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Source: Brendon M – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-12-18.m4a File: brendon-m-box-of-chocolates-2025-12-18.mp3 Duration: 00:50:49
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Thank You Ramona. Everybody my name is Brendan. I'm an alcoholic. I'm grateful to be here and grateful to be sober. It's nice. Yeah, I was here. It was a few years ago and it's always nice to be asked back. If I remember correctly because I remember things where that go weird for me is I remember it was not my best night, actually. I remember I kind of froze up on what I wanted to say and got caught up in about a self and you know, you guys might not have remembered it, but I did, right, because anything about me, I am really good at remembering, right?
My number one topic to think about is me. So for me, I'm like, oh my god, they let me back. It wasn't so bad, you know, but I am grateful to be here and just to get the you know, the official stuff out of the way, I do have a sobriety date, which is February 25th of 2011. I have a sponsor who I have an active relationship with, meaning, you know, I talk to him on a regular basis. He knows what's going on in my life and thankfully, I think I'm pretty much still sponsorable.
I have a home group, which I'm grateful to be a member of. I mean, it's been one of the greatest experiences of my life is being a member of that home group and growing with it. In there, I learned how to be a man, how to be a good AA, how to put other people in front of myself, how to, you know, like do stupid stuff, like make coffee for, you know, a whole bunch of people, but also learn how to put my hand out to a guy who's shaking and doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
And because of that, I've actually, you know, I've had the experience of sponsoring other guys and that's been an amazing experience in itself. You know, I wasn't sure, like, you know, which direction to go. You try not to think about it, but you always do. I don't know. I don't care who you are, you always, you know, think about it, you know, and you know, there's a, I was looking for something in the book and the first thing I opened up to just happened to be the thing we read at the beginning of my home group.
And I'm only gonna read a small portion of it because it's a couple paragraphs, but you know, back a couple years ago, we made a group conscious decision to change the readings we do in the beginning of the meeting. And we decided to, we all fell on page 25 and there is a solution and how we do it, the two paragraphs starting at there is a solution, almost none of us like, yada, yada, yada. Don't worry, you don't got to worry about reading. I'm gonna cut down to the next part. But yeah, we go down through that second paragraph and and the part that really just kind of stuck out to me is on that set, the paragraph, it's actually the second full paragraph down and it says in the middle there that the central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and our lives and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.
He has commenced to accomplish those things for us, which we could never do by ourselves. And I'll tell you the the value of that in there and the truth to that takes on more and more of a texture and a depth to me over the years. You know, I came into AA and I didn't want anything to do with God or anything like that and you know, to be able to say that today, I mean, it's just, it's insane. I mean, you know, night and day change, you know, we talk about a complete rearrangement of thoughts, ideas, and motives, things that were the guiding force of a person's life, you know, get, you know, basically like a 180 turn and a whole different set of motives and stuff comes to take over it. And you know, if you would have told me, you know, you know, at the end of February 2011, that everything was gonna change so drastically,
[00:05:03]
I would have been like, oh, that's nice. You know, that's some nicey nice stuff. I know you got to say that stuff because we're in AA and all that, but I'll be damned if it ain't the truth. You know, I just to you know, give you a kind of what it was like briefly, you know. You know, like I talked in the beginning about, you know, I'm a self-centered person just by nature and you know, I've been like, my whole life was that and I could still be that today, absolutely.
But you know, from the time I was a kid, I just always was locked upstairs, you know. I was always worried about you know, like what you were thinking about me. I was just consumed with that whole idea about, you know, what I was supposed to be. And like I said, you know, what you were thinking about me, like I talked about how, you know, I remember talking here, you know, a couple of years ago. I remember having this moment where I got all stuck in my head.
I remember that. Most people are like, I don't care. I wasn't paying attention. Right. But that type of stuff sticks to me. Right. And I spent my whole life locked in that. Locked in that prison of self, you know, we talk in the third step about the bondage of self. And I always liken that to be in that prison of myself. You know, the self being, you know, my self-seeking, my self-pitying, my self-aggrandizement, my self-importance, self, self, self, self, self.
And when I'm thinking about me, you know, it just for some reason always feels hellish. You know, and when I was a kid, like I just it's not like I knew that that wasn't right. You know, there's a line in the doctor's opinion and it says to him, his alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And that's with my drinking, but also just with every else, every other part of me, you know, like I didn't know that other kids weren't so self-consumed all the time.
I thought everybody was like that, you know, and I thought, well, everybody's just so uncomfortable. I just, you know, maybe I'm just, you know, I have a hard time with it and they don't. I didn't realize that, you know, and. You know, and it's it's one of those things, it's it's not like I knew that that I wasn't supposed to think that way, you know, and, you know, I just thought that thinking of, you know, because everybody, you know, I remember when my mom would be like, you know, stop thinking about yourself.
You know, why are you always thinking about yourself? Didn't you think about what other people need and other people's wants? And, you know, and I like to me, I'm like, no, no, I didn't think about what other people wanted. And, you know, in my mind, it just transcribed into that I was a bad kid, you know, and that I wasn't normal. I'm a bad kid and there's something wrong with me. And, you know, and that went on through my childhood until I met this magic thing, you know, that that answered that problem.
And that was alcohol. You know, and I met what met up with alcohol very young, you know, I remember, you know, it was like that the light introductions, if you will, you know, bouncing on my grandfather's name and when we drink his beer and stuff like that, you know, maybe drinking a beer at a family party or some. And then I remember when I was about six, we were having a Christmas party and, you know, it was all us, you know, my mom, my dad, my three older sisters, my grandmother and my grandfather and stuff.
And my mom, but wine around the table for everybody, as she would do every year. And, you know, and I remember I ran around the table and I drank everybody's wine and I didn't like get into a fight with anybody. I didn't start causing any problems, but I do remember that I had this warm feeling and I remember laughter and all that stuff. And, you know, I didn't end up going from there and starting drinking every single day.
But a seed was planted, you know, that would later come to fruition, you know, come to bear fruit, if you will. And, you know, I grew up around alcoholism. My father was a violent alcoholic, and I don't think that necessarily makes me an alcoholic. Now, I got three older sisters who to this day, you know, don't show any signs of alcoholism as I've come to know it. You know, they could take a drink and leave it alone.
They could, you know, drink and have a drink they don't like the taste of and pour it out, which to me is like blasphemy.
[00:10:05]
You know what I mean? Like, how dare you? You're like, I might not like the way a drink tastes, but I'm not pouring it out. You know, how dare you be so wasteful? Right. And, you know, and, you know, so there was always something different about my drinking. And, you know, I remember being a kid, you know, like my father, like I said, my father was a violent alcoholic. I remember being a kid and saying, you know, I'll never be like that.
I'll never be like him. And I wasn't able to see the difference or I wasn't able to see the similarity between his drinking and my drinking. Because him, you know, and I heard the alcoholic word very young was, you know, my idea was violence and all that stuff. And to me, it was just fun and family and all that. And, you know, I, you know, when I was 10, my father ended up committing a suicide as a direct result of this illness.
And it was on Christmas. And, you know, I remember, you know, like, you know, having this like absolute, like, it's not like I, you know, and it's not like that turned me to drink. And I don't think that was it either. But what I did feel at that time was an absolute loss with any kind of connection or any kind of possibility of any kind of connection with the God in my understanding. And the let me just take a sip of my drink real quick.
The. Yeah, I was raised Catholic and I did all the stuff we were supposed to do. So I thought, right now, I did the good boy things that you're supposed to do. Baptism, penance, communion, confirmation. Right. I followed the rules. And in my mind, if you followed the rules, nothing bad was supposed to happen to you. And then, you know, people would say all this stuff about God and I bet God. It wasn't around my house.
I didn't see no God. I see my mom pray all the time. I see my mom beg for God to help her. I see my mom go to church and all this stuff. And yet she still had to suffer all that stuff. The abuse of my father, the drinking, the suicide, you know, and then that same around that same time period, her mother and her father both died. You know, I mean, so my idea was don't tell me there is any God that has any love or anything for me.
And, you know, having that loss of God, you know, you know, and then a comment from that, you know, like any kid, you know, I started to gravitate towards other kids who came from troubled houses. And we did what a lot of kids do. You know, we got into drinking and, you know, we we would sneak into older sisters and brothers bedroom drawers to sneak out what kind of party finale they had. Or we'd go into the parents liquor cabin and steal what we could out of there.
And, you know, and that kind of gravitate and grow until I remember one night specifically, a bunch of us were out in the woods and and each of us had thrown out about five bucks for a guy to go to the liquor store and get us a bunch of beer. And I remember, you know, everybody had their own six pack and and I drank my six pack and my other buddy only drank about three of his. So I drank the rest of his and my other buddy only drank for his.
So I drank his, too. And I just went around playing cleanup crew. Right. And, you know, I never thought anything about that. But the one thing I knew I felt more than anything that night was. You know, just like all this up here, all that noise, all that worrying about what you were thinking about me, all that worrying about, you know, what I was supposed to be, all that thinking about, you know, all the stuff going on with my family, all that stuff about all that gone.
An absolute solution to my problem had quieted down this thing inside my head, and I was able to have fun and be a part of and, you know, and not be so locked up in that prison. And when you find a solution like that to a problem that you've been living with her for at that point, 10, 11 years, you know, why am I not going to do that ever again?
[00:15:01]
And I did, you know, and straight through high school, I drank every chance I got, you know, and, you know, and like my drinking, even from a very young age, I mean, it was always to excess. I mean, I would drink to the point to where I would throw up and then go and rinse my mouth out just so I could go back to drink again. And I would tell people when I was a kid that I did that because I'm not no punk.
Right. I could keep drinking. I could hold my right when really I didn't realize at that time that I had triggered an allergy inside of me that had to be filled and fed no matter what. And now I'll go on with my drinking like that until I was 32 years old and there was a lot of red flags along the way. I mean, you know, underage drinking charges, getting kicked out of homeroom class in school because I came in acting all funny.
You know, I remember I had to go to rehab in high school because I got caught with some stuff. And, you know, like all these little things that happened that, you know, like I just thought they were just inconvenient things that happened to me. You know, like the police always ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time. You know what I mean? They shouldn't have been there. If the cops weren't there, everything would have been fine.
And, you know, it's I when I graduated high school, which I graduated by the skin of my teeth, I remember I started to realize, you know, there's a problem and the problem was New Jersey. I grew up in North Jersey and I realized if I get out of New Jersey, everything will be fine. I'm going to go move to New York and I'll be better there, you know, because I'll be around people who understand their cooler and all that stuff.
And I moved to Queens, New York. Just so happened that I met a girl at a nightclub who, you know, this nightclub called the Tunnel and she had an apartment. I needed an apartment. So it worked out beautifully. And so obviously that meant I was in love with her, too. And we moved in together about three months later. We got engaged through alcoholic form. And, uh, I went on and, you know, uh, you know, there was some good things in there. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I've always had this ability to get jobs straight throughout high school.
I always had a job, you know, and then even when I moved to New York, I got this really good job as a, as a junior executive for a security company that handled all the, uh, the New York city housing authority buildings in, uh, a lot of the large apartment buildings and, and, and, uh, you know, great job. And they were, they were trying to prime me to be a great executive and it was fantastic. Um, I remember, you know, on, on Fridays, I would sit around with the boss and, uh, and like the, uh, the vice president and the construction manager and the security manager, all these guys that we sit around and we drink Sam Pooka and coffee.
And, you know, we talk about business and, you know, like Bill talked about in his story, you know, I had arrived and drink was taking on an exhilarating part of my life. Don't tell me there's anything wrong with it. You know, and that went on. And, you know, there's a, there's a weird thing about sales though, is when you're in sales, they want you to sell stuff and I seem to have a problem with doing that.
At least I had a problem with writing the proposals up. I go to the appointments and I price it all out, but I always just, you know, forget the PR, you know, write it out because I'd always get like all like weird in my head. Like, Oh, if I write this, they're not going to take it. And I get so worried about them not taking the deal that I wouldn't even hand it in. Right. I would sell myself short on so many things.
There's that part in, in, uh, the fourth step and, uh, talking about fear and it talks about fear as an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence is shot through with it and that fear should be classed with stealing. It seems to do more damage. Right. And, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've robbed myself of great opportunities because I was afraid, you know, and I get all afraid and I get all worked up and I drink.
And my first thing when I drink, like Bill talks about is, uh, you know, the fierce determination of wind came back. Right. And, uh, my fierce determination of wind just happened to be, let's get out of New York and move down to Florida. And, uh, you know, my girlfriend or my then wife, her mother had a house down in Florida and she said we could go stay down there. And I did that thing. You know, I moved down there.
Everything got great for a little while. Got the job, got everything. Everything's fantastic. Boom. I show up again. You know,
[00:20:01]
that always will happen. You know, and after a little while the wife left me because of my drinking, you know, cause the paychecks wouldn't come home because I was doing things with other women that are married men shouldn't be doing that. You can never get an honest word out of my mouth and she left me and rightfully so. And, uh, it's funny cause until I did my first four step, I would tell people that we split amicably.
She ended up leaving me three days before Christmas because all that, you know, and, uh, she gave me chance after chance, you know, and then my drink always became was a priority and it didn't matter cause at that time I had my eyes on another woman anyway and that other woman, I would get her to take me in cause I'm really good at that. And then I would destroy her life as well. Oddly enough, she ended up become the second woman after the woman after my wife ended up becoming a drug and alcohol counselor. And, you know, I like to say I played a part in her great career that she has now. Um, I was priming her with everything she needed for personal experience.
And, uh, you know, but she left me, I ended up leaving, you know, and I moved back up to New Jersey cause any, like any tough guy, like any, you know, everything, I moved back up to my family when everything goes wrong. And, uh, my sister let me stay at her house cause, uh, you know, I was in Florida. I couldn't pay the rent on my own and all that stuff. And around this time I started to notice that there was something going on and I wasn't sure what it was. And of course, after I moved up to Jersey, you know, things got better, start drinking again, yada, yada, yada, same old story.
And, uh, I remember I went to this therapist and, uh, she'd give me this book and the name of it was wherever you go, there you are. And I thought I didn't learn to realize later to the truth, to the name of that book. You know, I can't run far enough or fast enough to escape myself. There is no place in this world that I could go that will escape what's going on in here. And I tried and I tried and I tried.
And I remember after about the third visit with that, that there, but she said, well, listen, how about you stop drinking and we can work on your problems? Yeah. I said, well, how about, how about we work on my problems and then I won't want to drink no more. And she said, I'm sorry, Mr. Manley, it don't work. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. It don't work like that. And, uh, so obviously she had none for me. So I stopped seeing her.
But the one thing that woman did is she did give me my first meeting was for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't go at first. It was probably a few months later when I ended up going after one of those long weekends where, you know, the paycheck, the bank accounts overdrawn, you know, I was late for work, you know, the way it woke up, only to kill myself because I did it again. One of those things. I remember I went into my first meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous.
I looked at everybody there. I judged and I compared their outsides to my insides and I hung out. I was respectful. I waited until the end of the meeting and then I left. But then I was like, they don't got none for me. Look at them. They're different. You know, cause I'd go in and I'd see them laughing and joking around and having a good time. And by this time I had tried to stop drinking a few times.
And every time I try to stop drinking, the last thing I want to do is laugh and joke around. You know, I remember one guy saying one time, he said, you know, my idea of sobriety is feeling the way I feel the first day of being sober for the rest of my life. And that's how I think it's going to be because I don't know any better because I don't know that you guys did the work and all that stuff in order to feel that way. You know, and I went on and on.
I ended up catching a DUI in Manhattan and uh, as a part of that and you know, I had to go to AA and I went to AA and I went to the meetings and you know, I'd leave, I'd go and the people were always nice to me. They'd all, you know, I'd tell them like I had 90 days when I didn't have 90 minutes, you know, and they'd say, Oh, that's nice. Brendan, keep coming back. You know, cause they knew, they knew I was full of it.
And I would both tell myself that story and you know, they probably said the most amazing AA pitch lines ever, but there ain't getting no, like no getting through this head. You know, when it's going, that internal dialogue is so intense that no matter what you're saying to me, I can't hear it. You know, and it's until I'm beaten to a state of reasonableness that I won't be able to hear that.
[00:25:00]
And I went on going to AA meetings that last couple of years and I said, Rob, am I drinking? You know, I'd go sometimes two to six meetings a week and I'd leave and I'd drink and I'd wake up and I'd want to kill myself. And that went on over and over and over and over. And I tried to stop drinking and I drink again and I try everything I externally that I could possibly do to make this go away. And nothing made it go away.
I'm grateful that I tried every other damn house on this block before I finally sat, came in and sat down. Talc Oaks Anonymous because I had to try everything else before I was going to believe what you guys were telling me. And, uh, in February of 2011, after, uh, a situation where I had a hit and run DUI and it was in my sister's truck. The sister, very sister was letting me stay at her house. Um, yeah, I had a hit and run DUI and down in Atlantic city where I just ended up one night. I'd never been to Atlantic city, but I was drinking and it seemed like a great idea. And, uh, you know, I ended up, uh, in a hit and run DUI. I tried to run from the cops, got about four blocks.
They caught up with me cause there's no big fancy getaway when you're drunk. I mean, I was stumbling like an idiot. There was, there was no question about who the drunk guy was walking down the street. And, uh, yeah, I remember I came out of jail the next morning. Hmm. I remember I came out of jail the next morning and, uh, I just figured I was just gonna wander and, you know, disappear. And, uh, no, the thing is, you know, homeless is horrible. It's not fun.
Homeless on the beach in the Northeast in February is a thousand times worse. Now there is no escape in the cold. And I remember I'd sleep in the bathrooms of the casinos and I'd wander around and I'd try to steal drinks from people who are in the casinos. And I'd pick up the cigarette butts off the street and out of the ashtrays and smoke them. You know, living that life of absolute depravity, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
You know, and I remember, uh, you know, the one that I just got to the point where I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I went into the bathroom. I was standing on top of a toilet with a belt around my neck, thanking a God who I didn't believe in to take my life because I couldn't do it anymore. You know, I'm begging, I remember begging him to help me drop to my knees because I just can't do this anymore. And I don't know what happened, but all I could tell you is that God did tell him for me that I could not do for myself. He took my life that night and he gave me a new one.
You know, cause the next thing I know, I'm, I ended up, you know, in a police station telling him I needed help. And then in a psych ward. And, uh, at the end of my stay at the psych ward, they had said, listen, you go go to Wilmington, Delaware, or you could go to Wilkesboro PA. And, uh, I didn't know anything about either of those towns. I asked them, I really asked them, you know, is there a place with like beaches or some of their mountains? And they said, you are homeless. You have no money.
You don't have insurance. You don't have a job. Your family is not coming to get you. Your only other option is to go back out there and be homeless in the winter. And you know, when they put it that way, I said, I guess Wilmington sounds nice. And, uh, and I do believe God puts you exactly where you need to be. Cause my first night here, I was in a TV room with a bunch of guys and, uh, everybody was talking and joking about their experiences.
They were talking about things I had done. You know, they were talking about some of the depraved things they had done. They had talked about, you know, their efforts to try and stop and their failures. And I listened to all of them, especially this one guy. I listened to him. And I heard him like, you know, you listen to some people, but I heard him. Like I heard him in a way I'd never heard somebody before.
[00:30:02]
And then the night, you know, everybody went to sleep except for me and that one guy. And he came over to me and he said, so what happened? He didn't come over and talk to me about my drinking. I had heard him talk about his drinking all night long. And I knew he drank like I drank. He felt like I felt and he did like I did. And because of that, I had that moment of identification that you can only find in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that guy ended up being my first sponsor. You know, we would read through the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. He would take me through through the chapters and you know, because even in the beginning, I mean, I'd read stuff and I'd had to read it like five times over just because my head was still so crazy. It took a couple of months before that finally started to slow down. And when I was able to read something without having to go back over and read the same paragraph multiple times, but I would read through stuff and he would say, do you know what that means?
And usually I'd say, yeah. Yeah. And then he asked me and I'm back. All right. I don't know. Yeah, and true true to form, right? I don't want to look bad by saying I don't know something that might save my life. And you know, and he he would point it out to me and he would help me understand what alcoholism was. Those times where I thought I was insane. He pointed out that that's just alcoholism. I get no doubt that you wanted to stop, but you are fighting a power that is so much greater than yourself.
And in order to stay sober, you are going to need a power that is so much greater than your alcoholism to keep you sober. And I found that power through the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and I had an experience when I was about three months sober and I remember I was about to get kicked out of the place. I was at because like, you know, I get sober and all of a sudden my defects come glaring all over the place.
And you know, my defect was talking to women who I wasn't supposed to be talking to in the program that I was at and I thought they were going to kick me out and I remember, you know, going out on this little doc. They had on this river in the back and I remember getting there in my knees for the first time. At this point, I had already taken the suggestions that he was giving me, which are things like ask whatever is running the universe in the morning to keep you sober for the day and thank whatever is running the universe at night for keeping you sober, right?
Simple directions. And I was willing to follow directions like directions. I did not believe in in order to have an experience that I didn't think was possible. And I followed those directions and by this time I was starting to grow a little bit, but I remember I was at on that doc and I remember for the first time I said, God, I'm like, God, you know, I am trying, you know, I am trying so hard. I want to do the right thing.
I keep screwing up. I want to do the right thing. You know, I want to stay sober and if I get kicked out of here, I'm going to be homeless again. My family's not going to let me in. They're going to think I just screwed up again. Please help me. I don't remember in that moment just having this feeling wash over me. Like God saying, listen, I got you. You don't got to worry about not prior to that. I had my doubts about the existence of God.
Since then, I've never doubted the existence of God. You know, and that lit a fire under me that just changed everything. Yeah, I'm for brevity. I'm going to kind of shorten it up a little bit. But, you know, I ended up going through the steps and, you know, I had an experience with the fourth step, which, you know, I honestly, I didn't do my fourth step till I was a year sober, which I do not recommend.
But at the time, my friend, my sponsor, who very well meaning said, why don't you wait until you're out of the homeless shelters and then we could work on it, which he meant well, but I do not suggest that to people today. But but when I finally got out of that, I was in the homeless shelters for like a year, my first year sober. And, you know, and when I got out, I did my fourth step, you know, and, you know, there wasn't a lot of depth to it, but it was enough to clear away the stuff that was holding me back so that I was able to see in a lot more depth the problems that then like the real causes and conditions that laid deep down that have been guiding me my whole life.
You know, and, you know, and I did that thing that all of us do with six and seven, where I spend about a year looking at all my motives every single time.
[00:35:01]
You know, I did some like where I'd ask myself, what's my motive here? What's my making myself nuts? And, you know, I had the experience of going back and making amends to my sister, the one who let me stay with her, who tried again and again to help me, who near the end of the time I lived with her. I lived with her for like three years and I was supposed to pay her $500 a month rent. And in that three years, I might have paid her rent nine times.
And, you know, and I demolished her truck. And, you know, so many things are besides just, you know, I was supposed to be there to watch her kids overnight because by the time I moved in, she was divorced from her husband. And the deal was I could move in and she would help me get on my feet and I could be there to watch her kids overnight because she was in work as an EMT overnight. And how many times she had to worry that, you know, her drunken brother was the only person she could have there to watch her kids and times where she'd come home and find me face down on the floor.
You know, and. You know, I got to make amends with that and I got to make amends with my mother, who also tried time and time again to help me. You know, and. Going to jump so much has happened, I mean, how you say everything that's happened in 15 years or almost 15 years and in a little while. Well, you know, I had the experience of trying to sponsor guys and my first couple times were horrible. You know, the first guy asked who asked me to sponsor him.
He ended up getting another sponsor and and I felt, you know, oh my God, how could he you know, I had a resentment towards him. That was I had to work that out with my sponsor. And then the second guy tried to sponsor. I tried to do everything for him because the first guy didn't work out. So I got him a job and I got him a recovery house and I got him everything. And then as soon as he came out of the place he was in, he drank, you know, and I had to learn the lesson that I was robbing him of the experience by doing everything for him.
You know, not giving him the experience that I had that I had to learn to trust God to provide for me. You know, and there was times why do I do I go to 50 or 55? 55555 Okay, just want to be sure, you know, and I had this home group, my home group that I'm in now. It's still my home group. I started going there really like when I was in the homeless shelters, but it really became my home group after I got out.
And, you know, I had the opportunity growing in there and that started out as just they needed somebody to make coffee. At least I thought they needed somebody to make coffee because the person who made coffee there was horrible at it. And so I told them I would be the coffee maker. And, you know, over time, that groups, I watched that group grow from, well, you know, over time that groups, I watched that group grow from what was two meetings.
There were just two meetings. They weren't a group, but there were two meetings I met on Thursday night and Sunday night and they weren't connected to the whole of AA, didn't have a GSR, didn't have an intergroup rep, didn't, you know, none of that stuff. And I got to have the experience of watching that group, you know, being a part of that group growing, of us getting connected first to intergroup and then getting an intergroup rep and getting to be the first intergroup rep for them and then getting us connected to general service and getting to be the first GSR for that group and getting to be the general service rep, the general chair for that group.
And I got the opportunity to watch people come and go throughout that group, and I've had the experience of watching that group grow to where we were way over capacity at the church and like the fire department capacity. And I've watched it go down to points where I was small and intimate, you know, and I've had the experiences of going all over with AA, you know, to go into the regional
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service assemblies that we have up in the Northeast, you know, to Connecticut, to Maryland, to New Hampshire, all over, you know, to be in service. And, you know, when I had five years, I got a new sponsor and he lives out of Vegas and I've had the experience of meeting so many people with him, you know, going to meetings out in Vegas and going all over, you know, to do stuff with him. And I have so many people in my life today.
My life is huge. I'm not rich. I don't have some fancy car. Well, I love my truck, but it's not like the most expensive thing in the world. But I have a life that is amazing. You know, I have people, everything good in my life has in some way or another been touched by Alcoholics Anonymous first. Most of the jobs I've had throughout my sobriety came from somebody in AA getting me there. The house I live in today was because somebody needed a roommate in the house that he was living in.
And I ended up taking over. I was only going to stay for a few months and I've been here for almost 10 years and me and my buddy rent this house together. We've been renting it for years and he's a good guy and he's sober and the both of You know, he's got, you know, his his fiance and I got mine and you know, both of us are, you know, spend our weekends with them and then the rest of the time we're here and I can't tell you how many men have sat on my couch downstairs and cried their life out to me.
How many men have sat there kneecap to kneecap with? How many men have sat in my back patio smoking cigarettes telling me their life story? It's an experience you must not miss. We know you won't want to miss it. I'll say this and I'll wrap it up, you know. Past two years have been a little tough. I mean, I've lost people. I mean back in 2020, my niece died of an overdose and I was actually out of retreat in Vegas with my sponsor when that happened and I remember I called my sister as I was like, you know, Shannon, what do I do?
You want me to come home? And she goes, no, I know you are exactly where you're supposed to be. My family trusts and loves Alcoholics Anonymous. My mother in the last years of her life, she died back in 2022. She got to know her son as a sober man and we got to have years of time to go over there and we would talk about God. And my God might have been a little different than her God. But you know, both of us love the St.
Francis Prayer, the 11-step prayer. I don't remember the last time I saw her, I brought that to her. She was in the nursing facility. And I brought that to her. It was a little prayer card with the St. Francis Prayer on it. I remember her saying, you know, I was looking for that and I knew she was full of it, but she made me feel good for praying to her. And the last thing she said to me was, you bring me so much comfort.
I learned how to do that from you. You guys showed me to seek the comfort rather than to be comforted, to seek to understand rather than to be understood, to seek to love rather than to be loved. And that is the only way I will get out of a selfish, self-centered person I am. Back in June, I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and I spent half a year I spent half a year in excruciating pain like any stubborn guy saying it'll go
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away and uh in the weeks leading up to that my voice started to go like it's this it's better now it was a lot worse and uh I remember I called up Bob and my sponsor and I said oh Bob my voice is going and I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to talk to guys so one thing I love more than anything you know I run my mouth a lot sometimes I run my mouth way more than people want to hear but I love talking about Alcoholics Anonymous I love AA you know and I love talking with guys about AA I love sending me cat to kneecap with guys and talking about it yeah when I was afraid I was gonna lose it and I said to him I'm afraid Bob I'm gonna lose my voice what am I gonna do I said Brendan you know you might be able to find a job doing a voiceover for one of those old-time gangsters and I like a Don Corleone or something because he knows how to make me laugh to bring me down to right size and you know and over the past couple months you know I've I've had AA coming out of the woodwork trying to hold me and I've gone to more meetings over the past six months than I've done in years and I've spent more time talking to God than I've done in years and I've had people you know I've had my friend Billy come from West from Virginia come up to see me and spend time with me I'd have friends from all over call me all the time and I've met so many people who are going through the same thing who have been helpful you know and I found a way to be helpful and useful to them as well I remember oh and uh in the first couple months I was losing a lot of weight and my sponses they would come over with boxes of protein drinks and stuff like that tell me but wait on I've seen these men at their most selfish self-centered points and I've got to see them be gentlemen who are caring and loving and helpful to another person it's an experience you must not miss I know you won't want to miss you know and uh one of the things I've been saying over the past couple years and I don't know where it came from but I my prayers I thank God at night you know I always uh I always say to him God thank you for all the places you've taken me the experiences you've given me and the people you've put in my life and I could say that to AA as well thank you for all the places you've taken me for the experiences you have given me and the people you have put in my life because I have a life and I thank you for it that's all I got I love you well I forgot I was supposed to close it thank you for a great meeting tonight I'm just gonna ad-lib you'll have to come back to see what's going on next week because we have devolved as chief from Chicago Illinois and I'm looking forward to hearing Brendan do you have a prayer or saying that you want to take us out with or is it are you too unable to talk right now let me just see if I could pull it up real quick I'll be one second I'll be fast I promise I know I have it's him because I give it to everybody on that this one actually a guy started saying it uh at a meeting a couple months ago and he just hit me I asked God for strength and he gave me difficulties to make me strong I asked God for wisdom and it gave me problems to solve I asked God for prosperity and he gave me the brawn and brains to work I asked God for courage and he gave me dangers to overcome I asked God for patience and God placed me in situations
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where I was forced to wait I asked God for love God gave me troubled people to help I asked God for favors and God gave me opportunities I received nothing I wanted I received everything I needed my prayers have all been answered thank you thank you Brendan and I forgot to say that next week is Christmas and we will be open for business so come and join us next week all right thank you Brendan I want to look it up