The 11th CDA Serenity by the Sea Weekend in Ocean City, MD

My name is Josh. I'm alcoholic and drug addict. Perry asked me to introduce him or I was picked or someone. I was and I said yes until I got here. But, all day long, I was nervous about what I'm gonna say, but I'm not the one speaking.

You know? I met Perry a little over a year ago. He started coming to my home group, Nick Conley. I'm from Delaware. And, he was just laid back, you know, he didn't say too much in the beginning.

I guess he's a little nervous, you know, being around a bunch of Delawareans. But, he started opening up and I like really liked what he had to say. So I started talking to him and I asked him for his email address. Boy, that was a mistake. That's just a joke.

But, we started emailing each other and then I went on this retreat and, spiritual retreat with him and, he kinda told told me that he would temporarily be my sponsor. At the at this time, I was spiritually and emotional bankrupt. There's no doubt about it. Perry has helped me tremendously and I I I can't express some words what he has helped me with and how he's helped me, you know, from my heart. He has a neat way of getting my attention.

Last Sunday, I was going down the road and I was eating a sub. My phone rings. I looked at it and it's Perry, so I was driving with my knee and all of a sudden, I had a busted mirror hanging off my truck where I done hit a mailbox. But I didn't have a very few kind words to say to him even though it wasn't his fault. So with that, I'm just gonna introduce Perry.

Hi. My name is Perry, and I'm chemically dependent. Hi, Perry. And I'm a member of the, New Life Group. I think that's the name of it.

At at Conley Church on Tuesday nights, 7 o'clock. We had Alexis there just a couple weeks ago for our group anniversary. I'm nervous. Thanks, Josh. Josh is one of many people since moving to Delaware that has made the transition of moving again easier.

What I'm struck by, I guess I wanna say this right off the bat, is, the the whole idea of the unity of this fellowship of chemical dependence anonymous, and I very much love this program. I am in other fellowships. I started out in other fellowships because I got him in the program before CDA had started. But what I'm amazed by is having gone to meetings in Maryland and Montgomery County and PG County and and a little bit in in the Annapolis area and then now here in Delaware for the last year. What I'm struck by, particularly because I I travel a lot, and, and by traveling, I go to AA meetings, like in California and Florida, Louisiana, different places like that, and, how the the idea that that invisible sign that they say that's in, in AA, but I believe it's in in CDA, and that's that sign that says there's no strangers here, only friends we haven't met.

And so much so that that very quickly and rapidly, CDA in Delaware has embraced me, and I'm very, very grateful for that. And and also what helped too was having both John e and John T. Down before, and that that's certainly made it easier. I've always wanted to live at the beach, and I was a single parent for many years and, wanted the Montgomery County School System for my son, who had a lot of issues and needed that school system to help him. So, now that he's going to college in Southern Maryland, actually, he goes to school where I went to school.

I talked to him the other night, and, and it just finally gave me the freedom once he was kinda more on his own to to live at the beach. Now those who know me, know that, in our CDA big book, we have a chapter called fun in recovery, and you're seeing my name in there a few times. And, and be because I got sober young, it just it's just been my way of life, basically, to have fun to have fun in recovery. Sterling smiling at me. It's, it is about having fun, in recovery.

Last night, I, spoke in a place that I got sober at, not specifically that place, but, CDA, a few months ago, took on a responsibility to, SCI, which is Sussex, Correctional Institute, and we take a meeting in there. We take a couple meetings in there. We take a meeting to a boot camp type thing, and we take a meeting to a thing called the Key program, which is like a second Genesis, but in prison. It's a second Genesis in prison. The guys do a minimum of a year there.

It was really a trip to be there last night. There's a 130 guys. Anybody that's seen Oz that on HBO, it's that kind of a cell block. You're right there in the cell block. And what was so powerful for me, because 23 years ago, that's where I got sober, in a prison setting.

And, the gratitude to to 1 and I said this to the guys too. I get to leave. I get to walk out. And I'm so grateful because of 12 Step Recovery and, and this process of, the 12 steps that we have as a recovery program that I've been able to get out of prison and stay out of prison, and not just the physical prison. Certainly, the prison of addiction.

I've been real nervous about, like, trying to be funny, and and that ain't gonna happen tonight. It's gonna be a serious talk, it appears. I'll tell you, I I was less nervous last night than I am tonight, and I think that's because I know most of you here, because last night, I didn't know any of the guys here. And and doing that last night too, One of the big messages that I gave them, which was given to me, was if I can do it, you can do it. When I was in prison, I went to a number of different prisons and eventually ended up in Southern Maryland, and I went there because there was ex cons and Alcoholics Anonymous that were bringing meetings there.

And for me, that was real important. That was real, real important to have people who had been where I've been. I mean, there were some outside people who had never been in prison, and and their Skid Row was their state of mind. But to have some ex cons that had been down the same path like that, that that was very important for me. And so I shared that last night, and, and what was so cool was 23 years later, what it was was the guy I was, like, saying, if I can do it, you can do it.

And that as one AA told me a long time ago, in a meeting, it's sort of like, it lights your candle of hope, that if you can recover, I can recover. I'd like to say, I guess, basically, my story. I'll I'll start off by saying I was born like most people, and, I come from a small family. There's 8 kids, and, I'm the oldest. And, my parents actually gonna hear this tape, so I was wondering just how much to, share.

They're, right now, just leaving the the CDA meeting in Daytona Beach that they started almost a year ago. And if you're ever in Daytona Beach, look them up. We have a CDA meeting there on Friday nights. I've been to it about 6 or 7 times. I'll be to it I'll be there next week, actually.

I'm there next Friday night. And, so I'm not gonna tell their story. But I will say they they planted seeds, and they when Kevin was talking about childcare, I I I I went to childcare at meetings. My parents came in AA at 10 years old, and I went to some childcare AA meetings. And my old sponsor used to call me an alabrat.

Instead of an alateen, she used to call me an alateen. I went to alateen for 7 years until I was asked to leave. I was asked to leave because I was smoking pot during secretary's report, and so was my sister and my brother and, couple other kids. And, the AA people didn't like that. I don't know why, but they didn't like that.

That was over in Chevrolet at the fellowship group, actually. And and been asked to leave that meeting. That I've been in Alatine and and been asked to leave that meeting. My parents', alcoholism I I like to mention this because alcoholism, drug addiction, it's a family disease. It's very much a family disease.

It affects all of us and in a family. And if you don't think it does, I I you're, you maybe need to talk to your sponsor if you don't think it does, because it does. I really believe that. I also I tend to believe that chemical dependency, alcoholism, drug addiction, it's all I I tend to believe it's it's there's a, a genetic predisposition. I tend to believe that.

I've had the opportunity to go to school after I got clean and sober and and study and actually become a certified addiction counselor. And in doing that, I've read a lot of the research. I read a lot. And and I tend to believe from what I read, plus what I observe, my own family as well as many other families, that it tends to run-in families. And, and it certainly did in mine.

But then my sister did an intervention. I mean, we all come in here from some kind of intervention. Now I'm always amazed by the idea when I talk to people who've never been in recovery. Like, how does somebody stop? And and I'm amazed by people who are still in their active addiction, family members and others.

And the thing is, unless there's a reason to stop, why stop? Nobody I mean, if we're gonna be accountable, I mean, there's that all that classic enabling that's, you know, strong aspects of our addiction and our and the family disease of it. So, in my family, my 9 year old my sister Julie was 9 at the time. She did an intervention, and these were her words that she, had said to my mom based on what my mom has said. She said, mom, everyone in the neighborhood is calling you and dad drunks and calling our family white trash.

Can't you do anything like going to AA like Uncle Joe? Now that was said from a 9 year old's voice. My mother this was the day after Thanksgiving in 1967, after another bad episode of their drinking. My youngest brother at the time, the 7th child, was in a foster home. He had been put in front of a church a month before in a basket.

My mom had left a note telling him to take them, and they went on on another weekend disappearing drunk thing. And, my mom called AA, and she talked to a lady who whose daughter ended up becoming my Allotene sponsor. And she talked to the woman and Alice, and, my mom was too drunk and hung over to go to a meeting that night. But the next night, on November 2nd, her and my dad both went to their 1st Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and they're and they're still sober. She did have a 1 year relapse, a a relapse a year later.

She went she went she found some other people that had relapsed, and she went out with them. And and, Alatine really helped me during that, and that's Alatine's sponsor when my mom had her 2 week relapse. But really, our family became a program of recovery, and and a few years later, my dad ended up 12 step in his dad, and I went along I went along to my grandfather's detox 12 step call. I was, like, 15, 16 years old, and, he ended up getting a couple years of sobriety before he died. He did die drunk, but be but for several years before that, though, he had sobriety and went to AA meetings in Prince George's County.

And my youngest son has been in the program, so I'm really here to say I'm part of 4 generations of 12 step recovery programming. And I say that only to say that this is as much as it's a family disease, it's a recovery process, family process too. And, and so I I guess I'm saying that too maybe to give you some hope if you got active alcoholics either a generation up or down or with you or or on your sides too. Certainly, some of you know my some of my siblings, and they've been in and out in the rooms as well. Because I had all that alateen and AA, I went to a lot of these kind of speakers' meetings.

And and I remember I'd like to go because they some of the speakers were funny, and some of and they had cake there, and they had girls there. And that's why I went to Alatine because of the girls, because of the the cookies, the donuts, and the wine punch. I did. That's why I went. I didn't really listen.

I I think if I listened, maybe I wouldn't be standing here right now. I think it goes more than that. But I, it planted seeds for me. I always liked that idea. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink it, but you can make him thirsty.

And eventually, I got thirsty for recovery. And it was seeds that that germinated later on. And later on too, I remember kinda blowing my mom off by saying, when I get as bad as you and dad, I know where to go. I was really trying to tell her where to go, but I was really but, it was true. And my son has basically said the same thing to me too.

It's funny how that goes around. In my, and I I'm leaning in to say, you'd think after going to Alatine and and some of you are parents and have children, and you certainly don't want them to become alcoholics. You don't want them to end up in this fellowship. And, certainly, my parents did not wish that and yet only to find out, you know, and and go through a process of of a number of their children either needing to be in the program, and, and all the heartache and pain that goes with that. And I and then years later, I got to go through that process with my son and his problems too to, to go through all that as well.

I was thinking about that, driving today, how last night, I spent about an hour and a half talking to my stepfather on the phone, making arrangements to go down there next week. And, we talked for an hour and a half, some about my mom. She's not doing so good. That's why I'm partly going down there. We talked about CDA and about being doing this right now and about hit the meeting he's doing, and we talked about some spiritual things that he's very active in his church, and, we talked about golf.

And we did that for an hour and a half. And what's amazing and we usually have these hour, 2 hour conversations now. It's amazing. I was flashing back when I was, growing up. I was very afraid of this guy.

I was very afraid of him. And then it got to a point in in my active addiction where my mom was in the hospital and my dad wanted me to go see her. And, it was, like, about a 45 minute drive, and our relationship had deteriorated so bad that my dad said, you either go see your mom with me right now or you're kicked out of the house. I was 17 years old. I'd just been drinking and drunk in about a year or 2 at that point, and I'd just gotten out of the army.

I was only in I was in the army for just a few months at 17 and out. And, I chose to be homeless, because it was so bad that I did not wanna spend that 45 minute car ride to go see my mom and then the 45 minute ride back. It had gotten so tense and negative that I chose to sleep in friends' cars and to, sleep in the woods and basements and and be homeless, because that's how bad it got between him and me. And then years later, in recovery, doing my 9 step with him was profound, profound, where I got I told him that I loved him. My sponsor said when I go to do my amends, the first thing I should say is I love you.

I just did my 5th step, and it just profoundly changed our relationship. I could never make eye contact with this man up till then, and I was about 22, 23 years old when I did that 9th step, and, it just radically changed everything into where it is now. It's just it's amazing. It's just it's it's just incredible, the relationship that continues to evolve. It it continues to evolve even I got a birthday card, about a month ago.

I turned 44, and, I got a birthday card for my mom. And and, you know, like most moms and dads, usually just the mom signs it and puts the dad's name or whatever. And If you're like most families, I guess that's most families are like that. Well, he signed he wrote some things in there, and it really touched me and and got me really teary that, I very much will treasure that birthday card for for for the rest of my life, that, that he's come a long way and and and the ability to communicate the love that we have and respect and pride and all that good stuff and joy. Again, it's a process.

It's not an event. Gotta reiterate that too. I could not have imagined, for those who are new here, like, in your 1st couple months, in your 1st year, the the the idea that, you could have these rebuilt relationships. And I'm here to say recovery can give you that and has and will give you that if you want it. I love in CDA here in Delaware, I can't remember if you guys do it much in in Maryland is, we read AA's promises at the end of the meeting.

All CDA meetings in Delaware do that, and and, actually, the one in Daytona Beach does that too. They we read the promises at the end of the meeting. And I just I'm so nurtured, comforter comforted, and and almost held by the sort of the spiritual energy that those promises offer us. And they offer those if we work the first nine steps. That's when they're introduced to us.

And just what a a a treat and a joy that those promises have been in my life and and as well as I've I've witnessed in other people's lives and recovery. Many of you here in the rooms that that I know and I'm close to, I've seen those promises in your life as well, and it's such a treat to to be part of that whole process of that. I'm kinda bouncing around here. I'll say my drinking and drugging lasted active addiction. I started at 16, and it was over at 21.

20, 21. I had my last drink at 20, I had my last marijuana maintenance at 21. Actually, next week, May 1st, will be 23 years the last time I spoke PCP. K w, for those PG Caddy people that know it that way. K.

I love PCP. That was one of my drugs of choice. I actually when I was in prison, I was, I became editor of a jail newspaper there. We called it the Centennial Slammer. It was called the Centennial Slammer.

And, I used to write some stuff in there. And, some of you know I I aspire to write, and I wrote a poem. It's one of my first poems. Sometimes I share this at meetings and and it seems appropriate here. One of the first poems I consciously know that I wrote as an adult, I was had been in prison about a year and a half or so.

And the poem was called KW. And and the poem goes, there's a high known as killer weed, but you can call it angel dust green or PCP. A high hits you as fast as a train, but if you keep smoking it, it's gonna burn out your brain. And if you keep making those k w sales, all you're gonna do is wind up in jail. And if you think this is all a big joke, then die as you take your last tote.

That's what I wrote, and I was still smoking it. So I was 19 years old. When I was 16, right before I started to right before I started to, to get high, I was in PG County. I was part of that court order busing where you got bused to schools to bus white kids to black schools and black kids to white schools. And they're just finally ending that now.

Here, 25 years later, this social engineering that some would say worked, and so a lot of people would say it didn't. And I was caught up in that. And I've been very involved in sports, and I what was I was thinking about this recently. It was so weird. They bust us in the middle of the school year.

And I had gone to Bladensburg High School, and I was like, we had a really good basketball team that year in 72. And I really remember being really into that because basketball was my first love. And and so in January, they bust us to Fairmont Heights, and then I'm supposed to cheer for that school's basketball team. And and there was a lot of conflict there. And a lot of us didn't do very well with it.

And not to say that was the reason of why I went a different way, but up until then, I was college bound. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to go I I hoped to have gotten a baseball scholarship or something. I was teaching karate by then, so I was I had some aspirations to do more with that, and I worked part time jobs. You know, also, at PG Hospital and Chevrolet, you know how they have those candy stripers?

Well, I was there's a male version of that. I don't know if anybody knows that. There's a male version of a candy striper. They're called bluecoats, And I was a bluecoat. And I used to think I was a bluecoat because they gave you free food when you worked a shift there.

But I did that. And I wonder sometimes, like, why was I so caretaking of being the oldest of 8 kids and doing babysitting and and, doing that. That was the summer before I started using. Why I was a a, a candy striper male. Candy striper.

Who knows? But, but that just says something about the way my life looked. And I worked part time jobs. I worked at McDonald's and the restaurants. I had a Ponderosa restaurant.

I worked there. Different things like that. I was always entrepreneurial. I did a lot of little things. And those that know me now, I've been working for myself for 10 years in the same business and, I wouldn't have it any other way.

But, I mean, those traits were already with me as a teenager, preadolescent, actually. So that was my life. And then I smoked pot for the first time by myself. Matter of fact, my brother, Jerry, who a lot of you know, I stole the joint from him. He had already been smoking pot, and I went back in the woods and smoked it by myself.

Now I said this to to the guys last night at the prison. I don't meet that many people that the first time they did drugs, they did alone. And right away and I and I really believe there there's something wrong there, that peer pressure is one of the biggest influences the first time people use, and I don't have that to point to. I totally approached it as a way to feel the effects of it and see what happens. And and what happened was nothing happened other than I got paranoid, but that was it.

But then a couple weeks later, I got around some guys, and you guys know these guys too if you grew up in PG County or Baltimore or Annapolis, I guess, too, was these guys are called greasers, or rednecks or grits. And, I had grown up around these guys. A lot of these guys ended up it was kinda like training ground before they became bikers. A lot of those guys later became they joined the outlaw clubs. And these greaser guys if you ask a lot of bikers, a lot of for the ones I asked, they a lot of them were greasers.

It was sort of a training ground, I guess, or boot camp to that. And, some people say Alatine was boot camp for AA also. I gotta throw that in there. I got around these greasers. I grown up with them, knew them from school and and things and neighborhood.

One of them I still sponsor today, 10 years. We've been we've we've we've been friends since 3rd grade, and he was there that night. And I I drank 3 or 4 beers that night, maybe 5 beers, and I also smoked some PCP powdered marijuana with trace opium, I'm told later. The guy that we copied this dope from was, a chemist's son, and I finally felt the effects of alcohol and drugs for the first time, my first high. And I always say this, it was the best feeling I had ever felt in my whole life.

Actually, it was the 2nd best feeling I ever felt in my whole life. And, I got a bigger laugh in prison last night. I wonder why they, I did. I get they really roared on that, but it was it was an awesome feeling. And I told her and I'll say this.

I believe, for me, I became psychologically addicted, and I like what brother Alexis always says. We drank or drugged to change the way we feel, and I discovered that time that I that if I ingested alcohol with other drugs, it would change the way I felt. And I believe I psychologically was addicted right from there. And I partied and had a lot of fun through that summer of 11th grade, no. 10th grade into 11th grade over the summer, because that was in the spring.

Now as I said, I was in the sports, and my idols were, like, sports figures, the Olympic guys that were in the Olympics because I was in track and field for a while and basketball and all that. And and believe it or not, to my golf buddies, I used to play golf back then. You wouldn't know that when you see my scores, but I've been playing longer than most of these guys, and yet my scores reflect like I haven't. But, I mean, I was in a lot of sports, and those were my kind of figures or role models. 6 months later from partying, going into the 11th grade, and thinking I was gonna go to college and being on the college track of study, I ended up, stopped going to school and I became a greaser.

I had the leather jacket, and I had wore the I already wore Chuck Taylors, but the sweats, socks, and and all the other clothes that go with that. And then my my idols became bikers and the mafia and, criminals, and that's became my role models. You know? And I was saying this to the prison last night. I also had a lot of issues with stealing and and I see today I was thinking about this today too, my anger.

You know, I I did a lot of vandalism at schools and things. And when I was in, in these gangs, I became a a gang member, and, and we did crimes together as a group. And where I used to be proud of, like, sports accomplishments and things like that, now what I was proud of was how much alcohol if I could drink a case of beer on a Friday night, that was something to be proud of and not throw up. Or to smoke a whole ounce of pot over a weekend or or a tent agreeing that was good and, stuff like that or how much money I could steal. Because if you stole the most money, then you'd buy more drugs and alcohol.

And there was, like, a badge of, honor and, and how good you were as a thief and and as a and as a person that drank and drugged. And that was my lifestyle for a couple years. When, you steal long enough, you get caught. We know that. And I used to think I couldn't get caught, And, I used to do a lot of breaking and enterings of houses.

And when I did with these guys, we'd steal guns, any alcohol, any drugs, and money, coin collections. We didn't deal with stereos and TVs and stuff like that. We just wanted quick stuff. And we had this gun we couldn't sell. Normally, we get guns.

We'd sell them as soon as we got them. But we had this gun we couldn't sell. And we also used to do we used to rob 7 elevens and, gas stations and fast food places. Went out I won't go into detail. I didn't do it last night either at the prison, but there was ways you could steal from those places and not get caught.

But with this gun, we thought, well, let's do the classic stick up. So first of all, I heard when I was in prison, white boys shouldn't do stick ups. That's a that's a black guy's thing. That's not a white guys don't do stick they don't there's not many successful white armed robbers. And ask any black guy and he will tell you that, especially any guy that's in prison.

And, and we did a stick up up in Beltsville, across the street from my Alatine home group. Actually, right there at Powder Mill Road in Route 1 at Saint John's, they've moved that meeting now, but at Powder Mill Road right next to it used to be an x rated movie theater. Nobody knows that. Right? That drive in movie theater, it was x rated.

But nobody will own that. Right? But, but right next to there was a gas station. I think the price club's there now or something, and we got $8. There was a drop safe.

They had these drop safe. This was on my mother's birthday on December 10, 1975, and we left there and some volunteer firemen followed us at a high speed chase. We were at a 65 Lincoln Continental, my buddy had. So we didn't even do it in a stolen car. And and and as this was happening, I thought I was watching this on TV.

Like, back then, what was real popular was that show Skarce T and Hutch, and and it felt like that. And I'm in it. And and we're shooting they're hanging out the window shooting this gun, and the guy's still following us. So we stopped the car, and my buddy, my best friend, Mike, gets out and shoots the rest of the gun and and the guy stops because his windshield just got shot out. And then we go on further.

We're going through those back roads in Greenbelt that take you over to Kenilworth Avenue, Sunnybrook, I think. And that way we're trying to get to Kenilworth Avenue in the beltway over there, and there's a roadblock waiting for us. Well, before the roadblock, we get a flat tire, and we're riding on the other shoulder of the road. And we come up to those apartments there at Kenilworth and the Beltway, and I think there's state police there or something. And we get out and run.

Me and my brother my brother Jerry's bet one of his close friends. He was AWOL Marine. And we get out and run. My buddy my best friend stays and tells him our names, and, and my life was to change forever. I got indicted for that armed robbery.

It was a 15 count indictment a month later, and I was facing a 137 years. I had a $25,000 bond. I was 18 years old. I've been drinking and drugging not even 3 years yet, and I went to Upper Marlboro. And I knew what Upper Marlboro was like from all my buddies.

They'd all been there. I hadn't been there yet, but now I was there in Upper Marlborough. I I first went to an area called, D Down Left, d l, Down Left, and it was where if you had serious crimes, that's where you went. So my cell partner was a pretrial murderer, and and it was rapists and murderers were and and a few armed robbers, but they weren't white. And they were and I rat I I was, like, stunned that my life had taken this turn.

And yet I wasn't stunned enough that I still got high in there. I'd have bug spray. We'd make jailhouse wine, that kind of stuff. And I kept saying, I better change my life. I better change my life.

And, eventually, I convinced my mom after four and a half months to get me out on bond. The night I got out on bond, my buddy Billy came by with some pot and and got me high. And, and for the next 3 months, I was high and drunk every day knowing see, I knew what was gonna happen with my sentence was I was gonna plead guilty, plead bargain, and I did. They dropped all the charges but 1, and then I was only facing 20 years, and of which I got 8 years. So I got 8 years for that $8 armed robbery.

And as I said to the guys last night and as I'll say to you right now, that prison saved my life along with Alcoholics Anonymous. By that, those two things together saved my life, literally. I know it. When I was about to go back and get my your sentence, some of you also know that know me. I I had a lot of tattoos and, I had love tattooed on my fist.

And I had used this do it yourself tattoo removal and took the v off, and it hurt so bad, and it took so long, and it was all nasty. And so now I was walking around with l o e on my fist. I already had an e there. And then I was and then I had hate on my fist. And I had that removed about 7 or 8 years ago now with lasers.

But, that word hate on my knuckles was a statement to the world. But more than that, it was a statement to me about how I had hated myself. And I remember right after I did that, a few days before my your sentence was to begin, I, trashed a bunch of things like trophies and sports stuff and karate stuff, and some of y'all know I'm into photography. And I had a lot of photography stuff from some stuff I had done, and and I threw it all away. My mom actually retrieved some of that.

Interesting how moms do that for us. And, but that's how I felt I had thrown away my life. Here I was getting away I should have been going away to my first no. 2nd year of college, and instead, I was getting ready to go away to serve an 8 year sentence to the Department of Corrections. And I did, and I went there.

And I remember having a little bit of an alcohol withdrawal the first night. It's interesting. When you're a teenager, because I was 18 years old, 19 years old, we can't become physically addicted quicker. I mean, from going to counseling school, I found that out that teenagers and and and women too can get physically addicted quicker. And I I believe I went through some alcohol withdrawal, at 19 years old in in d 2 in Upper Marlborough, the the first night of my sentence.

I began doing time in prison and very quickly, I did that for a couple years. Did that jail newspaper thing. I got my high school diploma in prison, got the GED, started taking some independent college study. And I was doing all this good stuff, but the priorities and the motives were this. One, it would help me get out of prison, because those who've been in prison know the only way you get out is you program.

I said that last night and everybody laughed when I said about how, you know, you guys aren't here to program because you are. When you're in prison, that's the only way you get out is you gotta program. And so my programming was these good things. The second reason was that when you did these things, you had better opportunities to drink and drug, because I became a trustee. And when you were a trustee, you got access to alcohol and drugs easier.

And I did. And there was times when I was smoking pot every day and drinking and doing other stuff. And, and I did that. And and now and then the third reason I did these things was maybe this is good for me. Maybe this will help my life.

So it was all distorted. Well, eventually, I was in Upper Marlborough a long time because the state system was so overcrowded, and eventually, I got to Baltimore to the penitentiary and then up to Hagerstown at MCTC, Maryland Correctional Training Center. My youngest brother is there right now, my who was my, parents' AA baby. There were several 3 years when they had their last child and he's now doing time there. And we communicate, but that's where I was at.

And at my second AA meeting, I had to pay a carton of cigarettes to go to my first AA meeting there. And I had to do that because I was going up for parole and I needed to and it was, like, another good thing for the parole board. Go to AA. Well, at that meeting, I was standing and you hear a lot of people have heard me say this. My moment of truth was at that AA meeting.

It was in February 1978, and a guy asked was I gonna drink when I got on the streets? And I said, I'm gonna drink. I'm gonna drink sociably. I said, this is an Amy, and I'm gonna drink sociably. And then he said, had I ever drank sociably before?

That was my moment of truth because I've always said, alcoholics only lie when they move their lips. Drug addicts only lie when they move their lips. Up until then, I believed that I was a social drinker. I don't know where I got that. Just total fantasy.

Because that's what I had. I had this picture in my mind and I can remember this so clear as day as I tell you this story now, 23 years later, that I was with this attractive girl, drinking some wine, probably, Wild Irish Rose. My old sponsor always says Wat Irish Rose is the only wine that's never seen a grape. It's all chemicals. It doesn't make he says, it doesn't make you drunk.

It just makes you stupid. And, I liked Wild Irish or Ripple or TJ Swan or Moon's Farm or any of those. And with some pot, actually a green belt lake with a picnic basket and a blanket. And and when he said I have ever drank sociably, this picture of partying that way, this moment of truth was that wasn't reality. Reality was, 1, she wouldn't have been an attractive girl.

2, I would have drank all the wine and thrown up or passed out, or I would've gotten in a fight with her. Probably, she would've thrown me in the water, or I would've thrown in the water. And the reality was I didn't social drink. I also had this hang up too. I was too young.

See, young people weren't in AA back then. And, I heard lots of World War 2 battleship stories in AA. A lot. My parents came in AA in 33 and that was young. 33 was young in the sixties coming into AA.

And here, this was the late seventies. And I got something now. And that was, if alcohol causes problems, then alcohol is the problem. Simply said, I never got I didn't lose good cars, good jobs, houses, wives, things things like that to loo I didn't lose those things because of my drinking or drugging. And the reality was I never got those things to then lose them.

That is young people in in addiction, we get sicker quicker. And so I never got those things to to gain, to lose. So I went back to my cell that night with a pamphlet called A Memo to an Inmate Alcoholic. I still got the pamphlet. I just saw it about a year ago.

And it had 20 questions, similar to the kinda questions we asked about our addiction, and I answered 4. It's interesting because the 20 some years later, when I looked at that last year, I could honestly answer 17. But back then, I answered 4. But 4 was enough. 4 was enough.

Because those 4 questions opened me up to realize that I had a problem with alcohol. And my last drink had been a few weeks before. It was some jailhouse wine. It didn't ferment long enough, so I was really pissed off that it didn't ferment. And and so that was my last drink, not very memorable, housing unit 5 in Hagerstown.

I went up for parole, and they gave me a year's set. Before I went up for parole, I said the serenity prayer 50 times and they gave me a year's set offs. And I thought, this serenity prayer doesn't work very good. And I got transferred to the system. And as I mentioned, in May 1st, I was in Jessup.

I've been smoking PCP for a week straight at Jessup at the main camp, and then I got transferred to Southern Maryland Correctional Camp. And that's where recovery really really began for me. There was no CDA. There was 2 NA meetings in DC at the Banata program at the VA hospital. And there was a couple of guys from Southern PG County who went there.

And they were going to AA and they were heroin addicts and did other drugs, and they were coming down to Southern Maryland occasionally to the prison, and, they were saying because see, I stopped drinking, but I could still smoke pot. And people in AA were saying, yeah. You can still smoke pot. Some people were saying that. And other people were saying, no.

You can't. Especially these guys that went to the NA saying, you can't smoke pot. But I was conflicted, of course. And, but what happened was, I, my sister, Julie, I well, first of all, I I made a commitment to to get sober. My sponsor finally said they convinced me that it was a solid form of alcohol.

That was the way of in AA, of looking at it like that. That was a drug abuser. And, when that happened, I became open to this process of recovery. But in the process, what happened too though, my sister Julie, that had helped my mom get an AA and really radically change our family, I was she was coming to see me one night and instead, she couldn't make it and I ended up going to a meeting. And my last conversation with her was a very, kind of, a teary conversation on the phone.