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Source: Rich B – Steel City Woodstock (2022) – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: rich-b-steel-city-woodstock-2022-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:08
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in City, Maryland. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Rich. I'm an alcoholic. This feels good. I promise there is no one in this room that will go home this weekend having gotten more out of this weekend than me. I was separated from alcohol on August the 30th of 2004, so you're not doing math. That puts me in my 18th year of sobriety. If you're new or counting days and you've been listening to everybody else all weekend, they bring me for you, the newcomer, because the people with more than 20 years have already stopped listening to me.
I say that half-jokingly. I live in Ocean City, Maryland. Many of you have been there probably. It's an island seven miles long by one mile wide. If you got every alcoholic in the same meeting on the same night, which would never happen, by the way, but if you could make us all good, there'd be like 80 alcoholics. Then COVID came, and that divided our fellowship into the Zoomers and the non-Zoomers and opinions.
We don't have 30 days sober yet, but we get opinions, right? Which meetings I'm going to go to, who's doing it right, what I'm going to do. I'm homeless. I'm in a homeless shelter. Before I get a house, before I get anything back, it's the first thing you get back in AA, unfortunately, is our opinion. My life's a disaster, but I'm not going to your group. I like this group. I know one group from another group, and we got that going on in Ocean City, but the point of that is I used to get to come to all kinds of stuff like this where I'd get in the car and go, just say yes.
I thought was the first step was like get in the car. We're going off the island, right, because you have to go off the island if you want to experience AA in its totality. For the last couple of years, this type of thing hasn't been happening, and I have missed you guys desperately. I depend on you for my sobriety. You guys can do weekends like this. In fact, you do them all the time without me. I can't stay sober without you, and I've been stuck on the island, and this weekend, I've been sucking it up, man, and just so excited to be with you.
I'm grateful to John. He took the time out of his day. He took a half a day of work. He made me pay him for the other half, but he came and got me at the airport. That's a lie if you're new. I'm joking. And he hung out with me and has just been a pal all weekend, and I'm grateful, and thank you, Nancy, for putting all this together and including me. With that said, I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.
I have a mother and father who are nothing short of wonderful. They love me to pieces, but I couldn't feel that. I have one little sister. Her name's Whitney. She's three years younger than me. I'm 48 for a couple more days. March 10th, I turn 49, just so you could put that together. Whitney's never had a drink. My parents have never had a drink. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, nobody drinks, and I just say that for the newcomers, and somebody grabbed me at the front table, a friend of mine that I met a while ago, and was like, you know, you told this story this one time that really hit me, which screws you up, by the way, when you're about to talk, because, you know, I've just finished praying and sitting in a little bit of meditation about, you know, God, let me say what you want.
And I'm like, yeah, but I got to tell the story of the new girl that a girl asked for. And what that story is, is if you're new, please don't waste as much time as I did trying to figure out how you became alcoholic, right? Nothing could be, just there's nothing more useless, right, than how did this happen? Did I drink too much? Is it genetic? Is it not genetic? You know, did it have something to do with my childhood?
Does I not love, blah, blah, blah, right? It's kind of like a person whose house is burning to the ground. Your house is on fire. Everything that is precious to you is in that house, and it is burning before your eyes, and the fire department's there. The neighbors are out. They've run the hose, right? You know, how everybody pitches in, they've run the hose. But the problem is, you're up in front, you control the hose.
The neighbors are screaming, they are pleading at me, Rich, shoot the hose, please shoot the hose, put the fire out. But I'm up front. And you know what I'm saying? I go, well, hold on a second. Before we go shooting this hose, we've got to figure out how this fire started, right? And I'm here to proffer to you that in that moment, there is nothing more useless than how that fire started, right? We've got everything you need right here to put the fire out, right?
[00:05:02]
And we've heard it all weekend, right? We have heard the bulk of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think anything new is going to come from this point forward, right? We got some steps, I'll get the, you know, they picked me to talk about like step zero, right? The guy that like hadn't done any steps. And then tomorrow, they picked me for 1011 where I get to stand here and go, remember what everybody talked about yesterday?
Keep doing that. Right? So if you want to sleep in tomorrow morning, right, there's the, you can, because that's what I'm going to say tomorrow morning, right? You're all the good speakers. Keep doing what they were talking about. Baltimore, when I grew up, Eastern Stainless Steel, Flynn and Emmerich Brick Company, hard work in place. I kind of think of Baltimore City is the same way I think of Pittsburgh and one of the things that I've noticed is hard work in towns, blue collar, honest people, honest hard days work, honest days pay, right?
Nothing's free in this world. You hoot with the owls, you got to get up and soar with the eagles, right? The harder the drink in town, the better the AA, right? But anyways, and Baltimore and Pittsburgh are just kind of town. And my parents did this thing, I went to public school and I had lots of friends and my life was amazing up until third grade. And then my parents ripped me out of that school and put me on a school bus for 45 minutes to go to this private school far away.
I mean, why would you do that to a kid? Who does that? I mean, I'm going to rip you away from all your friends, everything you're enjoying, we're going to uproot you, you're going to be on this 45 minute bus ride to go to a school with these rich little punk kids that you don't relate to at all. In fact, they make fun of me, they call me farm boy, they call me redneck, I had horses where we lived, I had to like muck stalls in the morning, feed horses, sweet feed, all the stuff that goes with a horse farm, right?
And these kids have their names on the buildings, their parents and grandparents in downtown Baltimore, Jonas Price, Price Waterhouse, right? That's his grandfather up there on my school bus, right? I could go Chris Mason from Legg Mason on my school bus. Then there's this kid, there's also a rule on this school bus at the private school with the rich kids and that's the older kids sit in the back, the younger kids to the front, it's like a social hierarchy on this school bus.
I'm not used to that but I pick up on it, we're good like that. And if you go to the back of the bus, you get beat up. My kid was named Reed Carter, his job was to beat me up every day for something and I think the school assigns you like an older kid to beat you up and I've never gone back to check on that and my perceptions, you know, what it is, right? But I can tell you that Reed was good at his job.
There was another thing on that school bus called a beautiful girl. Much like many of the women here this weekend, this particular girl's name was Nikki. And I really like Nikki, I had no idea to tell Nikki I like Nikki or any other woman for that matter. I didn't know how to make the approach, I didn't have words for it but man, I like Nikki. And one day, some of the older kids and I always like hanging out with the older kids, they said, do you want to skip last class and do some drinking?
And I'd never skipped a class, I'd never done any drinking and out of my mouth came, you bet, like I'd been doing it all the time and they said, what do you drink? And I said, bourbon. And I don't, I have no idea where I got bourbon. I do know that I wish that that was true, I wish I got to stand here and tell you we then broke out a bottle of bourbon and we fired it down and I'm here in Pittsburgh steel making flannel shirt wearing guys and bourbon, right?
But what those guys actually had was peach schnapps and when you say that your first drunk was peach schnapps in a town like Pittsburgh, they send you back to Baltimore, right? I mean, because it's just pretty weenie. And the good news is we've heard from Don about steps one, two and three, right? That it isn't what I drank, it's not how often I drank it, it's not even what it does to me that makes me one of you, right?
It's what it does for me. And that day as they passed that stuff around, what I noticed, the first thing is, is I have to go to the bathroom and I'm walking into the boys room and it says at that school boys and girls. And it just kind of struck me that, boys, I kind of feel like a man, right? Boys room, right? And then I get on that school bus and I start walking to the back of the bus and I'm going to sit next to Nikki and I don't know how I knew how to do this, I somehow after drinking a bunch of this peach schnapps, I intuitively knew how to handle this thing with Nikki that used to baffle me, right?
Just somewhere down a bottle of booze, a little bit down that bottle, there's like some instructions apparently, right? They're not printed and all you got to do is drink it, right?
[00:10:04]
And I start walking to the back of the bus to sit next to Nikki and Reed starts to get up out of his seat because I'm going where I know I don't belong to the back of the bus and as Reed's getting up to his feet, I give him everything I got and Reed goes down and out and Reed is out and the whole school bus gets really, really quiet and I sit down next to Nikki and I'm looking at Nikki and in that silence, man, that silence on that school bus was something I'd waited for my whole life, it was like long overdue respect, right?
Like finally you know who I am, right? And I'm looking at Nikki and Nikki's looking at me and I'm looking at Nikki, Nikki's looking at me and we get to Nikki's bus stop and when she goes to get off that school bus, she leans over and she gives me this little kiss that some of you guys will remember, it's half on my lips and half on my cheek and it's different than when my mother and my aunts kissed me, I felt it in my toes, man, this was a big deal, right?
And I get off that school bus and I go into my house with those wonderful parents with morals, integrity, love, nobody drinks and I'm falling down drunk and I'm in big, big trouble and I go into the bathroom and I'm sick all night and they leave me in there and you know why they left me in the bathroom all night, right? They were going to teach me a lesson and that was going to become a very common theme in my life, a whole lot of people through the course of my life, when I look back in inventory, there was a lot of people that God put in my path that were just there to try to help me down the road of life, just to give me a little friendly nudge down the road of life, I don't perceive it that way.
In that inventory, you know what I learned? Anybody that has ever tried to help me, I think you're trying to hurt me, you're trying to tell me how to live my life, you're trying to tell me what to do, back off, this is my life, you let me live it and I don't know what that's all about, I do know that my book talks about defiance, right? As one of the defining principles of the alcohol, it's like our key, one of our key characteristics, right?
And that certainly fits me. They leave me in there, I'm sick as a dog, you know, I don't have to tell you guys how we sleep in a bathroom wrapped around a toilet, I mean it's like, like we know. And I wake up and I'm as hungover as I've ever, just sick, right? It's my first hangover, sick as I've ever been, I don't ever remember feeling that bad, and I was grounded forever, which is like a big deal in 7th grade, that's, I've been checking out some of the tats this weekend, that's like life without parole for you prison people, and you don't know when that's going to end, right?
And sick as a dog, I'm grounded forever, and that thought comes, you ever going to do any more of that drinking? Just like that. Are you kidding me? I mean seriously, are you kidding? Grounded forever and sick as a dog, what a small price to pay for what I had going on on that school bus, man. Shoulder to shoulder with the fellas that long overdue respect I found in that silence, the ability to sit next to Nikki and my God, that kiss, are you kidding me?
And I was going to chase that, and chase that, and chase that, and I can't say it better than Bill did in his story, in that moment my relationship with alcohol was forged much like a boomerang that I was going to set into flight, and my relationship with alcohol was going to give me so much and do so much for me for so many years while that boomerang was going out, but one day it was going to turn in flight and come back and take from me where I was going to surrender to it, so we don't get in a semantic game, right?
Every bit of morality, every bit of integrity, everything decent that those wonderful parents gave me, but you know how alcohol was going to do it? One drink at a time, so slowly that I didn't know it was going to happen, right? I couldn't feel it happen, I didn't see it happen, and our book talks about that. It says often by the time the alcoholic, that's me, by the time I clue in to what's going on, like the rest of the world has known it forever, right?
But I've slipped past the point of human aid by the time I'm even aware of what's going on. I mean, at my first AA meeting, if you were to put everybody that loved and knew me in a meeting, you know, and I'm sitting in there, you remember how you were the first time you said it? Like, your hands are like, you know, my name's Rich, I'm a, I'm an alcoholic, the whole room would have gone, no shit, right?
Like, I was the only one that was shocked by this. Anybody that knew me was like, we've known that for five, ten years, right? But it's a big admission for us. We're the last ones to clue in to this fact, right? And through high school, I drank. And through high school, I drink as often as I can.
[00:15:01]
In Baltimore, in the country, we do cornfield drinking. We're underage. You get a keg of beer, cornfield fire, right? You drive, you draw straws to see who drives. It's not who's drunk and who's sober. It's whose turn it is to drive drunk, right? You draw a straw and you drive home. And I'm driving a CJ7 Jeep, was my first Jeep. And I come just to let you know about the morality of my family. My father said, hey, anything you save up from working, I'll match for your first car.
And I saved up $2,000 at an Ace Hardware store unloading wood. Before it came on pallets, I would stack 2 by 4s with convicts. I had splinters and I'd be sore and I'd come home. And my dad would say, I said, dad, I hate this job. I'm sore. I'm working with these grown men with, you know, he'd say, that's good. That's what works for you. Figure out what you want to do and what you don't want to do. There's two ways to make a living in this world, son.
One's with your back, one's with your brain. Maybe you want to pay attention in school, right? And I'm learning things, right? My parents were always teaching stuff. I didn't like the way they were delivering the lessons, right? He signed that paper for me to start working at 15, right? And I say, I mean, I loved that CJ7, right? Didn't stop me from drinking and driving it every night. I had a keg of beer in the back, three friends.
We were coming around a turn one night a little bit too fast. I don't know what you guys know about CJ7s. The reason they stopped producing them is because of the narrow wheelbase, right? And I'm coming around the turn and that thing rolls three times. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. My friend's out, I'm out, some broken bones, some scrapes. Nobody's, you know, seriously hurt. Apparently my definition, right, as a young budding alcoholic of serious injury means death, right?
So like if you're alive, it really wasn't a big deal. In fact, the way that I would talk about those types of things Monday at school is I'm like, did you see that? I rolled that Jeep three times. I mean, that was some pretty good drunk driving, right? That was like NASCAR stuff. I mean, that thing rolled and boom, I landed on my feet and we walked away from that. That was some good drunk driving, right?
And then I would say things as I got a fake ID and could get into the bars in downtown Baltimore which was at 16 and 17, if you could get your money up certain places you were in. And I'd have conversations with you guys, no doubt. I'm embarrassed to talk about it now, but I would say things like I drive better drunk than sober, right? And if you're nodding and smiling, I welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous.
You don't belong in the wedding down the hall. You didn't, you know, you didn't slip into the wrong room by accident. Like normal people don't know. They don't, yeah, they go, what is wrong with you is what the people down there are saying, right? And then I would proceed into a conversation with you about why I drive better drunk than sober. I'm like I got a system, you know, when I've had 5, 10 drinks, what you want to do.
You want to put the windows down. You put your left arm. You put the elbow against the door. It creates a third class lever. You put the hand on like 11 o'clock. It locks it in. You light a cigarette with your right hand. Put the windows a quarter of the way down so the alcohol kind of goes through in case you get stopped. You keep the cigarette going. For smoke, get rid of the odor. You close your right eye.
You lock your left eye on the double yellow line. Coming down the thing, it creates a lever. The wheel won't move at all. You won't swerve because of the lever created with the left arm. Keep the right eye, right? And then you guys would share with me your system, right? For drunk driving. We'd have an intelligent conversation at the bar. And if anything I'm even saying right now registers with you or you had a system for drunk driving, right, again, I welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous.
You're in exactly the right place, right? I eventually get a scholarship to go to a bunch of places. God's given me a bunch of things that I learned about in 4, 5, 6, and 7 that we've heard talked about that I've got nothing to do with. I remember things when I read them. I've done nothing to achieve that. So it would be stupid for me to take credit, right? I mean, just think what that would sound like.
Hey, I want you to know I'm a really good rememberer. I went to remembering camp, you know. I practiced remembering when I'm at home. Got this amazing skill I've developed called remembering, right? I mean, you can either read a book and remember it or you can't. It doesn't make anybody better than anybody else, worse than anybody else, right? But guess what? When you can remember things and you spit them back out, in our education system in the United States, they give you straight A's for that because you remember everything in the book, you vomit it back out, they give you A's.
Don't know if I learned anything, didn't learn anything about studying. I don't have to study. Why would you study? You read it and spit it out, right? I read it the night before. And then I didn't go to a study group and learn about like working with people, making friendships, forming partnerships, working together, right? Working hard, getting great, like all the things you're supposed to live, it's great.
I was seemingly winning at the game of life, Bill says, right? And I'm getting awards and accolades
[00:20:00]
and people are say giving me ribbons and saying Latin words like cum laude. And I go across the stage, right? And then I get scholarships and I'll tell you another amazing skill that God gave me that's incredibly valuable for absolutely nothing, I'm a good soccer player. And you know who cares about that? Nobody. But I do get to go to college like for free for that and the remembering and I get lots of opportunities to go places.
I picked the University of San Diego. You want to know why? I grew up, parents always had a place in Ocean City. I learned how to surf. I don't remember when I learned how to surf. It would be like me asking you, a red shirt dude, can you tell me about your learning to walking experience, right? Like teach me, I mean was walking hard for you to learn? How long you been walking, right? Like you're just like I don't know, I've just been doing it, right?
And that's what surfing has been in my life thanks to my dad, right, and I love it. To this day, I surf over 200 days a year. I like telling you that so you know what you're dealing with, right, like if your sponsor says something to you different than what I say tonight, for God's sake, listen to your sponsor, right? I am waterlogged. I have seen over 40 Grateful Dead shows. I followed them around the country, right?
If you offer it to me in the parking lot, I take it because why wouldn't I, right? I wasn't a snob or picky. I didn't know about your traditions when I was 18. You know, it was just like, oh, yeah, right? So what I'm telling you is I have like two remaining brain cells, right? I'm like you're dealing with like a waterlogged surfer deadhead, right? And that's the type of person they like pick and, hey, they're like, yeah, get up there to the podium and say something, right?
So there's the fair disclosure, right, of what you're dealing with. I picked the University of San Diego because they've got great waves, some of the most beautiful women that I've ever seen in this world, and there was another school in like New Jersey, right? They're my parents and the academic counselors. Anybody have those people, academic advisors? What do they know, right? They're like, you know, Princeton is really pretty good.
Yeah, I want to go to New Jersey when I could go to, you know, the only people I know about Jersey are leaving, right? Like that's, it's like, you know, they're fleeing, right? And New Jersey, San Diego, you know, got to be the smartest guy for that one. So off I go. However, I overlook something critical. It turns out to be a Jesuit college. I didn't know what Jesuits were. I should have done a little research.
I have, if anybody played any Division I athletics, you have two-a-day practices. I practice in the morning and in the evening, and classes, the Jesuit classes, and then I'm drinking, and there's four guys on my soccer team that are from like 20 miles south in Tijuana, Mexico, and these Mexican guys, amazing soccer players, great guys, each of them have like 56 cousins right across the border, and these guys know how to get stuff that these rich kids like smoking, and we become fast friends because we're the kids on scholarship, right?
And water always seeks its own level, right? We always attract that which we are. So ladies, when you're doing that fourth step, right, if it's, you know, Bob, jerk, you know, what a jerk, right? Steve, real a-hole, you know, yeah. Dennis, jerk, right? You got this list of jerks, right? And then I've listened to you. You go, there must be something about me. I just attract jerks. Yeah. Right? And guys, I've heard enough of your inventories.
I sponsor you, but I've heard a lot of guys, right? Stacy, crazy, right? Then I dated Nancy, crazy, right? It's like I like just attract the craziest women you've ever seen. I mean, it's none of this is mine. I'm like, yeah, you attract crazy, right? We cannot attract anything other than what we are, ever. So I'm with these guys on scholarship because they are me and I am them, and we get with the cousins, and I'm bringing in the stuff because I also figure out that in Southern California, the beautiful women are going with the guys that got some stuff, right?
They don't like the poor guys with no car on scholarship in Southern California. And I'm not saying this is true. I'm saying it's how I saw it, and I still think it's true. But, you know, there's somebody here from Southern California that's going to go, no, no, we are deep, well-rounded people, right? That was not my experience. They notice whether you're wearing Ferragamo shoes and driving a Mercedes before they care about what your last name is, right?
And I'm looking at what I really did at a young age unconsciously
[00:25:05]
because that's what the alcoholic of my variety lives is a very unconscious life, right? It's an unexamined life. There's no inventory. I make decisions based on feelings, you know, just unbelievable, right? There are human beings that are born unawake, get married unawake, go to work every day unawake, and die unawake. That would have been me without Alcoholics Anonymous. And the unawakened life is a really sad thing.
And what I did was not even knowing it in an unawakened state was to make a decision much like Bill that I was going to have to pursue the material. I knew about spiritual. I went to a Jesuit college. I had great parents, morality, integrity, all that stuff. And I was going to need to acquire some stuff if I was going to get any of the chicks that look like you, right? I was going to need a car. It was going to have to be a really nice date if you were going to like me.
And no woman ever told me like, you're ugly, you're stupid, you know, I just knew. I had an internal deep knowing that I wasn't good enough for you and that if you were going to go out with me, it was going to have to be first class. And that set me on this course that Bill talks about. Remember when he was out on that farm in New York with Lois and he says like this would be the last honest day's work I ever did, the exciting lore and maelstrom of Wall Street we're on, right?
You know what that means? He wanted to go shuck and jive and make a quick buck. I get that. I'm Bill, right? Like I like that. I love money. I like fancy things. I don't like working, right? And that's a problem, right? And by my senior year, I have purchased my first home, 423 Nautilus Street in La Jolla, California. It's the third house on the right at Winded Sea Beach which is one of the best surf spots in the world.
Bought the house cash with money that certainly wasn't legally owned. I don't surf anymore because when you drink and do what I do at nighttime, you don't wake up at 6 AM when the wind is offshore and the dolphins are going by and the wave feathers back and you glide down that wave as it gently throws over the top of your head and you retract it into the present moment and touching the face of God.
But all that's gone because that's what alcoholism does to a guy like me. It takes away every joy, every passion, everything I love. One of my favorite things I do with the new guys, I sit at the table, I bring my checkbook out as if I could actually do it. I can't. I assure you of that. And I go, hey man, I'm going to write you a check for $500,000. What do you want to do for the next six months? Most of them, they're like, I used to ski when I was a kid.
You know, I can remember I like jogging. You know, I used to like going to the, you know, by the time we get here, anything that we used to like that brought us the joys, our passions, our hobbies are like long since gone. We don't even know what we like to do anymore, right? And I love making them think about that, right? Like I could give you what you think you need right now, $500,000, what do you want to do?
And they can't even answer the question, right? And I get that. I'm in that house, I'm driving a BMW with a fancy number on the back that lets you know that it's one of the European ones. I had to have shipped here. They don't send it in the United States. I had to do that so you would know how important I am. I'm dating the prettiest girl at the college, at least that's what you guys thought. So I dated her.
I still have no idea if I liked her. And that's how I'm living my life, to impress people that I barely even know. It's 4.30 in the morning, boom, boom, boom, boom. Every door and window comes in and I'm on my stomach. They're putting on the plastic zip ties and off I go to the federal penitentiary. It's called the Metropolitan Correction Center in downtown San Diego. It's the first time I've ever been in a prison.
In high school, I've been arrested a lot. I've been to a lot of jails. I say this for the benefit of the prison guys. I was not a prison guy, you know, I'm a jail guy. In Maryland, jail's anything up to 18 months. Prison is more than 18 months. I get 30-day sentences. I violate probation, get six months back up, get out, get a year on an assault, get out, you know, disorderly conduct, 60 days, violate probation, get the 30 days, you know, I've done all of that, right, over and over and over.
And my sponsor pointed out to me because I've always been scared of prison, I'll be honest with you. Prison represented like a pretty serious commitment to me. I've never been a commitment guy. Like 5, 10 years of anything seems like scary to me. I don't particularly like structure. I don't care for people telling me what to do. I've just, I didn't think I'd be a good match for prison, right. That'd be a good match for prison, right?
So I did this endless cycle of jail and my sponsor pointed
[00:30:01]
out to me in the inventory, he goes, you know, you think you're pretty smart, you got a lot of degrees, but do you realize when we look at this, you were serving a life sentence. You were just doing it on the installment program and you were so stupid you didn't realize it, right? That's what alcoholism had you doing. But this was the first time I was in a federal prison. The San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Times ran an article that said Jesuit student, 27 kilos of cocaine.
The federal sentencing guidelines, if anybody's ever had a federal thing, they look at the number of times you've been arrested and what you had with you. Mine said 46 to 60 years. Jail, a judge isn't even free in a federal court to do what he wants. He has to sentence within these guidelines. So I'm looking at somewhere between 46 and 60. It turns out all those stupid little things, the disorderly conducts, the peeing in public.
In Maryland, when Don and I, I don't know if you guys used to do this here, but like in Maryland at 2 o'clock when the bar's getting ready to close, to see who's going to pay the bar bill, you step out front with your friend. And the first guy to knock the other guy down, you know, you do a little fist fight. And whoever gets knocked off their feet first pays the bar tab. But if a cop rolls up while that's happening, you know what they call that?
Second degree assault, right? They like take things very serious. And they got like these names for things. I've never done well with like prosecutors, judges, cops, because they just take things so serious that really we're just figuring out a bar tab. And it turns out that all this kind of stuff adds up over time in my life, right? I am nothing but the sum total of my actions, right? My tombstone's not going to say, here lies Rich Bruckner, he meant well, right?
I always thought that's what I should be judged on. I don't know if anybody hasn't, you know, ever looked at your NCIC. If I sponsor you, we're going to have three documents when we do your fifth step because it's what my sponsor made me do. We go to the Maryland State Police, it costs $5, they print out your NCIC, it's your criminal history, National Criminal Index. We're going to pay the $1, and now it's free on credit card.
We're going to print out your credit report. And then we're going to read what you wrote. And I can promise you, I haven't at one time had those three documents match, right? Because the sponsee sitting in front of me, right, says something like, you know, I'm financially misunderstood. And I'm like, yeah, well, this says, you know, you're $58,000 in debt and don't pay your bills. You especially like to go in and out of emergency rooms and not pay hospital bills, I've noticed, right?
And this document says, right, and it's good to have a little bit of reality in the room when we're doing these fifth steps. But I'm sitting in there and I'm in there way longer than I want to be. I will say that I had the beginning of this thing we talk about called an awakening in that facility, which is literally that spirit that has been asleep. The 12th step that somebody's going to talk about tomorrow, I mean, it says it right in there, right?
Like that's the spoiler alert of AA, right? What's the solution? We have one known solution to alcoholism since the beginning of time, and it's called spiritual awakening, right? Like that's what we're looking for. And I'm here to promise you, tell you, proffer to you, share my experience with you that you don't have to believe in the 12 steps, you don't have to like doing them, you don't have to think that they'll work, you don't have to think that they'll create a spiritual awakening, but that's what happens.
It's also the most misread step in Alcoholics and Honest. It says, right, having had a spiritual awakening as the result, people say that, it takes everything in me to not from the back of the room go, hey, it says, hey, could you read what's on the paper? Right? And you know why I'm adamant about that? Because having had a spiritual awakening as the result, right, the result, not A, A is a plural word, right?
If it's a result, that means anything might happen. We might go through these steps and maybe you'll turn purple, right? I don't know, like anything could happen, right? Maybe your life's going to suck, right? But that's not what it says. It says if you go through with this course of action, the result, singular, only one thing's going to happen, you're going to have a spiritual awakening. And I don't know what that's going to look like for you, but I do know that's what's going to happen for you.
And you, and you, and you, and you, and I've watched it over and over and over and over in Alcoholics Anonymous. And in that place, I realized for the first time because I was surrounded, God surrounded me with enough of me in that facility, I think it holds 1600 men, I was the only one in the whole place that was guilty. And I know that because it's all they talked about in the yard, right? They were, it wasn't their fault, it was the mechanic.
And if the mechanic had fixed the taillight right, that cop would have never pulled him over. And if the cop hadn't pulled him over, he wouldn't have smelled the weed. If he didn't smell the weed, he wouldn't have searched the trunk and then there's a probable cause. And you can see how this is my mechanic. And when I get out of here, if I find that mechanic, we're going to get this straightened out.
And if you hook that guy up to a lie detector, he'll pass.
[00:35:02]
He absolutely believes he's serving 15 years because of his mechanic, right? Had another guy in there that if his wife hadn't done what she'd done, he wouldn't have had to stab her. And he totally believed it, right? It wasn't his fault. I was where I was because of who I was and I was who I was because of how I live. That's the beginning of my way. That is huge. I'm going to say it again, it's the biggest thing I ever realized.
I was where I was because of who I was. I was who I was because of how I live. AA is big on that, right? Into action, we don't care what you think, we don't care if you like it, we don't care about any of that. We care about what you do, right? I promise you, my home group could care less than I'm here this weekend. In fact, they make fun of me, right? They're like, oh, you're going to speak, Mr. Speaker, going up to Pittsburgh.
Where are you flying to this weekend? Ho, ho, ho, Mr. Speaker, right? They give me nothing but grief. But if I'm not there Tuesday night at 7 o'clock for the 8 o'clock meeting making the coffee, which it's my three-month commitment right now, they care very much about that, right? We're going to have a problem, right? That's the stuff they're watching. This is what they make fun of. We all carry the AA message.
When absolutely necessary, we use our mouth. This is the least potent form of AA. But what these feet do is what everybody's watching, right? And that's what you guys impressed me with. And there I am, and I'm in that place, and I'm having that awakening and realization that it's my actions, right? That I'm judged. When I eventually get out of that place, I start bouncing around. I'm like a man without a country.
I can't go my form. I've used everybody in my life up. Everybody's done with me. Bails and bonds and lawyers, and can I borrow 20 bucks? And can I get a little money extra for tuition? And I lie, lie, lie, lie. That's the sound of my life, right? I just suck you dry. The more you love me, God bless you. I will turn every hair on your head gray if you're my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, God help you.
Because the people that don't love me like that, they're able to step back. They're done a lot quicker, aren't they? But the ones that love us the most, they go down with the ship. We've heard a lot about that this weekend, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that. I can't stay where I am. I just lost 27 kilos of product. There's people looking for me. I can't go back east because they're done with me.
I've shamed my whole family. I start bouncing around the country. Alcoholism controls every move I make. I'm drinking to forget about a life that almost was, right? I was almost a college graduate. I was almost something. I was almost a big brother. I was almost a son. I was almost, almost, almost. When Bill Wilson did his fifth step, he did it with a guy named Father Ed Dowling, and he shared all the stuff that we're scared to share, right?
And I'm saying this just to be funny, right? The, oh, my God, I had sex with a donkey or, you know, whatever, right, stupid thing that we're like, oh, my God, there was this goat this one time, right? Like, whatever, right? I've got to say all this stuff that happened that we're so embarrassed of, right? I call it the confessional part, right, of that step, right? And Bill finishes doing all that, and, you know, Father Ed Dowling says to him, he looks at him, he goes, you know, Bill, it's not so much the things that men and women have done that keep them drunk, it's the things they've left undone.
Langston Hughes wrote a poem called A Dream Deferred, the boogie-woogie rumble of a dream deferred. And most of the alcoholics that I've worked with were almost something. Whatever that is that they wanted to be in their life, right, and that's, I got to keep that down, man, I got to keep that boogie-woogie rumble of a dream deferred. Because the head I go to bed with is my own and I can't get around that no matter where I go and what I do and what I drink towards the end.
And I'm trying to drink it away and it's just not doing it. And I get warrants in Steamboat, Colorado and I moved from Steamboat to a little Sun Valley, Idaho and I moved from Idaho to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I'm in Wyoming, I'll tell this last drinking story and then we'll get sober. My favorite place in Jackson, Wyoming was the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. Anybody been there? Always like one because they can vouch for me.
I mean, this place, man, the barstools are saddles that are bolted to metal poles in the ground and when you get in that saddle, you put your money up on the bar. I mean, you want to talk about a sense of ease and comfort that comes at once? I mean, you know you are in for a good night's drinking, man,
[00:40:01]
when you are in that saddle, right, and I put that money up on the bar because that's what I lead with, right, that's the bait that I fish for you ladies with. I'm shocked when I catch a certain type of fish, right? But anyways, I put that up there and Jennifer sits down next to me and she says, what's your story, cowboy? And I look at her and I go, let me buy you a drink, babe. I'm traveling, just traveling, right, like I'm some type of romantic sojourner across our great nation, right?
I got warrants in Steamboat San Diego, right? I got warrants in Idaho. I got a warrant in Maryland, right? I am like running but in my delusional mind, I'm like on the Great American Adventure, right? And I wind up where all big shot wannabe alcoholics, you know, wind up when alcoholism, right, is done with me. Federal government had seized every house, every car, every bank account, every nothing.
Alcoholism had seized every bit of morality, integrity, hopes and dreams and I wind up back where we all wind up eventually, a lot of us and that's mom's couch, right, in Ocean City, Maryland and if you started your journey to sobriety on mom's couch, you know, I couldn't even believe she took me in again. There was only one rule at mom's couch, right? You could stay here as long as you want, as long as you got it.
As long as you don't drink, you guys all just rat it yourselves out, that was good. A lot of mom's couch people here, always are. And I made it two weeks. I was never, I couldn't even believe I was there and I made it two weeks. Coming in and out of AA, there's people, I don't like AA, I don't like the steps, you all seem kind of weird. There's this one lady in my area that I really hate, her name's Janine, Janine's always carrying a big book with her, she's like 16 years sober when I met her.
She's got a stupid smile on her face like always, right, like, you know, a lot of you here got it. You know, it's like, and what I really hate about her is she doesn't call the girls that she sponsors, sponsees, she doesn't call them pigeons like a lot of the old timers do. She calls them duckies, right? And all the duckies got their big book and Janine comes in to a meeting and there's like six duckies with her at every meeting.
And Janine sits down and doosh, doosh, doosh, doosh, the duckies like file in and sit there. If I see Janine, right, with these duckies, I go to another meeting if I can. I eventually do a 3 a.m. residential burglary on my mom's house, she had a protective order at that point of no contact, a restraining order you might call it, I don't know what you guys call it. I wasn't allowed 100 yards in my mother's house.
Where she sleeps, she's a retired school teacher, first grade, she's got a modest little pension, little townhouse, sleeps with that purse underneath of her bed with the front door locked with a restraining order against her son. Probably all I need to tell you about our previous relationship, right? And at 3 a.m. I break in, I'm doing my best commando crawl across my mom's bedroom floor trying not to wake her up and I'm crawling and I'm reaching under the bed for that little purse and her eyes come off the side of the bed and she catches me dead square in the eyes and she says, Rich, take it.
Would you just take it? And some of you have been swimming with me. I've been stabbed in Panama on a deal that went bad. I've been beat up more times than I can tell you. I've been taken into Mexico. I have an M burned branded into my shoulder to remind me who I work for and who owns me for the rest of my life as far as they were concerned. I've been through some stuff, but nothing like when your mother looks you in the eye and just gives up.
You can beat me up, you can lock me up, but don't you give up on me, mom. That one woman, and it turns out moms don't ever give up. She just had to be done. And I'd love to tell you I did and I did and I stay drunk and I eventually get arrested on that and I make it to 30 days not drinking in AA. I don't do any steps. I don't have a sponsor. Really, it was that fourth and fifth step we heard about that took me, I couldn't wrap my mind around because in the business that I was in, I mean in the cocaine business, when you write things down like that, you guys call it an inventory.
I call it a paper trail, right? I mean the IRS is looking for me. I just got out of a federal penitentiary and you want me to write things down. I mean, in fact, that's the first rule of my business is never keep a ledger. Don't write anything down. Idiots write things down, right? And you guys are saying things like it holds the key to the future, right? This is how we got free. And I'm like, yeah, for you, right?
I mean I can look at you and I can tell the worst thing you did in your alcoholism. You know why you're here? You're here because that one night you had on a white shirt. You know why you're here? You're here because that one night you had on a white blouse, you were having a nice cabernet, and you spilled a little bit, and it stained your beautiful white shirt, and you were humiliated.
[00:45:01]
And now you came to AA. Yeah, you're going to write an inventory. Oh, that time I spilled the red wine on my white blouse. I mean, you people are much different than me. Look at you. Look how good looking and well put together you are. That's what my mind was telling me. I'm sitting here going, I can't do that. I don't have a sponsor. I don't really know what I have to do or not do. I'm just deciding things.
I make it to 30 days. I'm 28, coming on 29. I end up in Johns Hopkins Hospital. My liver was biopsied. They take a chunk out. I don't know if anybody's ever had a liver biopsy that sucks. But it's Hopkins. I mean, what do they know? And I don't really listen to doctors. I listen to bartenders and drug dealers. They're the ones that know stuff, right? I'm like, just got kicked out of college and my whole future just got drunk away.
You know, you got a solution for that, Mr. Barkeep? Yeah, have a double on me. There's my solution. Brilliant. So I eventually, I'm 30 days without a drink. I can't go one more day with a drink. I know I can't take so much as one more drink. With my liver, I wasn't supposed to take any Tylenol for a year. It'll shut your liver. It's the worst stig for you. They told me what to do and not do. I did the ultimate act of any coward.
I just wanted to take myself out. I knew I couldn't drink anymore. Their book calls that the jumping off place, where I'm petrified to take so much as one more drink. And the only thing scarier than that's living one more day without a drink. And I take every Tylenol I can, everything in that medicine cabinet. My body falls. And when I fall, apparently I fall into the refrigerator. I've learned this since from the lady that lives next door.
She's one of those weirdos that had a perfect attendance record at work. She hadn't missed a day's work in nine years. But that was her first sick day. It was a Tuesday. She's home. She hears boom into the wall. When I hit that refrigerator, it scared her. She ran around, looks through the front door. She sees feet. She dials 911. I wake up in the Atlantic General Hospital for like the fourth or fifth time because of my alcoholism.
This time, I'm hooked up to all kinds of things that are beeping. And I got the sexy paper hospital gown that ties up the back and your butt hangs out no matter what you do with it. And as my eyes clear and I figure out where I am and what's going on and I'm such a loser, I also have this feeling of you are such a loser, man, you can't even kill yourself the right way. That's a special feeling. You can't even succeed at that.
And then as my eyes clear, you guys know who's at the foot of the bed, right? Janine with about three or four of the ducks. And I'm fairly certain that if there's a place called alcoholic hell, I'm in it. Janine didn't talk to me that day because she tried to talk to me a lot, but she did talk to the duckies. And she said, girls, I want you to take a good look. This is what happens to an alcoholic that refuses to take our steps.
Let's go, girls. And I didn't know it, but that was going to be it. That was as far as God was going to let me go. And when I got sober, I was a little bit bunched up about the fact when I read Bill's story, right? He's in the hospital. He got that bright light and that cool breeze that blew through and through. And I got Janine and the duckies. It didn't seem fair, but it turns out in hindsight that what I had was every bit as sufficient as Bill's experience, because the next thought that went through my head was that if I get out of here and I live through this thing, I'm going to do the only thing I've never done in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because I'm a meeting maker. I go to three meetings a day. I'll sweep your floors. I'll clean your ashtrays. I'll go to your dances. I'll sign up on your committees. In fact, I'll do everything in Alcoholics Anonymous other than Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the 12 steps. And if you get nothing out of the bald guy's talk from Ocean City, Alcoholics Anonymous is a set of principles, spiritual in nature, called the 12 steps.
And when practiced as a way of life, they enable the sufferer, that's me, to become happily and usefully whole. We have created a fellowship around a spiritual program called Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 steps, of which our fellowship was named after the program, the 12 steps. Dances, meetings, conferences, norasses, service structure. All of it is designed to do one thing, encourage the newcomer into and through the 12 steps.
I had it a little backwards.
[00:50:00]
I thought we were a spiritual fellowship with this kind of support program for the really good members that wanted extra credit, that like did the 12 steps, right? And I'm wondering why I'm not getting it, right? I just kind of had it backwards. I get out of there, and I decide, you know, that thought that I'd never had one like it before or after was that if I lived through this, I'm going to find one of those old guys with that book in their hand and that smile on their face, and I'm going to do everything that he tells me to do.
And I knew who that was in my area. It was a guy named Jim. And at that point, Jim had 40-some years sober. He had a sponsor named Clarence Snyder. He had a sponsor named Dr. Bob Smith. I like that. I like knowing what somebody's telling me and where they're getting it. I'm just like that. A lot of us alcoholics are kind of skeptical, like where'd you get that information? And Jim would always tell me that.
One of the first things he told me is he said, you know why they wrote this book? They wrote this book to protect you, the newcomer, from me, the old timer. The longer I've been around here, he's like, we get to thinking we know things. I'm going to add something, change something, do something. He goes, that's why they wrote it. That's why they put it all down. It protects the newcomer from the old timer.
And I was like, wow, what humility to tell me that right off the bat. He's like, if I ever tell you anything that you can't square up with this, it isn't AA. It might be my opinion, it might be something I've done, but this is what AA is. He started giving me some pretty good directions. And we start going through this. And as we worked through the book, in the interest of time, he took me through one, two, and three.
And that powerless, he goes, powerless, less power. You OK with that? Would you agree, powerless, less power? I'm like, yeah. What's the second part of the step? Unmanageability. He's like, can you think of any decision that you've made time and time and time again? Well, yeah, Jim, that I'm never going to drink again. How you doing managing it? Well, not very good, Jim. We're here, right? And he goes, oh, OK.
So you're telling me that you have less power than is required to manage your own most sincere desire to never drink again. That's what you're looking at. That is the one thing I know about me. I'm a guy, as I stand here tonight, I have less power than is required to manage my own most sincere desire to never drink again. I came to believe in the power of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it's the most important thing we could come to believe in, because if I don't believe your 12 steps can help me, I'm not going to do them.
I made a decision to go ahead and do them. We just did three steps in five minutes, right? Did that inventory. The result was obvious on the problem. Six and seven, I'd never felt I had that experience that I heard about today. I wasn't feeling zippy after that stuff. I was feeling pretty crappy. He said, we're on eight and nine. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is what separates the boys from the men in Alcoholics Anonymous to women from the girls.
How free do you want to be? Just ask around. I mean, if you don't like what I'm telling you, I'm sure you could find somebody in AA to sell you some middle of the road stuff that they'll tell you you don't need to go talk to your daughter. They'll tell you, just write a letter. Yeah. Why would you drive all the way to Ohio when you could just send a letter? That'd be fine. That's not what the book says, right?
Books are face to face and that kind of stuff. And he starts walking me through it. And my first amend that he directed me into was with that mother. My mom, by the time I got to you, had not been able to look me in the eyes for a little bit over a decade. Whenever she looked at me, her head would just kind of drop. I'm her oldest child, her only son. And I just wasn't what she raised. And there was just a sadness in her.
And he said, if she'll go on any lunch date, dinner date, whatever that lady will do with you, take her. My first job in AA was working for one of you because I'm unemployable. I've just got to. If you pulled my NCIC, you'd see 36 convictions and places really, really, really good jobs like McDonald's and cleaning the bathroom at Walmart. They won't hire a guy like me, which is a good feeling, right, when they're like, oh, you want to change those blue hockey pucks in the urinals?
No, you're not qualified. We looked at your background, right? I'm like, things are really looking good in AA, right? There's hope around here. But a sober member of AA gave me a job sweeping the floor in a picture frame shop. He hand-carved these wooden picture frames. And my job was just to keep the sawdust off the floor. I made $6.25 an hour before taxes. I think that's like $240 a week, 40 hours before taxes.
And the damnedest thing happened. I always had $1 for your basket. I always had enough. And I always had enough to take my mom to dinner once a week. And I have no idea how that happened. But what I do know, that you guys talked to me, showed me, and demonstrated for me, is that when I focus on the spiritual, the material always takes care of itself. And the second I take my eye off the spiritual and start worrying about the material, there's trouble.
[00:55:00]
And there's another story. And I'm not a big story-from-the-other-book person, but there's this really cool one about these loaves and the fishes. And this guy's got a little thing, right? And there's like one fish and one loaf of bread. And there's like thousands of people, and his job's to feed them all, to give it away. Feed them all. Give them a wholesale miracle has taken place. Wholesale. Look that one up, right?
Available to everyone, right? And he's going, he's starting to hand out the bread. And he's starting to hand out the fish. And he's handing out the bread. And he's handing out the fish. And every now and then he gets, he's only got, every time he looks down, only got one fish, only got one. Don't look down. Don't look down. Just keep handing out the bread and the fish. And as long as I don't look over there, right, at the material, and I just keep focusing on the spiritual, there's always enough.
First thing I got in AA was a pay raise. I don't know how it happened, right? Taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. I'm taking mom to dinner. One night we were at Carrabba's. And she eats spaghetti. She twirls it around on a spoon. I don't know why, but that's how she does it. And she's doing that, and her eyes came up from that spoon.
And she was looking at me eyeball to eyeball for the first time in over a decade. And she said, you're really doing good, aren't you? I said, I am, mom. I really like AA. And she hugged me when we left dinner. And it was the beginning of something new between me and my mom. She started calling me to come over and take her trash out, because she was getting into her 70s, and it was a walk to the dumpster.
When her light bulb would go out in the kitchen, she's got a little fixture. It's got one light bulb in it. She can't stand on a chair to change it. It used to take me two to three weeks when she would call me to change the light bulb to get sober enough to go over there. I would leave my mom cooking and eating in the dark until I could sober up enough to get over there. But now I was sober, man. And when she would call, I would be over there.
And I'm changing light bulbs. And I'm taking out the trash. And little by little bit, my head's coming up, man, and my shoulders are going back. And you guys would say things like, you know how you grow in self-esteem? By taking esteemable actions. And I'm like, whoa, that was brilliant. And that stuff comes out of the most unexpected person, right, in AA. And my mom, as she was here tonight, I got married at nine years sober.
I have two little girls, Isabella and Sophia. Isabella is seven. Sophia had her fifth birthday party today. It was a unicorn painting party. She got her first skateboard. I got some pictures. I'm really proud. I skateboard and surf. My five-year-old got to. It's pink, and the wheels light up when she goes. And she was doing a video showing dad today, since I couldn't be there. And trust me, my wife would rather have me be with you.
Because she knows that by participating in the because she knows that by parting with her husband for one weekend, she gets me all the rest of the days. And if I'm not sober, it doesn't matter. That relationship, if my mom was here, she would tell you that her son chose to build a house about a mile and a half away so that I could be near her and do her old age and to take care of her. She's got her own guest bedroom.
So when she's over playing with her grandbabies, which is every day she's in and out of my house two, three times a day, she's getting her revenge. I'm trying to get them to eat broccoli. She's getting out ice cream. I'm like, do you forget parenting? I'm trying to get them to eat vegetables, right? And she's just having a blast. And she sits in her Tommy Bahama beach chair on the beach, and she's watching.
Both of my daughters know how to surf already. And they get on the front of my longboard, and she's watching her grandkids and her family. And my little sister hadn't talked to me for six and a half years because of some stuff I did to her when I got to you folks. When I got here, I had a set of Baltimore Ravens season tickets. I don't know why I had them. I think I was in a homeless shelter. And we're weird like that.
Our priorities, right? I pick up people from our homeless shelter all the time. And they don't have a bank account. They don't have a car. They don't have a check. I mean, they have nothing. And they got an iPhone 13 Max. And I'm like, hey, dude, what are you doing with a $2,100 cell phone? You notice you're in a homeless shelter? But that's how we are, right? And we're just weird. And it turns out I don't even like the NFL sober, anything.
I can't sit still for three, four hours. I got stuff to do. My sponsor said, you know what you liked about the NFL? Being a big shot, having the best tailgate in the park.
[01:00:18]
not asking you, I'm telling you, send the next set of tickets, and I sent that next set of tickets, and my phone rang, and on the other end of that phone, man, was a voice I hadn't heard in over a decade, Richie, Richie, did you see that, the Ravens just caught the ball, they're in the end zone, the game's tied, I don't even know who they were playing, there was nothing I could care less about, but I was talking to my little sister, man, for the first time in over 10 years, and I kept sending those tickets, and she kept calling, and we kept having conversations about those games, and on the weekends, it took me three hours after the season ended, I would drive to her house after I worked all week, sweeping the floor, $6.25, took my mom on a Friday night date, Saturday morning, I'd drive three hours to Baltimore City, and I'd help my sister fix up her first townhouse she bought in Federal Hill near the stadium, help her paint the walls and put together that snap together like hardwood floor, and I'd do brother stuff, and I never had time to do it, it was never convenient, I never had enough money to do it, I didn't have toll money for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I didn't have money to waste on gas, it was never convenient, but my sponsor tells me that Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of divine inconvenience, if Alcoholics Anonymous fits nicely into your schedule, you're doing it wrong, right, it's that simple, it is a program of divine inconvenience, and if I waited until it was convenient, or I had enough money, you'd have to have somebody else tonight, because I'd be drunk, but instead, what happened is I forged a relationship based upon positive actions that you instructed me to take with the little girl that I'd ruined, and she became one of my best friends, and over a period of time and years, a guy called me that I'd grown to know, and his name was Justin, and he said, hey, Justin, he calls, hey, Rich, yeah, man, what's going on, and he said, I know your father's no longer part of your lives, and you've become the number one man in your little sister's life, she looks to you for everything, and I really love her, and I want her to be my wife, and I'm calling to ask you if I could have her hand in marriage, and I promise everybody in this room, man, there is nobody less qualified to give away the hand of a beautiful little girl than the drunk that stands before you, and I got to walk, she asked if I'd give her away, and I got to walk her down that aisle, sober, dressed like I am today, mom, and nobody was wondering, is he going to show up drunk, right, they'd watched, I had some street cred in Alcoholics Anonymous, right, from showing up, and what a day, and I had a friend, Ethan, he asked me to be the best man in his wedding, and he sent me a plane ticket, it was when I was at San Diego, taking over the world, one drug deal at a time, and I wanted to be in that wedding, we've heard the story, man, and the night before, I was to be the best man, his father bought me the plane ticket, his father had me a tuxedo made, right, he got me measured, made, paid for it, I was, and there was nothing I wanted to do than be at my best friend's wedding and be his best man, and in fact, I was so excited to do it, I started drinking the day before getting on the plane, and I don't need to tell you how that ended, right, the important engagement was not kept, as the book would say in 1939 language, right, and I have a list of people like that, right, and if I do something like that to you, I can no longer take your phone calls, because I know why you're calling, you're calling to cuss me out, you're calling to tell me I'm a no good bum, I'm a no good friend, in fact, that's why God made caller ID, as far as I was concerned, right, and what caller ID really is, it turns out that caller ID was made by Alcoholics Anonymous, not a lot of people know that, what it is, is it's a ninth step detector, right, if you have to look at who's calling, if it at all matters to you, if you cannot answer your phone, if you call me, and there are people in this room that call me, you know how I answer the phone, hello, Rich Bruckner, you know why, nobody's looking for me, I don't owe a penny to a single person on the face of this planet, it took me 11 years to be able to say that one sentence, if you're new, we say these things when we're standing here, as if they just happened, right, took 11 years for me to say that sentence, no warrants, why can't you answer the phone, just that's one of those reflective questions, right, like, if it matters, right, just talk to your sponsor, maybe, who's on it, right, and Ethan was on that list, and every time he would call, I couldn't answer it, and I get that, like, sickness and tightening, and he said he's next, and I called, and I said hey, I know you hate me, I know I screwed up your wedding, I know I'm a no good friend, you're going to start cussing me out, don't do that, I need five minutes, dude, I need five minutes, I'm sobering in this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous, I was dying, but now I'm not, I know you, this is like a life or death deal, dude, can I please have five minutes with you and your dad, and he goes, yeah, whatever, you could be here Saturday morning
[01:05:02]
at 8 o'clock, if you could make it, and it was like nine years later after his wedding, so he had one of those resentment things that you guys talk about, and I'd been watching Facebook, his wife was beautiful, he had a daughter, he had a son, I'd never met him, and I knock on that door, and I show up 15 minutes early, and I got a pocket full of money for that thing, and Ethan's mother answers the door, and he's standing next to her, and Ethan's wife is standing with their daughter by this kitchen island, he's kind of in the back, and this little boy came running straight to me like a freight train from some back room, and he just comes running at me, and he grabs a hold of my leg like a tree trunk, man, and he looks up at me and goes, you're my Uncle Rich, Daddy said one day I'd get to meet you, and in that moment with the little kid hugging my leg and looking up at me, I knew for certain what he'd been telling those kids, what a piece of crap I am, what a no good drunk I am, but he hadn't been saying any of that, made all that up, and those blinders fell that Bill talks about from my eyes, and in that moment I became aware, our book talks about that, it's an inward knowing, I don't know where that comes from, that I am what separates me from you, I'm what kept me out of those kids' lives for five years, I missed five years of their life by my inability to simply face the music, to say I screwed this up, how can I fix it, instead I tell myself stories that separates me from you, and the problem with that is if I'm separate from you, I'm separate from God, and it's just that way, and I may have never learned that lesson, except for a little kid holding onto my leg, looking into my eyes, and I went into the other room with his father and I sat down and I said, Mr. True, I know I owe you some money for the tuxedo and the wedding and the plane ticket, he said, you're damn right you do, you owe me $1,378, and I started reaching into my pocket to get out to pay him, and he said, no, no, if you're really a part of this AA thing you're telling me about, what you're going to do is no more than $10 at a time, you're going to take some donuts to your home group, you're going to buy some fancy coffee, you're going to put some gas in a newcomer's car, don't ever give them the money, put the gas in their car to get to the next meeting, you're going to save the receipt, when you have $1,378 in receipts, none of which could be for more than $10, you're going to drive back to Baltimore, you're going to bring me those receipts, and on that day your amends to me will be complete.
By the way, I'm sober 30 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I've been praying for you in Athens since you've been that big, I didn't see that coming, but our book says that nine out of ten times the unexpected happens, sometimes good, sometimes bad, when the approach is made in this fashion. The last thing I want to tell you about, and I know it's getting late and everybody's had a long day, but in case you can't tell if you're new, if you can't tell I love Alcoholics Anonymous with every fiber of my being, you've missed something tonight, because there is nobody in this room more grateful and more excited about this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous than the guy that gets to come be with you tonight.
I got to leave the island and come hang with you, right, to bring the good news of Alcoholics Anonymous. Is there a better job? And I had this old warrant in San Diego, all my amends were done, and I was on probation, I was backing up five years, a judge put me on this drug probation called the PC1000 Felony Offenders Program, it was five years in jail, and if I went to ten AA meetings, did some clean pee tests, it would all go away.
But can you believe that? Ten AA meetings? I mean, what an order, I can't go through with it. Five years in prison, ten AA meetings, right? You know who could do that? Somebody that has power, choice, and control over their drinking. Somebody that can make a rational decision. Somebody that gets to decide. Remember my first step? I'm a guy that lacks power, choice, and control, it isn't up to me, alcohol is going to tell me whether or not I'm going to complete that probation.
I don't get to go. You know what, I think I'm going to do a good job, right? It tells me that a mere code of morals ain't going to cut it, right? I want it to cut it. Anyways, he says, you got to go serve that five years, this is a good time. How free do you want to be? How free do you want to be? I mean, you've been in that jail every night of your sobriety, you know, you're almost two years sober, you've been serving that time every night.
I said, I'm trying to explain it to him, right? I'm like, listen, and I know the book pretty good by that point. I'm like, this is a non-extraditable warrant, that means they're never coming to get me in Maryland and take me to California, it ain't going to happen, it's 3,000 miles away.
[01:10:01]
So what are you going to do? Tell your kid that Disney World is better than Disneyland? You like surfing, there's a lot of great waves out there, you're just going to lie the rest of your life. Plus, each night you go to bed, you know it's out there. How free do you want to be? It's up to you, up to you, kid. Head you go to bed with, there's your own. Just kept nudging me, right? And finally, he confiscates some paychecks, gets me a one-way Southwest ticket, and they send me out there, and I stand in front of the judge, and what I didn't know is 40-some AA members took the time out of your life to write that judge letters about what my life looked like.
I was sponsoring guys, I was sponsoring churches, I was mopping floors, things I was doing in Alcoholics Anonymous, and the judge, I don't think he'd seen anything like that, he looked at me and said, I've never seen anything like this. He said, you mean to tell me you just flew 3,000 miles on your own nickel to serve five years in prison? I said, I did, judge, I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have to do the best I can to clear up the wreckage of my past.
I don't ever want to have to take another drink, so I need to get this behind me so that I can live a free man. I'm looking forward to putting this behind me, and I really apologize for not following through with the probation. I didn't know that I didn't have the ability to do that when I was an alcoholic. And he said, hold on, and he starts going through your letters. And it was a long time that I stood there while he read those letters, and I had sweat circles under my arms, and I'd been in the bathroom a lot that morning.
It wasn't sexy, it wasn't brave, any of that stuff about faith and fear can't be in the same place at the same time, maybe for you, but I was scared to death, right? And I had the faith to know that you guys had never led me astray. The judge said, these people say that you've been to over 1,000 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I ask you to go to 10. They tell me you're helping all kinds of people, I don't know about all of this, but you look like a different guy, and you've exceeded the terms of the probation.
I ask you to do greatly, you didn't do it when and how I told you to, but you have done way more than I asked you to. As far as I'm concerned, this case is closed. If I was you, I'd go back to Maryland and do whatever those people in AA tell you. And he hit that gavel down, and I've never walked out of a courtroom. I've walked into a courtroom 36 times, and I've gone to jail 36 times. And when I walked out of that courtroom, my God got bigger that day, and I called Roger, and I said, Roger, Roger, I'm coming home, I'm coming home.
Tell the guys we don't have to move the big book study that's in my living room on Wednesdays, I'm coming home. He said, well, wait a second, hotshot, you went out there on a one-way ticket, you got to get a ticket for tomorrow. So while you're there, why don't you go over to that Jesuit college that kicked you out, and talk to that dean, and straighten that out. And I'm thinking to myself, could you relax for a second, we're having a moment of celebration.
But Don read it, that ninth step, it's like a pep talk, it says like action and more action. And the sponsors say stuff like that, like stupid sponsor talk, right? And let's be honest, is going over to like talk to a dean, seem like small potatoes compared to five years in prison. I drive over there, of course it's still the same dean that kicked me out, I couldn't believe it. I said, I don't know if you remember me, my name's Rich B., I used to go to college here.
And she said, we remember you, we've only had one student go to federal prison in the history of the university. And I said, well, listen, what was in the paper, I'm a sober member of Alcoa. When I went here, I had no idea I was an alcoholic. I thought I was a college kid having fun. You don't know what you don't know. And what I did brought a lot of shame to this institution, I've shamed the Jesuits, I now know what Jesuits are because of AA, Jesuits stand for integrity, honesty, education, doing the right thing.
I didn't stand for any of that when I went to this school. And I brought a lot of shame to the, I don't know how to straighten this out, but I'll do whatever you tell me. And she said, if that's true, come with me. And walked me to a building next door and put a huge stack of papers in front of me. She said, this is an application to our law school. What you're going to do, you've always been a good rememberer, you're going to fill this out, you're going to go to our law school, you're going to graduate, you're going to go on to do great things that make us proud.
That's what makes us look good as a university, is graduating students, not kicking them out. We like to have a high graduation rate and alumni that do great things. I went outside and called Roger. I said, Roger, Dean's lost her mind. She wants me to go to law school. I've got 36 convictions. I had this federal felony thing. I'm not sure how that's working out. Even if I make it through law school, they're never going to let me take the bar exam.
If I pass the bar exam, the ethics committee's never going to let me through. They'll never give me a law license. Plus, I don't know how I'm going to pay $36,000 a year for three years for law. She said, shut up. Shut up. Did you just tell that lady you would do whatever she said to make it right? And I said, yes, sir. And he said, then go. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, then go with her and fill out whatever papers she tells you to.
And I did. Three years later, I graduated second from the top of my class. Not because I'm smart. I did law school the AA way. You know what that means. I showed up 15 minutes early for every class.
[01:15:00]
I shook every teacher's hand every day until they knew my name, just like you taught me to do at the door with a newcomer. I stayed after class. I asked a question, whether I had one or not, just like you taught me to do with a newcomer. And it turns out that that builds a relationship and that the principles that you taught me in here work in every area of life. It's a formula for life, right, that works everywhere.
And when I came out of there and I'd cleaned up my phone rings and I can answer it. It doesn't matter who's on it. And on the other end of the phone, I said, Rich Bruckner. And this guy says, hi, this is so and so. I'm the state's attorney for the state of Maryland. I know who state's attorneys are. That's the dude that locks me up all the time. I hate state's attorneys. He said, hold on, we're patching a call through from the governor's office of crime control and prevention.
We just received a large federal grant. I want to hire an assistant state's attorney to head up our narcotics prosecution unit. We've been given your name that you know something about the importation of narcotics. We'd like to, and that's how I felt. My knees about buckled on the other side of the phone, right. And, but you know what I remembered? I remembered the old guys with that book in their hand and that smile on their face.
And you know what they told me? They said, kid, one day your sordid past will become your greatest asset. And they never lied to me. And I did that for the next 10 years. I served, I repeat, served the state of Maryland in that capacity. I got to take that program, the PC-1000 program in California and stole it just like you told me to do in AA, we pass it on. I changed it. We call it drug court in Maryland.
I've put drug courts in every county in the state of Maryland. It turns out that helping people get sober does a lot more than locking them up. We've put in some alcoholism things. We've, I've met a new friend this weekend that's wearing some jewelry I'm very familiar with known as a scram bracelet and a GPS monitor. That's the double header. If you're really fancy, by the way, you get two ankle bracelets.
And my new friend is super fancy, let me tell you. So anyways, it's been a hell of a journey. And after 10 years, I got to take an early, I allegedly gets a check when I'm 55 for like the rest of my life. But I left because of that boogie woogie rumble of a dream deferred and that you guys told me that if I don't drink for a day, anything is possible. And I had a dream that wasn't fully done and I always wanted to own my own law firm.
And with my wife's blessing and a whole lot of faith and fear and all that sweaty armpit stuff, I resigned and walked out with two little kids and a wife and zero clients and all that stuff, right? And last year, I did 400, I defended 417 DUIs which means 417 times I had you sitting across from my desk and I got to have conversations with people like my new friend John. I go, I can't help but notice that this is your third DUI, John.
Do you think your drinking might have anything to do with this? And John says something like, well, I think the cops got it in for me. I go, I sure see where you're coming from, John. And that's the two-minute warning and two-minute isn't close to sum up what you guys have given me. And I hope I've shared a small piece of my enthusiasm and my gratitude for this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can tell you, I'm a part of all kinds of things.
I got to help author a law called the Good Samaritan Law where if somebody is overdosing and you call the police, you can't go. It's a federal law, it's in every state. When you go, I testified in front of the senate and the house, you get to bring one guest when you do that. You want to know who my guest was? My mom. It was the most proud she ever was of her son. And she stood in there on that marble floor with the big seal, the eagle of the United States where her son answered questions from senators and congressman with his head up and his shoulders back and she just remembered when I was in jail cells and on her couch and stealing her purse and that you guys gave her a son back with a life worth living that gets to put a little something back into this world.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.