The Jaywalkers Roundup in Richmond, VA

Relate, Marshall notated. Make sure I knew

he's the a police.

He is. Marshall. They're talking about you up here.

If you're here last week and you left a big book, we have a big book here.

Jeremy would use it. Is it yours?

Welcome, Black, back

in black.

So

our main speaker is out here from Colorado. I was really excited that he was coming out and I've done Kevin for quite a while now. I want to say six years. Is it longer than that?

Longer than that? Longer than six years? Yeah, it feels like it. But he's a very good friend and

we have the same or had the same sponsorship lineage for a very long time. And he's done a lot to help me in my recovery. And when I was out in Colorado last year, he was, he was very good to me. I was very, very sick physically and he took really good care of me, so

I'm really excited that he's here. I can't wait to hear his story. I haven't heard his whole story, so I've just heard part of it because the tape that I was sent cut off.

I, I hate when that happens. So I've only heard part of it. So I'm really excited. I'm really glad that he's here at my Home group. So please help me welcome Kevin Peak.

Thanks a lot.

Hi there. My name is Kevin Peterson. I'm an alcoholic. So where did the tape cut off? I'll just pick up there and the hell with

the rest of them. My sobriety date is May 5th, 1991. I have a sponsor. His name is Jack. He has a sponsor. His name is Jerry. I haven't talked to my sponsor for a couple of days, which he'll love when I call him tomorrow and tell him that that's part of your format. His sponsor, Jerry is a great man. I love him to death. And the last time we were all together,

Jerry put his arm around me and he said, you know, Kevin,

it's your job to keep Jack sober. And they laugh hysterically.

I said, and you're doing a great job. And I thought, oh wow, that's really cool. And then it took me a few minutes. I'm like, hey, that's not a compliment.

So I have AI have a great sponsor and he has a great sponsor. And I'm very blessed to be part of the lineage that Val is talking about. I'm very fortunate to be here and I'm very thankful and thanks for letting me speak or ask me to. And thanks, John for putting up with me for the weekend. We'll see how it goes. You know, trying to behave myself. And I guess my subject tonight is me,

and it's one of my favorites. And so

away we go. I don't see a clock anywhere, someone going to, I have a phone. But is someone going to kind of clue me in when I'm or I'll just notice when you're all kind of like shaking in your seeds and oh God, enough. I grew up in Palo Alto, CA.

It's a interesting little town. Back then it was just kind of a fun little college town. We have no idea. It was soon to be the center of the computer world.

I definitely, I, I, my mom and dad are still married,

have a younger sister. I grew up in what is commonly referred to as a nuclear family. You know, there was, it's just a regular average all American family. We had a golden retriever, We had a pool, you know, the whole deal.

I definitely started hitting sips off dad's drinks when I was younger and I can remember opening up his beers. Remember back in the days when Coors beer came with the two holes and he had to pop? OK, good. I see some old folks, that's good. And, and that was kind of fun as a kid to try to pop those beers open and I'd shake them up and give them to my dad and ha, ha.

And so, But I'll tell you where the drinking really took off for me. I was 12 years old and I was in the Boy Scouts of America and I belong to a troop that went camping every other weekend and then went out in the Sierras over the summer

for these

two or three-week trips hiking. It was, it was stunning. It was beautiful. But I also noticed that there was this group of older guys that always got to camp a little bit further away from the parents than we did.

And they were always hooting and hollering, having a great time. And I just knew there was something cool going on over there and I'm cool. So I got to get in on that.

And when I got old enough, I think I was 12 or 13, some of the, you know, the 14 or 15 year olds kind of initiated me into the gang and what they were doing was drinking and some other non conference approved things. And, and I thought I'm in on that, you know, and I hit drinking and I hit it in stride. You know, I, I remember, I remember drinking at that age, that middle school age 1213 and 14 thinking where has this been?

You know, I mean, my God,

I you know, I needed this in kindergarten. You know, I just, I really did. I loved it. I just took to it like a fish to water. You know, I don't understand people that I hear in a so like I don't even like the taste of alcohol. I'm like, I love the taste of alcohol. I loved it all. I love Night Train and I love the expensive stuff. You know, it didn't matter to me.

You know, I, I just

just dug it

and, you know, it's, it progressed through high school. I was an athlete and a fairly decent student and I was a fairly decent kid and I didn't get into too much trouble. I kind of got on the the sort of dance on the edge, but I was living with my parents and I was living in a very controlled environment, you know, and there wasn't

there wasn't that much of an opportunity to sort of go over the edge,

you know, and really, really get out of the norm. And and so, you know, when when I look at the big book and when Bill has is talking about, you know, this the phrase he uses, I have arrived. You know, for me, that was high school. You know, I love saying that I drank normally from 14 to 18.

You know, you tell that to non drinkers, non Alcoholics, and they're like, huh, what are you talking about?

But that's where I could actually control my drinking. You know, Bill actually talks about that and he talks about how he had a time in his life where he could actually

make his, his social life work, his personal life, work, his business life work and he could drink and, and it worked out just fine. It will as far as he thought, you know, and that for me, that was that at 18 years old, I went off to college. I went to the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles

womb and that's where the wheels came off. You know, I loved it. This was the best thing that ever happened to me. I'll give I'll tell you two stories about college. It's very important to me not to spend a lot of time talking about drinking. I'm going to take it for granted since we're in an, A, a meeting that you all pretty much know how to drink, you know, but you might want to know about how at least how I stay sober.

I, my first week at school was the fall of 1982

and back then the, the guy that started Apple computers decided to throw a three day party and it was a concert called the US Festival. And you're probably don't remember that, but I don't remember much of the doctors, to be honest with you. But all my buddies in my dorm were like, hey man, we're going to this concert and everyone's going to be there. It's going to be 250,000 people. And that was the weekend of freshman orientation. You know, that's when you're supposed to go there and find out where your classes are and learn all the right stuff about

be a good student. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm in. Let's go, you know, And I just went, we were drunk and stoned for three days straight. And I was just like, I love college this wrong. How many more years did we get to do this? Sweet. This is great.

And

I had an unlimited supply of money. I come from a fairly well off family and I had an unlimited supply of alcohol and and drugs. And it turns out in college there's a fairly unlimited supply of women too. And, and I love that, you know, that was fantastic.

So my freshman year, one of my buddies, one of my best friends actually pulled me aside. He said, hey, you know what we ought to do for fun. And I was like, no, what should we do for fun? And he's like, you know, the graduation ceremonies are coming up

and we can walk through graduation ceremonies. And I was like, how the hell do you do that? You can't go through graduation. He's like, oh, yeah, you rent the cap and gown and you got, all you do is hand the guy a piece of paper and he says your name and they give you this empty diploma holder. There's nothing inside of it. I checked it out. And I was like, oh, wow, that's really cool. We didn't do it, but I stored that information because if you're the kind of a student that I am,

you know, I, I recently had to pull my transcripts because I'm in Graduate School now

and I'll get to that. But I, I, I got my transcripts from and I, I looked at him and, you know, it started off with bees and C's the first semester and it kind of just took a nosedive after that, you know, I mean a serious nosedive. So after six years of college

and, and by the way, USC is private and so that's, that's an important part of the story. And back then, this is in the early 80s, this was 25,000 a year, you know, so my dad was writing a check and that would have, that was a fundamental. But after six years, I decided I graduated and and

so using the knowledge I had for my freshman year, I ordered up the announcements, I ordered up the cap and gown. I had all my family fly into town

and yeah, it's funny now

when my parents 2000 miles away and I walked through graduation ceremonies and I was easily a year and a half short and

yeah, I,

I walked through the I don't know why I'm laughing. It's really not fun.

I walked through the ceremony. The ceremony was Thursday at 9:00 in the morning or 8:00 in the morning and in Los Angeles in May and it was blazing hot and I had been drunk for three or four days till to go into that. Now,

there are times when my drinking where I got drunk on purpose because I knew that was the only way I could get through the day. And that was one of those days. I knew what I was doing was a sham. I knew it was the biggest lie I've ever done in my life. And I knew my entire family and friends and network was there to see this. And I was just, it was AI was a fraud, you know, and I want you to hear that because that's pretty much how I lived my life.

What you saw on the outside did not match what was going on in the inside,

and it was probably a lie. You know, it wasn't just a spiritual difference. It was just an actual outright lie of who I was.

So I faked my graduation from college and started an illustrious career in bartending and and AI, created my own multi level marketing home pharmaceutical and entrepreneurial situation and and I was a terrible drug dealer. I lost money.

You know how that works, that I was just horrible at it. And then

but

you know, I did that for three years. And so

by the way, I'm going to stop just for a second and let you know I have a Home group and my Home group was called Denver Thursday night. We meet in Denver on Thursday night at 8:00. And we actually, this is going to really shock you. We meet in the church basement and it's, we have a meeting at 6:30. It's called the beginners meeting where somebody goes through the four or the first three steps in four weeks,

they do powerlessness, unmanageability, and then the second step in the third step in each weekly kind of roll through it. And that's an open meeting. And at 8:00, it's a closed meeting and there's about 120 people that have been coming to our meeting. And it's awesome. I have to tell you, I think it's the best meeting I've ever been to. And, and if you're ever in the area, I please invite you to come and let us know you're there. We'd love to have you.

Wow, why did I jump tracks there? OK, well, whatever. So

I'm bartending and dealing drugs and losing my ass in the process. And I,

oh, that's why I was telling you that because our format is we have a call up podium meeting like this and you're given 7 minutes to talk about what you are like, what happened and what you're like now. And someone like Val sits right here and they have a little sign when you get to 5 minutes and it says warning, you're at 5 minutes. And then it turn around, it says you're at 7, sit down.

And so I'm going to tell you what I was like, what happened, and what I'm like now. So now you've gotten a very good idea of what I was like.

What happened was I was at a family reunion in San Luis Obispo, which is about four hours away from where I grew up. It's a beautiful part of the country, by the way,

recommend you visiting there. And

I was drunk all weekend, of course. And one of my other, my cousins was there and he was drunk too. And we had the time of our lives. As a matter of fact, he and I peeing all over ourselves. That's always fun. So. But I just want to let you know what kind of drunk I am. I'm not a pretty drunk, you know. And

so at the end of this weekend, my dad pulls me aside and says, hey son, how about we drive home together for the four hour ride? And I was like, Oh yeah, that sounds great. Dad. And I should have smelled a rat. But he, we got to his car, his brand new BMW and he threw me the keys. He's like, why don't you drive? And I was like, Oh yeah, sure, no problem. And I really should have smelled a rat at that point. And we got into the car. We get on the freeway and the 1st 5 minutes he pretty much hits me with, you know, you're my only

and I love you, but I don't believe a word out of your mouth. I think you're a liar, a cheating, a thief. The family's pretty much had it with you. Your younger sister who used to idolize you, hates you and doesn't want you around anymore. And, and by the way, and he, he has my key ring in his hand and he starts taking off the house keys. You know, I didn't live with them, but I had a key to the house and I had a key to the cars. And he starts taking that stuff off. He's like, you're no longer welcome in our family

and you're no longer welcome in our house.

I thought, wow, 3 hours and 55 minutes to go,

this is gonna really suck.

And you know, I did what all Alcoholics do, you know, you, you paid us into a corner and you put the pressure on us and man, we turn into weasels, you know, and I started squirming and I started coming up with an ideas and, and negotiating and trying to figure my way out. And evidently he had been primed for this because there was no negotiating. He had just locked it down on no way.

So we, you know, drove the rest most of the way. Silence. You know, me fuming and got home

and I did what all true tough guy Alcoholics do. I called mom, you know, I was like mom, dad and mom was in on it, you know? And mom was like, well, honey, I think if you agreed to see a therapist with him, he might loosen up a little bit. And I was like, OK, sure, no problem.

And so we started, my dad and I started seeing this therapist together and,

you know, it went really well. And I'll tell you what was interesting is that I actually started to sort of confess my sins and cleanse my soul in the therapist office and really get everything out on the table. And my dad did too. And it really went well. We had a great time. That was in October, and we kept going all the way through

May, and

my folks went out of town for my mom's birthday.

And the therapist is like, well, hey, Kevin, why don't you come in anyway? Then I was like, oh, OK, sure, whatever. Now, mind you, I'm still drinking and bartending and my other little entrepreneur enterprises, you know, failing. And this is my last 90 days of drinking. Remember how great that was? You know, everything is just going really well. You know, your world is just collapsing around you, and you're just like, oh, God, what next? You know? And then it happens, you know, you're like, oh, man.

And so the parents are gone. I end up in this guy's office on a Thursday morning at 10:00, hungover, like there's no tomorrow. And he's like, so Kevin, what do you want to talk about? And I was like, you know, man, I don't really care. Normally we pick up with my dad where he we left off last time. And so I'm cool.

And he's like, well, I really have something I want to talk about, but you're the client, so you get to guide us. I'm like, now I'm getting annoyed and I'm like, no, no, dude, knock yourself out. What do you want to talk about? And he just looks me straight in the eye and he says, you're an alcoholic and you might be a drug addict and you need help.

And I want you to know that was not the first time I'd ever heard that. You know, I actually had a girlfriend tell me that about a year before. We went skiing for the weekend. And we came back and she looked at me and she said, you know what, Kevin? I love you. You're a wonderful man. And I want, you know, I want you to be my boyfriend and I want to be your girlfriend. But you got to knock off the drinking, the drugs and sleeping with other women.

And I swear to God, I looked at her straight in the eye. I said, can I get back to you on that?

And I did a year later and we'll get to the amends later.

So he said, he hits me with the brick and I'm like, you're right. I am. What do we do? And he's like, well, he just took a giant sigh of relief. And he's like, you know, you need to call Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, and I have a friend that runs the local rehab center. He's a doctor named Barry. And I got to tell you, I heard rehab and I heard jail. And I was like,

at end of spiritual experience, you know, he's like, here's Barry's phone number. Why don't you give him a call and see if you can connect with him? And I was like, yeah, OK, sure. Yeah, you bet. I'll get right on that. And and, you know, I went, I went home from that feeling, feeling like I had some clarity. You know, I, I

my friend Chris at my home groups describes his life. He's like, you know, it was a series of dramas, crisises and calamities. And the only thing they had in common was me, you know, and I was like, yeah, right. And that's where I was. You know, I don't have one of those dramatic on national television SWAT team stories. Okay, I I'm a drunk fraternity boy. That's who I am. That's what I am. I did some pretty wild and crazy stuff, but I guarantee you at the majority, people in the room have a more dramatic story than I do. But but when it comes.

Understanding whether or not I'm an alcoholic, I'm right there, you know, and then I am kind of jumping a little bit, but

so I, I get home, you know, of course I don't call this guy. And then it gets time to go back to therapy. And

I think I did throw this guy a phone call and he called back like five times, of course, you know, And I never bothered to return the calls. And, and I walk into therapy again with my dad. And the therapist is like, I think Kevin has something he wants to tell us. And I was like, oh, yeah, Dad, I think I'm an alcoholic. And he's like,

you know, I was kind of wondering. And. And then, so then the therapist says, well, did you get ahold of my friend Doctor Rosen? And I was like, you know, that guy is so hard to get ahold of. I have left him so many messages, you know, and even in my best moments, I'm a liar, cheating, a thief. And. And he's like, oh, really? OK. And he turns around. He walks over to his desk, and he dials a phone number. And he's like, Barry. Yeah. It's Julian. You remember that kid I told you about?

Hold on.

And I was like, hi. Yeah, sorry I didn't call you back. Yeah, sorry. And he's like, so look, you want to come in and talk? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And he's like, well, the only time I have available is next Thursday at 10:00. And I was like, oh, that's not going to work. That's when my see my dad and Julian. And at that moment, they both turned around and went, that's OK,

you can go meet him. So I went and met him

and at this point, by the way, I confess the fact to my parents that I didn't graduate from college, that it was all a sham. That was interesting. And I did that. I did that in the therapist office because I wanted a third party in the room. And I mean, I'm not kidding, by the way, when I was, he sat on this end of the couch and I sat on that and I was like, OK, can I get to the door? And so he

we, you know, cleared the air and I had decided to go back to school and finish my degree. And so I was going back to Los Angeles. That's about 500 miles away from where I lived. So I'm meeting with this, the guy that runs the, the rehab center at Sequoia Hospital

and he's like, well, you know, Kevin, you kind of have a game, a thing in play and then, and I understand that and that's cool.

Um, you know, we met for two hours and I know that for a fact because he billed me and, and I,

you know, we just had this really great talk and he kind of, you know, he really put the whammy on me about he said, I know you're going back to Los Angeles in a couple weeks. Do me the favor, give me one favor. The moment you get there, would you go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And of course I didn't, you know, no matter how serious I was, I got there like 3 days later. I ended up going to my first meeting. I, I have had a series of angels in my life sort of watching over me and at this time

one of them was the president's secretary at the university,

the USC now. Now there's 30,000 students at USC and there's 5000 employees at USC. So

you need to know, I'm sure most of you do. When it comes to large institutions like that, the president really doesn't run the place. But the president's secretary has the voice of God, you know, And I was one of her babies. Her, her husband and my dad had been drinking buddies. And her dad, her husband died basically of cancer and of liver disease. And her son and I were drinking buddies during my first stint in college.

And so I called her up and I said, hey, I'm coming back to school. And she was like, that sounds great.

On Monday morning, I want you in my office at 8:00. I'll help you. And I said great, fantastic. So I walked into Liz's office and I said, you know, hey, Liz, we sat down and I was like, so Liz, I don't know if you realize this, but I didn't really graduate here from USC. And she's like, Kevin, I'm the president's secretary. I know, not only do I know, here's the list of people that you need to go talk to, you know, and right on top of that list was a guy named Ron. Ron worked in the athletic department, and he literally traveled the

raising money. And she picked up her phone and she's like, I want you to go talk to this guy. And I was like, OK, sure. And so she called them up and said, hey, Ronnie, are you there? And he's like, yeah, I said, well, I'm going to send this kid over. And then she said, you know, go straight over and see this guy. Don't stop. I want you to make sure it's spent as much time you want talking to this guy. Doesn't bother me. I said OK, great,

walked into this guy's office and lo and hold. What do I find? You know, I find a, you know, guy looks exactly like me. You know, back then I had blonde hair

and, you know, green eyes. And he's a drunk X drunk fraternity boy. He'd actually been an Olympic swimmer as well. And we sat there and talked for two hours, and he told me all about Alcoholics Anonymous. He'd been sober nine years and nine months at that point. And he offered to take me to my first meeting. And I went to my first meeting that night. It was June 3rd,

2/19/91 and it was the Brentwood Men's tag at 12:12 thousand San Vicente Blvd. in in Brentwood, CA

if you do the math. I got sober May 5th and I went to my first meeting June 3rd. So I did the 1st 28 days on my own. That was really fun. I watched a lot of Three Stooges reruns and drank a lot of coffee. I don't recommend that. That didn't work out too well, but that's what I did. So I went to my first meeting and I saw in this meeting a pack of guys,

you know, my age and a little bit younger and a little bit older, and they were having fun.

And I thought I was going to walk into Alcoholics Anonymous and find a bunch of people pushing shopping carts and trench coats, missing teeth and smelly. Now those guys were there and I like those guys. They're cool. You know, we don't know a lot in common, which is really weird. But I mean, we, we just, you know, I clicked with this group and I found a guy to sponsor me in that group. And his name was Jack. Jack was this great big, enormous

Armenian guy who was a jeweler in downtown Los Angeles.

And I noticed that he was the sort of the epicenter of this gang of like 15 or 20 guys that sort of circled around him and, and, and they all went out to dinner and did stuff. And I was like, man, see, once again, there's the cool kids and I'm a cool kid, so I'm going with the cool kids. And I asked Jack to sponsor me and he's like, sure, I'll be your sponsor. Here's my phone number. Call me every day. We go to meetings every night. We go to meetings on weekends and, and

at USC we had meetings every day at lunch.

So when I tell you that the first year and a half of my sobriety I spent going to say anywhere from 10 to 15 meetings a week, I'm telling you the truth. I did 2A day Monday through Friday and then sometimes two or three a day on the weekends. And you know, I mean, I would love to tell you because it was so much fun and I had such a great time. The truth is I had nowhere else to go. You know, my family was still like, hey, you're sober. That's great.

You just stay right over there, you know? And my friends basically have the same stance. I burned all my bridges with them.

So I'm hanging out with Jack and I'm hanging out with this crew of guys and our schedule basically is that we go to meetings every night. And here's how it went.

We meet for dinner at like 5:30 or 6:00, depending on what time the meeting was. We go to the meeting and we go to coffee or ice cream afterwards. And I get dropped off at home or I get home by 11:00 or 12:00 at night. I didn't realize that going out was an option. You know, they didn't allow that. You know, they just put your arms around you and come on. Here we go.

In a way we went about four months into this process, we went and saw this guy speak, guy from San Diego's name was saying. And he he talked and it was, it really touched me and I can't even tell you what he said. But afterwards I went up and talked to him afterwards and I said, he said you look trouble, what's going on?

I said, well, I kind of got this problem. I said what's your problem? I said I bought this car, but I haven't made any payments on it.

And he's like, okay, and he kind of smiled that a smile like I know where this is going. And it's like no one. I have the car, but they're calling my family and they're calling my friends and they want their car back. But the truth of the matter is that they screwed up the registration. You know how we always have an excuse and a story why it's okay for us to keep something that doesn't belong to us?

And, and he looked at me and he just smiled. He said, you know, Kevin, it's been my experience that if something is affecting my sanity, it'll soon affect my sobriety. And nothing is worth my sobriety. And I just looked at him. I thought, wow, words of wisdom. You are a genius. You know, I went home that night. I picked up the phone and I called the company, the finance company. I said, this is Kevin Peterson and this is where I live and this is where your car is. And I just want to clean up this matter.

And let me tell you, that car was gone by 8:00 the next morning. Now, here's a really funny thing. I told that story one time in Los Angeles, and this old guy comes up to me and goes, where was that? I said it was 720 W 28th St. He's like, yeah, I probably took it.

I was like, really.

And

so I roll along with these guys for about a year and a half and I'm having the time of my life. But here's the interesting thing I'm noticing is that amongst our group of guys and sort of the guys that we sponsor and hang out with,

there's sort of this constant revolving door going on. There may have been 15 or 20 guys, but it wasn't always the same 15 or 20 guys. Now, we had commitments at every meeting and we and we went to you know, we like I said, we went to 10 to 15 meetings a week and we had sponsees that we made call us every day and and we called our sponsor every day and it was kind of just, you know, Hey, how are you doing? I'm fine, you upset and I'm good. OK, great. See you tonight. Bye. You know, and we called each other.

It's been my experience that there is a second round of what it was like,

what I was like, what happened and when I'm like now, and that was that's sober. So what ended up happening is that that wasn't working for me anymore.

I was starting to sleep around again, cut corners at work and I got in trouble for that. And I started to write bad checks again. And I started to realize that that was all the stuff I had done drinking. And I, you know, I had a lot more fun drinking. I didn't have this conscience beating the hell out of me, you know, And so I thought, well, you know, I think it's time. I think I've done enough of this a, a nonsense and you people are great. But the truth of the matter is I'm, you know, I'm destined for big things. And, you know, I got to move on.

And I confided in a friend of mine named Barry that that's what was going on. And he confided back in me that he was going to kill himself. He'd been sober five years and he was ready to blow his head off.

So we talked about that a little bit. Oops. And sorry about that.

And a funny thing happened to Barry. He, he was a pharmacist and he owned his own pharmacy in Santa Monica. And this guy who we had seen speak many times and in LA, most meetings, I don't know, but a lot of meetings, every night, you can go to a speaker meeting and hear all sorts of speakers. And we'd heard this guy speak, his name is Joe. And, and Joe annoyed us because he wasn't funny, he wasn't exciting, he didn't make a ton of dough

and, you know, didn't have a lot sort of an entourage of women following him around. And, you know, that's what we wanted. You know, let's be honest. That's why we're here. We're trying to clean up our lives so we can get all the goodies, you know? And he talked about, you know, working the steps out of the big book. He talked about writing inventory, talked about making amends. And he talked about completing the 12th step and then going over and doing it again. And that just sounded like a lot of work to us. You know, I was like, come on.

And so Joe walked into Barry's Pharmacy and they started having a conversation.

And Joe looks at Barry and says, and I'll try to clean up the language a little bit. If you knew Joe, this is not what he said. He said you look like crap. And and Barry is like, yeah, well, you know, I'm five years sober. I sponsor 3 guys. I have a guy that I sponsored as my sponsor. We talk to each other every day. We go to meeting every night, you know, reading off the litany. And Joe said, yeah, you still look like crap. And my question to you is, where are you in the big book?

What step are you on? And Barry was like, well, I say the third step prayer every morning

said, yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. He said the program of recovery is outlined in the 1st 164 pages of the Big Book. And he said, I'll tell you what, we have a little meeting down the street. It's on 2nd and Hill meets at 7:30 at night in the church. And I'd love to have you there. It's called as it's outlined in the Big Book. And Barry started going because he was desperate

and

an amazing thing happened. I watched my friend change. He no longer wanted to kill himself. He actually wanted to live. He actually wanted to go forward. And he started talking about the weirdest stuff. He started talking about the phenomenon of craving.

What the hell was that? You know? Oh, thank you so much. And then he also started talking about the mental obsession and the spiritual malady. And, and he was, he had asked Joe to sponsor him. And they were working the steps together. And I was at the point where I was, you know, I was at the jumping off point. Like, jump out. I'm out of here.

And

so I said, I don't know what's going on bro, but you got to take me with you. And he's like, OK, he goes, but you just need to be prepared that if you're going to start hanging out with me in this group, it's going to really piss off Jack and our group. And I was like, really, he's like I said and, and I and I said, well, whatever. And I ended up going to a couple of meetings with Barry and they, they, my sponsor, Jack, ended up calling me

and telling me I had to make a decision

if I was going to go hang out with Barry and his guru and I couldn't be part of the gang anymore. And I got to tell you that was an easy decision. And I said, well, then I'm going to go hang out with Barry because I don't know what's going on, but it's working. So I started going to this meeting. I'm going to tell you a little bit about this meeting. How are we doing here?

OK, I started going to this meeting and

it was an hour and a half and it was a closed meeting. We spent the 1st 5 minutes in a group meditation, which was awesome. You know, it was just down the street from the ocean. The the sea breeze was coming through. It was very spiritual, very meditative. It was wonderful. Then we spent the next depending on the, you know, what the format was. We had a couple of different formats, but primarily what we would do is have somebody speak on a given topic in in the big book. When we bring someone from another group and they would speak,

they speak for half the time. And the other half of the time was for questions. And I don't just mean questions to the speaker. I mean, I could look at Val and say, so last week you were talking about your third step. What happened? How did that go? You know, and it freaked people out, man. You know where you were making amends Will last time I saw you. How did that go? Did you finish your amends and you had to share back to the group? I mean, it was, it was

Crosstalk was chump change, you know, we were, this was Crossfire, you know,

and, and it was a great meeting. It's a great group because basically you had to be accountable to the group. You had to be working your steps. And what I realized once I got over the sheer terror of hanging out with these people is that if you were reading the big book and working the steps, you had nothing to fear.

Nobody can rob you of your experience. If I mean look, the guys that are new,

I have some suggestion for you, some slight advice. Whenever someone starts talking and Alcoholics Anonymous and they start quoting the big book or giving you big bombs of wisdom, if they don't start the statement with it's been my experience, stop listening. They're they're lying. You know, I hope I started with that, but you know,

it's been my experience

that that's you can't take away somebody's experience. This is my experience working the steps. This is my experience staying sober. You can't take that away from me.

It may be different than yours and that's OK. But this is mine and and I'm going to help you get yours. And

so I, so we do that for an hour and a half and then the last five minutes were another group meditation to sort of cool down, you know, and, and then we'd all go out to dinner and it was a lot of fun. I identified a guy in that meeting in Miles. And Miles was this ex surfer was 40 years old, was a house painter, and he lived with his mom and dad in Redondo Beach.

And I thought, yeah, that's the guy I want to be my sponsor. And he was really cool, man. He was. I loved this guy. He was awesome. So I cornered him at the meeting and I said, hey man, will you sponsor me? And he said, well, what makes you think you're an alcoholic?

Huh, Never thought about that. I said, well, you know, I got in a lot of trouble. I've been going to all these stupid meetings for a year and a half and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he just kind of smiled. He said here's my phone number Call me we'll talk about it.

OK, I thought you never said no to an A a request. You know, what the hell is this guys problem you know. So I called them and I said he said well you know Kevin I'd be happy to work with you. What you need to do is get yourself a brand new big book. You need to read the 1st 164 pages and I want you to start at the blank page and go with 164. I want you to highlight everything that reminds you of yourself. I said OK great. He said I want you to be at my house at Friday night at 7:00