MKACNA XII in Atchinson, KS

I'm Larry. I'm an addict. Hey, Larry. I think we should give Tom a hand for that, HNI. He's doing a hell of a job.

And real quick before I introduce Brownie, I'd like to share that, I've been a volunteer and I've been to that prison. And to to see the hope and the desperation in those guys' eyes, and they'd love to see you come in there. So if you get a chance, if Tom or Glenn or or Bill or any of them guys ask you to go, you should do it, man, because it it it does something to me. It's really awesome. So, thanks again, Tom.

I thought that was really great. Brownie. I met this guy it's 8 years ago. Kobe and I went to New York City to a convention. And, I said I said, Kobe, how are we gonna gonna get where are we gonna stay?

And he says, well, we're gonna stay at this guy's house named Brownie. And I said, okay. And, so I he, we get off the airplane, and I see this guy walking down the the hallway. I said, oh my god. He's high right now.

And, I mean, he was all wild looking and and, I said, this is alright, Kobe? He said, yeah. It'll be alright. It'll be alright. Tony d sent him.

It'll be cool. So, I said, fuck. It looks like he just came out from under a bridge. And then later on, when I when I've learned how when I met and learned him, he, he did come out from under a bridge. And, but, you know what, man?

This guy has really touched my life. He stopped his life for 4 days, took, Kobe and I all over New York City. And I don't know if you've ever been to an a strange city and not knew anybody there. Maybe you've been to a convention and and you have to take a taxi everywhere. This guy showed us New York City in 4 days.

He took us everywhere. He made us speak at at every group we went to. He we went to ground 0. We went to Times Square. I mean, the whole city everywhere.

And, I mean, it was really great. You know? And I don't know. Over the years, Brownie and I just we had a connection somehow, and, he ended us he ended up letting us stay at his house. And, I mean, we crashed his house, and and so, before, you know, before when I was using, if I met somebody like that and I and they let me crash at their house, I would have stole everything they had.

And, this guy took us in, I mean, like nothing. So, I didn't take too much. Just a few little things. Whatever I could get in my suitcase. But you know what, man?

This guy, we've really built a great relationship with this guy, and, he's became my traveling partner. He's became my friend in NA. He is truly all about narcotics anonymous. He lives, breathes. He he, I mean, he's all about the traditions, the steps, and this guy has came I know he's came from a lot of us.

He's came from the bottom of the barrel, and he's worked and scratched and clawed his way up to the top. And I'm really proud of him, and I love you, Brownie. Come on up. Tell you a story. Yeah.

I'm Brianne. I'm an addict. I'm Brianne. Can you guys hear me? Yeah.

You can hear me. Right? I just wanted to say to Larry, after that introduction, you'll never stay in my fucking house again as well as you. Yeah. I Anonymous for their Anonymous for their dedication and their selfless service in providing a venue to fulfill our primary purpose, which is to carry the message to the act who still suffers.

I, I was involved with, my home area, which is the West and Queens area of Narcotics Anonymous, with our first convention. We just had it. It was was March 7th, 8th, 9th of, last month. And, it was it was a commitment when I took it. I thought it was gonna be a 1 year commitment.

It turned out to be a 4 year commitment. And I know the sacrifice, the dedication, the perseverance, and just the compassion that you have to have for a second suffering addict to be involved in something like that. So I wanna commend the members that did this convention for having all those principles in their life. And I wanna congratulate you guys. Listen, I'm, you know, I'm I'm a grateful addict.

I'm very very grateful. My life has been a miracle since I walked into Narcotics Anonymous. You know, I'm excited about being clean. Being clean is exciting to me and I'm enthusiastic about it. And I try and be enthusiastic about my recovery because I feel that enthusiasm is a purest form of gratitude and that is contagious to the newcomer.

There's nothing that makes me more depressed or sick than when I walk into it what I wonder, like, what does the newcomer think? You know? I wonder what it what I wonder, like, what does the newcomer think? You know? And, I'm enthusiastic about it.

For lack of a better way to say it, I'm down with this shit. I'm all in. I'm an narcotics anonymous member. And, I wanna thank Jimmy Kennan. Yeah.

I I hear sometimes I go to meetings, I hear everybody throw it all these circuit speakers names around. I don't give a fuck about any of them. Now I wanna thank the guy that took the time and used his house to get this fellowship going. I wanna thank those members in Sun Valley that adapted the 12 steps. Not adapted them.

Adapted them so that they work for hopeless addicts like myself. Tax anonymous. And I used drugs for what seemed to be a lifetime in the streets of New York City. And I can remember as a young boy wanting to be clean. I went to I went to high school in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

That probably means nothing to some of you. Some of you probably heard of it. The best way I could describe it is there's a lot of heroin in the Bedford Stuyvesant section in Brooklyn. And I became, primarily a heroin addict as a young boy. And I don't, and I just say that because it's my story.

I don't wanna, I don't want anybody to eliminate themselves because they didn't use this same substance as I did. This is a fellowship with that we have one common bond, the disease of addiction. And, it's not about the substance I used. I wanna tell you this, that I didn't refuse any drugs. Yeah.

I wasn't a refuser of drugs. When I was on the methadone maintenance treatment program, a guy came up to me with a mayonnaise jar full of pills. He said, Brownie, do you know what these pills are? I said, give me 10. I'll let you know in a half an hour.

Yeah. I was very open minded when it came to drug use. And I talk about the drugs. I talk about the drugs. I you know, I go into narcotics.

Yeah. Well, I don't know where the fuck that came from, that we don't talk about drugs. This is our fellowship. This is a fellowship of drug addicts. So I talk about these drugs and narcotics and others.

When when I am asked when I'm given the privilege to carry the message to an addict that still suffers, I put my crosshairs and my telescope squarely on the forehead of the newcomer. I try and talk straight to the newcomer. Yeah. And I don't know where that came from that we don't talk about drugs and narcotics anonymous. There's another fellowship that used to throw you out for that.

This isn't it. It says I'm gonna read you something from a from a third tradition. You know? We have a we have a a we have a a pamphlet. It's called the group pamphlet.

And in there it says that we need not dwell excessively on war stories. It says dwell excessively. Doesn't mean don't talk about where you came from and what happened to you. Yeah. I'm gonna read something from our 3rd tradition.

It says, although our third tradition is written simply, we know that when it talks about a desire to stop using, it means using drugs. We understand that narcotics anonymous is a program of recovery for drug addicts. Thank god for that. Although addiction takes on a broader meaning for many of us as we continue in recovery and it has for me, it's important to remember that we first came to narcotics anonymous because of our drug problem. If new members and there we are back to the newcomer again, ought to feel that they belong in Narcotics Anonymous, they need to hear something they can identify with.

They find that identification in the fellowship of recovering addicts and narcotics anonymous. And I also I go into meetings now and people tell you that you can't curse. This is a this is a a spiritual program. It's okay to say fuck here. Yeah.

I'm gonna share my experience. When I walked into my 1st narcotics anonymous meeting, the guy was talking about heroin and he said, fuck. I remember thinking this guy knows what he's talking about. So I try not to get into the arrogance that I've moved so far in recovery that I shoot over the head of the newcomer. I try to keep the newcomer in mind when I carry the message.

Because this message is a precious gift. It's a miracle. It's something that I don't want that that I've been given. I've been given a precious gift and I don't want it to go over the head of the person that I'm supposed to be giving it to. And here, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my story.

I was a hopeless drug addict. Basically, I told you my choice of drug was. And, I can remember wanting to be clean as a young boy. And I can remember looking for a way to get clean. There was no way to get clean.

And I remember, you know, going to all kinds of different treatment programs. And I, you know, and and I started to realize that society was more baffled about what was wrong with me than I was. You know, I went I remember one time, I got arrested. They let me out a they they released me to an outpatient drug program. You know, they always send you outpatient.

5 times a week. Outpatient. Outpatient. This way you never get into a narcotics anonymous meeting. You're so busy going to outpatient that they're guaranteed to get you back so they could charge your insurance again.

Yeah. So I was going to outpatient outpatient outpatient. And on my way out of the outpatient program, there was a little, Korean doctor standing by the door. And he said to me, he said, mister Brown, he said, we have no treatment for heroin addiction. He said, you look like excellent candidate for such treatment.

So I said to him, well, what is it? He said, we call acupuncture. So I said to him, now I had been through all kinds of treatment and I had no faith in any country. Here was my question. Do you accept Medicaid?

That was my question all the time. Yeah. I want to know if they accepted Medicaid. So he said he took me into his office, and believe me, I was hopeless and I was desperate, And I wanted anything to work. I was willing to try anything.

And the guy drove the hole through the top of my ear and he put a metal pin in my ear. And I'll never forget what he said to me because I so urged to said to me, when urge to use heroin come over you, he said, spin the metal pin in ear. He said, stimulate production of endorphins in system. And he said, urge to use, go away. And I remember looking at him and I remember thinking, this motherfucker looks like he knows what he's talking about.

And I left his office I left his office at 12 noon. At 12:30, I was in the shooting gallery on Picken Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn like this. And I kept I remember the guy in the shooting gallery said to me, what the fuck is that thing in your ear? And I continued to use and then he said to me, hey, you think you could get me one of them? Where'd you get that?

So that was, like, my experience with all of these solutions. You know what? Literature is very specific about what works and what don't work. We read it at the beginning of every meeting. We say, many of us ended up in jail.

And I heard what the guys in jail said. I like the guy who said it was a fucking snake pit. I'll go with that one. Many of us ended up in jail. Medicine, religion, and psychiatry, none of these methods was sufficient for us.

Now we don't tell people they can't go to the psychiatrist or they can't go to church. We tell them these aren't solutions for the spiritual disease that we suffer from. And our first step is more specific about it. Our first step goes into it in a little more detail. Lovers.

Everything we tried failed. So if I'm a narcotics anonymous member and I'm trying these solutions, practicing the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Now when I came to my first anonymous meeting, I had drug used drugs for what seemed to be a lifetime. I'm gonna tell you something. I was born in 1950 2.

There was another fellowship in New York since 1933. I didn't know anybody that got clean. All my friends died from using heroin. It wasn't until 1981 that when Narcotics Anonymous came to New York that things began to change for addicts. So, I was I was on the streets in New York City, and I'll tell you something, I looked like a junkie when I was using.

Some people say that look still hasn't gone away. No. Yeah. Fuck them. But I was standing somewhere around the street, New York City, and the Coxenomics this is about that maybe 1985.

And the Coxenomics was fairly new in New York City. And someone must've seen me and said, get a look at this guy, like, just push him in there. And I ended up inside an narcotics anonymous army. And let me tell you something, I don't know how I got there. And I don't remember anything anybody said.

I don't remember what the who the speaker was. I was high. I was high. I won't let anybody in this meeting know if you got high today that you're a member of narcotics anonymous. Well, you know that.

I'm gonna go further into that. Here's what I'm gonna tell you, that when I was using, I had a very very busy schedule. I really did. Really. Between stealing, selling what I stole, sneaking on the subway wherever I with with whatever I stole, trying to sell it to people that only want to give me $2 for it.

Going from cop spot to cop spot, trying to find one that was open, dodging the detectives, dodging the warrant squad, having no place to live, out in the winter in the freezing cold. Let me tell you something. If you made it, if you could squeeze a narcotics anonymous meeting into that schedule, far be it for me to be the motherfucker that don't welcome you here. You have to be in a terrible amount of pain to show up in an uncharacterized universe being under those circumstances. And I came.

And I was high when I got to the meeting. And I don't remember what happened inside the meeting, but I remember this, that something interrupted my thinking process. And let me tell you something, I had I had used for what seemed to be a lifetime and I had started to think, a certain way and most of my beliefs was steeped in self deception and dishonesty. And, I believed a lot of things that weren't true were true. And we say we get a we have most of our information was, we were misinformed people.

We were we were misinformed by misinformed people. That was that was my case. And when I think back to the way I thought when I first got to Narcotics Anonymous, some of the things that I believed seemed totally bizarre to me now. They really seemed bizarre. I had a fucked up thinking process.

One of the things that I believed was that if you had teeth, that you were the police. I believe that. I really thought that healthy people that had teeth, they must be the police. Now and let me tell you something. In that first meeting, I seen people that looked happy.

They looked healthy. I heard one guy say he was dressed nice. He had a gold chain around his neck. He said he hadn't used he was a life he was a career heroin addict. He hadn't shot up in 4 years, and I remember thinking, I I don't know about that.

Because let me tell you something, the thought of not using was totally inconceivable for me. And I had a hard time believing when people said they I can remember asking a guy outside to me, you mean you don't use use nothing? How could that be? Yeah. I didn't know anybody that didn't use nothing.

I thought that was impossible. I thought the concept of full abstinence was the most bizarre fucking thing I ever I started to go to the meetings, you know, they put an interruption in my thinking process and I started attending our taxonomies meetings. And I wish I could tell you, you know, that I've been queen ever since then. But here's what happened to me. I had been conditioned by society's to believe that there was something wrong with me that no one understood and that could never be fixed.

And I thought I thought I suffered from a hopeless condition. That they I could never be, they they could never be a reprieve from what I suffered from. And I remembered that everyone who tried to treat me was looking, for some kind of Money seemed to be at the bottom of all kinds of treatment. Listen. I remember I was living homeless in the Hunts Point section in the South Bronx.

It's a notorious section of the South Bronx. I was a little bit homeless there, and I I have been using for about 25 years. And I used till my teeth fell out, till my hands were covered with sores, my pants were covered with blood from shooting up, and I can remember when the when the rush hour traffic coming out of Manhattan used to come right by where I was living underneath the highway there. And 1 guy stopped and he said to me, he was like a good samaritan type. He said to me, he said to me, look buddy, you need fucking help.

He said, if you're here tomorrow at this time, he said, I'll take you to a hospital. So the I wasn't waiting for him. Yeah. Just happened to still be there. He took me to a he took me to a a a hospital in the Bronx.

And I know when I got to the hospital, I looked like I was shot out of a cannon. Yeah. I I had a full beard, my teeth were rotten out. I have By the way, I have an AIDS diagnosis for over 25 years. So I wasn't looking to spry and chipper when I wasn't eating and running around the street.

And, I remember when I got to the hospital, there was a guy, he was dressed in a suit, he had glasses on like this, he had a bunch of paperwork in front of him. I was standing there in front of him, I stunk and I remember he was looking around on the paper shuffling the paper and he looked up and he said, what of insurance do you have? And I remember thinking, this guy just don't get it. I wanted to tell him, voids of London motherfucker. Yeah.

And it wasn't till I got to narcotics anonymous that I met people that didn't care what I had. They didn't give a shit what I had. And one of them first meetings and I had that meeting list, I went to a narcotics anonymous meeting and I was always cold and tired tired and hungry and broke and lonely and desperate. And I just wanted to get out of what I was in, and I really didn't care how it stops. And I can remember being very, very confused.

And that feeling of hopelessness was embedded in the fiber of my being. And I can remember a guy pulled me out of my seat at one of the meetings, and he he had a brown paper bag. And inside the brown paper bag he had a pound of ham, he had half a pound of Swiss cheese and he had some rolls. And he took me out of my chair and he brought me into the back of the meeting in the pantry of the church and he made me a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on a roll. And I ate the ham and Swiss cheese saying he met himself one too.

And I ate the ham and Swiss cheese sandwich and I started talking to him and he started talking to me about the places he'd been, the things he'd done, the institutions he had been in, the drugs he used, and he told me what his life was like now in recovery. And for the first time, I got the feeling for the first time in my life that I had met someone who understood what was wrong with me. And I and he always say in our that the spiritual essence of this program is one addict helping another. And that's what I'm here to talk about tonight. I'm talking about service work and reaching out to people.

And I started coming to narcotics anonymous meetings and I came to meeting for about must have been about 4 years before I got the balls up to stop using. No one ever told me I wasn't welcome in the meeting. People encouraged me. They said nice things to me. They helped me in whatever way they could.

People welcome me back when I showed up back. They were happy to see I was still alive. And I started coming and, I start, you know, back in the eighties, there was a lot of goodwill in the fellowship. There was more goodwill in there than it there seems to be now. Now we have a lot more the fellowship is anchored in a lot more literature.

But back then, sometimes the only thing that stood between you and your next shot of dope was the addict sitting next to you in the meeting. So there was a lot of camaraderie in the meeting, and there was a lot of goodwill, and I had no place to live. And sometimes people would let me stay in their house. And unlike Larry, I would never steal anything out of everybody's house. I wanted to be welcomed back.

Yeah. And I started coming to meetings and I was using and, I started listening to what the members shared about using drugs and the truth started to become apparent to me. I would go out and use and prove that what they said was the truth. And then I would come back into the meeting and I started to develop the principle of self honesty. And one guy had me, sleeping in his boiler room.

He had a bed in the boiler room in the basement boiler room, I had a TV set. And I had my first, like, awakening after I had a relapse and I came back into that boiler room. The TV show, the Wheel of Fortune was on the on the TV. And I had just used and listened to the people say what the truth was, and I came back to the to the guy's house and I was down there. And a woman on the wheel of fortune won a cruise to the Caribbean.

And I remember thinking, well, that's never happened to me. But I I remember identifying with the wheel of fortune because I I remember institution, rehab, institution, rehab, multiple arrests. Yeah. Emergency room. And when I pick up when I pick up a shot or a drink or smoke some crack, vacation in the South Bronx.

You'll be touring the vacant lots, abandoned buildings, and shooting galleries of the scenic South Bronx while staying in your deluxe accommodations And that'll show Brownie what he's won. It's a brand new shopping cart. Yeah. So when I started to put it together you know, we say here, know the truth and the truth will set you free. I heard that in an archives anonymous meeting.

To thy known self be true. It's hard to deny our addiction when our problems are staring us in the face. So I started to develop that principle of self honesty and I started to realize I was able to look at a bag of heroin and see if what it really was. And I started to move from fantasy to reality. I started breaking those barriers, clearing those barriers away.

Clearing those barriers of denial and self deception and non belief. They started getting cleared away, and it was through the people that practice principles with me, that practice spiritual principles with me, people that showed me that People that welcome me back. People that met me where I was and loved me for what I was and saw a hope for me when I saw no hope for my self. They're the ones that helped me get into recovery and change my life. And I think the miracle here happens in our current synopses when we practice these principles on each other and all our affairs.

And I was able to stop using, put time between me and some drugs for short periods of time, and then, you know, we have a I was I was able listen, I've been coming here for 22 years. I'm not clean for 22 years. I've stayed clean 1 year, three times. Then in the course of getting the 1 year twice, I made it to 2 years. And here's what I wanna share with the members who might be in the same place and the newcomers in the room.

I wanna let them know that when I when I look back at those periods of abstinence, because they were just periods of abstinence. I, I, you know, I clearly see them as periods of abstinence now, but I then thought that I was in recovery. If you would've told me I wasn't in recovery during that period, I wouldn't want to fucking fight with you. Yeah. I would have said, what do you mean I'm not in recovery?

But here's what I noticed about those periods of absence. There was always a loophole in my program. Yeah. We and and and our in the chapter in the basic text, recovery and relapse, there's a line in there that says, we've never seen a person who lives in our car accident program relapse. And we do recover.

It says in our experience, no addict who has completely surrendered to this program has ever failed to find recovery. That means that if I have a home group, a sponsor, I'm involved in 12 step work, I sponsor people. If I'm reading the literature, I'm involved in service. I make meetings. I make phone calls.

And I use drugs. That means I'd be the first person. Listen, when I went to that Chinese guy and he told me to spin the pin in my ear, he didn't make me no fucking promises like that. And, you know, we have a message here, a beautiful message in our tax now. A message of hope, a promise of freedom that any addict, any addict, can stop using, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live.

That's what I found here in Narcotics Anonymous. And, you know, there was a couple of years there where when I kept having those relapses, there was always a loophole in my program. I either didn't have a sponsor or I didn't want the steps. It wasn't about what was going on in my life because my life was a catastrophe. Yeah.

My life was a catastrophe. What I knew about living before I got to narcotics and armist nearly killed me. And it was no different after the drugs were gone. What I knew about living continued to almost what I knew about living continued to almost kill me after I got here. So I learned like this.

I was clean 2 years, for the second time. I had no sponsor. I wasn't working the steps, I ended up using drugs again. I got arrested in Manhattan. In Manhattan, the jail the city jail back down was called the Toombs.

They sent me to the Toombs. I was waiting at Raymond for, for Raymond in the tombs in the bullpen with 30 other guys in the bullpen waiting for arraignment. Now in the years I had been an narcotics anonymous member, I had learned to make simple observations. And we say a good recovery requires observation. Need to re we need to observe what works and what don't work.

I made a simple 30 guys in the bullpen had a sponsor or work the steps needed. I began to catch on like that. And you always say, when you do what you've always done, you get what you've always got. And our 6 step tells us that we know we're growing when we begin to make new mistakes instead of repeating the same ones that we've always been repeating over and over again. You know?

And, I used to come into the meeting and I would pick out the guy and say this guy what do you mean I need a sponsor? This guy has 18 years. He's got no sponsor. He hasn't worked the steps. Well, I'm here to share this with you.

What I here's what I know about that guy today. He's not me. I can't do what he does. Relapse defined for me in clear and certain terms who I am as an addict and what I needed to do to stay clean. So I got a sponsor.

I got involved with the 12 steps. I, I used the narcotics anonymous literature. 12, the narcotics anonymous step working guides. I hear people now, they call it the flat book. I don't call it the flat book because I don't wanna eliminate narcotics anonymous from the title of the book.

The guys who worked on the book, they named it the Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guide. That's good enough for me. Yeah. I wasn't on the fucking committee. I'm the guy that lived under the highway in the South Bronx.

And you know what? I attend narcotics anonymous meetings. And making meetings, just making meetings wasn't enough for me to stay clean. I had to surrender to the whole program. You know, we have a pamphlet.

It says, welcome to the Narcotics Anonymous Program. In there, it says that, yeah. Says you could get clean just by coming 12 steps. I'm here to share with you that I couldn't stay clean until I got involved in the 12 steps of this program. And the program works.

What do we say? It works if you're working. It works if you don't work it. It probably just won't work for you. I hear that all the time in New York City.

And, I got involved in the program and I started working steps. Group is group is the day by day group. We meet in Woodside, Queens. A lot of these guys have been to my home group and spoke there and been a part of my home group. They know the members.

There's people in in this room tonight that have been to my home group. And my home group is like the driving passion in my life. It's the thing it's really the place I love to be. It meets 5 days a week. We meet on Monday Thursday from 11 AM to 1 to 12:30 PM, And we meet on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 12 noon to 1:30 PM.

And it's really, it's a special it it's it's very, very rich, spiritually, my home group. In this way, that it's filled with desperate, fucked up people looking for a way to get clean. And I get to practice what I've been given here, taught by the members who came here before me in that home room with those people. And you wanna know something? We can only keep what we have in narcotics anonymous by giving it away.

I'm all in. I'm down with that. I spent a lot of my time around the desperate ones. I love being around the sick members. I remember when I was sick, I used to feel like no one wanted to be around me.

When I came to narcotics anonymous, I didn't I actually didn't know what to talk about. I can remember standing outside the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I had absolutely no social skills and I couldn't carry on a conversation. I can remember being outside the meeting, I'd be a circle of people and I'd be talking. 1 guy say, oh, I bought an air conditioner for my apartment.

The next guy say, I paid my car insurance. The next guy say, I brought my girl to a Broadway play. The next guy would say I visited my mother today. The conversation would get to me, I would say, remember the remember the dope latuna on Clinton Street? Wasn't that dope good?

Yeah. And I actually of course, I was in a place where if you weren't talking about using, or hustling, or in the street, or the police chasing you, I didn't know what to talk about. So I stay in my home group and I stay around those people. And I practice the group, it's a place where I get to see miracles occur on a daily basis. I have a couple of home group members that there's one of the guys in my home group.

He was in the he was in the AIDS hospice for 8 years, wait ambulate. They brought him there with the ambulette. They brought him there with the ambulette. He came out in the wheelchair, and he came to my home group for about a year still on the methionine. We encouraged him.

We welcomed him back. He got the courage to start going down on the methadone. He got off the methadone. He finally got off the methadone, then the wheelchair went. He started coming with a walker.

After he's about 6 months clean, he started coming on crutches. I see this guy every day. I I get to witness turnabout. A basic text says this miraculous turnabout is evidence of a spiritual awakening. I get my spiritual awakening at my home crew.

Listen, I'm in the trenches. I roll up my sleeves and I get the fuck in there. And this guy now, not only isn't he in the hospice no more, he's living free in society. He has his own apartment. His crutches are gone.

He comes in with a gym bag now. He comes from the gym. And I'll tell you what, I'm a little jealous of the fucking guy now. Yeah. He comes in with a fucking gym bag.

So I've been you know, my journey in recovery has been 1 when I first got clean, I was after all the materialism, and I wanted, I can remember I wanted a girlfriend. I'd never have it. I'd never had a girlfriend. I want a girlfriend. I've been using listen, when you live under a highway, you have age and no teeth, you don't have that many romantic relationships going on.

Yeah. It's not it's not a big issue. Yeah. So I got into recovery and I got some teeth and all that, I can remember the guy said to me get a sponsor. I said I'm getting a girlfriend.

Yeah. And let me tell you, I was a bad picker. My picker was fucking definitely broken. If you walked into the meeting and you were on Methanol maintenance for 30 years and a girl had a couple of black eyes, one leg shorter than the other and some teeth missing. Say, that's my girl.

And my thinking was like this. I would look at him and I would think like, did you ever see the TV show, The 6 $1,000,000 Man? I would go like this. I could rebuild her. I could rebuild.

Yeah. Look, I have the technology. Yeah. Look, I I moved 1 girl into my apartment. I went through the whole thing with the relationship.

I had 1, I moved her into my apartment. She was in, she was being released from from an institution on the weekends. I was waiting outside the institution with my car. And then I would bring it to the Narcotics Anonymous, being like, was the drive in movie? I remember one of the old timers in the media said to me he said to me, is that that your girl there?

I said, yeah. He said to me, isn't she in the institution? I said, yeah. Then he said to me he said something I never forgot. And now, this goes for all the members, not just the woman.

Because the women get a little touchy, you know. The men this goes for the men too. He said to me, do you realize what you're doing is like shopping in the dented can aisle of the supermarket? And I don't know what I said to him. I said, watch it motherfucker.

That's my girl. Yeah. So I moved her in. I had her in my apartment. Right?

She's living in my apartment. She had no sponsor, no steps. I had no spirituality. I wasn't spiritually grounded in any kind of recovery. You know, we just used to go to meetings together.

Do your nails. Let's go to the meeting. Yeah. Get your hair done for the meeting. Yeah.

I was gravitating towards materially. So the girl that I thought was so beautiful, she let me tell you something, if you if you're in a relationship and there's no spiritual principles in that relationship, you face a rough road. Really. Things are gonna be a little edgy and irritable around the breakfast table. She would get up and she would be like this.

And then I said, wow the girl I thought so was so beautiful. She's starting to look like a pit bull. You know, so I began to realize I began to realize hey, one night I was making love to her. She went like this. So I began to realize that no matter what I put in my life, without the principles of this program, acceptance, surrender, courage, trust, perseverance, humility, that no matter what came into my life, I wouldn't be able to manage it.

It would drive me fucking nuts. So I'm involved in the program now. And I stay I stay involved in the tax dollars program. And I'm gonna share a couple of stories with you that I haven't been in a romantic relationship in narcotics for 9 years and, 8 months. And this is not by any coincidence.

I'm clean 9 years 8 months. I wanna share that with you. I'm now clean 9 years 8 months. My relationship is my home group. And let me tell you something.

There's no fucking perfect members. I wanna let the newcomers know this, that if you walk into a meeting and you meet someone that appears to be perfect, run for your fucking life. Will. Hightail it the fuck out of there. There's nothing more creepy than that, you know.

Really? But since I've been involved all of this stuff in all of this stuff, you know, my wife has taken a course provided by my higher power. And if I would have been in control of my life over the last 9 years 8 months, a lot of wonderful things that have happened to you wouldn't have happened to me. I'm gonna share a story with you. You know, I've been all over the world now, halfway around the world with narcotics anonymous.

And not just as a speaker. Everybody wants to be a fucking speaker. Speekety, speakety, speakety, speakety, speakety. How about a nice big cop and shut the fuck up? Well well, where's the girl who opened the convention?

Her name was Holly. Is she in this room? She said something very important. She only spoke for about 5 minutes. She said something I really believe.

You know what she said? She said, I'm not really into this speaking. I'm nervous and I'm not she said, but I come from the best fucking home group in the world. Let me tell you something about this message. The message is meaningless unless you live it.

If I wasn't in my home group with my sleeves rolled up, if I wasn't in and out of Rikers Island, if I didn't go on an HNI commitment wherever I've traveled, what the fuck would I be talking about up here? A lot of big a lot of shit about me, I guess. What I got, what I've accomplished. Character, the 12 steps have made me ease the pain and confusion of living life without drugs, but the 12 traditions taught me something crisply clear that it's not about fucking me in this fellowship. Believe me, it's not about me.

And I've been blessed with a lot of stuff. They asked me to be now, the reason why I said that about the speaking is because I don't wanna be a fucking speaker. I wanna be a narcotics anonymous member. I wanna feel that feeling of being spiritually refreshed and glad to be alive because of the service work I've done with hopeless desperate people. I'm eager to help people that are in the pits of despair.

It gives me that feeling. My purpose my self worth has been grounded in my higher power's purpose, and not just from the fucking podium. And let me tell you something about speaking. It's no more important than the guy out there at the registration desk, the people that that back there selling the water, The guy who hugged you when you come into an narcotics anonymous meeting. The person that makes the coffee is probably more important than the but I've been blessed and I've recently I was asked to go I'm gonna tell you, like, how my life has turned around and how God took a hopeless desperate addict and just used me for something I never would have imagined that I would have been used for in a 1000000000 years.

And if I wanna pursue my own selfish interests, it never would have happened to me here. When I surrendered to the narcotics anonymous program, it's we say we say, when the addict stops using drugs, wonderful things happen. Miracles happen. So I was invited to Ireland. Was in Ireland, my friend invited me to Belfast.

He said, we're going into the prison in Belfast. He said, and we're gonna he said, well, we're gonna meet my friend Duff. We're gonna take the train up. It's a 5 hour train ride. We're gonna meet my friend Duff.