The Cocaine Anonymous Messenger Group in Dana Point, CA

Alright. This is a speaker meeting. We ask you we ask that you relate to the feelings being shared so you can better identify with our stories. Let's give a big welcome to our guest speaker tonight. Our speaker is Tom p from Dana Point.

Thank you. My name is Tom, I'm a real addict. Tom. I'm putting my watch on the thing so that the newcomer has hope that I'll stop. I'm grateful to be here.

I'm very grateful to be sober. Grateful to be in a meeting. Wanna congratulate all these guys, all the folks that took chips, 9 months, 6 months, the can you hear me? Can you hear me in the back? Really wanna, welcome the newcomers, all the people there, I counted something like 21 or 22, welcome to Cocaine Anonymous.

Welcome to the emergency room. I love cocaine anonymous. I get very passionate, and I'll try to hold it down, but, it's a privilege for me to, be here and and try to carry a message of hope and vision, the way what the way I heard it, and, and, and I'm grateful. I'm very grateful. You know, we're instructed in the book Alcoholics Anonymous to to to that our stories disclose in a general way, what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now.

So that's kinda implies, suggestion on how to how to share, and that is to because we what I was like, may create identification with the still suffering cocaine addict, the alcoholic. And, what happened is what changed me, and what I'm like now is change. So what it's a process of change. However, the what I'm like part is problematic, and that, it requires that I remember what I was like. So I make it up most of the time.

Because I was a blackout drinker, and I used cocaine to the point of psychosis and schizophrenia. So, there's a lot of parts that are that are blank. I can I have some ideas about what happened, but, the public record doesn't necessarily agree with what I recall? I do know that I was arrested 48 times, between 2002 and I mean 1992 and 2001. That's from the public record, I also know, I like to tell this story because it kinda gives you a sense of, what I was like, and that was a couple years ago, my daughter calls me, she's living in my house up in Colorado, and we were in the process of getting ready to finish with I I'd remodeled the whole house.

I'm getting ready to re landscape the property, and it's a nice property, and, so she had called, you know, needed to have the utilities located, the gas, the electric, and the and the and the water. And so the utilities company come out to, do the location, the service location, and, they bring a police escort with them. And Karen calls me and she says, dad, what's up with this note in the file that they need, what the utilities company needs to bring a police escort? And I said, oh, that. Well I guess, what here's my idea, here's my view of what happened.

I don't remember the year when it was, but there, I was outside and I was, you know, in 3 or 4 in the morning, watching the sky as is, what I used to do is staring at the sky, staring at the moon or the stars, wondering why I wasn't there, because that's where I belonged. And, while I'm doing that, I see the spaceship come down. And it latches on to the street light, and it starts sucking energy out of the street light. And I'm watching this thing, and I go and run-in the house, and I grab an ax. And I come out and I start chopping down the, the telephone pole that holds the street light, because I had created a neighborhood neighborhood watch program right then for extraterrestrials.

And, because I was even back then I was service minded. So I'm chopping away and, and I, you know, just mean to chop the thing down, I cut the wire. I'm cutting the wire. And it cuts off the electricity in the neighborhood, so the lights go off and all the houses are in the neighborhood, and so the utility is cutting. I'm still chopping away.

I'm just doing my work, I'm planning on the next one I'm gonna chop down, because I know these things can pop, they can hop around, you just gotta get them all. So I'm chopping away and this utility truck pulls up, light flashing, and they they hop out and, asked me what I was up to, and I told, I tried to explain to them, the the dire nature of the of the problem, and how if they were smart they'd do the same, and they'd get on some of these other utility poles because, there was a serious problem about to take place. Well, I guess the note in the file said something about owner is unpredictable and easily provoked as. So my view of what happened, it was differs from the public records. I go back my I'm the oldest of 6 kids.

I was I was born to 2 parents who love me, and they raised me well. They are, you know, of all of their 6 kids, all of us graduated from college. They scrimped and saved and made sure that we'd get through college. My dad they were both born of blue collar, folks in Chicago, and my dad was an air force pilot. And so we moved around a lot.

We went to 5 different grade schools and 3 different high schools. And I wanna say that the the kind of the earliest memories I have have are of about the time when I was 10, 11, 12. And what I remember, what I recall from that time frame, when I was 11, it was 1968. And the world was getting pretty crazy, it was on TV, and we're watching, we'd get to see this stuff, Martin Luther King gets killed, Robert Kennedy gets killed, the, that we were living in Chicago at the time with my mom's mom, my grandmother, because my father was in Vietnam, and the democratic convention, and there's a huge riot and the city of Chicago goes up in fire. And I'm seeing all this stuff and I'm just really confused, I'm really scared, and I don't know what to do, and, there's another thing that was going on, my dad was flying f one zero five's and this was a plane that was ill suited for the mission that they had it for, where the mission involved low flying bombing missions in North Vietnam, and, it was a loud plane designed for heavy payloads, so, it was it was they were they were sitting ducks.

Half of them were getting shot down, you know, so half of my mom's friends' husbands were either POWs, MIA's, or dead, and we would we would see regularly mom, you know, having to deal with this, and it became something I didn't wanna deal with. I just wanted to turn my back on it, and but I was living in fear all the time. And I was living in fear that my my Dad wouldn't come back, and and he did. He managed to get through there without, you know, 132 missions, without, without any harm, and I never talked about it for the longest time, but we talk about it now, and it's real it's one of the the blessings of this program is the relationship I have with my father. Anyway, I'm just, I'm 11 years old then, and I'm just confused, and I'm, and I, and I remember kind of over a period of time making a decision that I've got it, that the only person I could rely on is me.

That I can't rely on anything else, because it's always gonna let me down. So I begin this process of relying on me, and very very soon after that, I become very angry, I start, you know, become vandalistic, and, start treating my my anger, my fear, my my self pity with, with, sniffing glue. I start sniffing glue, and then very soon after that, I had my first drunk, and I blacked out. And, I enjoyed it. I absolutely and I so much so that all I can think about for the next month until we could plan it with my buddies to do it again was making sure that we could do this.

And I'm the one that stole the booze from the officers club, arranged for it, and, I be I believe today that what had taken place is, I crossed the line with my first drunk and and a mental obsession took over that's more powerful than my will, and that mental obsession was the, it was born of the effect produced by drugs and alcohol. I like to get loaded. I really like the effect produced by drugs and alcohol. You know, the effect I like is, I can recall back in when I was in college in in Arizona, we we had gotten a big 6 foot nitrous tank, and I'm hitting on this nitrous tank, and I'm for the the first one, and I'm falling, my face is about to hit the coffee table and all I can think about is I'm doing this again. That's the effect I'm looking for.

I'm looking for that complete get me out of here quick mode. That's why I drank and used. And I drank and used for 30 1 years. Drinking caused me a problem. Drinking and and I discovered drugs very very early on, in Hawaii, we started smoking pot, that's where I lived, we moved from Chicago to Hawaii, and that's when I was in junior high, or intermediate school there.

And got in a lot of trouble, got them a lot of money to do that, and they did, and, and, you know, I them a lot of money to do that, and they did. And, and, you know, I continued to get in trouble. Alcohol alcohol caused me problems. I was a good athlete, I was a good student, I was, you know, had good parents, and, when I was a senior in high school, you know, the way I drank was I usually drank a couple times during the week, and always on the weekend to celebrate. You know, no matter what it was to celebrate, smoke pot, do mushrooms, whatever we had to get our hands on.

Senior year of high school, I'm the on a bat on our basketball team. It was a good basketball team. We were ranked 3rd or 3rd in the state, and I was the 2nd leading scorer in the state. And the week before the state playoffs were to begin, they we get the week off. And, because they have the state wrestling playoffs.

And so I'm we went to the state wrestling playoffs, and me and a couple other buddies, so I just get really drunk. And I end up blacking out, and at some point, end up on the mat, with the yelling at the ref, and in the wrestling match, in front of all the athletic directors from the schools, and so they're left with no option other than to kick me off the basketball team right before the state playoffs. And, of course it was their fault. That's the way I've I've dealt with it, and that's the way I convinced the world that it or at least I explained it to the world, it was their fault. They didn't didn't understand me.

I went to college. And I played football at a little school in Southern Colorado. And, at the end of that 1st semester of playing football, I was brought asked to come into the coach's office and dismissed from the team for smoking pot in the dorms. And I moved on to the University of Colorado, and I walked on to a baseball team there, the the collegiate baseball team, and I made the team, and, and I'm scheduled to start in left field, when their opening game against Oklahoma State, and, I'm sitting in my room, and I'm smoking pot, and it just, you know, what's the use? I'm gonna blow it anyway, and I don't even show up.

I don't even show up. That's what drugs and alcohol did to me from the very, and I never only What I struggled with was trying to put structures in my place, in my life, in such a way that I could drink and use without damaging the environment around me too much. I could drink and use without damaging the environment around me too much. And, and I did I did that with reasonable success, so I was able to continue this. I ended up at moving and finishing up college in Arizona at Arizona State.

When I got down there, I had been working and I had gotten laid off in industry, and, and I had been accustomed to a certain lifestyle, because I had been working to make a lot of money that, that included drugs and alcohol. And that could, you know, cost money to do that. So when I get down there, I was out of money, and living on student loans, and I, would, here's where I would spend my week, I would go to school, and 3 times a week I'd get to go give plasma. And I'd give plasma, I'd get $12 2 times a week, and a $3 bonus to get 15 on 3rd. And, and then I'd go take that money next door to the bar, and drink 25 cent beers, and, so I could drink a lot of beers, and, and I, you know, I was just a hopeless alcoholic even then, I'm, you know, peeing in people's sinks, and, you know, just passing out under bushes, not making it home, just just a just a complete wreck, and it's amazing that I was able to graduate and get it all, get all that done, but you know, I just one thing I would do is I would pride myself on the fact that I could I could clean up, and I could look okay the next day, no matter how bad I felt, and that that since I could do that, I probably wasn't one of the things I'd read about and heard about it, although I didn't know too much about alcoholism and drug addiction at that point.

Anyway, I I make it through college and I get married. And we move down to Tucson, have a kid, and I'm with the big 8 accounting firm, I become a CPA, move back to Colorado, and all the time I'm managing to keep a lid on things. Just once in a while, although it's become very apparent to my my wife that I've got a big problem with alcohol. And so my there's so much so that in the 3rd year of our marriage, I 85 or 86 something like that, she suggests I go to some AA meetings, she'll go to an Al Anon meeting, and we do this for 3 weeks and she doesn't necessarily like the Al Anon meeting, and I don't really like the AA meetings, and finally I say to Robin, you know, they're talking about selfishness is the problem. I've been going to this thing and you know I buy everybody drinks.

And she goes, Yeah, you do. And I said, I think that AA thing is for people who who don't like to share their booze. And and I said, Also, they got this thing they call a big book. And I've looked at it. It's only a 164 pages.

The writing is really big. I think it's for people who don't like to share and can't read very well. And so I didn't go back. I didn't consider that to be a I didn't even consider that to be a solution for me. I just kinda discounted it as kindergarten.

And I went on through life, made my ex wife very very sick, we had a couple of kids, and in the process, she got very very ill and suffered some emotional turmoil, and what have you, had to independent be hospitalized, and, we get we ended up she divorces me in 1992. In 1992, I get five DUIs, and in this process, going through this divorce, I managed to keep these things all secret. They're all in different counties, I've got different I And, I'm a manipulator, I'm a con, I do all this stuff, I do I've been trained very well in it, I've been moved around, I've learned how to fit myself everywhere I go, and, I get awarded primary physical custody of those kids. And it almost kills my ex wife, almost kills her. Fortunately God takes care of things, and, 2 months after I got awarded I had to call Robin and say, we need to maybe change this arrangement because I'm not gonna be around for 6 months.

Because I had gotten sentenced to end one of the charges and I was going away to jail. So I went away to jail, and and you know, in that time, what I managed to do then, when I'm in jail, I don't drink and I don't use drugs, I I I'm pretty good when I'm, when I got a coach telling me what to do and I'm on the floor, or I'm in a jail, but get me out on my own when I'm relying on myself and I completely just fall apart, and the only solution I know is drugs and alcohol. And it's so I'm I'm going through this and, we can get out of there, and, and I'm just drinking like, like I'm trying to put out a wildfire. And, when I don't have the kids, I'm just a bat case and, I rediscovered cocaine, I had been using a lot of cocaine in college, in fact in college, cocaine caused me a bit of a problem, because I had got, came up with a bright idea that I would take my student loan, buy some coke, turn it over a couple times, pay my tuition, and then have all this free coke.

Well, didn't make it fast, phase 1, and now here I am. Used up all the coke and got no money for tuition, and, and I ended up I, got on a bike, and, put a mask on, and I had a, a hairbrush, and, went to a convenience store, and my plan was to rob it. Store, and my plan was to rob it. So I'm riding around on my bike a couple times, and I just thought, Oh, this is a shitty idea. And I didn't do that.

And I ended up what I ended up having to do is I ended up taking classes for people for money, and I got in order to pay my tuition. And so, Sober, divorce, and and I'm begin being becoming very successful in business, in real estate development, general contracting. So much so that it starts to be that I don't really have to care about any what anybody else says and what anybody else does. And I, you know, I I would take naps in rest stops between place where I was driving, and, and I wouldn't come home. I'm stand I began about 1996.

I'm up I'm up 5, 6 days in a row just using coke and drinking and sleeping 3 days and, about 1997 my brother and I have a blow up and he and we part ways and I quit workin', I I began to, I quit workin' so I could devote full time to drug addiction and alcoholism. In this time frame, I'm I'm using a lot, I'm using you know 3rd to half an ounce of Coke a day and drinking a 5th of vodka and 2 or 3 bottles of wine, a 6 pack of 2 of Heineken, and this is just my life, and this is what I do, this is what becomes normal. And, I go through this process and I become completely incredibly schizophrenic and psychotic, and, and and new problems start to crop up. I get 2 more DUIs, and I, and get charged with felony possession 4 different times. So this stuff's starting to become inconvenient.

And and so I go, for the first time, to a treatment center, because I needed to get some room. I need to get I need to do I've heard this called wreckage management. I need to get some space between my problems and and and and me so that I could take care of it. And, and while I'm there, I'm not there intending to get sober. I have no interest in getting sober.

But, while I'm there, they bring the kids in. And they've been they've trained them, they've been down there, and they can you know, the people in my life very much would have liked to see me get sober. You know, while it was my drinking and eating wasn't a problem for me, it was a big problem for them. And it was a big problem for the police, and it was a big problem for the community. And, but it wasn't a problem for me.

It wouldn't become a problem for me until later. And, so they bring the kids in, and they send my 2 daughters and they're 8 and 14 at the time, and they and they're they write poetry about want me back in their life, and they write, draw pictures, and, you know, they they sit down and and I and I break down in tears because, you know, our, one of the the page 18 of our book talks about how there are no other diseases like this, no other disease generates such fierce resentment and misunderstanding and financial insecurity and, and sad wives and sad parents and disgusted friends and employers. I just all it says. And then warped lives of blameless children. And that one really gets me, because warped lives of blameless children, they didn't do anything, and and here they are.

Anyway, I make this commitment that I'm not gonna do this stuff anymore. I I put my will in place, and the same will that had had earned me successes and all this stuff, I'm gonna put it in place. And And, and I swear on my tears that I'm not gonna do this to my children anymore. And, I leave the treatment center about 7 days later, and this this was one of the nice things about this treatment center. They feed you filet mignons, and give you some acupuncture, and some massage, and, talk very nicely to the inner child.

And that was the extent of it. And, and I left there 7 days later with no defense against the first drink. I had no defense. And, I thought my will was my defense. And I left and, I'm sitting at a bus stop getting ready to go from Tucson to Phoenix, catch a plane up to Colorado Springs, it was in the early part of December, in fact it was December 3rd when I got out, and the plan was I'd get up there and, we get our lives back to normal, and they were gonna have this big Christmas dinner.

And they were gonna have me at this Christmas dinner, my daughters were gonna plan it, put it all on. Well I get to the bus stop and I see there's a case of Heineken over here, and I order one of those Heinekens. Because I'm not gonna do it like I used to do, I'm just gonna have 1. I wasn't aware that I've got a physical, a physically abnormal relationship with drugs and alcohol. I don't know this at the time.

Today, one of the beauties of one of the benefits and graces of this program is it makes sense of that 31 years of insanity. Now there's 2 different kinds of insanities. There's the insanity of what takes place when I'm using. And that's crazy it it it's insane. Y'know, it's to the point where they'll they'll pick you up and they take you to these involuntary places, one one I was very familiar with was called the White house.

It's in Colorado Springs. I got time. I'll tell this story. So I'm I'm I've got some people living with me, taking care of me, and this is after that treatment center. I'm gonna go out of Yeah.

And, making sure I eat, and one night I'm out, it's about 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm doing my perimeter check, making sure everything is fine in that around the neighborhood. And, and, and I just don't start to notice some things being out of place, you know, because I pay attention like that. And, I noticed some things have moved. And, I've been paying attention to these 2 people pay who are taking care of me, and I'm a little bit suspicious of them, because I I'm involved in some big projects, because I've been having to deal with the extraterrestrials, and, and now I'm working on this thing where we're gonna be it's a big deal.

I was gonna have to become the reincarnation of Jerry Garcia, and it involved me learning music and understanding the Bhagavad Gita, and then reconciling the Bhagavad Gita with the bible, and, big project. So that's why I spent a lot. It's not like I didn't do nothing. My life was full. In fact, I needed all those hours I was up.

Anyway, I come back to the garage and I notice some things have moved. And I look in the refrigerator and there's, it's full of, like some new beers and stuff that I didn't buy, and I open the freezer and it's full of this meat. And I'm lookin' at the meat and it's not like, it's not been wrapped at a grocery store like Albertsons or Safeway or or King Soopers, there was just Kroger's out there. And, I'm looking at it and it's interesting. And I start because I've been paying attention.

And, one of the things that came to my mind was I become aware that what this is, is a body that's been chopped up and put in the freezer. And why would they do it? Because they're trying to frame me. Because I'm involved with this huge thing that's gonna reconcile the world. And how do you how do you discredit a movement?

Well, you discredit this I was gonna be the mouthpiece for this movement. Well, you discredit the mouthpiece, and a good way to do it is for the authorities to find a chopped up body in his freezer. And I'm on to him. I figured it out just like that. And well, I, you know, had made that, so I've gotta thwart their plans, I take the body, It wasn't a body by the way.

It was about $1,000 worth of custom meat deli meat that came down from Denver from a a little, boutique deli and, well I took John. Here's what I'd figured out he was, was that a friend of mine used to come and play guitar when I played drums in the basement. And John hadn't been there for like 2 weeks. I'm, you know, I was worried about him. I hadn't seen him.

Well obviously, I figured out what had happened to him. I took John and and I buried him all over the Broadmoor neighborhood in Colorado Springs in order to thwart their plan and be able to have my own plan to put back into place, And and I booby trapped the house from the outside in, I've got bungee cords and golf clubs over doors and stuff. And I said, it's about 7 o'clock now, 7 or 8, and I'm I start ringing the doorbells and, and they come to the and I've gotten my baseball bat, and I said, what? What'd you do with John? They said, what are you talking about?

And I said, oh, I know what you did with John. Don't play stupid with me. And, I go on a rant and they said, Tom, you need to go to sleep. So they taught me to go to sleep and I slept for 3 days or so, and, it was what I would do. And I get up, and of course this is very present present to me.

I'm getting up and I'm up in the attic now, and I'm smoking some crack and drinking some vodka, reading reading Wall Street Journals from the seventies, because that's where I got a lot of the the clues about what I was supposed to be working on. And I just, I did, what I noticed was that one of the registers was off, and there were there was heat blowin' up in the attic. And it was gettin' really hot and I just determined that what they were tryin' to do was blow me blow me up and get rid of all the evidence cause they were gonna abort their mission. So I grabbed the axe head, I'm up on top of the roof, chopping a hole in the roof, and and the authorities came and, got me down. Made me go to this place and shoot me up with stuff and I'm shuffling around, not able to go anywhere until I'm begging people to sign me out and nobody would sign me out.

Anyway, I used to think that's what was insane about drinking and using. I used to think that was the insanity of drugs and alcohol. That I would get loaded and all the stuff, insane to get arrested 40 8 times. Insane to get DUIs, 7 DUIs. Insane to to wreck a marriage and wreck children's lives.

I used to think that was the insanity of our disease. I know today, as a result of the book Alcoholics Anonymous in in my experience, that the real insanity of my disease takes that's what's supposed to happen when you use drugs and alcohol to the amount that I use. That's the effect I'm looking for, complete detachment I'm I wanna get loaded. I wanna get completely and that's what's supposed to happen. What what's insane is that I'm sittin' in that bus station, and I look over there, and I take a drink.

I take the first drink, and I, and the book program promises me that I will have no effect of mental defense against that drink on my own. So when I stand up here and introduce myself as a cocaine addict, I'm not saying I shouldn't use or that I can't use. What I'm saying is I am gonna use unless I get in touch with some power. Because I've got no power to not take that first drink. Well anyway, I take that first beer, I end up drinking all the rest of them, I get on a bus to Tijuana instead of Phoenix.

And I do what I do. I get on a plane from San Diego, I go to Lake Tahoe, Lake Las Vegas. I keep used to keep money in casino cages, just in case there was like these moments where you need to get cash and you're you're they've taken your credit cards away. And so I I go do that, and 10 days later, it's done. I I dawned on me that I haven't called anybody to tell them I'm not going back to Colorado Springs, that I wasn't gonna be there.

And, and later my ex wife tells me that that for 3 hours, my youngest daughter sat on the the porch, and they would open the door and say dad's not coming. And she'd say Oh yeah, he is. He's just out buying us presents. He'll be here. He said he was gonna be here.

You know, and that's a warped life. That's the war, that's what happens to me, is I have no effect of defense against the first one, and so I'm gonna be taking that first one. And so my, I've got 2 problems. I've got a problem that is with my I've got a problem physically, and that is I get loaded. You know, we call it the book calls it a manifestation of an allergy.

That we a craving. That once I put in my body, my body takes over, and I get loaded. Because and that's been my experience. I I And I thought that was the purpose of drinking and using. I thought I did that because I wanted to.

Now it but it made some sense to me when I when I first learned this. Because it explains, why in a blackout am I busting into a bar, trying to get more tequila, when I've already got the effect? I don't even know what the heck I'm doing. It's it's it's, I'm trying to take care of a craving that's beyond my mental control. Once I put the first one in my so I can't I can't so it would seem that the solution would be, you know, if you get if you're having trouble, and you're getting into problems because you drink and use, just don't do it.

Just don't do it. The deeper problem, the more graver part aspect of my problem is a problem that centers in the mind. And that is that I'm unable to at certain times to bring forth with sufficient force the consciousness of the misery, suffering, humiliation of that week prior. It's just not there. It's like my thinking slips down a rabbit hole.

When the book calls it a peculiar mental twist, a mental blank spot with my relationship with drugs and alcohol, leaves me defenseless on my own will against drugs and alcohol. What I discovered here was that I that I I've got to get in touch with a power that will provide me that defense. I go on. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get to where I was. Yes.

Right. My sobriety date is September 6, 2001. And I, had been visited by my my ex wife and my children prior to that, and I saw the look on their face. And they were just horrified, they don't I saw I saw a person like that this weekend. You know, it was a ghost.

It was absolutely a ghost. And, and I was a ghost. I had nothing left. I was completely on the empty on the inside. Just, you you know, I'd shoot up 3 quarters of gram of coke and drink half of it the vodka and I'd get nothing.

My mind is still spinning, my gut is still twisting, my back is still all those things that used to get solved when I drink, nothing's getting solved. It's just getting no effect. And I'd fall on the ground and I'd cry. And this had happened before. It's not like this and I just wanna be dead.

And I'd make feeble attempts to try to kill myself, hopefully hoping that drugs would do it, and, and I I can't do it. And so, September 6th, I said I've gotta go. You know, I had kind of taken on that these treatment centers were gonna be I I do 30 days a year in a in a treatment center, and then I could get the old high again. I can get the old effect. You know, it's like that our reading says.

And I'd go, you know, eat some good food and then come well, I I September 6th, I I get up, so I announce to the world, I'm gonna go get sober. And they say, alright. Good for you. And, I go to sleep, and I get up on September 10th, and I make some phone calls, and I try to get back in the place I've been going to, and they said, no you're not welcome here. You're not you're not serious about this.

And I said, but I you really need to go. And, then I ended up going scheduling to go to a place in Antigua. I figured a beach cabana, that would be a good useful good place for me to go to. And, so I was scheduled to go on September 13th, so I figured I'd just sleep until then, and, got up on September 11th, and of course September 11th happened. And, at the time I had five warrants for my arrest and there was no, I wasn't going anywhere.

And I ended up getting pretty crazy, my brother put me on his plane plane and flew me down to a place in Phoenix. I called it a spin dry, where they gave me a big book and made me go to meetings. But the some things happened there. The first day I'm there, I mean, we're in a group, and they say, What are you here for? And I'm trying to tell them, Well I'm here for a little vacation.

I'm having having a little trouble with drugs and alcohol. They just seem to stop working. But I figured out that if I do this, they'll start working again. I'll be fine. And just, you know, just let me run this thing and don't worry about a thing.

And the guy on the counter, 25 years sober, and and and says You're just full of shit. And moves on to the next person. And she she's she shares about finding her dad dead on her floor when she was 13, and, and something snapped inside of me as she spoke. And it became apparent to me that the because I as she spoke, I became aware that that the next time I leave my basement, I'm coming out in a body bag, because I knew I wouldn't come out again. I knew I wouldn't walk out of there, and that I had no, that was the best I was gonna do.

I was gonna end up dead on my basement floor and that was the legacy, In spite of all my dreams and aspirations and goals, you know, what I want, you know, what I was gonna leave my kids was me coming out in a body bag. Bag. And then she describes the next 39 years of her life, and she's in the same room I'm in. And it was horrific for me. I did listen to this.

And, you know, prostitution, all the things that she would do, getting raped, getting beat up, all the stuff in order to in order to satisfy that craving that takes place once she puts a little bit in her body. And, and and while I'm listening to her, her voice changes. It becomes I got my eyes closed, tears coming out, and it becomes the voice of my youngest daughter, and she's talking about how she trusted me and had faith in me, and and that's what she would talk about her dad, and then she finds him dead. And, and I was hopeless at that point. I had nothing.

I knew I was, I knew I knew the only thing that I was gonna do on on the self reliant design for living that I that I had moved into back when I was age 11, was I was gonna end up dead on my basement floor, taking out a body bag. And at the end of that, after she shared, it was about an hour long, I looked up on the wall and I hadn't noticed and there's the Footprints poem there. You know, the Footprints, the 2 Sets of Footprints poem. And, what was interesting about that was my oldest daughter, when she was 12, had had saw that and loved it so much we went and got her a throw, a throw for her pill, her her bed that had the footprints palm on it. And I turned to God.

I asked God for help. I had no idea what to do. And I turned to God and I asked God for that I could I had no idea what to do. And God sent a member of CA to the the treatment center. He probably came every day.

But he came and said You wanna go to a meeting? And I went to a meeting. It was a men's stag meeting, a Thursday night in Tempe, and I went to the meeting and I and I heard the message of cocaine anonymous. I heard that that people had felt like I had and that they that they had recovered and that they their lives were not like that and I believed them. And, the following Saturday, another man from cocaine Anonymous came in doing a panel into the treatment center and he carried a message of hope and he had a vision.

And the vision was that I could live a life today for forever, one day at a time, the rest of my life, I could live a life that was that I was free of that that that merciless obsession, drugs and alcohol. And and I believed him. And I started doing the work, and I and I did enough work there while I was there to get to to get in touch with the power, enough that I could hear what the suggestions be, man. They suggested that I come out to Dana Point and go to a recovery home. And I and I took the suggestion and moved out here, and that was in October of 2001.

And, while I was out here, I I I I remember I still had 5 warrants for my arrest in the state of Colorado, so I was a fugitive. And I was going to 2 or 3 meetings a day, I was going to 18 meetings a week, that's what I was going to, and I would take the bus and I'd walk and I'd get picked up, and, and I, the 1st week I'm here, the the first meeting I go to is a meeting down in San Clemente on Wednesday night, the zoo's CA meeting, and the last time the last meeting I had been in in Tempe, the last Thursday night stag meeting, I had asked for some names of people I might contact when I got out here. I got a couple names, and I put them in my little big book. And I get out here, and the first the first person to share at the zoo says my name is David Booth, I'm a cocaine addict and alcoholic. And I opened my book up and sure enough, that's the first name I had written in my book, because God was doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.

Because I'm still self reliant, still run by self will, and, I would have figured out a way to not get a sponsor. Well, god made it so apparent to me. I asked this man to be my sponsor. And he took me, along with, Thurman, to a 4 step workshop that following weekend. And, I did a 4 step workshop, did the 5th step with him the following week after that.

He took me to a convention after that, and and my life was changing. I was still absolutely nuts. I was I don't have enough time to talk about it, but I was nuts. And, but I was certain you needed to know what I had to say. One of the things that happened to me in the recovery home that I was at was, they, they banned me from the newspaper.

They didn't like the clues I was bringing out. Anyway, I'm doing this stuff, I'm getting involved, I'm being part of this deal, and, about 5 months later my grand mother died in Chicago and we all went out there to the funeral. And, while I was there, I talked to my family, I talked to my attorney, and and figured out that what I need to do is go back to state of Colorado and turn myself in, and get take care of some of the stuff. Because I've been doing some 9 step stuff, and that was a pretty serious 9 step deal for me, was to get right with the state of Colorado, get right with civilization so that I could walk a free man. And, I went back and I thought what I'd do is I'd, you know, still running on self self will, and I'd turn myself in on the easiest charge, because I'd already plead guilty, I just never showed up for sentencing.

And, I had to go to that court and I stipulated do do 7 days on that, and it was DUI number 6. And, I got because I I think that was that DUI was even back from 1998, and here it is 2002, I'm just starting to deal with it. It's getting ready to deal with it. And, judge says, what are you here for? And I told him what I was there for, I was gonna do my 7 days days and get out and go take care of all this other stuff.