The Temecula water district meeting in Temecula, CA

Today, warm welcome to our main speaker, Steve D from Rainbow.

I'm Steve, Alcoholic.

One of the reasons I'm here tonight is because I got run over by a drunk driver.

You're all quiet. The room gets when I say that you guys know who you are to over.

Yeah, I was out in box Canyon years ago and me and a couple of my drinking buddies and a couple girls are going to get back off the road a little bit. And we'd been drinking all day at the beach and. And so I jumped in my van and we all jumped in the van and went down this old bumpy dirt road and. And the linkage fell off the transmission on my van. And being a smart mechanic that I am, without even turning the ignition off, I was going to jump out and put that linkage back on the transmission. And

so we could go a little bit further. And when I did, I jumped underneath the van and I put the linkage on the transmission and pulled it into gear and ran over myself.

Just the back tires ran over me. But

then I had to chase the man for a little while, but I jumped back in. So in reality I did get run over by a drunk driver. Me and

and I wanted to welcome

Michael and Morgan and if I missed one, I'm sorry. The newcomers in the room tonight, I hope that what you hear in these rooms

is, is somewhat of a reflection of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, and if it seems a little bit uncomfortable for you, good.

It's not very comfortable when you start out. And I sympathize with you and, and I, and I want you to keep coming back till you feel comfortable. And, but anyway, I want to welcome the newcomers as part of my assignment. I wanted to thank Merle for asking me to come up here this evening. And, and usually I don't stand up here in front of this many people unless it's at my own arraignment. So.

So I'm a little nervous and

I wanted to let you guys know I'm going to be telling you some of my secrets tonight. And, and that's not always comfortable, but I learned that my secrets will kill me, so I have to tell them. So in order to be comfortable telling you people my secrets, I kind of want to know who I'm talking to. So I'm going to have a little show of hands here that I always like to do. And it's a little survey that I like to take so that I I know who you people are.

Is there anybody besides me that that sat in the backseat of a cop car?

Oh good, I feel better already.

More than once,

All right. Oh, I feel taller already. Is there anybody that made that stupid phone call in the middle of the night? They wish they could have taken back more than once. Any bed wetters in here

more than once.

Oh, you guys all right. I feel better. I can tell you my secrets now. I came from a big family. I came from an alcoholic family. Everybody drank. I came from a musical family. My parents were both big band members. My mom was a lead singer and my dad was a sax player and a singer and the Johnny Martin Band and they played in the big band era. And so we, we had jam sessions at our house and over five kids and a lot of drinking going on and, and

it's, you know, just the way I was raised party on and,

and every kid in the family all played a different musical instrument and, and we just all partied together. One big happy musical family. And I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. I'm a third generation native Californian and endangered species. And I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, up in the Covina, West Covina area and, and went to school up there. I went to four different high schools and never graduated. My parents were alcoholic and, and so they do real good for a while, just really run for the goal and, and

then do really bad for a while and lose it all. So we always moved a lot and a lot of bill collectors and, and all that stuff that goes along with with trying to raise a family and drink at the same time. So I learned early on to lie when the bill collectors had called the house. I learned real early to tell them people that, well, I don't know, I don't even know who my dad is and my mom's at work, you know.

And so, so from a very early age, I learned that lion was real important to cover your ass. And,

and so,

you know, life went on and it got real, got real crazy. Like I said, I went to four different high schools, but it seemed like every time I'd make friends would have to move. So I stopped making friends

and boy, I tell you what, my parents were some booze hounds and my whole family was booze hounds. I had a an Ant to put a gun in her ear and and my grandfather hung himself and just crazy, crazy, severe alcoholic tragedy and drama going on my whole life. I was just raised with it and that's the way it was. And and I just thought it was that way everywhere. And I was one of these kids that did real well in school and and then I do real bad. So I was like an A student that was

in detention all the time.

No, it was just nothing seemed right and I was you guys have heard it before. I didn't fit in my skin and and it's a very difficult when when I watched the way that my family drank, I said, I'm not going to do that. I'm a product of the 60s too. I kept my hair though, and

I tell you what,

the way people drank and the and the things that I've seen, I didn't want any part of that. And so I was going to be a pothead, you know, I was just going to smoke weed,

knock. I was not going to be, you know, stumbled and drunk like my folks and their folks. And, and the problem with that is that stuff made me thirsty, you know, you know, I'd smoke a couple joints and then I'd drink a couple beers and I'd smoke a couple joints and drink a couple beers. And just that, that, I don't know, it's just, it was just boring. Life was real boring for me. And, and, and I couldn't wait to get out of that crazy, insane house. And, and

the Vietnam War was coming along and coming along nicely and, and they were drafting most of my friends. And,

and

I'll tell you what, if you left school when I was a when I was in school, if you left school, you had to go on the service. You had to have permission to leave school. You couldn't leave school like kids do now. It's like now they don't even go to school. But anyway, you couldn't leave school and unless you're in the service. So I joined the service. I was a kiddie cruiser. My older brother joined and I was 17 and I joined when he joined and and went in on the buddy plan and and I was going to join the service because I didn't want to get drafted and go to Vietnam.

So I went on the,

I went into the service, I joined the Navy and I was on the,

I was on the USS Fort Snelling, which was a in the amphibious Navy. And, and before I was even 20 years old, I'd, I'd already been to Naples, Italy and Barcelona, Spain. And the, the ship that I was on was, is an amphibious ship and it had a helicopter flight deck. And it's the ship that the Navy sent over to to the off the tip of Spain, United States Air Force accidentally dislodged a a bomb.

And and so the ship that I was on is the one that went and recovered. It had Alvin, that little two man submarine that went down and and grabbed onto this bomb off the tip of Spain. They evacuated the

all of Spain back miles and miles and went down. Our ship is the one that recovered it. So the Navy granted us what they called a Good Hope cruise and that's like the pleasure cruise. And so we came back to where the ship was tied up and painted everything and shined everything and we got to go. I went back to Little Creek, Virginia, went island hopping all through the Caribbean. And I was your typical drunken sailor. Couldn't wait to, you know, go on liberty and, and, and get good and liquored up and, and, and I'll never forget. I wasn't, I wasn't very good at it. I was

as one of these guys who just had too much fun and it always catch up with me. So in one time we were in one port of call in, in Tobago, which is way down below the equator by Trinidad and we're in Tobago. And I had it offended one of the natives there. It's I think it's British W Indies. I'm not sure. But I had offended one of the local natives there. And before I even got to the end of the building, trying to run away from this bad scene that I'd made drunk,

some of the locals there had grabbed me up and had a rope around my neck and was actually pulling me up the flagpole in front of City Hall and was going to lynch me right there. And, and Tobago. I didn't really think that story that drunk was going to end that way that day, but shore patrol came along and popped a couple rounds off and got me down off the, the flagpole and, and I was restricted to the ship for again,

that's just a kind of,

you know, I, I got a, when I look back on it, you know, it's kind of funny now and, and you know, that was kind of scary then having a rope around my neck, but I always ended up in those. I'm not the kind of guy that like lost my watch and came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I made great big messes. I, I ended up in Vietnam anyway. I spent seven months in Vietnam, but I got shot in San Bernardino.

But anyway, after, you know, after the Tobago scene and getting in Trinidad and Tobago, we went to Saint Croix and St. Kitt and and

Ponce and San Juan and, and all the way down below the equator. I went shell back and and had a good time aboard that ship and it and it really was a a lot of fun and got to see a lot of the world and a lot of drunks and

and what happened is I got in trouble. I always seem to get in trouble and I got sent down to to the bilges of the ship. Part of my part of my punishment was to go down and do some duty painting down in the builders of the ship and

and the Navy uses a real toxic paint. It's called red lead and zinc oxide. And it's boy, I got overcome by paint films and I'm not a huffer, honest to God, but I got overcome by paint fumes and next thing you know, it's like I'm being pulled up out of the bowels of the ship and I'm laying in sick Bay damn near died. And, and I said, hey, these corpsman have it made, man, Jesus. They don't get dirty, they don't do any work. They get the best food

they don't even get. They don't even have to take shots, you know. So anyway,

I changed rate. I became a striker and and so after I left the ship, they sent me off to Great Lakes Naval Hospital core school in Great Lakes, IL and and I became a hospital corpsman. That's not a good thing for a guy that likes to drink and that has like an obsessive kind of personality me and pill popping and drinking and partying. Corman isn't a good job. And, but that's what I became and, and I got stationed down in Corpus Christi, TX in the Naval Air station down there and, and,

and I started stealing pharmaceuticals off the, off the

out of the medlockers and selling them off, off base. And unfortunately, someone, you know, it got back to the Navy that I was taking their drugs and selling them. And I was brought up on charges. And so here I was joining the Navy trying to avoid going to a war in Vietnam. My choice was, was go to Ford Leavenworth, KS, or take orders to Vietnam. And so off I go. And now I'm attached to the USS Reposi, which is a hospital ship sitting out in Cameron Bay.

And that, that's where they fly everyone off. You know, if you guys saw a MASH where they, they take them from the MASH tent and they send them out to the hospital ship. And if you can't fix them there, they'd send them on over to Saskapo, Japan. So that's what I did for a while

for a young kid,

I cracked and I couldn't stand all the carnage and the blood and the death and what was going on. Remember, I joined when I was 17 and, and watching all this stuff was too much for me and I didn't want any part of it anymore. And so the Navy decided to, to discharge me with, you know, I got an honorable discharge and all that. It was under medical conditions. And so when I discharged out and I was all done with that, I discharged out. I was out of

the Navy on Treasure Island which sits up underneath. It's in San Francisco area and Treasure Island was a man made island for the 1939 World's Fair.

And so that was where the Navy base was and it's right down the street from Haight Ashbury and that that was going on now. Now I got out of Vietnam right before the Tet Offensive and and so Haight Ashbury was happening and boy, the music they were playing and the things they were doing and they ate was that was me. And then I grew my hair long and, and I blended right in there and, and it was just so much fun. It was such a great, great time. I was just, you know, just lucky to, to

experience that without the bad experiences. And I thought, man, I'm, I was missing it. And by this time, you know, I'd learned to drink

and I was mixing it up with everything up there. And, you know, I'm for some reason, I got some brainstorm come back down to Southern California and leave the Frisco area and, and have the American Dream. And, and so I came down and I met a gal and we got married and started making babies and, and I didn't realize that I was caught in the throes of alcoholism, that I would do the same thing that I saw my parents do. I do really good for a while, and then I'd make a great big mess.

You know, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about that. You know, you guys hear us read in in chapter three, well about the real alcoholic.

Well, the real alcoholic is actually he's described on page 21

and I'll read it to you guys. I get too much feedback there, Dan. OK,

anyway, the real alcoholic is the real He's the fellow that's been puzzling you. He starts off as a moderate drinker. And that that's what I did. I started off a moderate drinker. And he says he may or may not be a continuous hard drinker, but at some stage of his drinking career, he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption

once he starts to drink. And that's that's what they call the real alcoholic. They say for most real Alcoholics, well, that's that's who they're talking about, is the real alcoholic that he loses control. He says here's the fellow who's puzzled you, especially with his lack of control.

He seldom mildly intoxicated. He's always more or less insanely drunk.

His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature, but little he may be one of the finest fellows in the world, yet let him drink for a day and he frequently becomes disgustingly and even dangerously antisocial. That sound familiar? That's how I drank and and nicest guy, you know, when I'm sober and give me a couple drinks and just instant asshole and and I just make great big messes and that's that's going to and I didn't know that's what I had. I didn't know that my problem was at all related to alcohol. You know,

I thought because I went to the war and I saw all this carnage. That's what, you know, I thought maybe it's because my parents were were drunks and all this insane kind of childhood that I had. I didn't know that it was like from alcohol, but it was. But it took me years to figure that out. And that that's why I welcome the newcomers. You're going to discover some things in here. It's going to take you a little while to being sober to realize why you drank, you know, and, and I couldn't figure that out. I couldn't figure out why I drank, why, you know,

I didn't go out there till I get a rope put around my neck and be pulled up a a flagpole. You know, I was down here at a

I went fishing one time and, and, and a good friend of mine wanted to get out of Cardiff and he says, Hey, you want to come, you know, jump on my fishing boat with me and and go fishing. Or I said, sure, I need to get out of Cardiff anyway. And so we go down to Point Loma and he has his 40 foot fishing boat and we head up the coast and he had an ex-wife that there was a cashier at one of the markets there in Cardiff and he anchored off of Cardiff right where I just left. And he goes on on the beach on a, on a drunk and spends all the fuel money.

The the, the storm came up, the anchor came off the boat. It starts going

closer and closer to shore and I don't know how to drive a boat. You know, he's the captain. I'm just an engineer and I can keep it running, but I don't know how to steer this thing and I don't know how to read bottom charts. I can't take it back to point Loma try and save his his masters papers. So I'm going in circles for 17 hours and I'm talking to the to the surfers in the lineup out there in Cardiff on the reef. Hey, go find fish. Jim, tell him that the anchor came off the boat. I've been driving in circles for hours here. I don't know how long I can stay awake or and and the boat

washed upon the state beach

right there made the front page of the paper and I would buy this. You know, that's what I mean. I didn't just like lose my watch and come to AA and I now I got a BU I boating under the influence, you know, and

so I didn't really sign up for that. You know, it's like I was just going to go have a couple beers, maybe go do some fishing. And,

and so my life just got crazy like that. And, and I'm one of the, you know, I'm just one of them guys that was just lucky enough to get out of that one, you know,

on to the next adventure. And, and not, not realizing that maybe, maybe I might have a drinking problem here. Well, you know what, the marriage back to the American dream, the marriage didn't work out too well. You know, by this time there were a couple kids and my wife was a drinker and a pill head too. And, and the marriage wasn't working. And it came apart and they came apart real quick and, and my kids stayed with my, with my ex. And next thing you know, they weren't behaving too well. And,

and

it's a family disease, you know, they're experimenting with drugs and they're drinking and and they're becoming a little insubordinate shits to the point my ex couldn't deal with them anymore and made my two daughters awarded the court. And I'm out there running wild. So, you know, I don't have a thing to say about it. And next thing you know, my daughters are up there in waiting to be fostered out at a place called Penny Lane and Van Nuys. And Penny Lane is also a little recovery home for kids that are delinquents. And and so my oldest daughter, Amber and my youngest girl, Jennifer, up

Penny Lane go on to meetings and waiting to be foster home doubt will I go up there to visit them? And and the counselor there at the front front desk said, Mr. Duvall, we can't let you see your daughters. And then and I said, why not? They said, well, our records here show that you're an absent, negligent alcoholic father.

Well, that sucks, you know,

they're right, but it sucks, you know, and I got a little indignant about it and my feelings were kind of hurt and, and, and I pleaded with her and they wouldn't let me see my kids and, and so I, I didn't get a visit. And so I went back out and, and I had a big chain link fence around this place about 15 feet high. And my oldest girl saw me walking across the parking lot expecting me to visit him that day. Dad, where are you going? I said they won't let me see you. And so they're, they were a little bit, you know,

they were crying and everything. And my oldest girl, it's not this one here, but I I used to carry it to meetings. When I spoke,

they brought their big book out to the fence and said, hey dad, read this big book and maybe if you get sober they'll let you come visit us.

Do you think a God gets sober? Huh.

It got worse. It got worse. I mean, you would think that those kind of things like usually are wake up calls for, for the normal people, but for us, it just drove me into harder drinking and and became homeless. And you know, when I was chasing that American dream and I had the home in Oceanside and, and you know, I was, I was a renter in the Los Angeles area before I even came down to San Diego. I had good jobs. You know, I worked for a rock'n'roll radio station. Two of them, KPPC and KMET both of those.

Started out at KPPC and I used to swap records with the with the guy that had the largest 45 and 78 collection in the world, Bear from Canned Heat and Doctor Demento with all trade records and play table hockey when I worked at KPPC. So I was lucky enough in those days to go see Jimi Hendrix live, you know, and I saw Janice live and I saw The Beatles and I saw the Stones and, and all the greats. I got to see them all, you know,

And I'm, I'm wearing expensive suits and driving a Jaguar and, and, and I'm on top of things, except that drinking was getting in the way.

That rose right to the top. Everything I wanted to do. I mean, I had lunch with Leon Russell one day at La Brea Tar pits up on Wilshire Blvd. because that's where it came at, was when they pulled the plug on KPPC. Half the air staff went to KLOS and the other half went to K met some of you guys with silver hair, might have remembered those days, but I went with the K mat staff and man, next thing you know, I'm drinking and, and, and I'm ruining a job, you know, so the marriage is coming apart real quick. The kids are gone

and next thing you know, it's a you know from those good jobs in a marriage being intact and a homeowner and driving nice cars and wearing nice clothes and and having change in my pocket. I don't know how it happened, but

all those bumps on the way down that I was, I was unscathed. I just kept hitting these bumps and lower and lower and lower and the next thing you know, I'm a homeless guy, you know, and

I can hang with that, you know, I'm not a very good pan handler. I'm too proud to Panhandle, you know, but but I got to hustle and, and I'm a homeless guy and I'm living in my car and, and you know, I didn't realize this until I did an inventory years later. And, and I didn't realize all those years of homelessness when I was feeling sorry for myself and drinking every day and, and all that stuff that I was spoiling myself with being with being irresponsible.

Now I'll kind of explain that once I,

once things turn the corner for me and I sobered up, I had a chance to have good jobs and housing and, and relationships and I'd, I'd been such a flake for so many years. I was too afraid to do that, you know, and, and the reason I say I was, I was homeless is, you know, I already asked you guys, I, I can tell you my secrets. I'm not real proud of some of the, some of the ways that I lived, but I went from like what I thought was the top to the bottom and I didn't know how to get out of there. And I was eating one meal a day at Brother Benoit soup kitchen and selling blood,

you know, for a guy that used to work at radio stations, you know, they'd seen all the greats and had a family. It was like, it wasn't like I was ashamed, but I didn't know how to get out of it. And, and that was, that was the weird part about alcoholism that took me years of doing inventories to figure out. I, I didn't know how to get out of it because I, what I've done is I'd shaved off all the rough edges of living like that. And I've got so used to getting a meal here or a hand out here that that I didn't know how to.

I was becoming more animal than human. I lived in my car for three years after I sobered up. Now I want you guys to stop and think about that for a minute. I want you to stop and think about when you leave this meeting, you go out to your car and you take the blankets, they're in the trunk and you move them to the back seat. And then you got to go find a dark neighborhood somewhere and hope that no one sees you flop over in the back seat so you don't get rousted by the police. It's not, it's not easy being a homeless guy. And I'm not saying that because I'm a low bottom drunk,

you know? It's just that's my story and you almost have to want to live like that.

And that's why I had to do inventories. It's like I chose to live like that because you know what? If you're homeless, you don't have those damn phone bills.

You don't worry about making those stupid phone calls in the middle of the night. You got no phone, You know, registration. I had your sticker on my car

warrants you got to catch me first. I was wounded in five different counties. Just stupid stuff, just failure to appear and not pay fines and drunk drivings and, and the way that I behaved when I drank and, and so I had to lay low. And so being homeless and wanted is really scary because you kind of stick out when you're a homeless guy. You know, you always got that look. Your hair's on kind of sideways, you know, and, and your clothes are all wrinkled from sleeping in them. And,

you know, you're just leaving the soup kitchen instead of, you know, your job.

And, you know, The thing is, I didn't know how to get out of that. And some of you guys have been around the Oceanside area or over on the coast a little bit and know that right, right where Wisconsin ends. And in between Wisconsin and Oceanside Blvd. on the Coast Highway, there's an old cemetery in a bowling alley That was my home. I slept in the cemetery

and I like to say that it was quiet.

I was the first guy up every day,

but there was an old mausoleum in that cemetery there in Oceanside and had a wall all the way around it. And all the, all

the Crips had already been vandalized years ago. And so would throw my Rd. gear in one of those Crips and crawl in there every night. And every once in a while you'd have to, you know, you have to guard your stuff when you live on the streets. It's hard to believe that, but you have to guard your stuff because the, it disappears. Sleeping bags, whatever you have, you know, the cheese that the state will give you what people take it. And it's not like you guys wouldn't take it. Other homeless guys take it. And so it's like you got to hide your stuff. And so it's a real, it's a real shuffle. It's a lot of work, but there's a lot of things you don't have to do.

You don't have to pay rent. You don't have to answer to a boss. You don't have to do that phone bill. You don't have utility bills. So as I slipped into this, this whole thing of drinking and being homeless, it sounds pretty attractive sometimes, you know, no responsibility, none at all. And I didn't want to answer to you and I didn't want you to see me. And it was, it was a miserable lifestyle, not one of those lonely ones like you think it'd be. It's like, how did I get here? How can I get out of here? Always figuring out,

you know, always on guard, wondering when the cops are going to pick you up.

And I went on like that for 10 years. I was a homeless guy for 10 years before. I'm a slow learner and you know when I, when it's just all out of ideas and I was wanted all over the place. The sheriff's down in Cardiff knew me on a first name basis. They'd go Steve, they didn't want to take me in anymore. They knew I wasn't going to pay my fines. It was a good time to clean up. I do 30 days and and and get cleaned up and get fed and fatten up a little bit and it boot me back to the streets And it was just

thing over and over and over again. Matter of fact, I got sober on Valentine's Day in 1988. And the H and I people that used to come in and do H and I service over in the Vista County Jail on Melrose. There if you was doing if you was at the tail end of a of a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day sentence for drunk driving or if you had an alcohol related crime that you was doing county time for and you was well behaved in county jail. The H and I people would come over to Vista County Jail

and they'd put you in a van and they'd take you to an outside meeting. Can you believe that?

Well, that's what they did. And so my very first meeting from the H and I people that came over to Vista County Jail on Melrose Ave. took me to an outside meeting at Saturday Night Live over at the YMCA on Saxony Ave. They used to have mats on the ground there that set up on the basketball courts. And so the van from the county jail would pull up and about six of us from the from the county jail would get out and our dungarees and our green shirts and our flip flops and we go into a meeting

Greg was talking about. Each head had two eyes. It was like a million people looking at us, you know,

all these inmates walking in, you know, and

walk into me. And it was no doubt in my mind who I was going to be holding hands with at the closing prayer. You know, I didn't get to, like, pick out a pretty girl and go. I'd like to stand next to her and pray and

so another inmate I'm handcuffed to. And then they'd take us back to county jail and then, you know, a week or two later than they'd turn us loose and it'd be the same thing over and over again.

I, I got sick of living like that and I didn't know how to get out of that. And, and I was kind of wanted and, and I'd pick up little day jobs here and there and I got a little bit of cash in my pocket and a guy gave me a job painting inside of a house and he sent me to the paint store in the, in the company truck. And I think I was headed down to Frizzy Paint and,

and I took his truck and I left town,

I stole a truck and I went out to Desert Hot Springs. Well, first I went to Palm Springs and

and I was sitting down there at a place called The Nest. Just a scurvy little dirt floor bar and, and,

and this lady about

150 was sitting on a bar stool drinking and

big diamonds and big hair. And she got so drunk she fell off the bar stool. And, and a couple of the locals there went there and picked her up and propped her back up on the on the bar stool. And she dragged this phone number out of her, out of her purse. She said, call these people that it's Alcoholics Anonymous, they'll come pick me up. And so she'd totally relapse. But she knew that Alcoholics Anonymous would come pick her up. And she was staying at a convalescent home close by. And I don't know whether they came and picked her up or not, but we got her over back to her

to a Roman, the convalescent hospital. But she said if you need some help

to stop drinking, call these people. And so I did. And I was in a stolen truck and I was hiding on on side streets and sleeping in in this stolen truck wondering what I'm going to do next. No money, want it everywhere. And so I called him and I called a place called Lost Heads. Now Lost Heads is a is a recovery home. I think it's called the Ranch. Now it's in desert Hot Springs.

They had two beds

that were provided by the state. It was sort of, I didn't know it at the time. It was a high end recovery home. It was like you did if you flunked out of Betty Ford, you could go to lost heads next. So it was up there. It was pretty expensive to to stay there, but they had two state beds was part of the requirement for their state funding, One for a guy, one for a girl. And they took me and they detox me and the counselor was going through my bags and, and I was just in that days that you're in when you decide to stop drinking,

not comfortable at all. And you know what the the counselors, I, I said, you know that truck out there in the parking lot, I got here and it isn't mine. And I really should let the guy know that I have his truck if I'm going to be here for a little while. And they said, oh, make an amends are ready and I'm going, huh?

So I called the guy and I said, hey, you know what? I've turned myself into A to a rehab. And if I tell you where your truck is and you don't call the cops, that would be cool. But if you're going to call the cops, I'll just burn it. I don't care.

Didn't matter to me.

Everything in my life at that time was so disposable. You know, everything was a throwaway. And,

and so they took me in Lost Heads and I called the guy and he came and got his truck and, and I didn't play well with others and I didn't do recovery real well. I didn't understand what was going on, but I felt something different. What was different is that I asked for something different to happen and it started happening and it was almost scary. It was like I felt better health wise. I could, I'll never forget that. That had some big shindig when Betty Ford herself had gone over to the Betty Ford Center and they had pheasant and the leftover pheasant they brought over to Lost Heads.

And it's like, God, I'm in a recovery home. I went from a soup kitchen to pheasant and I go, yeah.

And

yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll mess it up if it's, if it's possible, I'll mess it up. But I, I got in trouble there too. And next thing you know, they had me at lost heads sweeping rocks across all the way across the tennis courts and the swimming pools and and then I'd sweep rocks all the way back. They, they caught me with too many candy bars. And it's like, God,

candy bars. I mean, you guys, man, I used to hang around with outlaw bikers, you know, candy bars. Give me a break. You know, I,

I left that part of my story out and, and it's not, it's not important, but at the end of my drinking, I didn't hang around with the kind of guys that, that I could come up and say, give me a hug, I'm having a bad day. You know, I hung around with the Mongols. I wrote Harley Davidsons. Yeah. I hung around with an outlaw motorcycle club and I hung around with thieves and liars and cheats and drunks and dope beans and and it's not the kind of people that you want to say I'm not doing too well

because it was a sign of weakness and he just couldn't hang around.

You couldn't hang around and say, I need help. And I wasn't raised that way. And so now I'm in, I'm in a mess. I'm in a place where I have to ask for help and I don't know how. And so there's only one person that's going to help me and that's just God that I asked to help me when I said my little prayer out there in the middle of the desert. And so it was just like it was one of these deals where they go, well, you know, you don't, you don't have to get the God thing. Just find a power greater than yourself and,

and you can make it the group or whatever you want to be. But

these people here are, you know, they're all going to have to find their own individual higher power. And, and so I did and, and I didn't think it was working. And I made it 30 days and they reviewed my case and said maybe better stay another 30. And that's good. I don't have anywhere to go, you know, well, I know where I'm going. You know, I'm going to go right back to the streets, right back to the bars and and and by this time, I'd sobered up enough to realize that

I'm going to have a car like Greg's. You know,

it's going to turn into the nearest liquor store. And they told me he said, you, if you leave this place, you won't, you won't make it back. You're one of them kind of drunks and we don't think you're going to make it. What what do you mean I'm not going to make it? So you know what? I stayed there with a resentment for a long time going. I'll show you guys. And I made it. I made it to 60 days. Well, at 60 days they started taking out of lost heads and started doing a little work for the, for the

rehab there like what they had car washes and things like that. And you bring the money back and, and so it started working a little bit. Well, at the end of 60 days, it gave me another 30 days. Now I've been there 90 days

and a guy with belongs to another program. One of our other sister programs came around and real well to do guy and he came around to all the recovery homes in the in the valley out there. And he said if anybody is looking for work and getting ready to discharge out of here, I'm opening the Oasis Water Park down here and would like you to come to a lot of applications. So I went to work for the Oasis Water Park right there in Palm Springs and

got what a great job. Walk around, get a tan and, and, and you know what I was, I was around people that was serving beer and the obsession had been lifted. And I'm making some money and, and I bought a bicycle.

You know, Palm Springs is kind of flat so you can ride in a blue. So I bought a bicycle and and I met my sponsor and he had a he had a room at his place. He was due to go in for some back surgery. And he said, I'm the maintenance man at this huge apartment complex. I'll give you a room for free if he helped me do the maintenance in this apartment building. And so he did and, and I moved in there and he gave me a room and he went to the hospital to get his back surgery. And you know, I thought

sponsors were like bulletproof, but he wasn't. And he started drinking

anyone into, on top of his pain pills. He went into anaphylactic shock and died in the hospital from using and from using the the prescribed medications and drinking. And so now, now I got to move and I lost my job and I go, what am I going to do? So I took my paycheck. And remember back in my story when I said I'd spoiled myself with irresponsibility? I've got money enough to get an apartment, but I'm too scared to do it because there's a whole bunch of responsibility that goes along with that.