The Mark Houston Recovery center in Manor, TX

Good evening everybody. My name is Chris and I am an alcoholic

live from Joe Hawk Hall on Saturday night. This is this really is an absolute pleasure for me. I, you know, to be to be asked to come down here is you know it

when when Mark called me up and said, Hey, I want you to come down and do a workshop speak. I'm like, you know, I couldn't believe Mark. Mark's been a hero of mine for

since 94 or five when when I first got a hold of some of the workshop tapes And to be able to come down here is really, really great.

On or around December 28th, 1989, the grace of God separated me from alcohol. It was it was a brutal period of time for me.

Willingness only born of desperation,

shoved me toward what I thought was my only possible hope, the only plan that was out there, and that was to to go back to Alcoholics Anonymous. I did that with a fervor and through a course of events and being exposed to some really wonderful people. I haven't, I haven't seen the need to to take a drink since that day. I'm very, very grateful for that.

Want to want to start start my story at the beginning. I was born at a very early age.

One of the one of my first memories. OK, here's one of my first memories. I I remember my mother came up to me. I'm about 5. And she said, Chris,

kindergarten starts today. You're going to kindergarten. And I'm like, what? And she's like, yeah, you're going to really like this. I'm taking you to kindergarten. Get dressed. I get dressed. I don't know. I don't know really know what's going on. She throws me in a car. She drives me across town. She parks at the top of this hill. She opens up the door and she says, see you later. And I remember walk. I remember getting out of the car. She drives away. And I'm standing up on top of this hill looking down at the school and the kids. The kids are already down there. They're running around. They're playing tag.

Well, they've already like like they've already made friends with each other. There's already peer groups starting. I'm standing up there on top of the hill going there's something wrong here. This is not a good idea. You know, I, I was filled with self-centered fear. I was thinking, you know, what if they don't accept me? What if I get beat up? What, you know, what if they ostracize me? I'm worried about all this stuff. I'm fine.

I but I, you know, I know enough that I need to go do this deal. So I act as if everything's OK inside me. I'm freaking out. I acted as if everything's OK inside me and I walked down and I start the kindergarten thing. OK. Now what I remember of school, what I remember of the first six or seven years of school, it, it's really not pretty. I mean, I was not having a good time. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I was never comfortable with myself,

my environment. I was always worried about what you were thinking about me. I was, you know, I always had this anxiety and you know, there would be like, there would be like an oral report where I'd have to get up in front of the class and I cut school that day. Then I cut three days after that just in case there's a makeup. I mean, you know, I just, I was just freaking out and I was acting as if everything was OK because you had to be cool, you know what I mean? So I was acting as if

thing was OK and it was it was traumatic for me. And you know, I was looking at you guys and I was thinking how do you do it? How are you like okay with this whole thing? You know, I'm like freaking out, but I can't tell anybody.

So I get to about 7th grade or something like that. I've got a couple of friends, and we decide that we're going to cut school. We're going to go back to my mother's house, and we're going to get drunk. OK? This sounded like a really cool thing to do. We could brag about it at school the next day, you know? It was like, you know,

it was like dangerous and on the outside a little bit and that attracted me. So that's what we did. We went back to to my mother's house. We cut school and I didn't know anything about drinking at this period of time. They the only the only explode. I don't come from an alcoholic family. You know people that that do you know, God bless you, you, you understood probably more than I did. The only thing I knew about drinking was the John Wayne movies. You, you remember the John Wayne movies?

Hey, bust through the saloon doors. He'd go a bartender. Whiskey,

you know, the bartender had pour a big water glass of whiskey out. He'd drink like the whole glass down, grab the bottle, go back to the table, shoot somebody in a little while, you know. And so that's what I did. I poured these big water glasses of Four Roses Canadian whiskey.

You know, to this day I have like a Pavlovian response to this. If I smelled that 4 Roses, forget it. Here's what happened. Let let me first tell you what happened to the two guys I was drinking with. They never became alcoholic. As far as I know. They never became problem drinkers. What they did was they drank about 2/3 of their glass and they had had enough.

You ever drink with people that have enough?

Isn't that annoying? No thanks. I've had enough.

Are you crazy? Let's go to the city. You know, I mean, that's the way I drank. It's only one in the morning. You know you can get to work. Still,

they'd had enough. And they sat back and they watched the show. Because here's what I did. I drank my whole glass, the rest of their glass, the rest of the bottle, and I went into my first blackout. Any blackout drinkers in here?

Whoa. That's the most amount of hands I've ever seen, Mark. That is, It's disconcerting to be a blackout drinker, isn't it? I mean, you know, you ask your buddies. By the way, last night was fun, wasn't it? You know what? What? What did we do? You know,

you ever, like, lose your car? Forget what you know, forget where you park your car. You ask like an earth person. I need to go look for my car. You need to look for your car. Well, where did you put it? I I don't remember. What you mean you don't remember? Well, blackouts. Blackouts are really disturbing. I mean, you know, I've done some crazy things in blackouts. I got increasingly violent as I drank. I remember. I I don't remember this one time I called up my boss in a blackout and threatened his life. I'm gonna kill you. And I and I quit.

Right now I'm in a blackout. So I get dressed. I go to work. The next day, I walk. He's like, what the hell you got here? I'm like, what? You threatened my life last night. I did

this type of, you know, you wake up in Topeka with one shoe, you know, Topeka. Hello, Topeka. And because you, you can't look stupid, you got to pretend that you always go to Topeka with one shoe. You know,

Oh man, I, I, I would come to in some very, very strange places with some very strange people. And you know, it was, it was, it's, it's really disturbing. But anyway, I went into my first blackout the very first time I drank. I went into my first blackout

trash the house, you know, busted windows, made a whole dinner, made a whole scene, ended up waking up in a field, you know, coming through in a field. Like, what am I doing in a field? And the, the, the thing was, was after that I was horribly ill. Do you remember your first real drunk? I mean, you had to be horizontal for like 2 days. I mean, you're poisoned. You're poisoned. You're like

like vomiting all over yourself and

and here's I mean, I was so sick. It was unbelievable. Is anything else would have made me that sick. I never would have gone near it again. If I would ate a rutabaga and got that sick, I never would have I never would have gone near a rutabaga again. I wouldn't need to I wouldn't have needed to go to a 12 step rutabaga anonymous fellowship. I wouldn't have needed to get a rutabaga eaten sponsor. You know, I wouldn't have needed to get a coffee commitment. You know, I would have had an adequate mental defense

not eat rutabagas. Here's what alcohol did for me though, and I don't believe that it does this for non Alcoholics. It may, but I I don't believe so. You know, that scared kindergartner that was always in me that that repressed anxious, you know, really worried about everything kid that was inside me. When I started to drink that alcohol, all of a sudden I knew a new freedom and a new happiness from that

depressed anxiety. All of a sudden, I'm like, ah, you know, like, like,

like this is the secret elixir of life. Now I can finally feel like you guys. Now I can finally feel like I fit in. I felt larger than life. OK. I was the funniest guy. You, you were lucky to be hanging out with me. Who cares what you think about me? You know? I mean, it was a complete shift in in perception and it was a an unbelievable amount of freedom. And then I learned how to projectile vomit, you know? But

but listen, the, the, the, the part that made me so sick,

that memory started to fade. But what didn't fade was what alcohol did for me. And from that moment I became preoccupied with alcohol. I, I figured I'm never drinking 4 roses again. And you know, I never did. I started to drink things like remember Boones Farm Apple wine, You know, I'm like 12, you know, Strawberry Hill, you know, Budweiser, Schlitz.

I mixed it up a little bit. I never drank the Canadian whiskey,

but but I started to plan where I was going to drink, who was going to buy it because the drinking age was 21. I was 12. That was problematic, you know, but but you, you can always work things out. You can always find a way. You know, I started to figure out where I was going to drink it, who it was going to be with, where we were going to start. I became very, very preoccupied with alcohol. Now I come from a really smart family. My sister and brother are both college professor, pH DS, my mother and father Phi Beta Kappa, you know, just

really, really smart family. And the moment I started drinking, things started to change with schoolwork forming. OK, I started to not pay much attention to that and my grades started to slip. If you can imagine now, you know, you always see things in hindsight. I did not say to myself, jeez, I'm becoming preoccupied with alcohol. If I keep on like this, you know, I may not get into College of my choice.

I didn't say that. You know what I said? Like things like, who cares? Leave me alone. Get off my back. I'm not hurting anybody but myself. You're the war cry of the alcoholic, you know? Just stay away from me and my booze, OK? It's my business. And I started to do things like take Wednesdays off in high school just to break up the week, you know? Hey, where's Chris today? It's Wednesday. Oh, that's right. It's his day off. You know, I mean, I just,

I quickly became incredibly irresponsible. Now

now there was this is this is the late 60s, the very early 70s. So guess what, folks, there was some non conference approved materials around that you could get your hands on it. And believe me, I partook of such things. Whatever it was, I I'd eat it and then I'd ask you, by the way, what was that? You know, I mean, it just I was looking for anything to Get Me Out of May. I wanted to escape the bondage of Chris. Like, you have no idea.

And I was always drunker than anybody else, took more drugs than anybody else. I mean, you know, we had. So we had some real times back in those days. I remember, I remember the Basking Ridge Quaalude epidemic of 1972. Now here's what happened. One of my really good buddies brings a big sack of Quaaludes into school. He got it from his brother way late the night before. He goes, hey, these are qualudes. And we're like, well, what are those? Oh, they're great. You know how many do you take because

therefore, so like fifty of us took like 3 or 4 Quaaludes before first period. OK, it's my third period. I'm walking down the hall hanging under the lockers like this. Finally I go. I got to make a break for it. Okay, this is too much and I see the exit sign right. Boom, I go through the exit. Now what I don't realize is the whole 400 wing is watching me. They love this. They said, Chris, it took you 15 minutes to go 100 yards.

You know, I, I find make it out, I make it outside Now, you know, I had a lot of fun in the early days with some of this, some of these drinking and drugging. But very, very quickly there, there came problems. There came problems and I would minimize the problems, but but they started to become severe. I crashed a lot of cars. I totaled 9 cars in drunken blackouts got 3D WISI mean, you know, some some of these some of these accidents were unbelievable.

I remember allowing myself to become over served at this one bar and I'm leaving the bar and the car spins around on some black ice and hits a bridge abutment going backwards. I get thrown out the back window and I come to it. I'm looking up at the stars. I'm laying on the trunk with my feet still in the car. I'm, you know, laying on the truck and I'm going this isn't this isn't good.

I I should probably get out of here now. The car was bent like a boomerang. There wasn't a window left in it. It had three flat tires and the drive shaft was slap in the frame.

Where am I going? What am I going to do? What do we do? We go home, right? We try to head home. So I get in the car and I'm going about a mile and 1/2 an hour down the road whacking a book in a band, whacking a book in a band with this car. And I go by cops giving radar. I can still see the guy. I mean, he didn't even pull me over. He like walked me over, you know what I mean? And he reaches, he reaches through the window and he starts shaking me. Where'd you have that accident? I'm like, what accident officer? I got glass sticking out of my head.

I don't know about you guys, but the cops were always hassling me. He goes, where are you going? I go home, he goes, where is that? I go basket rich, he goes. That's 28 miles. What are you thinking? You got no tires.

Leave me alone.

DWI #1

Another time I'm in Florida and I'm I'm doing quaaludes and whiskey again, which if you're new, we don't recommend you drive on that. It's it didn't work for me. I misjudged the trajectory going across traffic and got T boned, you know, on like a highway rolled me down the road. I come to and I'm laying on the the roof of the car because the car's upside down

and my shoes had been knocked off. This is another important warning sign. If you're ever in an accident and your shoes has been knocked off, that's that's probably a pretty bad accident. But people are looking in like, is he dead? Is he dead? I crawl out of the car and I had been thrown through the passenger window and then thrown back into the car.

Now I had glass sticking out of my head really bad. And I mean, this is a head when it was bleed, I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I mean, covered with blood. And I'm, you know, I'm standing there like talking, talking to people and they're looking at me like this guys crazy. And the cops come up. I grab a bystander. I say, listen, call my call, my call my wife and tell her I'm heading to the hospital. The ambulance is coming and everything. And the cops are like, you know, we're going to give you a blood test when you get to the hospital.

So I'm like, all right, officer, I only had one.

You know, you're not an alcoholic if you admit, admit to more than one when they pull you over. I just had one. I get to the hospital, I'm in the emergency room. They wheel me in. The cops are coming. They wheel me in and and then they don't pay attention to me. So I'm laying on the Gurney. I'm looking around, getting out of here.

I jump up off the Gurney. I bust through the emergency room doors, through the waiting room. Now people like horrified because I'm like covered with

heading up. I bust through the doors and I'm heading for the woods. Meanwhile in comes in comes my wife, her sister and her sisters boyfriend driving this way. I see him and I start heading for him. I dive through the window onto their lap and go. You gotta Get Me Out of here. They want my blood. They're like,

OK,

now here's here's how good the alcoholic is. I talk him into taking me back to the party I was at. Okay? And and she and my wife did and drop me off. I go back in the party, a couple of biker chicks are yanking the glass out of my head with pliers. You know, I'm wondering why she wants to leave me. You know, it's a matter with you

another here's my here's my last last DUI. I'm driving another evening. I'm allowed to be overserved. I'm on my way home and supposedly I crossed a double yellow. You know how this is supposedly I get pulled over. Now the cop comes to the window and knocks in the window says license, registration, insurance card. And I'm like OK and I am so drunk. I open up the glove. I'm fumbling in the glove compartment for like 5 minutes. I'm so finally I just grabbed the entire

contents of the glove compartment because I can't. I just hand it to him, you know, maps and Combs and pens and tissues and everything. You know, the cops are always hassling me. Now he goes, got a car, gives me the sobriety test. I remember very little of this because I was just about in a blackout, but I remember nailing the ABC's. OK, I get take, I get taken to, to, to jail, you know, booked everything. Now the next morning I remember nailing the AB CS.

So I get a lawyer, OK, $1500 lawyer where going to go there. We're going to fight this. The first thing to do, I don't know if they still do this around here, but they videotaped me up at the police station doing all the sobriety tests. Now I remember getting the ABC's. Now I'm here with a lawyer. He's he's in a three piece suit, you know, $1500 worth. He's you know, professional as hell. We go up and we ask for the videotape, and the cop is when he hands us the tape, he's like,

like this.

Yeah. Now he puts in the tape, and I'm horrified. OK, Has anybody in here ever seen yourself taped, like, really drunk? Whoa. You need, like, therapy after that. Now, I did. I nail the ABC's. I sure did. Here's how I nailed them.

And and then there, then there's me walking the line and I got, I got my arms on the wall. He's like, you know, Mr. Schroeder, please take your arms off the wall while you're walking the line. I'm like, I'm every five seconds I'm asking for a cigarette. I was horrified.

And this whole time, this whole time the the attorney is like, you know, very, very professional. I'm like hiding my head in shame. Then comes the end and the, and the, and the cop goes. Mr. Schroeder. But before we turn the camera off, is there anything you'd like to add?

I look at the camera and I go look this way.

The attorney just loses it. He's like,

because I've never seen anything like that.

If you ever had any chance at all of them at all.

Oh my God. So I'm like, I guess we got to play this one, huh?

So I get another, you know, the cops are always hassling me now, you know, these things are happening to me like, like I, you know, I got to tell you one thing after another. Problem after problem after problem after problem after problem.

Now somewhere along the line I booked, I become an electrician. OK, You know, I came to in recovery and I was an electrician. I was a really bad one too, because you know, it takes some, some intelligence or else you start fires and you, you know, you get, get electrocuted. I was every day I was getting electrocuted. My hair was like constantly, you know, some of the things I did. I, I remember this one time the people I worked with just couldn't stand me because I was just so lame. I, I couldn't remember things and I'd always be,

they don't like electricians that are shaken, You know, these people. Now I remember this one time I'm working with a guy and I had done, I had done a bunch of heroin the night before and a lot of whiskey, which is something else we don't recommend. And, and, and, and I had, you know how you're dehydrated in the morning and you got to rehydrate? Well, this morning I got a half a gallon of grape drink. You know, just

go, go, go, go, go. You know, I rehydrated up and I off to work. I go and I'm sitting there and I'm putting an electrical paddle on somebody's house

and my partner's like over here messing in the truck and all of a sudden it's like

I'm like, oh, and I've got experience with this, right? I have about 7.2 seconds to get somewhere because I am going to be very, very sick. So I figure, what am I going to do? I don't want this guy to see me,

so I know what I'll do. I'll tear around the back of the house. So I tear around the back as I just make it around the back of the house and it's like a fire hydrant. Purple vomit. I like stucco this house. Just stucco this house. Now I thought I was alone. OK, now I look over and about this far away as a family from a neighboring house on a deck, a mother, a father and three kids have a nice day. And you could tell they were related because they all had the same look on their face,

like

Mommy, Mommy, the purple puke monster from hell. Mommy. You know, now you got to act cool, right? I mean, you don't want to look stupid, you know? So I get the hoes and, you know, Washington. Yeah. This always happens. I mean,

another time I swear this is true. This is bizarre. I'm working as a maintenance electrician in a department store places called Epstein's. It was like a Macy's or a Bamberger's or something.

And they were putting in the computer cash registers at this time. So you had the loop data cable around this is a mid 80s or something. And so I had this big drill. It was one of those big huge steel, like 4 horsepower with the with the bar handles and the locking trigger. And I'm drilling with a big auger bit with an extension down into the floor to drop the cable into the ceiling below. And I'm in the lingerie department. OK, so I'm preoccupied if you can imagine,

you know, lingerie. But all of a sudden the thing hits a beam and and catches

womb and it grabs me and it starts spinning me around like this. It's the drill. Spins me around, ties me up in the drill and then rips the pants off my ass

and it finally, finally it unplugs from the wall and I'm tied to a drill like this with no pants in the lingerie section. You know, all these women are like, you know,

again, you got to act cool. You don't want to look stupid. Oh yeah, this drill always does this.

Another time, Another time I'm wiring a kitchen addition for for some people you know

why aren't a kitchen addition and I'm running the sub panel feed for everything in the kitchen down into the basement and I tie it into the wrong to the wrong panel, the wrong junction box. What I tie it into is the timer meter junction box for the hot water heater. If anybody knows what that is, it goes off

at 8:00 in the morning and goes on at 8:00 at night. So I leave the job and their kitchen doesn't come on until 8:00 at night. They call my boss and they go, hey, you know, we eat at six. This isn't going to work for us. I was, I was always, always getting in a lot of trouble, always electrocuting myself. You know, it was, it was a mess. Now, you know, I had, I had friends that

didn't even have names toward the end of my drinking. They they had like, they were called like Bear Man and Weezer and,

and Green Man and, you know, these, these were like guys that were just like they had their own parole officers and they were like, you know, aliases and stuff. And these are, these are like my buddies toward, toward, toward the toward the end of my drinking, you know, and talking about, talking about like relationships with women. I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't hitting on all cylinders with this.

The last girlfriend I had when I was drinking, I met through a prison pen pal thing, which, you know, somebody I knew had gone to prison and and met her and, oh, she was a sweet girl and everything. And I started writing to her and she was like a career criminal, OK. She was like a courage. She spent like 20 years in prison, you know, for really crazy violent crimes. Oh, I love you, you know. So she ends up moving in with me and mom.

OK, because I'm living with my mother. They didn't get along, if you can imagine,

got really involved with a lot of serious drugs. One of one of these times, like because I was drinking so much alcohol, I really was detoxing every morning. I was a heavy duty daily blackout tricker. So I get up in the morning, you know, and I'd be like anxious. I'd be like, you know, like noises and things that, I mean, just really on edge.

And I remember I went to my doctor one day and I said, doctor, you know, I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm always nervous here. I really got a lot of stress. And he goes, you know, I think he put it, he put his, his stethoscope on my heart and my heart was going he goes, oh, you've got it. You've got, you've got a protracted mitral valve that's leading to hypertension and anxiety and blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah. And he goes, well, I go, what do you got for that doc? And he goes, well, we've got this new drug called

Annex. So I go, well, what kind of milligrams images you got that in doc? I'll take the big ones, you know, and you know, so all of a sudden I, I start eating Xanax like candy. I mean, you know, I'm doubling up the prescriptions. I'm weighing them in my hand. I'm not taking two. I'm like, and washing them down with whiskey and big letters on there. No alcohol. It's like bigger than the Xanax. No alcohol.

That doesn't mean me, you know,

for amateurs. So, so

I remember, I remember allowing myself to be over medicated this one time. You know, actually what it was, was it was like a suicide attempt. It really was. I'd gotten to the point where, you know, I'm eating a whole bottle and I ate the whole bottle of Xanax when I was really drunk. And not only did I wake up the next day, but I decided to go to work now. Now, much to my boss's chagrin,

what happened was, you know, I, I made it out to the road where the guy was picking me up and goes, man, Chris, you know, go back inside. You know what I mean? You should know what, you know, go back and I was going to work. Well, I end up getting to work and, you know, there's there's the window where my boss was. And I remember walking Serpentine up up to the, you know, it took me like 10 minutes. I'm like,

God damn it,

take him home. You know, he like shamed me in front of my fears, you know, go out, yo. It was just, it was just insane. I was I was suffering from so many things. Now

I

what really got my attention, what really got my attention, and this is just this is just crazy, but the first thing that got my attention was I was at work and the guy who was in charge of me was a 19 year old kid. I'm 33, OK, and the boss puts a 19 year old in charge of me. I mean, that's, that's how much responsibility I was able to handle. And I was putting a ground screw in an outlet box on the ceiling and I was shaking so bad that I just kept dropping the screw. I could not do it. I mean, I was shaking so bad and this

kid was looking at me like this, like you pathetic, good for nothing. No account, loser. OK. Because I could hear him thinking at you. You know, when you're detoxing, you can hear people think at you. And I knew what he was thinking, and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I signed myself in to a place that I, I had gone to actually to get one of my licenses back for a DUYI went to like some outpatient thing. I went drunk every single night to the outpatient, much to the counselor's chagrin.

And I would I would critique the Father Martin movies while I was doing that. Anybody seen any Father Martin movies? Well, as soon as the movie would be done, I'd. Chris, do you have a comment?

You know, and I'd go off an oil well. Thank you for that comment. You know, it was just horrible. But I, I heard that there was a place to go if you were in real trouble. So that shamed me so bad that out now I'd lost my family, my drivers license, 3 * 1,000,000 cars.

And you know, I, every car I had was like $100 car. It was, you know, you know what I mean? It was like fictitious plates and, you know, bald tires, No insurance, no registration because I was busy.

And every once in a while I'd like, I'd like run into like a late model BMW. You know, I'd crash into it or something. I'd be really pissed at them for having an expensive car. I'd go up and I'd say, what are you thinking buying a $20,000 car? You know how much trouble this is going to be Now

I get $100 cars. I crash in my throne wagon, another one. And they usually weren't real happy to, you know, have me share that wisdom with them. You know, they weren't very understanding,

but anyway, you know, I go to this, I go to this, this, this rehab and I sign myself in and you know, I'm looking back on it for many years. I thought, you know, it's a good place. It was not a a good place that they did not do right by me. I don't know whether they didn't know what they were doing or they did, you know, they didn't have the funny, I don't know, but it was really, really inadequate because it just didn't, it didn't offer me anything even close to a solution. A couple of suggestions. Get out of here, go to out, go to outpatient,

get out of here. And but I really, really wanted to stay separated from alcohol. I ended up relapsing. I talked about that a little bit today.

It led to about a five month period of the worst drinking I ever had. I'll tell you what a typical day would be. Here's a typical day. I would come to in the morning in the clothes I was wearing the night before, just wreaking a vodka or bourbon and you know, I was on time for work. You know, I'd go into the bathroom, I'd do my vomiting, calisthenics, you know, I'd brush my teeth and I'd find my way down the car, the $100 car. I'd try to make my, I make my way to work, all the while swearing to God, I'm never going to drink again.

I didn't, I never wanted to feel like this again. You know what? Those they're not even hangovers. They're, they're, they're more like they're, they're more like, you know, you're dying. You know, it's not like a hangover. You like dying. And I would be swearing. I'm never, ever going to drink again.

And what would happen is I'd rehydrate, you know, with a half a gallon of something for lunch. I'd get maybe half a sandwich down, and I'd start to feel just a little bit human. And I would say to myself, you know, that decision I made earlier about never ever drinking again,

That's pretty extreme. As a matter of fact, I'm going to have to modify that decision today. And I, and I would zoom to the liquor store right out of work, I'd buy, I'd buy a, a quart and I just start drinking. And I would do this whole thing. And, and I drank with such a vengeance that in about two hours I I was tongue chewing,

knee walking, not able to operate my own pants zipper drunk in about two hours. You ever been that drunk?

And this was cutting down on my social life, you know. I mean, you can't you can't do much when you drink that much. Now what happens is Christmas at the Schroeder's 1989. I'm drinking, my mother's there, my brother and sister come home, nieces and nephews, cats. I mean the whole deal.

The Christmas tree is decorated, there's presents, you know, there's a fire. The Christmas, you know, stockings are hung by the chimney with care. You know, the whole thing is everybody's home for Christmas. And I get a resentment and I got really pissed off and I start walking around the house with a 38 caliber handgun saying I'm going to kill all of you. I'm going to kill everyone of you. That's not the festive mood that they were looking for, I can tell you.

So what they did was they picked up and they took their Christmas elsewhere.

I came to, you know, you know, this was a multi day blackout. It was just horrible. I, I was as shattered as I've ever been. I remember, I remember staggering into the kitchen and seeing a pile of vodka bottles like this in the sink. I didn't even remember buying them. I mean, I must have been gone for a that must have been out for days. And I and I started to go into these unbelievable DTS, I mean, hallucinating, you know, violently going into convulsions. I was hearing things. There was little animals running around,

maggots all over me. There was big animals scratching on the House to come in. I remember laying down on a couch. Yeah, like this. And a demon came out of the ceiling like one of those monitor type demons, like with a bullhead and the big horns. And he was coming out of the ceiling to eat my face, I swear, you know. And I go,

God help me. I mean I cried out from the depths of my soul. God help me,

I'm telling you, when you cry out with that kind of desperation, there's something that hears. I haven't had a drink since I cried out to keep that demon from eating my face. OK? What happened was I was so shattered, I couldn't even leave the house for a couple of days. I couldn't sleep. I'm coming out of it and I know, I know that that, you know, going back to the 28th day thing is not really what I need to do. I need to get back to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I tried a but I hadn't participated. I had sat in the seat, but I hadn't done any of the deal. And I just felt inside that that's, that's really my only hope now. I had a 19, a 1976 Ford Granada with white walls, no heater, no clutch, no emergency brake,

no heater core. It's December, and because it has no clutch, I have to find a flat meeting to go to. So I look, so I look in the meeting book and I find a flat meaning, and it's in Morristown. And I remember driving to this meeting now, because there's no muffler or clutch, there was a little hill going up into the church parking lot, OK, And 150 people are having cigarettes out on the porch. All my new peers and I have to gun this thing to get up a tiny little hill

like this, about a mile and 1/2 an hour, you know, they're all looking like this. Must be a new guy, you know,

I go into that meeting and you got to understand I'm shattered. I haven't slept in about four days. I'm there out of desperation. I sit down in a chair and all of a sudden somebody hands me a step book and goes. They're reading from step 12. And I look down the row and they're reading paragraphs one after the other, and they're coming for me.

OK. I, like, panic. I'm gonna have to read from a book. So I freak out and I go outside. I mean, I there's no way. I mean, that's just too much. They want me to read. I mean, that's how shattered I was. And I'm having a cigarette out on the stoop thinking, yeah, I don't think I can do this. You know, this is just too much. I don't think I'm gonna, you know, it was one of those, those seconds and inches moments where it could have gone either way. And this guy named Jorge comes outside. He saw me leave

and he goes up to me and he goes, kid, what's your deal

running around those really, really bad. And he goes, well, why don't you come on back in the meeting with me and I always meeting tomorrow night that I'm going to go to, you know, there's a meeting tomorrow night. He goes, no, he knows. He knew what tomorrow meant. So he grabbed me by the arm. He goes, no, come on back in the meeting. Yes. I didn't want to make a scene. So I went back in the meeting and we sat out in the second row and I'm I'm sitting there and they're done sharing. They're done reading now and now they're sharing.

So I'm, I'm sitting there, you know, like this. Like totally, totally

freaking. And he leads over to me and he goes, now raise your hand and tell everybody you're coming back. And I'm like older than me. Everybody raises her and everybody says they're coming back. And she's like, no, raise your hand. He's starting to get loud now. And you know, he's starting to get loud now. People are looking my way. OK, you know what's going to happen next? They're going to be thinking at me, right? So finally I just, I just panic. You know, I can't shut this guy up. And I raise my hand right in the middle of somebody sharing. I've never seen this happen before

or sense right in the middle of somebody sharing. I raised my hand and the person sharing the meeting is a little confused and shuts the person up who's talking and calls on me and I said something profound like this.

Unbelievable. Thank you.

And it's really quiet, okay.

And then all of a sudden they all of a sudden the whole room goes

like this. Now, you know, I took that as acceptance back then, you know, I now know that it's oh man, that guys put that.

I feel so good. Oh, I thought I had problems. Thank you. Oh, you know, I, I know that that's what it is now. But but I, I took it. I took it as acceptance and, and there was a wall of fear between me and being able to engage in Alcoholics Anonymous. I just did. I was just, I had too much anxiety. I had too much of that self-serve. I just couldn't do it. You know, it was too much to deal with. And by raising my hand and saying I was coming back,

I knocked a bit of that wall of fear down. You know, this Jorge guy saved my life. I learned later he had like seven days himself. You know, I couldn't I couldn't believe it. So I started to go to meetings. I I got myself a sponsor. He told me go every single night. And I just I just I'm going to like a million, a million meetings. I'm doing whatever they asked me to do. I was a secretary here. I was a treasurer over here. You know, I was a no show GSR here, because if that's what you do

New Jersey, you know, I I was driving people from, you know, treatment to the maintenance. I was doing everything. I was doing everything. Now, here's the thing that that scared kindergartner. He was still all over me. That that just that repressed, you know, always worrying really a really attached to, you know, what you thought of me and, you know, just real overly shy and overly sensitive.