The Primary Purpose Group in Oslo, Norway

I should tie myself so that I don't actually

go over, but I'm extremely happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation to speak and

program

the number of minutes again,

202530

30-40. All right, great.

Hey, head to Josh. Yeah, Also alcoholic.

I I'm really honored to be here today. It's,

it's a huge thrill for me because my, actually, my, my forefathers come from Norway, which started my interest in coming here. And

they came to the US into Canada 3 generations ago. And I was very close to my grandmother who passed away

six years ago. And just before she died, I was going through with her her family history and growing up in this small town

in, in Saskatchewan where it was all Norwegian immigrants. And

she mentioned

a brother of hers, which I had never known growing up and I'd never heard speak spoken of in the family and was basically an unknown to me in my in my life. And then she revealed that that Uncle Donald was an alcoholic and who had been, you know, from a, from a young age, boisterous and spirited young man

on the prairies and

had discovered alcohol. And he was, you know, she didn't go into details about his story, but she ended up by saying that they put him on a one way bus to Vancouver where he died on Skid Row, Skid Row. And there was no, there was no Alcoholics Anonymous available to him. And I was, you know, I'd been in the program a while at that time, but I was shocked that my

dear loving grandmother would put her brother on a one way bus

to unknown destination and a horrible fate.

But that is exactly what the family at that time had to do. And I have no doubt that I'm a drink away from that same fate because without this program,

I'm there's just no alternative. Found out along the way that he had been treated in asylums where he was put in that bathtubs and received electric shock therapy. And the kinds of alternatives that exist for people like myself

and that are still being widely employed.

So I'm extremely grateful to have another alternative, you know, and to have a, a home wherever I go and, and people who, who I can connect with and, and, and enjoy the fellowship and find a softer, easier way to stay sober. I was raised as a child of the hippies

and you know, my, my grandfather died very young and my mother's life

and I was raised by her and my, my, my in Canada. And yeah, I enjoyed a very interesting alternative

lifestyle in terms of drugs and and alcohol were widely available and people were experimenting with all kinds of stuff. And at six years old, we moved down to to Boston, where I met my father for the first time and lived out in the woods, spent some time in New Hampshire living, you know, with the TP set up and growing pot in the backyard

and people doing all manner of activities. And

yeah, I was, you know, this little scamp running around in the woods with my dog and was not, didn't, wasn't expected home, you know, had a pretty free reign of it would. And it was great. You know, I, I, I enjoyed the freedom of, of my childhood. And but then one day they came along with the bus, the school bus. And they said, OK, you get on, go on to this bus here. And they let me off at the school and

it was a small town in in New England. And all the kids had shaved heads, really short cuts. And they had a little crocodiles on their shirts. And they all had their stuff together. And I had cowboy boots on and a vest and hair down to here. And I said, I think I got off on the wrong spot. And I don't think this this place,

not sure about that. And it was not a very successful experience in school.

You know, I always experience driving around. If we saw the police, you just kind of duck. And, you know, and when I saw the when I saw the teacher, I just kind of saw the same thing. I said, OK, I get it. And that's the teacher there. He's that's like the cop. All right. So, yeah, I didn't have a lot of skills for or training for dealing with, you know, what I consider this very weird

society. And

it was not very happy. And you know,

that that. But when I was in 6th grade, I moved back up to Canada. I moved to this town called Calgary. It's a little, it's actually bigger than Oslo. I mean, it's, it's a midsize city. And and I got to reinvent myself as a kid. And a part of that was I got to get a hold of some pot, got to hang out with a group of kids who I could tell right away we're doing the kinds of things I wanted to do. You know, they just had that certain attitude, that certain look,

saw things the right way. And yeah, it was, was great. You know,

I felt that actually it helped a lot. It helped me to fit in, felt like I had, I was able to become, have some popularity or some social skills

got into, you know, minor scrapes, breaking into things and busting car windows and just trying to steal, steal little things. Just being a goofball and, and partying on weekends and having that relief. I mean, I just when I picked up the first drink, it was down in my toes.

It was on. I just was like, you know, solution check. That was all I needed. It was.

I had some pretty bad scrapes my first time out, ended up totally bombed and getting home and falling down the stairs and all this stuff. But

it was pretty much on. And my friends got into, you know, pot was right at the beginning, but really got into LSD and yeah, they were. They, you know, we really just sort of the same vein of, you know, this whole, this whole government thing, this whole school thing, you know, pretty much anything I could attack, be negative about,

you know, I just didn't really have any

grounding in terms of,

I kind of had a sense that I was kind. I really did. I really felt that I was kind and there was something authentic about people that I would look for. But all of the other stuff, you know, the good and the bad and the rules and all that stuff, I was extremely oppositional,

ridiculously oppositional. And

yeah, I mean, again, though, the alcohol was a great, great thing for me. And I got some of my best friends in high school

and we're still close and none of them are alcoholic. And,

you know, without it, I don't know exactly what it would have happened. I was, I was pretty tightly wound. So, you know, I'm not sure. And I, I don't, you know, I don't want to close the door on that chapter of my life. And it was a wonderful tool. And, you know, I, I think from the beginning was an alcoholic, but I wasn't experiencing the consequences.

Well then and I went then I started going, then I went to college and then I pretty much, I turned a corner because I got involved in,

in the commercial side of the, of drugs. And that what that did for me was basically cut me off from any kind of mentorship or guidance. So you've got the youth don't take advice shirt here. And you know, I, I wasn't at that point, I was, you know, 18I. I basically, I wasn't taking advice. I had my own program. It was the Josh program. And you know, that's, that's pretty much what I was doing.

I didn't.

I dropped out of school my first year. I was very heavily into drugs and alcohol. I followed a band called the Grateful Dead.

I did pretty much anything and everything I wanted to and, you know, wasn't, wasn't very successful in relationships, wasn't in terms of friendships. It really was kind of tough for me to establish. And

so basically at that point, I think somewhere around there, it really,

really became kind of like, you know, the switch would go off and I was out and if the switch went off, it didn't matter where, when, you know, I wasn't going to be, I wasn't going to slow down. And,

but I ended up moving back to Canada where I got back together with a girlfriend who I'd known in, in high school. And we ended up, ended up together and, you know, God bless her. I, I, I don't know how or why, you know, it says something in the book that we have an earning capacity above average, which I, I'm not quite sure about that one either. But also this idea that we have tracked of wonderful women in our lives, which in this case is absolutely true.

But

you know,

I really didn't have any maturity. I didn't understand what it made to be, what it meant to be make a commitment or what it, you know, I didn't know who or what I was doing. I was, I was lost and I was grabbing onto life preservers. And, and we did get, I proposed that we were married. And when I graduated from college, we moved immediately to Taiwan, which, you know, as a young single person with no prospects and a lot of debt, that's, I don't know. That's the first thing that occurred to me

and we immediately had a child, which again, you know, her parents were shaking their heads on that one. And I was I was doing my own thing. So I, you know, I, I it seemed just par for the course for you know, where this is makes perfect sense. Looking back at it, I realized none of this stuff is in any how to books where young people,

you know, it was amazing. We got out of there alive. It was, you know, stayed there three years. I started a company

and I had my first experience with Alcoholics Anonymous there because I had some big jackpots. I mean, I was incapable of, of being a, a, a faithful husband. And, and I realized that one point that I was absolutely, you know, that I was screwed, that that alcohol owned me, that if I picked up, I was, I was gone. And I had an uncle who on my father's side of the family who was in the program more than 20 years now.

And he had, he had taken me to meetings a long time. And he had sort of, you know, he had, he had identified me. He had helped me out. It saved me a seat. You know, just come along, we'll show you. Just, just just take a look at nothing serious. But I reached out to him and he, he actually met up with me in in Thailand and brought me a big book and, and introduced me to this program.

And so for a year, my first year sober was in Taiwan, no meetings as a part of Taiwan. There was no no meeting at all,

no English speaking meetings that I was able to find. And I had a big walk and I had a lot of fear. I had a big jackpots and I pretty much had identified that I was screwed. But you know, a year later, I had the most successful year of my life. I started up this company became quite successful. I was, you know, on top of my game. And, you know, guess what, started thinking it's really a good idea.

Well, I don't like grab some beers and, you know, actually, no, you know what? The first thing that happened was someone brought me a ball of hash and,

you know, I said, oh, well, I never really had a huge problem with that. So, you know, next thing you know, I'm burning every single morning and, you know, doing my thing and, and well, a week of that and it was maybe 10 days of that, I said, well, this is stupid. I mean, you get that. It's kind of harsh on the throat. You know, I need to put that down with something.

So that put me on a long run. I mean that just, you know, and of course immediately everything started going sideways in the business and everything else. And so I ended up back, we ended up back moving to Boston where I thought, okay, well, can give this a, a thing a shot again. That worked really well.

Let me just see how I'm doing here.

So that up until that point, I really hadn't dug into the program.

I had had some white knuckle sobriety. Basically. I tried workaholism is what I was doing in Taiwan. I was just workaholic and investing a lot of time into this, and I still hadn't really patched up relationships. I hadn't learned how to be a father,

you know, There was still some major, major issues. I was reading the big Book regularly though, which you know, is is incredible

piece of literature. It's not a program by itself unless you work it, but it's that's what's my introduction. But when I got back to the States and

I knew a friend of mine who had been in the program, and he brought me over to the first meetings where I got where I tried to get sober and it was a clubhouse. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't a program. It was a clubhouse. It was folks. And yeah, the clubhouse is cool. And, you know, it was some of the people to meet. And I had just moved from Taiwan, so I didn't know what was going on.

I went once a week. I asked for a sponsor of the group. I didn't get a sponsor

and I just kind of thought, well, this is, you know, this is this program isn't that good. I tried that. It probably went three or four months, but ultimately it was even less successful than when my ass was on fire because at least then I had I had some, I had something some burning sense. In fact, I think I had a higher power in my for that year. I mean, it was really the only way that kept me sober. And

so

went out again at that point, I've got a, you know, four or five year old girl.

I'm married. I managed to get a job as a teacher in Boston public schools and I'm living about 45 minutes to an hour out of Boston. And

it's a, it's a, it's a long commute in, it's a long day teaching in an inner city school and a long commute out. And basically

I, I, I went in,

did my work on the way out and then I tried to walk from the train station home without picking up a package of, of, of alcohol and it was impossible. I, I basically, I, I really changed my style of drinking. I was a spree drinker. I would go out and go crazy and not come back for three days, you know, and at that point I put enough controls and limits on myself that it just became a maintenance, you know, daily maintenance.

But boy, you really can see it. You know, you can really I can feel it in my bones that there was,

you know, I get off the bus and I'm in the train and I was just like, you know, there's really I could tell there was number way I was going to make it to my house without picking up. And I just became a daily maintenance drinker. I would drink to pass out.

You know, I was completely absent as a father. I had a lot of anger issues at that time as well, and as I've always struggled with that

and it was a it was a very slow

was basically a slow, slow death, but it kind of looked all right on the outside. It looked like always pulling nine and five is working hard. People didn't see what was happening on the inside and see the the yelling, see the feet and see the

see the fact that I knew I was beat and I was running through just running through the motions. You know, I as in at that phase and in other phases, I could always do one thing well. And so then if I want to talk to some of my uncle, you know, my father and my uncle or someone in my life, I would just tell him about the one thing, you know, I wouldn't mention all the chaos. And so I kind of think, you know, that was to the degree that I was a functional drunk, it was I could be doing this one thing. You know, the fact that well, you know, seems like relationship with your daughter kind of sucks. Well,

I'm doing this. Oh, OK. You know, And then later on, oh, I'm being a great dad. See, I'm doing this stuff here with my daughter. Yeah, but, you know, you're not paying your bills. Like. Oh, well, you know, I'm not really thinking about that now. I'm being Mr. Dad. You know, I could always kind of do one thing and fool myself into thinking that somehow I was keeping the show on the road, but I was just fooling myself because, you know, it was just a sinking ship and my body was falling apart. And

I really didn't have a terrible, terrible

last. I mean, I put so many controls on myself. I didn't get Duis, you know, I wasn't doing drugs. I didn't get, I didn't get picked up for stuff. I would get to work really early and sometimes find myself puking off the getting off the tee and looking around to see if any of my students were getting off the same train as I was. And I felt about that big, you know, less that they see Mr. Lawrence coming off and,

you know, saying what's going on with him, you know, but

the the last day of that

was and along the way at that time, I tried many times to stop. I had New Year's resolutions. I had some really nice charts with, you know, working out a number of drinks of water and all kinds of little things,

you know, but without this program, for me, it was just, it was just nothing stuck and.

The last day that I had a drink, it was, it was a Saturday, just a typical night really. I drunk myself, pass out. And next day I had a basketball game, which I play on Sundays, which starts at 2:00. And I was, you know, I probably got out of bed at 12 and I just reeked of alcohol. I was playing, you know, if you've had just

vodka coming out of your pores and you just have that very distinct aroma.

And I'm on the court and I kind of know everyone's like, what the hell, what's going on with this guy? I, I got, you know, I took a break, went to the bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was 10 years older than I look now. I was just, I was just falling apart. And I realized that, you know, I was

this thing absolutely had me, it owned me, and I was going to just be on a sort of autopilot till I died, until I fell apart, you know, and that that's basically that bottom. And I got in the next day into my first meeting. And that was

a different meeting, a meeting where there's a lot of focus on the program. I immediately got a sponsor, a group of guys about 12:15. Guys that did a 12 step program were sort of my Home group was essential for me to hear from other men in this program what it means to work the steps. You know what that actually looks like when you're at work, when you're in your home, when you're dealing with your parents and your siblings and your wife. And

that really made the difference. And it was a couple guys who came in around the same time I did

and who I could see because I looked at, you know, this guy Joe, who, you know, Joe looked like he just came off of a spy novel. He was all huddled up and had this cap on. And he's this Irish guy and, you know, looked kind of looked like a mobster or something, you know. And six months later, he was, he was smiling and, and he was, you know, had to see sparkle in his eye. And it was for him that I kept coming back and

and, you know, slowly but surely that

that that was that was it. You know, my, my, I got a sponsor who spent endless amount of his time and energy, you know, was available at all times, went through some professional things.

But basically what happened was

I, you know, my life just took off, absolutely took off. It was, it's, it's been just a complete,

you know, blasting it to the 4th dimension for me. And I think, you know, I don't know, I really can't explain it except for a higher power in my life. But you know, living life for me when I pick up when I'm drinking and trying to do this thing is, it's just, it's, it's like trying to win a marathon with, you know, your, your, your legs tied together. It's just, it just doesn't work. You know, I can't do it. And once I picked up this program and started working with some

some guys and working with

a sponsor, you know, it just, it's been incredible. So I went from that teaching job.

Actually, I just started a PhD program. You know, four years later, I was doing a postdoc at Harvard. I was, you know, my career was

blasting off

in terms of my relationship with my daughter. That took an awful long time. I think anger was a huge and continues to be a huge issue for me. And, you know, making amends and apologizing when I'm, you know, make mistakes has been like, that's just the go to for me in terms of my relationship with my daughter. And, you know, today she's she just arrived here on Saturday. She's here with me,

have a, you know, phenomenal relationship. She attended my last time. I took a chip last year. You know, I just, I don't have the skills to do fathering. I learned those all here. It's just, you know, that's probably the hugest one that you just get to this program because it's the most important relationship I have in my in my life,

my relationship with my wife.

We amicably separate or divorced or divorced. Like, I guess it's been, it's been

more than a year since we've been divorced in a couple of years since this process has gone to get, you know, gone started.

Talk about miracles, you know, amically mediated separation with someone, you know, having loving parental plan for your daughter, being able to work together to do things. I mean, I, I'm looking to fight every time. And you know, I've somehow managed to have this, this transpire where we've been able to to move on and, and

still have a great outcome for my daughter. It's,

you know, that's, I think that's it's mind boggling. It certainly was nothing that I accomplished. It was only by being at in this program

and you know, now I'm here as a part of my visit to Oslo because I've had the experience of meeting someone new in my life. And, you know, I don't know where that's going and I don't, I don't need to know. But the, the, the thing about this program has been that if I had told, if I had set a list of what I want it when I came in,

it would have, I would have under shot

what the program has been because I couldn't even imagine what the program has given to me because I didn't even have it in my vision to know what kinds of, you know, satisfying, what a satisfying life look like. I mean, I just didn't have that vision to see that my relationships were not there, you know, and that where, where things could be in my life. And I just try to remember that. I think that's really a huge centering piece for me is that, you know, I know, I know don't need to be the director,

but it's, it's just that it's not just because that's self-destructive, but also because the gifts of this program and where I'm supposed to be, not for me, but for service, for what I can do in the world is way beyond what I can imagine, you know, and I just need to be allow myself to show up and be present and to do the next right thing. And, you know, that's basically my job for the day is to, you know, to, to, to do the next right thing for today and not get to wound up

and where things might go because

at the end of the day, I am just one small hog. You know, I'm one of seven billion of us on the planet and

that's pretty much all I need to handle is is my side of the street. Today.

I just like to say a little bit about service in this program. I've been extremely lucky to work with or to, to, to be a part of a Home group in Irvine, CA, the Solutions group, which meets every morning

at Mariner's Church. And there's a group of guys there that, you know, together they, they help me stay sane and we help each other stay sane. And we stay very close, very connected. And you know, it's the program has allowed me to see other people come in here and struggle and be successful and,

and there's nothing that beats it. There's nothing that beats seeing someone

bloom in the program and to be able to

unconditionally love a group of guys you know, and, and see them support each other and feel that support.

And yeah, how am I doing on time here?

Yeah, good. More,

I think I'll take a wrap there. Thanks.