James D. from Seal Beach, CA at San Diego October 10th 1999

My name is James David and I'm an alcoholic and I want to thank you all very much for for having me here and especially the girl who just read the 12 traditions because I think I'm shaking as hot as you were.

Thing that matters is that you came up here and said, and I learned that lesson. So bride, it's an honor and a privilege to participate in the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was taught that very early on and I'm grateful for that. For those of you who are new who took championship birthdays, welcome and congratulations. I know how scary it was to get up in front of rooms and take those chips when I was brand new. The first night meeting I ever went through was a speaker meeting on a Monday night in Seal Beach. It's called Monday night Seal Beach Speaker meeting and it's about this size And I got up to take that.

I thought I was going to break into pieces. So I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous in a new way of life until they tell you that if you're as lucky as I am, that you might have an opportunity not to ever have to drink again. It also made me feel a little bit better when I saw Joyce up here as our five minute speaker. I had the opportunity to meet you, which a couple weeks ago, she came with a grand sponsor to speak at a meeting I'm secretary of in Long Beach called the East Bay Group. And that group's been around for 52 years. And by getting involved in that group and other groups like that, that have tradition and people that are old,

I got to learn how to do this program one day at a time. I'll just going to share with you my experience, my strength and my hope. And hopefully you'll be able to hear something that will be of value to you this evening. And I ask you to take what you can, file the rest away for later use. I'm the baby of nine kids from an Irish Catholic family from New York.

Umm, at the truth new or anything.

I gotta tell you that I grew up in alcoholic home and I've been told that this is a family disease and I want to welcome those of you might have grown up in that environment as well. And I know the pain of that. And I got to be on the other side of that. I got to be the alcoholic causing terror. My mother had me when she was 47 years old.

Umm, this is really pleasant. It was after she had gone through menopause and she thought she had gas.

She went to the doctor and it was me.

I've pretty much been feeling like crap ever since

and and that's the fact of it. And my mother told me that when I was about a year sober and I said that explains a lot because I'm normally the piece of crap that the world revolves around.

I'm self-centered and egotistical by nature. And I never thought that before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous

and I got to find that out in Alcoholics Anonymous by reading that big book and by taking those steps and looking at myself in black and white. It was real simple. I started very early. Like I said, I'm baby and nine kids from an Irish Catholic family. My father owned a bar in Queens for 35 years. I'm purebred, right off the boat. Mom and dad were born in the old country. All my aunts and uncles, I mean, they all have the broke. Oh, Jimmy, how are you, boy? Nice to see you. Come here, laddie. Let me give you a little dollar.

You know that that action I go to on Saint Patrick's Day to my father's bar in Queens. And if you were four or five years old and you could walk, somebody was slipping you something. And I did a lot of that, you know, sipping the whiskey off the table when somebody was looking the other way or they were two Hammonds to know what was going on. And I learned early on by watching that men do a couple of things. They drink hard, they work hard and they fight hard. And as long as you were able to suit up and show up to work the next day

and put food on the table, whatever you did the night before was forgiven. And I remember that very clearly because I remember my father being drunk. My father would, you know, there was those nine kids. My mother, God bless her, she, she worked at, at the house with the kids, but she didn't go out to work. My dad was in the city 5-6 days a week, working 18 hours a day to provide for us. And when he would come home that day or two, you know, he'd come home. And most of the time, 'cause he's an alcoholic, he had to drink. And when he drink, he'd get

drunk and he'd make promises, make promises, and he'd forget the promises. And I always wanted to know the next day why that was happening, to be honest with you. You know, I was told an Alcoholic Anonymous that more will be revealed. And I want to tell you that if you're fortunate enough to work the steps, more will be revealed. And I don't remember a good portion of my childhood. That's just a fact. So I share with you what I have and I can tell you that from my best estimation, I've been an alcoholic from the first time I ever picked up a drink because the big Book tells me that alcoholic drink

basically for the effect produced by alcohol. And I remember the first time that I ever like truly made a choice, you know, to have a drink. I was 12 years old and my father had sent me with my mother to Ireland to see all my cousins. I have 106 first cousins. I want to let you know, and they sent me, they had to meet those cousins and, and work on the dairy farm and, you know, to show me, you know, what a real, what a real hard day was getting up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, milking the cows and getting out the pasture. And I want to, I went with my cousins from Brooklyn.

These guys are a couple years older than me. And boy, I really, really looked up to them, really looked up to them. And we went and there was a distillery about a mile and a half from the farm that my aunt owned it. It ends up that it was owned by Jameson. And if any of you are in here, you probably drank a little bit of that Jameson Irish whiskey. I was 12 years old. And we walked over to that distillery. And again, if you can walk an island, you can buy a bottle of booze. That's just the way that it is. And the three of us went in there and we bought 2 bottles of 120 proof stuff just came,

came out. We crawled back under under the hay barn. There was a hay barn there for all the cows on the on the farm. And we crawled up about 3040 feet in there. It was a rainy day. And I remember they just got me smashed. And what happened to me about 45 minutes later was I ended up falling about 30 feet out of that haystack and laying the dead on my back. And the rest of the story I tell you is what they told me because I had my first wonderful experience of what I know now is called the blackout. And that's where I drink to the point where I can't remember what I do.

And this was the, you know, this was to become the theme of my life. This happened over and over and over and over again. And I fell out of that haystack. And I woke up three or four hours later in the middle of this field. And there was puke all over me. And I looked up and there was a bowl. I was in the field where they kept the stud ball. And I don't know whether this is real or imagined, but my imagination was running wild. And I thought the bull was chasing, chasing me. And I started making a beeline for the gates so I could jump over. And I ran like hell. And I jumped over that gate

and at that moment as I crap my pants, this is like the theme of my pitch.

That moment as I crap my pants, I did the 1st

and biggest mistake I ever made in my life. Probably now looking back, I thought, man, I'll just never drink that whiskey again. And it wasn't never that I shouldn't drink again. It was just that I drank the wrong thing. Or if I drank a little bit less, or if I tried a little bit of this or if I only did it on the weekends, then it was all going to be all right. And that said about a real illustrious, fairly short lived, but very intense drinking career and

probably 1415 years old growing up in that alcoholic house, seeing all that violence, seeing those broken promises,

I knew I was already an alcoholic. I was blacking out three or four days a week. I was going to school the next day and people were telling me the things that I had done the night before, you know, and I got a kick out of it and I laughed at myself and I thought it was all pretty fun. And then probably the, the thing that got me to stop was I went to this party, my best friend and moved to another high school in New York. And I went to this party and I wanted to impress these people, which if you're an alcoholic like me, you try to do on a regular basis. And I was there trying to impress people in the way that you impress people in the neighborhoods

I grew up in was if you could drink them under the table. So of course, I set out to do so. And what I ended up after drinking a bottle of Absolute and a six pack of Miller as I ended up getting butt naked and jumping in the pool and walking around in front of like 300 people at this party and going up and introducing myself to people as this poor guy's best friend.

And I don't remember that night either. The only reason I have that information is they showed me the pictures.

They showed me the pictures about a week later. But what ended up happening is they they try to throw me in the back seat of this guys car and they got me in the back seat of the car and I proceeded to vomit profusely all over this guys car who I had never met. And then they decided to put me in the trunk because that was the safer route.

And they pop the trunk and push me in. And I didn't, you know, put up a big fight. And they drove me home. And they leaned me up against the front door and they rang the bell.

And

yeah, I kind of got like a flat face. That was from the that was from the fall when mom opened the door and I hit the concrete and the rest, my mom told me. She told me that she she brought me to the the toilet. I had to go to the bathroom and I passed out again and fell off the bowl and smacked my head into the side of the wall and buck in the air, pants at my ankle. And my mother at that time is,

who knows, probably 62 or 63 years old.

And she's got to drag her son to the bed again. Like she dragged her older son to the bed,

like she dragged her her daughter to bed. And like she dragged her husband to the bed. She dragged me to the bed. And I woke up about 3:00 the next afternoon with a solemn resolve that it talks about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, never to drink again. Because I was not going to be like my father. I was not going to give broken promises and I was not going to rip people's heart out on a regular basis. And I made that promise to myself. And I set out to not drink and did not get high. I want to let you know that I suffer from the disease of alcoholism,

and part of that ISM is I stuff myself with whatever makes me feel better. So if you're in this room and you identify it as an addict, I want to welcome you. I know now that I suffer from the disease of alcoholism, but I used anything you would put in my past, anything that would Get Me Out of feeling the way that I felt. So I could have that quiet heart and that quiet head for just a second so I could feel OK. I would take. And I'm also the kind of alcoholic that will take as much as I can get as often as I can get it, because if it feels good, I want more.

Now let's start the search. And I woke up and I said, that's it, I'm not going to do it. And I set out for about a year and a half to two years of total and utter insanity. Because what I found out is that alcohol was my solution. Alcohol was my best friend. When I wasn't feeling right, when I wasn't feeling good about myself, when I was feeling like I didn't fit in or I wasn't smart enough or I wasn't good enough, I could take a couple of drinks

and get that magic place and I could just

just have a sigh and I could have about 5 or 6 minutes apiece. And I had to give that up. And I ran around like the big book talks about. And I started telling people, you know, how life was so much better now that I stopped drinking. You know, it talks about that. I was like a scared boy whistling in the dark to try to keep myself from being afraid.

And that's what I was doing. I ran around for that year and a half in two years, and I hung out with people who were drinking and using on a regular basis. And I was preaching life is a lot better now that I'm not drinking. You should try it. Come on over to this side of the team, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what happened was, is I was going insane really, really fast

'cause I'm an alcoholic and my solution wasn't there. And I didn't know about the Big Book and I didn't know about the 12 Steps and I didn't know about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm here to tell you tonight that I'm grateful I didn't know. I have a brother who's nine years sober in this program today. And I have an older sister. She runs the biggest state-run hospital in New York for alcohol and drug rehab. And I have another sister, the one who's older than her. And what she does is she's the head. She's the head charge nurse on that detox ward

in that same hospital. And my brother that's got nine years is an orderly in the detox. And not one time did any of them ever tell me about Alcoholics Anonymous. They let me fall in my face hard enough to like it hit a bottom that I was willing to hear what you people had to tell me and willing to do what you told me to do. And I'm grateful for that today. And they know it because I've told them I've thanked them from the bottom of my heart for that opportunity. And I ran around for a year and a half. And like any good alcoholic, like the Big Book says, no matter where you run and go,

if you be an alcoholic, eventually you'll have to drink. So I figured after a year and a half or two years of not drinking, I must not be an alcoholic. I was foolish, I was young. I've got this problem licked. I'm going to set about to do some, you know, controlled. Enjoy drinking now because I've got the whole solution solved.

The genius from Queens with the solutions, huh?

What a joke, what a joke. And I picked up and I controlled and enjoyed it for a week.

And then if you've ever had the opportunity to read the big book like I have, then you know that this is a progressive disease. When I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was easy for me to believe that I suffered from this disease because when I read that book, it was like reading an autopiography. It was all about me

and I knew it was progressive because within a week or two of coming back, it was worse. I was drinking everything I could get my hands on on a regular basis. I'm the kind of kid that was labeled. I got a lot of talent, I got a lot of potential, and I always, you know, fizzled really far short. I would do just enough to skate by with what I had

because I didn't want to fail. Bottom line, before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a quitter one day at a time.

That's what I was until I got here and I set about to go ahead and do that drinking, You know, the escapades. If you're sitting in this room tonight, you didn't get here for singing too loud in church on Sunday. You got here because you got a story and you probably did some things you had to write down in your in your 4th step and share with your sponsor. And I did those things too. And what I can tell you is that I said about to try to be a tough guy like my dad and like my uncles, I set out to drink hard and fight hard and earn a reputation for myself. And I decided to be a tough

and I started running out 1617 years old and I was selling drugs in the street and driving drunk constantly and under the influence. And I started running down

into Manhattan's and neighborhoods the people of my skin tone are not really welcome at. And I started to make friends because I thought if I got around people

who I viewed as being lesser than myself, who had a worse problem than me, I could justify what was going on. If I always pointed the finger at you, then it was easy not to have to look at myself. I always pick people whose lives were totally messed up so I could feel good about myself. And I told myself that I was doing good because I was helping these people.

I'm the kind of guy that would help an old lady cross the street and think that if I did that I could steal from my mom for the next 5 days.

That's who I am. That's the truth. I am the Jekyll and Hyde it talks about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am normally a sweet, nice person until I get under the influence or you're in my way to get what I need to get to shut this off.

And then I'm willing to do whatever I got to do to get where I got to get because I suffer from this disease and I did so. So that means I there's a lot of hurt lives. That's what it talks about. It says it hurt lives of family members and friends. We run through their lives like a tornado. I'd imagine if you're in this room, you probably have some wreckage of your past. I know that I do.

And I ran around and basically I got into running with some really nice Italian gentlemen

who all, you know, hung out at social clubs and played cards in the whatnot. And I was the wannabe. I was never anything in my head. I was the most grandiose mafia hit man that ever lived. Really what I was was just some Irish kid who knew some Italian kid who was taken bets and I'd run around and collect money and I thought I was a big chef and I was running around. And after I graduated high school, I couldn't hold the job because I'm the kind of guy, I told you I'm a quitter and I go to jobs and I work real hard

three or four months and I can keep it together three or four months. The bosses love me, they promote me. I've got a a skyrocket pass to the top. And then I pull the rug out from beneath my feet. Talks about the alcoholic. When he goes, there's a story. It talks about a guy who's going to have a business deal that's going to end in his favor,

and a day or two before it's all gonna workout, he's gotta pull the rug out from underneath himself. And that's me over and over and over and over again from the disease of alcoholism. And I gotta tell you something. I definitely, definitely had that big D word denial, 'cause I had no clue that alcohol had anything to do with my problem. Anybody, whoever told me I had a problem with alcohol or I drank too much, I got him out of my life. I found some excuse for some reason, something they had done to me to push them out so I didn't have to look at the fact

because you're the problem, not me. It was my dad, it was my mom, it was my brothers, it was my sister. Was the kid up the block? It was that girlfriend. It was never about me. There was no responsibility. I got pulled over and pulled over drunk. I blew a a 2.81 time and the cop let me go.

He let me go. Why? Because I had a fast mouth and I was willing to tell a story. And another time I crashed the car into a light pole or a curb, and it was destroyed. And I pulled the keys out of the ignition and I threw them in the woods and I sat on the curb. And in New York, if they don't find you behind the wheel, they can't convict you. And I knew that. And they took me into the drunk tank. And I had a brother-in-law who was a cop. And, you know, I started dropping his name and they called over and found out. Yeah, sure enough, my brother-in-law's a cop. So they drive me. The police station comes, the other

police, they come pick me up and they drive me home and they drop me off and I couldn't make it to the front door.

I'd crawled about halfway to the front door and ended up face 1st and along, waking up a grass in my mouth one more time.

And it was about seven or eight years after the incident in Ireland. What's the difference?

Nothing. Just that it takes a little bit more to get me to the point where I pass out. And a Long story short of it, what happened to me? Because all those things I got involved with and who I thought I was and what I was trying to be as I ended up in the week of my 19th birthday

and I was facing 25 years to life in prison and I was in a welfare hotel and none of my family and none of my so-called friends wanted anything to do with me. It's 'cause I had burned and twisted and ran through their lives over and over and over again. And my if my dad was the king of broken promises and I was the Prince. And that's just the way that it was, you know. And I thought one more time about the 10,000 time looking in the mirror. God, if you Get Me Out of this one, I swear to God, I'm going to change. I'm going to go back to school,

I'm going to get a job. I'm going to treat people the right way. I'm not going to steal. I'm not going to hurt nobody. My life is going to be different. There's a 10,000 time I've made this prayer. And I know today that I'm an alcoholic because when I sat and I looked at myself in the mirror that day, like I had so many times before, I meant it from the bottom of my heart. I meant it. And I no longer had a choice. And I didn't know that. I thought I was a bad guy trying to get good. And when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I found out I'm just a sick guy trying to get well.

But I have an opportunity to stay sober one day at a time if I'm willing to practice principles in all my affairs.

I do the best I can today to try to do that. And guess what? I'm standing here before you. So I'm obviously not doing 25 years in prison in New York. So I got off one more time,

and guess what? I forgot the promise one more time because I got to forget the promise because I got a drink and I got to use because I got to shut down this. And the big Book tells me that the main problem is the alcoholic centers in his mind. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that that is true in my case

that says that alcohol is but a symptom of our disease. I know that that's true too, without without any shadow of a doubt, because I still have alcoholic thinking. My head still runs 1000 miles an hour frequently. I just know what what I need to do daily, one day at a time, which is go to a meeting, talk to my sponsor, help a newcomer, work a step,

get a commitment. Those are the things I can do to combat that. And what I found out is that the longer that it's been between me and that last drink or that last fix and doing the right things, the quicker that stuff goes away and the less frequently that it happens. So if you're here tonight, that's what I can offer you. I can tell you for me, it hasn't gone away completely, but it's gotten 1000 times better. And if it didn't, I wouldn't have driven from Seal Beach to San Diego to speak at this meeting tonight. I was taught that when I'm asked to do something in Alcoholics Anonymous that I do it

unless I'm already committed to something else. I'm the secretary of a big speaker meeting on Sunday night. I told you that E space about this size about 300 people every single week

and I was asked to do this and I went to my sponsor and said should I do this? He said I'm the one who gave out your phone number. What do you think?

So I got somebody to cover the secretary's commitment. And I'm down here. And I'm, I'm, I'm glad to be down here. I'm glad that I'm here with the people that I'm here with. Three people got in a car with me and, and wore suits even though they didn't want to. And they came here with me to this meeting tonight. And I have friends today. I have true friends. They'll go to the whole distance for me. They'll go all the way from me. And they know that I'll go all the way for them.

Absolutely all the way. Because I was taught to an alcoholic, synonymous. I got out of that. And what did I have to do? Well, no responsibility again, right? So I got to run around then I got to keep doing what I got to do. So I'm going out and I'm doing it. And I got a job working one day a week as a bartender.

What better job for an alcoholic, right? And, and in New York, the Bosnian closed until 4:00, and they reopen at six. And I found out that when you got the key, they don't close.

So this was the perfect line of employment to me. The only problem being that I was 19 years old and I really technically wasn't supposed to be a bartender, but you know, I knew the guys, Dad owned the boss, so they let me work for him.

What also happened to me through that drinking and using this, you know, mom and dad got sick and tired of my, my antics and they kicked me out three or four times. And I'd go and I'd work mom. I'd manipulate mom like crazy because I'm her baby, right? I'd work mom, I'd play mom like a violin. I'd play mom like a violin and go stay at a friend's house for a couple of weeks and Mom would be driving bad, so crazy that Dad would give in and let me back a couple of weeks later and I was back in good graces,

you know? And I'd kiss Mom on the cheek and tell her I loved her until I wanted her car keys or some money and she didn't want to give it to me.

And then I was the animal that I become when I have to get high and when I have to drink. And I'm so grateful to alcoholic synonymous to have had the opportunity to work the steps that I got to make amends for that, for ripping through those people's lives, especially my mother. But I'll get to that. Long story short, I'm doing what I got to do to get where I got to get. I got some more heat from the police warrants. You know, I got pulled over four times for driving with suspended license.

Whoopsie, didn't mean to. And you know, I had a friend who would come to California

and he was living in Hollywood and he said, you know what, come with me, get away from these people. And I knew, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was right, that if I got out of New York it would all be different. What really is going on here, folks, is I tried everything else I could do to make it work and none of it worked. And this is the only friggin excuse I had left. I figured if I upped and moved from New York to California that it would be different. But I could change and I could start over and nobody know me and I wouldn't have any connections and nobody come up me want wanting something or want to give me something

and I could start all over again. And what preceded that really was I had gone and I was working at that bar and I probably had, I don't know, 1012 Long Island Iced Teas. And I drove, I got a ride home from a friend of mine. And I'm not supposed to be driving because I got all those warrants out and Mom and Dad were asleep and I wasn't drunk enough for me because I need to shut my head off. And I had a copy of Dad's keys made, you know. So I popped the garage and took Dad's Blazer and went back to the bar that I worked at and I had about another 6 or another eight.

Now I got to tell you that I have a high tolerance for alcohol and I was not even remotely close to the drunkest that I've ever been before in my life. And what happened to me was I'm driving home, it's about 20 miles away from my house and I'm driving home and I got to about a half a mile away from the house and for some reason I didn't understand, I slammed on the brakes and the car went sliding off the road and I crashed into a fire hydrant and I tore up the right side of that car. And I got out and looked at it and said

he won't notice.

And I drove the car down the hill when it's stupor parked it in the garage and passed out.

And my mom shook me awake about 2:00 the next afternoon. She told me my dad had tried to wake me up at about 10 so he could kick the living crap out of me

for doing that to his car. And he couldn't get me up because I was so polluted from alcohol. And my mom shipped me to it about 2:00 the next afternoon. And she looked me in the face like she had done probably 300 times before with tears in her eyes and this time with anger that I had never seen before. And she asked me what the hell was I doing to her and what the hell was I doing to myself?

And for the first time, I really had no answer or no excuse

and I couldn't take it. And I packed everything that I owned and I put it in some Hefty bags. And I walked up the street to a friend's house and I dropped him in his backyard. And I went to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

My friend from California came home for Thanksgiving. He said, you come live with me, I'll give you a place to stay. I'll get you a job. You know that? Well, that's the same lying to you. What am I doing? That's the story I told my mom and dad. The real deal was he wasn't the adult film industry

and his girlfriend was working for an escort service and they were living in Hollywood. And I jumped on a train December 3rd, 1992, and I took a train out from Penn State

and a lot last song I heard on the radio before I got to the train was going to California by Led Zeppelin. And I figured that's my sign, God telling me it's going to be all right. You see, I'm doing the right thing, fellas. And I hadn't drank for about 30 days, but of course I had to drink and smoke a little bit with the fellows on the way to the train station just to say goodbye because I owed it to him. We were friends for a long time. And I cut on that train and I swore this is my last Bender. I'm going to go these three days and I'm going to enjoy myself. I'm going to

my ass off and I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna start all over again. And if you're an alcoholic like me or an addict like I am, when we get in groups of people, it's like a beacon weep. We find each other in Group and cause chaos. And I found the group and we took over the smoking car and it was ugly. There was a problem with the train in Chicago and we jumped off and some guys, buddy picked us up and took us on a tour And the first stop on the tour was the liquor store. And we, we brought 2 bags, probably about

10 or 12 half gallons and brought it back to the train and it was on. The police came on in Salt Lake City, UT in Denver, Co and in Las Vegas, NV to threaten us if we didn't quit it that we were getting off the train.

And I got here December 6, 1992 and the first song I heard when I got in the car was going to California and now my state was sealed. This is where I was supposed to be. And I went up there and you know my my friend neglected to tell me one small thing when he took me up there. He neglected to tell me that him and his lovely girlfriend had a $300.00 a day crack cocaine handed. And you know I'm a pretty big guy and I eat a lot and they couldn't afford to feed me and feed their habits. So guess which one out and I'm out on my ass and I'm 3000 miles

home and I have no clue what the hell to do. No clue at all. So one of the guys I had gotten loaded with on the train, I called him up and he took me in and I started leeching off of him. I used to say that I'd go stay with people, but now if I'm honest with myself in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I know that I was believing him dry like I had bled everybody else and he wasn't having it. And that SOB told me I had to get a job. I'm like, don't you understand? I'm 3000 miles away from home and I just got kicked out. I mean I'm the sob story

told me I had to get a job, so I did. I got a job at this gas station and the gas station was about 15 miles from where I was living and he gave me like a huffy bike and I'm peddling 15 miles to go where graveyard shift at this gas station making 550 an hour and I'm peddling my happy little ass off that I gas station every night. Me and my six friends upstairs the committee they're they're running the whole time I'm pedwinning. What happened to me? You know I deserve better than this. I'm supposed to get more than this. All right, I

and I made my own bed and it was time to sleep in it. And I was riding to that job and I, I was at the jumping off point. I talked about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the point where I couldn't imagine life with alcohol or without alcohol anymore. And that's when a power greater than myself that I didn't quite understand when I got here, and I understand just a little bit better today, walk somebody into my life because I was primed and ready.

And he walked this old guy in his probably 4550 years old. And to me, that was old. I was like 20, OK, So don't take offense. And it was like 4550 years old. And he's coming in, man. It's like 5:30 in the morning. And I get off at six and he is happy as hell

and I am not a happy camper. You know, if you'll like me 536 o'clock, you ain't got no money left, you ain't got no booze left, you ain't got no dope left. And you're pissed off. And if you're pissed off, you got to make everybody else pissed off. So, you know, I'm, I'm thinking to myself, this guy comes in laughing, man, I'm going to tell him or even kick those jokes and shove up his mom. And I knew I couldn't say anything to the guy because if I did I was going to lose a job and I needed a damn 5/15 an hour

because I had nothing else. And the next day he came in and he was dressed exactly the same 3 yellow jumpsuit. And I got to tell you something, you wear that colored jumpsuit in my neighborhood, you are going to get jumped. OK? And that was it. I had enough. Any good alcohol like two days in a row is enough, right? So what I say to him, I said what the blank are you so happy about? And he looked me right in the face

and he said I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and drugs and alcohol no longer run my life.

And for the first time in my life, I didn't have a God damn thing to say

and I sat there dumbfounded. I went from angry to real quick. It was a quick transition and I didn't know what the hell to say to that guy.

I did not know what to say. And I just said, you know,

I think I might be an alcoholic, too. He said, I'm going to a meeting. It starts at 7:00 if you want to come. And I got to tell you, like I told you earlier, I had no idea about alcohol or synonymous. My sisters didn't try to ram it down my throat, nor did my brother. So I had no preconceived notions. So when it came time for God to walk Alcoholics Anonymous into my life, I didn't have any walls up against it. And I did something that day. That's probably the most intelligent thing I had ever done, and I just listened

and followed somebody.

Where I come from, the things that I do, the people that I run around with, there's always an angle. Somebody's always trying to get something. You're working somebody for something. I want to know what the hell this guy wanted. For a second I thought maybe he was, you know, gay and interested in me. You know, egotistical like I am. I was a drunk, slobbery pig and this guy's attracted to me, right?

Nobody wanted me. I didn't want me. What the hell are you going to want me for?

And that guy took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that morning.

And but for the grace of God and the program by Alcoholics Anonymous, the people that were in that room and those 12 steps that are in that book, I haven't had to take a drink from that very first day. And that was March 11th, 1993. And that was sorry, That was nine days before my 21st birthday.

And I'm so grateful that I have not had to take a legal drink. I'm also grateful that I know I drank plenty to get my sheet and Alcoholics Anonymous And I went to that meeting and I did something that day I'd never done before. And I asked somebody for help because where I come from,

I don't need you. I got it covered. It's all good, don't worry about it. And that day I asked somebody for help and that guy drove me home and he dropped me off and he told me if I didn't drink that day that he'd take me to another meeting that night. I said, okay, I really, my social calendar was pretty open at that time.

So I went to the meeting and that was that speaker meeting I told you about in Seal Beach where I had to stand up as a newcomer. And that guy walked me around and introduced me to all the people who were active and involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. In other words, he brought me to the a, a Nazi camp

and he hooked me right up in line and he sat me right up front and he got me all the people. And I met my, my sponsor that night and I met a lot of people are still involved in my life and who helped to save my life from the very first day. I want to let you know, if you're new in this meeting, you've never been Alcoholics Anonymous before. Relapse is not a requirement. You are welcome here if you've gone in and come back out. I've had a lot of friends that have long term sobriety that have done that. I didn't have to take a drink from the very first day. And I believe that's because I was

down to the core and I was humbled and I was willing to do with people around me told me to do for the first time in my life. And I got involved in Alcoholics Anonymous right away. I looked around at people and most of the people were happy. And they seemed to be saying the things out loud that I was thinking in my head on a regular basis. And if these people could recover, then maybe there was a chance for a loser like me. And I just got a little bit of hope, just a little bit of hope. And I decided to do what these people told me. I forget. I'll give it 90 days. I'll do exactly every