Recovery in the Rockies XIII in Midway, UT

Hi everybody, my name is Danny and I'm a cocaine addict.

Is that OK? Oh, OK. You know I. Isn't the countdown great?

I just, I have to refrain from getting carried away with that, Douglas. One time I was speaking somewhere and I got all into it. I'm yelling and screaming and then I had to come up to the podium to share and I had no voice left.

So I just kind of clapped now. And but I love it though. It's a great deal. Before I forget, I want to thank the committee for asking me to come up. It's always an honor and a privilege to do so. So I appreciate that. Thank you and

everybody up here that worked on the committee. Thanks. Before I start, a lot of you people have have heard me before, but I'm glad to see that there was a matter of fact that table there could probably tell my story.

But I'm glad to see there's a lot of new people here tonight and welcome, welcome.

Buckle yourself in.

I think Jim said you're in for a hell of a ride. Before I start, I like to loosen up and joke around a little bit. So I, I do a little show and tell which something I found some years ago. And this is

'cause there was a lot of signs that I had a problem with alcohol and and drugs and I never paid any attention to them and I should have and there was a lot of them. And so I found this thing some years ago and I love to share with people want to hold it up. I don't know how many people back there can see but

picture of an old lady you say and and it says on the top before 6 beers. OK and then you take the same picture and just turn it upside down and it becomes a picture of a Princess and says after 6 beers. So

just,

I'm sure some of you guys can relate. If you ever went to bed with Cindy Crawford and woke up in the morning with Lassie,

you know, that's a, that's a problem that maybe you had a maybe you had a problem with alcohol. You know,

and there's signs along the way that I should have paid heed to that I had a problem with cocaine. You know, if the grocery delivery man is at your door again with the Chore Boy and baking soda, that's a sign that maybe I'm doing too much cocaine.

If the voice is in your head are grinding their teeth, that's what

that's a sign that may be doing

too much cocaine. I don't know.

I always like to joke around just to loosen up. You know

what I what I share with you people is, is what I always share. For those of you that heard me once, twice, five times, you know what it was like and what happened. Don't change,

you know, Hopefully you stick around and what changes is what it's like today, you know, And I'm one of these people that come up here and I talk about the insanity of cocaine

and especially tonight. I want to do that because I see so many, the new people here. And, and hopefully maybe you could relate to something, you know, because we clean up really good. We we get sober and, you know, we put a suit on and, and the ladies look beautiful tonight. And and sometimes the new people thinking, well, you know, you ain't been well, I just came from, you know. And so before I even get started tonight, let me share with you my analogy of cocaine.

So maybe right off the rip, we can relate. Cocaine was like the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life.

And a nightclub with 1500 people in the place on the other end of the club. My lady Cocaine. And I see you and I got to have her. And I make my way through the crowd, through all the obstacles in my life. And I get up to her and I get lucky and I get to leave there with her. And we jump in a cab and all the way in the cab ride back to her place, I got this thing going on in my stomach just anticipating how good it's going to be, you know, It's so powerful. It's it's good. It's right here choking me, you know,

it's so strong. Even my butt is puckering just just thinking about it. And,

and we get up and we go to, we go to her apartment and, and we go to bed. And just like I, I knew it was the best love making ever had in my life. And, and when it's over, I get up to go to the bathroom and she reaches under bed and grabs her bat and pow, cracks my head open. Takes all my money and all my dope and all my jewelry. And about 20 minutes later, I, I, I'm, I start coming too. And I stagger to my feet and I'm dizzy

and I'm hurting and I'm bleeding and the first thing I say is where is she? I got to find her. I know she didn't mean that.

I know she loves me. When I find that this time it's going to be different.

Now if you can relate to that, then you're definitely in the right place tonight. That's my analogy of what cocaine was with me. So anyway, let me start like I usually do. And there's always, I always talk about four things when I have the opportunity. And I've been blessed many times to come up to the podium and share. And I always share about the same 4 things. I acknowledge 4 things that are important in my life today. And the first is God.

And I don't make no bones about talking about God,

have a loving, loving God in my life today. And the second thing that I acknowledge that I understand I have in my life today is miracles. I, I, I really believe in miracles and I'm a miracle. And I don't know most of you people in the room, but I bet you're just about everybody here is a miracle, you know. And the third thing that I, I like to acknowledge and that I believe in, and it's in my life today, is I believe in angels.

And I believe that all around us right now, we're surrounded by angels. They just did it all over the place right here. The fourth thing that I believe in is the reason

that I believe in the first three, and that's Cocaine Anonymous. If it weren't for Cocaine Anonymous, I would not know nothing about God. I wouldn't know that I'm a miracle, and I wouldn't be in touch with the angels at all around us. So I always acknowledge those things. Cocaine Anonymous put me in touch with all those things

and I like to talk about that.

I think as I share with you my story, what it was like and what happened, what it's like for me today that I'll talk to you about God. I'll talk to you about miracles and angels and, and certainly the whole thing is to do with Cocaine Anonymous. So

I want to tell you I don't come from a a dysfunctional family in the sense that my mother was in a alcoholic or an addict and and my father wasn't an alcoholic or an addict, But but I know that there was something wrong with me all my life,

way before I ever had a drink or a drug, way before I ever smoked a joint, there was that the book talks about that strange mental twist to our thinking. I had that all my life, you know, and as far as I can remember, and I go back and I'll share with you about about my earliest memories, about five years old, I guess. And, and I'm born and raised in New York City in a little neighborhood we call Little Italy. And in my neighborhood,

growing up in the in the early 60s in my neighborhood,

to me, the greatest thing in my life was the New York Yankees. One of the greatest things in my life today

is the New York Yankees. So I was a little kid, maybe like five years old, and I had all the baseball cards

from the Yankees that year except for one. I didn't have Roger Maris. And there was another kid in my neighborhood. He had all the cards, but he didn't have Yogi Berra. So he said to me, one day, you want to flip? And I said sure. So we made an appointment to meet the next day. And I went home and I practiced flipping all day with my Yogi Berra card. And all I thought about was, tomorrow I'm going to have the whole Yankee team, five years old, the greatest joy in my life.

It never crossed my mind that I might lose my Yogi Berra card. And the next day we met in the park and and we flipped and he won.

And all of a sudden it dawned on me that not only am I not going to get Roger Maris, I'm about to lose Yogi Berra. And I got this thing, this anxiety in me went up and it was just choking me. And it was just a terrible thing. And I just couldn't let that happen.

I kicked his ass

and I took all his cards from him.

You know when I learned an important lesson that day

I learned the lesson that stuck with me for 20 something years. I learned that if I can't get what I want the right way, I just kick some ass and take it.

Work for me

and about maybe about

a year late, I was maybe about six years old in my neighborhood. We had the Feast, which is an Italian festival. And what they do at feast time is they come in and they block the streets off and they put games and food carts in the streets and everybody for 10 days pigs out and has fun. And I was like 6 years old and I had 1/4 in those days. And I quarter you could buy a whole bag of candy. And I, I went down to the cotton candy stand and I got a thing of cotton candy and I ate it all. It was good, I liked it. So I

some more and I got like two things in cotton camp for the quarter and I had three brothers. One of my brothers had safe, you know the kind. You take a butter knife and pop it open cracking my brothers safe. I get it open and I take out a half a buck and I go back down to the Facebook cotton candy and it was good. I liked it and I ate it all. I ate the whole 50 Cent up where the cotton candy. It was good, I liked it. I went to more I didn't have no more money. So I went back up to the apartment. I went to my mother's price. And I took a dollar and I went back down to the feast and I got cotton candy.

And now meet the cotton candy. And all of a sudden I started getting paranoid. I'm thinking,

I'm taking this thousands of people all around me. Somebody's going to say, hey, where you getting all this money for this cotton candy? So I went into the alleyway between two buildings and I'm crouching down

and I'm eating the cotton candy.

One night when I was going to see somebody in the building, I crouched in the alleyway one night, different alleyway, same, same neighborhood. And I took the pipe out and I hit the pipe and you know what? The tendencies were all the same.

You know, I never stopped and thought about what I'm doing and I lived my life for 20 something years that just, it didn't matter who I had to do what to. If I wanted something, I went and took it.

You know, I didn't think there was anything wrong with that.

I don't come from a dysfunctional family. I actually grew up in a family who came from a lot of love, come from a big Italian family. And there was a lot of love in my house growing up. And my father was a big man. He was a handsome man. He used to pick me up. He used to take me in his arms. He used to say, I love you, Danny. And I said, I love you too, Dad. And so I share this with you because I want you to know there was a time in my life that I, I felt at peace with myself and one with the world. I never said, Danny, you're at peace with yourself and one with the world.

But I had no fears, no worries, no anxieties. Life was good. I couldn't wait every day to wake up and get out and hit the world because life was good for me. And my father used to pick me up and hug me and say, I love you, Danny. And I said, I love you too, dad. And my mother was a beautiful woman. She used to take me to a bus and she said, I love you, Danny. And I said, I love you too, Mom. Life was good. My grandmother didn't speak much English. She used to hug me and say, Benicio, Danny Benesar. I say Bennison, honey, life was good for me. And and that's just the way

was and I remember that time and one night I had three brothers and we used to sleep in the same room. And one night was late at night and and my brothers were sleeping and I couldn't sleep this night. And I was tossing and turning and there was a knock at the door. And I kind of went out to the hallway and my mother went to the door. She opened the door as a policeman there and he was there to tell that there was a shootout and my father was dead. And I was listening. And I didn't understand what that meant because I had never dealt with death before. I was 10 years old and in about 1/2 an hour, my place was full of people and

one corner whispering, the women wore another corner crying. And I went in and I said, what's going on? And one of my uncles says, your dad's dead daddy. And I said, well, what does that mean? And I said, that means he's not coming back no more, you know? And I didn't know it then and I didn't know it for a long time until a couple of years in this program. But I could tell you for sure today that that was the dividing line in my life, that that was the point in my life that I wasn't OK with myself, at peace with myself and one with the world anymore.

And that was the very day that I started building walls in my life to keep you out.

And I don't know what your shit is, but I can tell you that something that was affected me all my life and even early in sobriety here was that I didn't know how to allow you to love me. Because ever since that day, my mother would hug me and she'd say, I love you, Danny. And I said, I love you too, Ma, on the outside. But on the inside I'd say, and my grandmother would hug me and she'd say Benicar. Then I said, Beneson, honey, I love you too, Grandma,

on the outside, but on the inside, Nah. And I've been fortunate all my life and I've been fortunate that I've had women in my life that want to love me and be part of my life. And they'd say, I love you, Danny. And I said, I love you too, baby,

on the outside, but on the inside we're saying we ain't going there.

Can't do that. And a couple of years. So, but I became aware of that. That was my problem, that that was that was the big thing for me. And I've been working on that for years and I've made lots of progress in that area, you know, and today I believe I have the ability to allow somebody to love me.

You know, we all come in here with our with our different things. You know, the book talks about we find out cocaine is, is, is just a symptom to our problems. And we put the cocaine, the alcohol down. We find there's a whole lot wrong with us, of which a whole lot has to be done. Bill says, you know, so

I was 12 years old and the police brought me home and I was running the streets and getting in trouble. And

13 years old, I got six months in reform school. They locked me up in a cell. And 14 years old, they gave me 18 months in a reformed school. So by the time I was 16, I was locked in itself for two years already.

And when I turned 17 years old, I got in trouble and

they were going to lock me up. My mother was dying of cancer and she went to they were going to charge me as an adult. And she went to the judge and begged the judge not to lock me up. And and the judge, I stood in front of judge 17 years old and he said

you can go to prison for three years so you could join the service. So I said, when do you sign up,

You know, and I don't want to tell you that I'm one of these people that talked about, I used to say this all the time. We ain't hurt. No, I ain't hurt nobody but myself, you know. And I believe that for so long, I say, you know what I'm doing ain't hurt nobody but me. So thank you. I want to tell you what, how foolish that is, that when my mother died in 1976, I read her her diary and I read how it was killing her

that at, at 13 years old I was locked up and she couldn't do nothing. At 14 years old, I was locked and I was just tearing her life apart, you know? But we don't, we don't hurt nobody but ourselves, you know,

I So what happened was I went in the Army and I went to the Army for three years and I wound up doing two years in the Army and a sick in the Brig and I got a dishonorable discharge because the Army don't play that either, you know.

And I was Wildman. And while I was in the Army, I got a girlfriend from my neighborhood childhood girlfriend. She got pregnant and we got married. And by the time I was 19 years old, I was married and had two kids. And when I come out of the Army and I just started running around doing stuff and, you know, wasn't long because before I caught a long prison sentence and I went away for 15 years and did 6 1/2 behind the wall on that, you know, and I didn't have one sober day and 6 1/2 years.

I never thought there was anything wrong with that. I used to get high every day in the joint, you know, and I just never even thought there was anything wrong with me being away. You know, my kids were this big when I went away and they were this big when I got out. And, and I just thought it was like occupational hazard, you know, like if you're a Carpenter, you might bang your finger one day. You know, for me, I was making my living on the street and I got caught and I had to go away. And I didn't think there was anything wrong with that, you know. And and so I came out and and the reason I share all this, which is

tell you my mind frame. You know, we all have our stories and we all come from different points, but we all wind up here and, and every one of us sit in this room tonight is useful to somebody else.

And I don't know who I'm talking to tonight, but I know I'm talking to at least one person tonight. And I don't know who that one person is, but I know at least one person tonight is going to hear me. He's going to relate to me. He's going to feel me

and whoever that person is tonight, be it man or woman,

that's what I'm talking to tonight

because somebody has felt what I felt and have gone through the things that I've gone through and it's sitting in this room tonight

and that's what it's about. So I, I, I share these, these things, which, you know, I, I came out of prison and I'm still running around and just just doing insane things, you know, and

cocaine. When I started doing cocaine, someone one of these 60s, seven early 70s kids and you know, so we did all the kind of drugs they were, you know, and they were a lot of good drugs in those days and,

you know, four finger lids, nickel bags, you know, but

yeah, good as we. But

when I started doing cocaine, it was a very, it was a very kind of a luxury kind of drug. You know, I can remember starting doing cocaine. We take a limo to the Hilton and, and, and get high all weekend, you know, and then a couple years later it was like we're taking a cab to the Days Inn. You know,

couple years after that, it was like walking to this hotel that I don't know, it was, it was black. It said no trespassing. It was no electricity on there.

That's the degradation of cocaine. But but it was a very, it was a very luxury kind of thing, you know, and, and, and I loved everything about it. And I want to tell you that I'm not standing here tonight because I hate cocaine.

I'm here tonight because I love that shit. I love everything about. I love all the I love dealing with all the lowlifes. I love the anticipation and the waiting and the bullshit. And I love the strawberries and I love everything that goes with it.

I said that in England when I was sharing in England and somebody came out. What's this strawberry?

So strawberries, the hookers you have to deal with. She's coming, you know, and the, and the, the women that are smoking too and that kind of stuff. But

I love all that, you know, I'm not here because I hate cocaine. I'm here 'cause I love it. How can I stand here tonight and tell you I hate that shit? What I can't stand, I can't stand coming down.

God, what a terrible feeling that was every time I came down.

So that's the thing that I hated about it. I always wound up busted and disgusted, never suicidal, but I always got homicidal and I didn't want to hurt me. But I didn't kill you and I never and and I have never

and my entire sobriety come close to feeling anything like I felt every time I came down off of cocaine. That horrible feeling,

just terrible. But

I want to tell you the the insanity, the insanity of this disease is really simple for me. No great philosophy on the the insanity of this disease is I can't stop doing it.

I don't want to. I swear I ain't going to do it no more. But I can't stop.

And towards the end it got so bad for me that I started doing things that, you know, my last five years before I got sober, I knew I couldn't do no more cocaine and I know I couldn't stop. And that's a terrible, vicious cycle to be stuck in.

Cocaine is the greatest solvent I ever, ever seen. It will remove everything from your life.

So and, and I am watching everything slip away from me and I just could not stop. I didn't want to, you know it, it just got so bad. I would go out and after three days I have no money left. But I didn't want to go home because I knew the wife was up. And so I'd wait around till about 1:00 in the morning and then I tiptoe in the house and she'd be sleeping and I, I didn't want to get undressed. I just kicked my shoes off and I get in bed real easy like,

and I take a deep breath and freeze

because I don't want to wake her up. And I'd lay there. So

lay there and lay there. And I cling to the stupid thought that maybe when I wake up in the morning, all that money I spent is going to be under my pillow.

And my wife would say, honey, you're home, I've missed you.

And the kids would run and jump on my lap, say, Daddy, Daddy, we love you. And I just lay there, try not to move, not to breathe. And I just sometime during the night, I just fall off. And sometime the next day, I come too. And I'd look under the pillow and there'd be nothing there. And I'd get up and I'd walk in the kitchen. It should be in the kitchen. And she'd look at me and she'd say, you're son of a bitch. You did it again.

And I've been out for three days and I needed a shave. And my eyes were sunken in and my cheeks were sunken in and I smelled and I looked like death warmed over. The kids would hear my voice. They'd run into the kitchen. They'd see me. They run back into their room. And I go to the bathroom and I look at myself in the mirror and I said, what's the matter with you, Danny? Why can't you stop?

And then I'd say, whatever fiber of my being, I say, I swear to God, I ain't going to do this no more. And I'd mean it. And I want to tell you that I, every time I said that, I meant that just as sure as I'm standing here tonight, I just didn't know that that wasn't enough. I thought because I meant it so much that that's all I needed. And I took that thinking into recovery. And I thought when I got sober, 'cause I want this so bad, that's good enough. And I want to tell you, if you're new, you got to get willing.

Wanting to be sober is not willing. I got to do some things because I could not stop. I got so bad. I can remember getting some dope and going up to the apartment with my friend and we sit on the couch,

hit the pipe. I'd say check the Windows Update the window.

What are they hovering with wings out there?

And I'd pass him the pipe. He'd take a hit, he said. He hurt the window.

It's insane. It was insane. When I think about the things that I did on it, every time I got high, it was like insane getting on the floor, you know, My first time, it was like kind of just reaching down and just touching the floor, you know? You know, it's just terrible telling you. These are not wrinkles on my face. These are Venetian blind box.

Just crazy.

And I can remember one time towards the end of my usernet, I knew I said to myself, one day, I said, Danny, you're doing too much cocaine. Don't you don't do no cocaine tonight. And this is I'll get I'll back up in a minute. But my wife had left me already. And so I called this lady up. I I got dressed up, I put a suit on. I jumped the kid. We went to the restaurant and was sitting down

and we eat and then and it's raining really hard this night. And the whole time we're having dinner, the cocaine's calling me canes going dinner and I'm going

back up to my apartment And I said sit on baby, I'll be I'll be right out. And I went to the bathroom. I got my my dope down. I went to the bathroom. Now you got to remember this lady didn't even drink or or nothing. She sat on the couch and watched me go into the bedroom. And I step into the shower and I don't know why I got my suit on, you know,

And I hit the pipe and I'm in the bedroom. Maybe 20-30 minutes.

I'm sweating like a bastard

and after about 30 minutes I opened the bathroom door and I'm holding my pants because they're making too much noise

and I tiptoe right by her like she's not even there. Right.

I kind of do the combat, crawl to the window,

get to the window and remember it was raining really hot. I get to the window, I peek out the window and the lightning struck just as I peeked out the window and I said oh shit they just took my picture.

Don't forget I'm on the 9th floor, right?

And she got up and ran it.

Tahoe was like Doctor Jekyll went in the bathroom and Mr. Hyde came out.

She got, you know what I did when she ran out of it and I went to the door and I bolted it up. I said

thank God she's got. She was fucking my head up.

The insanity of this disease is I can't stop.

I don't want them.

I swear I'm not gonna. But there I am doing it all over again the next day. It's insane. I know. I laugh. I think about it today. And I what I could have done would have been just about the same thing is I could have went to like the middle of the South Bronx, like 2:00 in the morning was like a whole bunch of guys hanging on the corner and I could have took $5000 and I said, hey, kick my ass and you can have this, you know, And then when they beat me and stomp me down and kick me and step on me and take my money. And as they're walking off like, hey,

I'll see you tomorrow,

right? What's the difference?

The difference, really, is this. Nobody ever abused me the way I abused me. If anybody ever tried to abuse me that much the way I abused me, I would have killed them and chopped them off.

Nobody done to me like I done to me. Unbelievable. Anyway, let me tell you, I, I

tell me what happened when I, when I came out of the, when I came out of prison, I'm back in my neighborhood and

man, I was, there was another case. I was home for a couple years and I caught another case and

there was five of us on trial and there were seven charges and two charges were 15 years and another fight charges were life without parole for all of us. And so I tried to make a deal with the DA to cop out. I was willing to take 10 years and the DA wasn't making no deals. He had a good case on all of us and he was a cop. Nobody was being able to cop out. And so I in those days, I had what I call my 711 God.

This is a convenience store kind of God. You know, I went there when I needed something

and I went to God and I, and I made this deal with God guy. If you Get Me Out of this one, I'm going to be a good husband, a good father, a good brother, a decent human being. And I meant that, you know, and, and so I go and we're on trial for like 3 1/2 months. And after 3 1/2 months, the jury came out and the five of us stood up in all seven charges, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, man, right down the line, all of us. And I pump my chest out and I looked at the DA and I laughed at him. And you said you asked. So you had me for 10 years and now I'm walking out of here

and I went home and I forgot all about God. If you help me, I forgot all of I thought I was God at that point. You couldn't touch me then. And I, and I walked out of there and I went home and I, I kissed the wife and I hugged the kids and I pet the dog and I got the pipe down and I proceeded to go on a two year binge. And about a year into that two year binge, my wife, who had been with me for 17 years, came up to me and she said, you're killing yourself and everybody around you. And I can't take no more Danny. I'm out of here

and I want to tell you where my mind was in those days I went. She you're leaving me something wrong with her.

Like I was a bargain, right?

And so go ahead. And and I had some friends of mine from the neighborhood that were down in Florida and they were doing some things and they kept telling me, come to Florida, we're making money down here. And I wasn't trying not to use or not. And I just figured a geographic would be OK, you know, So I was going from New York to Florida, NY to Florida back and forth. And I had my eye in this restaurant down there and in my neighborhood. I thought, I come from Little Italy. And what happens even today, in today's times,

people come from Europe, from Italy, and they come and they move right to my neighborhood. And that's right. One of the reasons we call it Lil Italy. And there was a family that just moved to my neighborhood. And the guy's name was Luigi. And he had a wife and two kids. And and I went to this restaurant down in Florida. So I said to Luigi, come with me to Florida or take this restaurant, we'll put in your name. I don't want to do any work. You just give me an envelope every week. And he said, Danny, all I want is for my kids to grow up in America.

And I said, you know, I had a part to play in those days. I used to play good. I said, Louise, you know what about nothing? You stay with me. Not only will your kids go up in America to be rich.

And I packed this man and his family up and took him down to Florida and we bought this restaurant and I got myself a nice condo on the 2nd floor, this development and he opened this restroom. It was a good, honest, hard working man. And the restaurant started doing good. And all I was doing at this point was smoking. I was just smoking and I didn't want to know nothing or nobody. And I was just, I'd smoke till I passed out and I'd come to and I'd start smoking again. I just lived for the next hit and anybody,

my life, my children, my family, anybody in my life that meant anything to me, I just kicked everybody to the curb for another hit adult.

And I was meeting this Colombian guy. And I met this Colombian guy at the restaurant one day and I got a kilo of cocoa. So every once in a while I used to get a a kilo and sometimes I'd make it to New York and sell half of it, and most of the times I wouldn't. But so I met this Columbia guy at the restaurant. He gave me a kilo. And I went into the office of the restaurant and had these drop ceilings and I broke a big piece off of this thing, about 200 grams. And I took the rest and I pushed it up in the ceiling.

And I went home to the, my, to my condo. And I knew I was going to be getting high for like 3 days.

So I wanted to eat something. So I took this leather bag and I put my, my scale in there, the daring and all my paraphernalia and the coke. And then I did something I never did in my life before. So I talk about the angels, right? So I believe that the angels been with me all my life. I believe that God's been protecting me and watching over me all my life. What I believe today is that God loves me just as I am, no matter how I am.

And I'll get to that in a minute though. But what happened was I took my gun and I put it in the bag too. And I never, I was schooled all my life. Don't ever give anybody a gun because the biggest insult in the world to get shot with your own gun.

But for some reason, I put my pistol in there too. I zipped the bag up. I went downstairs to the guy under me. I said, hold this for me, I'm going to eat something and then I'll take care of it. He said, sure, Dan. And I went back upstairs and I started making myself something to eat. And the DEA came over. They were watching this Colombian guy and they went through my apartment and tore my apartment up and they there was nothing there. Usually they find a pistol, they bring me in for the pistol. There was nothing there. They took me down to Miami. They had Luigi in one room and they had me in the other room. And the agent says to me, we found the kilo of cocaine in your restaurant.

And me being a stand up guy I am, I said I don't know the restaurant. And the agent said to me, we know that your restaurant. And I said, look pal, if you found something in a restaurant, you need to talk to somebody else, 'cause I don't own a restaurant. And make a Long story short, after a couple hours, my lawyer came. They had to let me go, but they weren't letting Luigi go. The restaurant was in his name. He wasn't a citizen. He had a green card and they were charging him with a dope. And you know, and here's a, here's a man that wound up doing a year in jail being deported. His family went

his whole Great American dream show by me because I'm not what I'm doing. Ain't hurting nobody but myself, you know? And that's just one of the lives that been ruined in my tornado. And that's not even one of the worst stories, you know,

So and what happened was I, I left that that

agency down there and I went back to my condo and I didn't want to feel anything.

All I wanted to do was escape. And I knocked on that guy's door. I said, give me that bag back. And I went upstairs and I started cooking stuff up so big that it was melting down the sides. Just I just wanted to escape. The phone was ringing. It was Luigi's wife. I didn't want to answer. There was nothing I could do for him, you know, and I just didn't want to feel. And for the next three days, and this is really nothing out of the ordinary, but for the next three days,

all I ate for three days was about 15 packs of cigarettes, 3-4 bottles of vodka,

whole lot of cocaine. And after the, after the first day, I'm so paranoid because I'm thinking Luigi is going to give me up in any minute. They're going to come back and, and get me. And I'm extra paranoid, you know, and, and, and I made a decision and a big book talks about we made many resolutions, but never a decision. I made a decision. The decision I made was when they come back,

they ain't taking me in and that we're going to hold court right there and I'm going to be the judge and the jury and the execution on somebody's dying with me.

They ain't taking me. I'm too messed up and I ain't going to jail and I'm there and I'm just smoking. I'm just smoking. I'm just don't want to feel or know nothing. You know, at this point, I kicked everybody out of my life coming into the night of the third day and then cook it from doing their little crickety noise that they make. You know, I had been living down here for about a year now in Florida. I heard that noise every night. But on that particular night, I didn't hear it to be the crickets. When I heard it to be was the crackling of the police radios.

And I knew I was surrounded. And So what I was doing, I was in the middle of my living room floor and I, I hit the pipe and I put the pipe down and I'd take the pistol and I'd crawl out to the terrace and I'd look around to see where they were, 'cause I know I'm surrounded. It's the crickets, right? Well, I'm trying to find a way to hide in the cops. And then I'd call back in and I put the pistol down. I hit the pipe and I put the pipe down. I grabbed the pistol and I call back out and I look and I come back and that's what I did for hours.

I call out with the pistol, call back in, put the pistol down at the pipe, put the pipe down, hit the get the pistol. And you know, I had the pistol in one hand, pipe in the other hand, not knowing which one to suck on next. And I'm crawling in and out and

and I'm, you know, just bug eyed crazy. And and then I heard these words. I heard somebody say, OK, sarge, let's go. That was it. I got to my feet for the first time in like hours. And I, you know, I put the pipe down nice and easy and I and I grabbed the pistol and what I'm sharing with you now happened this quick on that quick. And I ran to the terrace and I reached down and I reached over and I looked down and there was one guy down there. And I said to myself, one guy for me,