The monthly first Saturday Danville/Diablo Groups speaker meeting in Danville, CA

You ready?

All right. And now it gives me great pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker, Moshe Kay from Los Angeles.

Oh, hi, everybody. I'm Moshe, and I'm an alcoholic.

Thanks. Thanks. Congratulations, everybody. Happy birthday. That's a pretty big deal. And let's see, what are some of my preliminary jokes I wanted to make?

I like these guys a lot. I think that's the creepiest place to sit. I can't even, I can't even imagine deciding to sit there. I feel judged by you already. And

unless you guys break out in hymns and choir stuff, I don't alright. And I like the I like the invisible podium. I like the minimalism of this, although it's upsetting because I usually like to drop my trousers during a talk because, you know, they tell you to picture the audience naked. But I find that very disconcerting in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous to picture you guys naked. That's a very horrible image.

So what I like to do is actually make myself naked and it really calms everything down. But unfortunately for me,

I'm just going to have to do it the old fashioned way.

And I think that's all for my little jokey poos. But I've been sober. Let's see. Well, let's see. I've been sober since December 25th, 1994. And I'm, I'm, I got sober very young. It's funny for me to be speaking here because I was young here. You know, I was one of the people like that was bothering you at this meeting,

smoking and kicking stuff and like, you know, trying to, probably trying to graffiti in the bathroom and stuff like that. And I was a strange kid when I got here. I had, I had my name, my A, a nickname back then was Fila. And that's because I wore so much Fila sportswear. And that's 'cause that stuff was dope back then. And

if you don't know what dope means, that means a hip or cool.

And I was that. And I had a southern accent when I got sober. I'm not from the South. I'm,

I'm from Oakland and,

but I had a southern accent and I had, I used to put in my hair. I used to put three flowers in my hair. And some of you guys might know three flowers. And I, I, it was, it's basically Vaseline. It's basically Vaseline. And I had a comb. I was one of those guys, you know, with like a comb in my pocket. Also, I was all the time like, what's up dog? How you doing, you know, combing? And what happened was I had like a, I would sweat and I had this ring of acne because I was a teenager.

I had this ring of acne around my face and forehead and this greasy comb in my pocket. And this Southern accent, I used to wear bicycle gloves because they were my burners in case I had to get into a fight at the meeting. And my Southern accent and my sagging pants. And I'd be in the back and I'd be talking. I'd be like, what's up, girl? You want to make out? And she'd be like, absolutely not. And I'd be like, I didn't want to talk to you anyway. And,

and, and people would and you would be telling me to be quiet and be quiet and be quiet. And it's a meeting and we're trying to listen. And I just did not care about your needs

to listen to immediate. I just couldn't careless. I just, it was not interesting to me that you wanted to listen because I was young and I was feeling myself.

But anyway, now I'm so I'm sober since December 25th of 1994, which means that New Year's Eve of 1995, I was like 6 days sober. And, and that's I, I got invited to a party that night

and a, and it was like a, it was a party. It was like, you know, it's a party. And I was 15 when I got sober. And you know, you remember when you were 15, some of you might, might not remember when you're 15. That's OK,

but when you're 15, you get invited to a party. Super big deal. Also a big deal for me because at the time I had stopped getting invited to parties because me and my friends were the kind of people that would come to your party, rifle through your mom's jewelry, you know, kick the keg over, call you a bitch and leave.

So we'd never got invited back, right, Micah? He was there

and anyway, I got invited this party. Now, I knew that if I went to the party that I was going to get drunk. I just knew it. I knew it, no question about it. I'm six days sober. I'm at a party. I'm going to get drunk if I go to the party,

but I really wanted to go, man, if you can, if you can imagine how much I wanted to go, you know, And then I the other, only other thing I knew about that was going on was there was an, A, a dance that night in Danville,

the sort of center of the nightlife scene in the Bay Area.

And it, it wasn't a, not a, it wasn't even a young people's dance. And those are those suck enough. You know what I mean?

It was a regular people. And by regular, I mean old.

And

I agonized, you know, I agonized about what to do. And in the end I decided to go to the a, a dance and I stayed sober that night. And my I got a ride to Danville and I went and is Rose here? No, this girl Rose was not that Rose, another Rose. It was the only other young person in the room. And we went and we sat outside, we smoked cigarettes and we talked about how much life sucked. And then at 12 O1, my mommy came and picked me up and I went home.

And that was my first sober New Year's. And it was awful. It was boring and terrible and glum and,

and you know, I mean, there's no other side to the story. There's not like AI don't have the part where like, you know, I get like, and then, you know, Biker Joe came outside and he put his arms around me. He told me a poem he wrote in the pen and it changed everything for me.

No, it was just bad. And I was like, wow, this is awful. But you know, hindsight being 2020, I now get to look back at that time and realize that it was decisions like that, little jumping off points that changed the trajectory of my entire life. And that it was little decisions like that. Making the decision to take put recovery first. Even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was frightening, even when what I wanted more than anything else was to go hang out with people, get drunk, have a good time. I made the decision to put recovery first,

those kinds of decisions that have changed my life. And so if you're new in the room tonight and you are, I want to say like if you're new in the room tonight, you're doing something very special for yourself, which is that you are investing in your own life. And for people like us, for, I'll just say for people like me, investing in my own life was not something that I was particularly

skilled at. All of my behaviors brought me to a deeper and lower level of degradation and humiliation.

And I didn't get here when I was 15 based on like my mommy found my marijuana stash. And then I went to an after school program and I decided AA was the place for me.

I hated it here and and I didn't want to be here. And people love to tell you how lucky you are to be getting sober. When you get sober, young people tell you all the time, you're so lucky how lucky you are. It's lucky. What luck for you? Lucky you

like. Oh really? This is lucky, huh? Awesome.

This this doesn't feel like lucky. This feels like death,

you know? What are we doing tonight? It's Friday night. Recovery, Bowling. Awesome. Great.

I I was hoping

so I didn't find myself to be to be particularly lucky when I got here. I didn't find I, I mean, I know it was in maybe it was inspirational to everybody else, but to me it was just a bummer. I was the youngest person in the whole fellowship in Oakland. I was that one. And this is a cool meeting for me because it's like it really is like a blast from the past, man. It's like,

well, like Tracy came up and Ben came up and they both, I don't know if you remember there, there were the, the young people,

the young pretty people that took long term sobriety. It's like both of those people were very like Tracy was, was the person that had gotten sober young like me. And it was like a real miracle. And I would just be like, look, she can do it, I can do it. And Ben, you know, I met Ben like 6 days in and he was, he had like forever sober. And I was just like, it's just a really cool thing. And my, you know, my friends, my friends are here. And it's a really neat thing for me to look back on this life that I've spent in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I mean, I was I'll just real quickly tell you about

like this life that I had in AA was was got it did get exciting. You know, the Danville dance, there used to be a dance. Some of the people here were used to do that dance and that dance man would just that was the reason that I kept coming back. Man. I didn't even know that there was a large meeting going on that the dance was somehow a subsidiary of. I was just there to dance in my Fila gear. I had my Fila hat.

I had this one outfit that I would wear to every dance. It was my Fila hat

and a Fila T-shirt, Fila shorts, Fila socks and Fila shoes. And I was good to go. And I would go to the Danville Dance on the 1st Saturday and I would go to the Concord Fellowship on the second Saturday. And then there was a Pleasant Hill NA dance on the 3rd Saturday. And on the 4th Saturday I prayed to whatever God I believed in to make it through the weekend. We all did. We just said there's no hope without a dance.

And, you know, we played cards, we played spades and we dined and ditched at Denny's. And we

and we, we would sneak into a, a conventions, like one of us would show up, one of us would register, go into the dance, find another person who registered, take their badge, walk out, pin it to one of us. We'd walk in and continue cycle until all of young people's AA snuck into the dance. That's what we did. And maybe some of your shaking your head disapprovingly, but you know, that's just what I did, man. That's the way that life was. I was that that was life. And I and, and I mean, I guess I could go make amends to someone.

Sorry.

I was doing whatever I could man, you know, I want to say

I love a A and just so you know that I don't have the most. I mean, this is going to sound so snide like pompous, but I don't have the most. Maybe I don't have the most conventional story in the world. I got sober super young. I don't, I don't I I'm not a I'm not sure. I'm not a fundamentalist. I was a fundamentalist. I used to be a fundamentalist. I found it uncomfortable. I've decided to have a nice life instead. But

but

you know, I, but I love AAA, you know, and I used to love AAA the way you love a new girlfriend. You know what I mean? Like, Oh my God, did you hear what she said tonight? Oh my God, she said she likes me. And isn't that amazing? Like, no, everybody says that. That's the way it sounds when you talk to people like, oh, she's so pretty, isn't she pretty and perfect and amazing and everything she says is like liquid butter. It's amazing.

I used to love a a like that. Like I used to be blown away by by everything and everything was perfect and I just and,

and neat. So that was amazing. And that's what carried me through through AAA for a long time. And these days, I love AAA the way that I love my family

and I love it and it's all that I didn't choose it.

I didn't, I didn't. I didn't necessarily even want it,

but it's, I love it and it's a big part of who I am and it's built up my entire life and it informs my identity and it informs the decisions I make today. I can't imagine life without it. I care more about it than I care about almost anything else. And sometimes it bugs the hell out of me and sometimes I find it difficult to deal with. Sometimes it's hard to adhere to or to listen to. Sometimes it's just difficult. But I just can't. I don't have much of A choice in the matter. I've got to keep coming back. I've got to keep showing up

because this is who I am. I'm an alcoholic and these are the principles I've chosen to live my life by now. How did I get in here? That's a good question.

Well, I, I, I, I moved to California from my, my mom's actually here tonight. She's my mom's. God bless her. She is a big fan of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was a kid. I was an angry, insane, obsessive, feral child. I was AI was a monster.

I was a nightmare of a child. I was AI was a constantly kicking and screaming and foaming and angry. And I mean, I was, I went to therapy for the first time when I was four years old. The four years old therapy. That was what I was and I and, and and I was in I was, I, I was so uncomfortable and I was so out of control and so unpleasant. And all of the teachers had me send I I mean, I'm gonna get into where where I I I ended up with

school. I was lost in school, just lost. I was just a a little monster child lit. So when I found out alcohol, that wasn't

first of all, let's just say like, you already know what I'm going to say. Sometimes I wonder why we even go to a a meetings because everybody says the exact same thing, you know? I mean, like the story is exactly the same. Like, oh, I felt so different. And then I found alcohol and it made me forget about my differences and made me just feel OK for the first time. So I kept drinking because it was the thing that made me feel OK. But then, just like a boomerang, it turned around and cut my life to ribbons.

And then I found I couldn't stop. So I sought help and Alcoholics Anonymous and I found that help. And then I went to college.

That's like the same. That's like a a story right there. That's But I felt different.

I did, man, and I was different. You know, I'm from Oakland and I'm a little Jew and I'm a,

and you know, my parents are deaf and welfare kid and a latchkey kid and a, and a white kid and a Oh, isn't that hard? That's tough. Anyway, whatever, I felt different. It doesn't matter why I felt different. What what's it doesn't matter at all why it felt different. The point is, and and it's not even it's not that we're the only people that feel different too. You know, sometimes people in AAI mean they love to blame normal human things on alcoholism. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what it is. I'm such an alcoholic. This guy cut me off in traffic,

threw a Snapple bottle at his windshield.

What an alcoholic. No, what a Dick

I I don't know that my weird disposition made me an alcoholic. I know that the first time I know that this, this is part of what makes me an alcoholic is the first time I drank all of that weird unabormal disposition went away. I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. I didn't feel I didn't feel broke. I didn't feel weird. I didn't feel white. I was I was a ambiguous race that was intimidating to everybody. I,

I, I, I, I just, I, I forgot about who I was. I forgot about myself and I was just able to be. You know what I mean? I was just able to be

and so I continued to drink because that was the only thing that made me feel that way. And I continued to drink in that manner just regardless of what it was doing to me on the outside. Other people looked at me and said it was out of control almost immediately. Now getting sober young for me has a slightly seems to have a slightly different arc of behavior. You know, like if you start drinking later, it seems to me from the stories I've heard that you slowly chip away at the edifice of your life and your morality and your ideas and your

you compromise who you are. When I was 12 years old, there was nothing to compromise. I jumped in. I started drinking daily and getting high daily from the very, very, very beginning. And by the time I was 14, I got thrown into a mental hospital. I got locked up in a mental institution. I spent my another New Year's I spent in Ross Hospital and I and I got out of there. I went to my first rehab when I was 13. I landed, I was at Newbury. Anybody new Bridge up in this piece up in here?

They used to have an adolescent program. That's where I met my friend Gerald, my first, actually, my best friend Gerald's here. And my first day at Newbridge was a field trip to another rehab

to go watch him graduate this stranger

like. And then we would come back and we would solder stained glass and then this ex cons would yell at us like that's cool.

But so I went to rehab for the first time when I was 13 and there was a lot of consequences that came very quickly. I got, I got, I, I started doing very strange things very quickly. I started, I was, I was, let me just say a teenage alcoholic is the worst thing to have in your household. I mean, it's just the worst thing because there's no, that's like I say, like there's no like I'm going to do better for you, honey, or whatever. You know, you might do that. Your wife, honey, you know, I love you. It was just like, no, I'm not going to do better for you. I hate you. I hate you,

I want you to suffer. That's why I do this.

And

and I was like, you know, I do weird things like I was graffitiing on the wall in my own house.

And my mom will be like, I know you did it, you know?

Or I would, I was, I would, I was fond of peeing. I was a big pisser. I peed a lot. Peeing on the. I pee on the pee on the floor in my house, like just on the ground or not sure. My mom knows that. Do you know that? Are you aware of that? Oh, she Yeah. Actually, no, it's OK. I would pee like in these weird bottles, you know, you know, the pee collection that we get, you know, or like, you know, peeing in the heater because it made a funny sound, you know,

funny smell. I found out later too.

I do want to say there's a lot of urine in my story. I know this is Alcoholics Anonymous and

I don't want to offend anybody,

but this is just my story.

Out of respect for the traditions, though, I'll now refer to urine as yellow alcohol.

Sorry, that's that's a bad joke anyway, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to get real. All right.

I mean, all these things were happening, you know what I mean? All these different things were happening and, and I was in a lot of trouble, man. I was just in a lot of trouble. I, I was, I was getting arrested all the time and I was punching holes in the, I mean, it wasn't all funny, you know, I mean, it's funny now looking back, but it's like I really abused my family. I really hurt my, my, my mother and my brother and my grandma and my home. I was punching windshields in of cars and kicking doors down and throwing things and breaking windows and throwing my shoes at windows. When I get mad,

I get mad at start throwing stuff. And I was, I was violent and I was out of control and I was a thief. I love to steal money to get I just stole money. I loved that I would that was what I did because I was, you know, 12/13/14 years old and I needed to get what I needed to get. And I was in my mother's purse and I was selling my stepfather's CDs and my stepfather's books and my own clothes and stuff I would find around the house or stealing credit cards and ATM cards and, you know, stealing money from my grandma's purse and wrestling with my grandma for this money. And like,

and it's real funny guys. And, you know, all this crazy stuff, man. And I was just so out of control. But you know, the the through line through all of this out of control drinking was really that that the problem was that people wouldn't get off my back and that people wouldn't just if people would just leave me alone, I could be free to do what I need to do, which is, I guess, steal from you.

People are so uptight about that. And,

and like one day I realized that I looked back. I, I had the police telling me that I was a problem. I had the Oakland police come to my house and have a meeting with my parents. You know, this officer, Joe Carranza, I can say his last name because he's an asshole. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Anyway,

no, he came to my house and he had a meeting with my parents and he sat down and told him just what he was a real piece of work. This guy, he would just search us on site. That was like I was like that kid in in in that neighborhood kid little band of wild ne'er do well, crazy kids. And he hated us so much and he would search us on site. Every time he'd see us, he would search us and he would all we'd always have some things. We'd always be getting in trouble and getting arrested by this guy. And like, I remember I was like 30 days sober and you remember when you're like 30 days sober and like things start to like look better

and you're just like, everything's great. You know, you don't even realize that it's only been a month because to you it's been like absolute eternity. It seems like it's been forever. So you feel like everybody out there has like probably got the message or whatever. So I was like walking along and he, there was, I remember I was walking through, through Oakland. There was this guy like this bum asleep on the on the ground, like full on prone. Like I, I'm now having a dream that I'm in a nice bed kind of just like full on. And I walked by him and I the cop was there like, dude, Joe was there and I was like,

how's it going, officer? Like total like little brat, you know, I mean, then he was like, you see this guy, this is you. And I was like, thanks a lot, officer be seeing you.

So that's officer Joe. And so I had all of these problems, you know what I mean, all these crazy behavioural problems. And I got, I dropped out of school in the 7th grade, in the eighth grade. I'm a junior high school dropout. And then I went back to school. Well, I, the way that I dropped out of school was a funny story. I, I, I got beat up by a 7th grader. I was in 8th grade and this dude said something smart to me. So I slapped him as hard as I could in the face. And I figured that'd be the end of that.

No, um,

here's how the fight went. I would swing and he would dodge the punch and then he would punch me in the face and then I would swing again and he would again dodge the punch and punch me in the face. And this went on and on and on because apparently this guy knew how to fight and, and we got everything got broken up and then we both got suspended and, and I went back. I was suspended in the week was over. I had two black eyes, so like a little raccoon boy and

and my like, I had to go back to school though. I had two black eyes. So like a true pimp, I asked my mom to put some makeup on me so that nobody would see these black eyes. So, you know, you know, she sat me down gangster style and she made me into a painted lady. And I went back to school and all of these kids were like making fun of me and stuff. They were like, yeah, you got you got, you know, beat up. Ha ha. I was like, yeah, you're right. Fair enough. I did, you know, like, yeah, you got, you know, you got whooped by sevens. Good. I was like, yeah, true that. And then this one kid, Corn Nuts said to me, he's like, wow, you got your ass.

Is that makeup? That was it. I never went back. I was it. That was, that was it. I dropped out of school right there

and then I went back. They forced me, you know, so I was out of school. I never successfully passed a grade, passed the 7th grade and I went back. I got forced back into school by by, you know, the courts. I got forced to after that to go to this place called Seneca Center for the Severely Emotionally Disturbed Youngster, which is just as nice as it sounds.

And it was really nice. I mean, it was like it was. I had to take the short yellow bus to school.

I There was a padded cell in the classroom

and nothing will distract you from a lecture about Christopher Columbus quite like a feral, insane child slamming his body against a padded door screaming Let me out of my cage.

And if you talk that a turn at Seneca Center, you had to stand and put your nose up against the wall for 5 minutes, like, and I probably, I don't know, hum like a Marine song or something like that and flagellate or something.

All of these things make my life particularly unmanageable, right?

None of them make my life alcoholic yet because, you know, there were other kids in Seneca Center for the severely emotionally disturbed youngster. And I don't know any of them from a a I'd have met any of them in AA. What makes me an alcoholic? Is it? Well, there are a couple things. One is the day that I realized that this idea of everybody's, that the problem was everybody else getting off my back stopped making sense. You know, that the police were wrong and Oakland Public Schools was wrong, and my mother was wrong and my counselor was wrong and my rehab counselor was wrong and my individual therapist and my family therapist,

group therapist, that they were all wrong and they were all pointing the finger at me and they all needed to get off my back. One day. I had this moment of clarity that that didn't make a lot of sense and that maybe that the problem was what they were pointing at. And, and it really blew my mind, you know what I mean? It really kind of like changed everything and I really felt like I had a solution. You know,

my solution was to just get it together. Anybody have that solution before? Like I'm just going to get it together and I'm going to get, I'm going to get my life together and, and then everything will be cool. I have this idea that like everything was going to be OK all by itself that, you know, no, but no effort on my part was going to have to happen. I was just going to somehow someone's going to call me and be like, hey, this is college.

We heard about you and we heard you're pretty smart.

We don't mind that you drink daily and steal money from your parents to buy drugs or that you're a 7th grade dropout. We'd like you to come to college. That call never came. And I started to realize that I was never going to escape this life, that this life was never going to change. And because every day was like the last day, every day I would try to get out of bed and I would go back to bed. And then I would get up eventually and I would steal money and I would go and I would either

steal some booze from Safeway or I would go buy some drugs. And I would and I would, then I would think, I got to stop this. I really have to stop. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep hurting everybody around me. I can't keep hurting the people who love me. I really need some help. It ends here. And then I would go to bed and then I would wake up and then I would go back to bed. And then I would go steal some money and then I would go steal some booze. And then I think,

what did something? Did I miss something? No. OK, I got to stop this. I have to stop this. And then I go to bed.

And then I wake up and I'd steal some money. And then. Does it sound to bore you? Yeah, It started to bore me, too. But I couldn't find a way out of it. I couldn't escape it. It was like I couldn't stop. I had this idea that I would just get my life together and I couldn't do it. It's like my my brother talks about the idea that that it's a singularly alcoholic problem, that at the very moment you realize that alcohol is your problem is the very same moment that you can no longer do anything about it.

And that's the place that I found myself the moment I realized alcohol and the life I'm living is my problem. I then also realized I had no power to change it. And I realized that because I went to my drug dealer's house and I went to him and I paid him for yesterday's bag. And I said, look, I'm out. I'm out the game and I'm done. I won't be coming back here. And he was like, OK, so the next day when I went to his house to buy a bag,

he looked at me and he said,

he said, what are you doing here, man? He's like you said yesterday, you quit. Here you are again today. He's like, you really have a problem,

so if your drug dealer ever does an intervention on you, it's time to get help. Seek help

and that started my journey of quitting. You know, I just was quitting all the time. I was always quitting and

it's a lonely place to be man. You know, I'm and now sober almost half my life and I got sober very young,

obviously. And I would be a particularly

shallow and unintrospective person if I didn't ask myself why I'm still here, why after all these years, Alcoholics Anonymous still applies to me. And so I think a lot about that, you know, I think a lot about what what I'm still doing here. And I'm going to try to answer that question in a in in, in a way that makes sense

tonight. The reasons that I'm still here. But one of them is that I really, really remember how painful and frightened I was frightening it was when I realized I had no power over making my own problem go away. I finally found the reason why I had so many problems in the 1st place. And I tried with all of my might to affect some change on that problem. And I found myself doing the exact same thing. Not that I found myself not

getting much better, or that I found myself unable to fully master my problem. I found myself unable to even remember the problem the next day. Not even to remember that I had said yesterday that I was never going to drink again. I would wake up in the morning and I would think about drinking and I wouldn't have to. An Angel and a devil pop up on my shoulder. You know what I mean? I wouldn't have one guy. Like, remember the path that you've chosen. Come with us to the Community

Church. And then on the other shoulder was the devil like ah, forget it, let's get some St. Ives let's go right on a wall let's piss on the floor. And then I then had a problem figuring out who the right one was and I would go towards the devil that it seems like it's how it should have been, but that's not how it was at all. How it really was was that I woke up in the morning. The obsession to drink would hit and I wouldn't even remember that I had quit the day before. I would only thing I could think about was the bottle that I was going to get was the money I was going to steal, was the

the life that I was forgetting.

I get very hazy memory when I stare at a bottle. You know what I mean? I can be thinking about all of the problems that I have. And once that bottle of Saint Ives is in front of me, the Saint Ives, I mean, a classy a man's drink is Saint Anne's. Even though is that real anymore? Does is that exist anymore? They still have it. Really. No. Wow. I outlasted St. Ives. All right. Moment of silence,

man, I loved saying I didn't drink. Listen, my drinks were if you gangster rapped about it, I drank it. That was how I determined if gangsters rapped about it. That was gin and juice, Cisco, St. Ives, crazy malt liquor. And that was that was it. I didn't. I've never had. The only wine I ever had was Carlo Rossi. And that's because E40 sung about it. I don't. I didn't

I didn't know anything about Pino or whatever. I don't even whatever it is that people drink this stuff. So, OK, all right, so,

so that happened. I found myself living the same day again and again. And I've been to rehab and I've been to rehab a number of different times. And, and so I came to a A asking for help. And I guess I think that's a, that's a pretty significant thing to do is to come into a A and to ask for help. And OK, here's part of the the problem with a A

I hate adults. I mean, I hate them. Every adult I've ever met has

wanted to put me in jail or wanted to give me a pill or wanted to, you know, lock me up or wanted to tell me to stop drinking or wanted to, you know, tell me that it's not OK to hit your grandma. All like, I hated adults, you know what I mean? And I came into AA and guess what? All adults want a total. Everyone is an adult in a A when you're 15, like everybody's an adult, period. So I hated everybody. And then I started listening and something happened that was really miraculous,

and I heard these people talking.

I stopped thinking of them as adults, and I started thinking of them as Alcoholics. And what they said started to resonate inside of me. And that's real dangerous. Like if you're in a A and you're starting to really relate

bad news.

Like if you're doing this, you are, you should be doing this because you're not ever getting out of here.

So anyway,

I came into AAA, you know, I came into AAA and I gotta say that this is something that is another reason that I still am here after all of these years because my life was on a, just an absolute, I mean, just 100% crash and burn all the way down. And

there's a line of demarcation in my life. The day before I came to a A, the day after I came to a, A where my life started going like this. I mean, it was, it was, it wasn't significant at first, but almost immediately I started to realize that things were changing. I started, I mean, the minute I came into a, A, the day that I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous and asked for help, everything flipped over from a slow, steady decline to a slow, steady uphill. And I should rephrase. It wasn't a slow steady decline. It was a

quick crash and burn, and I was slow and steady on the way back up. And that's a problem for me because my sponsor and I talk a lot about the idea that I want to drink the program and you can't drink the program. That's the bad news. So there's some bad news. Anybody that tells you there's no bad news here is not being completely honest with you. The bad news is that a A doesn't work like alcohol does. I like alcohol because I get to open a bottle, drink it, and I feel different immediately.

It doesn't matter that I feel different immediately and I know that slowly it corrodes my life, that it makes me unable to function in society, that it ruins everything on the outside,

that it dissolves all of the relationships I have. None of that matters because if I can drink it now, I can feel OK and forget about all that stuff. Alcoholics Anonymous works the exact opposite way. There's no way for me to crack it open and for me to drink it and for me to be OK right now. I can't do that. It's slow, it takes time, it doesn't happen immediately, it doesn't change the way I feel, it just changes the way I am. The good news is that it that what it does is the opposite of what I'll call did for me as well.

It makes my life bigger. It makes my reality bigger. It makes me feel more deeply. It makes my world more large. It makes my relationships more deep and profound and amazing. It makes my life bigger.

Alcohol painted me into a corner. The only thing I could do was drink. And the only thing I've been able to do since I got here, since the day I got here was, was I started living.

And I, I guess, you know, if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know what it's like to have a life that doesn't feel like life. You know, there was a speaker, she said. I just heard at this meeting a few days ago

in LA, she said. There's some more bad news. We're all going to die. This is true.

We're all going to die, every one of us. The question is, what are we going to be doing until then? Are we going to spend our time living or are we going to spend our time trying to blot out the fact that we're that we're even alive? So so OK, so that's a little bit Gothic.

I'll pep it up.

Why am I still here? You know, a lot of people say that they're still in a A because they're afraid of relapse, right? They're afraid of going back to that life. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid of that. I don't ever want to live like that again. I don't ever want to feel out of control of myself. I don't want to hurt the people that I love. I don't want to be controlled by a beverage. By the way, have you thought about that? It's a beverage. It's an inanimate object. It exists in 711 right now. It's waiting for you there. Right now it's just sitting there in a bottle, not doing

thing. It's just a thing, a liquid, a thing. And if you weren't in the liquids, well, it's something else. But it's just a thing. And it controlled my life, man. This beverage,

this is water. Like this is a much more important beverage.

I don't even ever, ever think about water. I thought about booze all day long. What happens when they put juice and it ferments is that it controls my life. What did the little demons in there come out and start manipulating the puppet strings of my mind? It's insane when you think about it. I don't want to go back to that. I never want to go back to that. I I don't want to be in that life, but that's not why I'm still here.

It can't be for me now. This is just for me. For you, everything might be different.

Um, beware the person that tells you how it is for you or how it is for us or how we do here in groupthink. Beware that person or the person that has the special way he's figured out the special way. Get away from me. Like if you know a special way, the, the special way of a like the secret way that the real truth get away from me. I do not want to drink from your poison. Well, I do not want to move to Guiana. I'm not interested.