to prove to them that I was worthy to become coffee guy, and I went, damn, you know, I was upset that they took away my position of coffee, and the next guy that got the position was never there. The coffee wasn't done, and I copped a real attitude, but this time around, I started to, I really surrendered. I really believed that I had to find the winners, you know, and I latched onto this person, Jim Jay, and you know, he got me active. He got me to another group that needed more active members. This group already had plenty of members that were active, and their people that made the coffee was the ones that chaired the meeting, so I didn't get coffee job. They said they were going to make me an alternate group service rep, and I would have to go to this, you know, service meeting, you know.
My job was only to take notes if our GSR didn't show up, and I went there for the first month, and I had no idea what the hell, I mean, the motions and everything. I really had no idea what was going on. I was totally lost, but I latched onto another person that seemed
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to have all kinds of knowledge of it, and he's one of our old-timers in CA that helped write the bylaws for Toledo, Carl W., and I kind of listened to him, and he seemed to know what was going on, so I tried to follow him around, and I asked him to be my sponsor, and you know, the neatness was is that he did have a lot of knowledge of service, and it was really a strong beginning for me to listen to someone give me some structure, and I've been to business meetings all over, and I tell you, we lack structure sometimes, and they tell us that we don't need it, but when you're trying to do things sometimes, it's real aggravating, and I found that out. Well, you know, my second month coming there as an alternate group service rep, the group rep came, and he resigned, and so they automatically moved me up, and I'm like, oh, shit, you know, now what do I do? You know, all I had to do before the first month was just be there, and all of a sudden, I had to write down the notes, and I got a voting say, and they told me, you know, I'm the vote of the conscious, but you know, hell, I had no idea what our conscience really was. You know, sometimes I believe we do things backwards. We ask the questions, and I vote on it, and then I go back to the group and let them know what I did, you know, but it was the beginning, and I did that, and I joined HNI. I really wanted to give back on the hospitals and institution committee, and I got to go up to, I had to have six months over first, and I got to go up to the Lucas County Jail, and I went up with the guy, and I went up every week with them helping him, and it was a different guy than the one that Pook, Pook had already moved down while I was in prison, and another guy, Gus A., had taken it over, and I remember when I was asked to go up there because, you know, one of the things with the jail system is that most people that haven't been through it really don't want to go get locked in to share a message, and, you know, I'm a firm believer that I relate best to people who've been to where I've been, you know, and I wanted to give back to the people that came into me by trying to carry that message, and so, you know, I went, but I remember the first time I was going, I told another guy at my own group that I was going, and he told me at six months I didn't have shit to share, and that I shouldn't be going, you know, and I'm glad that I didn't listen to him, because if anything else, I showed those guys that I was there, and that I had six months sober, you know, and that was a beginning for me.
It really made me feel proud, because when I was in prison, I thought I just destroyed my whole image of who I thought I was, and in a sense, I broke it down and rebuilt it today, but, you know, after like six months, that guy wanted out, and I've been running that meeting for the last three and a half years, and I get the biggest joy out of walking into there, you know, and the guys, when I come up, I get the respect, they shut up, they set the chairs up, everything's ready to go, and, I mean, if I'm a minute late, they're wondering where I'm at, you know, they like it when I get there early and I stay late with them.
It's a new type of style, it's a dormitory style, I have like 48 guys, you know, and most of them are there from six months to a year now, and I really get attached to some of these guys, I really do, and, you know, I also, in the service work after being a GSR, I became vice chair of H&I, became chair of H&I, you know, I became vice chair of special events, chair of special events, you know, and it's not, not to say that I really wanted all these positions, it's just, there's a lack of people that have the willingness to dedicate time, you know, and one of the statements that was told to me right at the beginning is that if I put as much effort into staying sober as I did getting high, that I'd have almost a 100% chance of staying sober, and I believe that the service work has put me in touch with so many people that have so many ideas that gave me a whole different outlook upon service work, upon sobriety, you know, how each person gets it is different, but our goal is the same, it's to stay sober one day at a time, you know, and I remember that I wanted to be a DSR, and a DSR had to have two years sober, and I was going through the, you know, I like to read things to find out, you know, where other people do it, and I was looking through the World Conference guidelines and stuff, and they had alternate DSRs, and we didn't have that in Toledo, so I decided to, you know, make some amendments and try to add new articles to our bylaws, and, you know, I got a bit of static from some of the people that were there way ahead of me, you know, and the boat was narrow, but we got it in, and then I became an alternate DSR.
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And I was an alternate DSR for one month before the other DSR quit, and I became a DSR automatically. You know, and it's so funny because it seems like when we fight so hard, and then the people just drop out afterwards, you know, the ones that are so argumentative to something, you know, and basically, to me, it's just a change, and I learned early that I need to be willing to listen to the person coming in behind me because I swore I didn't want to be like some of the people ahead of me where it was their ideas and their way or no way. You know, I ran into quite a bit of that, you know, and I know when I gave up special events last year, I gave it up to a guy, and I fought for him. He's not really an educated person, and he's not real good at follow-through things, but he wanted to be, you know, he wanted to get into it, and because of his laxness and some of his paperwork, they disbanded the Toledo District, voted to disband the checkbook and stuff and bring it back to the district so that they would have control over what this guy did, and of course, he quit as soon as they took everything away from him, you know, and I barely see him at CA meetings anymore, see him at other meetings, but, you know, I thought that was wrong because I believe in our traditions we need to let each person grow at their pace and each person be an individual and try to help them instead of take away from them. You know, it really hardened me towards a couple of people in the program. You know, I had to pray on it. I believe that service work has given me the option to learn how people do things in different areas, especially when I go out of state.
I always end up sitting in on one of their committee meetings after the convention or before the convention or something, and, you know, I see that we're not unique. That just happens everywhere I go is the money matters. When it comes to money, me and addicts just can't agree, you know. We want it and we don't want to spend it, but we want the results of spending it. You know, we fought for billboards. You know, we finally got billboards in Toledo, but nobody wants to spend the money to put them up because we can't guarantee how long they're going to stay up, you know. Thirty days isn't enough. They want someone to give us 90 days so it's more worth our money, but those, you know, billboards are doing us no good sitting in a basement at someone's house, you know. I have to believe that I have faith in my higher power today that, you know, he'll direct and he'll do what's best for us as a fellowship as a whole and me as an individual. You know, it's, I don't know, it's been a great thing for me in growth, you know, coming out here and being asked to speak. You know, I gave my first lead at a convention that was taped and it was called Campvention. It was outside around a campfire and we had all candles lit. You know, I'm a pretty good speaker and I don't really, I don't know if it's show fear or what, but, you know, I share from the heart so it just flows and I got up there and I got the old microphone taped to the shirt, you know, and the flames are flying, it's dark and, you know, I can't see hardly anybody but these candles and I got this real weird feeling and I stumbled through the first about 15 minutes of figuring out what I was doing.
But, you know, when I walked away and I had the opportunity to take two brand new sponsees that are brand new in the program to their first convention and actually one has three months than the other one and they're just, they fight over me. You know, who's going to get my attention and who's better and who do I call back quicker and, I mean, they fought the whole way up, you know, and I am vice chair at the area in the state of Ohio and I've also been instrumental, we rewrote our area bylaws and that was a real chore. We took it basically out of world service and just adjusted some of our committees and things and but it was changed and it took us six months to finally ratify things after making 50 copies of 20 pages and bringing it back and then someone else would pick apart one thing and we'd have to bring it back again the next meeting, you know, and finally we got that hammered in and one of the things that the area of Ohio has always done is, you know, we, the vice chair does not rotate into the chair position and we were argumentative to, you know, you work with somebody and then as soon as he gets the idea of the job then he doesn't move up and the next guy comes in and it seems like we were always so much more disorganized and we wanted to move it in and I didn't, I guess I realized if I didn't, you know, so once we got it voted in that meant that I automatically rotate into the chair so I got another two years in the area and I really wanted to, I wanted to be a delegate is what I wanted and I've just come to grasp that I'll serve two years as the chair and
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then I'll worry about it from there. I want to, I'd like to go out to California on the basis of being able to be involved instead of just out there and I was out there a couple years ago and it was wild. It's different, you know, the growth and the part and each time that you, I guess, I won't say step up the ladder but the next position you're always finding more people with more sobriety and newer ideas on how they interact with people.
I believe that service work is just like my sobriety, 90% of it is my attitude. If I take a bad attitude towards somebody for what they say then I'm letting them control my emotions and feelings and I found that in service work that when people, I won't say attack but accuse, you know, they're not actually going after me, they're going after either the actions or what the group has done and at the beginning I had a hard time separating personal attacks from what was legitimate questionings on budgets or why we spent the money and stuff, you know, as committees we're allowed to make decisions but then we come and they don't like the decisions we made and I would take that real personal and, you know, I've gone as far as to quit CA if there is such a thing. I quit CA for like 8 days and went to only 8 meetings and I was lost. I just, I felt out of place. Even though I knew lots of people at those meetings I just, I did not feel right. You know, CA is my home, it's where I identify with people and it's just a unique feeling I can't really explain. I'm sure other people have felt the same thing, you know, and it was just I was, I think I was growing and I was resisting the growth and when I resisted the growth I rebelled and when I rebelled I closed down and I became unwilling to listen to new ideas and all those things that I said I wouldn't be just like back in the 70s when I said I'd never be like my father, you know, and that has helped me to identify with feelings when I think back to those times when I denied, you know, that I was an alcoholic, that I had a drug problem and I argued with my mother for years that there was no way because, you know, I never came home and beat my wife.
I never did some of the things my father did but of course someone pointed out it's hard to, you know, come, if you don't come home it's hard to do those things and that was my M.O. is I just didn't come home for 4 or 5 days at a time and the emotional turmoil that I caused in the life at home, you know, my wife is involved in Kolanon and service work and it's really neat, it's taken our relationship to another level of talking about, you know, some of the things that are going on and I'm able to share with her some of the things I've learned to help her because, you know, this is, they just celebrate one year of the Kolanon going on in Toledo, you know, and it's helped her to be able to listen in on some things and these are rewards that I never thought possible and without the service work I would have never had. I believe they've opened up communications with so many people that I would not have had the courage to go up and talk to because they have too much time but because of service work I'm kind of thrown into the mix of them and I get to meet them and, you know, I used to envy people like Jim J that would come back and he knew all these speakers from out of town and, you know, yeah, I know him and, you know, the speaker would come to town and say, well, I had breakfast with, you know, and I used to envy that, you know, I used to say that I wish that I could go out and do these things and I've had that chance. I've got to eat breakfast and lunch with trustees and I get to know people only by being involved and, you know, the convention is one thing but, you know, when it comes to service work there's a common bond, you know, and someone was sharing yesterday in Utah I was about the only one that I hear say slaves instead of servants and someone was complaining that I'm not a slave to anybody and, you know, I have to take a look at me and just see where I'm at and if I am in a bad space maybe that would bother me but I kind of chuckle at it today because, you know, so I'm okay with it, you know, if you would have told me I would have been a slave to cocaine I would have called you a liar, you know, and I was I became a slave to it I had to have it and I don't believe that I have to have service work but I feel a much better person when I contribute instead of sit back and point and complain about why this isn't being run right, you know, or how come this isn't going on, you know, they told me early on if I didn't like something I need to become involved and help change it, you know, and I have, you know, instead of complaining about something I've been able to get involved and change it, you
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know, and it's not always been easy because it's been a struggle at times, you know, the personalities that I've dealt with and, you know, my one sponsor that was so active in service work and, you know, at a GSR meeting, you know, he was going off and he was saying something about, you know, you need to call your sponsor and he was my sponsor but I hadn't told him that I was firing him and he made me get up and I said, well, you're not my sponsor anymore, I fire you, you know, and he was mad that I did it that way but, you know, I kind of got forced into it but now today, you know, he's thanked me because it made him look at some of the things he was doing and I guess I was the first one to ever fire him, you know, and I've been fired myself as a sponsor and told I'm too tough, I demand too much or tell you you need to do this or that and I got a brand new sponsor, again, at 35 days sober and he wanted to come out here, he wanted to come out here real bad and he had, I talked to his, he's on probation, I talked to his PO and, you know, his life exactly the same as mine, you know, he got shocked out of prison and screwed up and he's back in, you know, back in now again and went through the same treatment facility I went through and everything, the same prison, everything, you know, our lives are mirrored images and he had asked actually a friend of mine that I was sponsoring a while ago to be a sponsor and then after hearing me, he said he had to change and he had this hard time with, you know, letting go of his other sponsor and wanting to be with me and he wanted to come out here so bad and I called up his probation officer and she wasn't in so I asked if I could talk to her supervisor and, lo and behold, this woman's supervisor was my PO of years ago when I got out of prison and I explained to her and she, instead of fighting with me, thought it would be a good idea but I needed to talk to his PO. Well, then I, the next day I talked to his lawyer to see if it would be okay that he could go and his lawyer said no way, they wouldn't allow him to go and so I, you know, he had an adjustment to it that he couldn't go and he's called me each night here at the hotel, you know, we set up a time where he could get a hold of me and last night he called me in a crazy mixed up state, he went to court Thursday and they gave him electronic surveillance and his lawyer told him that there's nothing, nothing big about electronic surveillance.
This guy is, you know, has no job and he's used to going wherever he wants all day long, he's taken flying lessons, you know, he's got no financial records of the past, he's got a large trust fund so he's doing all the things he wanted to do when he was getting high and instead he's trying to do them all at once now and evidently I told him that God must saw fit to slow him down because electronic surveillance lets him go to, and I told him he's lucky, they're letting him go to two meetings a day, it's 15 minutes to go, 15 minutes to get back but that's it, he's got to be at home under house arrest that whole other time for six months and he's like, damn it, I'm doing so good and why do they do this to me and, you know, I told him they didn't do nothing, I said this is the consequences of what's up but, you know, I was just glad that I was in the room last night when he called because I'll tell you, he was angry and he didn't believe that he was angry, you know, and he was justifying all of his anger to the court system or towards his lawyer because his lawyer told him it was no big thing, I said your lawyer's probably never been on electronic surveillance so he didn't know, you know, I had no idea how strict it was either until one of my other sponsors had to, you know, and I told him the aspects of going back to prison, I think I'd rather be under house arrest at home with cable vision than in prison, you know, locked up and you can't do anything and I said, you know, you've got the telephone, you've got people that'll come over and talk with you, I gave him a couple phone numbers of friends of mine in Toledo that have been through the same thing so maybe he could identify, you know, he said he can't wait till I get home, you know, he misses me already, you know, and I've actually never had a sponsor tell me that he missed me when I was gone away or something, you know, but service work to me has just been the enduring part of growth and sobriety and I believe that I'm a much better person today because of it because it's taught me to share, it's taught me to be more open, to be a little more tolerant, you know, it's really easy to come into a meeting of a regular meeting for an hour and listen to somebody if you disagree with them, you get up and walk out or you just sit in the back row and you don't say much, you know, but in a service meeting that's almost impossible just to sit back and not be involved and that's where the service work has gotten me so involved that it's made me a much better person today and I guess I'll open the floor to anybody that would like to come up here or stand up down there or stay sitting that would like to share in service work. We have about 15-20 minutes.