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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 829 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-p-experience-strength-and-hope-in-cocaine-anonymous-recovery-ca-2007-archive-829.mp3 Duration: 00:46:56
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Alright, this is a speaker meeting. We ask you, we ask that you relate to the feelings being shared so you can better identify with our stories. Let's give a big welcome to our guest speaker tonight. Our speaker is Tom P. from Dana Point. Thank you. My name's Tom. I'm a real addict. I'm putting my watch on the thing so the newcomer has hope that I'll stop. I'm grateful to be here. I'm very grateful to be sober. I'm grateful to be in a meeting. I want to congratulate all these guys, all the folks that took chips the nine months, six months. Can you hear me? Can you hear me in the back? I really want to welcome the newcomers, all the people there. I counted something like 21 or 22.
Welcome to Cocaine Anonymous. Welcome to the emergency room. I love Cocaine Anonymous. I get very passionate. I'll try to hold it down, but it's a privilege for me to be here and try to carry a message of hope and vision the way I heard it. And I'm grateful. I'm very grateful. You know, we're instructed in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that our stories disclose in a general way what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. So that kind of implies a suggestion on how to share. Because what I was like may create identification with the still-suffering cocaine addict, the alcoholic. And what happened is what changed me and what I'm like now is changed. So it's a process of change. However, the what I'm like part is problematic in that it requires that I remember what I was like.
So I make it up most of the time. Because I was a blackout drinker and I used cocaine to the point of psychosis and schizophrenia. So there's a lot of parts that are blank. I have some ideas about what happened, but the public record doesn't necessarily agree with what I recall. I do know that I was arrested 48 times between 1992 and 2001. That's from the public record. I like to tell this story because it kind of gives you a sense of what I was like. And that was a couple years ago. My daughter calls me. She's living in my house up in Colorado. And we were in the process of getting ready to finish. I remodeled the whole house. I'm getting ready to re-landscape the property. And it's a nice property. And so she had called. I needed to have the utilities located, the gas, the electric, and the water.
And so the utilities company come out to do the service location and they bring a police escort with them. And Karen calls me and she says, Dad, what's up with this note in the file that the utilities company needs to bring a police escort? And I said, oh, that. Here's my idea. Here's my view of what happened. I don't remember the year or when it was, but I was outside and I was, you know, in three or four in the morning watching the sky as is what I used to do is staring at the sky, staring at the moon and the stars and wondering why I wasn't there because that's where I belong. And while I'm doing that, I see the spaceship come down and it latches onto the streetlight and it starts sucking energy out of the streetlight. And I'm watching this thing and I go and run in the house and I grab an axe and I come out and I start chopping down the telephone pole that holds the streetlight.
Because I had created a neighborhood watch program right then for extraterrestrials. And because I was even back then I was service minded. So I'm chopping away and I just mean to chop the thing down. I cut the wire. I'm cutting the wire and it cuts off the electricity in the neighborhood. So the lights go off in all the houses around the neighborhood. And so the utilities, I'm still chopping away. I'm just doing my work. I'm planning on the next one. I'm going to chop down because I know these things can hop around and you just got to get them all.
So I'm chopping away and this utility truck pulls up light flashing and they hop out and asked me what I was up to and I tried to explain to them the dire nature of the problem and how if they were smart they'd do the same. They'd get on some of these other utility poles because there was a serious problem about to take place. Well I guess the note in the file said something about owner is unpredictable and easily provoked. So my view of what happened was differs from the public records. I go back, I'm the oldest of six kids. I was born to two parents who loved me and they raised me well. Of their six kids all of us graduated from college. They scrimped and saved and made sure that we'd get through college. They were both born of blue collar folks in Chicago
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and my dad was an Air Force pilot and so we moved around a lot. I went to five different grade schools and three different high schools. And I want to tell you that the earliest memories I have are of about the time when I was 10, 11, 12. And what I remember, what I recall from that time frame, when I was 11 it was 1968 and the world was getting pretty crazy. It was on TV and we'd get to see this stuff. Martin Luther King gets killed. Robert Kennedy gets killed. That we were living in Chicago at the time with my mom's mom, my grandmother, because my father was in Vietnam. And the Democratic Convention and there's a huge riot in the city of Chicago goes up in fire.
And I'm seeing all this stuff and I'm just really confused. I'm really scared and I don't know what to do. And there's another thing that was going on. My dad was flying F-105s and this was a plane that was ill-suited for the mission that they had it for. The mission involved low-flying bombing missions in North Vietnam. And it was a loud plane designed for heavy payloads. So they were sitting ducks. Half of them were getting shot down. So half of my mom's friends' husbands were either POWs, MIAs, or dead. And we would see regularly mom having to deal with this. And it became something I didn't want to deal with. I just want to turn my back on it. But I was living in fear all the time. And I was living in fear that my dad wouldn't come back. And he did. He managed to get through there without 132 missions, without any harm. And I never talked about it for the longest time. But we talk about it now. It's one of the blessings of this program is the relationship I have with my father. Anyway, I'm 11 years old then. And I'm just confused. And I remember kind of over a period of time making a decision that the only person I could rely on is me. That I can't rely on anything else because it's always going to let me down. So I begin this process of relying on me. And very, very soon after that, I become very angry. I start, you know, become vandalistic and start treating my anger, my fear, my self-pity with sniffing glue. I start sniffing glue. And then very soon after that, I had my first drunk. And I blacked out. And I enjoyed it. So much so that all I could think about for the next month until we could plan it with my buddies to do it again was making sure that we could do this. And I'm the one that stole the booze from the officer's club and arranged for it. And I believe today that what had taken place is I crossed the line with my first drunk and a mental obsession took over that's more powerful than my will. And that mental obsession was born of the effect produced by drugs and alcohol. I like to get loaded. I really like the effect produced by drugs and alcohol. You know, the effect I like is I can recall back when I was in college in Arizona. We had gotten a big six-foot nitrous tank. And I'm hitting on this nitrous tank. And I'm the first one. And I'm falling. My face is about to hit the coffee table. And all I can think about is I'm doing this again.
That's the effect I'm looking for. I'm looking for that complete get me out of here quick mode. That's why I drank and used. And I drank and used for 31 years. Drinking caused me a problem. And I discovered drugs very early on. In Hawaii, we started smoking pot. That's where I lived. We moved from Chicago to Hawaii. And that's when I was in junior high or intermediate school there. And I got in a lot of trouble. I got always in trouble. And so much so that my freshman year of high school, my parents put me into an all-boys Jesuit school over there. It cost them a lot of money to do that. And they did. And I continued to get in trouble. Alcohol caused me problems.
I was a good athlete. I was a good student. I had good parents. And when I was a senior in high school, the way I drank was I usually drank a couple times during the week and always on the weekend to celebrate, no matter what it was, to celebrate and smoke pot and do mushrooms, whatever we had to get our hands on. Senior year of high school, I'm on our basketball team. It was a good basketball team. We were ranked third in the state. And I was the second-leading scorer in the state. And the week before the state playoffs were to begin, we get the week off because they have the state wrestling playoffs. And so we went to the state wrestling playoffs, me and a couple other buddies. I'd just get really drunk. And I end up blacking out and at some point end up on the mat with the yelling at the ref in the wrestling match in front of all the athletic directors from the schools. And so they're left with no option other than to kick me off the basketball team right before the state playoffs. And of course, it was their fault. That's the way I dealt with it. And that's the way I convinced the world that, or at least I explained it to the world. It was their fault. They didn't understand me. I went to college and I played football at a little school in Southern Colorado. And at the end of that first semester of playing football, I was asked to come into the coach's office and dismissed from the team for smoking pot in the dorms. And I moved on to the University of Colorado and I walked onto a baseball team there,
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the collegiate baseball team. And I made the team. And I'm scheduled to start in left field when they're opening game against Oklahoma State. And I'm sitting in my room and I'm smoking pot and it just, you know, what's the use? I'm going to blow it anyway. And I don't even show up. That's what drugs and alcohol did to me from the very, and I never even considered that there was a problem. I never considered there was a problem. The only, what I struggled with was trying to put structures in my place, in my life in such a way that I could drink and use without damaging the environment around me too much. And, uh, and I did, I did that with reasonable success that I was, so I was able to continue this. I ended up at moving in, finishing up college in Arizona, at Arizona state. When I got down there, I had been working and I had gotten laid off in the construction industry. And, uh, and I had been accustomed to a certain lifestyle because I had been working and make a lot of money that, uh, that included drugs and alcohol.
And I could, you know, it costs money to do that. Uh, so when I get down there, I was out of money and, uh, uh, living on student loans. And I, uh, uh, would, here's how I would spend my week. I would go to school and then three times a week I'd get to go give plasma and I'd give plasma. I'd get, I'd get 12 bucks two times a week and a $3 bonus, get 15 on the third. And, uh, and then I'd go take that money next door to the, to the bar and drink 25 cent beers. And, uh, so I could drink a lot of beers and, uh, and I, you know, I was just a hopeless alcoholic even then I'm, you know, peeing in people's sinks and, uh, you know, just passing out under bushes, not making it home, just, just a, just a complete wreck. And it's amazing that I was able to graduate and get it all, get all that done. Uh, but you know, I just, one thing I would do is I prided myself on the fact that I could, I could clean up and I could look okay the next day, no matter how bad I felt.
And that, that since I could do that, I probably wasn't one of the things I'd read about and heard about it. Although I didn't know too much about alcoholism and drug addiction at that point. Anyway, I, uh, I make it through college and, uh, get married and we moved down to Tucson, have a kid and I, with a big eight accounting firm, I could become a CPA. I moved back to Colorado and all the time I'm managing to keep a lid on things just once in a while. Although it's become very apparent to my, my wife that I've got a big problem with alcohol and she, it's so much, there's so much still that in the third year of our marriage, 85 or 86, something like that. Uh, she suggests I go to some AA meetings. She'll go to an Al-Anon meeting and we do this for three weeks. And, uh, she doesn't necessarily like the Al-Anon meeting.
And I don't really like the AA meetings. And I finally say to Robin, you know, they're talking about selfishness is the problem. I've been going to this thing and you know, I buy everybody drinks and she goes, yeah, you do. And I said, I think that AA thing is for people who, who don't like to share their booze. And, uh, and I said, also they got this thing they call a big book and I've looked at it. It's only got 164 pages. The writing is really big. I think it's for people who don't like to share and can't read very well. And so I didn't go back. I didn't consider that that'd be a, I didn't even consider that would be a solution for me. I just kind of discounted it as kindergarten. Uh, and I went on through life, uh, made my ex-wife very, very sick. We had a couple of kids and in the process, uh, she got very, very ill and some suffered some emotional turmoil and what have you had to end up having to be hospitalized. And, uh, uh, we get, we ended up, she divorces me in 1992. In 1992, I get five DUIs. And in this process, uh, going through this divorce, I managed to keep these things all secret. They're all in different counties. I got different attorneys working them on them. And I could always point to look how sick she is. She's sick. She can't have these kids. We're fighting over custody of the children. And I'm a manipulator. I'm a con. I do all this stuff. I do. I've been trained very well in it. I've been moved around. I've learned how to fit myself and everywhere I go. And, uh, I get awarded primary physical custody of those kids.
And it almost kills my ex-wife, almost kills her. Yeah. Fortunately, God takes care of things. And, uh, two months after I got awarded, I had to call Robin and say, uh, we need to maybe change this arrangement because I'm not going to be around for six months because I had gotten sentenced and one of the charges and I was going away to jail. So I went away to jail. And, uh, and, you know, in that time, what I've managed to do then when I'm, when I'm in jail, I don't drink and I don't use drugs. Uh, I, I, I'm pretty good when I'm, when, when I got a coach telling me what to do and I'm on the floor or I'm in a jail and I'm, but get me out of my own where I'm relying on myself and I completely just fall apart. And the only solution I know is drugs and alcohol. And it's, so I'm, I'm going through this and, uh, we can get out of there. And, uh, and I'm just drinking like a, like I'm trying to put out a wildfire. And, uh, when I don't have the kids, I'm just a bat case. I rediscovered cocaine. I'd been using a lot of cocaine in college.
In fact, in college, cocaine caused me a bit of a problem because I had got, came up with a bright idea that I would take my student loan, buy some coke, turn it over a couple
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times, pay my tuition, and then have all this free coke. Well, didn't make it past phase one. Oh, here I am. Used up all the coke and got no money. for tuition, and I ended up, I got on a bike and put a mask on and a hairbrush and went to a convenience store and my plan was to rob it, so I'm riding around on my bike a couple times and I just thought, oh, this is a shitty idea, and I didn't do that, and I ended up, what I ended up having to do is I ended up taking classes for people for money and I got, in order to pay my tuition, so. Sober, divorce, and I'm becoming very successful in business and real estate development and general contracting, so much so that it starts to be that I don't really have to care about what anybody else says and what anybody else does, and I would take naps in rest stops between places where I was driving and I wouldn't come home, I'm staying, I began about 1996, I'm up five, six days in a row just using coke and drinking and sleeping three days, and about 1997, my brother and I have a blow up and we part ways and I quit working, I quit working so I could devote full time to drug addiction and alcoholism. In this time frame, I'm using a lot, I'm using a third to half an ounce of coke a day and drinking a fifth of vodka and two or three bottles of wine and a six pack or two of Heineken, and this is just my life, and this is what I do, this is what becomes normal, and I go through this process and I become incredibly schizophrenic and psychotic, and new problems start to crop up. I get two more DUIs, and I get charged with felony possession four different times. So this stuff's starting to become inconvenient, and so I go for the first time to a treatment center because I needed to get some room, I've heard this called wreckage management, I needed to get some space between my problems and me so that I could take care of it, and while I'm there, I'm not there intending to get sober, I have no interest in getting sober, but while I'm there they bring the kids in and they've trained them, they've been down there, and the people of my life very much would have liked to see me get sober. While my drinking and using wasn't a problem for me, it was a big problem for them, and it was a big problem for the police, and it was a big problem for the community, but it wasn't a problem for me. It wouldn't become a problem for me until later. So they bring the kids in, and they see my two daughters, they're eight and fourteen at the time, and they write poetry about wanting me back in their life, and they write, draw pictures, and they sit down, and I break down in tears because one of the, page 18 of our book talks about how no other disease is like this, no other disease generates such fierce resentment and misunderstanding and financial insecurity and sad wives and sad parents and disgusted friends and employers, that's all it says, and warped lives of blameless children. That one really gets me, because warped lives of blameless children. They didn't do anything, and here they are. Anyway, I make this commitment that I'm not going to do this stuff anymore. I put my will in place, and the same will that had earned me successes and all this stuff, I'm going to put it in place. And I swear on my tears that I'm not going to do this to my children anymore. And I leave the treatment center about seven days later, and this is one of the nice things about this treatment center, they feed you filet mignons and give you some acupuncture and some massage and talk very nicely to the inner child. And that was the extent of it. And I left there seven days later with no defense against the first drink. I had no defense. And I thought my will was my defense. And I left, and I'm sitting at a bus stop getting ready to go from Tucson to Phoenix, catch a plane up to Colorado Springs. It was in the early part of December. In fact, it was December 3rd when I got out. And the plan was I'd get up there and we'd get our lives back to normal, and they were going to have this big Christmas dinner. And they were going to have me at this Christmas dinner, and my daughters were going to plan it and put it all on. Well, I get to the bus stop, and I see there's a case of Heineken over here. And I order one of those Heinekens, because I'm not going to do it like I used to do. I'm just going to have one. I wasn't aware that I've got a physically abnormal relationship with drugs and alcohol. I don't know this at the time.
Today, one of the benefits and graces of this program is it makes sense of that 31 years of insanity. Now, there's two different kinds of insanities. There's the insanity of what takes place when I'm using. And it's insane. It's to the point where they'll pick you up and they take you to these involuntary places. One I was very familiar with was called the Lighthouse in Colorado Springs. I've got time. I'll tell this story. So I've got some people living with me, taking care of me. This is after that treatment center. And making
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sure I eat. And one night, I'm out. It's about 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm doing my perimeter check, making sure everything's fine around the neighborhood. And I just start to notice some things being out of place. Because I pay attention like that. And I notice some things have moved. And I've been paying attention to these two people who are taking care of me. And I'm a little bit suspicious of them. Because I'm involved in some big projects.
Because I've been having to deal with the extraterrestrials. And now, I'm working on this thing where we're going to… It's a big deal. I was going to have to become the reincarnation of Jerry Garcia. And it involved me learning music and understanding the Bhagavad Gita. And reconciling the Bhagavad Gita with the Bible. And a big project. So I spent a lot. It's not like I didn't do nothing. My life was full. In fact, I needed all those hours I was up. Anyway, I come back to the garage. And I notice some things have moved.
And I look in the refrigerator. And it's full of like some new beers and stuff that I didn't buy. And I open the freezer. And it's full of this meat. And I'm looking at the meat. And it's not like… It's not been wrapped at a grocery store like Albertson's or Safeway or King Soopers. There's these Kroger's out there. And I'm looking at it. And it's interesting. And I start paying… Because I've been paying attention. And one of the things that came to my mind was… This is interesting. I become aware that what this is. Is a body that's been chopped up and put in the freezer. And why would they do… Because they're trying to frame me. Because I'm involved with this huge thing that's going to reconcile the world.
And how do you discredit a movement? Well, you discredit… I was going to be the mouthpiece for this movement. Well, you discredit the mouthpiece. And a good way to do it is for the authorities to find a chopped up body in his freezer. And I'm on to him. I figured it out just like that. And well, I made that… So I've got to thwart their plans. I take the body. It wasn't a body, by the way. It was about $1,000 worth of custom deli meat that came down from Denver from a little boutique deli. And well, I took John. Here's what I'd figured out it was. Was that a friend of mine used to come and play guitar while I played drums in the basement. And John hadn't been there for like two weeks. And I was worried about him. I hadn't seen him. Well, obviously, I figured out what had happened to him. I took John and I buried him all over the Broadmoor neighborhood in Colorado Springs in order to thwart their plan and be able to have my own plan to put back into place. And I booby trapped the house from the outside in. I've got bungee cords and golf clubs over doors and stuff. And then I see it's about seven o'clock now, seven or eight. And I start ringing the doorbells. And when they come with it, I've got my baseball bat. I said, what would you do with John? They said, what are you talking about? I said, well, I know what you did with John. Don't play stupid with me. And I go on a rant. They said, Tom, you need to go to sleep. So they talked me to go to sleep. And I slept for three days or so.
And is what you would do. And I get up. And of course, this is very present to me. I'm getting up and I'm up in the attic now. And I'm smoking some crack and drink some vodka, reading Wall Street journals from the 70s, because that's where I got a lot of the clues about what I was supposed to be working on. And I just what I noticed was that one of the registers was off and there was heat blowing up in the attic and it was getting really hot. And I just determined that what they were trying to do is blow it, blow me up and get rid of all the evidence because they were going to abort their mission. So I grab and grab the axe and I'm up on top of the roof, chopping a hole in the roof.
And and the authorities came and got me down, made me go to this place and shoot me up with this stuff. And I'm shuffling around, not able to go anywhere until I begging people to sign me out. And nobody would sign me out. Anyway, I used to think that's what was insane about drinking and using. I used to think that was the insanity of drugs and alcohol that I would get loaded and all the stuff insane to get arrested. Forty eight times insane to get seven DUIs insane to to wreck a marriage and wreck children's lives. I used to think that was the insanity of our disease. I know today, as a result of the book Alcoholics Anonymous in my experience, that the real insanity of my disease takes. That's what's supposed to happen when you use drugs and alcohol to the amount that I use. That's the effect I'm looking for. Complete detachment from here and now. I want to get loaded. I want to get completely. And that's what's supposed to happen. What what's insane is that I'm sitting in that bus station. I look over there and I take a drink. I take the first drink and I in the book promises me a program promised me that I will have no effective mental defense against that drink on my own. So when I stand up here and introduce
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myself as a cocaine addict, I'm not saying I shouldn't use or that I can't use. What I'm saying is I am going to use unless I get in touch with some power because I've got no power to not take that first drink. Well, anyway, I take that first beer. I end up drinking all the rest of them. I get on a bus to Tijuana instead of the Phoenix and I do what I do. I get on a plane from San Diego. I go to Lake Tahoe, Lake Las Vegas. I keep used to keep money in casino cages just in case there was like these moments where you need to get cash and you're you're they've taken your credit cards away. So I go do that. And ten days later, it's done. I don't on me that I haven't called anybody to tell him I'm not going back to Colorado Springs, that I wasn't going to be there. And and later, my ex-wife tells me that that for three hours, my youngest daughter sat on the porch and they would open the door and say, Dad's not coming. And she'd say, oh, yeah, he is. He's just out buying us presents. He'll be here. He said he was going to be here. You know, and that's a warped life. That's the that's what happens to me is I have no effective mental defense against the first one. And so I'm going to be taking that first one. And so I got two problems.
I got a problem that is with my is I've got a problem physically, and that is I get loaded. You know, we call it the book calls it a manifestation of an allergy that we are craving that once I put in my body, my body takes over and I get loaded because and that's been my experience. And I thought that was the purpose of drinking. I thought I did that because I wanted to. But it made some sense to me when I when I first learned this, because it explains why in a blackout am I busting into a bar trying to get more tequila when I've already got the effect. I don't even know what the heck I'm doing. It's I'm trying to take care of a craving that's beyond my mental control once I put the first one in my. So I can't get. So it would seem that the solution would be, you know, if you get if you're having trouble and you get in problems because you drink and use, just don't do it.
Just don't do it. The deeper problem, the more grave aspect of my problem is a problem that centers in the mind, and that is that I'm unable to at certain times to bring forth with sufficient force the consciousness of the misery, suffering, humiliation of that week prior. It's just not there. It's like my thinking slips down a rabbit hole. We know book calls it a peculiar mental twist of mental blank spot with my relationship with drugs and alcohol. Leave me defenseless on my own will against drugs and alcohol. What I discovered here was that I that I I've got to get in touch with a power that will provide me that defense. I go on. I'm going to I'm going to get to where I was. That's right. My sobriety date is September 6, 2001, and I had been visited by my my ex-wife and my children prior to that, and I saw the look on their face and they were just horrified. I saw I saw a person like that this weekend. You know, it was a ghost. It was absolutely a ghost.
And I was a ghost. I had nothing left. I was completely on the empty on the inside. Just, you know, I'd shoot up three quarters of a gram of coke and drink half a fifth of vodka and I'd get nothing. My mind is still spinning. My gut still twisting. My back still all those things that used to get solved when I drink it. Nothing's getting solved. It's just getting no effect. And I'd fall on the ground and I'd cry. And this had happened before. It's not like this. And I just want to be dead. And I'd make feeble attempts to try to kill myself, hoping the drugs would do it. And I can't do it. And so September 6, I said, I've got to go. You know, I had kind of taken on that these treatment centers were going to be. I do 30 days a year in a treatment center and then I could get the old high again.
I can get the old effect. You know, it's like that. Our reading says. And I'd go, you know, eat some good food. And well, I September 6, I get upset. I announced to the world I'm going to go get sober and all right, good for you. And I go to sleep and I get up on September 10th and I make some phone calls and I try to get back in the place I've been going to. And they said, no, you're not welcome here. You know, you're not serious about this.
And I said, but I really need to go. And then I ended up going to miss scheduling to go to a place in Antigua. I figured a beach cabana, that would be a good, useful, good place for me to go to. And so I was scheduled to go on September 13th. So I figured I'd just sleep until then. And I got up on September 11th. And of course, September 11th happened. And at the time I had five warrants for my arrest and there was no, I wasn't going anywhere.
And I ended up getting pretty crazy. My brother put me on his plane and flew me down to a place in Phoenix. I call it a spin dry where they gave me a big book and made me go to meetings. But some things happened there. The first day I'm there, we're in a group and they say, what are you here for? And I'm trying to tell them, well, I'm here for a little vacation. I'm having a little trouble with drugs and alcohol. They just seem to stop working. But I figured out that if I do this, that they'll start working again and I'll be fine. Just let me run this thing and don't worry about a thing. And the guy
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on the couch is 25 years sober. And Says, You're Just Full of Shit, And Moves On to the Next Person, And She Shares About Finding Her Dad Dead on Her Basement Floor, When She Was 13, And Something Snapped Inside Of Me As She Spoke, And It Became Apparent to Me, As She Spoke, I Became Aware That The Next Time I Leave My Basement, I'm Coming Out in a Body Bag, Because I Knew I Wouldn't Come Out Again, I Knew I Wouldn't Walk Out of There, And That I Had No, That Was The Best I Was Going to Do, I Was Going to End Up Dead on My Basement Floor, And That Was The Legacy, In Spite of All My Dreams, And Aspirations, And Goals, You Know, What I Was Going to Leave My Kids, Was Me Coming Out in a Body Bag, And Then She Describes The Next 39 Years of Her Life, And She's In The Same Room I'm In, And It Was Horrific for Me, I Did Listen To This, And You Know, Prostitution, All The Things That She Would Do, Getting Raped, Getting Beat Up, All The Stuff, In Order To Satisfy That Craving That Takes Place Once She Puts A Little Bit In Her Body, And While I'm Listening To Her, Her Voice Changes, It Becomes, I Got My Eyes Closed, Tears Coming Out, And It Becomes The Voice of My Youngest Daughter, And She's Talking About How She Trusted Me, And Had Faith In Me, And That's What She Would Talk About Her Dad, And She Finds Him Dead, And I Was Hopeless At That Point, I Had Nothing, I Knew The Only Thing That I Was Going To Do, On The Self Reliant Design For Living That I Had Moved Into Back When I Was Age 11, Was I Was Going To End Up Dead On My Basement Floor, Taken Out In A Body Bag, And At The End Of That, After She Shared, It Was About An Hour Long, I Look Up On The Wall, And I Had Noticed, And There Was The Footprints Poem There, You Know The Footprints, The Two Sets Of Footprints Poem, And What Was Interesting About That Was My Oldest Daughter, When She Was 12, Had Saw That And Loved It So Much, We Went And Got Her A Throw For Her Bed, That Had The Footprints Poem On It, And I Turned To God, And I Asked God For Help, I Had No Idea What To Do, And I Turned To God, And I Asked God, That I Had No Idea What To Do, And God Sent A Member Of CA To The Treatment Center, He Probably Came Every Day, But He Came And Said You Want To Go To A Meeting, And I Went To A Meeting, It Was A Men's Stag Meeting, A Thursday Night In Tempe, And I Went To The Meeting, And I Heard The Message Of Cocaine Anonymous, I Heard That The People Had Felt Like I Had, And That They Had Recovered, And That Their Lives Were Not Like That, And I Believed Them, And The Following Saturday, Another Man From Cocaine Anonymous Came In Doing A Panel Into The Treatment Center, And He Carried A Message Of Hope, And He Had A Vision, And The Vision Was That I Could Live A Life Today, Forever, One Day At A Time, The Rest Of My Life, I Could Live A Life That I Was Free Of The Merciless Obsession Of Drugs And Alcohol, And I Believed Him, And I Started Doing The Work, And I Did Enough Work There While I Was There To Get In Touch With The Power, Enough That I Could Hear What The Suggestions Being Made, They Suggested That I Come Out To Dana Point And Go To A Recovery Home, And I Took The Suggestion And Moved Out Here, And That Was In October Of 2001, And While I Was Out Here, I Remember I Still Had Five Warrants For My Arrest In The State Of Colorado, So I Was A Fugitive, And I Was Going To Two Or Three Meetings A Day, I Was Going To 18 Meetings A Week, That Is What I Was Going To, And I Would Take The Bus And I Would Walk And I Would Get Picked Up, And The First Week I Am Here, The First Meeting I Go To Is A Meeting Down In San Clemente On Wednesday Night, The Zoo's CA Meeting, And The Last Meeting I Had Been In Tempe, The Last Thursday Night Stag Meeting, I Had Asked For Some Names Of People I Might Contact When I Got Out Here, I Got A Couple Names I Put In My Little Big Book, And I Get Out Here, And The First Person To Share At The Zoo Says My Name Is David B., I Am A Cocaine Addict And Alcoholic, And I Open My Book Up And Sure Enough That Was The First Name I Had Written In My Book, Because God Was Doing For Me What I Couldn't Do For Myself, Because I Was Still Self Reliant, Still Run By Self Will, And I Would Have Figured Out A Way To Not Get A Sponsor, Well God Made It So Apparent To Me, I Asked This Man To Be My Sponsor, And He Took Me Along With Thurman To A Four Step Workshop That Following Weekend, And I Did A Four Step Workshop, Did The Fifth Step With Him The Following Week After That, He Took Me To A Convention After That, And My Life Was Changing, I Was Still Absolutely Nuts, I Don't Have Enough Time To Talk About It, But I Was Nuts, But I Was Certain You Needed To Know What I Had To Say, One Of The Things That Happened To Me In The Recovery Home That I Was At Was They Banned Me From The Newspaper, They Didn't Like The Clues I Was Bringing Out, Anyway I'm Doing This Stuff, I'm Getting Involved, I'm Being Part Of This Deal, About Five Months Later My Grandmother Died In Chicago And We All Went Out There To The Funeral, While I Was There I Talked To My Family, I Talked To My Attorney, And Figured Out What I Need To Do Is Go Back To The State Of Colorado And Turn Myself In And Take Care Of Some Of This Stuff, Because I Had Been Doing Some Nine Step Stuff, And That Was A Pretty Serious Nine Step Deal For Me Was To Get Right With The State Of Colorado, Get Right With Civilization So That I Could
[00:35:01]
Walk A Free Man, And I Went Back And I Thought What I'd Do Is I'd Still Run It On Self-Will And I Turned Myself In On The Easiest Charge, Because I Had Already Pled Guilty, I Just Never Showed Up For Sentencing, And I Go To That Court And I Stipulated Do Seven Days On That, And It Was DUI Number Six, And I Think That DUI Was Even Back From 1998 And Here It Is 2002 And I'm Just Starting To Deal With It, I Was Just Getting Ready To Deal With It, And Judge Says What Are You Here For, And I Told Him What I Was Here For, I Was Going To Do My Seven Days And Get Out And Go Take Care Of All This Other Stuff, And He Says I Don't Think So, He Says I'm Not Going To Accept That Stipulation, You're Going To Be Here For A Year, And That Was A Problem, Because Not Necessarily Because Of The Year, But Because I Had These Three Unresolved Felonies Behind It, And There Was A Potential Three-Strike Deal In The State Of Colorado, And After Seven Days I Had Done The Math And It Wasn't Looking Good, I Was Going To Be There For A Long Time, I Was Worst Case In Every Deal And It Was Just Not Going To Be Good, And Plus I Was In Maximum Security In A County Facility Because Of The Unresolved Felonies, And So I Have No Freedom, So Twenty-Three Hour Lockdown And Can't Get Out And Get Books, Nothing, It Was Just Absolutely Miserable, And I Pray, After Seven Days I Said What I Need To Do Is Pray, And I Asked God To Show Me That Me Being There Was That I Was Doing His Will, And That Me Being There Was What He Had In Mind For Me, And The Next Morning A Chaplain Comes In And Gives Me A Bible, Says You Want A Meditation, I Get The Meditation, It's Called Our Daily Bread, I Open It To That Date, It Said Read Romans 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, It Said Bless Those That Persecute You, Bless Them And Do Not Curse, Give Up Your Conceit And Be With People Of Low Position, Whether It's Joy Sharing The Joy, And Whether It's Sorrow Sharing The Sorrow, And I Read On Further And It Said The Authorities Are In Place To Carry Out My Will, And Give Respect Where Respect Is Due And Give Honor Where Honor Is Due, And I Realized I Had Not, I Haven't Given Respect Or Honor To Anything In My Life Except For Drugs And Alcohol, And I Realized That I Was Right Where God Intended To Me, And A Sense Of Safety And Peace Came Over Me At That Day, And It Became Just Where I Needed To Be, And I Began To Practice Prayer And Meditation, Had A Lot Of Time To Do Meditation, And I Started Doing That, And Very Quickly After That I Got Some Freedoms, And I Got To Start Getting Out In The Pod And The Population, And I Got To Go To The Library, And I Started Getting Books On God, I Kept A Bibliography, All These Books On God, Whether It Was A Judaistic View Or A Christian View Or A Hindu Approach Or A Buddhist Approach, And I Got Books On Meditation, And I Read That Stuff, And I Began Working With Guys, And I Got A Big Book, And A Twelve In Twelve, And I Started Sponsoring Guys In There, Because Pretty Much Everyone That Comes In There Is A, An Interesting Place Where I Was, Because It Was People Who Were Just About To Get Sentenced Or Who Had Been Sentenced And They Were Just Getting Ready To Get Shipped Off, And So That's Where I Was, And Very Quickly I Became Somebody With Seniority, Because I Was Stuck There, But I Started Going To The Other Counties Where I Had To Take Care Of The Other Charges, I Go On Writs, And I Go To The First One, And It's DUI Number Seven, And I Get In Front Of The Judge, And He Says, What Do You Have To Say? I Said, Well, Judge, I've Been Wasting Your Time, I've Been Wasting The State Of Colorado Time, And The People Of Colorado's Time, I'm Right Here To Do Whatever It Is You Have In Mind, And He Gave Me Time Served, And The Next Judge I Went In Front Of Was A Judge In Colorado Springs, It Was One Of The First Felony Positions, I Had Already Gotten A Felony Dismissed In Front Of Her, This Was Going To Be The First Felony Charge I Had To Deal With, And I Recalled That One Time She Told Me, When I Was In Front Of Her, She Says, Tom, You Just Need To Get Help, And I'm Using For Like The Next Year And A Half Or Something, Every Time I Use It, I'm Thinking, What Does She Mean I Need To Get Help? I'm Shooting Up, And I'm Not Working, She's Working, She Needs Help, But I Could Never Get Her Out Of My Mind, And When I Got In Front Of Her, I Couldn't Even Talk, I Just Broke Down, I Couldn't Talk, I Was So Grateful That I Was There, And I Understood What She Meant, And That I Had Gotten Some Help, And Things Had Changed For Me. Anyway, I Did All That, And Satisfied What Was Needed To Be Satisfied, And I Ended Up, After Serving Six Months, Getting Released On A Reconsideration, And Sent Back To California, And Went Back Into The Recovery Home, And I Want To Tell You That I Just Got My Driver's License Back This June, So For Six Years, By The Way, Although There Was A Little Stint In There, I Was Driving, And It Made Me Go Insane, So I Stopped. Fortunately, I Didn't Get Arrested Or Anything, But I Was Just So Full Of Fear, And I Realized That The Reason I Was Full Of Fear Was Because I Was Running On Self-Will, And When I Run On God's Will, That Fear Disappears, And So I Stopped Doing That, And I Started Living This Thing, And That's The Way I Live Today. My Ideas Are Grounded In A Power Greater Than Myself, Just Like The Doctor's Opinion Suggests, In Order To Recreate My Life. So My Life Is Constantly Being Recreated. It's Constantly, Because Every Time I Go Through This Process, Every Time I Hear Somebody Else's Fifth Step, I'm Changing. Every Time I Get To Come Up
[00:40:03]
And Share My Experience, Strength, And Hope With You Guys, I'm Changing. The Fourth Or The Third Edition Of The Book Talks About That Recovery Begins When One Alcoholic, When One Drug Addict Shares Their Experience, Strength, And Hope With Another. And I Believe That Two Things Take Place There. I Know In My Experience, When An Alcoholic, When A Member Of Cocaine Anonymous Came And Shared Their Experience, Strength, And Hope With Me, What I Got Was I Got Some Hope. I Had Surrendered Enough That I Could Allow That Person To Get Through My Self-Reliant, Self-Centered Defense. And I Could Believe What He Had To Say. And When I Did That, I Got Some Hope That Maybe I Might Get Some Freedom Too. And What I Know Today Also From My Experience Is That When I Share My Experience, Strength, And Hope With Somebody That Is New To This And Is Still Suffering And Is Hopeless, Is That I Get Some Spiritual Healing. You Know, To The Untrained Eye, It Would Look Like The Solution To Our Problem Is Normal Living. That If I Go Out And I Do Things, But I Want To Tell You, For 31 Years, I Tried That. And That's Not, That Just Makes Me Sicker. What I Need To Do Is I Need A Change That Comes From The Inside Out That Is Provided By God, By A Power Greater Than Myself That Allows Me To Shift My Perspective Of The Life That I Live In. You Know, We Have A Beautiful Solution Here. We Have A Beautiful, It's A Three-Part Solution Because I Got A Three-Part Problem. I Got A Problem Physically. So The Physical Problem We Solve By Not Drinking And Using. You Know, I Look Around Here, I Don't See Anybody Drinking And Using Here.
That Doesn't Mean That They Weren't Drinking And Using Before. But Right Now, We're Not Drinking And Using. So I Got A Chance In This Time Frame To Go A Period Of Time Without Drinking And Using Being Part Of The Fellowship. So The Fellowship Being, Living In The Principle Of Unity Allows Me To Stay In Touch With You Guys And We're Not Drinking And Using. And I Can, You Know, Because If I Think Margarita Is A Good Idea, Steve Might Say, No Tom, It's A Bad Idea. And Remind Me. And So He Provides Some Sanity In My Life. But I Can't Be With You Guys All The Time. A Lot Of Time I'm Alone. A Lot Of Time I Need To Be On My Own.
And The Other Part Is, If I Have To Deal With You Guys, The Way I Came In Here, I'm Afraid Of You. I'm Ashamed Of What I've Done To You. I Don't Trust You. Something About Me Has To Change. Something About That Has To Change. Because That Stuff Stems From My Self-Centerness, From My Fear, From My Self-Delusions And My Self-Pity. Something About Me Has Got To Change. So I Have To Go Through A Process. The Second Part Of The Process, I Need To Recover. I Need To Have That Mental Change. I Need To Have A Profound Alteration In My Reaction To Life. My Reaction Has Always Been My Problem. I Got To Have A Change There. And How I Do That Is I Work The Steps. The Steps Are Intended To Put Me In Touch With Power. It's A Series Of Precise, Specifically Detailed Instructions. And The First Step Is A Reflection And A Conclusion.
I'm Screwed. Concede To My Innermost Self That I Am Hopeless. I Got The Physical Problem, I Got The Mental Problem. Step Two Is Okay, I'm Going To Accept A Spiritual Solution For This. Because The Book Says When The Spiritual Malady Is Overcome, We Straighten Out Physically And Mentally. So Our Work Is About Straightening Out, Overcoming The Spiritual Malady. And How Do We Overcome The Spiritual Malady? It Says Here In The Reaching Out, I Was Just Thinking About This, Is That Spirituality Comes From Caring About Others. So The Change That Takes Place In The Steps Is I Become Able To Care About You. I Become Able To Actually Consider That Maybe You Are Living, Loving, Trying To Get By In Life Just Like Me. That There Is No Difference. That We Are Children Of The Same Creator. And From There, What I Get To Do Is I Get To Then Move To A Different Way Of Being With You. The Third Legacy Of Recovery Is Service. So I Now Have A Different Way Of Participating In Life With You, With My Family, With My Children, With The Community. And That Is I Get To Express My Gratitude For What I Get To Experience One Day At A Time By What I Do. And I Don't Do What I Do In Order To Get Something. I Do What I Do Because I Get To. Because How Else Can I Thank God? There Is No Other Way. In Fact, I Can't Thank You Enough For What I Have Got Today.
For What Cocaine Anonymous Has Given Me. I Can't Thank You. It Is Not Enough. And As I Do, The Funny Thing Is As I Do This, I Get Back. There Is A Story That Talks About Not Wanting To Trade This Life For What I Had Back Then. The Life I Had Back Then Was Exciting Crazy, but I wouldn't trade a day of this for that. I wouldn't go back there. I wouldn't give up what I've got today I wouldn't give up because what I've got today is freedom. I've got freedom to to Put myself in the in accordance with the will the will of a power greater than myself And when I do that instead of feeling like I'm always fighting upstream or running on ice What if I get some traction when my lot one when my will is aligned with God's will I get some traction and life?
[00:45:05]
Works and I'm not trying to I'm not trying to to to fight windmills or Just or turn to steer the Titanic or whatever. I just live and as I live, you know, it changes. I've got I've got Two grandchildren and I get to you know, it's amazing I've got a really wonderful relationship with my children wonderful relationship with my father all that, you know it's it's amazing what this program has brought brought about and One last story and that is that there's a I mean the tradition I come for that I the spiritual tradition is a it's Catholic. I you know, some people call themselves recovering Catholic I call myself a practicing Catholic and that is because I practiced the faith. I misunderstood it when I was growing up I didn't quite hear things properly and way although they were the number one or they're up high on my resentment list I understand now that it was my it was the problem resided with me any problem. I have that resides with me and There's a story about a bunch of guys couple guys and they there's a healer carpenters healing people and it's very crowded They can't get anybody to them so these people jump up on the roof they tear the roof off and they lower this guy that needs this paralytic down to him and and and heal the paralytic and he gets the Carpenter tells me take up his mat and walk. Well What I get to do today is I get to be one of those guys up on the roof You know, I get to try to do what I can to get somebody down to the source of the healing You know, the source of the healing is a power greater than me. We don't have a monopoly on on that power We don't try to describe that power We don't we're not we don't we're not competent to describe the nature of the power what we have Competency in what I have competency in is is Thank you.
Thank you.