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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 894 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kermit-kermit-s-na-recovery-journey-and-service-na-2003-archive-894.mp3 Duration: 00:50:30
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I have to get this out of the way. My name is Kermit, I'm an economist. Did I get it right? I've been practicing that for three fucking days. In Spanish, it's Me llamo Kermit, un adicto. In French, it's Mon nom Kermit, je suis dépendant. In France, we're dependents. In Israel, it's Kermit Mahor. I like that one. In Turkey, it's Benny Adam Kermit, den bir bulim liam. In Greece, it's Milena Kermit, ime narkomanis.
I said to him, narkomanis, what's that? He said, narcotic maniac. I identify. I was speaking in Hawaii and this Japanese people came over, you know, about 20 people. I went to the little girl and I said, how do you say my name is Kermit and I'm an addict in Japanese? And she went… I was like, shorter? She went, yakuchu. I said, okay, yakuchu Kermit. I said, great, what's that? She said, narcotic.
I said, narcotic Kermit. Yep. That'll work. And in English, it's my name is Kermit and I'm an addict. And I'm clean today through the grace of God and Narcotics Anonymous. And I am so honored to be here. I can't tell you how honored I am to be here and to be sharing the 10th convention, any convention in South Africa, you know, where I have a sponsor, where the dream is that someday my sponsor will be able to come and share, you know.
And that's, you know, what moving to freedom is about for me. All my dreams come true in recovery. Let's take a moment of silence for me. Thanks. What I do in my moment of silence is I ask what this gentleman said about the literature prayer. I ask God to relieve me of the bondage of self that I may carry his message and not mine, so that no addict seeking recovery need die from the horrors of addiction without having had a chance to find a new way of life.
And I've added so that we may bear witness to the miracle. And the miracle is one heart touches another one. I walked into my first 12-step meeting in August of 1979. I was in a treatment center wearing what the well-dressed addict wears, blue pajamas. Now, when you're in treatment about two weeks, you're well, right? So they stick you on the newcomers, and this little group of well folks came down the hall to get me.
They were going to carry the lot to me, and they said, we're going to go to this alcohol meeting. And I thought, great, you know, I'm a social chameleon. I can fit in. You tell me the game plan. And we walked down the hall, and I'm sort of smiling at the group, and they're all happy. And it was a little different than this. We walked into this little treatment room. They had one of these little crummy tables, a couple of beat-up chairs.
And I looked around, and I was 26 years old. I was singing in a New Wave punk band. And I looked around this room, and there was these 40- and 50-year-old guys, and they had big red noses, and they had pot bellies out to there. They were bald back to there, and they said, if you want what we've got. And I said, fuck no. I'd be willing to go to any leg not to catch that, whatever it is. I quit drinking for the next two years.
I went through two more treatment centers strung out on heroin, but I was sober. I went through treatment doing as little as anybody could possibly do, doping to the strength to get me out early, and went back to the bars, and hung out there and drank Coca-Colas and showed you how cool I was that I didn't have to use. And I relapsed. Duh. I didn't have like a re to lapse from. I called the treatment center.
I said, I think I need a refresher course. The first time didn't take. They're kind of like the fellowship. They said, we love you. Keep coming back. That'll be $10,000. I had to go through three treatment centers and spend $30,000 to find out that the meetings are free. So here I am with my second treatment, right?
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What a treat. I've been there two weeks, so I'm well, right? Met a girl in there for drug addiction and other symptoms. I found out what the other symptoms were. Now, it's one thing when you're like 12 or 13, and your parents come in on you in the bathroom and you're playing with yourself. But when you're 27 years old and you get caught naked with a girl in treatment, and you've got to go to group and apologize.
I'm sorry I threatened her sobriety. We'll sit on other sides of the couch. Can I stay? Selfless service. I got out of that treatment center doing exactly what I did the last time. Didn't get a sponsor. Didn't go to meetings. I think I showed up at 90 days to pick up my chip. There was only A. I took a couple of months, and I picked up something. It was just a joint. It was just a joint. Within two to three weeks, I was back to my drug of choice.
I was supposed to get my son for the summer. I'd lost my son and my comic book store and my wife and all that. My son and my wife, X, had moved back to Boston, Massachusetts, up at the top of America. They were going to bring him down for my brother's high school graduation in New York, and I was going to drive up from Virginia, pick him up. I came early, and my mom left her pocketbook out. Right? No penalty for any withdrawal.
I took a 20. I went into the city. I'm just going to do one. One turned into 10 and turned into 20. Turned into me nodding out in the front row of my brother's high school graduation. My wife had been to a couple of these classes, and she pulled me aside that night. She said, you know what? You can't have your kid for the summer. I said, well, I can't. She said, no. And you know what? I'm tired of telling him.
You're going to tell him. So at 11 o'clock at night, I had to tell this five-year-old boy that he couldn't spend the summer with his dad. And my kid looked up to me. He said, well, why, Daddy? I said, well, you can't. He said, well, why? I said, because I'm sick, and I can't stop taking drugs, and I'm sorry. It's not your fault. And he went and cried to his mom, and I went to the bathroom to get off.
And I wandered back to Virginia and got in a relationship with a married woman whose husband taught at the college, and she liked to do the drugs I did. The guy went to Washington, D.C. for the weekend, and she said, come on over. So I came on over, and we were having a good old time, and this guy decided to hitchhike home. Two and a half hours took him. Got back to his house on the top of this hill, climbed this big hill, happy to be home.
Got to the front door, happy to be home. Walked upstairs, happy to be home. Opened the door to the fine sight of me doing it to his wife. And I was a friend. He said, get out! I got out. And I went out back, and I sat down in my car, and I had all those feelings that we have at the bottom. I felt ashamed. I felt embarrassed. I felt disgusted with myself. I called my therapist. I said, I think I need to go to treatment.
He said, the treatment center won't take you. We only have one. And I hung up the phone. And I remembered a couple weeks later there was some deal at the local mental health government house, and I went down there, and, you know, it's the old deal. When the pupil's ready, the teacher will appear, right? And, you know, when God will just put you in places with people. I walked into this guy's office, and his name was Martin, and he said, you know Wes?
I said, well, yeah, he's my dealer. He said, well, I sent Wes to treatment down at the beach, and he's got six months clean. I said, I wonder why the dope was short. And he said, we're going to send you down to the beach, right? And I went down three hours across the state of Virginia to this little hole-in-the-wall treatment center where 30 days before I got there, they started the first NA meeting in that town in that treatment center.
And the people from the next town over were doing H&I, they were bringing it over. I'm clean today through H&I. And I walked into this treatment center in September of 1981, and I immediately noticed a serious architectural defect in the planning of the building. I wanted to let them know right away. There was no doorknob on my side of the door. And they had this detox that was like a metal cage kind of thing where they used to keep the crazy people, and they put you in there, and they shut this door, and it just slammed shut.
And I was just a three-time loser. And after four or five days of twitching and growling, some folks came down the hall to get me, right?
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And they said the words that were going to change my life. They said, would you like to go to an NA meeting? And I said, yeah. And I'd heard where I lived that there was something out in California called Narcotic Something. I thought, wow, that's cool. And I walked down this hall with this group of people, and I walked into a room, and I looked around, and it looked just like us. There was a lot more bikers back then than motorcycle guys.
I looked around this room, and I weighed 100 pounds less than I do now. My skin was yellow, my hair was matted up, my tooth was chipped in half. I was in blue pajamas, and when I sat down in that meeting, I knew that the women were checking me out. Regular stud muffin, yeah. See, my world was so crazy that I had to build a world around me that I could feel comfortable in, you know? And they read out a little white book. I'll never forget this.
It said we were addicts. We used to live and live to use. And I went, yeah, you know? And it was just everything that they read hit me right in my heart, you know? And, you know, I did treatment like I always do treatment, you know, sit in groups. You've got to get honest, motherfucker. Nothing honest about me, right? I love it. Newcomers want to do three steps, right? One, nine, and twelve. I surrender. I'm sorry. I'll help you.
You see these guys at treatment meetings, right? I do H&I, and, you know, you give your talk, and at the end, there's a guy through the whole meeting who's got his hand up. Pick me, pick me. You know what he's going to say, right? He gets up to the podium, and, you know, you say, come on up, buddy. I've worked my first three steps with my sponsor. I've been making amends to my family. I'm getting ready to do my fourth step.
These have been the best two days of my life. Sound familiar anymore? I identify. I remember I had three weeks clean, and they had an NA speaker meeting, right? And it was the biker, right? I mean, this guy was rough, you know, chains and all that. I was like, I was in blue pajamas, right? You want a piece of me? I was scared to death of this guy, right? And he got up, and he told the worst war story you wouldn't imagine, because that's all we had back then, right?
This guy talked about being through 12 treatment centers and state psychiatric hospitals. He had been in and out of the program so many times, he had 40 white chips. Forty. That's like an outfit, a belt. This guy had tried to get clean 40 times. And at the end of his talk, he sat back down, and they called him back up, and they gave him his one-year medallion. And I thought, a year, that's forever.
If that son of a bitch can stay clean a year, I can stay clean. That son of a bitch is Billy E, and this year he celebrated 23 years clean in Narcotics and Owens. I mean, amazing. And, you know, I tried to get out of treatment early, and, you know, they busted me. Finally, you know, I called on my higher power. I don't know if you know, her name's Patty. I called my girlfriend, and I said, you know, I think I should go to the halfway house.
She said, oh, no, I come all the way, and I cry home, and you have to come home. I said, what do I tell them? She said, tell them you made your mind up. So I went back to group, I said, I've made my mind up. You know, and they got it out of me. You know, they have one of those super groups, my group, the group, and they all try to tell little Kermit to surrender. If I go to the halfway house for six months, she'll leave me, and my life won't be worth living.
Aw. We were married a year later, and nine months after that, we were annulled, and my life's been great ever since. So much for iPod. So now I left treatment, right, with everybody telling me I was going to be loaded by nightfall, and basically they were right. I drove across the state of Virginia, three-hour drive, got to this little town, said seven miles to town, and the disease started talking.
And it was loud. Where can we get some dope? Where can we get some money? What kind of story can we tell the connection? We're in a Honda car. She's going to hear us. I moved out of my brother's house because he was shooting heroin. heroin, I couldn't stay there, so I moved in with my best friend who was only dealing cocaine. I made a decision. I got to this basement apartment, a hippie padded me through a mattress in an empty room,
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and I laid down on this mattress with Patty, and I started shaking. I was right between the rock and the hard place, you know, where I was going to do what I always did when I felt uncomfortable, which was use, or do something different. And something inside of me cracked, and I turned to her and I said, Patti, all I'm thinking about is how can I get away from you and where can I get some money, and I'm really scared, and I don't know how to do this shit.
She said, well, there's an AA meeting tonight, and, you know, that was it, and I said, okay, and now, folks, in 1981, in the mountains of Virginia, they were not thrilled to see drug addicts in their AA meeting. I sat down in a meeting with as much people in this section, there was 50 people in the room, and they all went around saying, hi, my name's Betty, I'm an alcoholic, and my name's Bob, I'm an alcoholic.
Everybody said, hi, Betty, hi, Bob. My name's Kermit, and I'm a drug addict, and three people said hello. I didn't care, you know. I had one of those round robins, you know, where everybody speaks, it gets to the back. It finally got to me, and I, my name's Kermit, I'm a drug addict, and all I'm thinking about is getting high, and I don't know how to do this stuff, and I'm scared. This little cowboy was next to me, had a shit-eating grin on his face, he's just smiling, right?
He had the answer, right, he's just smiling. You won't believe what this guy says to me, get this, he goes, just don't get high today. I said, well, run that by me today, you mean till I go to bed? He said, yeah. I said, I wonder why I didn't think of that. And that's what I did, I went to bed that night clean, and I woke up the next morning free. And I'm not saying I haven't had a burning desire to use since that day, because I've had some barn burners.
But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I never had to use again the rest of my life, one day at a time, in the 12-step meetings. Last month, I celebrated 22 years clean in narcotics and alcohol. And that next morning, I made a second surrender, and what that was, was the second half of the first step. It's the part we always miss. That my life was none of my business. That our lives had become unmanageable, not manageable.
Every time I managed my life, I wound up in blue pajamas. You know, my sponsor put it so simply, he said, it's your thinking that's messed up. I said, well, how much of it? He said, we usually start with all of it. So I surrendered, right, and I went to every meeting that we could get to, and we had like eight, nine meetings a week of AA, and we had this little drug counselor thing with Martin. And after four months, Martin pulled me and Wesley, this tall brother, aside, and he handed us a starter kit and said, why don't you go start one of those NA meetings?
I said, cool. I said, you know, folks, I'm not a good leader. I'm not even a good follower. I get lost, right? This guy gave us this kit, and I was like, all right, you know. And we wrote letters to all the places, you know, where they had AA meetings. We're no dummies. Like, let's get our foot in the door somewhere, right? And we sent out 40 letters to the different churches in town, and we'd get these letters back, and you could kind of read between the lines and say stuff like, the board of deacons do not feel that it is prudent at this time, and you can see right there, to have a bunch of drug-shooting junkies in our basement and give you a key.
Are you crazy? Sincerely, Reverend so-and-so. We got one letter back from this little Cherry Avenue church, and the guy said, well, we'd love to have you come and talk to us. And Wes and I, we got dressed in suits. It's a program of attraction. And we went to talk to this guy, give him our story, and he gave us the key. And I was the committee. I was on fire, right? I was the literature committee, the PI committee, the phone was at my house.
I was chairman of GNI, guilt and intimidation. I see we have the South African president here. I put up flyers wherever I thought addicts would be, and I stopped at the University of Virginia Medical Center and gave them a flyer. You know, send addicts to N.A. One meeting. And this guy calls me about two weeks before the meeting, and he says, you know, we've got this, you know, you brought that thing N.A. by here, and we've got this 15-year-old girl, she's on our sixth floor psychiatric ward, for her third time trying to commit suicide and eating speed, and we don't know what to say to her anymore.
Would you come and talk to her? I was a big guru with four months. Okay. And I don't know about committees, you know, I was a committee, so I showed up. H-not committee.
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And I went by myself, and they gave us two chairs and a room, and, you know, she sat there and I sat here. Now, when you've been using for like 12 years and you've got four months of recovery, what are you going to talk about? For an hour and 20 minutes I told this poor little girl every rotten, scummy, disgusting thing I've ever done in my whole life, and in the last five minutes I said, and I have four months clean and I go to N.A.
And she looked at me and went, okay. She was nodding and all the appropriate way, me too, me too, me too. And her name was Jennifer, and she was having trouble with the one day at a time, you know. She'd go a few days and eat some speed and go a few days and eat some speed. And after one meeting some guy was giving her a ride home and said, you know, Jennifer, if you're having so much trouble with one day at a time, why don't you not use from tonight's meeting till tomorrow night's meeting?
Jennifer said, well, I wonder why I didn't think of that. And she surrendered, and this January Jennifer will be celebrating 22 years clean in Narcotics Anonymous. We didn't have a basic text. We didn't have a white book. I took the who, what, how, why pamphlet, the pamphlet number one, and made a hundred copies because I was the literature committee. And that was our literature for like a couple of months, you know.
It was like I took these little poker chips and I put little N.A.s on them. You bet your life on N.A., have a chip. Oh, God. What we had was the therapeutic value of one addict helping another, which is without parallel, you know. And my belief is that if Narcotics Anonymous hadn't found that 15-year-old girl, I think she would have been dead by today. But instead, she got clean. She stayed clean. She graduated high school.
She got a social work degree. She married a sponsee of mine, and she lives in Richmond. And she has sponsees, and they have sponsees, and they have sponsees, you know. And, you know, when I see Jennifer every now and then, we live about an hour apart, that movie Little Big Man, my heart soars like a hawk, you know. I had about nine months clean, right, and no sponsee, of course. And I decided I was on step three, right.
So I said, okay, this is how I'm going to work step three. I'm going to look for God's will in everything. If I get stopped in a traffic light, okay, it must be God's will because there's going to be an accident up ahead. A napkin would fall off a table. It's a sign from God. But what's the deal with God? If you want to know where God is, he's right on the other side of willingness, right. And I was willing.
And I got in Patty's car one night, and, you know, she handed me the mail, and there was a letter there from the sheriff's department. I knew they wanted me to come speak. It was a warrant for my arrest, right. Paying checks knowing there's no funds in the account. I know you people have never done that. So I'm mad, right. I'm doing all this good stuff. I'm clean nine months. I'm doing the N.A., and I hold this letter up in the sky, and I'm like, all right, God, what do you want me to do about this one?
And the Beatles song, Let It Be, comes on the radio. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. I was like, shit, I've heard from the Almighty. Paul McCartney. I mean, that's as close to let go and let God as you get, right. I mean, I said, what do you want me to do about this one? And let it be comes on the radio. So I said, all right, I'm going to let go and let God. I'm going to turn this problem over to God, and I'm going to act as if he's got it already taken care of, and I'm just going to do the next right thing to do.
And that's what I did. You know, I didn't worry about it too much until the night before, and then the morning of court, right, and I got all dressed up in a suit and brought my A.A. book with me, and I'm sitting in the back row where all the guilty people sit. And I like what Richard Pryor says. I went there for justice, and that's what I found. Just us. So they call my name, right, and I'm doing the long walk.
Because it's the judge. You know the judge. The one who said, if I see you here in my court again, I'm going to try you to the fullest extent of the law. That judge. So I walk up to the guy, and he says, Mr. Osborne, you want to tell us something about this check? And I go, well, your honor, I… He said, hold it. And he calls the lawyer over for the supermarket food store, and he says, counselor, do you recognize this check's a year old?
And the guy said, well, yeah. He says, well, you can't prosecute this man in a criminal case for a check that's a year old. And the lawyer said, well, I can't. He said, no, no. Now, you can prosecute him in a civil suit and get your money back. He said, unless, Mr. Osborne, you want to pay the money you owe. What do you think the guy said? Yes, your honor, that's what I'm here to do. Pay the man $32, case dismissed.
I didn't get to open my mouth.
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See, if I had opened my mouth, I was ready to admit everything. Yes, your honor, we did break into that cigarette machine when I was 12 years old with David R. Tell him everything I've ever done wrong. God didn't want that. God just wanted willingness. And it's like I've had a deep faith in the God of my understanding since that day. And, honey, when the music plays, I listen. I moved down to the beach to get my wife away from her alcoholic father and got away from my wife.
But her father's had more problems and then finally hit bottom, and he's been sober for 15 years now. So there was something right there. And I got heavily involved in service, area, region, world. And I remember my sponsor, I had gotten an NA sponsor, and he lived 900 miles away, which God knows how many kilometers that is, but a long way. Like, you know, to Cape Town, right? And I know you guys don't do that, right?
It's nuts up. And I wasn't calling him regularly. And so I decided to get a local sponsor, and I went to the 5th Virginia Convention of NA. And there was a guy there named Michael. He was just a quiet, soft-spoken kind of guy and, you know, just humble, kind of leader that just naturally led. And I grabbed him on the steps, and he knew I was going to bitch about something because I was a purist radical.
And I said, Michael, and he looked at me, and I hadn't done this in a while, you know. And I said, would you be my sponsor? And tears came up in his eyes. And he said, I'd be honored to be your sponsor. Honored. I mean, that's the kind of guy he is. And he said, where are you at on these steps? I said, I don't know. Seven, one. You tell me I'm lost. He said, well, what's the last thing you did? I said, well, I wrote the first three steps and sent them to Joseph.
He said, good, we're going to do a fourth step. I said, great. I can screw up for a year now. We had a four-step guy back there with like 500 questions about your mother's sex life. You know, I knew I could just… He said, no, no, I just want you to write about three things. I said, three things? Okay. He said, resentment, sex, and fear. I said, well, I could do that in a sentence. I said, I was resentful and fearful that my wife wouldn't give me sex.
He said, and I'm going to give you an appointment for a fifth step. I said, a what? He said, an appointment. I said, what's that for? He said, well, four steps are really nine and 20. I said, nine and 20? He said, yeah, nine months to worry about it, 20 minutes to write. He said, I'll give you a deadline and then you'll… I hate when they're right around here. So he gave me this deadline and I started writing.
And there's something magical about writing on a piece of paper. It's like if you get quiet and you ask God to come in and you start writing, amazing stuff will come out. Of course, there's some of us, the greatest story ever told. But I was learning to be a travel agent and I was typing. So I'm typing on this typewriter and my fingers just started moving. And it said, I felt abandoned when Georgie left home.
And I started crying. And it was my older sister had left home when she was like 16 and I was 12 and left me with my crazy family. Here's my family theme song. We'll get into that later. You look up dysfunctional in the dictionary and there's a picture of my family smiling. You know, I wrote out this inventory and I went to do the fifth step with my sponsor and a botanical garden, you know, with flowers at sunset.
And, you know, the best story I ever heard about a fifth step, right? This guy's doing his fifth step with a sponsor and the sponsor says, well, read what's on the paper and add anything on that comes up when you're talking. And so the guy's reading and he's adding and he's reading and he's adding and he's reading and adding. And eight hours later, he finally gets the last sentence. And sponsor said, is that it?
And the guy says, yep, that's it. Sponsor said, you sure? Yep, yep. Nothing else. We got it all. That's all. Sure. Finished. Sponsor said, you sure? He says, yep, yep. He says, well, give me a hug. I'll see you at the meeting. And the sponsor, he starts to leave his sponsor's apartment and he gets almost out the door and he drops that one last thing. I fucked a chicken! The sponsor yells back, Did yours die too?
There are only so many things that the human mind and body can perform and honey, we've done them all, right? So if you think your stuff is so weird
[00:30:00]
that you're going to be rejected, forget it, right? So I told him about my chickens and then he told me about his and I went, oh, you're sick. He said, yeah, so are you, my friend. That's why we're working these steps. It was the funniest thing. I got a new sponsee for Arizona. The guy, he had like a hot 30 days clean, and he owned a farm, and he calls me up. He says, my chicken died. I said, sure it did. We laughed for five minutes.
So, I took, I shared all my inventory with my sponsor, and, you know, I got all this stuff out, all the pain, and all the hurt, and the losses, and the stuff I'd screwed up, and then he pulled out a little, he had made little notes, and he relayed stuff in his life that was exactly like mine. It may be a little different here, a little there, but, you know, his family's nuts, and all that stuff. And at the end of all that stuff, he took my inventory, and he rolled it up in a tube, and he held it in front of my eyes, and he said, not forever, and not for always, but at this moment in time, are you entirely ready to have God remove these defects?
He said, all this pain, and all this hurt. And I said, yeah. And we bowed our heads, and we shared that willingness with God. And we went back to his house in Virginia Beach, and we got on his front lawn, and we put the papers in a pile, and he said, what's your favorite prayer? And I said, well, just for today. And we got on our knees, and we lit them on fire, and we said, just for today. And we humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
And I like to say, if you get real spiritual, and write your resentments on a piece of paper, and light them on fire, they'll be gone. Addicts will be running around, here, burn this shit, here. Now, the sixth and seventh step is a process. You know, there's like, you can do a spiritual one, but then there's a process about that step. And what it was for me was that, when I wrote about all my defects and shortcomings, was that they became real to me.
And every time I tried to act on them, it would hit me like a two-by-four, you know. I think I'll lust after that girl at the dance, and say, well, you went home alone the last ten times. I think I'll spend on that credit card, that'll make me feel good. It's like, yeah, but you're paying off five others. I hit a bottom with this about six months later, at a regional, where I was supposed to be elected RSR alternate.
And they elected somebody else, and he didn't even have the clean time requirement. Didn't they know who I was? Yeah, that's why they didn't elect you. No, God knew who I was. God didn't want me running around, world this and that. He wanted me to stay home and do my work. And my sponsor, Michael H. and I, chair, we went aside, and he gave me an assignment, right. He said, I want you to go home and write down everything you're doing, or not doing, that's keeping you from God's will for you.
I was like, ugh. And I went home, and you know, it's like, when you're in the middle of that six and seven step, it's a really short list. Because it's right up here, and you're using all your power to push it back. You know, I don't want to deal with that. My sponsor, Joseph, used to say, we say, this too shall pass, this too shall pass. He says, no, this too gets buried. You know, something comes up, it's emotional, it's difficult, we push it down and bury it.
Put a band-aid over it, do something short and quick. He said, the answer is, this too shall dissolve. It means it's gone. That when I write an inventory, it's not on there anymore, because it's healed. So, I went home and write down this list, you know, I got to get up in the morning with my son, I got my son back in recovery. You know, what a miracle, you know. And, it's like, my wife, my wife hit bottom, she was drinking in Boston with my running partner, and she called me up and said, I need to go to treatment, would you take your son back?
I didn't have to serve papers, nothing. I had gotten a woman who moved in with me, and that week I got the phone call. I got him in the wonder years, it was a wonder I didn't kill him. He had a lot of resentments, and we had to grow up together, you know. But, you know, I wrote this list, I got to quit procrastinating. You know, why put off till tomorrow, what you can put off till the day after, I always say.
If you just did everything right now that you were responsible to do, you'd be happy, joyous and free. Oh, who would want to do that? I haven't got time for that. I got to quit playing with my son, I did that every day whether I needed it or not. You get these guys after the meeting, really related on that, playing with my son. Can you give me a hand with that? I'm like, I don't think so.
[00:35:01]
Call your sponsor. I wrote this list, and I looked at it, and I went, yeah. And I went to bed, and I woke up the next morning, and I said, alright, I surrender. I'm sick and tired, running my game for the glorious ability to be right. Old Kermit killed himself, yeah, but he was right. And I had a profound change. And I went back to that town, I was living in the mountains for some conference, and I walked past the street where I used to shoot dope.
I walked past the ghetto where I used to hang all day long, and it dawned on me that I didn't know what it felt like to be that guy that was in the streets. I had changed that much, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. I made a list of all persons who had harmed me, and made sure they made amends to me. I made a list of all persons I had harmed, and I went over with my sponsor, and I made a deal.
Most of my family was in New York City, and I set it up. My grandmother's here, my stepsister's here, my brother's there, and the NA meeting clubhouse is here. I'm going to end at NA. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I went through all of them, and got down to the clubhouse, and walking down the street to the clubhouse, she happened to have become an NA member, was a girl that I'd taken advantage of when we were kids in camp.
And it was some 30 years before that. And I just said, OK, God. It's like when you get into that step, God's going to put people in your life right where they're supposed to be. And I got to sit down with this girl, and I got to make amends. My sponsor used to say, he got clean, and he was living in Memphis, Tennessee, and he said, I ran around town saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He said, I was the sorriest motherfucker in Memphis, Tennessee.
He said, I'm sorry I got caught. That's the only thing I was sorry about. He taught me that amends doesn't mean I'm sorry. Amends means living in a way that it doesn't happen again. And if you look at the sixth and seventh step, it teaches us to change the way we live. If we're greedy, to be generous. If we're fearful, to walk in faith. So that when you say, I'm sorry that I haven't been a part of your life, mom or dad, then you have to change and start being a part of their life.
That's what amends means. It means making it right. The tenth step, these are not necessarily the views of Narcotics Anonymous. They're what work for me. So if you want what I've got, you probably need more therapy. The tenth step for me is a deeper working of my sixth and seventh step. The tenth step for me is when I go back and I heal everything. When I go back to my childhood and I deal all that stuff.
I mentioned Adam's family. I had a workaholic father that was non-existent because he was over here half the time. And I had a mother who was a depressive. And when my father left, my mother let the dogs and cats go to the bathroom all over our house. And we lived in one of the wealthiest towns in America. And my father got married to my stepmother, a young girl. And I ended up getting high with them when I was 13.
The first time, smoking dope. And I had a baby brother, a stepbrother who was a five-year-old boy. And he was a cute little blonde-haired, cute, cute kid. We all loved him. He had seven brothers and sisters, loved him dearly. And he was happy all the time. And Michael was in an apartment in the Bronx in New York. And he was sitting on the 13th floor. And he was on the windowsill. And he heard a siren. He wanted to see what it was.
And he leaned against the screen. And the screen fell through. And he dropped 13 floors and died. And my stepmother. My stepmother. My stepmother was my rock and my salvation. She was the only one that was in my court, you know. She picked up a fifth of alcohol and drank a fifth of liquor every day for 20 years until it killed her. Not before molesting me when I was 15. And, you know, my ex-wife. The plaintiff, right?
My last wife, right? She used to say to me, we'd go to family functions. And, you know, she was from a very, you know, white kind of community where the normal shit. We'd leave the house and she'd go, it's a miracle you've come from where you are. Coming from this. The 11th step for me. I have trouble sitting and meditating, you know. My sponsor used to tell me, get a little birthday candle and light it and sit there.
[00:40:01]
And you can't move until it goes out. Fuck that shit. What I decided I would do was to repeat positive stuff. You know, because I spent so much time repeating negative stuff. You know, you're a loser, you're a jerk, you're a fool. She's not going to want to go out with you. So I started. One of the things they told me in treatment was to repeat, if God is for me, who can be against me? And I repeated it all the time, year after year.
I do laps, you know, I'd swim in the pool. If God is for me. And, you know, it was after about 11 years of doing this, it dawned on me one day. If God is for me, why am I against me? Why am I against me? And the other one I really like is whatever's going on in my life, God has it already taken care of. It was real interesting. A few months ago, I was speaking somewhere and it dawned on me that the spiritual principle in the 12th step is unconditional love.
Right. That's what they say. The spiritual principle is unconditional love. And it dawned on me. What are conditions? And I realized that defects of character are conditions. Right. That greed, envy, pride, jealousy, lust, anger, fear. Those things are conditions that keep me from being of service to God and to be of service to other people. And that in the sixth and seventh step, when I remove those things, it makes me a free and open channel to be there for the miracle.
You know, and it's like for me, it's like everything I've gotten, I've gotten as a blessing of Narcotics Anonymous. I don't have the heart to say no, you know, when they want me to do anything. You know, my 11th year clean, I had a codependent meltdown. I lost my house, my wife, my business, a half a million dollars. And then knowing up the government tax man, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Newcomers keep coming back. It gets better. And all that pain just drove me to my knees and drove me to, you know, go seek help. And and when all my work was done and, you know, left the plaintiff. God brought the woman of my dreams into my life. You know, in my 11th year, I had a year of depression. I mean, every day, the best I could do was go swim laps and get my endorphins going so I can make it through that day.
And, you know, I was speaking at a workshop in Virginia and she was in Baltimore and drove down to the workshop and heard me speak. And Sunday morning, she said, you know, can I call you because you just you've been divorced for one year and you're happy and I'm in the middle of divorce and I want to know how to get from miserable to happy. And I said, sure, you know, and it's just carrying the message.
I was just trying to be of service. And I did that for four months, just nothing, nothing there, just helping. And in one of our talks late one night, you know, she talked about, you know, sex or something, you know, and I said, you know, I don't I don't even need sex. I wouldn't mind to have someone hold me. You know, I've just been so alone for so long. And she said, well, I could do that. And I blew it off.
OK. You know, I told my sponsor, Rich, one of my older sponsors, and I told him, get out of here, man. Go down there. I said, you think she's busy, right? But, you know, she truly meant that her mother had died. She was an only child and she was her world was just falling apart. And I sent her a teddy bear for her mom's, you know, as a gift. And it was an angel bear. Find out she loves angels and her whole house is full of angels.
And it was the right one. Right. And I went down there and we had the most wild weekend. And about within a week, I started telling her that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. And you tell any people like that and the negative committee shows up. Oh, no, you can't do that. You know, for six months. Why don't you really? When God touches two people's hearts like he's touched ours, there's no maybe about it.
Right. She used to go to meetings in Baltimore and there was this guy, Omar, who's like, you know, one of the old timers. And she said, you know, Omar, I don't know. You know, maybe maybe God has some plan for me, but I don't. And Omar looked at her and said, James, there's no maybe about it. God most certainly has a plan for you. And it's better than anything you could ever dream of. And, you know, she would sit and go, you know, all right, God, I'm holding on.
But if you got that plan, you better show it to me. And, you know, about two months after that, we've got together and we've been together four years married, and she's the love of my life. And I was speaking in San Diego, California, and it was our anniversary week, and so she came with me, and there was this deal where you could rent a boat, right, with a captain kind of boat, for about four hours, and I said, shit, I'm going to do this, right, and
[00:45:01]
I rented the boat. It was a surprise. And she comes. to the beach and she said, well, where's the surprise, and the captain walks up and says, ready to board, sir? I said, absolutely, you rented the boat, and I said, yep, and we got on this boat and drove out into San Diego Harbor and they do fireworks over the harbor and we put on the only tape they had, which was Frank Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra's singing, I'm staying on this boat in San Diego Harbor with the love of my life, getting ready to speak at an N.A. convention in front of 4,000 addicts, and Frank's singing, that's life, shot down in March and up in May and I thought to myself, you know, if I had used in that 11th year, when life didn't look like it was going the way I thought it would be, I'd have missed the whole damn thing.
I won't stop five minutes before the miracle. After I had a year clean, I went to the Virginia convention and I met a guy from Connecticut, which is where my sister lives, way up here, and I'm down here, and his name was Danny S, he's passed away, and I said, Danny, I got a couple of good sick ones in Connecticut, my sister and her husband, use an addict, I said, would you give them a call, and this guy took five minutes of his time, you know, when he drove home to pick up a phone and call his girl, and my sister said, yeah, cool, Michael's getting out of prison, he's been there three years, and I'm, you know, sick and tired of being the addict wife, bringing the dope in, so we're not going to go down to the Avenue Cop anymore, we're going to send someone else, yeah, that'll work for an hour, and she took this guy's number and threw it in a drawer, and Michael got out, and on the third time, he decided to go himself and it was a sting, and they busted him, and they took him back to prison, and my sister Juliet called this guy, Danny S, and he got her to a meeting, and she kicked in her bathtub, she sweated it out, and went to meetings every night, and this January, I got an email from her, and it said, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, she had 20 years clean of narcotics and alcohol, my brother's got 15 years, my stepmother's second stepmother has 17 years clean, and I've got two sisters working on the 90 days, you know, my running partner at 17 years old was a concert violinist, he was going to go to Juilliard and learn how to be a conductor, and he did 300 milligrams of methadone, overdosed and died.
My other running partner married my wife after I left, he drank himself to death and had hepatitis C, and my last running partner, my brother, you know, the one that we always got each other out of trouble, you know, he'd get in trouble in New York, I'd bring him to Virginia, I'd get in trouble in Boston, he'd take me to New York, and I tried to sell N.A. really hard, and he didn't want it, and then he tried it, and came in and out, and one of his outs, he picked up the AIDS virus, and eight years ago, we buried him from AIDS, you know, it was not nice.
Everything I have today, I have because of the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, and when N.A. asked me to do anything, I don't have the heart to say no, you know, I'm going to end with a song, I hope you're open-minded, and it sums up everything that I believe about Narcotics Anonymous, and I heard it at a convention in Georgia some 20 years ago, and it was so moving, and I said to the girl, Gail, I said, can I use that song when I do my talk, she said, oh, it's a gift from God, pass it on, and it's called The Last Time I Saw Michael, and it goes like this. Oh, good, accompaniment. Someone introduced us somewhere, I don't remember now, I guess we started talking, but I don't know what about. Michael was from Florida, by way of NYC, and from that moment on, he became a friend to me. Well, I always used to see him, and sometimes we'd drop by, and every time he'd be alone, just trying to get high. The high was never high enough, he tried day after day, and helplessly I watched his spirit simply slip away. God, he used to sit and brag, the money and the dope he had, but I just can't forget how sad Michael looked to me. Well, I saw the evening papers, they called it heart attack, but I know damn full and well he overdosed on smack, so now the party's over, they've gone and rented out his space, I never will quite forget the look on Michael's face. God, he used to sit and brag, the money and the dope he had, but I just can't forget how sad Michael looked to me. Well, I'd like to say in closing, the
[00:50:00]
story's sad but true, and somewhere lives a Michael in me and all of you, and I am deeply grateful for what I have today, because I would be where he is if it wasn't for N.A.