Acts of Recovery in Baltimore, MD

Hi everybody. My name is Chris. I am an alcoholic. It's always a pleasure and an honor to be asked to do something like an act of recovery. A lot of enthusiastic people show up at these events and enthusiasm is something that is a, it's a grand quality to have when you're, when you're struggling your way into recovery.

Enthusiasm can keep you going,

get you through the rough spots. Want to thank the other, the other speakers. I, I related so much to, to all of them. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to sound redundant because there's so many similar experiences that I've had, but my, my topic today is being rocketed into the 4th dimension. For me to cover that, I'm going to have to talk about the three Chris dimensions that I was in prior to to being rocketed into the 4th dimension.

They, they, they became quite grim toward the end. Like I said, I, I am an I am an alcoholic.

My first drink, I went into a blackout. I trashed the houses. I was about 12 and I experienced the things that you experience when you're alcoholic and you drink. I experienced the phenomenon of craving, which is when when you put one drink in your body, it asks for the second drink and the second drink demands the 3rd and the 3rd insists on the 4th.

That's what happened to me the first time I started to drink. And I got to tell you that's not what was happening to the two guys I was drinking with. They could have, you know, 1 1/2 and they were fine. That's that was never my experience.

They also didn't go into a blackout like I did. So from the very, very get go, I had, I had an abnormal reaction to alcohol,

but there was something that it did for me.

You know, I want to I want to go back a little bit because this is this is one of the crisp dimensions,

which is I'll tell you a little story.

One of the first memories that I can really remember that's indelibly etched into my mind is the day my mother came up to me and said, get your stuff together. It's first day at kindergarten. OK. And I'm like, what? You know, she says like you're I'm taking you in the car across town. You're going to kindergarten. You know, I'm a little confused about all this stuff by getting a car. And she drives me across town and I can remember this like it was yesterday. She parks on the top of this hill and down the hill toward the bottom of the Hill

School, and there's all these kids playing kickball and tag. They're all running around. They're already friends and everything, right? She lets me out of the car, closes the door, drives away, and I'm standing there up on the hill, looking down the hill, feeling like a Dick, You know what I mean? Like, like I'm, I'm like, you know what if they don't like me? You know, what if I do something stupid? You know, what if they make fun of me

and you know, I mean just just horrible anxiety and self-centered fear and you know, obviously there's something wrong with me because they're all, they're all friends already and everything, right? So I know there's something wrong with me. So, so I go,

I go, I know, I know, I just have to do it. I gotta, I gotta pull myself together. I gotta be cool, you know, I gotta go do the kindergarten thing. And so, you know, I walk down the hill and, and, and I, and I started, I started the, the kindergarten thing, you know, with all that anxiety and that self-centered fear. Can I, can I tell you what would have really helped?

A pint of vodka. You know what I mean? A pint of vodka. I'd have been, I'd have been doing that kindergarten stuff, you know, I'd have been the kindergarten kid.

Oh, I'd have been the funniest kid. And you know, you know what I mean? Because that's what that's what alcohol did for me. My problem was I didn't have any alcohol. And the drinking age at that time was 21, OK, I was 5. That was a big problem I because I couldn't get, I couldn't get any alcohol. So,

so I went through like the next like seven years of school with that same self-centered fear, that same like like, you know, like I was afraid to do oral reports in front of the class. You know, I was always just just burdened with the this, this overwhelming worry about what you're going to think about me, you know,

and then I discovered alcohol that day with my two buddies and I went into the black, black out and I learned about projectile vomiting and, and I, you know, I woke up in a field not knowing how I got there

now and I was ill, you know, the first real drunk where you poison yourself and you have to stay horizontal for like 48 hours. And, and you know, that's what I did,

but, but let me tell you the, you know, I slowly started to forget

how I'll, it had made me, but I very, very distinctly remember and was able to hold on to the memory

of what the alcohol did for me. It got rid of that fear, that self-conscious always just, you know, just anxious all the time. I was never comfortable with myself or my environment. I just never was. And for the first time in my life, after like, drink #2 I was good, you know, I mean, I could step out and I had no problems.

So from that moment forward, I started to become preoccupied with alcohol. I started to become preoccupied with where I was going to get it,

you know, where I was going to drink and who I was going to drink it with. Where was the money coming from? What was it going to be, you know, And I got real, real preoccupied with that. And I didn't become a daily drinker at at age 12, but I became a weekend drinker. And, you know, slowly the weekends would, you know, you'd do a Wednesday here and there and then a Tuesday and a Monday and a Thursday. And,

and you know, that happened slowly over the course of time, but I, I started to use alcohol

with a very, very specific purpose. The purpose was to improve my spiritual condition, my emotional condition. I was not OK. OK. I was not OK. I was holding it together because you had to be cool, but I was not OK. And when I drank for brief periods of time, I was OK. So I was using it strategically.

You know, what happened was

alcoholism, I guess like recovery can be, can be aggressive and quick or it can, it can be slow. It can be the of the educational variety or, you know, and what happened with me was I drank for about 20 years. You know, I love it when, when, when people come up and, and talk about being able to get into Alcoholics, Alcoholics Anonymous at a, at an early age. I would have qualified for a, A, A at 12 because I showed all the signs of alcoholism

black out, you know, the preoccupation, the phenomenon of craving. But how do you know? How do you know what you don't know? You know, I, I, I was stubborn. I was irresponsible. You know, I was emotionally sensitive. I didn't like authority. If somebody told me to go left, I'd automatically go right, even if there was a Cliff there,

you know what I mean? I, it was, it was just something that I just didn't want any advice. You know,

it's OK, I got it, you know, so, so I held on. I held on like an idiot for like 20 years. And you got to understand, the first time I drank at age 12, I went into a blackout and it got worse after that. You know what I mean? My drinking, because over any considerable period of time, you know, your drinking will get worse, your alcoholism will get worse. It's not going to get better.

And so, you know, I, I was stumbling my way through, through school and I come from, I come from a period of time where

it was the late 60s, early 70s when I was starting to drink. So, you know, there was, there was a lot of, you know, non conference approved substances around and, and, and I partook, I will, I'll let you know that, you know, you could have a pill in your hand. I grab it and I need it. And then I go, what was that? You know, could have been a birth control pill or something, you know what I mean?

I just didn't care, you know? I wanted out. I wanted out, you know what I mean?

I'm checking out. This is just too much, too much. The sobriety stuff, it's untenable. And, and I would do, I would do whatever you could do. You know, I remember the, I remember the Quaalude epidemic of 1972 in my, in my, in my school, this guy brings in a big sack of a roar 714 Quaaludes. If anybody doesn't know what they are, you take a quaalude. It's like drinking 2-6 packs of beer in five seconds, you know, So this guy brings this big sack of Quaaludes in. And, you know, he had

way late the night before, he'd never done them. And so we would go, oh, Quaaludes, great. You know, what are they and how many do you take? And the guy goes, I don't know, three or four.

So, so before first period, about fifty of us ate like 3 or 4 Quaaludes before school. I'll just put it this way. The ambulance was back and forth all day long and and it got to third period and I was walking down the hall hanging on to the lockers

and I and I figured, you know, I gotta, I gotta get out of here. I'm gonna make a break for it, right. So, so I see the exit sign, I start heading for it and I bust through the doors and I start heading for the woods. Okay, now, not, not really thinking that the whole 400 win can watch me out the windows of their classrooms and they can't. You know, they came up to me the the next day and I said, Chris, it was absolutely hysterical watching, you know, it took, it took you, it took you something like 5 minutes to go

100 yards. You know, I was like,

I really I thought I was hauling ass too.

Another thing, another thing I did was another thing I did with quite with a with a with a degree of regularity was was total cars. I totaled 9 cars in drunken blackouts. I've been thrown out the front window, the passenger window. I even came out. I even came to laying on the trunk of of the car I was driving. One time I've been thrown through the black back window. That was that was crazy. The car spun around, hit a bridge of Buckman and I was throwing out I, I'm, I'm looking up at the stars,

you know, and like, whoa, you know, this isn't good and,

and what do you do? You know, like when see what's the first reaction if you're in alcohol? Yes, I'm going home, right? I'm going up. So I get back in the car. It's got 3 flat tires. It's not a window left in it. It's bent like a boomerang, okay. And the drive shaft is slapping the frame. So on how you know I'm going whacking a book at a bam, whacking a bug in a bam like about two miles an hour and I go right by a cop taking radar. OK,

much to his consternation,

he didn't even have to pull me over. He like, walked me over, you know, and

he reaches through the window and he starts shaking me. Like, where did you have that exit? I'm like, what? Accident officer? Glasses flying out of my hair

and cops are always hassling me. And he goes

because where you going? Like I'm going home. He goes, well, where's home? I go Basking Ridge.

That's 28 miles. Are you nuts? You got no tires, you know? So once more I get hassled by the cops. And that's that was my that was my first DWI. Let me skip to my last DWI. OK, You're going to love this.

Supposedly I crossed a double yellow. You know how that is, right?

Supposedly I crossed a double yellow and I get pulled over and, you know, I rolled down a window and the cop goes license, registration, insurance car. So I'm reaching over into the glove compartment. I'm, I'm toasted, okay? I'm as drunk as a goat and I'm, you know, and it's, it's just, you know, I'm fumbling like 5 minutes, right? Finally, I just give up and I scoop up the entire contents of the gloves and hand it to the cop. OK.

There's like maps and

homes and, you know, tissues and a flashlight was in there, you know,

and remember I told you cops were always hassling me, right. So, so he, you know, he he does some sobriety thing, like he looks in my eyes and, you know, they like don't even move or something. So he takes me to the police station to do the, the sobriety test. Has anyone in here ever been filmed, you know, while doing a sobriety test? OK, Yeah. You know, listen, don't ever watch those. OK? I'm warning you right now

going to need therapy. If you do,

you know, the next morning,

hazy recollection, you remember hazy recollections of certain things. I go, you know, I nailed the ABC's in that test. I'm going to hire a lawyer and I'm going to fight this. So that's what I did. I hired, I hired a $1500 lawyer, real high-priced lawyer for, you know, 1983 or whatever. Hire this lawyer and we're going to fight this, right. So the first thing we do is we go to the police station to, to, you know,

watch the video. We need to we need to check this out.

And the cop that gave the video to the lawyer was he's like,

that was not a good sign.

You know, they must have been watching it during break, you know, for like the last six months. You know, it's like a bad Jerry Springer episode. But but anyway, we put he puts it and he puts it in the and all of a sudden the TV lights up and there I am. I was horrified. OK. I mean, if you've ever seen yourself that, you know, you're, it's, it's disturbing

to see yourself in that kind of a state. And we get, you know, we get to the ABC's. And I did nail the ABC's. You know how I nailed them like this?

I'm going now. This whole time, the $1500 lawyers, you know, he's very, very professional, OK? He's he's, you know, professional and, and there's parts in it where I'm hanging on to the wall. I'm walking the line. You know, they make it walk while I'm hanging out on the wall. You know, it's just horrible. I'm asking for a cigarette every Tuesday. It's just, it's just pathetic. It's pathetic.

And I'm like this and, but, but here's the worst part. They get to the end of all these tests. They, they've made their point, OK. And, and they got Mr. Schroeder, we're going to, we're going to turn the camera off. Is there anything you'd like to add before we turn the camera on? And, and, you know, I'm a little concerned and, and sure enough, I look right over the camera and I go like this, right?

The attorney. The attorney drops to the floor in hysterics.

He's like,

I've never seen any like that. If we had any chance of beating this, you blow it.

I walked for four years on that one, You know what I mean? I was expecting Jetson Mobiles when I got my license back. But you know, these are all the problems and you know, I had problem, I had problems with work and anybody had anybody ever have any problems with work? Your boss being a jerk? You know how many people in here don't have bosses that are jerks? You know, I mean, you know, it's typical.

I just, I came to,

I come from a really smart family. My brother and sister are five, are both college professor PhDs, my mother and father, Phi Beta Kappa. I graduated the second stupidest kid in high school. I was really preoccupied with things, you know, I was busy. I would take Wednesdays off, you know, just to break up the week.

The teacher go, where's Chris and somebody go, It's Wednesday. Oh, that's right. It's his day off, you know, So I wasn't applying myself, you know? Did anybody ever tell you you had a lot of potential? You know,

I'm one of the potential crowd.

But anyway, you know, I I went to college, you know, I had I had these great plans. Anybody a good starter in here? All right, I'll give you a friends. I always started really well, man. I was cooking and somewhere along the line, you know, I would lose emphasis. I would lose enthusiasm to continue with the project that, you know, I would, you know, change my mind or something. I took guitar. You know, I'm going to learn the guitar. I took three guitar lessons.

I'm going to join the Boy Scouts. I went on one camp out, OK. I went to college for six years. I got 4 credits, you know, it was just like, I just, you know, I get to a point where I don't want to do that anymore, you know, And so I ended up somewhere along the line becoming an electrician and, and I was a bad one. Okay.

I, I electrocuted myself practically every day. It was really, it was through my hair just, and you know, I would do, I would do really bad, you know, I'd miscalculate where to drill down and somebody's house. I remember one time,

you know, I had to go down, you know, my drill got caught and there was stuff on the end of the bid. I had to go downstairs, the homeowner and have him open up his his master bedroom closet. It was like 20 suits all covered with plaster, one of them coiled up into the ceiling. You know where I caught it?

Oh, another time. I, this is, this is so bizarre, but I swear to God, it's true. I'm, I'm working in a department store. This place is called Epstein's. It's like a Macy's or something. And we're doing the computer cash register. So what I had to do is I had to loop data cable between cash registers and right out in the middle of the floor in these places or cash register. So I'd have to drill into the floor with these, with this big drill with the big auger bit. And then I'd have to climb in the ceiling and pull cable. Well, this one day I'm doing the cash register in the lingerie.

OK, Now I'm preoccupied a little bit. You know, it's just an interesting place to be working. And, and all of a sudden the drill catches on a metal beam after it goes through the floor. And it's one of those old like 12 horsepower big silver drills with the bar handles with the locking trigger. You remember those? They're like illegal now, but you know, that's what they gave. And, and the trigger,

I, I bear down on it when it catches the trigger locks and it spins me around like this,

it literally ties me up in the cord and then rips the pants right off my ass and, and it finally unplugs from the wall and I'm tied to the drill with no pants going like this in the lingerie section. Okay.

Which is an issue when you have to be really cool like me. You know what,

gonna really stretch to do that in that situation. You know, I mean, time and time we get there, they're bad, bad things would happen Now, you know, I had lost a family. I'd lost my driver's license a whole number of times. I'd lost so many jobs. You know, it's ridiculous how many careers I, you know, how many careers I start. I had very few friends left. The, the friends that were still with me toward the end of my drinking didn't really even have names. They were, they were like, they were like Green Man and Weezer, you know, they, they had

like aliases, you know, and you know, they're all, they're all dope fiend, you know, alcoholic type of friends who are, you know, really bad. My, my last, my last girlfriend when I, when I was drinking, I met during a prison pen pal thing that somebody had talked me into. And listen, I'm not recommending this if you're new or just coming back and, and, and you, you're lonely, you know, this, this, this did not work for me.

She was like a career criminal, you know, like, like, do you know what, what, what, what sociopaths are? There are people that have absolutely no

remorse or guilt or any kind, you know, they just, they're just like, you know, they just could do anything and it just doesn't matter. And and I you know, I end I end up moving her back up to New Jersey to live with me and mom. Okay,

she always wanted to be armed. You know, I mean, this is really a bad move on on on my part. You know, it was it didn't didn't go well. I mean, you know, so like, like, like my love life is not do. I mean,

if you look at the quality of my like the quality of my life was in the toilet toward the end the last couple years of my drinking, here's what here's what it would look like. I would come to in the morning wearing the clothes that I had passed out in the night before. You know, I go and I was a smoker too, you know. So I go into the bathroom and do my vomiting, calisthenics, you know,

and, you know, brush my teeth and then, you know, get out in the car and, you know, drive to work shattered. Because if you drink like a, like a quart of whiskey or vodka,

you know, the next day you're like, you're ringing, you know,

you're like, you know, a Geiger counter would go off next to you, you know, you're just like, and, and, and I, and I drive off to work. Now, if I get pulled over, I hadn't had a drink since like 8:00 the night before, I'd still get a DWI because it's common out of my pores. It's common out of my pores, you know what I mean? So I'd get to work and I'd had a bad electrical job, you know, and I'd go up to the boss. I'd go, well, and, and he'd go, he'd go, oh, I want you to go here and do this and here and do that here and do that. All right, I get in the truck

out of his driveway, and I would have completely forgotten what the hell he told me to do,

and so I'd have to drive back in. What are you doing back here?

What? What do you want me to do again?

God damn it. I told you to write things down so he'd like, yell at me and like this whole time. This whole time I would be swearing to God I'm never going to drink again. You remember making those promises to yourself? I never want to feel this bad again. I never want to feel like this again. I'm like poisoned. I'm shattered.

I can't go on like this today. Today is the day I am gonna quit drinking. I'm not drinking today. OK. Now The thing is, I, you know, I really meant it at like 9:00 in the morning. If you want to put a lie detector on me, you know, the guy, the guy doing the polygraph would have said this kids never drinking again. You're you're good because because I meant it, you know, but here's what would happen. I'd rehydrate, you know, you know how you'd have to get about 1/2 a gallon of, of liquid down to, to rehydrate?

I get maybe half a sandwich down at lunch and I'd start to think, you know, that position I took earlier this morning on never drinking again, That's a pretty strong position. Never ever drink it again. That might need to be modified

and by three o'clock 330, you know, 4:00 is quitting time. I will have, I will have modified that decision into going and buying a quart of vodka on the way home from work.

I would get home. I, I, I'd buy it, you know, and listen, when I showed up in front of the guy in, in front of the liquor store clerk, it might as well. I might as well have been saying this. Hey, hurry up, hurry up, you know, ring me up. Ring me up. That's up. I'm sober. I'm sober. I, you know, I got, I, I need help with this, you know, will you hurry up? This is horrible. This is horrible. I, I need to get that, but I need to get home. I need to start drinking, you know,

get Missus Mcgillicuddy the hell out of the way with her, with her God damn white wine. You know,

hurry up. I mean, you know, this is what, this is what I'm thinking. And as soon as I get home, as soon as I crack the top off of it, it's like this,

you know, that feeling like, OK, all right. And I had, I had these like 24 oz glasses. I throw some ice in

and I take a little bit of Coke like this, you know, and I just start drinking. And literally, I was, I, I was drinking to overcome an obsession,

you know what I mean? So I went from from if you could call it sober at like 4:15

to knee walk in tongue chewing, not able to operate my own pants zipper drunk in about an hour and a half. You know what I mean?

And I'd be like, and then I'd start calling people on the phone or something. You know what I mean?

Call people up on the phone. Oh, man, I'd come down the net. I'd come down the next morning, I'd see the numbers. I go, no, I called Mary Lou Mcgillicuddy from the 8th grade. Oh no, I can just see it now. You know,

I love, you

know, like 2:00 in the morning. Yeah. Oh, so. So what I started to do was when I started to, I knew I was going to do this. I, you know, I was powerless over drunken dialing.

So, so I started cutting the phone off, you know, I'd start to drive, cut the phone line, but I'm an electrician, right? So, so I'll fix, I'll fix a freaking thing. And, and it got to the point where I tried to make it hard. I'd cut it next to a knot hole or something, you know, but, but, but I, I cut the electrical cord off the off the vacuum cleaner and packed, you know, just to patch it or whatever. And then I was cutting it way up at the top of the house. I throw a ladder up on the top of the house and cut the phone lines like way up at the top of the But I'd find some milk

when I got drunk and I'd get up there and I'd fix it. It got so bad that I I had to call the phone repair guy. It was like you'd pick up the phone and be like,

it's like I go, my phones not working, you know, she comes over and I never forget. He's looking, he's going. What the hell?

He goes. It looks like somebody just cut this phone line in 35 places and Scotch taped it back together.

I didn't see a vacuum cleaner line on, you know, I'm like, like, yeah, that's what I thought it was too,

because you got to be cool, you know?

So, I mean, my life is not going great. OK. Do you get some kind of a perspective about the, the, the three dimensions of like, Chris''s world? You know, like I'm about, you know, I need to be rocketed into something. You know what I mean? This is like really bad. It's, you know, and listen, I'm a smart guy. You know, I'm a smart guy. Keep doing stupid things

well, time and time again I'm doing stupid and I and I'm I'm kind of a nice guy. I like knew that inside, but I would do really mean things to people. It was

it was, it was getting to the point where I was starting to contemplate suicide. Here's here's an important statistic. The alcoholic is 60 times more likely to take their own life by suicide than the non alcoholic. So be careful when you're getting life insurance and you got to check that box. Okay,

I

because they know that you know, of a sudden your premium is going to be like 14 grand a month.

But

but anyway, my life is like hell right now. What moves me toward, you know, here's what happened

with all of us. We're going to have a separation experience, you know, the clouds of delusional parts for us to such a degree that we'll be able to see how much trouble we're really in. You know what, we'll get a quick glimpse of just how bad things have really gotten. And then we sign ourselves into happy hills or, or you know, something, you know, we do something, you know, we go to the therapist, you know, whatever we do, we take some kind of action because we're desperately pushed toward, toward that because we see, look, this is

just getting worse and worse and worse. And mine, mine was a situation happened at work. It shamed me, you know, like, like I could lose my family, I could lose my driver's license, you know, but being shame was just something I just couldn't take any more. So I signed myself in to a rehab in my area, 28 day program. You know, when I got sober, you couldn't shake a stick without hitting the 28 day programs. They were everywhere, you know,

as soon as managed care came in, in 92600 of them closed up in like one month in America.

But they were everywhere, you know, and I signed myself into this place and, and I, I got to tell you, I wanted to separate from alcohol. I was desperate to separate from alcohol, OK? I wanted to stop like more than anybody.

And, and so I signed myself into this place and I started to do the things that they asked me to do. Now I've I've had the opportunity to begin to work in, in, in with, with revolving around professional alcoholism and, and drug treatment and, and I'm starting to really know what the hell is going on with that stuff. And this place that that that I got signed into was no great shakes, OK,

I didn't have one counts one meeting with one personal meeting with my counselor. What they would do is show show us Father Martin movies and put us in Group.

Anybody ever been in Group

that fun? It puts you around a big circle and you each get to talk about how lousy your day is. Oh, my days really, really lousy and every once in a while somebody like hog the group time and I'd be I'd get I'd get pissed. I'd have a resentment shut up. Would you just shut up? I'm tired of hearing it. Just shut up. I want to share, you know, and

and you'd wait until you got your turn and you tell everybody how awful everything is it, you know, listen, let me tell you what I know about alcoholism today. Trying to treat alcoholism with group is like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb. OK,

you're you're going to you're going to a gunfight at the okay corral with a Swiss army knife. All right,

it's not going to work. So I did group and and I got out of there. I got out of there and here's what they told me. They go. You might want to go to you might want to get a sponsor you want, you might want to get a Home group, blah, blah, blah. You have to come back to outpatient. It's like, okay, I'll do the outpatient. So guess what outpatient is?

OK, so I'm paying $85 a night to listen to the to this moron. You know that I can't stand talk about how screwed up his family is. I wanted him to die.

I did. Why don't you just drink? You know, so you get the hell out of here, you know? I mean, and I'm paying $85. I'm going to two AA meetings a week, and I'm two outpatients. What more do you people want? OK. I mean, my God, you know, this is primetime TV night, you know? I mean, what more do you want? Paying money, you know, and I'm going to a, a, like, it's a Castor oil treatment, you know what I mean?

Begrudgingly going in there. And you got to understand, I still got the scared kindergartner all over me. OK. I don't feel comfortable in the meetings. Oh, Chris, would you like to share?

No, but I'm going to kill you after the meeting for suggesting it.

Thank you very much. You know you're going to be looking for tires.

I was, you know, I was a nut. But I thought. I thought I was addressing my alcoholism. I'm doing what they told me to do, OK? I'm doing what they told me to do. One day, I'm on my way to an A a meeting, and the thought crosses my mind. Chris, you've been sober almost 90 days. You know what? You don't even really remember what it's like to be drunk. It's been so long,

I'll bet if you bought a gallon of vodka and drank it, it would make you feel so bad that number one, you'd remember what it's like to be drunk. Because some idiot said if you can't remember your last drunk, you haven't had it, you know? So I took that literally

and #2 and #2 I would rush back into AA and I'd be the AA kid, you know, I mean, I, you know, I wasn't mixing well, you know, I thought that I'd, I thought that I'd do the things that I needed to do. So. So I drank a gallon of vodka to better improve my sobriety.

OK, can I tell you that was a miscalculation?

Three drinks into it,

I go, Oh my God,

what have I done?

Opened up the cage door, the beast. And the beast is going to move me around like a puppet, you know, for the next six months or however long I'm I'm dead. Why did I do this? Now, let me ask you something. Was I insane? Did the alcohol make me insane? My insanity came from a place of sobriety. My insanity came from a place of unrecovered alcoholism. All I was doing was showing up.

You go to a bunch of PTA meetings, it doesn't make you a parent,

you know what I mean? I'm going to a bunch of AA meetings. You know, you sit in a chicken coop, you're not going to become a chicken.

So I wasn't, I wasn't doing what you needed to do. Now

like five months later, you know, I come out of this and I've just threatened my entire family with a 38 caliber handgun. You know, I was going to kill them all. You know how you know how it is. And

it was Christmas, you know, and,

and I was going to kill him. And

that didn't go well.

And it talks about in a vision for you, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, demoralization, terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair. You'll wish for the end. You know you will wish for the end. And and I did. I, I remember I started to go through the DTS. Anybody in here get the D TS ever? Oh, yeah, that's fine, isn't it? Oh, boy,

doing the fish flop, you know, completely insane.

You want to talk about terror? So anyway, I come, you know, I, I, I come out of I'm like detoxing and there's, there's animals running around the room and there's maggots all over me. And I'm hearing marching bands and there's big animals like shaking the house to get in, you know, and, and I remember looking up at the ceiling and a big demon came out of the ceiling to eat my face. OK,

this big, big ass demon,

you know, I remember just looking up and I go,

God help me. And it was, it was, it was a, it was a a cry of help. It was what it was, is I now can see that the level of humility that that cry of help came from, you know, God hears those prayers when you come from that kind of a place of powerlessness and that kind of a place of humility. And I knew I was, I, I knew this thing was going to eat my face off, you know, and I and I just said, God, please get me sober or kill me. You know, I can't, I can't take this anymore. And, you know,

haven't had, I haven't had a drink since that demon.

I went back into Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew the Happy Hills was not going to do it for me. You know I didn't want any more group

and had plenty of that. Thank you.

Oh God, Hey, you you wonder where the closed minded discussion meetings come from that that there are around. You know, where do you think they came from when there was 7000 rehabs everywhere and they were they were flowing everybody toward us. Oh, let's let's let's put a big circle around and talk and talk about our day. We can do group.

OH,

anyway, not that I judge,

I don't. I don't mean to cast aspersions.

And, you know, if that's what your Home group is like, you know, that's what it should be like,

that's probably good.

Oh, God. But anyway, anyway, I headed back into Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I went back in with a 1976 Ford Granada with white walls and no clutch and no muffler and no heater, you know, and no parking brake. And it had orange paint inexplicably, you know, strewn throughout the passenger compartment. Never remembered how that got there,

you know, And I struggle off to tonight, to my first meeting and, and, and here's what happened. I get into the meeting and I sit down and you got to understand, I mean, the scared kindergartner is owning me. And I'm sitting there, you know, and all of a sudden somebody taps me on the shoulder and hands me a step up.

So, OK, I grabbed the step book and they go, they're reading from step 12 on page 112 or whatever, right? And I look and I go, I figure it out. They're reading a paragraph or two and they're coming down the row at me.

You know, I'm like, no, you know, So I get up and I leave. You know, I I was gonna have to read from a book, you understand?

So I'm outside on the stoop and I'm having a cigarette and I'm thinking, oh, man, this is too much to say. Way too much. I don't think I can take it. I don't think I can do it

so so this guy I'll never forget him, God bless him. He and I found out later he only had like 6 days himself. But he sees me leaving. He comes out his name was Jorge. And and he comes out and he he lights up a cigarette too and he goes hey, my name is Lauren. How you doing? What's your deal? And I said something like this

and back. And so he's hard. He's trying to get her no clutch. It was hard, you know, and and he goes, he goes, well, why don't you come on back into the meeting with me and I go, well, there's a man tomorrow night, there's a meeting tomorrow night that I'm going to go back into. And he goes, no, no, come on, let's go inside. All right. And he knew what tomorrow meant. This guy, even if he had six days, he knew what tomorrow meant. So he so I don't want to cause a scene so

so I go in with him and I sit down. We sit down right in the 2nd row.

I'm sitting there like this and he leans over to him and he goes, OK, now raise your hand and tell everybody you're coming back.

I'm like, what is it meaning tomorrow night, everybody raises their hand, everybody's coming back tomorrow night. He goes, no, raise your hand. He starts to get loud. So now listen, this is bad because people are starting to look at me, OK, Any minute they're going to be thinking at me. I got

shut this guy up. So never seen this happen before, never seen it after I shoot my hand up right in the middle of somebody sharing, OK, this this person sharing it out there day or something. And I raise my hand and and the leader is like perplexed the leader, the leader shuts the person up who's sharing and calls on me because you know, they can see that this is this is some kind of big deal. So

I was pretty profound, you know, I did it. I did it kind of like this