Broken Chans group in Prescott, AZ

Sharon's experience shrinking up with us. Please help me welcome Terry.

I

I'm Terry heroin addict. That was a long time ago and it's amazing to me to be here with y'all tonight. I raced as fast as I could up this hill. It took me like 3 hours to make my house in Gilbert and all the way I was wanting to get here because I love the effect that Heroin Anonymous produces in me.

I started using it at a really young age.

I may not look like a heroin attitude today, but then again y'all don't look that much like one to me either. Because what I found out about this disease is it doesn't care what you look like. It doesn't care where you come from. It doesn't care whether you come from

a family that's got it all together or torn up home or whether you're in or it doesn't matter. This disease destroys everything that it touches. And I started super young, right? I was an addict, I believe by the time I was 12 or 13 years old,

even though I'm 63 now, the world was totally ill prepared for young addicts.

Hell, it still is, right? I remember when I remember when I first got busted for doing drugs, I was in, it was either the 7th or the 8th grade and I was going to Catholic school in Southern California and I'm #9 out of 10 kids, right? So we all went to Catholic school and when we would like, you know,

it's like the family was disciplined supposedly, right? And we go to church in my mom would be at the front and all ten of the kids in a row, my dad at the back. And they put us through Catholic school. And I remember getting busted for doing a a drug back then that was called Secondol or Reds. And our Reds were like, they had no purpose. There's no purpose for that drug.

All it did is you take it or make you fall out, right? So, so, so you could buy when I was young, you could get real value. So you could get what was called a rack of Reds. That was four of them for a dollar. And you could, I mean, that's just, you know, back then it was 20 pop bottles and you were in or, or you could get what's called A roll of whites, which were Benzedrine white crosses and ten of those for a buck, right?

And it's crazy for me to think about the fact that I was like 12

eating a rack of Reds and going to school, you know, and, and I remember falling out and getting busted and my mom was sick and dying with cancer. She got cancer when I was 11 and it just ravaged her. And she died right after I turned 15. So in those years,

you know, I'm on drugs, my family's in chaos, my life is just blowing apart. But I remember when I got busted,

a kid rolled on me in in the, the nuns called me into the office and they said, we know you've been doing them drugs.

We know you've been doing Red Devils and,

and, and we know that your mom is dying.

And if you tell us the truth, we're not going to tell that woman

because the truth will set you free. And we don't want to give your mother anymore suffering than she's already experiencing. So I sat there, you know, and I already been a little St. urchin and I kind of held on to the idea of the code of the streets, that you don't ever give it up. But I gave it up for my mom. And I said, yes, sisters, I did it. And they said, OK, you'll be all right.

And I remember when I got off the school bus that day,

my mom was a beautiful, proud Irish woman, right? And back then, all your clothes had to be ironed.

I walk, I walk into the house and my mom says, come here, I need to talk to you. And she takes me back in the laundry room where she's ironing clothes. And she looks at me. And she said the school came by today and they told me that my son is a filthy doper. And she said, the shame you have brought on this family, the shit, I can't believe this. The shame you. I cannot tell your father because if I, if I tell your father, he'll be you to death.

And you may deserve that, but I need him to feed the rest of these kids. So what you're going to do is you're going to take this secret to your grave and I'm going to take it to mine. A grave that you have helped put me in early. The shame you brought on your sister Kathy and your brother Jim and John and Rita and Maura and Brian and Michael and Colleen and Kevin.

The shame you brought on this family. Now get out of here. You make me sick.

And I walked out of that room a little boy with the drug problem

and none that felt bad. I knew what to do with those feelings, right? I was already good at stuffing what I felt.

More dope, smoke, more weed, more pills, whatever. More pain, more shame. Shame. My mother, I know today, did the best she could to try to help her son. That was all she had. She didn't know that there were, you know, the shame doesn't change anything. All it does is make everybody who who it gets laid on sicker, you know? But but my mom carried it to her grave

and she went to that grave with me, believing the last word she said to me were get out of here, you make me sick.

That's a hell of a load to carry throughout a lifetime, right? That is not why I'm an addict. I think I was one just because there was something about it. There's a line in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that says men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. I'll say no shit. And if if you like, if you like alcohol, try some heroin. You want some? You want some effect? I'll show you effect

so

you know, it's just terrible man, you know, But I did the best I could roll in my street homies in

and started robbing houses to support getting high. And when I was 18 years old, I got arrested for. I had escaped getting arrested the whole time being a juvenile. And I turned 18 and 12 days after that I got arrested for seven felony burglaries. And

my dad hired a lawyer for me. And the lawyer was a drinking buddy of the judge. And for a case of gin,

they that was all the lawyer charged was a case of gin that he split with the judge. And they gave me the opportunity to go into the Army instead of prison. It was at the end of the Vietnam War. Back then you could trade prison time for military service. They gave me that option. I reported for duty. I get, I get shipped over, I get shipped overseas to Germany

and man, I'm a good soldier, right? I mean, when they put me in basic training, I was a bad ass. I got in the best shape of my life, you know,

umm, throwing grenades and shooting stuff matters. Like damn, this is chaos. I love this stuff and and I was a great soldier, right? And I did really well because I had structure around me. That's why I think I do really well in recovery because I have the 12 steps in tradition and all of you that create some structure around me.

I am not a very good free range kid.

You let me loose. And I have always just seemed to find what was bad, you know, So I get shipped overseas to Germany and I'm over there and I'm being a good soldier. And what they were doing, unbeknownst to me, was as Vietnam was winding down, there were tons of soldiers that were becoming heroin addicts

in Southeast Asia. So they didn't know what to do with them. They weren't shipping them back to the US, so they shipped them to Germany.

So their ETS time came out. So I remember like showing up at my barracks and it was a parade field with like five story buildings like shaped like AU and a giant marching field in the middle. And you could look up at all of the windows and you could tell which ones were the junkies because you could see the puke stains out the windows. And it was like I thought, man, I wonder what's that? They need to paint this thing right? And then

this dude says to me, hey, Matt, whatever you do in this, in the company I was in, he goes, stay away from that guy over there. His name is Shitty Smitty. And I said, well, of course, right away. What did I do? Hey, brother, what's up, man? Why did they call you Shitty Smitty goes man, I don't know.

So Shitty Smitty taught me what it was like to shoot heroin, right? There was not even there was no stop. There was no thought. There was no it just like you want to shoot some heroin. And the answer was absolutely

there was number thought about.

They tricked a lot of y'all, you know, when Oxys came on the scene and then they tricked you with smoking, you know, knowing that eventually, man, what's coming down the pipe. This shit is wicked right in the way that it comes out of. But you know, for me, man, I made that jump to shooting heroin and,

and it wasn't long, but you know, I started doing the heroin and, and no time at all, the heroin started doing me.

You know what I'm talking about. It's like you stop being something I wanted to do to something I had to do. And if I didn't have heroin in me, I started to get dope sick fast. And I know that as long as I was shooting heroin, I never experienced a cold or a flu. I just, you know, I just shot dope straight through life and, and, and it was all good, right?

So I started slinging heroin, shipping it across international borders, you know,

going to Amsterdam, the cop coming back to the bears. I was living dangerously, right? And, and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And the heroin started taking more and more and more. And I got up. I took this trip back from, from Amsterdam with a bunch of heroin. And I also had a letter that was written to me with a bunch of LSD in it. So when we were approaching the border crossing

heroin, where I always hid the heroin on the train and in a different place, I heard I hit the envelope with the acid. And so they come through, they search everything. I've been doing this gig for a while. I'm with my girlfriend, right? We were madly in love with heroin.

I thought it was with each other and

and then the guards come back to my rail car again.

Can we see your passport again? Oh, that's not a good sign. And they said come with us. And they took me off the train in cuffs. And I said to my woman, I said

they found because they told me we found this envelope and they showed it to me. They found the envelope with the acid and they hadn't found the heroin, right? So I said to her, hey, they found an envelope with something in it. They said it's mine. They didn't find anything else.

I'll call you when I get released. So they take me in and I go through the whole deal, strip search and all that stuff. I'm talking to them, they don't speak my language. I'm spinning the tail. You're crazy. That ain't me. And finally, they can't really figure out what it is, so they put me on the next train

and shipped me right. Well, I wake up the next morning on the train

pulled into my station. Now I was buying a lot of heroin with a lot of other people's money. And so I called my girl and I said, hey baby,

they dropped everything. I'm cool, I need to come by and see you to pick up the package. And she said it wasn't there.

And the way she said it, I knew she was lying, right? In the way she said it. I knew there was nothing I could do other than go face what was waiting for me, right? Which is if you don't show up with the money or the heroine, something's coming down. So I end up

I end up walking into my barracks and being arrested again. Maybe that arrests Amy for being beat to death or killed over that drug deal. I get arrested and they tell me, they said, listen, man, we know that you're running some dirty shit. So what we're going to do is we're going to let you sign this paper, which is a discharge for the good of the service, right? It's a discharge and other than honorable conditions.

Now, I come from a family of patriots, Wright brothers that served in Nam, a family that cared. We flew the flag

and there I was. You know, now I've, I'm already a young doper, I'm already filled with shame, and now I got a yellow stripe painted down my back being thrown out of the military in disgrace.

Those are just some of the places that, you know, heroin takes you right Before that happened, though, I want to just share with you like the lengths that I would go to to do my dope. I don't know if you'll find yourself in this story, but for me, when I start using, there is no stop. I was in a train station in Stuttgart, Germany, one night and I had missed the last train back to the barracks. So it's like 2:30 in the morning

and I'm in this giant. I'm in a city of 300,000 people. I'm in this giant train station and I'm the only person in it. Next train is not for three hours and I start getting dope sick. So I got to shoot some dope. So I go and I check the men's room and it's locked. I go to check the ladies room, it's open, there's nobody in there. So I get my spoon. I go to turn on the water to get some water and the water doesn't work.

So it's A1 stall bathroom. So I figure I'll lift the back of the lid off the toilet, right? Wouldn't that kind of toilet? And I look at this toilet and it is, I'm telling it's disgusting, man. This toilet has a mountain of shit. The the the travelers, the toilet had not flushed. The the toilet didn't flush and all day long

the travelers, if I had to go, I'd illustrate for you, but the travelers would just go right on up there and they just drop one on the mountain

pile and surrounding it was a Moat piss and I thought, well, the fire will kill the germs and I threw that Victoria put up man, and there wasn't a second thought about that shit. It was just like it was not a matter of is this wrong? Is this unsanitary? There was no doubt of that man. I needed to dope. Can you dig that?

Yeah, because when I need the dope, I do the dope.

So I just drew it up. I cooked it. Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, medically evacuated from Europe. It didn't work out quite like I thought. But, you know, I'm the kind of guy that would take take my, you know, this is before AIDS. And I would take the match. I would take a matchbox and my point and sharpen it, run it against the tender part of my skin to see if there was a bird. I got a hole in my arm.

That is a nasty hole.

It's right there. And that's from slamming without a needle because all I had was a syringe. I had the dope, I had the rig. Just no needle. You talk about. We stood at the turning point. No shit. I I just thought, well, OK, what are my choices, right? I got a rig filled with dope. I have no way to do it.

I got no needle. I can't find the needle. What are my choices

so I start running my own like first inventory. Like what are my options here? I can squirt it in my mouth.

I could save it till tomorrow.

And then I hear this voice say just shoving up your ass.

No man, nothing goes in my ass. That's somebody else's story. And then and then I and then I hear this voice say just shoot up without the needle. Good idea. So I tie it off and bam,

I may have crossed some line. You know, I may have entered a realm of abnormal use.

I remember stripping power wires out of walls to get the metal to push through the blood

packed points. That's what it was. You know, we didn't have needle exchanges and stuff like that. And thank God, all the good work that's being done these days to try to make a difference.

But the fact is that that heroin destroyed me, right? And it laid my life to waste. But I, I'm a good person, right? I have a bad disease. So I get back to the States, I pull it together. I go to college,

I meet this woman right my wife Donna, she is smoking hot man. My wife Donna is got these blue eyes that are so big and

a sparkle like to see, right. And when I met her, I just fell into those eyes and I was in a good place in my life, right? I was doing good, things were cool. You know, we're not bad people. It's a bad disease. But my life kind of goes like a roller coaster. In fact, if I were to tell you how my life went, most of the time is when when things are bad, I'm good.

Like when shit's bad, I can bear down and pull it off,

but when things go good, I go bad. And that's just the way it always went for me, right? So I met this woman, man, and she was so cool and I thought I had better marry her fast because the last thing on earth I wanted her to do. Because I knew bakti down inside me that there was this something in me that came up kind of like

maybe like a werewolf or something. I don't know. Just like I had these changes that would occur to me where I would just go nuts with drugs and alcohol.

So

I married her and we took off. We started the company, built big success, started to roll. I bought her BMW for Christmas, you know, and the big book, it says that we addicts and Alcoholics are above average people that were capable of tremendous things. And I can tell you, I know that to be a fact based on the 27 years of my continuous sobriety because I have sponsored tons of dudes and I've watched men and women

come up out of the grave that they were digging for themselves. Every time that I shot that dope smoke that coke or took those pills, it was like I was digging my own grave. And I was almost ready to have that last shovel full of dirt put over my face when somebody worked their 12th step on me. And then I was able to come in and say, because I've seen what we do sober.

When I got sober, I looked at my life like it was a mountain of shit.

It was like I looked at my life like here was this mountain between me and a good life, and there was no way I could see over that mountain. I was 35 years old. I was bankrupt, repoed, unemployed, unemployable. I weighed 140 lbs.

My marriage was on the rocks. My kids had no respect for me. My dogs growled at me.

My parents were dead. My brothers and sisters, none of them would talk to me when I walked into the room. They'd get up and walk out when the world turned its back on me. Heroin anonymous in places like this, open their arms to me. And what happened was, you know, I mean, I burnt my life to the ground

and I was looking at this mess. I was looking at this insanity.

I was looking at this, you know, that I was taking 50 perks a day, that I was on methadone, that I was drinking booze, I was smoking crack like a Wildman, and nothing could fill that hole in my soul. All I wanted to do was die and I was doing a pretty damn good job of killing myself. One hit a dope at a time.

I had this hole in my soul, a Spanish philosopher in the 1500s named Spinoza said. I have a God shaped hole in my soul

and the only thing that fills that God shaped hole in my soul is the God of my own. My own understanding and the way I found that God was working the 12 steps, nothing else worked for me. I tried to put dope in that hole, I tried to put money in there, I tried to put women and power, control, materialism. Nothing ever worked. My life just kept

getting worse

to where I was at a place where I had outwardly many things people would consider worth having. I had a wife to love me,

I had kids. I owned a home, you know, I mean, outwardly it looked pretty cool. On the inside, it was me and my madness

locked in Mortal Kombat, and I was getting my ass kicked every single day and I was at a place where I'd raise my right hand to God and I'd swear on my dead mother's grave for the lives of my children. I will never do this again. And then I would do it again. And then I would raise my right hand and I would swear on everything sacred. I would never do this again.

And then we and people around me go, wow, he really means it. Look at how good he's doing

and the next thing you know, I'm gone and so is the VCR. It's like that was the cycle of my life

and, and every time I tried to stop and failed, I wanted to try even less. What was the point? Nothing worked and I would have died out there. I'm absolutely convinced of this because I was already in the dying process. You know, I remember when I got into treatment and they said to me, Terry,

what do you fear more, dying or losing your family?

And I said losing my family. In some of the patients, they were like, you know, assassins, like, oh, that's bullshit, man. Death is final. I said, I'm not afraid of dying. I'm already dead. Don't you get that?

The spiritual death that precedes the physical one? That already happened to me,

but I love my family, you may hear and can't get sober for another person. Well, I couldn't get sober for me because I didn't care about me.

But those two little boys, seven and three, damn, I wanted to do better for them, for that woman who loved me, who I watched her blue eyes turn like the eyes of a shark, Gray and dark and hopeless.

I still cared for her.

Somebody worked their 12 step on me. It was in a pawn shop. I was selling my stuff. I pawned it in the morning to get some dope. And then I went back to the pawn shop in the afternoon to sell what I'd pawned. And the guy in the pawn shop looked at me and he said, dude, I don't know if you're in trouble or not, but if you are, in the minute he started talking, my mind slammed shut. Like

here I go one more time,

I'm going to get another good talking to. I'm going to have one more person tell me what's wrong with you. Dude, you got so much potential. What about your family man? I've had the best and twos my whole life. If a good talking to would have changed me, I would have already changed If when my mother shamed me, if shame would have brought change, I would have already changed when my dad used to strap on me to beat sense into me. If that could have changed me, I would have changed. If when the school's counseled me, if that could have,

I would have changed. If when the police arrested me, if that could have changed me, I would have changed when the judges sentenced me, when the military court martialed me, nothing changed for me.

And there I am in this pawn shop and the dude says he starts talking to shit. And I'm thinking, oh great, one more lecture. I'm going to have to listen to this dude because I need the money. I need the dog,

but what's different about this cat

is he flipped it

and he started talking about himself.

In the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and our experience in heroin Anonymous tells us what to do. Don't talk for moral or spiritual Hilltop. Tell them your story.

And that's what that cat did. He said, I don't know if you're in trouble or not, but I used to be in trouble. He said I couldn't stop drinking. I couldn't stop driving. And I went to this detox and even through a mental map where the detox was, and he's telling me all this stuff. And he said, you know, I couldn't stop. And I went to this place and I got sober and I've been sober for four years now. He said, and I own this pawn shop

and everything in it. And then he went.

You know a lot of it used to be yours.

Ridiculous. Man. That is cold blooded, right?

An addict properly armed with the truth about themselves, with a working knowledge of these 12 steps, can do for another addict. But no other human power can possibly touch

everyone of us sitting in this room tonight, whether we're sober for a minute or celebrating those big two and three-year birthdays. In the one year, it doesn't matter. Every one of us got a story to tell and a song to sing. And when we tell our story to another, what happens is the miracle of Heroin Anonymous comes alive. And in someone else's story, I started to hear mine

and my life started getting better, right? And, and I heard things like

go to a lot of meetings. So I started going to a lot of meetings and then I heard stuff like get involved in jail work, hospitals and institutions. So I started doing that when I had six months. You know, I have done the same jail I, I do 7 jailed and prison meetings a month. I'm not saying that to glorify myself. I'm just trying to tell you that a dude who traded his wedding ring for dope, that a dude who robbed his kids bank accounts for dope, a dude that broke every person's heart and every promise I ever made

has been able to live up to these commitments.

I've been doing these meetings for 27 straight years and every time I go into a Correctional Facility and I sit with the men and sometimes I get to go into the women's prison out in Perryville. And when I go into those places, I see myself

and I see the power of Heroin Anonymous. It even has meetings in those places and and I see what's happening because once someone is armed with the truth about the power of Heroin Anonymous in these 12 steps, they are set free whether they're in a prison cell or not.

I know that's true because I know what it's like to be physically free and be a prisoner. I spent most of my life serving a needle or a crack pipe. So I started doing the work that other people did and the reward started happen. And the next thing you know, my kids are liking me and they're wanting to play and the dogs want to like have me throw a ball and they're not growling. And my wife is like the Blues coming back in her eyes.

And I see that magic, right? And and I keep doing it and I start showing up at their school events and I start fully participating because what I'm doing is I'm following the well marked path of the soldiers, the men and women who trudge this road of happy destiny before me. And I started to do what they did. And in that process, I started to find a higher power. Because I will tell you what, man, after those

burned me, there wasn't much in my heart for God. I knew for sure if there was a God, he didn't believe in me. But what I found by doing this work is I found a relationship with this creator of the universe, a higher power of God, of my own understanding, who I know loves and cares about me.

They asked a minister in the earliest days, and there's nothing new about that. Bill W said, you know, Heroin Anonymous is a new fellowship. What you're doing up here is still brand new. You are literally like the first apostles. You are the ones here that are getting these meetings going and enlighten that fire and showing the way of hope. What Bill said in those early gatherings, there was more spirit than air in those rooms.

So what I thought when I walked in here tonight,

kind of jacked from a stressful drive, but wanting to be here so desperately to share the love that's in my heart for recovery and for heroin Anonymous with all of you, you know, and they asked this minister at the beginning of a A to go, what's the secret of the program? He said, First off, there's no secrets. What you do is you find a man or a woman who seems to have found the solution to the problem

and then do what they did

and eventually you'll come to know the power behind that person.

The work that's happened in my life is not of mine. I show up. I got great daily disciplines. I start my day on my knees. Every day. I roll out of bed onto my knees. I never step out into the world. And then what I do is I get up and I tend to my business, take a piss, get ready out of the day, do some meditation. And then at the end of my day, I get on my knees in that same place.

And on my knees I do my nightly review. And I review that day. And at the end of it, I tell my higher power, thanks for the state of sobriety.

And then I pray for those who are still suffering. And then I pulled myself up into that bed. So the first thing that touches the floor every day of my life for my knees. The last thing that touches every day of my life for my knees. And I do my best not to screw up what happens in between. And that is a simple and easy formula for living. I stay in the middle of this fellowship because I know a factual Here's a fact, you cannot fall off a building if you're standing in the middle of the rough.

Find the middle of the roof for you like God found it for me. The middle of the roof for me is Heroin Anonymous, where I meet my fellow travelers and I hear your stories of suffering and madness, and I share your joys and I share your sorrows.

We laugh together, we cry together,

we come alive together.

My soul came alive. Now I am 6 foot four, maybe a little taller. When I came in the rooms, I was like six one and a half, six two. Now I know you don't grow between 35 and 63. At least they say you don't. I was probably this height all the time, but it was I could never go to the world in the eyes, compressed by the weight of my guilt and my shame,

with the merciless disease talking in my ear all the time. You ain't nothing but nothing, motherfucker. Who do you think you are? Do you know what you did to that person? You know you rip them off. You know you cut that dope. You know you turn that person on. Now they're strung out and ruin their life. Those are the stories of my disease, this merciless thing that spins around in my head. But the difference is this program has given me tools to push back. So when my head starts talking to me like that, you know what I do? I get quiet,

I take a deep breath and I toe my head. Thank you for sharing.

Now shut the fuck up

because I got a life to live here and in doing this thing called recovery, I have become the man I always knew in my heart I was capable of being.

The only thing that limits the power of these steps is a lack of willingness and most folks or that they're too afraid to try. In step 10 in the big book, it says we have entered the realm of the spirit. I go through my life, I'm prayer, I'm a meditator. I I work all 12 steps. You'll hear a lot of definitions of insanity in the rooms, right? Like doing the same thing over and over, expecting different result, right? You know what I'm talking about. I'm going to give you my definition of insanity.

Being in a 12 step program and not working the 12 steps. That's insane.

I don't make excuses. Meditations hard for me too, but I do it. I don't make excuses for it because there was no way I would see there's a formula for success here. I would no more think about taking a process out of shooting dope

then I would think about taking a step out of here when I'm shooting my dope. I followed an exact process.

You know what I'm talking about?

One thing and the next and the next in the next, and you follow it in exact order to get the desired effect. It's the same thing with these steps. I did my own dope. I do my own recovery. That's how this works. You know, I could share my experience, strength and hope with you, but I can't make you want to do the work. What propels me to do the work is I am no longer. I keep staying involved, not because I'm afraid of using,

but because I love the way I live. That's the power behind me today.

So we've entered the realm of the spirit. I was at a retreat. I was 50 years old and I was meditating. And while I'm sitting there meditating at this retreat, the retreat leaders go on, think of a pain in your life and, and let's go there. And I thought, man, I don't have any. I'm cool, right? That's good. Let's see. I was 15 years sober at that time. No pain, no problem. And he goes, think of something. I'm thinking nothing, man. And then he goes,

but I'm breathing and I'm going with the flow. And the next thing you know, I was in that laundry room with my mother

and that feeling came over me.

And the very next thing that happened

is I was at my mother's bedside just before she died.

And she had had what's called an embolism, where the cancer broken off and blocked part of the brain. So my mother had not spoken in a while. She just laid there, you know, grunts. And my job when I got home from school was this little boy was to take, like, the scroll, like, oatmeal and mixed vitamins with it and try to feed my mother with an eye dropper. So I come home from school and I'm sitting there and I'm feeding my mom and I'm putting the eye dropper in the corner of her mouth. In this meditation,

I see all of you and my mom's going

and, and she won't take the food. And if she won't take the food, I start to get emotional. I start to lose it because she's going to die if she doesn't eat. And I'm not ready to have that happen because I got this wound and this pain in me, right? And so I'm sitting there, I'm trying to feed her and, and she won't do it. And I look at her and I go, mom, what? And my mom did this. She went, oh, I love you, baby.

Those were my mother's last words to me. Not get out here. You make me sick. I was 50 years old when I finally heard them. Do you have any idea how free that was for me? I don't know what pain is driven you to this room tonight, what pain of your past, what wounds of your soul. But I will tell you one thing, that this program and these steps unleash a power that is limitless.

It can Take Me Out of that grave.

It can heal relationships from beyond the grave. It can make things right that were never right. I had traded my wedding ring for dope. That is a scandalous thing to do. I love my wife. It wasn't that I didn't love her or know the value of gold and jewels. I just needed another one. Can you dig that?

I did it

when I was 12 1/2 years sober. My wife finally gave me another wedding ring

and she put this ring on my finger. And as I started to put the matching ring on hers, I said, Donna, there's a question I've wanted to ask you since I first got sober because if I had to describe heroin addiction with one word, the word I would choose is thief. That thief comes into our lives and takes it takes honor, valor, money, health lives. Countless of my friends that have died over these years of that nasty ass disease that never got a chance to really

what they were supposed to be.

So I had to ring on her fingertip and I looked her in those blue eyes that were sparkling again. And I said, Donna, there's a question I've wanted to ask you since I first got sober. And she said, what is it? I said, knowing what you know now, would you still have married me? And she looked at me and she said, in a minute, baby, because whatever that thief may have robbed, loving God in this program can restore.

My marriage is healed. I just passed my 40th wedding anniversary

August 5th, right? So 40 years married to the same woman. And I can tell you what, when you apply the principles of this program in a relationship, you can have a love affair, a love affair that fills your heart and your soul. So I said to my wife, you know, I've made my Amanda work tight work. Cool. So I said to her, I said, Donna, what do you want to do for your 40th? And she said, you know where I want to go? I want to go to Machu Picchu

up in the end, he's a sacred Inca temples that were built

so long ago. I said cool. I said, do you mind if I plan the rest of the trip? And she said, no, I'd love to be surprised. So I told her what the climate was. I planned the rest of the trip. And here was the trip We got on the plane. We flew to South America. Then we flew out into the jungle and took a boat down Amazon. And we stayed in a tree house for four days. And we stayed up in this treehouse.

Oh, the Tarzan, Eugene, we're, we're telling us love and life, right? We come back out of the jungle

and we head to Machu Picchu. What my wife didn't know is that I had flown her sons, their wives, and her grandbabies down to Machu Picchu secretly and I had hired an Inca shaman to renew our vows on Machu Picchu and I had a wedding dress I picked out for her that fit perfectly.

And so it was our anniversary day, August the 5th, and I said, baby,

here's what you're going to wear this afternoon.

And when she walked up, there were her sons.

Her granddaughters were her flower girls.

See, whatever this thief may have robbed. And it took from all of us to power this program to restore lives. The last thing I had in my grave was a love of running. As a little boy. I could run, I could hurdle. I, I, I just fly, man. You remember what that was like before the drugs came in and started taking from you? Do you remember when a beautiful day was all it took to set your spirit on fire?

I ran, I hurtled, I loved it.

And then when I started getting high, all that stuff went into grade 2:00. So at 50 years of age, I decided I was going to start running again. I ran my first full marathon for my 50th birthday, and people thought, dude, you're nuts. You ever been a runner before? I said, yeah, Once Upon a time, the little boy. So just last Saturday, a week ago, Saturday, February

16th,

our crosante, you know that is we're 69917 just north of that. I was trained up. I had my sneakers laced up and the gun went off boom and into the dark desert night, morning. I flew and I ran hard and 70 I, I ran 100K race. It ended in Anthem