Ali R. — 10th Annual Spring Into Sobriety Women’s Conference, Venice, Florida — 2009

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About this recording

Topic

10th Annual Spring Into Sobriety Women's Conference — Venice Florida — Disc 3

Speaker

Ali R

Date

2009-04-17

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Source: Ali R – 10th Annual Spring Into Sobriety Women's Conference – Venice Florida – Disc 3 – 2009-04-17.mp3 File: ali-r-10th-annual-spring-into-sobriety-womens-conference-venice-florida-disc-3-2009-04-17.mp3 Duration: 00:36:15

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Good morning, everybody. My name is Ali, alcoholic addict. You know, this is a program of progression. That's no doubt. I was such a liar this morning, you know. My partner asked me, Are you nervous? I said, Hell no. I've done this all this for 23 years. I'm good. Then I go to the bathroom, and a lady says, Are you nervous? I said, No. Then I thought through, and I said, You know, I lied. I am extremely nervous.

My knees are buckling. So I took myself and I hid myself in a corner, and the waitress says, Where are you going? She says, I'm going to hide. She says, I could find a better place. Got a little nervous there. So I told her I'm married. So I went, found my little corner, and I sat there for another 10 minutes. I had a wonderful meditation. Okay, sure. Is that better? Okay. So I sat there for 10 minutes and meditated a little longer and came back out, and I was still nervous. I said, Oh God, what am I going to do after all these years? I could stand here and speak to you guys.

I love you. Anyway, but for the grace of God, the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, good sponsorship, and the 12 steps, I haven't found it necessary to pick up a drink since December 10th, 1985. And for that, I am so forever grateful. Just a little about how it was. I am one of nine children. I'm of Puerto Rican descent, born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York City. I have had seven brothers and one sister.

So, that wasn't too bad, except my father was a drunk, an abuser, and a beater-upper, and all that other good stuff that comes along with the turf of being a drunk. And so the nine of us were kind of scared of him, you know, and were very leery of what was going to happen the next minute, from one minute to the other. At any rate, we walked on eggshells most often, but when he was away, we had a wonderful time.

My mother was very enabling and loving. She was the best loving mother I could ever have. She was always happy when something was wrong. She always was happy. She just needed something to make her go, and that was it. So, needless to say, my oldest brother was a drug addict and was stealing us left and right, getting in trouble, getting shot, getting beat up, going to jail, and so all the attention fell on him. And so, okay, I lived in the ghetto, Spanish Harlem, and I looked around me and I used to say, Hmm, I don't always want to be here. I don't always want to live here.

What do I do? Nothing. I picked up a cigarette at the age of ten, you know, started drinking beer. What else do you do when you live in a neighborhood of that nature and surrounded by drugs and alcohol? So, you know, my father used to have parties, and they were always good when he was drinking and having parties. It was good because he was happy. And, you know, way back in the day, the beer bottles were brown bottles.

Brown bottles. And so was Clorox. Yeah, Clorox was in a brown bottle. And so I thought that the brown bottle that had the Clorox was beer. Yeah, I drank it, got very sick, but recovered to have a shot of rum. You know. So as time went on, and I was like, you know, very malnourished looking. I was very tiny. I must have been like 100 pounds even at the age of 20, soaking wet. And I grew very slowly.

And I still haven't grown much, have I? But nonetheless, I went through school, and I went through elementary school. And during my elementary years, my mother and father separated. And in one of those years, and I can't recall time, so forgive me, my father kidnapped me from my mother. And my sister had already gone with him because she thought she was going to have an easier, softer way with him.

So she left. And he took me and landed up in some woman's house. And the woman said, What the hell are you thinking? You think I'm going to have your whole family here?

[00:05:00]

Get out! He threw us all out. So she did. And we landed up in his barbershop on a loft, sleeping there. And I cried all night, all bloody night. And I begged him to take me to school because I had a special test. I think it must have been fifth or sixth grade. And he did. The idiot. You know? And I ran away from school. I said, I have pink eye, I told him. And I went home, and I found my mother in the hospital, and I went to the hospital. Somebody took me there. And…

I consoled her because I did love her dearly. She was my anchor. She was my love. And so, you know, she said, Just get better, mommy. Let's go home. And so she did. She got better. We came home, and I didn't try that again. And so that was good because she went to court and got custody of us. And eventually my sister came back home too. She didn't find the grass greener over there either. So, but I continued, and somewhere along the line there also, some Catholic charity nuns came and reaped us off the streets and made us go baptism, catechism, and communion and confirmation and all that good stuff.

So I became a Catholic. Yeah, all that good stuff by the age of 13. So that wasn't too bad, except that every time I didn't go to church, I felt like I was damned to hell. I said, Okay, this is not going to work. So that didn't work at all, so I stopped going to all that shit. So that was it. Excuse me for cursing. And then, you know, seven brothers, seven brothers, and I loved them and I adored them, and I was just like them.

Now, I come from a family of womanizers. My grandfather, the last count, had 53 kids from about 13 women, kid you not. And I stopped the count because I was just too out of… I said, This can't be real, but it was. So 53 kids, and he thought there was nothing wrong with that. So what did my brothers do? My brothers thought that was okay too. So they become womanizers, and somewhere in my teen years, early teens, I feel the very strange sensation that I love women.

I saw my music teacher. She had the most beautiful, beautiful legs. She had short skirts to here, and I said, Look at those legs, dear God, what a beauty. I went into the chorus. I went into the band. I went into anywhere she was, I went. I had to kind of now deal with these emotions of liking my own sex here. And I never looked like a girl unless my mother forced me on Easter Sundays to put on those funny dresses, which were almost like, you know, like just death sentences.

So in my teens, I realized that I had these feelings. And I looked around my family, and everybody wanted to push a boy in my way. And I said, Okay, I'll try this. And my mother wanted me to marry this one. I said, Why don't you? I really don't like that. And I finally came out of the closet very early in my years, and I said, I can't do this. I'm going to end up dead because if I marry anybody, they will find me with her in a bed, and I will be dead and so will she. So I came out of the closet.

I told my family. Everybody was okay. They fought it tooth and nail for a little bit, but they just got over it real fast because I was not going to change. It was just not in me to change. So I accepted that about myself. It wasn't why I drank. You know, I drank because I was less than. I was more than. I wanted to get out of the ghetto. I went to school, got into nursing, graduated. Wow. Oh, everything's good.

But in the meantime, I'm drinking and drugging. I'm smoking pot on one hand and drinking a beer on the other, but no idea. And I ran into this group of people, now with hardcore drugs. And excuse me, my drug story does, you know, lead me into my alcoholism. This is already into 1960s or something, and I get a friends of all these gay girls and all this, you know, LSD. It was in the 60s, so, you know, everything was out there in the 60s.

So I ended up getting hooked up on heroin and cocaine, and I started mainlining. And I was working as a professional nurse also at that point, and having bad trips on drugs that I really, at this stage, I just shudder at the thought of this. But it happened, and somewhere along the line, I have been blessed that I got to this stage of my life. And in 1970, I

[00:10:05]

hit my bottom on drugs. Well, alcohol was involved too, because I drank and drugged simultaneously. So I hit bottom, and I put myself in a rehab. But this time it was a rehab of a—it was called the Quaker Rehabilitation Center in East Village in Manhattan. And I stayed there for a whole year, voluntarily. I said, What am I doing here for so long? You know? And I said, Okay, my boss—I had a job before I went in, and they promised to hold it for me. My director of nurses was charming, a darling enabler also, a darling enabler, yes.

She kept my job, except that she said, Well, if you come in out, then I'm not going to put you on the same shift you were on. I'm going to change your shift. You're going to work three to eleven. I said, Oh no, that doesn't work for me, does it? But it did. It worked perfectly for me. In between there, I went to see my father, my alcoholic father, who was in a furnished room now, dying of alcoholism.

And I had to kind of make some amends there and try to get this right with him and try to make my life so I could go on with my life. And I did go to see him, and I looked at him, and I said, This is just a bag of bones. What am I hating him so much for? What am I doing to myself? Why? And I looked at him, and tears come down my eyes, and I told him that I loved him, because I did. He was my father. And there, somewhere along the line, he taught me how to play the guitar, how to sing, how to do a lot of things.

I just never remembered the good things. I only remembered the bad things, you know. So I told him that day, and I went back to my rehab, and I cried all the way there. I got out in June, went to see him. I told my brothers, If you don't get this man to a hospital, he will die in that room. You will find him a corpse in there. So two weeks later, he was dead, right in front of my face. I was just there looking at him in the hospital, and he went into a massive coronary and stroke and died right in front of me.

And I said, Thank you, God. Thank you. And, you know, went through the funeral because at that time also, when you went to rehab, they didn't say, Don't drink. They didn't say, Don't drink. They said, Don't do drugs. Okay, I'm going back to the '70s, early '80s. Don't do drugs. That's all. So we, of course, a nice wake. You never, what's the best thing to drink except on a wake? Oh wow, that was wonderful. And so we all drank and we were all merry and having a wonderful time. And in the meantime, I was, I went back to school and got a, was getting my degree in nursing again, trying to better myself.

And I continued to drink. I continued to drink. I met a girl in '74. We started living together, and she drank too. And everybody around me drank. And I said, my family drank, my brothers drank, and all my brothers and I had a pact: just don't mess with mine and I won't mess with yours. And that was our pact. You know, that was our deal. Don't get fresh with mine and I won't get fresh with yours. I said, Deal. Okay?

So we did that, and we drank, and I drank, and I didn't realize how fast my progression was going. And I was working, and I was losing my fear for people. I lost the person I was living with. I lost my friends. I lost… I kept going away from my family, away. I kept going into an isolated mode, you know. And I said, Okay, I see this, and people at work are looking at me. And, you know, when somebody gives you a toothbrush and toothpaste, something is up in the morning. You know, there's coming out of your pores, they said.

I said, Is it? I said, Okay, I got to take a shower more often. Anyway, so at that point, and my boss there was also a great director also and a great person, and I think that because of this, I've been very fortunate that I never lost my nursing license. I've been very blessed. Again, they said, take the time and do something. So I went into… And do something. So I went into a rehab again, and I got sober.

[00:15:04]

But before I went into that rehab, that July of '85, I was driving to some land that I had in Pennsylvania because everything was, you know, really good. I mean, I had land, I had a home, I had this. Everything was fine. I had cars and land, and everything. I was going to build a little something up there in the ski slopes that I don't ski, you know, but it was up there. So I was driving up there to sign some papers to some builder or something, and on my way up there, I got pulled over by the New Jersey State Troopers, and I was given a DUI. And I said, Oh, shit.

I had a whole case of beer in the back. So they took the car, and I needed to get to a certain area to sign these papers. And I told them, I said, I just need to get to this point here. And you know what they did? They did. They drove me there. Is that amazing or what? Not only did they drive me there, but I rented a car there. I rented a car and started riding around there, signed all the papers, did all the papers that I needed for this building or whatever I was doing. I can't remember. I just knew I had to sign papers, sign papers.

And I got a hotel room and I, you know, wonderful. The next day, I bought a bottle of vodka too and went to the room, put on the TV. I had a wonderful night. Isn't that something? Wonderful night. Just think about that. Next time I tell you about the last night after I took… I made my decision to turn this over. And the next morning, I had to return the car. So how am I going to get back to that precinct now?

Well, I hitchhiked back to the precinct. I hitched. I did. I said, wow. And they got me there, and they gave me my keys, my car, and the beer was still in the back seat. Now go figure. What a guy, you know? I said to myself, I'm going to wait till I get out of New Jersey, though, because I don't trust these folks. They might be following me or something, you know? So I did. I got out of New Jersey, and I cracked open a bottle of beer and drank.

Like, I mean, how insane is that? How crazy is that? I mean, really. And all, I didn't tell anybody about this, did you? Not a member of my family, no one. In the meantime, I was inside eating at myself. At that point, my drinking escalated to every day and almost around the clock. I don't know how I was working. I don't know how I was getting back and forth to work, but my drinking escalated to the point of no return.

And I got into this. I lived with my sister downstairs, and I had a room and a suite downstairs. And I looked in there and I said to myself, My God, this looks like a prison. And I made it. I made this prison of my own making. And I looked in the mirror behind the door, and my face was… Three sizes, the sizes should be. Tears were coming down my eyes. And all I could say, because I always thought that I was God and I could do everything and I could, you know, have my own destiny in church.

And all I said there was, Oh God, please help me. God, please help me. God, please help me. And again, I ended up in a rehab. And in that room, that when I went to, before I went into the rehab, I had to go to those, you know, the classes for the DUI. Well, I couldn't drive in Jersey, going back a little bit, and I drove anyway because, you know, that's the alcoholic. I'm going to drive anyway, and then I'll walk to the class around the corner because that's where it was, you know.

I parked and around the corner was the classes. So I had a hotel room here and I walked there and I said, okay. And then I went and bought some big ZD, a bottle of vodka, and went into that room. In that room, which was about a 10 by 8 maybe, I don't remember, but it was very small. All I could see was despair. I even thought I was seeing roaches and maybe delusional and all kind of stuff.

[00:20:04]

All I saw was pain and suffering, pain and suffering in there. And I said to myself, My God. And this is the second day now because I have to go for two days. After all, I did, you know, I really did the deed there. So I had to go to two classes. So the next day I went in, and they left me for the last person. Why would they leave me for the— I was the last one. Like this session here, I was the last one. And all I could do was look at the lady. I said, I don't need to speak to you.

I don't need to speak to you at all. I need help, and I want it now. And she just grabbed me and hugged me and let me cry. She cried. Now I had to get back home. She wanted to put me in right then and there, but I had a car there. I had to go home. I had to make some arrangements for my job. I said, Monday. I said, Monday. I can't do this now. I know that I need to do this because I know this. I am there. I am there.

I am so bottomed out. I have lost my spirit. I have lost my soul. I have lost my life here. Everything is gone that I had in here. I had no heart. I had no love. Not for me, not for anybody else. So I did go home, and I did party hardy as much as I could. And I did go in on that Monday, on the ninth, and I was there. They let me go on pass on the 24th of December to go celebrate Christmas. I said, What are you thinking?

I'm an alcoholic. I did not drink. I did not pick up since then. I have not picked up a drink. But what I did do, I did go to meetings. And I came into these rooms. And this is what happened. I got in the middle of the herd with the women of this fellowship. And they kind of just dragged me along, you know, like, huh. And they just pushed me along. They didn't do anything too rough. They just said, Come on. This is it.

This is how we go. This is how we do this. And this one particular lady said, I'll pick you up. I said, I'm not a drive. I said, I'll pick you up. I said, Okay. So she picked me up, and there was the women in the middle, just dragging me, taking me, loving me. And they said, Okay, tomorrow we're going to upstate New York. We're going to a speaking engagement. You just listen. I said, Okay. Got in the car with a whole bunch of women, and off I went to these speaking engagements out there just to listen and to learn.

And then that whole year, and I say this often, I was having a lot of fun. I was having a lot of fun. I was not changing. I didn't come in here to change. I just came to stop drinking because I didn't want to drink anymore. It was killing me. But something else happened, and I had great sponsors. I have great sponsors, and what I learned from some of my sponsors is what not to do. Not what to do, but what not to do.

And so I got caught by one of them, and she said to me, Well, you know what? You're having the time of your life. You've been in bed with this one and in bed with that one, and you're having fun, and you're doing this and you're doing that. You're gonna drink. I said, No, I'm not. You will drink again if you don't listen to what I'm saying to you as the sponsor, as a suggestion. Now we have to go through these steps.

Now you've got one, two, three. Let's start working on that fourth, okay? Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. And I did. I listened because, you know what? I wanted to live. I wanted to live with quality. I didn't want to live just dragging my ass around here trying to just exist. So I did what I was told. And I went to five, and I spoke with her. I shared with the other people in my life. And I also met a wonderful lady in between there too that is sitting with us now. And I said, Okay, what is it that I'm looking for in life?

I said, I want somebody with quality. I want somebody that's mental health is good.

[00:25:09]

I want somebody with a job, well, not too many children. Okay. So, but I had to wait another few months before I could do anything else, you know. So I waited that year before we kind of went and lived together and all that good stuff. She has been absolutely a treasure in my life, you know. It has been, I've been able to maintain a relationship with people now that is real, you know. I don't have to jump from here to there to there to who am I?

What am I? What will I be when I grow up? I don't have to do that anymore. And so I did settle down, and I've had a wonderful life for the last 22 and a half years with Natalie. My fifth year of my sobriety, I was feeling like the hole in the donut. I felt like uncentered and offbeat. I kept going to meetings, to meetings, and speaking about this and speaking about this, and finally somebody caught it.

Somebody heard me. And they told me, You're looking for your spiritual being. You're looking for your spirituality. And I said, Oh, am I? I said, Yeah. Just go meditate. Go find out some things about, you know, meditation and stuff like that. And it so happens at the same time I was moving upstate to the mountains, upstate New Jersey. And at that very moment, a meeting was starting. It was an 11th Step meditation prayer meeting, and it was five guys, four guys and myself. And so, perfect, huh?

Me and the guys. I always liked guys. You know, they work fine for me. And I work well for them too. They told me, You're my woman sponsor, because I could think like them very often. But I got there in that meditation meeting, and I started the practice of meditation. And as time went on, I started to get the gist of the spiritual thing that we speak of in this fellowship. Now, the Catholic stuff didn't go too well, but the spirituality really went well.

And that's still going well. I still meditate and I still practice, and I try to pass it on to others as best I can. Somewhere along the line also, I have one of my brothers, Eddie, he's about a year younger than I am, was diagnosed with cancer of the liver as a result of this disease. And he came to New York. He was stationed in Seattle, and he came and said goodbye to us. And he was going into surgery in the White Plains and said, Come, come, because he may not make it out of the surgery. And so we all flew there, and he didn't make it out of the surgery.

I just held his hand as they extubated him, and tears came down my eyes and my heart was in pain. And I went to meetings, and this fellowship helped me through. I even went to grieving counseling because that was apropos. And then a couple of years later, my other brother Johnny was diagnosed with cancer of the liver also. And he was terminal also, and we were hanging out one night, December 19th, and I told him I'd be there because I spent a lot of time with him at the end stages. And we laid on television watching this Christmas story, and his wife told me, she said, What do you think? I said, You know what?

He's sitting here without a pulse, just about dead sitting there, but he was responding to me, and I put him into bed. And I think a hour later, he also passed away in my arms. And that hurt, and I cried, and that hurt, and I cried. And the fellowship got me through. I went to meetings, and I didn't drink. Then a couple of years later, my other brother, the one that was a drug addict, he lasted forever, it seems to me.

But yeah, so he died too, and that hurt, and I cried, and I didn't drink. A couple of years later. And I didn't drink. A couple years later, my mother ended up with stage Alzheimer's

[00:30:00]

disease. And we were the caregivers, my brother, middle brother and I. And at the end, I had made the decision that it's time to let her go. And he didn't want to. And I said, Well, Tom, it's just not fair to have her suffer this way. So we went into hospice, and five days later she passed. And that hurt immensely. It hurt a lot. I had no idea that her passing would hurt so much. But I went to meetings.

The fellowship saw me through, and I did not drink. And now, for the real hurrah, is that November last year, 2007, I was diagnosed with liver cancer also. And they told me I had two months to live. I said, Okay, I'm okay with that, you know. I'm okay with it. I said, So I packed my bags, I did my funeral arrangements, I got Natalie going all over the place doing everything I needed to do. After I flew back to New York, I got the priest to talk for me and everything. And I'm still here.

I did not drink. I did not drink. I had to have my sponsee and her sponsee coax me into taking medication for pain because I wouldn't. You know, and this has been a beautiful trip for me. I just got out of the hospital on Thursday, where I had just got a catheter put in through my groin and into my liver. They put some seeds there, so I'm a little radioactive. So if you see me shining somewhere, you know, it's because of that.

When Tila asked me last year, Would you speak? I said, Yeah, if I'm alive, I will. She said, What do you mean, if you're alive? I said, If I am alive, I will. You know, because they had put me on chemotherapy, and that sucked. That was awful. That was awful. I said, Listen, I want quality, not quantity. It's okay. I don't mind going. I've had a wonderful, wonderful sober life. I've enjoyed the pleasures that I can't even imagine could be available to anyone.

We have traveled. We've had family things. I have drunks in my family still, and I look at them and I love them to death because I don't have to do that anymore. I do not. I don't have to drink. And I feel for them that they drink, and I don't. But you know what? As I was telling Cheryl, there's no survivor's guilt here. I earned this seat. I worked hard for this. I earned this seat. I kept coming to meetings.

I kept learning and reading these books that we have all over the place, you know, all the redundancy that we have here. Yes, tell me again, and don't matter what, tell me again how to meditate. Tell me again how to work that fourth step. Tell me again. To let go and let God. Tell me again and again and again. Cause I came in here very stupid. I had no idea, no idea how devastating this disease was.

So I leave you with this, that I will be here for a while. You know, oh, just a little note of, I went back to the Catholic Church. Okay, I went back to the Catholic Church because I always told Natalie that I'm taking the expressway to heaven because of this fellowship and the spirituality that I've gained here. I feel that. But this priest spoke at one of our funeral arrangements, funeral masses, and he was very eloquent about her.

And I liked him. And I want him to speak at my church too. I want him to say the same things. So I went to see him. I said, Hmm. I said, I think I want to come back to church. And I, you know, I am already very spiritually fit. I'm one with God. You don't have to worry about all that, you know, and all these rules that you good folks have in the church. Not to worry. I'm gay, and God is okay with me being gay.

Don't worry about that, you know, because you people do all kind of other shit. So don't worry about that, okay?

[00:35:02]

I am here. I am here for the bonus. I am here for the bonus. Just in case, you know, you never know. I even, I even went to temple with Natalie. Yes. Yes, there is a God up there, and He's right here in my heart, you know. And what I want to also end up with is with the newcomers. I know we have a few, and they're very special to me. And I want them to stay, because it does get so much better. You just don't have to go back out there.

It's a mess, you know. It's a mess. So thank you very much for having me. It's been a real privilege and an honor to be here with you guys, ladies. And I'm glad that everybody spoke ahead of me, because I knew they weren't going to throw stones at me or anything like that. So thank you.