Karl M. from Covina, CA speaking somewhere in Texas, sometime in 1994

Good evening. My name is Carl. I'm an alcoholic. I wanna thank Tom for asking me to be out here, and I'd like to thank Bernie for not objecting to it when I got here. I also wanna really thank you people for the for the hospitality you've shown me.

I tell you the the the kindness and the love and and and everybody I I have not met one person who did not take the attitude with me of how can I help? What can I do to make you feel feel better and what can I do to help you? And and that's not always true in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've often run around Alcoholics Anonymous saying that if you if you like everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous, you're not going to enough meetings. And, I find that's not true in Texas, at least not here.

So anyway, I, in keeping with tradition, I'll state my sobriety date and, through a through a loving God and in the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and the unselfish actions of 22 men in particular, I haven't had take a drink or a drug since January 21, 1987. I, you you may you may find out you think that, well, 6 6 years 4 months is kinda young to be a speaker. That's not really so true in Los Angeles. But I, I was I called my my, sponsor earlier today, and he told me to let you know just as as Arly was introduced that I come from very good heritage. Sponsors like to claim they come from very good heritage.

And this is this is this is absolutely true with me. My sponsor's name is Eddie Cochran, and for 30 years, he was sponsored by Chuck Chamberlain, and Chuck Chamberlain's sponsor was God. So, and in 1984, Chuck died, so there's one more step closer. And even on top of that, last September, we all got a really big scare with Eddie and he had a 20 pound tumor removed. And so for a while, it was really scary, but I guess I would have been one step closer.

But anyway, anyway, didn't ask if any any people were brand new here in Alcoholics Anonymous, and if there are, I really wanna welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I hope you find here what I have found here. I have a little bit of advice for people that are brand new, and you and if you've been around for a while, you may think this is a little bit crazy, but I'll explain myself. If you're brand new here in Alcoholics Anonymous and you're wondering, now that I'm here in AA, what am I gonna do about all my old friends? Can I call them?

Can I go over and see them? Can I have them come over? What should I tell them about what I'm doing? What can I do? Da da da da da da da da.

Your head may be just spinning around with it. Maybe even be thinking, maybe I can go over to the crack house and just hold the torch and see how their life is going, that type of thing. What I suggest you do is that you call your old friends and you let them know that you're an alcoholic and that you're an Alcoholics Anonymous and then lay this one on them. Tell them that if they ever drank with you, they must surely be alcoholic too. And unless they finally find what you found here in Alcoholics Anonymous, they will surely I remember I told you it may sound a little bit weird, but I'll explain myself.

I don't recommend you do that to carry any sort of message or what we say plant a seed in anybody's mind. It's, my recommendation for doing that is because after you do that, you will have no old friends to worry about. And you'll be left with us as your friends and you'll probably have a better chance of this thing called sobriety. I, I, I also don't recommend the near beer as a way to wean yourself off of alcohol. Nothing wondering near beer how near do you wanna get.

If you're gonna do that, maybe you may as well go out and get some near pot and some near cocaine and we'll just nearly get loaded. But anyway, enough of this nonsense. I got to alcoholics knowledge when I was 25 years old. I was burnt out in every single area of my life, and I had no solution on how to live. And yet, I would question things.

I don't know if you're doing that now, but you may be, but I know I did. I identified with a lot, and I'll get to that. But but I also question things. And I remember pulling a fellow aside when I was new. I thought I needed to tell him about some of these things I was questioning.

He was a good AA, so he listened. I'm sure he wasn't too interested in what I had to say, but he listened for a bit. And I told him that, you know, I'm hearing all kinds of people say from the podium that they felt very, very different as a child even before they took their first drink. And this wasn't true in my case, and I thought I needed to prove it to this fellow. And so I told him, I just don't remember feeling very different as a child before I took my first drink.

And I went on to tell the fellow even more. I told him that at 4 years old, my father packed our whole family out of hell out of Montana, moved us to the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. I went to a Mandarin Chinese kindergarten. All the kids were Malay and Chinese. I was the only white kid there, and I didn't feel different.

The fellow looked at me for a second and said, son, there's alcoholism in reverse because a normal kid would have felt very different at that point of time. What he was giving me was the kinder, gentler way of saying, if you're looking for the differences instead of the similarities, you're gonna die, plain and simple. Very valuable information to to get early on in Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, I came back from Asia when I was about 9 years old, and I was a goofy goofy kid. I had short hair, I was playing violin, I was doing really well in school and I loved my family.

Kinda kid that might grow up to be a geek yuppie in a suit, kinda like what I look like tonight, but something happened along the way. I took a drink at 11 years old just basically out of curiosity. And I was like a time bomb waiting to go off. I had no idea. I stole a bottle of wine from my father, locked myself in a study when my parents were out of town for that weekend, and proceeded to drink.

And I'll tell you that I believe it was alcoholism right off the bat, and I'll tell you why. First sign of alcoholism was that I I got a feeling deep inside that I just had never felt before. It was just incredible. Just incredible. But that's the last thing I remember.

Next thing I remember, I woke up in my my bedroom, and there's vomit all over the room, just all over the room. And there are two signs of alcohol, an immediate change of perception. 2nd sign, loss of control, blacking out. But the third sign was my thought process the next morning, and that's what makes me believe I was an alcoholic for sure right off the bat. And that is, you see, after I realized how sick I felt, I had felt this sick one time before in my life.

While while we lived in Asia, I contracted this intestinal disease called tropical worms. Easily cured once diagnosed, but it took took the doctors a couple of weeks to diagnose it. So for a couple That's fine. But here here's the here's the clincher on this alcoholism thing. Once I ran to the bathroom and threw up one more time, I said to myself, I'm gonna do that again.

I didn't do that with the tropical worms. I didn't say I'm gonna go try tropical worms again. There was some sort of peculiar mental twist that was gonna lead me right back to what had destroyed me the night before. It was like an overnight sensation. Once I started to drink, all of a sudden, I described myself as a goofy kid, short haired, playing violin, doing really well in school, loved my family.

Like overnight, once I started drinking, all of a sudden out into violin and came to heavy metal guitar, wanted to grow my hair down in my ass. School became a very secondary issue and my parents became the enemy immediately. Posters went up, black lights went on in my room, posters went up, my god became Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore, and my parents just stood by going, and, of course, I started hanging out with kids that were doing the same thing as I was doing. We would drink in the morning, and then we'd smoke that commercial pot. Remember that stuff in back in the seventies?

Useless stuff. You had to smoke about 7 joints to get high. You smelled worse than you were. Guys would be standing around at that outside the at the at the school, and they'd be loading up this big ball of hog seeds and stems and popping on you. You'd be burning your your clothes and stuff like that.

And, you know, I'm just, boy did I but I always just loved to drink. And I was all and by 14 years old, I was trying to figure out how to control my drinking because I was blacking out a lot. And the reason I didn't wanna black out anymore, this is kind of embarrassing to say, but but it wasn't because I was worried about it. It's because some of my friend this one friend of mine told me one morning that he had seen me at the pet when I was about 14 years old, and I was in the bushes with this girl. And she had her shirt off, and I don't remember a damn thing.

And I was thinking I need to remember things like that. So so how am I gonna control these things? And and through a series of events, I I I found this I was introduced by this older person at this restaurant where I was a busboy on how to control my drinking. It was this little white powder that she put out on this mirror, did this big chop chop chop chop chop, lined it out, rolled up this bill, and I was incredibly impressed with this ceremony. And she handed it to me, she said, snort this.

You won't you won't be blacking out anymore. She was absolutely right. Absolutely right. But now I got a problem how to afford this on a busboy's tips. And so I went back to this waitress and I told her my problem, you know, and this is really helping my drinking.

I really really like this and and, how do I afford this now? And she had my answer. I'm going to the wrong people for my solutions at this point in my life. And she took me up and introduced me to her husband up up up at her house and he took me down into his basement and he opened up this sealed up bag of the most incredible pot I'd ever seen. Remember everybody smoking commercial pot?

This guy had this stuff that was was like out of this High Times Magazine. I don't know if that magazine is still out there or not, but he he he rolled up this joint and he took a took a hit. I should have gotten a hit from that and he handed it down to me. Remember, I'm only about 4 foot 11 at this point. Handed it to me and I took this hit and it just blew up in my lungs and I went right down on the ground barking like a dog.

And I handed it back up to him and he took another hit and he handed it back to me and he asked me a question that changed the course of my life. He said, can you sell any of this at school? My eyes got big and I said, absolutely. I'll be the most popular kid in school, guaranteed. Once again, overnight, my parents' phone is ringing off the hook.

All the kids are calling me. They're all trying to find me, and I'm just, answering the phone on the first ring, trying to hide this from my parents, and then I'd be doing that after school all afternoon, trying to set things up for the night, and I'd run up to the dinner table, and I'd sit there, and my mother would ask me questions like, how's school? These are very good questions that I can't answer. And, then I'd run back downstairs and answer the phone on the first ring. I forgot to mention, my father was a neighborhood Lutheran minister that put a damper on things every last time.

And this is what I did to junior high and high school as I I sold pot to afford cocaine so that I could escalate my drinking. The core issue was always the alcohol, and I certainly hope it doesn't offend anybody for for mentioning drugs and an alcohol. It's anonymous meeting, but I will assure you of one thing. I promise you I did drugs alcoholically. Absolutely.

And, So anyway, I started to do during high high school, and my parents always blamed my problems on people, places, and things. We can just get away from that group of kids, things will be fine. We get them out of that damn public school, things will be fine. Twice they sent me to private schools, I would I would drop out and get kicked out. And through after a very I I barely scraped out of the public school system and after a very nasty summer, they they had my they they tried to help again.

Man, do I love my parents for how much they tried to help they tried to help again and again and again to no avail. They had no idea that I was alcoholic. I didn't know I was alcoholic. And there and we lived in Seattle, and their solution at this point was to send me across state to this place called Washington State University, and they were gonna flip the bill for this. And I spent 3 years at Washington State University and got 10 credits.

I, at any given time, my grade point average matched my blood alcohol content about a 0.25. I did absolutely nothing at that school and, and now my parents had a life that was based on love and service, and I know that at that time they were just practicing a protective mechanism that we just don't wanna know what you're doing. And after 3 years, they became painfully aware of they became painfully aware of what I was doing, and they they showed up over there at Washington State University unexpectedly. And they let me know that, you can consider yourself, on your own. You really, we tried again and again and again, and you've done nothing but spit in our face, and this was absolute the absolute truth, but guys like me can't handle that truth.

And we just come back and and and say things to people we love dearly with profanity and and telling them we don't need them anyway. And I remember packing my car that day and I had no idea where I was gonna go, what I was gonna do. I'd had a lot of cars ever since I've been 16 years old. They would always start out as perfectly good used cars, but along the way, they would die of alcoholism. I don't know if yours did that, but I'll tell you exactly what alcohol did for me.

That is if I were physically sober on any given day, meaning I just hadn't had a drink yet that day. And I'm coming out of wherever I happen to be living, whether it be a park or my parents basement, depending what part of my life we're talking about. If I hadn't had a drink yet that day, I'd I'd walk up to a car that I'd owned for a while, and I'd look at that car and I'd I'd see the dents and the broken windows. I'd start to get angry. And I'd get in and I'd turn broken windows.

I start to get angry. And I get in and I turn the key and it's only hitting on 1 or 2 cylinders. And I'd see the cigarette burns on the apportion and smell the ranch and smell of alcohol. And the radio is sounding terrible for some reason. It sounded great last night, but it's sounding terrible now.

So we hit on 1 or 2 cylinders and I'm driving down that road and I'm going, god. What do I gotta do to get ahead in this world? All I'd have to do is go drink for a couple of hours. I'd walk back up to that very same car, and as I'd be walking up to that car, I'd look at it. I said, why that 62 Dodge Coronet is a classic.

An absolute classic. I get in and I turn that key and it felt like a mechanic had been working on that damn thing. Or there's a driving man's dream. Look at the way they're seeing corners at 70 miles an hour. But at that point, I hit the street, Portland, Santa Cruz speaks of Hollywood.

The words are demoralizing for that year and a half of my life. Those are the words to be used. Came back to my folks house, pleaded with them. It's rough out there. You gotta let me back in.

I'll do anything, you know, the way us, sons do. And they did they they had stipulations like get a job, do something with your life. Parents do that kind of thing to guys like me, and I and I swore to them, yes, I will. And I couldn't live up to it. I would be disappearing for 3 days at a time and coming back and sleeping in their basement.

Sneaking into their basement is what I'd be doing and locking the the door so they couldn't even get down into their own basement. And, at this point, I was drinking in the bar that as a young teenager, I swore I would never drink in because that's where the losers of the neighborhood drank. At this point, I'm running a tab. I know everybody in the bar, and I'd be there on any given any given night. And at a one night, these fellows that were that I met from Washington State University that were from Canada came down to find me, and they found me.

And and their their purpose for being there was to find out if I could still get that pot that I used to get years ago. They had a lot of money up across the border and they couldn't get anything. It's all dry up there and they came down to find me. What they wanted me to do is play middleman, and there's 3 losers in any drug dealer. There's the buyer, the seller, and middleman.

The middleman will make the least amount of money, probably go to jail first and get beat up the most. I will do that. And, so I started running. I would run truckloads of pot off the Canadian border and meet these fellows and each time they make a lot of money. And I'd go on these 3 day binges and I was used to 3 day binges.

I liked 3 day binges. Each time I'd do that I'd be coming back from that border laying in the back of my car, a stranger driving and I'd be bleeding out of every orifice in my body. If you know what that means, you know what that means. If you don't, I suggest you stay in Alcoholics Anonymous. You don't wanna know what it means.

And, I would be laying in the back of that car as sick as can be, counting money. Who owes me? Who do I owe? And that money represented my contribution to the destruction of 100 of lives. At that point, I could have cared less my life about getting loaded and making money at your expense and your children's expense.

And, about the 6 time Meet Me's fellows up there at the Canadian border, I I showed up drunk, and they showed up and they said, we couldn't get the money. We would have been late to meet you if we would have, waited around waited around to get that. Now you wouldn't want us to be late, now would you? Oh, certainly not. They said give it to us for 24 hours.

We'll be right back. It's been 10 years now since I've seen them. And needless to say, I'm scared to death. I can't go back to my parents' house. I can't go to my friend's house.

I've got people looking for me and I joined the Navy is what I did. Skipped right out of town. I didn't have any of that code of ethics that you hang in there and and pay your debts. I skipped out of town, and this is gonna scare you with the past that I just told you about. And that is that on my way into the Navy, I passed a potential test to become a nuclear electrician.

That should scare you. Navy has different, has other tests for smart alecks like me. They, they hand you this little plastic bottle when you show up and they say PM this, son. And I couldn't pass that test and and so they transferred me from the elite force in nuclear engineering to what they called nuclear waste. And, and my alcoholism exploded in my face at that point because I had to show up somewhere every day.

I didn't know how to do that and, and here I I disappear for days at a time, the navy frowns on that rather vigorously. And, I got in all kinds of trouble, constantly in trouble with the navy and, you know, on this one given morning after a series of problems, I was driving to the base after drinking all all weekend and had a bottle between my legs and thinking I'd had another driving man's dream again. I think I wrecked the car a week before. It was just like kinda puttering along, but I'm going way too fast if I remember right. I got this bottle between my legs and I got along straight away before the guard shack that gets you into the Navy base and I just had this depth perception problem between my front bumper and this median in the guard shack.

And, before I knew it, my front front right front tire was clicked up on this median and the car is going sideways and I hear twisted metal and broken glass, blood hits the dashboard, not sure whose it is. And it's these times in my life that I would just say to myself, if I could just rewind my life just by a few seconds, this wouldn't happen. But there is no stopping. They said, bam. Right through the guard shack, I can still see that marine doing this big dive.

And the car is upside down. The the wheels are spinning, and I'm upside down, but the bottle is still there between my legs. I know it's important. Now I'm and my thought process is I gotta get the bottle in the bushes over there, and I didn't need to get that bottle in bushes and out out from between my legs because I thought that would be evidence to incriminate me. I'm going to jail.

I'm going to the hospital. These are things that guys like me do about every 90 days. Reason I needed to get the bottle in the bushes over there so that once the jails and hospitals were done, I knew where my next drink was coming from. But that morning in the hospital, the doctor had different ideas for me. They put me on this stuff called Anabuse.

They patched me up and put me on Anabuse and sent me back to the ship. And I remember for a day or so, I was a celebrity. People were saying nice driving, Mario. Right on. There was one guy in the ship that said I hated that marine that was on duty that night.

Good job. Gave him a good scare. I like that. So I had a little negative attention, I'll take any kind of attention. Then all of a sudden I realized it's been about 4 days on my nanny on on an abuse.

And I realize it's 6 days, and I'm on interviews. It's been 8 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes on one hand of these. I looked around that ship and I knew there was a conspiracy. If they weren't talking behind my back, they were thinking it. I would look over and I'd see this other guy.

He's younger than me, but he's a higher rank. He's telling me what to do, that SOB. If I'm if you would've asked me during this few days, how are you Carl? Fine. Just don't like the way the sun feels on my skin.

Alright? The knot got tighter and I got angrier and all of a sudden on about 9th day, I realized what the problem was. They don't know who I am. They wouldn't treat me like this. They wouldn't think the things they're thinking if they knew who I was.

Now how do I let them know who I am? 1 of my superiors asked me to do something. I'm sure it's very legitimate today, probably something that they ask everybody to do, but I thought it was really way out of line. He asked me to do something. I looked at him and I said, you don't know who I am, do you?

And he looked me right in the eye and he said, who are you? That was the most embarrassing question I've ever been asking my whole life. I couldn't have answered that if you would have paid me a $1,000,000. The doctors had told me that, if you drink on top of antabuse, some people die, other people just get violently ill. So I locked myself in the hotel room to find out which one I was.

And bottle bottle vodka and a shot glass, I took one shot. Nothing happened. As far as I was concerned, authority had lied to me again. Took another shot. I looked in the mirror nose.

Bright red, blotchy in places. Took another shot. Looked down on my shirt. I was drenched in sweat. I realized I was hyperventilating.

We're doing alright so far. We're doing alright. We're doing alright so far. Alright? You guys are really sick.

Took another shot and up it came. You know, we all know how to practice throwing up. We've done years of practice. You can excuse yourself from any social situation and turn around and say, woah. I mean, you just come back now.

Where were we? Yeah. So this this was coming up and out, and thank God I was in the kind of hotel room with the toilets in the same room as the bed. And, found the magic of any of these though, if you're persistent at this, if you're really persistent, you keep drinking and you keep puking and you keep drinking, you keep puking, you keep drinking, you keep puking for about 2 hours, just 2 hours, enough of the and if I don't die, hear that, if you're new and happen to be on antibiotics, I like to throw that in there. After about 2 hours, enough of the interviews would kick out of my system just by upheaval that, I would just be red faced, hyperventilating, and sweating, and I can go about my business.

Now I drank on interviews once, sometimes twice a week for 7 months. And on my last night of drinking, I was being led out of the San Diego downtown jail. My ship was stationed there, and I was being brought up to the up to the ship, in in handcuffs by the shore patrol and the officer there put his arm up and said stop. The orders are not to accept him on board. He's a loser.

He's had every chance in the book. He's a lower rank than when he came in 2 years ago. We've just really had it up to here. The orders are to send him up to treatment. If he can't make it there, we want 90 days in and a bad conduct discharge.

They turned me around, sent me up to the treatment center. And, my feeling was, what are you gonna do for me in the treatment center? I've been on interviews. Uh-uh. There's nothing you can do.

I've got the Navy has sent me to a psychiatrist once a month. My father, the Lutheran minister has been sending me letters that they've been having these prayer vigils for me. So I've got it coming from all three sides and I'm drunk as hell. What can you do for me here in treatment? And that's the attitude I had for quite some time.

And they detoxed me and then the next thing they did was they put me into this small group therapy kind of thing and and they had also the large group. They had a small group and a large group, and everybody that was in your in the large group were people every the 35 people that came in, they took in 35 people per week, and the 35 people that showed up on that week were all gonna be in your large group and you would have these large meetings where everybody shared and and all of that. And on about the 3rd day, I'm really angry. I'm I'm the nod is back. I'm feeling just like I had been, though, whenever I didn't take a drink.

It was getting worse. I'm getting angry at the people there. I'm not a poster boy for recovery, I can tell you that. And, all of a sudden, this fellow comes in on our week and his name is Paco and he shows up and on about the second day there, he in this large group meeting, he says, you know, my name is really not Paco. It's just a street name that I've had my whole life.

My name is really Randy. I've never told anybody that, but my name is really Randy. This assistant counselor that was in there said, oh my god. This is a phenomenal move in your recovery. You're the only one that shows any hope so far.

You're now president of the floor. And now what that meant is now he could tell us all when we could smoke, when we could go get coffee, when we could go to the bathroom, who cleans up what, the perfect person to direct hate towards. And that's what I did. And so Randy was a real thorn in my back the whole time and I I got angrier and angrier and angrier. And I felt like my head was just about ready to explode and I and I knew there was no no answer and and they were giving me a lot of good information.

I I couldn't hear it because I was angry and at Randy. And, on about the 7th day, they took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I gotta tell you my first impression of Alcoholics Anonymous was a positive one. I could not deny that the people there at that meeting were talking about the way I've been thinking, feeling, and drinking my whole life. I couldn't deny that.

And I still remember sitting there and and Randy was a couple of seats away from me, and I'm and I'm listening and I'm thinking I'm just gonna be I'm I'm I'm I think I'm psychotic. My head was just spinning with stuff and I'm trying to listen and I and I just, don't remember much except for one person getting up and and they called on him. It was a participation meeting and the man came up and he said one sentence and he sat down. He introduced himself as an alcoholic and he said, my mind would have killed my body a long time ago, but it needed it for transportation. And and that's exactly what happened.

There's a slight laughter, and I almost fell right out of my chair. In one sentence, this guy had described my mental condition. And I felt great from identification for about 30 seconds. Then I remembered Randy was 2 seats away. Went back to the treatment center that night.

Of course, we had to. We had no choice but to. And then the second night, we went to, the second meeting and I don't remember what type of meeting it was, but I still I remember I got very, very confused. Everybody in that meeting was talking about something I had never heard before. Everybody in that meeting was talking about something called drug of choice.

I had never heard that term before. I'd never used that term. I'd never asked anybody what their drug of choice was nor had I ever been asked this. The what my drug of choice was, but everybody in this meeting was talking about it with like it was very important. I'd better figure it out.

At least that's what I thought. And I'm sitting there getting all worried. Oh my God. I don't know. What what do they even mean by this?

My God. So So we went back to treatment. The next day, I I asked my counselor. Her name was Mary Weber, a nonalcoholic, wonderful woman, probably saved my life for a lot of reasons. I said, Mary, last night in the meeting, they're talking about something called drug of choice.

What in the hell do they mean by that? She said, Carl, if I came into this room and I had a tray, and on this tray, I had a bottle of Jack Daniels, an ounce of cocaine, and an ounce ounce of Thai sticks. Which one would you take? I started to drool immediately. My god.

I take them all. And she said, no. Call. Play the game. You can only have one.

Which one would you take? But it was a terrible question to ask him. I said, well, I guess I take the ounce of cocaine. Well, then maybe cocaine is your drug of choice. Said, I don't know about that.

So take that ounce of cocaine and get the hell out of this loony bin. I'd sell 2 8 more by a quarter pound of sticks in a case of Jack Daniels. That's what I would do. So so I have no clue as to what it means and and there's 2 things happening there. I'm the first thing that was happening that day is that I was 25 years old, no solution on how to live, but I was a smartass.

The second thing that's happening there is it was actually a valuable piece of information and that is that we don't just quit our drug of choice, go to our meeting of choice and take our chip of choice. The message of Alcoholics Anonymous is clean and sober. Clean and sober does not mean that I just took a shower before I came down to this meeting. And sometimes people miss that because some people are scared to mention anything about drugs for fear of retaliation from, from from whoever. But my sobriety date depends on the fact that I do not do drugs.

So therefore, it seems to be a rather pertinent issue to mention if I did them. The core issue is alcoholism. I don't argue that at all. I don't argue that at all, but I know that the future of Alcoholics Anonymous that that I found in taking surveys, people under 40, most all of them, most of most all the alcoholics under 40 years old did drugs too. And and it's not and it's not that I that I think that it needs to be argued over.

The only thing that I see that I'm worried about is people that don't hear that and die because they think, well, I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not drinking. Alcohol. Alcoholics Anonymous. Nothing wrong with smoking or join in between meetings.

And so there I I don't know how many people I've run across that have that have not heard that, might be selective hearing, but sometimes they just don't hear it. They just don't hear it. And the other thing, it's absolutely impossible to have the necessary spiritual awakening personality chain necessary to recover from this deadly disease called alcoholism if you're doing a little social heroin in between meetings. You just it's just not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen.

So anyway, after 45 days, they're gonna let me out of that treatment center. They're not happy with my progress, but they're gonna let me out. And they used to they would they would throw some scare tactics at us at us 35. They used to say, only one out of you 35 is gonna be stay continuously sober. Now we all know who that's gonna be.

It's Randy. It's gotta be Randy. It's not me. I guarantee it's gotta be Randy. We're all standing on the doorstep, kind of looking out over the fence.

There's about 4 of us sitting there talking. What are we gonna do? You know, it's they've been controlling our lives. That's that's, they've been telling us when we could eat, when we could sleep, and we we just really couldn't drink even if we wanted to. But now we're about ready to go through that gate, and we're we're sitting there, and they're telling us only one about out of us out of the 35 is gonna stay sober and we're we all know it's gonna be Randy.

And then all of a sudden, the next thing we know, this car comes wheeling around the corner, spinning its tires, and it's Randy. He's got a bottle. And he's pounding that bottle, rolls down his window, throws it right at the treatment center, gives us all the finger. I guess his name was Paco again. I don't really remember much of what happened that day except that I must have gone back to my ship to take my orders back there, but the next thing I consciously remember is that I walked into a meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous at the North Shore Alamo Club in Pacific Beach.

6 o'clock Friday gong show meeting is what they call it. And, during this period of time, all I wore, other than the navy uniform that I had to wear on the base, all I wore and had been wearing for a long time and all I wore for quite some time into sobriety were black leather pants, black leather jacket. Mind you, I've never talked about owning motorcycle. And black leather pants, black leather jacket, black tank top, the spike top, flat top hairdo that I would sit down during the day when I put my hat on. Right?

But at night before I go out, I'd stand in front of the blow dryer, hit some hair spray, and bam, it would stand straight up. And I'd wear long dangly earrings and sunglasses at night. And this is the way I showed up with this meeting. This friend of mine, Mickey Bush, told me that, at that point in my life, I was experiencing IRS problems. Imaginary rock star is what that is.

And, and anyway, I'm sitting in that meeting and, I'm sitting back. I don't know a soul. I don't know anybody. And they're having their meeting, and I'm sitting in the back dying of alcoholism because I don't know a soul and I don't know how to hook up with anybody. 1 guy operating in his primary purpose leaned over to me and he said, say, I've never seen you here before.

Under his breath, he said, I haven't seen anybody quite looks like you in a while. And he he asked me a very important question. He said, what are you doing? And I guess without thinking, without trying to think up some sort of lie, I just blurted out, I just got out of treatment, and I don't know what I'm doing. This this was a Friday afternoon.

This guy just got excited. He started to shake in his chair. His eyes got big, and I thought I'm out of here. This guy's weird. But I now know what was going on.

It took me a couple of years to figure out what was really happening that weekend. This guy just got ecstatic over the fact that he just met a newcomer that admitted he didn't know what he was doing. And this guy had a couple of years sober and, and and also what had happened is that this was a Friday and on on Thursday, this girl his girlfriend had left him. So even more so was he very excited about a newcomer that admitted he didn't know what he was doing. And this guy just latched on to me instead of to take me to meeting meeting after meeting the whole damn weekend.

I went to, like, 15 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And and what I remember is that we would go to this meeting and then we we would get back in the car and and we'd be he'd be driving. I'd be sitting there and he'd be going, what you gotta do is you gotta get a sponsor. You gotta work the steps. You gotta go to meeting.

Goddamn that woman. And you gotta go to meetings. You gotta do that. You gotta do that. And you You go to another meeting where you're sitting there and da da da da da.

He'd be shuffling and dragging you to another meeting. Same thing. You gotta get a sponsor. You gotta damn that woman. You gotta get it.

That's all I remember. That was good information for me a couple years later. That's how I got to my 1st weekend without a drink. It was meeting after meeting after meeting. Came back to my ship and the same kind of thing happened.

1 other recovering alcoholic on the ship was waiting to ambush me. He was just waiting for me because he heard that I was coming out of treatment weeks before. He was waiting for me. So I did the same kind of thing. Just started to drag me to meetings and started to sponsor me even before I asked him to sponsor me.

And this man helped me more than I can I can even say? I'm very grateful for his persistence with me. He started to drag me to meetings and and hounded me about taking the steps, and I I, of course, boxed for a while and just went to meetings and went to meetings and went to meetings. But he put me back on my ship during the day, and my life is just a complete shambles. And I'm on the ship, and I'm still a little bit paranoid.

I still have no idea how to live. It's like coming out of a fog after 11 years old. I'm now 25 years old, and I don't know what's happened. And there I am in the navy expected to do certain things, and I just I mean and and and I'd look back at my past. My parents still are my parents' attitude, they were they were hopeful, but I'll I'll tell you what the deal was with my parents.

They were in Seattle. I was San Diego. They were very happy about that 1,000 miles. They were happy about that. And, you know, they they they were still very, very hurt.

I had I had spit in their face. I had robbed them. I had done all kinds of things. I had I had, you know, really, really dragged the family name around, as we all like to do. And, well, I forgot.