Audio
Transcript
Source: America K – From El Paso, Texas – Date Unknown.mp3 File: america-k-from-el-paso-texas-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:07:15
============================================================
Hi everybody, my name is America, I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank the committee, I want to especially thank Mike, you're right, we are kind of kindred spirits, it's pretty cool. Just to be invited, the fact that anybody wants me anywhere is a miracle in and of itself. We were talking about when we were at meals about being kicked out of things a lot of the time, you know, and that was my story, you know.
I should tell you that I never plan what I'm going to say. So if I'm all over the place, that is likely to happen. I was told that if I'm planning what I'm going to say, that's about ego, and if I don't plan, it gives me like this much of a chance to maybe say something that somebody needs to hear tonight, and my prayer always is that I just am able to speak to the person that needs to hear it the most this evening, and if that's all that ever came out of it, then I was just blessed and the luckiest person in the world that I could ever possibly be.
And let's start, my sorority date is July 15, 1991, and that's 28 years sober for the math majors in the audience, and because I used to sit there, I'm like, what is it? How far is it? And I couldn't hear anything that they were saying. And I'm originally from San Diego, California, and I then lived in North Dakota for a couple of years, and then I just relocated to El Paso, Texas like five weeks ago.
And boy, I'll tell you, Alcoholics Anonymous is great everywhere you go if you look for it. But in San Diego, they do it exactly different and the same, and my head will always tell me that there's something different because my head is always trying to kill me. And I can't explain, different religions might refer to it as devil or just different entities, but there is something that lives inside of me that doesn't want what's best for me, but also what lives inside of me is a higher power that wants everything for me, wants me to be happy, healthy, joyous, and free in an unselfish way.
And I can only share my story, it's the only one I got, and I'm going to talk about a couple other things because that's just my story. And so I grew up in San Diego, I had an older sister named Tiffany, so my parents weren't hippies or immigrants, that is the most common question, and yes, that really is my name, and I struggled when I was growing up, you know, my name was America, I was like one of the smartest kids in class, I wore glasses, I'm actually blind in one eye, so on your sports team, I'm not your girl, and so I always picked last, and I felt just really very separate and different, but not different better, different bad, like there's seriously something wrong with me.
And I remember talking to my mom when I was in third grade coming home, because I was bullied profoundly, and I remember telling her when I was in third grade, I said, you know, if anyone would just take the chance to get to know me, I think that they would probably like me. And then the next year what happened is that I started to believe that there was something wrong with me, because if there, why were people treating me this way if there wasn't something wrong with me, and I started buying all the press, you know, that everybody was handing out, and so it's just my mom, my sister, and I, and my dad, my folks are still married, and we are Irish and German is my heritage, my people like to get drunk and then try to rule the world is basically how that works out.
So alcoholic and Al-Anon together as one, and, you know, the only difference between a alcoholic and an Al-Anon, and I mean the only difference, is that the alcoholic has the allergy to alcohol, but the drivers of our behavior is exactly the same, you know, and the way that I will describe that is, there's something going on outside of me, it makes me feel uncomfortable, so I need to control and manipulate the situation so I feel better, and that is the most extreme definition of selfishness that exists, and when I live in that, I can't be farther away from God if I tried, because the idea that
[00:05:01]
fear and faith can't live in the same house at the same time, I mean, you might run back and forth the house at light speed, but they can't exist simultaneously, and, you know, briefly, I don't like to spend a whole lot of time on my drunkologue, because the truth of the matter is, is that the longer I am sober, the more I desperately need to hear about recovery, and, but I will tell you that I grew up in a house, my dad is a narcissist, and so if anybody's got any of that going on, that gives you a special set of baggage, and the way that that manifested in my house was that my sister and I needed to look a certain way, and so the way that that turned out was that food was very monitored, I used to get weighed, so did my sister, if we weren't at a certain weight, we'd get hit, I will also say that I'm going to do my absolute best not to swear, but because I don't plan what I'm going to say, if it falls out of my face, please forgive me, you know, the truth is, is that there's a good majority of people in here that were doing lines off of toilet seats and truck stops, so an F-bomb every once in a while ain't going to kill you, and, just saying, and so I will really try to, I really do try to respect that, you know, and, but, you know, I digress, so the weight was really an issue, so I, my sister and I both developed a raging eating disorder, and I was hospitalized for an eating disorder in adolescence, and the problem was, is that I was not given a spiritual solution to my problem, I was given a lot of therapy, which was helpful, but you add some genetics to the mix, alcoholism all over the family, it's managed to skip my parents, although my dad's got the ism, but he's just not an alcoholic, you know, and, but the, I fell face first into alcoholism, I drank, and I could not stop drinking when I would drink, it was the only thing that stopped me was passing out, or running out, and, you know, because I lived in San Diego, the nearest border town there is Tijuana, and I used to have, when we'd go down there, because you could drink, you know, no drinking age there, and I used, we'd take the trolley down, and I would have to safety pin my trolley money on the inside of my shirt so I wouldn't drink that money away, because that happened the first time I went down there, and that was just when I was just starting to experiment, you know, with drinking, and by the time I got sober, I rolled into Alcoholics Anonymous three weeks after my 19th birthday, and I was drinking a gallon of vodka every two and a half days coming out of blackouts, driving other people's cars, and that's the way that I drank, and I blacked out virtually every single time that I drank, but on the rare instance that I didn't black out, I would know definitively, I am way too drunk to drive right now, like, there's not a chance, but you add that blackout, and that reason is just gone, and the only thing that I can say, you know, I was, you know, the fact that I never got a DUI is a miracle, because I drove drunk all the time, and the only thing that I can think is that the fact that I'm blind in one eye, because, you know, when people, like, start to close one eye, you know, when they start seeing, you know, I might have had a competitive advantage slightly, I don't recommend that you go out and try that, but I'm just saying that I think maybe, I don't know, I can't speak for that, I haven't run a study, so, and so I was so spiritually broken when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous that, you know, I'm going to bust out the big book already, because, you know, the takeaway that I have from my first meeting, and my moment of clarity, I should say, was I was driving down the road, and I had just a total run, I'm one of those rare people that got sober young, that really, I'm just a purist, I never really did any drugs, I tried smoking pot a few times, but, you know, you always feel like eating after that, and if you've got a history of an eating disorder, it's not like you smoke pot, and you're like, let's have some rice cakes and salad, you know, it's like, let's go to the Circle K and like empty that joint, you know, and that just doesn't work for me, because I really was trying to be in recovery, because by the time I had gone into recovery for the eating disorder, man, my butt was handed to me, man, I was ready, you know, I was really done doing that, and I'd been doing, I mean, I
[00:10:02]
had already, by the time I get into Alcoholics Anonymous, I had spent half of my life in active addiction already, by the time I got here, so I was really, really, really ready to be here, and, you know, in the forward to the first edition, you know, we talk about the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, but in the forward to the first edition, it says the only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking, and, you know, that word honesty is very subjective when you first get sober, I've got to tell you, you know, I really, I mean, honesty was not my forte, and, but the moment of clarity that I had was I had been on a long three or four day drinking binge and had almost lost my job, I managed to lie my way proficiently through that and managed to keep that job, but there was no denying, there was no denying that I literally almost lost my job because of drinking, and somewhere along the line, I had an idea of what an alcoholic was.
An alcoholic is someone who blacks out, loses their job because of drinking, and I blacked out simply because I drank too quickly. So that didn't apply to me, you know, and, you know, because I drank huge quantities of alcohol when it was available to me. When I was in college, the first week of college, I got into a shot contest with a linebacker and just totally kicked his ass, I mean, like, he, I drank that guy under the table, I had 28 double shots of vodka in 45 minutes and a .3 blood alcohol level later put me the first person at Arizona State University to end up in the hospital for alcohol poisoning, which was a dubious pleasure, and, you know, and I thought I only had eight shots because that's all I remembered.
I didn't even know what a blackout was at the time, and, you know, being from California, I do call people dude, but that's not why I started calling people dude, it was because people were like, that was such a great party last night, I'm like, thanks, dude, like, I don't even know you, man, you know, and so, like, everybody became dude at that point in my life because I didn't know, I couldn't, I don't know, I knew no one, but I knew everyone, and, you know, and the thing about what drinking did for me, you know, my whole life, you know, I have so enjoyed the speakers that came before me, and we were talking, you know, talking about that idea of potential.
You know, I had, you know, a different experience in, you know, I used to get comments written on my things, my report cards from teachers saying, I wish all of my students were like America, and the truth of the matter is, is that I had a lust for learning, and the only person in the entire school that was ever nice to me were my teachers, and they were my safe haven, and so, naturally, now I'm teacher's pet, you know, I'm not trying to do that, but that was just, like, my safe place to fall, and, you know, when I finally, that push to excel, that need to look a certain way, be a certain way, this constant obsession of the mind that just never shut up, when I would put alcohol in my body, I didn't care about anything anymore, I didn't care about my grades, I didn't care if you liked me or not, I mean, just those two things sucked up, I mean, I went, my parents, I was fortunate enough to be put in private school because my dad was really smart growing up, and he had behavioral problems, and so, I was a smart kid, my dad didn't want that to happen to me, and so, I was put in Catholic school, not because we're Catholic, but because that was what my parents could afford, and that was the private school, they wanted to make me feel a little more challenged so that I hopefully wouldn't have to walk that path that my dad did, and, I mean, I would, in high school, I mean, I had four to six hours of homework a night, I lived for school, and to not care, oh, my God, I got put on academic probation my first semester in school, I mean, that happened to my sister, I mean, my sister Tiffany, like, so, Tiffany, like, oh, my God, Tiffany, like, if ever there was a girl named Tiffany, it was my sister, and she was, like, the beautiful one, and I was the smart one, and I was a really late bloomer, and, you know, my sister, when she was 16, got a flat tire, and I'm not even exaggerating that three different guys tried to pull over and change her tire, like, at the same time, they were, like, almost fighting each other to try to change her tire, I'm, like, hey, buddy, she's 16, jail bait mean anything?
[00:15:01]
there if that would have happened to me I mean like seriously Oh God and and so to just not care anymore was the most liberating thing that could ever happen to me I was flip I was try to flip through the book to see if anything jumps out at me because I don't plan but we'll just see you know so a couple things jumped out at me and one of these things was in the doctor's opinion it said that the phenomenon of craving is limited to that class us and never occurs in the average temperate drinker these allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all so because I like to know stuff turns out we really do have an allergy or at least we metabolize alcohol differently than normal people in case you guys don't know that I didn't know that for a very long time in Alcoholics Anonymous our enzymes don't work the way they do in normal drinkers and so part of that metabolism process one of those by products that make normal drinkers start to feel a little red in the face and a little dizzy like who I better back off actually creates the phenomenon of craving in us drives us to drink and then you add to the equation that in our brain and our pleasure centers lights up like a Christmas tree when we put alcohol like the fact it's we don't just like a normal drinker will just be like oh that isn't that lovely you know and meanwhile you know it's like elation for us when it gets into our body and those two things you take a physical abnormality plus a mental abnormality in terms of how we experience that and it turns out the only thing that can fix us is a spiritual solution that was bad news for me when I got sober I gotta tell you because you know and we were talking about this at lunch I think it was lunch and I've had several meals and but we were talking about you know God does for you what you cannot do for yourself which also means God won't do for you what you can do for yourself but you will God really will really has your back from like the nanosecond you step into Alcoholics Anonymous and I mean it turns out he had my back the whole time I just didn't know it you know what I mean I just I just didn't know it and so I was so broken with the concept of spirituality when I got sober basically my messaging from my father was that religion is a crutch for weak people and you know I'd like to think of myself as strong so that's just not going to work out so the first meeting that I ever went to an Alcoholics Anonymous was a big book study and they passed the book around everybody wrote their name and phone number in it and they prayed you know they read how it works they went through the whole deal and I'm telling you for the first 30 days I was over I went to big book studies step studies speaker meetings I went to real meetings not just like you know grab ass meetings you know what I mean like real meetings and I never heard the word God the first 30 days I was over because God knew if I heard that I would have ran for the door and the reason that that's important is that is about right sizing ourself you know we are beyond human aid and what that means is that we cannot get someone sober and we cannot get someone drunk and if there is some idiot spewing a bunch of random stuff that doesn't sound a whole lot like good recovery you gotta trust that the person that needs to hear that is going to hear it and the person who doesn't need to hear it won't and because God is just once someone has an honest desire to stop drinking now you may come in here for a lot of other reasons but at some point like if you are here and here to stay that shift has happened to an honest desire where you want to be sober for yourself and not because you're afraid to lose the job or the spouse or whatever your constant stay out of jail or whatever your consequences are and when you are in that state of mind you can be 12 step by a chimp I mean you know there it's really not rocket science you're afraid to sponsor I can tell you as I stand here there's not a chance that I would be sober today if I didn't sponsor women not a chance and if you're afraid oh my god I don't know what to do I'm afraid I'm gonna get him drunk reminder you can't and secondly all you got to do is get yourself a big book and have them get a big book mine's just got the serenity prayer written on it and you sit down and you go line by line when you get to a word you don't know whether they don't know it or you don't know it look it up and you'll learn it you learn the big book that way that's important because I was told that all the answers to every problem I was ever going to have in my life was in the
[00:20:01]
were in these pages and specifically the first hundred and sixty four pages and the rest of the pages are just like bonus pages there's good stuff there too and you know in my first meeting of course they knew I was new I don't know how they know but they know and after the meeting of course when you know we're talking identifying you know first time you know I was afraid you know there were they're going around introducing themselves and I'm thinking oh god right same same exact experience right and this gal says to me just as they're like the person next to me is identifying like two people went she goes you know you don't have to say you're an alcoholic if you don't think you're an alcoholic also an al-anon just FYI and and I'm like I looked at her and I was just like are you sniffing glue I'm like I'm an alcoholic my name's America and then I burst into tears and I was just like and then everybody was like you're so great you know like only in a do we clap for stuff that you should be doing anyway like yeah you didn't stab sweaty bitty in the face with a pair of scissors today good for you you know I'm just like yeah you know we just keep coming back and and we learn how to behave better and so they took me they took me out to eat after that me on it was a semi-circular booth and they stuck me right in the center and these old-timers just like locked me in there was no getting out and I'll tell you my takeaways from from my first meeting and then the meeting after the meeting because I didn't know it's the meeting before the meeting the meeting and the meeting after the meeting my takeaways were you don't ever have to drink again even if you want to that was really a huge revelation because I had actually never had the experience of wanting to drink and not doing it and they said you don't ever have to do that again the other thing that they told me was that if you have an alcoholic horse thief and you take away the alcohol you still have a horse thief a a works on the horse thief and that was a little surprising because you know I may not be much but I'm all I think about you know it's the plight of the plight of us and I didn't I didn't I was afraid that if you knew me that you would hate me because that was my experience right everybody hated me and I just knew that if there really was a God how could have all this stuff ever happened in my life you know I didn't get beat every day but I got beat I got beat one time so badly when I was 16 that I got kicked out of the house my dad said I could either go live with my aunt or go to a foster home and he beat me so badly with the belt that night that I had bruises on my back my butt and my legs that took like seven weeks to go away and I have to tell you that my moment of clarity in getting sober was that holy crap all the problems I'm having in my life were because of alcohol not because of my dad and that was like you want to talk about a shift right there and you know the truth is is that my dad has been my biggest spiritual teacher and what I mean by that is that he had 38 pages on my first fourth step and because I was told write it all down and you know the in the big book the thesis statement is found on page 45 it said lack of power that was our dilemma we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously but where and how were we to find this power well that's exactly what this book is about its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem note it doesn't say alcoholism it says my problem it also doesn't say that it that we suggested you find a power by which you could live it said we had to the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking but my experiences is that the only requirement for recovery and a peaceful life is working the steps being a service to others and I learned all of that here in Alcoholics Anonymous I was very relieved to find out and also very disappointed at the same time to learn what the true nature of my problem actually was
[00:25:04]
selfishness self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles driven by a hundred forms of fear self-delusion self-seeking and self-pity we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation but we invariably find that sometime in the past we made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt so our troubles we think are basically of our own making selfishness and self-centeredness never in a million years would I have even come close to listing that if it was a multiple choice question if the only option was selfishness and self-centeredness I would have skipped the question I thought that I was so giving and what really was is that I was I would vacillate between being the biggest control freak in the universe slash doormat and when I had when I had three years of sobriety so I will say this that the reason I also talk about the history of the eating disorder because it is my my history but the truth is is that if you're in an AA meeting that's large enough over a period of time isms the other isms that are out there that can get you get you and the path narrows the longer we're sober and you either grow or you go and I've I've seen people lose their sobriety like in San Diego when the casinos opened I watched five guys with time lose their sobriety you know first it was like I lost you know oh I lost a hundred bucks oh I lost 500 bucks I lost my rent check I lost my whole paycheck you know what I mean and then there's so much restless irritability and discontentment going on what is our only option we have one option and that is to drink and you know whether it's you know food I always pray so here's in a nutshell what it boiled down to for me I pray God please be there when I have no mental defense against the first drink drug cigarette food or fornication and I can add codependency on to that too but it was the big five now it's the big six and and I had to look at all of that stuff I have no idea why God tapped me on the shoulder when he did and said guess what you got to get sober you're not even of legal drinking age now you got to look at your eating disorder my eating disorder came back with serious avenge in in sobriety and at one point I weighed 268 and a half pounds that was a hundred and forty pounds ago and I was still sober and I was working a very good program but I was not as tight with God as I truly could be and if that would have gone on over time that would have that would have taken me out and I have to tell you I've lost many sponses to needing disorder they lose their sobriety and this cross addiction issue that we have is absolutely vitally important and even talks about it in the 12 and 12 and I forgot my 12 and 12 but I found it on on this so I'm going to read it to you in the 12 and 12 it says they they have let me turn it this way because even with my glasses you need an electron microscope okay they have become persuaded and rightly so that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone but now it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do all by himself and in the light of his own circumstances he needs to develop the quality of willingness let's talk about willingness for a second willingness in my world is a verb if you're not taking action you're not willing this program is not for people who need it it's not for people who want it it's for people who do it and people I listen to people God help me be willing to be willing to be willing I'm like really have you ever been arrested you ever paid taxes you ever go to school ever go to a job you don't like ever have to hang out with relatives you don't like were you willing to do any of those things no yet we magically do them which tells me willingness is not a prerequisite to take action taking action is the prerequisite to taking action and that was a huge breakthrough for me because you know that that honest desire to stop drinking and to do the work that we do
[00:30:00]
just have to do it. I was so blessed to have these incredible old timers around me when I first got sober. I mean, they told me things like, you know, God gave you two ears and one mouth so you can listen twice as much as you speak. When we want your opinion, we'll give it to you. America, in your case, we're going to take away your ability to think. And when we think you've earned the right to have it back, we'll give it to you.
And guess what? It never came back, never. And I, you know, we don't care how you feel, we just care what you do. You know, nowhere in the book does it tell us that we're not going to have butterflies in our stomach, that our palms aren't going to be sweating, that our heart isn't going to be pounding out of our chest. It just tells us that if we do this work, we get to walk in the sunlight of spirit.
That was crazy. That's craziness to me. That's like a miracle. Miracles is just a shift in perception for someone that only ever thought about myself and my woes and would tell anyone who would listen to me about it. My poor dad, I mean, part of the way I make amends to him is that I don't, like, trash talk him anymore. But, you know, I don't have to because, like, I've done inventory work and I've also done a lot of therapy.
It tells us in the book we need to see where people of religion and medicine are right. And guess what? Therapy falls under medicine. And I had to do a lot of work. I had to do trauma work. And I got to tell you, you know what happens when you do that? You start attracting a totally different quality mate. I mean, like, if you are stuck in relationships that are just not working, you know, the bad news is that we are the common denominator in that.
But, you know, like attracts like. It's not opposite to attract. You know, sick attracts sick. You know, and we may not be sick in the same way. But, you know, if you got a, you know, square peg, you know, I'm the square nut that's going to go right into that thing. And I took myself off the market. You know, what happened when I had three years of sobriety? Of course, it was about a guy. And God, this guy, I swear, I mean, you want to talk about not just, like, heartbroken.
We're talking soul sickness. That's how you know. You know, if you get out of a relationship, and it's one thing if it's, you know, you're going to feel some pain. But if your entire existence is shattered, that tells you that you're not really properly balanced. And that is exactly where I was at. My reality was shattered. And I was laying in bed, and this is a spiritual experience for me that I had when I had three years of sobriety.
I got into bed. I got into the fetal position. I pulled the covers over me, and then all of a sudden, I was sobbing, not just crying, sobbing, and my guts were coming out, kind of crying. And all of a sudden, when I pulled the covers over, I had this vision of God wrapping his arms around me. And I heard as clearly as I am talking to you, America, you are safe and protected. I will never give you more than you can handle.
Even on your worst day, I am proud of you. Even on your worst day, you can never let me down. And I'm telling you, like, I get emotional just thinking about that. I'm telling you that was God that was talking to me, because nothing was ever okay in my life. And I had a sense of peace in this calamity. That was not normal for me. I mean, I was like a teenage girl. I mean, just like, my hair is on fire all the time, you know, and God, that sucks, you know.
And I just, that's when I decided to take myself off the market. And you know, I wasn't like terribly promiscuous, but, you know, it got to a point where it emotionally hurt more than it physically felt good. And that's where I was at with that, and I was like, shoot. And I had to, and I was off the market for a long time. I was like, God, you just, whatever I got to do, just let me do it. And I dealt with a lot of, I've had a lot of medical things that I've dealt with.
And when I was like 10 years sober, I had a doctor give me some medication that ended up being a wrong medication. This was one of the things that had helped me gain weight. You know, it's not like I was trim when I started taking it, trust me, I wasn't making good choices. But I, it became toxic in my system. And I eventually fell into a coma, I almost died. They had to do dialysis to get this medicine.
I guess it's the kind of medicine you got to test every couple months to make sure that the toxicity isn't getting there, and it just became toxic in my system.
[00:35:01]
And they had a priest come and actually do the last rites on me, because they really did not think I was going to make it. And so fast forward, I made it, obviously. But I had brain damage, I'm telling you, coming out of a coma is not like it is on TV. I had like serious brain damage. I was on a walker when I came out of that coma. And I'm telling you that for at least three months, I couldn't put sentences together without going, what was I saying?
Like I would lose track of what I was saying mid-sentence, not even like mid-paragraph, you know what I mean? And it was, it was really scary. But ultimately, you know, I recovered from that, and I moved to L.A. Because I was like, well, I almost died, you know, maybe I ought to try living in another city, try a new adventure, they got good AA there, I think I'll roll. And so I did. And when I was there, I heard on the radio this doctor that was supposedly an expert at treating chronic pain.
And I started having chronic pain when I was 13 years old. When I was 23, I was finally diagnosed as fibromyalgia. But by the time I was 23, it had become so severe that the doctor had actually offered me a morphine pump as a mechanism to handle the level of pain that I was at by the time I was 23 years old. And I was like, you know, that might be good for some people, but somehow I don't, I mean, I'd already been sober for like four years at that point, right?
That just wasn't going to work for me. I couldn't see myself being hooked up to a morphine pump for the rest of my life and thinking that I was going to be able to be sober. And I had no experience with drugs, but boy, did I learn a lot about it from you guys. God, you guys are awesomely sick. And you know, and I had a really hard time understanding if, you know, when they talk about the progression of the disease, you know, this is how I know that there's a progression of the disease.
So I was pretty sheltered in a lot of ways, but not, it was sort of, you know, I was inexperienced in some things. And when I got sober, I was in the 90-day sober range, and I went to this big speakers meeting in San Diego, and this gal was talking about how she would basically just sleep with anyone that would buy her a drink, and I'm just like, oh my God, I can't believe it. And, you know, and I was just like totally judgmental.
And then like three years later, I'm at another speaker meeting, and a gal shares basically the same thing. And I'm like, that woman's a genius, like, you know what I mean? Like the idea that I could go from thinking that being judgmental, which by the way, judgment is the gateway drug to restless irritability and discontentment. And it's one thing for me to be judgmental towards you, but to be judgmental towards me is, that was like, I had a black belt in that.
I shouldn't feel this way. Hey, feelings are just, it's just information letting you know if something's working right now or if it's not. It's just God just trying to talk to you. And who am I to judge God's information? And, you know, it tells us that in Bill's story, well, it talks about in one of the stories, you know, Jim, the lucrative automobile agency guy, he, you know, isn't sober than is sober, but just sort of take, you know, that sounds pretty good what all you guys are doing.
And he made a beginning, his family was reassembled, he began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking. Here's the really important part. All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession. And it tells us in Bill's story, my friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs, particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me.
Faith without works was dead, he said, and how appallingly true for the alcoholic. For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life, right, how? Through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die, then faith would be dead indeed. With us, it's just like that.
So, you know, it tells us that we have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance
[00:40:02]
of our spiritual condition. Well, I looked up reprieve, and one of the definitions in there is a stay of execution. We have a daily stay of execution, contingent, or hinged, on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Well, how do we do that? Well, it tells us the way that we perfect and enlarge our spiritual life is through work and self-sacrifice for others. So, if you're not feeling terribly connected to God, you got to get more busy with service.
It's just the answer for us. It tells us when all else fails, work with another alcoholic will save the day. And you know, that, the fact that I even care about someone else is miraculous. So I digress, and let me get back to my LA story. So I find this doctor who supposedly specializes in dealing with chronic pain, so I just sucked it up, right? I was like, you know, I'm just going to have chronic pain.
It was sort of like having really, really bad PMS all the time. I was just sort of a short fuse, and just kind of like when you hurt, things really bother you. And I just had to deal with that. And so I hear this doctor, this guy's from China, and it's alternative medicine. So I go, and I, long story short, I see this guy once a week for six weeks. He gives me these injections of saline and Novocaine in my acupuncture channels, and like, it's like blowing out your acupuncture channels just like that, instead of just like little mini acupuncture.
And I, you know that paper that they put on a doctor's table that you lay on, it's like real thin paper? He would do that, he would do those shots, and I would just sweat profusely, just, sometimes I would laugh. I wouldn't even know why I was laughing. Sometimes I would cry and cry and cry, I'd have no idea why I was crying. Sometimes I had so much profanity, like if a trucker and a sailor got married, it was me.
And I learned from a therapist that excessive profanity is repressed anger. And so what happened is that over the six month period of time, I eventually could get off the table and it was bone dry. And all of a sudden my pain went from, like on a good day, an eight, down to probably about a four. And that is like, that's, I can live with a four, man, I can run a marathon on a four, you know what I mean?
Like, and I, and that was huge. And so, you know, I had chronic pain for 20 years, and I just thought that that was going to be my lot in life. And so then fast forward to this doctor who almost killed me, I had to take him to court. And I was, you know, one of the things I'm really grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous for is the fact that they've really taught me to live in the moment. Like, you know, if you've got too much fear you're living in the future, if you've got too much resentment you're living in the past, I will clean this up, but the way I was taught if you have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday, you're pooping all over today.
And so I was, I didn't have any anxiety about going to court or doing any of this stuff. And I, just as I'm driving there I get hit with just like total like anxiety and fear. So what do I do? I call my sponsor. That's what, you know, we're trained to do. So I call my sponsor and I will say one thing, my mom had the good sense that the day I went into the hospital she went and got a copy of my medical records that day.
If this ever happens to anybody just go do that. And so what the doctor had done, and he didn't know that we had original copies of the medical records but he doctored his records to make it look like he sent me to get blood work, but he never did. And so I call my sponsor and I'm like I'm freaking out, totally freaking out right now and I need to be present for myself in this moment. And she says, well what I'm going to tell you is a lot easier to say than it is to do.
And I said, well what is it? She goes, well you have to remember that everything is forgivable. It doesn't make it right, but it is forgivable. She goes, and I go, okay, because I had been sober a long, I mean I'm sober probably 15 years at this point. I'm like I buy your premise, how do I get there right now? Because I needed a shift in this moment. And she said, well, she goes, can you just for a second imagine how scared he might feel right now?
Think of all of the years of education, how much money this guy spent educating himself. Think of his. spent educating himself. Think of how well-respected he is in his field, because he really was. He could lose all of this today. Can you imagine, even for a second, how scared this guy must
[00:45:05]
feel? I mean, he's so scared that he even doctored the records, which is against the law. And I thought about it for just like half a second. I was like, that guy's got to be terrified. And just in that second, all that fear was gone. And I realized that the way out of resentment and the way out of fear is compassion. And that put me on a deeper path of being able to forgive my father at the deepest level that I had ever been able to have before. Because, you know, my dad got thrown out of the house when he was 15 years old. He'd been on his own since he was 15. And that fighter guy that he was, that he needed to survive, to protect himself, because he had nobody watching his back, he brought that into his parenting. He didn't know how to parent an adolescent. I mean, even if he had bad parents, he could at least opted to try to do the opposite. And he had no example of that at all. And could you just imagine for a guy who's really successful because he's really successful, could you imagine what it might be like for him to lay in bed at night and think, that's the best I could do for her? And that just broke my heart, broke my heart, to think of the kind of pain. Even if he's a narcissist, I'm telling you in the quietest quiet that there has to be just even a little bit of that. And that deserves my compassion and my love more than anything in this world. Because I was, I didn't understand what the concept of like being spiritually damaged, it talks about that in the book, like where we spiritually harm people. But I can tell you that for me to look in the mirror and to hate myself and to be 85 pounds and think I'm fat, that is a spiritual injury. And for me to be able to have like love and compassion in my heart for my dad is just like the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, this program, like that freedom that I have, that I don't have to judge him anymore. And that his opinion doesn't have to like dictate how my day is going to be. You know, the flip side of that relationship is that I have to be very mindful about what I share with him because he's still sick.
You know, I can't, you know, all I ever wanted was my dad to approve of me and love me. It's all I ever wanted. God, we'd fight for that, my sister and I would fight for that so hard. You know, I cannot be surprised every time I go to a dry well and wonder why I'm thirsty. Why do I keep going back to this guy and thinking he can give me approval? He is incapable of doing, he can't even do it for himself. How can I think that he's going to do it for me?
You will transmit what you have. And he is sick. So I can't share big chunks of things that are really important, what I feel are important in my life because if I do, what I've learned is that it will be weaponized and come back at me. And so for my own self-care, I had to find people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think that's why I was drawn to the old timer so much. It was just this, such this loving, nurturing energy, this unconditional love that I had never experienced before. And it was like fatherly love. And then I learned to build a relationship with a higher power and that is the ultimate, like for me, it's not like I see God, you know, let's talk about God for a second. So God, you know, God of your own understanding. I heard a guy share once and it made a whole lot of sense to me. He was talking about, you know, this whole God of your own understanding. He goes, I don't even understand that when you pull a Kleenex, how the next one comes out. How can I possibly understand God, you know? And so I think it's probably, it's my opinion, but I think it might be, at least for me, it was more accurate to say I needed to find a higher power I could do business with. And that turns out to be the same thing with your relationship with your sponsor. If you can't do business with your sponsor, like if you feel like you got to lie to your sponsor, you got, you might need to find somebody else.
Because there is no, I mean, I got to tell you that four-step, you know, everybody talks about the four-step. Oh my God, the four-step, it's so dope. The four-step, it's so hard. Let me tell you something. The first time I truly felt an overpowering sense of unconditional love is when I did my fifth step with my sponsor. I mean, I told that woman everything. And people often ask, you know, how many things should you have on your fourth step? Well, I'll tell you exactly what my sponsor told me. She said, driven by a hundred forms of
[00:50:03]
fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity. And she goes, and besides that, I've heard you bitch about at least a hundred things since I've known you. So get writing. And, you know, and what weighs more, a thousand-pound rock or a thousand one-pound rocks? It doesn't matter. If it pops into your head, you write it down. Oh, I'm over that. No, you're not. It wouldn't have popped in your head. Write it down. Get it all down. And then like with my sponsees, I was like, all right, you ready? We pray before we get started. I'm like, so do you have that thing in your mind, like the worst thing that's on your fourth step right now, like the thing you're most afraid to tell me about? She's like, yeah. I'm like, tell me that one first. Let's just rip the Band-Aid right off. Don't say that to, just get that crap out of you. We're like suitcases. We come in here and we're like full of clothes that don't fit, that have holes in it. We're just completely, nothing works. And for me, sobriety has been a series of just unpacking and offloading all of that stuff to make space for stuff that works. And, you know, I eventually won that lawsuit with that doctor. And, you know, and I was feeling, I was on this bike ride when I had come down. And in San Diego, if you've never been, it is the most expensive place to live in the country, but it is the most picturesque place too. And I was on this bike ride and we were riding along this like area like where the water is. And then you could put your bike on this ferry and go over to Coronado Island. And then we had lunch on this island. And then we rode our bike on the Silver Strand past the Hotel Del Coronado, the famous Hotel Del Coronado, if anybody likes Marilyn Monroe movies. And we were driving back and it was just the most beautiful thing.
And what I realized is that had I not gone to that doctor and had I not almost died, I never would have wanted to move to LA. Had I never moved to LA, I never would have met that doctor that helped me with my chronic pain. And had I not gotten over my chronic pain, I never would have been able to go on that bike ride. And I was like, holy cow, that just shows you that I just really don't know. And what it taught me is that the most, the things, when things don't go my way, I never say, God, why, why is everything going my way? Yet, when it doesn't go my way, I'd be like, why, God, why? You know? And so like if I don't do that when everything's going my way, I don't get to do it when things don't go my way. And I've been sober long enough and I've watched enough people. And that's an important concept too. Any idiot can learn from their own mistakes. Smart people learn from watching other people's mistakes. Pay attention, pay attention around here. There's a lot of heartache you can save yourself by interviewing somebody that's gone out and has come, been fortunate enough to not die and crawl back in here. And, you know, the, oh God, you know, the thing about, I don't know, I just don't know what's best for me and now when things don't go my way, I think this is proof positive that there is a higher power because there's another plan in place. It's not mine. So now I choose to be grateful when things don't get to go my way. And that's the really important thing is the choosing part. I didn't know that I had a choice in happiness. I didn't know I had a choice in gratitude. It tells us in that reading that I had started that the whole, our whole problem had been the misuse of willpower. You know, we are willful people, really, really, really willful people. But it turns out we can't will ourselves not to drink. But I can will myself to go to a meeting. I can will myself to pick up the phone when a sponsy calls and I don't feel good. I can will myself to call my sponsor. I can will myself to do a 10-step.
I can even will myself to call somebody and say, I'm so depressed right now, I can't get my ass out of bed. Can you come take me to a meeting? That sometimes it's got to go down like that. And I did really well for a few years health-wise. And then one morning in 2008, I think it was, I was still living in L.A. I had gone back to L.A. because I had had a job. And I woke up and 70% of the feeling was gone below my knees. And I thought, well, I've either had a stroke or I have MS. And I figured it was probably MS because if it
[00:55:01]
was a stroke, it'd be just one side. And I managed. Fortunately, I lived real close to UCLA. I went over there. Within a week, I had a diagnosis for multiple sclerosis. And I was on a cane for a couple of weeks. And then I seemed to snap out of it. Like everything was fine. I worked, worked, worked. I always worked in sales. I used to sell software to fortune class companies, traveled all the time. And I was working. And then in 2010, all of a sudden, I woke up one morning and it was like once again, all the numbness again.
I had to get on the cane again. But this time, I had something that happens to 80% of people that have multiple sclerosis. And that is that I had this profound fatigue. Like fatigue enough that my job was no longer an option. And what I realized at that time is that I had a tremendous amount of self-worth coming out of what I did and not for who I was and not because I breathed air. And I got to tell you that I was on a cane for six months. I finally went to physical therapy and I was able to get off the cane. And I had to go out on disability. And I've never been able to return to work. And it does not matter how much time you have, that self-pity machine that we've got that lives inside of us will want to just run with that. So instead, I started saying, I get to stay home. I get to take a bath. I get to paint my toenails. Everybody else has to go to work. I could be working an 80-hour work week right now, but I don't have to. And I get to go to more meetings and I run out of energy towards the end of the day, which is why naps are so critically important. Sometimes I have to take two naps. Sometimes I have to take three naps. Sometimes my entire day is canceled. And I look at it like, well, if I was supposed to be on the road driving, doing all these errands that I thought I wanted to be doing, you know, God's probably saved me from an accident or a ticket. I can't prove it either way.
So why would I choose not to believe the path that God is always looking out for me? That's my choice. That's my willpower right there. And it takes, it's a tremendous act of will to combat that broken thinking. And so I got off, I got off the cane eventually and started walking, you know, going on walks and stuff and trying to get a little more activity and get stronger again. And there was this huge power outage. Now, I should tell you that my sister, Tiffany, she's an alcoholic, but an alcoholic of the wino variety is the way I would describe it. She was the person that drank for the constant buzz. I drank huge quantities of alcohol because I wanted to be shut down. I was a binge drinker every day. And we had tried at one point, she called me, she had five kids, and she called me and she's drunk and she's been drinking for the last three years. And I was like, I don't know what to do. And she knew I was sober obviously. And she's like, I need to go to an AA meeting. And I said, okay. And I never preached to her, I never lectured to her because it tells us we are the least effective messenger that there could possibly be for a family member. And so I said, you need to go to this clubhouse over here. She had her kids, a couple of her kids in the car, she was drunk. And she managed to make it to the tail end of that meeting and somehow managed to put together about 90 days of sobriety at one point. And then her husband told her that maybe she was making a bigger thing out of this than it actually was. And she didn't have an honest desire to stop drinking. And when you don't have an honest desire to stop drinking, you go and you're drunk again. I mean, there's just nothing that it's going to take. You know, that's why that rigorous honesty conceding to our innermost selves is so important. So there was this huge blackout in San Diego, like the whole city went dark since 2011. And when there was intermittent power for a little bit of time, and I was with my folks, and we get a call, and my sister had shot herself.
She had a .28 blood alcohol level. She died of alcoholism. She had untreated alcoholism and an untreated eating disorder.
[01:00:00]
And here's what I'm going to tell you is that some people make it and some people don't. Of the people that don't, sometimes they're other people and sometimes they're family members. But this program works if you work it. There's no other scenario in which that's the case. And this is, you know, one of those moments that I know that there was God because I… Something came out of my mouth when my parents told me because I had actually gone out to try to get some ice.
And they had received the call. And when I came in, my parents were like, you need to sit down. I mean, they were freaking out. My parents are like not freak out kind of people. And they told me what happened. And I was shocked but not surprised because this is a fatal condition. Like people want to forget that. That forgetter, that is an incredibly short memory wants us to forget that this is a fatal condition.
And it tells us that we can never safely use alcohol in any form. So in other words, once you're a pickle, you can never go back and become a cucumber. It just doesn't work like that. And I said to my parents, this is God talking because I could not have said this. I said, you know, this is one of those things that's either going to blow a family apart or bring us together. And we have to make a decision right now what we want that to look like.
I said, what do you want? Do you want it to blow us apart or do you want us to stay together and get stronger? And they were like, we want to stay together and get stronger. I mean, they were just like totally into it. And I said, so what that means is that if you need a hug, you need to ask for a hug. If we think you need a hug and you don't think you need one, you're getting a hug. If you feel like you have to cry, I don't care what you're doing.
If you're at the grocery store or whatever, you need to open up and open your guts. You know, because the thing is is that when we don't acknowledge our feelings when they come, first of all, that creates restless irritability and discontentment and that is very dangerous for us. And there is a difference between letting something go and stuffing it. Oh, I let that go. Really? You really let that go?
Why do you keep talking about it? And the truth is is that for me to really let something go, I have to acknowledge I feel afraid. I feel angry. I feel scared. Like whatever that is, I feel, you know, disrespected or whatever that feeling is that triggered for whatever that person might have done, usually based on a decision based out of self, which placed me in the position to be hurt in the first place.
And I have to acknowledge it and I have to feel it and then I have to ask God to help me let go of it and to find some compassion. Because I really don't believe the world is full of people that are out to try to get me. I really don't believe that. I think the world is full of a lot of great people and a handful of turds. I mean, that's just it. And, you know, they tell us to stick with the winners, so I just try to do that.
And, you know, my sister, you know, she left five kids behind. And this is the thought that came to me in that moment. If the tradeoff is that she will never drive drunk with her kids in the car again, and that she is at peace and she is healthy, and if the tradeoff is that I never get to see her again, I can live with that and I am grateful. About two years before she died, I was talking to a sponsee and I said, we accept God's will and then right after that I said, with gratitude.
And I was like, oh, that's really good. I accept God's will with gratitude. So for two years prior to that, I had training. And when she died, I accepted God's will with gratitude. You know, some people just don't make it. And I don't get to question God why it had to happen to me. Why did I get it and she didn't? Why is just the stupidest question. It's a coping mechanism. There is some delusional thought that I have that if I somehow understand why I feel a certain way, that it won't hurt as much.
And that is not true. It is a delay tactic. Just feel the feelings. And that moment when I had three years of sobriety and I was crying and God told me that I was safe and protected, that means under all circumstances. I know that I am never given more than I can handle and the reason I know that is that I have never burst into flames with my feelings and I've never seen a single person burst into flames because of their feelings.
Which means that it's going to pass. My first little mini spiritual experience in Alcoholics Anonymous was exactly that. It hit the fan. I don't know what it was. But all of a sudden, for the first time in my life,
[01:05:02]
I thought this too shall pass. It's going to be okay. And nothing was okay. Nothing was ever okay. And that was a miracle to me. My next spiritual experience I had, I had probably about six months of sobriety. And like I told you, I was a real late bloomer in this world. And my sister was the beautiful one. And I was getting ready to go into this coffee shop. And I adjusted the mirror in the car. It was night time and they had the lights on in the parking lot.
And I went to adjust my mirror. And all of a sudden, I'm telling you, I saw myself the way God saw me. I saw this beautiful young woman. And what you guys told me was that you would love me until I could love myself. And then you just kept loving me. And that's the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. For someone who hated myself and wanted to die all the time, to have a zest for living, despite all kinds of medical things that go on, that's a miracle.
And I owe everything, everything to Alcoholics Anonymous. I am beyond grateful. I can't believe that I get to get through this life with this kind of freedom and joy. I have to tell you, truly, 99% of the time, I am peaceful. My mind is quiet. If something happens, I'm like, well, I guess that's the way it's supposed to be. Very rarely do I get wrapped around the axle. And that's a gift of doing the work here.
I want to thank the committee again. I want to thank you all for being so patient and kind and loving to sit and listen to me. Thank you very much. You guys have a good night.