The 12 step convention in Reykjavik, Iceland

Hello, I'm Brendan. I'm an alcoholic.

I just want to start off just saying thank you so much. Steini picking us up at the airport, making that easy, Thor hosting us, putting us up, terrific house Awesome and Gooner are helping out put this all together and meeting us up. Meeting up with us and I'm probably telling Terilyn their names. Terrible.

Forgive me, I'll slaughter them. I know. No Icelandic. Not even swear words. So sorry. And John met us up there at Akaviri. Did I say that right? We got one, right? Anyways, so my sobriety date is October 18th, 1991.

I, I, I'm not that old. I did get sober young, but we'll get to that. So I just want to start off really talking about

where I came from and you know, kind of the family and the household where my where a lot of this started. And I'll be clear up front that my family isn't the reason I'm an alcoholic. Circumstances didn't make me an alcoholic, but I think it is important to talk about some of that stuff and where I came from because recovery isn't just about physically getting sober, right?

Separated from alcohol, sobriety really is about beyond that. What happens after you stop drinking

when you're sitting in the rooms and your head's spinning and you're going crazy and you're sitting there at night wondering, God, am I ever going to not wish I was dead? You know, and going to meetings, going, this is supposed to work. This is not going to work. You know, seriously, right? You know, and sometimes going to meetings and feeling worse than when you first came, you know, and wondering if this is the solution, I'm screwed. And so with my family, I come from a large Irish Catholic family.

I have four brothers, no sisters.

You didn't have any girls in my family until I started having kids. For like 75 years. We used to joke that we assimilated women in the family. There's nothing but daily boys. There was never daily girls. We married you into the family if it was going to happen. So my my family though on the outside and the reason I talked about it, we all come from different backgrounds, different households. Sometimes things look crazy on the outside and they are crazy on the inside. Mine was a little bit like that, but everything looked really good on the outside.

I mean really good on the outside. Everything looked like it was normal. My dad was an attorney. He was a Notre Dame graduate, University of Notre Dame Law School in Iowa. It was a city attorney in the city I grew up in Redmond, WA, which you guys might know that place from Microsoft. It's for Microsoft headquarters is in Redmond, WA. So that's why I grew up and my dad was a my dad was a drinker and my dad would come home from long days at the office and he had these mug, these little glass jars, his little Scotch glasses and stuff.

And he would throw in a couple ice cubes. He'd throw in a little bit of Scotch. He'd start drinking. And with dad, you didn't know what you're going to get was either happy go lucky drunk or the evil violent drunk. And you really didn't know which one you're going to get. So as a precaution, you pretty much we just kind of hit. We just would go to our separate rooms or separate areas. We'd leave, just get away because things usually didn't go well with dad when he once he got home. The thing I didn't realize is that my dad had been drinking throughout the day when he was coming home. He was just putting a Topper on it, right? Topping off,

I thought he had just taken a little bit. To me, it looked like he just drank a little bit and got that loaded. One of my first memories of my dad was waking up in the middle of the night to my mom crying and screaming and my dad going by my doorway with my mom by the end of her hair like a caveman dragging her down into the bedroom and throwing around and beating her and telling her, 'cause she made a mess in the bathroom and just was just berating her up one side and the other. And I didn't know what to think about that. You know, I was five years old. I just sat there clenched and

next thing I know I woke up in the morning. I was still tense and I remember going out in the kitchen

and there's my dad with his briefcase, his three piece suit. He was getting ready to go to court that day, normal day. Mom had eggs and bacon and pancakes going and and my mom, you know, my dad was like, alright, see you later honey. OK, have a good day at work, you know, honey. And little kiss and goodbye like nothing happened. Like nothing happened. I'm just thinking,

did we not just have like wild caveman fighting crazy stuff last night? You know, like, I'm pretty sure I was there, you know, and but I'm five years old, I don't know. So I'm just sitting there. I'm just, you know, in shock, you know, eating like, OK, this is I guess this is what we do with life. If something like that happens, we just shove it away. We just, it doesn't happen. If we don't think about it, it never happened. And so I learned these tools early on. We just shove it down. We just bottle it up. We bottle it up. And the problem with that is that if you are, even if as a kid it doesn't matter, it's not easy to,

it's not hard to see that keeping those kind of huge emotional traumatic events just bottled up inside eventually just gets tighter, tighter. At some point it's going to blow. And my brothers, there's a lot of violence there. My brothers starting when I was about four, I used to sit downstairs and they, they throw punches at me and teach me how to fight. And they'd say always hit them twice and twice as hard. And they, they trained me right. Like basically the training was try to stop us from kicking your butt.

If you're successful, you're getting better.

If not, well, you'll be crying. So, you know, it's pretty much how training went, you know, and, and so when I walk home from school, my brothers would say, see that kid up there, go punch him in the face. And I'd be like, what? You know, like punch him in the face. We're going to punch you. I'm like, Oh my God, I don't want to punch him in the like, punch on. OK, So I go up and I remember, I remember going up to this kid and I'm like, I'm so sorry. He's like, why wait for this? You know what? I punched in the face and he's crying and I'm crying and I feel terrible. And I run around the other street. He goes up and I I'm hiding

bushes and there he is. My mom's out gardening flowers. You know, it's a beautiful day. And are you my mom thought, are you OK? This little boy is there you Brenda Daly's mother. Mother. Yes. He punched me the cooks over and there I am in bushes kind of sneak around. I'm not very good at it. Like, you know, I've never been good at hiding and, you know, whoop my butt, you know, maybe apologize and all that. And that's kind of how you grew up. You know, with my brothers, there's a lot of violence and we used to, it was not abnormal

to run around the house and and I was number 4 out of five. So they were bigger than me. So I grabbed a fire poker, you know, and I just start swinging it at him, you know, anything to keep, keep him away. And I, I started grabbing butcher knives and this one time my brother Brian started to run for me because I grabbed a butcher knife. And when we did that, I wasn't joking around. It wasn't just like dramatic, like, oh, butcher knife. It was like I'm going to kill you, you know, and meant meaning it. And I remember he went around the couch and I hucked that thing.

They went butt over tip, butt after tip and it just just went around to the couch

right behind his head, just hit the wall. And if I had backed it out, it would have just stabbed him right in the head. I mean, it was one of those throws, like I couldn't have done it a million times. I could throw it a million times and would have done that. That time it was perfect. And it landed in that minute. I was so scared. I just remember when I let go, I thought all I could think of was like, Oh my God, that's a perfect shot, you know, And it was it was perfect, you know, and, and he rounds the couch and in that moment hear it. And Brian looks looks back at me really quick. It's a moment of opportunity. And I look at him. I'm like, that's right up to you. You know,

I was scared to death, but seeing my family, you capitalize on anything like that to put security in front of you that kept me safe. Do you see what I'm saying? Like my tools for living was this actually was not a bad thing. These things were things that allowed me to feel safe and protected. Because if I if people thought I was crazy and psychotic, they wouldn't come near me. And if they didn't come near me, you can't hurt me

and I'm safe. I have a natural instinct to my human nature that says I need to be safe. I need to find security. It's just completely twisted and it's warped and it's just, it won't bring me any, won't bring me any unity with you. It will bring me disunity with you. And when I'm in disunity with you, I'm not in unity with God. And when I'm not in unity with God, I'm dying on my own. Even when I'm surrounded by 1000 people in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous,

I'm dying. I'm unbelievably lonely. But you wouldn't know it.

You would not know it. And the first time I ever drank, first time I got it done, I stole a bottle of McNaughton whiskey from my friend's, my friend's mom's pantry. She came home in the house and took this bottle and put it up in the cupboard like she always does when she comes home from the liquor store. And I remember, I don't know why, but this thought just pops in my head. Mike had to go back to his bedroom. She had to go do something else. And I was alone looking at this bottle. And in my head it just said you should take that and go hide it.

And my head said, yes, that's a good idea. And I said, OK,

it's one of many ideas that happened that I shouldn't have listened to, right? You know what started there? You know,

And So what I did is I remember grabbed it, I shoved it on my pants and I ran out the door. I don't know why they weren't around, but we showed my pants anyways. And So what my head said to do, and I ran out there and I put in the bushes. And then I ran back. And I remember running back, sprinting back and sitting down in the kitchen. And she came out and it was just in time because just about 10 seconds later she comes out

and I'm sitting there and I'm because I'm dying. So just sprinted and sprinted back and and I was in good shape. And, you know, and she, she said she's looking around. She grabbed her glass. She's didn't. I just. Did you see me put away the grocery? Yeah. Did you see a bottle there? Like, no.

Then we she kept looking. And then, of course, like we always do, I tried to help her find it.

Yeah, right. We never did find that bottle,

strange to say. We never looked in my pants or the bushes, so you know,

anyway, so you know, that would be a good place to look anyway. So never occurred to her. And so anyway, so Mike gets trouble. She thinks he just stole it. She's blaming him, yelling at him. I know it was there. She had the receipt and everything 'cause it's a separate receipt from stores. Prior to recently, we always had separate liquor stores that were separate. Now they're in our grocery stores. Back then they were separate. So she had her own receipt for it. So she look and I'm like, I don't know. And so I was told to leave. So I left and a couple weeks later we're sitting out at my friend's house. Joel in the summer

and you know, they said you got any alcohol? I said, yeah, you know, actually I got a bottle. So I ran and got it and I brought it up there and Mike was there. Actually that was the kids place where I stole the bottle from. And Mike was there, remember putting it on the table and he goes, you, you, it was you. And I'm like, hey, sorry, man.

That's our that's our early form of amends, right? Like amends when you're drinking looks like this. Oh, sorry bro,

you know and whatever and you know, and he was mad for like a second. He's like, whatever, let's drink, you know, and

so I grabbed these these glasses because I remember my dad had the had the had the routine, right, had the ritual, the glasses. And I told him we need, we need a shot glass. We need, I know we need that. I didn't know anything about drinking. I know we need a shot glass. That's about it. And we have shot glasses. I, I ended up with this thing. There's these restaurants around us called old spaghetti factory and not very good, but there are many ways. They're these tall glasses, skinny ones, and I just started pouring them 1234 just Downing them Downing I'm Downing them and I'm, I'm not, I'm just holding this gasoline basically down on my belly. I'm just

holding it down. And I remember I drank about 18 or those or whatever it was, but I basically drank in a rapid succession, 3/4 of that bottle of whiskey. And I'm sitting there and I'm pissed because my dad used to take some drinks and I'd see him get something right away, not knowing he'd been drinking all day long, right? And so I said this stuff doesn't work. I must have got the wrong stuff, you know, And but I'm pissed. I'm like, this stuff doesn't work. I can't believe it. Just I just put myself through tasting that junk, holding up my belly

throw up and nothing even I didn't get any benefit, you know, and remember stepping up and it was this one step up to the next deck towards the door. And it was just like in that 3 seconds, it was like,

I remember struggling to get these words out. Something happening now

and I felt like, you know, the best way I can describe is when that alcohol goes down to your belly, goes to the base of your spine,

slowly comes up your spine, all the way up back, your neck, top of your head, and feel your scalp tingling and Combs your hair back. And you're like, you know, it's like you feel alive, you know, And I remember for the first time in my life, you know what I felt like. I actually felt like at peace. I felt at ease.

Alcohol was a solution to how I was feeling. I was so tense and so wrapped up like this. It was like a cork just had let loose. And it was like, oh, you know, I could breathe for a minute. I felt soaked. And then after about a minute, maybe less than that, I black out. I don't remember hardly anything. I remember I was outside crying. Apparently. I don't remember this, but I guess I was sobbing. I wish I was like, oh, I was the awesomest drunk ever. I was so cool, you know? But I was crying on the doorstep of this house

because I couldn't tie my shoes

right. I'm just like,

I thought it was like 10 minutes. Apparently I was crying for an hour

and the sister, the older sister that lived there, the boyfriend was one that threw me out. He was annoyed with me. Get this idiot out here. He threw. He literally picked me up and threw me out, thinking I would just wander off in the darkness and go away. I did not move, I couldn't move. I couldn't go anywhere. I was just rolling around.

I can't do my shoes, you know, and God.

So I'm walking around and they have this bright idea. Let's take her to Heather's dad's house. He's an alcoholic. He'll know what to do.

This makes sense to 13 year olds. So they're taking me along. They're trying to help me and, and my friend Mike, who is still there with me, helping me, he was helping me and I was falling down so much. I kept hitting my head. There was parked cars, I was running into parked cars. And I was like, I just couldn't, I could take a few steps and back and they were trying to help me and I'd be good for a while. And then I just, I just fall down and they'd be like, oh man, oh, it's getting hurt, you know? And Mike went in the garage and he came running back. He stole a motorcycle helmet from somebody's garage

smart guy. And he put this, he couldn't be picky about sizes of helmets. So we had an extra large helmet and and I'm 13, you know, not much shorter than now. What am I saying? Anyways, So he puts this helmet on and it's like almost out to my shoulders. You know, overall it's like, you know, but but it puts this thing on and and you know, when I was a kid, they had these little toys, weeble wobbles, right? These little top heavy things. You could move them around like a lot of fun. I became a Weevil wobble because every time that thing went forward, I would die forward if it if it's lit

helmet slid to the right. They get me up and say, you know, and I was just I was head diving everywhere. But you know what, I wasn't getting hurt. I had a helmet. So they were like, now he's fine. They just stand me up and I go for a little while I crash and they just and I got the Max down so I can hear my own voice. I think it's the best thing on the planet. I don't know why that is for Alcoholics. We get drunk, we hear our voice. We think it's like, Oh my God, it's music.

We need to share it with the world, you know? And so I'm sitting there and like Luke, use the Force,

everything stuck men, everything Star Wars were drunk. I don't know why that is either loud in Star Wars. And so they're like pulling up the mask going shine like what they're like, geez, put it back down. Because in my town after 9:00 PM back when I was growing up at 9:00 PM, everything dead. There's nothing, everything is dead. There's not a store open except for maybe a 24 hour convenience store. Nothing. And I'm screaming, you know, it's like 2:00 in the morning. And they finally get me over by Heather's dad's house. And right before we get into their their little street right there,

they had another awakening. And they said yes. Might not be such a good idea, you know, And I can only imagine what that would have been like, you know? Hi. We know you're a town drunk. This is our Freddy's our friends wasted. What do we do?

How would you like some kids coming to your door on your how you're drinking? Hey, we know you're an alcoholic. You're screwed up. What do we do with this guy? You know, And if you weren't aware of it, you would be then wouldn't you be? No denying it at that point.

So they get me back and they do what I call the junk dump. And the drunk dump goes like this. You get your friend or relative or whoever the place they need to be and you escape before seeing being seen. You just dump them off where they need to be and you're out of there because if you're associated with what's going on and what's happening, it's not going to go well. So my buddy Mike shoves me in the downstairs window of our house and just throws me in there and I kind of stumble in and I'm so loud. He bails, he goes later, boom, he's gone. And

my brother Brian comes out

and I had, I had this girl on my mind for my school. Her name was Buffy, literally

the whole thing. She was blonde, well developed, beautiful, and I was thinking about her apparently, and Brian came out, my older brother, the one up for me, number #3 out of five. I gave him a big I called him Buffy and tried to grope him and kiss him.

He did not appreciate that. My feet stayed planted. I bent all the way over the couch like Mary Lou Wren or, you know, like the gymnast, you know, just woo. They pulled me back up and

my mom comes down and she's like, you're drunk, Jim, Jim yells. My dad, your son's drunk. My dad, which one, you know, and

swear to God, you know, and, and I got up there and I kind of recollect getting up there and I kind of was in and out, you know, and I remember being up there and I don't remember this. Apparently I've had Buffy on my mind again. My dad got close. So I tried to grow up and kiss him and called him Buffy and went above, you know. And like I said, I wish I was a better drunk, but I was a slobbering, whiny, nasty, stupid drunk, you know, just annoying,

you know, the kind you had to babysit. Those guys suck, you know? And you know, when I woke up in the morning and think about that is that's my first time drinking ever. My first night I, I woke up feeling great, you know, that I did no hangover. I was like, woo, all right. That was, oh, oh, I'm in trouble, you know, And I remember my dad having a talk with me and just said, oh, you got that out of your system. Well, don't do that again, OK? Or at least we'll get caught, you know? And you know, it's like, OK, dad, you know, well, he's an attorney, right? So he's thinking, you know, legal stuff.

And no one went to jail that night. No one died. Nothing happened. Bad in my book, right? I had some funny stuff happen. My friends told me about it. And you know what? Beyond that, though, I felt like I could breathe for a minute. And I after that, it was basically just go time. By the time I was 14, I had stolen a, a keg from the battalion Fire Chief up the street

and we turned in and we, and so I had my own keg at 14 and

I'm an organizer and I had a guy that was 21 and he would fill him. He would get all the profit and I would drink for free. It was a great arrangement. I wouldn't call it a relationship. It was an arrangement, you know, and but I was married to alcohol from that point forward because all I could think about my mind, all it thought about was, man, I can't wait to the weekend. I can't wait till the Friday night Keger. Let's have one on Saturday too, right.

And what would happen is during the week, we would have the leftover alcohol and we'd store it because I was the one that owned it. I'd store it and I'd go over there and I'd, I'd drink stale beer. You know, it's like if I could pump the, the keg there and tap it. And, you know, at, at the time I was, you know, she was about 30. Yeah, about 14. Still, by this time it progressed where I was drinking within a very, very, very short period of time. I started drinking during the day.

I started doing other things outside alcohol

that kind of helped. It was convenient because I could smoke it, but it also helped me control my alcoholism where I could drink more. I found other things that allowed me to continue my drinking.

One of them, you know, one night I'll remember this is I stole our car a lot. My family, we had a couple cars and one of them I stole a lot. And I remember pulling up to this house and I opened the trunk and we were, we'd still liquor cabinets. We'd go in people's houses and while they slept,

well, it's better that way. It's convenient. So they would be sleeping and we would go in and we would take the alcohol, we put it in there, then we drive away and we'd have just just get drunk. I'm not even licensed yet. You're not allowed to drive where I'm at till you're 16. My first car wreck, I'm at 14 years old. I was actually sober then.

Well, I wasn't drinking and I crashed the family van. My parents were on vacation. I wasn't even supposed to be in the house. And I remember seeing the woman's face in slow motion just because she was like smiling, waving at us. Then she didn't went to this, you know, the scared look and I just went bam. I remember seeing the glass and I was just like my heart and I was like, Oh my God, my buddy behind me goes punch it and we took off and she was injured not not severely, but she was injured. Her car was was not drivable. I ditched the car, I wiped it down. I ran home in a path

don't know through the woods. Only a local person would really know that. And and I got home so fast. They had police runners because they're trying to figure out if it was me. They, they had these two different routes and it would take too long to get to where we're at because we ran through and got to my buddy's house where I was supposed to be saying. And then I ran to my mom's house, my parents before they got home the next day and I, I faked a robbery and and I covered up what I had done. And this is the type of stuff I'm doing at 14 years old. I'm already I'm conniving. I'm

thinking of things like this. I know how to cover my tracks, you know, if they, if I don't get caught, it doesn't exist, right? If no one knows, it's OK, you know, And I'm bearing stuff down and bearing the stuff down. And I'm telling you, that woman's face, it haunted me for a long time. And I mean a long time. And I won't, I'll never forget the day when it finally came out. And I just, I finally just, I, I rarely cried, but this, I remember when that happened, I just broke down. I was like, yeah, it was me, 'cause I somebody else had found out somebody else had found out somebody else because, you know, when you're 14,

you know, and eventually it gets back, you know, it's like no one's good with secrets. So it got back and my family confronted me and, you know, that was done. And I remember sitting down with my dad at his law office and I remember him calling the police chief. Well, actually it's the, it was the King County sheriff because where it happened was in the county, wasn't in the city. So my dad was best friends of the police chief. He was best friends with the mayor. I grew up sitting on judges laps in Seattle in Supreme Court stuff for the local area.

And so he knew a lot of people. So my dad called him up and said, hey, you know, whatever Bill where his name was, this is Jim Daily, blah blah. They were, they knew each other.

He told what happened. And you know what? I wasn't in a a yet. I wasn't in amends or anything like that. But he told him what was going on and that he figured out what had happened. And you know what? I had no consequences because they'd already closed the file. They'd already paid the lady, the insurance had already paid. She was already done. It would have caused him more problems and paperwork than was necessary. And he just said, tell your kid he's the luckiest 14 year old all King County. And he hung up and that was it. That was the end of it,

at least I thought. Funny how sponsorship changes some things.

I did not like that stuff. But anyways, we'll get to that. So, you know, that's that's all my time. I'm, you know, I haven't even gone to my first dream in center, you know, this stuff happening, you know, and

my brother Brian goes to treatment one day. My parents were totally unaware. He went to him and said, look, I got a real drinking problem. I can't quit. He had his friend with them and that's a lot for a kid to come to them with. No, he wasn't in trouble, nothing. He just came to him and said, look, I got a real drinking problem. I also got problems with cocaine and some other things. You just start, you just came clean with everything. He just started listing everything he done. And my mom just sitting there just sobbing. And she's like, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God. You know. And

so he goes to treatment. And I remember my parents went away for a family weekend, they call it.

And family weekend is where you're they go away and they learn about the disease of alcoholism. And my mom went away, my mom. And by the time that weekend was done, my mom came home and she was a different person. And my mom was on a mission. And when mom gets on a mission, it's not always the best thing because mom was yelling at me going, I know what you're doing. I know I'm like, what am I doing? Like, hi, welcome home. You know, and you know, I know you're not swimming at the pool every day. That's not why your eyes are red. And she's, you know, like just berating me about all this stuff. And I'm like,

oh, you know, jig is up, you know? And because at that point, she just saw what she wanted to see, you know? And that's just how we were, right? Let's just look at the perfect family, you know? And at that point, it's like a bomb went off of my family. You couldn't deny. Where's Brian? I mean, oh, he's taking some time off.

I wasn't gonna work, you know, He was, he was young, you know. And so my brother Brian went to treatment. He went to this thing called wilderness survival. He comes home. And I remember my brother Brian walking in. My brother Brian had this look in his eyes I had never seen in my life. I can't explain. It actually freaked me out a little bit. For the first time ever, my brother looked at me and smiled and said, hey, Brendan, it's good to see you.

I, I mean, I looked at him and I just, I literally took a step back and he's, he laughed. He said, it's OK, man, I'm not going to hit you.

And I was just looked and I was like, are you OK? He was man, yeah, never better. It's really good to see you. I love you. And I was like, whoa, whoa, don't go to treatment, you know, kind of thing. And, and I gave him a big hug, you know, and I was like, but it really freaked me out. I mean, I, it really did, you know, and we didn't do that. It was, it was violence. We communicated by violence, silence and some other things, you know, and

you know, my house, it was like the pecking order in this ladder, you know, it was like older brother come home, my dad come home, yelled somebody, Bam. He'd hit somebody a lesser of power, Bam. Hit somebody, a lesser power Bam. All the way down to me. I'd hit my little brother Kevin, beat on him, and then we'd find Kevin sitting there grabbing the dog's hair, going

swear to God we hear the dog. What are you doing? He's like

poor, poor Freckles.

Brittanys Freckles committed suicide.

That's a true story. My dog had finally had enough. She laid behind my moms car and let her run her over. Swear to God, no, don't worry. I'm over it.

I dug the grave. I buried her. My dog committed suicide. I mean, that's pretty bad.

Screw you humans. I'm out of here, you know? And God, four freckles. I love that dog. She was such a good dog. She took a lot of beatings. I'm sorry,

it's really not funny, but it's terribly funny.

Sorry. Oh, I could just see my little brother. Oh God, the red headed psychopath, you know, and oh God, anyways, so, oh man. So

you know, he goes to treatment and I don't I don't know how to deal with this kind of stuff. And my reaction to that, it was the most bizarre thing I went to. I went and I just felt like it's like I couldn't, I didn't have any alcohol that day and I couldn't, I couldn't put the lid on it and I was just going to explode. And, and what happened was like I was saying in school, like people stayed away from me because I was a little guy, but I was a little scrapper. And I'm not not a big guy, you know, but I'm just saying like I was crazy. Most of my fights were one punch just psychopath fights. You know, they're just like Bam, knock them out later. You know that was it. You know

this one guy came up to me after this and said he started starting some stuff with me. I said not a good day dude, not a good day. Punched me in the face and I hit him and I broke his jaw and he dropped and it took two teachers. I blacked out. I used to black out in fights. I don't understand what that they well they diagnosed me later. Don't worry, I'm safe now, but they said I was Mac depressive bipolar with disassociated of whatever right. I was on my way to a good case of sociopath. You know, psychopathic behavior. But

it took two teachers to tackle me and take me down and

and I didn't know what was going on. I don't know why my reaction to my brother going to treatment or that stuff and what was going on my house. And they suspended me for one day because they figured out what was going on at my house and everything was in turmoil and they let me come back. Another guy,

another guy, I will get into the men's stuff later, but you know, I hit him and and knocked his teeth out and, and it was $3653 in damage. I remember that because my dad let me know

emergency dental stuff and

yeah, but that's kind of how my life was going and I got busted one day, one more time. And this time it was that one that I just explained to you where I had that that that amount. What they did is they created this law where if it was over certain threshold dollar wise, usually if you don't hit them in the face and you just hit them in the body and they had that much medical bills that meant they were in the hospital for a little while back then. It wasn't really designed for this one punch fight thing, but because of the damage, it put it at this Class A felony they're trying to charge me with. I would have got

if I pointed a gun at him and said I was going to kill him. Put it in context for you. Right? And so I was looking at mandatory 6 months lock up the facility and my school took the time, the teachers took the effort and they actually a ton of kids during 5th grade one day wrote letters on my behalf to the judge

crazy, you know, and they said, please don't lock them up. We know what's going on, you know, and they wrote all these letters that, look, he's a good kid, He's just, he screwed up. And they kind of explained some things to him. And, and it was, I never expected that, you know, I didn't expect anything. And I remember going in there and he, he gave me the six months, suspended it and, and I'd gone, my dad said, you should go to treatment, it'll count it as time served. And so I did, I went to my very first treatment center, you know, and I already gone to outpatient with my brother and hung out with him.

And but my only impact, my only introduction to AA at that point, which is kind of going to some meetings. My first a, a meeting ever was like 8 guys in this little church in Redmond, up in the upstairs. And they all talked about stuff, you know, like this Grant, I mean, crazy stuff that I hadn't even done yet. And so I thought, well, I'm not as old as them. They've done some crazy stuff. They've had wives, plural, and divorced. I've never even been married yet. You know, like these guys are way out there, you know, and I mean, I'm 1415 years old. This isn't going to work. I'm not

these guys, not one of these guys. I got some problems, but these aren't this isn't my people, you know? And so I go to treatment Lakeside Milan recovery center. Part of that treatment is wilderness survival. So I go out there 21 days and wilderness survival is basically I'm the only volunteering voluntary one. Everyone else is from jails. Or you could sign your kids. Literally if your kids were bad, you could sign. This is crazy. Back then you could sign ownership, basically custody of your kids over for this short term period. It was created by a lawyer. And so they

get you in the middle of the night. You'd wake up to these two big guys and they, no joke, man, they would grab you and they put you in handcuffs. They'd say you're coming with us like mom, dad, you know, and they, you know, like my son. We love you, you know, that kind of stuff.

Bye, Jimmy. Come back good, you know, and that wasn't going to happen, you know, But I was in treatment, so I was voluntary. And I remember getting off the plane going. They grabbed me by either arm when I got off the plane, you know, because when they pitch on the plane, take the handcuffs off back then they could walk you all the way in.

And then they you didn't even know you're going, you know, I knew because I was volunteer. These guys even know they're going like, where am I going? These guys come from LA, from Louisiana, all these crazy places and they didn't even know they're going to Bliss, Idaho. If you know where Bliss, Idaho, there's like nothing and there's like you're flying in the middle of nowhere and there's sagebrush desert, not a lot going on and country roads, you know, and they didn't even know where Idaho was. And I think, you know, so we get there and I get grabbed off the plane. I'm like, I'm voluntary. I'm voluntary. Sure you are, you know, and

literally there's God. They take me in this white van. We go out there, we strip down. It's jail basically. So we strip down. We have to do the whole, you know, hair cost, the whole thing. And then they give us these clothes to wear for 21 days. And we hiked sun up to sundown every day, sun up to sundown. And every night I dig a shallow grave. And every night I put rocks in there. And I start my fire with bow drill friction. And I build a little fire and I spread the coals and I bury the dirt so I can survive. Because if I didn't do that, I'd freeze to death. Because in the day it was OK. But at night it got really cold. It was High Plains, desert,

and we were starving out there. We got little rations like a couple lentils, rice flour, oatmeal, powdered milk, 6 billion cubes and some raisins, right? For a week. There's a week for you. And so we make things like ash cakes, flour, a little bit of water, make it doughy, throw some raisins, you know, And that was like, we would trade with that stuff that was like raisins were like, we're like gold. And we would save up, you know, and be the envy of the place, you know, and

crazy. It was like Lord of the Flies, you know, and

yeah, you're crazy and but yeah, I got someone I out there. I learned to trap things. So it's all natural material. So Cliff, rose, Cliff bark, you know, wind it up, make some thread. I took a rock, some sticks and, and put it in there and twined it around anyways, with a little Raisin and a mouse came along and, you know, you get them. And so you gave the mouse to me,

cut him, he take his fur off and took us. I just roast on my stick and it tastes like chicken with laughter. Taste of liver. Just in case you're wondering, I don't suggest doing the city, but in the desert, they're very, very clean. They're one of the cleanest animals. I'm trying to convince you of eating mice. I know, but

I don't want to be alone.

Eat mice with me, please. Anyways, we have. We'll have mice tasting after this. So right. It's an American tradition. Please. I insist

even there they're looking at me going. So anyways, so we get this medicine pouch and a rattlesnake vertebrae. You know, I put this thing in there and I don't know these in Native American culture where I'm, where I'm from, you don't, you don't tell people what's in there supposed to be like this thing, like from the spiritual world kind of thing. You put stuff in there and you don't share what that is. I didn't know that I'm coming back.

Well, I'm telling everybody, you know, right. And, and I come back from that thing, you know, and I've been in the desert for 21 days and I found God, you know, and I come back to meetings and, and,