The 34th annual All California Young People in AA Round-up in Santa Clara, CA

My name is Sean Christian and I am an alcoholic.

This is Eileen's first Acupa, in fact her first a A convention.

My Home group is out of the blue. It is a big book study. It is a men's meeting. It is closed. It meets on Monday nights at 7:00. It meets at the Salvation Army building on the corner of Laurel and Blackburn in Santa Cruz, CA.

My current service commitment is I am the Alternate General Service Representative for In the Hat Group which meets Sunday night at the Silk Hill Grange.

My sobriety date is May 8th, 1990.

I'm very excited to be here.

It's a it's, it's, it's a huge honor to be asked to speak at this, you know, and I'd really like to thank the host committee. It was an awesome weekend. And thank you for everyone for putting this on. It's been an awesome weekend. Thank you everyone for actually being good representatives of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't seen that many shenanigans this weekend, so it's been nice.

Let's see if we can keep that one going tonight. And you know what, thank you everyone for attending the panels. It was awesome. I went to the men's panel today. Like I showed up expecting like 20 people to be there maybe. And I had a hard time getting a chair, you know, that's amazing at an, a, a convention. The meetings have been packed, you know, and it just kind of warms my heart at an acupat. So that's awesome. It's been really good to be with all of you this weekend.

Let's get on to it.

I am the youngest child of 13 children.

It's an Irish family

and believe it or not, I have never seen my parents actually take a drink.

They were very religious, they went to church and they believed alcohol was a sin and there was no alcohol in our home and it was looked down on. I came from a fairly functional family. I was not abused. I think that I was actually shown an amazing amount of love, so I can't really point to my alcoholism and blame it on that.

My first beer, I had a sister who was five years, who is five years older than me, and she took me to a Super Bowl party.

I was seven years old. It was a Miller High life. That was before they had the long necks. They only came and the shorter necks. And she gave me that beer and I thought it was the most amazing thing that I got to drink it. You know, like, I absolutely, I heard a speaker earlier talk about the fact that she couldn't remember the first time that she had chocolate ice cream, but she absolutely remembers everything about her first drink, you know, And I started thinking about that all day and it's like, I don't remember the first time I had ice cream.

I don't remember the first time I had pizza. I absolutely remember that beer.

My parents are from the South. I was the only California born sibling and there was one bottle of whiskey in the house that was actually used for medicine. It was something that they did in the South. They put a little bit of whiskey in a small like glass and they put honey in it and lemon in it and they would heat it up and use it as cough syrup. And that was the only bottle. I eventually found that bottle.

It was hidden in my mother's closet

all the way at the top. I took the bottle, I took it out and I hid it in the woodshed. That bottle has never been discussed in my family ever. Like, I'm sure they knew it was missing, but no one ever said anything. There was just a lot of prayer in the house.

What I would do when I was young is I would go out and I would, they would put me to bed, close out the lights, and I'd sneak out my window. I'd go onto the yard and I'd experiment with that whiskey by myself in the yard. And I drank. And I drank that way until I found other kids who actually drank. And then I started hanging out with those kids.

I grew up, got drunk, and got sober in Sacramento, CA.

The first time that the first time that I really got drunk, I was Halloween night. It was with my friend Sean who lived around the corner. We actually split a paper route together. We were in junior high and we emptied out a gallon milk jug and cleaned it out. We put unsweetened Kool-aid in the jug and then we went through his parents bar and we took a little bit off each bottle, put it in the jug and shook it up.

That night we went out dressed inappropriately on Halloween night and and we were going to split that jug in between us. I don't remember much about that night. I remember there was a chainsaw. I remember there was a fire extinguisher. I think we set something on fire. Later on, I was told that it was my idea to steal the moped.

I don't even remember a moped and I remember vomiting on my friend's daddy's shoes.

I remember waking up the next day with my mother praying next to my bed and it was never discussed again.

And that started that started drinking for me. You know, I drank in the neighborhood. Sacramento is an interesting, the whole entire San Joaquin Valley is really interesting. There's not a whole lot to do for kids. You know, you drink in parks, you drink down by the river, you drink in a field, you drink in the back of a truck, you drink wherever you can drink. You know, Sacramento, we're incredibly lucky. There's this thing called the American River, right?

I guarantee you at any time of the day you can go down there and get alcohol.

Their people down there fishing, that'll give you a beard. There are people down there rafting that'll give you a beer. You know, there are people who will, you know, who are having a party that you can just join in on. At any age, it is fairly easy to find a way to get liquor.

Oh, yeah. And,

and you know, that's the way that things first started out for me.

I did a lot of things in my neighborhood. I broke into an amazing amount of houses, and never once did I ever consider breaking into a house and stealing something that I could sell.

Like it never occurred to me

in the Valley. And a lot of people know about this, you'll have a back porch that's screened in where the pool table might be or the ping pong table. And that's where dad keeps the refrigerator that he has his beer in, right? So we'd go in the middle of the night and we'd break into people's yards and we'd break into their back porches and steal beer,

you know, because that's the best way to do it. Like, why would I need money, right? I have money. Money's easy to get. Alcohol is hard to get. So we would break into people's houses, find out if they were home, and we would steal liquor out of their bars because that was the hard thing to do.

That started an interesting train of things.

A friend of mine who's not here tonight talks about something in his pitch and I'll talk about it tonight.

When I was young, my sister took me to Tower Records and I got to buy a record and that record was from a band called Black Flag.

And you know what? I went home to my skateboard and it was a Dwayne Peter skateboard also,

and I had every excuse in the world from that moment on to do whatever I wanted to.

I was young, I was a punk rock kid and I was a skateboarder, which means I can be drunk all the time, I can spray paint or break whatever I want to. And it's a lifestyle.

The more things that you do as the punk rock kid, a quote UN quote, right, or, you know, you could fill in anything in the blank there and it works is, you know, the higher and social status you get like, Oh my God, do you know what Sean did that night? Dude, he's so cool. He puked all over himself and then he went out and started a fight, you know, and like, then you're the cool dude, you know? So it was this great excuse. And I never identified drinking as a situation.

And you know what? I'm really sorry if I did this to your house, but

you know, and it could be, but you know, what would happen is we would hear about keg parties in neighborhoods, right? You know, like someone's parents is out of town for the weekend and they're having a kegger. So we'd show up to these parties and if there weren't good looking girls that we wanted to flirt with, what we would do is we would start a fight, me and a bunch of my buddies, and basically intimidate the entire party enough that we would take the keg for ourselves and leave.

So then you have like five of your buddies in an entire keg in a park and you're set. Now preferably do this on a Friday night. What happens is then when the keg is done, you can take the keg back to the liquor store. This happened in the 80s, right? You could return it for the deposit on the keg and the tap and they would give you the deposit in beer and they wouldn't card you,

right. That takes care of Saturday night.

Sunday night, it's time to go down to the river, go to Folsom Lake or go whatever you're going to do and I guarantee you, you're going to find a way to get drunk. So that went straight into high school and you know, I,

I swear to God, I thought that you had to be a jock to play school sports. When I found out that anyone could go to the tryouts, I thought that was the most hilarious thing in the world. And I was going, I'm like, I'm going to ruin your party, dude. Like, that's so awesome. I could show up and actually be on the football team. So I showed up and I actually got onto the football team, which turned out to be great because they would get drunk after games,

right? So that would take care of like a couple nights a week there.

Then I was like, I was the guy. Like I convinced my parents that it was OK to drive a motorcycle if you were only 15. And they never actually like, looked into any legality of this.

And they get, you know, they let me buy a motorcycle. So I was driving a motorcycle around the neighborhood, and I would go out and go out with my buddies in one way or the other. You know, we'd find the guy that had the parents who drank, and we were able to drink that night. And I never identified that as a problem, but it came down to it later on when I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I looked back on it. I was getting drunk every single night of the week. But I never thought about it. You know, I never considered it a drinking problem. That's what you do. You know, that's a good time. You know, the only thing that you might be bummed at me because I'm out having a good time

because you're a stick in the mud. You don't have any friends, you know? But this is what we do and we're having a good time,

so I thought drinking was fine and I did for a long time.

There's a lot, you know, I grew up in Sacramento. There's a lot of parts of my story that don't have anything to do with alcohol. We'll just phrase over that and say that, you know what, if there was something that I could get, because sometimes it's really odd to me that it's really difficult to buy alcohol, but it's really easy to buy anything else, you know? So I would do anything that I could get my hands on and that, you know, but alcohol was my true love. That is what I absolutely loved. I did not need you as my friend if I had a bottle. I did not need you if you were a girl, if I had a bottle, you know,

like, I don't care. I have a bottle. Go have fun. You know, this is what I could do. And

you know, because I came from drinking in my yard and that was a good time. Like I had fun getting drunk in my backyard on that bottle of whiskey all by myself. You know, I really don't need you. And

things got good. You know, I had a lot of fun. Like, I want to say that there were consequences, but, you know, I never really identified any of the consequences. There's a bowling alley called Country Club Lanes in Sacramento.

We would go by there and be drunk and we would steal bowling balls that were the rental bowling balls and we'd load the car down with the bowling balls and we'd drive around neighborhoods drunk, just throwing bowling balls through windows of cars.

We were talking about it the other night. Someone was talking about what a fun time it was actually being drunk. This was fun, you know, like if it's a Tuesday night, you know, you're in high school, you're 16, you want to get drunk. What we would do is we would go out and we would walk around the neighborhood and we'd steal a Volkswagen bug, right? And we'd joy ride that bug until we found another Volkswagen bug and we'd steal that bug and leave the first bug. We would do this five or six times in the last bug would end up where the first one was,

so everyone leaving their house would have a Volkswagen Bug in front of their house. It just wasn't theirs,

you know, and,

and it's totally fine to get drunk and set stuff on fire, you know, that's a good time, you know, like, if you haven't done it, try it. It's a blast

and I really thoroughly enjoyed drinking and I didn't ever acknowledge any consequences of that because you know what, I'm young, I'm a punk rock skateboarder kid. This is okay, this is all right. And then shortly afterwards, you know, I got to, I moved out of my house and I got to live on my own, an apartment in downtown Sacramento. That was a fun place. Like if you wanted to go drink, you came to my house, you know, that was the place to go. And things got really interesting

eventually.

My girlfriend that I had at the time was

asking me if I would go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had no idea what she was talking about. Like, why would I go to AA? The only idea that I had of AA was commercials that I saw on late night television for hospitals from this place called Schick, right? And they had little candles that you passed around. And I'm like, why would I go to that place? You know, Alcoholics Anonymous? I don't know. And she mentioned it that one time. And things in that relationship were kind of getting interesting. At the time, I was 18 years old.

I worked at a live music bar and I got to bar back at that bar and I thought that I had the greatest life ever. I got to drink at that bar before it opened. There were the cool bands were playing at that bar. I got to drink when it closed. I had a daytime job at the time. I had a house, I had a girlfriend, I had a car, I had money and I was partying. Things are good. Why do I need to go to a a, you know, what's the story there? And she kept asking, and

she would ask me and I would tell her, you know what? I called them up and they were closed.

And then I told her, you know, you know what? I, I called him up and I, since I don't have health insurance, I can't go.

Then I called her up and said, you know what, it's going to be really hard for me because it's all the way on the other side of town and it's in the middle of the day. So I can't go, you know, I have to work. And the excuses kept piling up and eventually she left and she actually moved in with a friend of mine.

And there came my first good, solid excuse to drink because I drank at her. Oh, yeah, You know what? I had an excuse then to drink and it was on. And I created a lot of wreckage and I was drunk all of the time, like pretty much day and night. I moved out of the beautiful house and I moved into a one bedroom apartment that I lived in with three other guys, right. And this was not a big apartment and it was definitely not nice. We actually had to keep our food in the refrigerator because it was the only

that the cockroaches wouldn't get in. Yeah, it was. It was that kind of place. Like, you shook out the sheets to get the bugs out and it was smelly. And you know what? It was the greatest thing ever. Like, look at me now. I'm a punk rock kid living in a punk rock house with my buddies, and we get to drink all the time. And no one's nagging me. Like this is awesome. I'm quitting my job, you know, like, there's no reason to go to work anymore. Like, this is ridiculous. You know, I need to really focus on what I'm doing because,

you know, and then I found out that you can buy

rice and beans and tortillas really cheap bulk, you know, like you could buy big like 50 LB bags of that stuff for next to nothing at the beginning of the month and have food for the rest of the month, right? So then all you have to focus on at that point is where you're going to get alcohol and that's the only thing you have to worry about. And you know what, you don't even have to really work that much or put that much effort into it. You could pretty much stay drunk all of the time.

There's a part, you know, I've heard lots of stories in Alcoholics Anonymous and I've read about stories in the books where people were hiding bottles because they were ashamed of their drinking.

I hit bottles all of the time, but I was hiding them so no one else would drink them. You know, that was my stash. You know, when we went out to a party, I wanted to make sure that I was taken care of on the side and I had my own bottle. So I would drink your alcohol and I would drink the alcohol available, but I would never tell you about the alcohol that I had. I knew one time I was actually working in another club and

I knew that there was no booze in the house. And I knew that all my housemates were broke. And they showed up to my job drunk. And I'm like, oh dude, they found it. They found my ball of vodka and I was just past. I was running around with a bat getting ready to cave ahead, and I was angry.

I was really angry because I knew these guys found the bottle and,

you know, I still didn't identify a drinking problem, any of that kind of stuff. I'm still living the life, right. You know, I'm working at a club. I have drunk girls that I'm making out with randomly. Who knows who they are, you know, I live in the cool house. And then came the next greatest thing. Oh yeah, dude, I started painting. Not houses, but paintings. And I was an artist, right? So being an artist, it's totally cool to drink, totally fine, acceptable, you know, And I was booking along in my life

just right. I would every once in a while go down to this coffee shop and hang out in downtown Sacramento. That's at 18th and Capitol. And then it was like one of the only coffee shops down there at the time. And there was always a bunch of guys down there that I really enjoyed talking to and having a cup of coffee with. And, you know, I really didn't know much about them, but every once in a while I'd see them out dancing, I'd see them out of shows, I'd see them having a good times. And I actually like these guys and considered them my friends.

One time one of these guys came up to me and said, hey, would you like to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with me? And I'm like, you're kidding. You're joking.

You go to A A Really, dude, I'm going, where do we sign up? Let's go to AA, You know, like, that's great.

Like, this is going to be really fun. Maybe what, you know, maybe I'll cut my hair and get a job. You know, who knows what will happen? Maybe we'll start going to church. Yeah. We'll be a good Alcoholics Anonymous people.

So I went to a meeting. I mean, I got good and liquored up and went to a meeting with him. I'm back. I wanted my buddies to go too. And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I'm like, no, who? We're going to an AA meeting, Dude is going to be

see what these people are doing, man. And I showed up and there was a bunch of people in the meeting before it started that I used to drink with. And I'm like, dude, that's where you are. I've been looking for you everywhere.

I'm like, you know, like I wondered what happened to you. I thought maybe you moved out of town. You're at this a a place, man. Rad. What is this?

And they told me to sit next to him. And I'm like, OK, cool, whatever, you know? And I didn't get, you know, the only thing I really understood that meaning is, one, there was a bunch of old people there because they had to be at least in their, like, 30s, you know,

two, right Is. Yeah. Yeah. I was 18, bro. 30 was old. Like, you should have been dead by now.

Like, you're doing something wrong in your life if you're not. And there were people who were, like, talking about how many days they had sober, you know, there are people that like, say, like, you know, hey, I have 18 days, you know, And that was pretty much the only thing I got out of that meeting other than I didn't relate to anyone. There were like a bunch of biker types that were tattooed and rough guys. And I'm like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. And I don't understand what's going on here. I'm leaving,

you know, and my friends gave me a book on my way out, right? They said, look, we bought you this book. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. And they all signed their name in it and put their phone number next to it, you know, And they got a couple other guys that I met in the meeting to do that, too. I'm like, wow, that's cool. You know, right on. I'm glad you guys do this. And went out that night and went home to tell my housemates. I'm like, dude, it was awesome. It was totally fun. There's all these freaky people there. And this guy was there and this guy was there. I'm like, we need to have a party. Invite him over.

And I didn't go back to a A for a while

and until things started getting really, really weird.

I started not feeling good all of the time, you know, and I always thought I was sick. I thought maybe I got some kind of bug or something like that, or, you know, maybe the cockroaches got in the food, who knows. And then I started vomiting blood every once in a while, you know, and I was drunk all of the time. Like, I got drunk when I woke up. I got drunk in the middle of the day. I was drunk constantly,

you know, and I just didn't feel good and I didn't understand what that was. So for some reason, and I'm not exactly sure why, I went back to that. Those same guys, they picked me up at the coffee shop and asked if we go to another a, a meeting. And I went to a meeting that was called the Primary Purpose Group. And

at that meeting, it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. There were people with like, weird hair. They were like, like real artists, you know,

they worked at, like, cool jobs, like record stores, and they went to coffee shops. And then there was this lesbian, right? She was angry. She was pissed, right? She was small and angry

and and she used and she used profanity and God in the same sentence and I'm like this is it toad? I like wow, this is awesome. This is so much better. I must went to the wrong AA before, like this is the right place. So

I'm like, that's it, dude, I'm joined a, a like I'm into these people, man, they're awesome. And and so like I went home and told all my housemates like, dude, I'm going to stop drinking. This is going to be great. You know, I got the calendar off the wall and I marked off the day that I went to the meeting, you know, and I'm like, stoked, OK, I go to bed tomorrow and I just wake up and this is what I do. I mark off another day on the calendar, right? And then probably like day three came along and who knows what happened, but maybe it was somebody's party. And it's like, oh, you know, dude, I can't, I can't flake on my bro, dude, it's his.

We have to get drunk. So I would get drunk and I'd, you know, wake up with regret and I'd show up, you know, and the next day I'd call up my friends and be like, you know, can we go to one of those meetings again? I'd go to the meeting. I would smoke a lot of cigarettes. I would talk to a few people and decide that I wasn't going to drink again. And I'd come home and I'd start marking days off the calendar again. And I did that for eight months. And it was terrible. And it was awful. You know, I all the sudden

decided that I had a drinking problem and I didn't know how to control it,

you know? And it was really humiliating, right? Because I'm the cool guy. I'm the fun guy. Everything's great, right? And I can't figure out how not to drink. And I started doing weird little things, right? It's the heart, it's the tequila. It's the vodka. That's my problem. You know, I need to drink beer. If I just drink beer with the Bros, it's good. All right, that didn't work, you know? All right, let's go back to just heart alcohol and not mix it with beer.

Didn't work. Still ended up getting drunk. Then I started. I swear to God, I wanted this big kick where I was going to drink wine,

you know, like I'll be the sophisticated artist drinker and I'm drinking wine and and I still ended up getting into the same places. You know, I would end up having a beer at the beginning of the night. And for some reason, I have no idea why, but it was my idea to throw the bus bench through the window of the building, you know, and everyone told me it was me. And I'm like,

so came up with this new theory. Like, I don't know how many people remember this, but they used to have these TV shows called ABC

After School specials, right? And I'm like, that's what we're going to do. We're going to have an ABC after school party and we're not going to have any boos, right? And this will help me not drink. And I really have no idea what happened at that night. But apparently it was my idea. Someone told me this. It was my idea at some point in the night to spike the punch because it would be really disco. And that would really make it an ABC after school party,

right? I woke up the next day, oddly, to my mother coming over to the house to clean it.

And

yeah, that was a scene. And there were like drunks all over the place. They were like scammering out when they saw my mom. And my mom was like, you know, your friends are very rude not to stay and help clean up, you know, and they're all freaking out because my like, 60 year old mother is there. And

yeah,

and I was done.

I had taken my housemates that I was living with to a a meetings at the time because they were the ones getting me drunk. Like, if they didn't drink right, then I would be OK. Like, I need my Bros to get sober. And I started taking them to meetings and they all stayed sober and I ended up drunk and I was pissed. You know, I'm like, oh, no. Because then it became an ego thing, right? They had more days than I had, right? And I'm like, oh, this, that's hammered.

So I started convincing them to get drunk with me. Like, no, dude, we need to get drunk, you know, come on, come on, Dri is in town. Come on, we have to go get drunk and go to the show. Like, you know, what else are you going to do? And they stopped talking to me and hanging out with me. They wouldn't even talk to me when I was at home. I'm like, this sucks, right? So I couldn't convince I could could Three of them actually stayed sober for a good little chunk of time till they decided that they weren't Alcoholics. And

I went to an A a meeting again and I wasn't going to go to the cool meeting that I liked with all of my friends. You know, what I was going to do is I was going to go to the old people biker a a meeting, right? And it was this place called Group 3. And

and there's like, OK, like, I need to figure this entire thing out. I keep hearing people talk about the sponsor thing. I need to figure this out. There was a dude in that meeting that had a mullet, right?

He used to live in like Kansas or Nebraska or something like that. He drove an orange Datsun B210 and he really, really liked the band Rush.

And I'm like, you know what, you're it, dude. That's absolutely like, will you be my sponsor? Because at the time he had the blazing amount of time that it amazed me. He had eight months of sobriety, right? If you could do this for eight months, I absolutely want you to be my sponsor. Because these other people over here that have like 15 years, they're not Alcoholics, you know, they have a bunch of time. They they haven't drank in years. They just need to move on, you know,

like, is this some kind of like weird like social club for them? Is it they don't have any friends,

you know? Is it they don't know how to have a good time? Do they not have a family? Is it a church thing? I don't know what's wrong with these people, but they need to move on, right? Because they're not drunks if they haven't drank in that long. Eight months. Dude was. Yeah, you're my man, right? Let's figure out how this thing works. And that was May 8th, 1990. I have not drank since the day that I asked another man to sponsor me.

I don't know exactly what I bit off in that situation, but and I didn't understand what sponsorship lineage really was at the time, but he happened to have a sponsor also and his sponsor was not a guy with eight months. It was his sponsor was a different type of guy. So

he invited me over to his house, said, OK, showed up. He had brewed a pot of coffee, set out some water.

There was a lot of literature there. I was like, weird man, What, you know, are we going to college? What's all this stuff? You know, he had a dictionary that was very old and very large. He had a pen. And he told me to bring that book that I got at that meeting that I went to. And I brought the book with me. And he said, OK, this is what we're going to do. You're going to read this out loud to me and where it says pray, we're going to pray where it says, right, we're going to write. And what we're going to do is I'm going to show you this exactly the way that my sponsor showed it to me because my sponsor said that he was teaching

me to be a sponsor. So I'm going to teach you the same way that I was taught. And I'm going to teach you how to be a sponsor. And this is how you take someone who's new through the steps. And where it said pray, we prayed and where it said right, we wrote and things were good through those times when I thought that there was absolutely no way that I was going to make it or I had to either like, I don't know, join a church. Like, I was still pretty convinced that everyone in a A was terrible and really boring and I really wasn't interested

other than this one group that I went to and then actually my second Home group, which is the Wednesday night McKinley Park Young People's meeting.

Trust me, you might have liked it now, but back then there was like eight of us and we're all sitting in a circle and we were really bored of each other's story.

Like, wow, OK, we've all shared and there's still a lot of time left. What are we going to do?

I think there was a scene too, for a while where we actually couldn't pay the rent and we had to meet in the park in front of it. Like we were actually meeting on the grass because the meeting couldn't pay for the rent. Like we're meeting in the parking lot, you know? And I started hanging out with some of these guys from these meetings because I didn't know what else to do. And I didn't know how not to drink. And what I didn't know is these guys were 12 stepping me. You know what? There were guys that let me sit at their house all night long, no matter how crazy I was. And they would watch movies with me. They'd smoke cigarettes with me and they'd take me to coffee shops and they'd let me sleep on

pouch. And the next day there would be some guy that would pick me up and take me to the coffee shop again. And we'd hang out at the coffee shop and he'd take me to a meeting in the middle of the afternoon, right? And then all of a sudden that would roll into going to another meeting at night, which would roll into sitting at somebody's house and watching a movie again. And the entire process kept going. And all of a sudden, I found out that I had 90 days. And the only way that I got 90 days was because other men and Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step me. And if I had to do it over again, I would

absolutely go to a detox. I wouldn't do it that way again,

but there's a lot of men that I absolutely owe my life to and I have no idea why they were even helping me other than the fact that they were probably just told to carry the message. You know, maybe they were looking for that fellowship to grow up around them because there wasn't a whole lot of us. And it was an amazing experience and one that I started sharing inappropriately before I got very far into the steps. I started going to parties and we called it 12 step jumping. We were finding our friends who were still drunk at parties and taking them to a A like, dude, that's what we have. We're like four of us. We're sober now.

We're gonna get you sober too. It's awesome, right? And we would take them literally from these parties, like sometimes physically dragging them out of parties and take them to our house and then show up to a meeting the next day with them, right? And

and my sponsor, God bless his heart, was like just amazingly tolerant with me. And I have no idea why. You know what, I don't think there was anyone. Like there might have been a few people and I just thought they were being mean to me. They told me, but man, I was just crazy. Like I was smoking through the entire chair. And then as soon as the smoke break came, I would come back into the meeting and start sharing about my life like in just vomiting all over meetings, right? And saying, like, I, I didn't even have a clue what the solution was

yet. And, and then all of my friends started doing that too, right? They all started coming along. And none of us really quite understood what was going on. And we were just vomiting all over meetings, like constantly talking about the bizarre wreckage that we were getting into. And you know what? People stopped going to those meetings eventually, You know, they're like, yeah, wow, this meeting is terrible. Look at all those guys in the back row. And that meeting actually moved to one of my buddy's house. And then one night we took a group conscience to either have the meeting or to watch The Simpsons,

and it never met again. So that was the end of that meeting.

Recently I heard that it actually was restarted, which I think is awesome. And

my sponsor showed me how to, my sponsor showed me how to do a fourth step and we did it right out of the book. And you know what? I was going to do the best, like the biggest 4th step ever. Like this was going to be a novel. This was going to be War and Peace. I was going to impress all of Alcoholics Anonymous with my 4th step. And like, I was just writing about everything, man. I was writing about the guy that worked at ampm down at the corner when I was in like third grade. That was mean to me or something. And

my sponsor looked at it and he was just like, what are you talking about? And literally through the whole thing away and made me start writing it again in front of him,

you know? And I'm like, dude, that sucks.

I'm like, you know how long I worked on this thing and then all of a sudden I was done with my 4th tape in like 3 or four days. I was done with it, you know, And I was like, oh, because I had to write it in the same house as him and he wouldn't. Like we were having an appointment where we were going to meet and basically it was just him coming over to my house and going now, right? You know, and I had to sit in the other room, right, while he was watching TV or something and write my 4th step. I'm like wow, this sucks.

God bless that man. He was kind. He actually took me to Santa Cruz, CA. We went to a meeting that night that was actually in the hat. It was at a different location. And that weekend he took me to the beach and I did my fifth step with him and we were right there on the beach. And it was one of the most amazing things. He he had me go out and he had me think about those steps that I did and he told me to make sure

that what I did was right and he told me to look at the book and review it. He told me to come back and we did the 6th and the 7th step

and then all of a sudden we took everything out of that first column in that inventory and said this is the beginning of your 8th step list. Now let's start adding to it. And I got through the steps that way and things were good and life got good, you know? But

all of a sudden I came up with the idea that I need to find myself in the 11th step. Like I need to get closer to God. So I moved to El Paso, TX.

I'm going to go to the desert and find God.

And I got into this thing that now I refer to as the 11th step groove that that was the only thing that I was doing was the 11th step. You know, I was going to meetings and I was getting spiritual and I was getting God and I was doing all these things and I absolutely ignored my daily program that I was supposed to be doing. You know, I was in the 11th step and things got strange. I moved back to Sacramento. I'm like, wow, the desert sucks and like, there's nothing but dirt here. And

I moved back to Sacramento and you know what? My life was really starting to get good. You know, I got the girl

and then I got the job and then I got the house and then I got the car right and things are stuck. So, you know, I'm going to like two meetings a week. I'm doing all right. I'm kind of involved in AA. And then all of a sudden I started my own business, you know, and work was rolling and my life was going on. And these are the promises coming true in my life. So I started going to a meeting about every two weeks, you know, but that's OK because I'm hanging out with all my AA buddies, you know, I hang out with a, a people every single day and I fellowship,