The saturday night speaker at Southern Ontario Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

K. Now we get to raise it back up. Okay. I am Ken Cross. I am an alcoholic.

I am. I am a drug addict. I shot cocaine for 15 years. That was my primary way of enjoying that class a narcotic. First drug I ever injected was black tar opium, followed by heroin, followed by anything I could fit into a syringe, whether I had to beat it with a hammer or cold soak it overnight.

Because that's the kind of drug addict I was. I shot LSD, and I'd used heroin to come down after the peak. So, you know, I loved injectables. I loved injectables because I'm a jaywalker kind of an alcoholic. You know?

I'm the kind of guy that, you know, I would shoot something and, you know, 10 minutes later, I'm, like, ready to go again. And the best part is is because when you injected things, you went from point a to point triple z in a nanosecond, you know, in a nanosecond. And, I was just sitting here thinking for the last hour or so, my left contact started to bother me, which I realized is gonna be a really good excuse when I start to cry tonight because I'll just tell you now, it's really my left contact. It has nothing to do with my gratitude for being sober. You know?

And for those of you that were here earlier today, you know that I just can fall apart really easily. You know? See, it's happening already. And, the reason it happens is because recovery is about love. Because God is about love, because service work and gratitude are about love, you know?

And when David said what he did, it was out of love, You know, when I got here almost 25 years ago, living in a stolen Volkswagen Rabbit, not knowing where my next meal was coming from, having just done a coke deal with the son of one of the most famous mafia leaders in the United history of the United States and ripping them off on purpose on purpose and making a mad dash out of the city I was living in in the middle of the night. There were not a lot of people that would have said much of anything like David just said. You know? Because I didn't know how to give. I know how to take.

I know how to steal. I knew how to rob. I know how to cheat. I know how to lie. If you had drugs, if you had a girlfriend, if you had anything I wanted, I was there with no scruples and no second thoughts or considerations because I was a drug addict.

You know? I started taking drugs when I was probably 14 or 15 years old. I grew up just outside of New York City in the sixties. I was a Greenwich Village hippie. I was running around the village in 68, 69, flashing peace signs at people and hanging out at the Fillmore on Osmly.

And, you know, we were gonna change the world. And then somebody introduced me to class a narcotics, and the hippiedom fell kinda by the wayside. You know? I was in prison for the first time at 17. You know, and that was just the beginning of a career of in and out of jails and in and out of institutions and in and out of insanity, you know.

And and I say, and I'm I'm an alcoholic because I suffer from a disease called alcoholism. And CA operates under the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, And at my very first meeting, which was cocaine anonymous, I shared earlier today, if some of you guys were here earlier, pardon some of the repetition, but, you know, so what. I got sober. CA was 5 weeks old. There were 2 CA meetings in the world, you know.

I got sober in group 1 of CA, And, oh, I know what I was thinking about. I do this a lot, and I'll explain that later on, but part of its age, part of its medical, part of its just that I just can't remember anything anymore. But, you know, when I went to my first meeting, I was given the big book. You know, the old timer that was running the meeting asked me if I add a big book. I said, no.

He gave me a big book and he said, I want you to take this back tonight. I want you to read chapter 3 more about alcoholism. He didn't say I want you to go back and stare at the blank page for a minute and contemplate on that and then turn to the next page and start there and read to the end. He said, you are sick. I want you to go back and read more about alcoholism.

And if you have any problems with the word alcohol or alcoholism, change it to anything you want. Cocaine, cocaineism, heroin, heroinism. You know, today it would probably be crack and crackism or Vicodin and Vicodinism or OxyContinism. You know? And I was sharing with Victor today, you know, if if the if the winemakers hadn't been making wine and the crackheads were in charge back in the day, we might have been, you know, cocaine anonymous long before Alcoholics Anonymous ever came around if the Peruvians had had their way.

Because I tell you what, they were chewing the leaves long before the Egyptians were drinking the wine. So if you have a problem with anybody who identifies with an as an alcoholic, guess what? You got a problem. Because I suffer from a disease that's called alcoholism that wants me dead every single day. It affects my thinking every single day.

Drinking and using was nothing but a symptom of how I needed to find relief. I needed to find relief from the way I thought. I don't know one person that relapsed that wasn't sober before he relapsed. So what does that tell you? Something was wrong with their thinking.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but my thinking's been screwed up since the time I was about 6 or 7 years old. You know, I come out of an alcoholic home. You know, I was never gonna be a drunk. I was never gonna be an alcoholic. I was a jock for most of my life.

I'm 6 6. I was the tallest kid in school my whole life. I played basketball 12 months out of the year from the time I was probably 8 years old. You know? I watched my mother drink and chain smoke herself to death.

I think Leanne said last night your mom died at 30, what, 7, and mine died at 47. She was 6 foot 2, strapping, big, beautiful woman. I was she was 19 when I was born. When she died, she had half a lung, one kidney. She was in a halo bed, which is what they put you in when you break your neck and back in a drunk driving accident.

And the last time I saw her, she had screws holding her head in place in this bed with blood dripping down her forehead. And the only way she could communicate with me was by blinking her eyes. And she lived in that state for 3 weeks before her body finally quit. And I got sober at 31. 47 seemed ancient.

I'm sure some of you guys in this room think 47 seems ancient. When you turn 47, it ain't so ancient. When I was when I was a hip slick 31 year old rock and roller coming into meetings, you know, I was lucky to be alive. I mean, I thought seriously, I never thought I'd see 30, no less 30 or 40. You know, when you shot dope the way I shot dope, there were nights I would shoot yellow jackets for those of you that remember barbiturates.

You know, I would shoot yellow jackets and wake up the next day and not remember a thing, you know. There were times, you know see, here's the other part. When you've been around and speak as much as I do, people actually have favorite hits, you know. So I have, like, stories over the years of different like, Percy tonight said, well, I've heard you 6 times, so I'm gonna figure out which one of the how this talk fits into those 6 talks. You know?

I've heard myself way too many times. So if Percy thinks 6 is a lot, just be grateful you're not in my shoes. I gotta do this at least once a week. It gets old quick. But, you know, you talk about thinking, this is how I know I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict.

I worked in the rock and roll business in the seventies, you know. I did a tour. I used to live in Atlanta and in Macon, Georgia, and I moved out to LA in 73. And I had finished some work and was gone for a couple of for a long time, and I said, you know, I'm gonna go back to Atlanta and visit my old friends. So I went back to Atlanta hanging out in the bars, hanging out in the nightclubs, hanging out with the the locals.

And one of my good running buddies now I came out of Atlanta. I or I was in Atlanta in the days where it was like the hate. There was a street with head shops and bars, and the Allman Brothers played in the local bar. I mean, it was a street scene, you know, and I sold drugs on the street. We all walked up and down the street selling our wares openly and verbally.

And, so when I went back that time, I ran into a friend of mine who was my first dealer buddy that had made it. You know, he had a 911. He was burying double hefty bags with cash in secret locations because you really can't do much when you're making that much money. He'd bought a big house in the country. So I'd run into him at this nightclub, and, and he said, let's party.

So who doesn't, you know, who doesn't agree to let's party? You know, that's the best invitation in the world. So some of the old folks in the room might remember this kind of stuff, but we went to his house, and he pulled out this great big round thing that looked like a block of cheese. It was red wax. And what it was, it was a giant ball of cocaine that weighed about a pound.

And he took out a very large sharp object and cut it in half, and all these large Peruvian flaky things that smell like cat piss fell from the center cut. And then he pulled out a box of brand new syringes, and my eyes just went, oh, man. Is this gonna be fun? You know? And, and I said, well, you know, so what are we doing?

He goes, just do as much as you want. You know, do what you want. Now my idea of a good hit is a butter knife, you know, so I did a good butter knife kind of size into the spoon, and I did my little job at the table. And because I was the guest, I got to go first. So, you know, so I do this little shot, and now I've been living in LA for 3 or 4 years.

I've been hanging out on Sunset Strip. I have my own table at the rainbow. Our slogan is the very best is barely good enough, You know? That went to pot, cocaine, Courvoisier, whatever worked, you know? I mean, I was running around doing crazy things with crazy people.

So, you know, I'm sitting there thinking, okay. This will be fun. So I do this nice little hit of cocaine, and, I'm sitting there, and I'm kinda turned sideways in my chair, and I turn back around to the table. And there's a glass, and I take the syringe, and I put it in to get some water to try to clean it. And all of a sudden my hand starts going like this, you know, and the syringe is kind of banging against it.

I'm going, okay. I maybe I should put this down. So I put that down, and then all of a sudden, I kinda hear this train off in the distance. But the problem is is that while I'm hearing things, my my not only am I hearing click click and whoom, but now my feet my feet start going side to side. And I look down and my feet are going, And in a minute or 2, my eyeballs, my feet, and my shoulder are all moving in opposite directions at the same time.

So I'm sitting there kind of like going, you know, Okay. And I'm starting to lose my hearing. And my friend says, you know, are you okay? And I guess the beads of sweat that were coming off my head were a sign that something was wrong. And so he goes, come on.

Come on. So they take me in the next room and they sit me in rocking chair in front of an air conditioner. And they turn on the air conditioner, they get towels and wrap them with ice, and they put them around my neck. And I'm sitting in this rocking chair like I'm at Magic Mountain or I don't know if they have Magic Mountain up here. So I'm like you know?

It's like Space Mountain had nothing on me. And, now these old houses in Georgia have grandma wallpaper on the wall. You know? Nice floral, velvety designs. So I'm sitting there, and I'm hallucinating now.

So now the flowers are twirling and the room is spinning and I'm shaking and the chair's going back and forth and the sweat's coming off of me. And I realize that the wall is getting very small. So I start squeezing the hands on the rocking chair going, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And it got to be about the size of a dollar, silver dollar, or, you know, coin maybe. And I'm sitting there and as sure as I stand here, I know that if I lose that spot on the wall, I'm gone.

I am toast. I have never been here. I've been doing co shooting cocaine for that time 6 or 7 years and had never gone there. And I got there and I held on for that ride. I rocked until I almost broke the damn thing.

I melted every ice cube in the towels. I soaked myself through with sweat, and that rush broke. My friends were still in the kitchen shooting coke. They left me alone because, you know, they had things to do. I would have done the same thing.

So I got out of there. I got up. I walked back in, and they said, are you okay? And I went, man, that was fucking great. Let's do another.

Now I think normal people don't think that way. I think somebody that socially snorts cocaine or maybe socially smokes pot or socially drinks wine with dinner doesn't think that way. I do not know how to do one of anything. It doesn't matter what it is. If it gives me a taste, I'm gone.

You know? That's the disease of alcoholism. I suffer from an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. And what happens when I stop taking drugs is I don't react to the allergy, but the obsession of the mind is there. You know?

I have a lot of friends that have allergies. I got a friend who's allergic to penicillin. You know what? He doesn't carry a petri dish in the trunk of his car. You know what I mean?

When his wife goes to bed, he doesn't sneak out to, like, cop some penicillin down at the pharmacy. He has an allergy to penicillin, you know? Funny thing, my allergy drives me to do different things. My allergy literally has me in fist fights with my roommate over who gets the last shot of cocaine at 5 o'clock in the morning. You know?

My allergy allergy has me thinking, where do I go with my pistol tonight to find more of anything, be it money or cocaine? You know? My life, my obsession, my allergy had me do things to people and do things for cocaine that I would probably not have done on a normal Sunday morning, you know. My thinking is askewed. The reason we come to meetings is because this is what fixes our thinking.

Because when I come here, I hear good orderly direction from a group of drunks or drug addicts. Because what's happened for me over the years is is that my insanity has been relieved. It hasn't been removed. My character defects have been relieved. They haven't been removed.

They're removed on a daily basis when I pray and ask for them to be removed on a daily basis and stay conscious of them on a daily basis. I can be arrogant, rude, critical, envious, jealous tomorrow if somebody says the wrong thing to me. But you know what? The miracle is is that I don't have to be that way. I've already had experienced 2 miracles tonight, maybe 3.

I know I've experienced a few already over the weekend. Where's Jimmy L from Niagara Falls? Right? He came up to me and says, are you Ken Cross? I said, yeah.

He goes, do you know Jennifer? My friend, Jennifer Rice, who lives in Costa Rica, had told her story told him stories about me from 25 years ago. And now here I am in Toronto, and he gets to share with me his experiences. What David had to say was a miracle. Theo and I shared a miracle earlier.

There's miracles everywhere in this room if you take a breath and understand that they're here. You can get out of your own way and understand that it's here. I came here living in a stolen car, not knowing where my next meal was coming from. My sister said she wouldn't spit on my grave. I watched my mother die of alcoholism, but I was too cool to be a drunk.

I was too cool to be an alcoholic because I was ahead, and it was the heads against the juicers, which is you gotta be old to understand that one. But it was the heads against the juicers. I was never gonna be a juicer. My stepfather was a full blown drunk. I met my my stepfather was a Christmas present, actually.

I woke up one day, I was 14 years old, I came out to open up the packages, and my stepfather was under the Christmas tree. See, alcoholics and drug addicts can laugh at that because they figure something weird was really going on in that house. And what was weird that was going on was is that we lived in a small cottage after my mother got divorced or after we'd after we'd been kicked out of my grandmother's house because of her drinking. My sister and I had the bedroom, and my mother slept on the pullout couch in the living room. So she had picked him up from Sing Sing where he'd be released from prison for doing 3 to 5 for armed robbery the night before.

He wanted to get laid. It seemed like a perfect fit, so why not come back to the house and sleep on the pullout bed next to the Christmas tree? So that's how I met my stepfather who not only was an ex con, but he was an ex marine drill sergeant who was a full blown alcoholic that was gonna teach me how to live my life because he was not mister unmanageability. Right? A guy that just got out of prison and and and was a marine.

I mean, you know, and he tried to beat it into me, but like any other good alcoholic or drug addict, it just wouldn't take. You know? Because I know better just like he knew better. You know? So I was never gonna be an alcoholic.

I was never gonna have anything to do with alcohol or drugs or drunks. They were beneath me. I'm a hippie. I'm cool. I'm better.

I know about peace and love, and I'm gonna change the world. You know? And and what happened in 1977 when I shot that cocaine was, is that I chased that high for the next 7 years. Maybe not. Maybe 5 or 6.

But the reality of that statement is is I lived in my bottom for 6 years. Because when you're looking for a grand mal seizure and you're crawling around on your hands and knees on a daily basis to secure the house, when you live there when you live in a gated security compound, there's something wrong. When you manage a strip bar and the strippers don't wanna go home with you no matter how many free drugs you offer them, something's wrong with your life. When the only time you feel secure is when you have a loaded 44 in your hand at all times, something is wrong with your life. You know?

You know, I have no idea what time it is or what time I got up here. Is anybody paying attention? Oh, it's a free for all now. It doesn't matter. I don't have a watch.

So, okay. I guess we're changing direction now. It's fun though, isn't it? At least it's not a canned pitch. I don't even know where I'm going.

So, you know. So what happened with me is is I ripped off the Bonanno family. Not a good move. They own the they own the strip clubs that I ran. And, I loaded up the car and moved to Beverly.

And, unfortunately, the hills I was living in, I was living in the front seat of my Volkswagen Rabbit Inn. You know? Because what I would do is I would drive up into the hills at night and find some place where they hadn't built a mansion rouse me, at least I'd have a second to get by acting. So that if the cops came to rouse me, at least I'd have a second to get my act together. Now you gotta realize, I mean, I'm up here tonight.

I, like, showered, and I got a haircut last week and I shaved, but when I got here, I didn't look like this. You know? I come out of Georgia in the early seventies. I worked for the Allman Brothers. I was a street hippie.

I moved to LA. When I got here, I was still basically a crazy rock and roller with really long, frizzy hair and a ponytail. And I loved pistols, and I, you know, I was a crazy, crazy human being. My last couple of years when I was down in Tucson, I rode a Harley with a 44 in a shoulder holster, and it had bullets in it because that was the law. And I loved it, you know, because you don't carry a pistol unless it's loaded.

So well, if you're gonna pull 1 on somebody and somebody else is gonna pull 1 back, they better have bullets in them or you're in big trouble if you're just showing, you know, trying to be cool. Look at my shiny gun. You know, and we laugh, but, unfortunately, I've been in shootouts. I watched the guy that I was associated with 6 feet away from me get the top of his head blown off with a 45. I watched another man in a drug deal get his throat cut 6 feet away from me.

I've seen the underside of drug addiction. I've seen the side of drug addiction that we can kinda laugh about now when we were in it. I walked away from it. I watched friend of mine with 12 years get carried out of his house in a body bag from a heroin overdose because he thought he could drink a little wine socially, take a few steroids at the gym. Alter is thinking just a touch.

This is a guy that would go into the hood in Venice in his Rolls Royce and ask for rocks. When they would stick their hands in with rocks, he'd hit the gas and take off and they'd shoot the car. Thinking? There's not a thinking problem there, is there? Let's see.

I can count on 2 hands how many Rolls Royces there are in Venice. Let me tell you. And Venice ain't that big. The hood and the hood and the main part of town are only separated by a street. So so when I came back to LA not knowing what the hell I was doing, as I said, my sister didn't want anything to do with me.

My friends didn't wanna have anything to do with me. My gigs in rock and roll had pretty much all but dried up. The last decent job I had, I was fired by a practicing heroin addict because I couldn't do my job. And you know what? We pretty much did work sober, so you know there was a problem when you work in an industry where it's okay to start drinking beer and smoking pot at 10 AM, And that cocktail hour comes at around 3, and that cocaine is okay any time of day.

You know, I got fired in that business. You know? So to say the least, I was kinda finding a desperate bottom there, and I had no idea what I was gonna do. I went over one friend's house who told me I could come crash on his couch. He didn't answer the door.

I walked in. I found him in the bedroom trying to hook his toe in this trigger of a 12 gauge. He's getting ready to take himself out because those are the kind of crazy people I knew, you know, depressed, insane, alcoholics, and drug addicts. His life was falling apart all around him. And, you know, and it was it.

And if you're new and you, you know, you hear us talking about one day at a time and just for today and don't drink or use for today, I tell you what, that's a piece of cake because my life sucked. My life was about 1 hour at a time, at best. I would wake up in the morning when the sun came up. I would go to a 711. I would buy a cup of coffee.

They sold these nasty blueberry muffins that, like, weighed about a half a pound. And I would buy an LA Times. And I would go to the park and I would eat this muffin and soak it in coffee so it would sit in my stomach like a cinder block for the day. And I would read every word in the LA Times regardless of what the story was about because I had nowhere else to go. I had nothing else to do.

I had no one person to talk to or to hang out with. You know? It was before cell phones. It was kinda like hanging around, looking for people, looking for friends. And I was able to get a hold of one friend of mine.

You know, one person said, you know what? I'll have dinner with you. And, and he said, meet me at Barney's Beanery. Now you guys don't know, but if you saw the movie The Doors, that's where Jim Morrison's favorite hangout was Barney's, a 180 brands of beer and pool tables and rock and roll. And and I got 12 step in Barney's Beanery, which was, you know, one of my favorite hangouts.

And this friend of mine showed up, and he said, you know, there's another guy meeting us for dinner. And I said, well, who's this? He goes, it's Charlie. I'm, well, who the fuck is Charlie? And he goes, well, he goes, I was afraid to come by myself.

I said, what do you mean you're afraid to come by yourself? He goes, well, I've been in AA for a year and a half, and I have 90 days of sobriety, and Charlie's my sponsor. I had dinner with Charlie the other night. I talked to the guy who 12 stepped me the other day. They're still both in my life.

I don't remember one word that was said at the table. I remember what was being thought at the table. Listen to what these guys are saying. John owns his own business. He'll let you stay on his couch.

He'll feed you. He'll give you money. He'll put you to work. Just nod. So are you sick and tired of your life being sick and tired?

Do you have any money left? Do you need a place to stay? You know? Just tell me what you want me to do. I know how to act out, you know.

Tell me what you need. I'll be just the person you want me to be to get by one more time. I'm in survival mode. I'm in drug addict, survival mode. How do I get over?

Just for tomorrow. And my friend said, you know what? If you think that you you can't, you know, if you think you can go without drinking and using, you can stay at my house. We'll see what we can do. You know, we're gonna go to a meeting tomorrow night.

So I you know, why not? My friend had a how you know, had a business. I said, okay. They bought me dinner. I knew I was set for at least 24 hours.

For 24 hours, I didn't have to sleep in a front seat of a Volkswagen Rabbit. And when you're 6 foot 6, sleeping in the front seat of a Volkswagen Rabbit, doesn't leave you much room for rolling over, you know? And if you do, it's not the thrill that you really want. And, you know, and the next day the next day, they loaded me up and they took me to a meeting. You know?

And, you know, I shared about it earlier today. The room seemed overwhelming. There might have been 35 or 40 people there. They sat me in between 2 people so that I had no chance of escaping. You know?

The speaker got up, talked about making 1,000,000 of dollars. This is during the powder days when cocaine was a high end drug, you know, not quite the way crack is a little bit today. But when I got sober, Coke was $23100 an ounce. So it cost a little bit to do a blow, a line of blow. And, so this cat was doing his story and doing all this stuff, and I was just not getting it.

I mean, I didn't know where my next meal was coming from. I didn't even know how much money I had left in my pocket. You know, I was sitting there counting Rolexes and looking at New Balance running shoes thinking, what am I doing here? I do not belong here. I'm a drug addict surrounded by drug act drug addicts and alcoholics, and I feel less than.

You know? And I couldn't get out. You know? I couldn't couldn't escape. And then they opened up the meeting of participation.

You know. And I was kinda listening and not paying attention and then they called on this guy. And this guy stood up, man, and he was nasty looking. He looked like Kramer on crack, you know. I mean, he had black hair that was standing up, and he was, you know, how tweakers are.

Right? I mean, he had just come back from a run of smoking free base, and he started to share. You know, he shared what his relapse was like. He shared that he'd been standing in a bathtub with tinfoil on the windows with pinholes poked through it, so he could look for them. Anybody else do that?

I was sharing I I forget if I was telling David, you know, the other great one I used to do besides that one is I would have stare down contests with space people. Now I don't know about you guys. I had 2 kinds of space people. I had the really tall ones that had, like, pointy heads and red eyes, and they never moved. They would stare as long as you would stare and never move.

So it was like you would hold on until you just absolutely had to go do that next hit before you would let them go. You know? And then there were the other guys that were short, and they were like Ewoks. You know? They scampered.

Like, they ran from bush to bush or behind car to car or chimney to chimney. And you knew you were really into it when you would chase them. And you would pray that your neighbors wouldn't be watching this scene at 3 o'clock in the morning. You know? And I was in one of those merry episodes one night where I called the police on myself.

And actually, it wasn't on myself. It was on the guy with the rifle in the backyard. But when the 2 patrol cars showed up because there was a gun involved At least I saw a gun. And they searched the trees in the backyard. Now this is another one of those nights.

I gotta back this one up because I was living in a house with a woman who she got so sick of my drinking and using, she abandoned her own house. She turned off the power. She turned off the water. I was living with plastic bottles with water and plastic bottles filled with other stuff and candles. I had long hair, and I answered the door when the police showed up.

And they said, we don't find anybody. And then somehow later, they got in the closet and were hiding in the dirty laundry, and I had to call the cops for a second time because I just didn't feel safe anymore. And then when they showed up that second time, they decided I needed a night in Fulton County Jail. Now back in those days, I come from a business that doesn't know a lot about Blue Cross Blue Shield or whatever you guys might have for health care. And when you're in that situation and you're fighting off spacemen and men with rifles, you start to think that maybe I do have a problem.

I remember people telling me in 1970 when they saw my track marks that, you know, you might have a problem. But, like, did I care? No. But when I started to care in 1976, I thought, what do I do? I guess there's a Georgia Mental Health Institute, which is basically a prison for the criminally insane type deal.

You know? The only good thought I had was, if I check myself in, will they let me out when I want to leave? And the way I was looking and the way I was thinking, I thought, they might not let me out. And I wasn't ready to be in a lockdown doing the Thorazine shuffle with paper slippers quite yet. So that entire train of thought that led to all of that has left my mind.

So where I was going with any of it, I guess, is irrelevant, unless somebody can remember what I was talking about before I went on it. Oh, and I was sharing with David one day. I was speaking on a panel. Do they have panels up here? Do you guys do panels where you go into lockdown institutions and share?

I was in the Veterans Administration. Now you can imagine American vets after Vietnam, smoking all the tie stick they want, doing all the heroin they want, and then living on the streets for 15 years. There's some interesting people in those lockdowns. And I was sharing one day, and this guy came up to me and went, man, I am so glad you talked about those space people. I thought I was the only guy that saw them.

You know? So either we are them or they among they are among us, 1 or the other. So, anyway, I remember what it was. I was sharing about the guy who relapsed, and he was in the meeting. And he was standing up, and he was, you know, just insane.

He had, like, 2 days back from a freebase run. And, and he was talking about the insanity of the disease, and I related to every word he said. Because what the speaker had to say, I didn't get a word. They were talking about steps. It was like Chinese arithmetic going over my head.

It was like, I don't get it. What is going on? And then the guy said the one thing that changed my life. He said the reason he was back in a meeting was because this is where he knew the hope was if he wanted to get his life back. And when you're 31 years old, living in a stolen car, and your life has come down to complete desperation in every area of your life, you start to think that maybe you've grown up to become the piece of shit that your stepfather told you you were going to be, or that you're just completely insane.

And I was pretty much bordering on both of those at the same time, you know. And when I heard that I thought, you know, maybe there is something here. I did not make a decision to get sober. I did not make a decision to not take drugs or drink. I made a decision that maybe there is something here, and I'll come back.

You know? And that night, and I shared the story earlier, the night that man came up to me. And in my opinion, he's the man who started cocaine anonymous. And for those of you who aren't here today, his name is Tom Kenny. And, he asked me if I had that big book, and he told me to read more about alcoholism.

And as I said, by the time I got to the Jaywalker story, I felt like my whole life had just flashed in front of my eyes because I had tried everything it described in that story. I had tried living life so many different ways. I had tried drinking, using and controlling my drinking and using. I tried to control my drug dealing, which always seemed to fail. I was great at hooking up for good fronts, and I'm talking good fronts, like a pound of blow and really bad about paying for it.

And it doesn't win you friends and and, you know, interesting people when you do that. But but it hit me. It hit me like a wall fell on me that I suffer from a disease called alcoholism, you know, and what is going on here? And it took me a couple of weeks, you know, because I had to hang out with a few old friends. I had to, like, bounce around a little bit.

I had to look for something. You know, I couldn't didn't know how to say no to a mirror or to a joint. And I'll tell you, I don't tell this story often, but the last time I used cocaine, I lived with a Playboy bunny for a lot of years, so it was fun. Quaids, cocaine, and a Playboy bunny. And, actually, it was almost as much fun as my wife, who was a bisexual heroin cocaine addict that liked to shoot up that was into bondage.

She was fun. I don't know if any of you guys like to play on drugs, but I love to play on drugs back in those days. And this was a good drug addict relationship. I met her on a job in December. We figured out we lived a few blocks away from each other in Manhattan Beach.

I did a deal. I had some leftover. Basically, I stole some and mixed an isotol into the bag. And I called her up and said, let's get together. I walked into her house.

I broke out a quarter ounce of blow, and she says, do you know how to shoot up? And I was like, oh, God. Is this gonna be fun? And then I found out about her sexual interests, and 3 weeks later, I moved in. That was the end of January.

On June 21st, we were married. I actually drove by the church where I was married the other day on my way to go speak in a meeting, and it's still there. And all I remembered was sweating and doing mounds of blow in the bathroom. I'm sure the preacher thought something was really wrong with these 2 people. And, and the day after I got married, I went on tour with the Doobie Brothers about 5 months.

I actually think I came to Canada, if I remember. I went to Nova Scotia first. And, and I came home in October. She'd been sleeping with a Coke dealer, because what else does a woman do that doesn't have a lot of money that wants blow? And we were divorced, like, 3 weeks later.

So but it was like being married for 5 years, because we didn't sleep a lot. So, you know, we packed a lot of stay awake time into those few months. But, you know, I was working I was working for my friend in his studio as a gofer. Now when I was new and they say you go to any length to stay sober, my friends, they really didn't give me money. I didn't get paid to work.

I worked as a gopher. I would go get lunch for these guys at the studio, and they would buy me a sandwich. I would go to a meeting with them. They would give me a dollar to put in the basket. We would go to coffee afterwards, and they would buy me a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.

You know, that's how I lived for about the first 5 months. I lived on my friend's couch for 5 and a half months. I drove the stolen car for about three and a half years, but that's a whole another story. But I was hanging out at my friend's studio and my ex girlfriend of many years called me and said, let's get together. I said, why not?

You know? And it was a rainy night in California in February. And, and we're in this restaurant. And I'm like, oh, no. I don't drink anymore.

Just I'm just gonna have Perrier, you know, because I'm like, you know, I'm that newcomer, like, gotta be goods kinda deal. And, and she's looking good and drinking wine, and then she goes, I got some really good blow out in the car. You wanna get high? So my mind instantly goes to blow, playboy bunny. What did we used to do when we did blow with the playboy bunny?

Yeah. Let's go out to the car. And she opens up this big bag of cat piss blow and, you know, just starts packing my nose. I mean, I was scrambled, like, bad eggs in about 5 minutes. And I'm sitting there thinking, okay.

So when's the party start? And she goes, well, I have to leave now. I have a date. And I'm like, what? You know, I just blew my 2 weeks of sobriety or less, thinking I was gonna get laid over all this cocaine.

And I took myself in the car, and I drove to a meeting. And I identified as a crazy stoned out of my mind person, and, and that was my sobriety date the next day, which is February 3rd 1983, and I'll be 25 in a couple of months. Actually, about I don't know how many a few weeks. But, anyway, so now I'm bouncing all over the place again. I have no no idea how long I've been up here.