Deandre M. from Lancaster, CA speaking in Ventura, CA

Okay. I just wanna do a little disclaimer here first before I introduce the speaker. My son, Destin, his grand sponsor, is speaking tonight. And my son told me that, he was gonna be coming up here to this meeting. And, he asked if he could bring a few of his home group friends with him, and we could have a barbecue at the house and yada yada yada.

We didn't know there was gonna be, like, 40 people. So but I'll tell you what, it's been really neat. Thank you, guys. I know none of you identify because you don't have any ego, but, you know. Anyway and with that, I would like to welcome our speaker, Deandre from Glendale.

My name is Deandre, and I'm an alcoholic. Deandre. Good to be sober. Thank you, Debbie, for your warm welcome and your hospitality over, at your home. I have already, violated the f word policy, but I did not do it from the podium.

And I'll make amends for that by not using it during my pitch. I wanna welcome anybody that's new, to the program. Saw a lot of new people stand up, some of the new people that we brought along with us. Wanna encourage you to get to another one of these meetings as soon as possible, and and try not to get loaded in between them. I'm just really, really excited about being in this area.

I I I drank a lot in this area several years ago. I used to live in a little town called Camarillo, And, yes, it was at the hospital state grounds, but it was it was in the back, the the staff housing where the California Conservation Corps, station was located. And then we had some fun back there. Let me tell you. When we were coming over that little, hill as you come down into Yazlo Valley up in here.

I just a little feeling just went back up in my neck, remembering, the sick old days. And, running around, in those hills back there behind that hospital man, not giving a darn about nothing and making sure that we have something to drink. You know? I grew up in a town called Watts, which is quite a ways from this one, and, I lived there for 14 and a half years. I come from the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts.

The local gang color there is blue, which is why I'm wearing red tonight. I'm a changed man. Grateful to be sober because of that. And part of the insanity of living in that community is that alcoholism looks okay, Based on what I've read in y'all's book and whatnot, alcoholism is not a bad idea. My mother made alcohol look fun when I was a young boy, and, I love drinking.

Drinking went right along with, how I was thinking. And, if you be new, we know that your way too. I mean, that's part of the reason why I think when somebody said something at the rehab, I finally wound up in about this being an illness or a sickness, it just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. Because when I started out getting drunk, it was because it made me feel, okay about not being drunk. You know, I don't know if that's a tongue twister for some of you, but what makes me thirsty is not, drinking.

I when I don't drink, then I want something to drink. And so what happens is I do all these things before I drink again. And, and then when I do all these things, I tell you that that's why I'm drinking. You know, because I did all this stuff. You know.

And and I'm a real human being. When I do certain things, I feel a certain way. So I add that on to my little story on how I'm gonna get drunk again anyway. So I I I confuse you and my mama and them, and tell you about all these things I think I'm doing and all these feelings I think I'm feeling, so I can do this sort of voodoo act on you and get a drink out of the situation regardless. I don't know if anybody in here can relate to that.

Heard a lot of laughing and clapping and stuff earlier. But that kind of modus operandi chasing me around like that for the amount of years in which I drank gets a little frustrating. I can't get a handle on it. So what happens is I live in this community, and then all of a sudden, we're riding the bus out to the San Fernando Valley, my sister and I, which explains the proper diction when I talk, but I really am from Watts. And, we would catch the bus and be in the bus program and we would go out there and we would have a good old time and we would stay up all night.

They used to have a late bus for our school, kind of like a junior alcoholic booster club, where where you didn't really have to go home on time. You could just stay and be late, and do the late bus, And I'm a real alcoholic. I know how to stretch being late. I really know how to make that look good, And, and we would just catch the late bus. I'd go and I'd drink with my friends out in that valley, and then I would come back home smelling like an alley.

And my mother would ask me, what is going on after school? And I said, what are you talking about? Well, she says, last night, I could smell alcohol on your breath when you were asleep. I came into your room, and I smelled your breath. You were drinking at the school.

And my only response to that was, you know, I eat a lot of candy. If you eat a lot of candy, there's a lot of sugar in candy. Candy has certain fruity, odors to it. And, that's why my breath smells like that. Now if you wanna talk about being addicted to candy, I can relate to that.

But my mother immediately started criticizing my drinking, and, you know, I I I just felt really at ease with being completely out of my mind when it come to that front drink, you know. And what happened was I got chased out of that community and I had done as much damage over there as I possibly could, you know, and my early surrender period where I'm almost headed to rehab is kind of like that little gingerbread man story. You know, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm loaded, man.

And I would just sort of run around the community and people would be trying to catch me. You know, the police would be, you know, or my mother would, you know, or it's just all of these people were trying to get a handle on me because I was completely out of control and I needed to be drinking, and I didn't have time to be dealing with these people, you know. And, so what I would do is I would just switch locations within that little sector there, and I would go on foot from Watts to Inglewood to downtown Los Angeles. And I would walk that and just sort of have my little triangle, if you will, of, you know, being of service to my disease, you know. And instead of immunity, service and recovery, it was the Jordan Downs Housing Project, Englewood, and Downtown Skid Road.

I would just work that triangle, okay, all three sides of it, in order to, be a successful failure. And, it takes a lot of hard work to be a successful failure. You gotta be irrational and you gotta ignore all help at all costs. I'm talking about real help. I'm not talking about refusing to get another drink out of somebody.

I'm talking about real help, like total abstinence, for example. Somebody suggesting that, is someone that really doesn't understand how I feel. And so what happens is I run out of that community, and I wind up being told by my aunt. She said, you know, we're not gonna let you in the house anymore, but we will let you sleep on the floor of the garage of Ron King Boulevard there. And, and I remember going over to that, house and sleeping on the garage floor.

And, one one day, I was headed back over there to camp out, and my grandmother, pulled up behind me on the street. And before I had left Watts, 2 of my close friends had beat me up pretty bad, and I wound up with a sling and a little cane that I was walking around with. And my grandmother had pulled up behind me. My grandmother is a very well respected woman in the community at that time, and she told me that I looked like a bum. And she nailed it.

You know, she had matched the way I felt on the outside, by what I had turned into on the inside. So I was pretty much a dead man walking, you know. And, and I remember just hobbling on back to that garage and sleeping, and then that next morning, my aunt told me to go down to, Big General Hospital and see if there was somebody over there that could assist me for real. You know? And and I went on over there, to the to the big general hospital and it looks nothing like the general hospital on television at all.

Wound up over there, and I went into the little service area, the little human service people area place, and there was this little old white lady sitting in a little booth. It's all I can remember. And she said, we don't have anything here for you, but go down to this little place called El Centro, which is a little referral agency place for alcoholics and drug addicts and things of that sort. And I went down there. I hobbled on over there and I met this man, this Mexican guy named Ronnie Macias.

And, Ronnie Macias told me the most profound thing I had ever heard in my life. He told me that I was 24 years old. I was living on Skid Row and I wasn't gonna make it. And for some reason, I believed him. And he walked out of that little cubicle and I got on my knees and I prayed and I asked God to help me.

And, Ronnie came back with these little bus tickets, and he told me that I was going to take these bus tickets and go to this hotel on 7th in Vermont and come back to his office on a daily basis until he could put me in some sort of a program. And a miracle took place. I didn't sell the bus tickets. And I proceeded to go back and forth from his office on a daily basis for several days. And on the last day that I was at that hotel, this little Jewish guy went and bought 2 40 ounces, and we drank those 2 beers and talked about the crisis in the Middle East for about 4 hours because because I'm gonna start my recovery.

And, and I went down to Ronnie's office and he told me this morning, he says, go down to the Volunteers of America building over right around the corner from 5th and San Julian, and go in there and call a woman named Yolanda at a facility called Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center. And I got on the bus and I went down to that building, and before I walked in the building, there was a little roach on the ground in front of the door. I know this is an AA meeting and don't nobody in here know nothing about weed or marijuana, But I picked that roach up off the ground and I hit it and smoked it and walked around the building and went in to start my sobriety. And I picked up the phone, and I called Warm Springs, and Yolanda answered the phone. And she told me that I had to be clean and sober for 7 days.

And I told her that I did not have 7 days of sobriety, and we were gonna have to push this back a little bit, because I'm surrendering, but I'm not ready. Because I still got a plan or an idea or something other than what somebody's telling me in regards to real help. And, and she told me to get on the van anyway, and that was on May 28, 1991. My sobriety date is May 29, 1991. I've been sober ever since.

So my story is really, really not all that exciting in regards to being stuck at the beginning and fighting the process. And so I'm going to go into that a little bit. One of the, things that happened to me when I got on that van is I went up this long, meandering road into Warm Springs, kind of like the road to Jericho. And, I remember just feeling really sick and very, very uncomfortable. And, I don't know if anybody besides my close friends here, who go with me on a panel.

In fact, we have that panel tomorrow night, who've ever been on that road, but it's real spooky and scary. It's like a forest, you know. And it's real, like, weird and dark. There's no lights out there. You know, it's just really creepy.

And I remember just going up that road and getting off that van and seeing all these people walking around Warm Springs in these weird little county jackets. You know? And everybody was looking like they didn't wanna be there at all. And, and everybody was sort of moping around, and it just felt like a training camp for zombie people in a movie or something. Everybody just thought it was zombied out.

Wasn't no new people up there laughing and answering their cell phone. Wasn't a lot of busy things happening for a lot of those new people up there. And I remember getting off that van and, going into the general service building and meeting this woman named Irene. And she was a mean old lady. And the way I evaluated that is by her asking me this very honest question that she had to ask all the new people.

Do you have any clean underwear? She asked me that in front of other people, And I thought that was very rude and disrespectful. Considering the fact that I didn't have any. You know, part of the thing that she went into was what I needed. And I don't really, feel comfortable when people really address what I really need.

I'm more stimulated when we pontificate hour after hour on things that I want. That's when I'm most stimulated. But don't be talking to me forever about what I really need. I'm allergic to that as a real alcoholic. You know?

And, what happened was I went over to Seadorn. This little guy named Renee, he came over and he walked me over to Seadorm. And in Seadorm is when I think I really began to be introduced to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because in that dorm, what we would do is in the mornings we would pray and we would ask God to keep us sober. And then we would start the morning by reflecting on what people had done the day before and what they had done to stay sober.

And then we would talk about the meetings we went to. And since I was a new person that first morning, I just listened for once. And, it just seemed like those people really had something special. And then they had this huge, big, gigantic tree with all of these AA chips on it. And they all seemed to worship the tree, It always seem like there was some sort of respect for the tree with the plastic Vegas poker chips with the little and it tripped me out.

I was like, why are these people attracted to this plastic tree? And if you went too close to the tree, or if you violated the guy's space who was in charge of the maintenance of the tree, You could be written up for that. He went too close to the tree when he was not supposed to be there, you know. And so, the tree thing sort of weirded me out a little bit. And then I went to the meeting and they had a speaker meeting, and the guy got up, and he said, for some reason, it really and it really scared me.

He said, hi. My name is so and so, and I'm the secretary of the speeding, and we're running low on chips. And my mind automatically said, well, what about the tree? You know, you got the tree over there. You just take the chips off the tree and put them in the thing, you know, and nobody would talk about the tree and the the chips that they could go and get and then so it it is sort of strange.

There's some strange things happening here. These people are constantly asking for stuff that they already have. They're crazy. I have 4 weeks of sobriety and I am going to suggest that we do something about this tree. I am tired of hearing them complaining about how we don't have enough chips for the meetings.

We shake down the tree. We save a couple of dollars. And I brought it to the meeting in the morning. We're all sitting around the tree and I looked at, we had a chairperson for each dorm, a chairman of the dorm. And I addressed the chairman.

I, you know, I raised my hand and I said, you know, it's come to, you know, all of our attention that there's a shortage of chips in the meanings and we have this tree here with all these chips on it And everybody there's 38 men per dorm in Warm Springs. There's about 6 dorms, And all 38 of those eyes, the sets of eyes, just sort of looked at me. And I looked at them, and then I thought about where we were in the woods, wooded area, a lot of negative things happened in woody areas, especially when you're primarily the only black guy around. So I kind of backed off that issue and we dropped it. And just trans, trans transitioning out of that rehab and going into the community, I moved to a town called Lancaster, California.

So We go from the only black guy being in the forest to the only black guy being in the desert. You know? You gotta be the center of attention. And, and I went on down there and I went to a little meeting called the Open Door Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And in that meeting, I met a man named Dennis Lee, at a noon meeting 1 afternoon.

And, and he made me laugh. I felt like getting drunk that day. I had been sober for a little while, and he was saying something funny in the meeting about how dirty the floors were. It's a high entry level group. And, just sitting around in there, man, and I I wound up talking to him after the meeting, and and he was telling me things like, you know, you know a lot about steps 1, 2, and 3.

It seems that you know that, but I'm gonna teach you what I know about steps 1, 2, and 3. And that kind of threw me off a little bit because at Warm Springs, I had completed my step packets. So I knew about the steps, but he wanted to talk to me about what he knew about the steps and what he had learned about the steps out of this book. And, and I remember looking at him with sort of, you know, askance, as a big book would say. And I looked at him, and I thought to myself, he doesn't want me to really do well around here.

I can already see that he's trying to challenge me because I've become the AA steering committee chairman by the time I had left Orange Springs, And I changed the bylaws so they couldn't vote me out. We were only allowed to do it for 6 months, and I got my friends and we we manipulated the bylaws, And I did it for 9 months. And, so I could I could clearly see that we got a white man here trying to keep a brother down. That's what's going on. He wanna slow me down in my price my progress.

I'm moving on in my life, and he's trying to, you know, so I went ahead and listened to him anyway. And, what happened was, Dennis Lee took me through the steps. He took me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and he taught me a whole new way to live and he taught me how to not leave here. And a lot of people are taking people through the steps, but they're not teaching people how to stay in alcoholics novels. And I don't think that that's a good idea Because if I take a look at these steps, they simply just turn into humility.

And I have, 2 problems with just being left with humility. First of all, I don't really know when I'm practicing it because my ego is bigger than all outdoors, and second of all, humility is not a cure for alcoholism. So what he was showing me through building history with this program and developing a relationship with AA that's not based on how I feel, what you need to give me, or what I should be giving you. You know? It's based on a relationship with a power greater than ourselves, And one of the things that I learned through trying to deal with this man is that he drove me insane.

I did not like the way he addressed me. I did not like the way he talked to other people when I was around, and his wife looked like a parrot. And, big book says that, we need to find a man with a real answer, and there are women here tonight. So when we use the term man in AA, a lot of times we need meaning human. And, and we had and I had to find somebody with and he and God just did that for me.

And, you know, what happened was we build a relationship humility and or work the steps. That's basically what most of those early conversations were about. Hi. This is Deandre. Can I speak to Dennis?

This is Dennis. Hi. I'm not gonna work the steps, and I know a lot of new people here tonight think that they are talking about all these other great things, but in early sobriety, most of the time, that's all a new man or woman is really telling me over the phone. Hi. My name is Whoever.

I'm calling to speak to you. Are you there? Yes. I'm here. Hi.

I'm not gonna work the steps. Are you gonna take this call or not? And as a responsible member in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous with Time Sober, it is my responsibility to bring forth the steps, regardless if you don't wanna work them or not. Now I know some people are looking for friends when they come here. He told me to buy a puppy.

And a lot of the relationships that I see in AA now are based on popularity rather than clarity. And as doctor Bob would say, I feel sorry for you. No, I've learned how to be unpopular and Alcoholics Anonymous in order to live a spiritual way of life that that works for this alcoholic. I'm not here to win anybody over. If you don't want what we have, we agree with not wanting what you have either.

In fact, we're trying to get rid of it. And I know a lot of new people are struggling just as much as people with time silver struggle. And that's why we use the steps. You might want to join us. We do not want to join you.

And a lot of this stuff that he would tell me seemed rather arrogant. It didn't seem very loving, but for some reason, he's still sober and so am I. And what happened in that relationship is it turned into something that AA needs. An example on how to get through the steps, stay here, and be here for new people, so we can get them through the steps. See, a lot of times with long term sober, I start thinking that I'm here to better my life, that I'm here to feel better about myself.

That I'm here to work on myself. That I am here to get you to work on me, so I can be who I think I really wanna be, which is someone I have no idea of anyway. But it just makes me feel good when I help you run game on that idea. I don't know if anybody in here can relate to that. And what the program and my higher power does is it takes this thing we call divine intervention, and it just messes all that up for me, and I wind up being here for you, And then I can get off my butt and go to work.

And then I can show up at your meeting and try my best to respect your format. And then I can go over to Dustin's house, where his parents are, and be respectful. And then I can sacrifice how I really wanna feel about something in order to make sure that you're getting what you need. You might wanna try that if you don't have a lot of time sober. You may wind up with more time sober.

It's a beautiful thing to be caught up in this altruistic movement rather than this obsession of self improvement. It's a neat thing to be a part of the process rather than helping people create more mess. You know? And that's what he was teaching me, and he's sick this week. He's not doing well.

Congestive heart failure about 4 days ago, and, he's in the hospital still thinking that they're gonna let him go, and that's not what his wife is telling me. And I just feel a little, upset with myself about, the games that I played in the earlier part of our relationship to not really value what this man did for the guy you're listening to. So if you're a newcomer, I hope, that you find a man or a woman in this program who makes a life lasting impression on how you drank and why you would wanna just be sober. Because if you do not find someone like that, you're probably going to be stuck with your own crap. And it feels beautiful to be free from arguing with him about anything.

Now I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with following along. A lot of people are saying that that they need to make sure that all of their demands are met before they will work the steps with someone. And, the rehabs have now been telling our new people what to look for in a sponsor. And there is a certain type of a check sheet that the newcomers should leave the rehab facilities with, and then they should go out amongst us and AA and sort of see if we meet a certain criteria, you know. And if we don't meet that, then that newcomer should go and find someone else.

And I'm here to share tonight, without using words that I normally use, that that's not how we roll. See, in therapy, the customer is always right. Somebody's gotta give that ID number over for the medical insurance and all that stuff. But in AA, we don't mind letting our customers know they're wrong. You know, we don't mind that.

We have no problem with that. In fact, we can run this thing on about 2 or 3 drunks. I know a lot of us get stimulated with the numbers, and we see all the people. Yay. We're so big.

You know? And, I don't think we try to grow in size in AA. I think we grow, more toward what the solution is. How do I stay sober tonight? I don't care if 3 or 4 or 5 people are gonna help me do it, but how do I do it?

You know? And that's what I've been learning from you people. How do I not get drunk tonight and how do I not use that as an excuse to not deal with life out there, because these people don't care. They really don't. Most of them don't.

I've been out in this community and and and I work. I have a job. I'm very functional. And, I could not tell my boss, hey, look, you know, this is my AA ID. I'm a be late all this week.

Been sober going on 17 years and, I got a lot of stuff going on here. Excuse me. Move over to everybody down on the floor now. Hey hey here. If you're a newcomer and you're going out of these rooms and trying to use us as some sort of a shield to not deal with real life, as doctor Bob would say, I feel sorry for you.

One of the things I'll share and then I'll start winding down. I know everybody is dying to get out of here to go help somebody. A a meeting. You know, the safest place to hide from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is right here in the meeting. So safe.

This is a safe place. Really safe. One of the things I want to read here is something that really disturbs me as a long time member in AA. And I was trying to avoid this for so long. And it's right here on page 85.

And real quick, it says, it is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve, contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.

How can I best serve thee? Thy will, not mine, be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.

So in other words, because I hear people saying that they need a break, that they're tired, that they're sleepy, that they got finals, that their boss looked at them funny the other day. Mom don't want me to go. It's too much money. Gas costs a lot of money. I'm too busy.

I got my whole life ahead of me. I got potential. That drug is I saw some people smile. Then, you know, when somebody out there tells us we got potential and we're still drinking, that means we're gonna get some money, man. We got it coming in.

Potential. Only thing potential about most of us is we about to be potential alcoholic, you know. But anyway, it's this busy me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me. You know, in my I'll talk about my head. You know, it's like you wake up in the morning, you know, you get out.

I get up in the morning and I rise up and the motor just starts. And it just sort of get on. And if I don't get into that meditation, if I don't answer that phone, if I don't pray and ask my higher power to rescue me from me, I am telling you that that little thing is going. It's going, and I lie, and I tell you that's not what it is. 1 of you guys are gonna wind up going, what's that noise?

Because you hear it. It's a it's a really high pitch sort of a faint sound. You hear it? You hear it, don't you? You hear it.

And what happens is I need my higher power to to get in there and stop that every day. My mind tells me that I don't need to do it every day. I only need to do it when I'm feeling bad. He used to call it breakdown maintenance sobriety. You know, show up every time they they owe you something.

Yeah. Or you got a cake? They owe me a cake. Yeah. I'm here for my cake.

What's the I'll wrap it up by saying, you know, if you've been sober for a little while, I really wanna thank you. You know, I really wanna thank, the people with long term sobriety tonight. We're always hooping and hollering for new people, and I think new people are very important. I think new people are the lifeblood of the program, but I am not a phlebotomist and I don't like being in a room full of blood. There's some meat, some backbone here and these people with this long term sobriety.

If you could just hang around here, please. If you could keep just coming back to our regular participation meetings. If you could please come to some of our book studies. You people with time sober. We really need the help.

I've never gone to an AA meeting and heard anybody running around going, where are all the new people? I mean, now the courts are making sure that we don't need to do that. Right? But you let the coffee guy not show up, and there's gonna be war. Where is the coffee?

I'll tell this last little story, and I'm gonna sit down. I've ran out of time. We had controversy going on at my home group 1 year. It was about the coffee. We had controversy because, we were trying to figure out if we were going to put 2 scoops in the coffee maker or one scoop in the coffee maker.

And the group split up. We had the 2 scoop people, and we had the 1 scoop people. And I happen to be a 2 scooper, by the way. I will always vote 2 scoop. It's never gonna change.

Down in my soul, I am a 2 scooper. And if I ever see a 1 scooper looking at me the wrong way, it's gonna be hell to fame. One scoopers get on my nerves. Come around here, they barely want coffee. You know, they think we all should barely want coffee.

One scooper ain't nothing, man. And when we get into tribalism in AA, you know, the young people over here, the Jewish people over here, who want the black people over here, the brown eyed people, when we get into all of that, I don't think we're really into all of this. If you're a new person, I hope you heard something here tonight that you can tell somebody else. Because if you just keep it to yourself, it ain't gonna mean nothing anyway. Thanks for letting me share.