A Suburban Version of Scarface Driving an 87 Honda Accord with Busted Headlights – Matt B.
About This Speaker Tape
Matt B. shares from a place of raw honesty, describing himself as emotionally volatile long before alcohol entered his life. Growing up outside Philadelphia in Malvern, he experienced extreme swings between blinding rage and crushing loneliness from childhood. In middle school, after a perceived betrayal by his only close friend, he staged a suicide attempt with Tylenol, timing it so his mother would walk in. He describes this not for shock value but to illustrate the depth of his internal condition before he ever picked up a drink.
When alcohol arrived between eighth and ninth grade, it changed everything. He remembers every detail of that first drink — the L-shaped couch, the nearly full bottle, the overwhelming sense of being safe and taken care of for the first time. That false power fueled seven or eight years of increasingly reckless living, including drug dealing, total estrangement from family, and a lifestyle he half-jokingly compares to a suburban Scarface. By October 2002 he was 130 pounds, strung out, unemployable, with forty thousand dollars in cash and two pounds of weed in his safe — and still unable to make the mental obsession stop.
He entered treatment in November 2002 at age twenty, initially planning to keep drinking. A friend's overdose death and his drug connection's arrest made him willing. His early sobriety included genuine prayer but limited surrender — he brought only his drinking problem to Higher Power and kept trying to direct everything else. Around his second year, a newcomer with ninety days of sobriety and a no-nonsense Big Book approach attracted Matt's attention. That man walked him through the steps and showed him a different way of living before relapsing himself, which paradoxically deepened Matt's commitment.
Matt closes by describing a recent humbling: he moved to Pennsylvania chasing a relationship and career opportunity, and both collapsed. He is currently living with his mother, unemployed, and without a partner. Yet he speaks with genuine peace about it, saying he feels carried by Higher Power and trusts things will improve as long as he stays close to the program. His central message is that the spiritual life must remain one of honest questioning and surrender, not self-directed achievement.
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Full Transcript
Hi, I'm Matt Bennett. I'm an alcoholic.
Hey, Matt Bennett.
And I'd like to thank you guys for asking me to come up and share my experience.
I'm going to keep my hat on.
It's not that cold. My hair is really just bad.
My...
Hey, Matt Bennett.
And I'd like to thank you guys for asking me to come up and share my experience.
I'm going to keep my hat on.
It's not that cold. My hair is really just bad.
My...
Hi, I'm Matt Bennett. I'm an alcoholic.
Hey, Matt Bennett.
And I'd like to thank you guys for asking me to come up and share my experience.
I'm going to keep my hat on.
It's not that cold. My hair is really just bad.
My sobriety date is November 16, 2002.
My home group is the Port Fishington Speaker Group.
We meet on Monday nights down right where Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Kensington meet.
So if you're ever in Philadelphia on a Monday night and you want to hear a good message of hope,
please feel free to come on out.
I'm supposed to, in a general way, share what it was like, what happened, what it's like now.
And, you know, you may be a little bit bored because I know a handful of you here.
And my story about what happened hasn't changed a whole lot.
So it sucks to be you.
I am very grateful for the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It has been by far the most influential thing.
This lifetime for me.
Not only in the fact that it has kept the obsession to drink away,
but it has also offered a way of living, a design for living,
that I did not know was really an option for me.
To try to give you a little bit of a background about myself,
I'm from outside of Philadelphia. I grew up in Malvern.
There's nothing sexy about Malvern.
It is.
Forty miles west and it is about as, like, middle class
and nothing exciting as a neighborhood as you can think of.
I came from a family that wasn't really middle class.
We were somewhere below that line.
And I come from a family that doesn't necessarily have, like,
a normal one mom, one dad kind of background.
That's how it started, you know, naturally.
But by the time I was growing up, things were a little bit different.
And that really is sort of irrelevant, to be quite honest with you.
It helped.
Some of that stuff helped form who I am today.
But in regards to alcoholism, it doesn't really hold that much weight.
Why?
Because I've talked with people and met people in all sorts of walks of life
that come from neighborhoods that were nothing remotely close to mine,
who look nothing like me, who are an entirely different gender,
who come from, you know, an entirely different socioeconomic background,
who still, without any prompting, share the same internal condition as I have.
So I know that alcoholism and also the solution
is able to reach across many different barriers.
So I heard someone say something the other day that I'm sure I've heard somewhere along the lines.
I just, you know, am a burnout and forgot.
But he said that we were talking, you know, we were getting in the age-old argument about alcoholism
and, you know, how much should we be emphasizing the drink versus the malady
and, you know, all this really life-changing conversations.
And somebody said, you know, I don't know.
He said something to the effect of that if alcohol was really the problem,
why does taking it away not solve alcoholism?
And it was, that's not exactly how they put it.
It sounded a lot better.
But I can tell you that my, the way that, you know,
alcohol being a disease of perception that just,
that the removal of the drink in my life was sort of bookended
by lots of personal discomfort without the drink.
And when I, to try to give you a quick background
about what it was like living in this skin
and why I was living, you know, why it was like being me,
I can tell you, you know, the long and short is that
I was a maniac before the drink ever even showed up in my life.
If you wanted to paint a picture to what I was like without the drink,
you would, you could basically just say I was either a polar opposite
of extreme anger or massive fits of hopelessness
and, like, feeling like I was the only one walking, like, a very lonely road.
And I was the one who, you know, I lived that sort of loneliness
until I was, you know, I was, you know, I was, you know,
I was, you know, I was, you know, I was, you know,
I was, you know, eventually I would just boil up
and I couldn't take it anymore.
And then that's where the other piece for me was,
was, like, the blinding rage.
You know, so being constantly all over the place,
being a wreck in my emotional states, I guess,
it was, as you could imagine, pretty difficult to develop
any kind of lasting relationships.
Even the ones that were closest to me,
i.e. my family, it wasn't even, they didn't know what to do with me.
And I guess the one, in retrospect, the reason that I ended up
selling my life out for the drink was basically when I look back,
I can see, in retrospect, when I started living my life
in a very self-serving and self-seeking,
type of way.
I don't, I don't have a date pinned by any stretch of the imagination
as to when I started feeling the big hurt inside.
You know, like an emptiness and being completely uncomfortable
with my own skin.
But somewhere, I would say around fourth or fifth grade,
is when I started to develop some,
I started to act out on the strange mental twist.
And the strange mental twist, for me, in the spiritual sense,
is that I try to,
to arrange things in my life that are driven by God-given instincts.
I try to start to arrange them in order to try to satisfy myself
in the hopes that by doing that,
I'm going to be able to live comfortable with myself.
And it's, it's, it's the most natural thing in the world
to try to do that.
You know, our big, our big book says
in the third step that
most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us,
most people, and when I was reading that,
that did not mean me,
but most people try to live by self-propulsion.
I don't really read that so much as, you know, most alcoholics.
I really read that as most people try to live by self-propulsion.
And in an attempt to, you know, fix this,
I try to make all this better.
And I started to do that very early on.
First example, Janine O'Donnell.
I probably shouldn't use her name.
She's not in these rooms.
But she was, she was the first her.
She never, I don't think to this day knows that she was the first her.
It just goes to, I mean, and I make a joke about it,
about how impactful, like, the pursuit of girls were in my life.
But it really, it just goes to prove, like, how strong, like, in my mind is,
is that...
This was, like, something that was completely fancy.
The girl never knew I even liked her.
For God's sake, we were, like, this tall.
But I remember spending days, weeks,
probably the majority of at least one school year, if not two,
thinking about this girl all the time.
It was so sad and, and, and honestly cute
that, that I would take my lunch money,
that, that I would take my lunch money,
that my...
You know, like, the little snack money that my parents gave me
and I would go and sneak it into her desk,
like, when she was away from her desk.
And then, and then she would come back and, like, I'd be watching all,
you know, super creeper status.
And she'd be, like, she'd pull it out and be, like,
you know, put it away.
And, and I knew that she knew that it was from me.
I mean, it...
This mind is, like, living with a serial killer.
So, I told you, you know, so,
in that aspect, like, chasing little girls around,
you know, I don't know if that's normal,
but it's, this is my story, so you're stuck.
Driven, pushed around by completely crazy emotional states.
I guess the, the,
the real sign that there
maybe is something seriously wrong showed up when I was in
as I moved into middle school and I was convinced that I was going to be
the cool kid. And when I could not make any friendships
like, now I'm trying to live by this
self-propulsion. I have a clear idea that I need to be hanging out with these
kind of people, etc. And I could not make a friend
to save my life. I was so pushed around by what other
people were thinking of me that I was just crazy.
I had one close friend and he
lived a couple houses down and
he was a couple years younger than me so he probably looked up
to me a little bit. And this kid
one day after school came back and he got stoned with his sister and I felt
betrayed.
I don't know to this day why I felt betrayed but
I felt betrayed and it was like
I'd just gotten like, somebody told me I was
an idiot or something at school and I was so fragile, like such
a mess. So I ran home and I wrote
a crappy suicide note
and got a bottle
of Tylenol and
sat in the front living room
in the chair and waited for my mom to start to pull up the driveway
before I popped the bottle and started eating Tylenol
so that she would walk in and see me eating these pills. You know what I mean?
Now it sounds ridiculous. It really does. It sounds
like really sad. But I've got to tell you that
that was what it was like being me.
And that's, it's really, you know, it's sort of humorous.
Now on the other side of it, but it's really, like if you want to talk about the essence
of selfish, that's pretty bad.
You know, to have, you know, wait for your mom to show up so you can start doing these things.
Instead of just saying like I need help and I don't know why I need help or whatever.
That's the kind of dramatic
insane alcoholic I am.
And all of that shit, you know, so that's
I've got to tell you that I've experienced that empty.
That, you know, it's sort of hard to put words to it.
It's one of the hardest things to put words to in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I experienced what
a lot of speakers try to describe as like the essence of alcoholism
from a very young age. And the reason I'm here in Alcoholics Anonymous
and not somewhere else is because alcohol had an effect on me
that was life changing. I started to drink when I was
between 8th and 9th grade. And there's a few things that I remember
and probably will remember to the day I die.
Working this way, going back, graduating college,
ending up in rehab,
first time I got laid, and the first time I drank alcohol.
And I remember everything about that day.
That's not true. Not that day. I remember everything about
drinking and first getting that effect produced by alcohol.
I remember, and I've said it a million times, dude, I remember
the couch I was sitting on. I remember being in the corner
of the L-shaped couch. I remember having my arms out like so.
I remember feeling the material. I remember the pattern
on it. I remember who was there. And more than anything,
I remember looking at the bottle that was like 95 bottle.
95% full. And I'm lit.
I'm good.
And if you know what I'm talking about, like I'm good,
like you may be in the right spot. Perhaps.
So I'm looking at this bottle and I'm taken care of.
And for me, if you want to get
like therapeutic wordy about it, alcohol always provided
for me a feeling like I was safe and secure.
Like I was taken care of.
No more of this constantly,
constantly neurotic thinking
and like on-edgedness about everything. And like, dude, I could
spend 20 minutes thinking about tying my shoe. Like
that's how I constantly live. And when I drank and that stopped,
it was like someone took a branding iron
into my mind and soul and just like stuck
it deep down inside of me. I did not make the
connection that day that you are about to spend the next
seven, eight years of your life doing this to the gates of hell,
to your death doorstep. But it obviously did something because, boy, did I take that to the extreme, man.
Now, when I say I feel safe and secure as a result of drinking,
that's just sort of the outcome.
That's the effect caused by it.
But what, at least like per me today at this moment, what I feel like,
is that there was something introduced into me at that time in my life
that I, up until that point, did not have.
The closest thing our literature uses
is the word power. And
from that point on, I was then able to
go ahead and act the way that I
felt like I was supposed to act. I'm like hugely right now
when we start working. You know, some of us are already
very willful, you know. And some of us are already
very willful in our lives. But even that
status quo that you're enjoying so much
we do that thinking is important and I agree with what we said at our
conversation today. Um, that's how you pricing all of that, that the people that do yourself, have Jane Lee Hop à cœur, there's just a very really simple attitude to that and for some people that look from another perspective, than you do not move from one somewhere else.
And so, I think in terms of that, well, I'm not saying that your strategy,
whatever it is that I do for you, you know, I do want
You know, I do like a lot of watching other people, alcoholic and not, and we were talking about this the other night, is that there seems to be some, like, just like alcohol was stamped into my mind at that point, I personally feel that, you know, this is the part where it's like Matt's opinion, but I personally feel that there was, you know, when I was born, there was certain hardwiring, certain things that were stamped into me.
Um, certain instincts that I feel like God loves me so much that he put those in me so that if I don't, if I just make some sort of path along the way that I don't even need God, he's wired me so that I'm able to survive and live even without him.
It's, it's really a beautiful thing if you think about it, like a very loving thing for, for, uh, for my God to do for me, that like, even if I'm like, hey, F you, he's like, okay, you're taken care of anyway.
Um, and I will naturally go ahead and try to satisfy those instincts and sort of try to touch on them a little bit about pre-drink.
I'm going to go and, uh, try to find her, you know, her, you know, the name is really irrelevant.
Um, that's not true, but, but I have, that's actually really horrible.
I didn't mean it in such a fashion.
But I'm going to, like, I have a, I have like a, a, a, you know, like a, I have that sort of instinct.
And listen, if you're, if you're anywhere between the age of, you know, 13 and 60, you probably have the same sort of thing.
Um, another one for me is like I want to feel part of either my family or my social setting.
And, uh, and I want to feel secure.
So, and, and, you know, some literal senses like, you know.
So, roof over my head, food and drink.
Um, so I want to have like some sort of security.
So for me that always comes out in what I do for money and stuff like this.
So, what, the reason I'm saying all this is because when I drank and that power was introduced into me,
um, all of that completely inability to have personal relations or sex relations,
any, inability to have any kind of self-esteem, any kind of ability to have any follow-through with any ambitions to make my pocketbook full.
I couldn't do any.
I couldn't do any of that before I started to drink.
It was incapable.
Like, I was trying to exert myself through self-propulsion.
It didn't work.
I hated myself.
I hated my life.
When I drank, the power showed up.
And all of a sudden, over the next seven, eight years, I orchestrated a masterpiece.
At least it's so it seemed to me.
You know, like, uh, I always make the joke if you're gonna, if you're gonna, uh, if you're gonna arrange and direct your life, at least try to make it an epic.
And, that's, uh, I go back.
The bigger I go home, that's what I do, uh, from the, you know, when I first started drinking and up into this day, um,
So, what did I do in order, now that I have this power, I go out and I start to, to attack with the vengeance, if you will, all those, uh, instincts, and so,
I gotta tell you that that's, that worked for a very long time for me.
Um,
I was also able, in that time, because of the effect produced by alcohol,
I was able to act in ways
um,
that were
totally self-seeking and dishonest and, you know, inconsiderate, would even be, like, fair to use those words.
But, um,
totally just an animal
in trying to get what I want.
But, I didn't feel the effects of my actions because of the fact that I was constantly drinking.
And, constantly, um,
introducing a false power or a false spirit into myself.
In other words, like, my, my guilt
and remorse
was dissolved by alcohol.
It just, I didn't feel it.
It was almost as if I was a sociopath.
Um, but, uh,
and that's why, you know, I gotta be honest, like, I developed, I drank so much
and, and, and used other substances so much that I feel like I warped my mind and body.
Just through regular, day-in, day-out use.
So,
where does that leave me?
At the end of, uh,
let's see,
I got sober in November of 2002.
What's the tenth month, October?
Thanks.
October of 2002.
This is what my life looks like.
Uh, I'm 130 pounds.
Strung out.
I am unemployable.
And I haven't worked, uh,
for probably close to a better part of the year.
Which means I'm not even trying to
cover my income at the time.
Um, I was living a,
such a delirious life.
Such a delirious life.
Such a delirious life.
Such a delusional world that
I was pretty much trying to emulate, like,
a half-Jewish suburban version of Scarface.
I drove around,
drove around in an
87, uh, Honda Accord.
The one with the lights that went up like this.
They were, I had to keep them up
because the, the little motor
wouldn't send them up anymore. So I had to always keep
them up. It was a car that my dad
had bought me, uh, you know,
a few years prior.
Um, I'm not
working. Uh, I stopped
going to school. Uh, I, I was
doing, like, one class at a time just to keep
fronts up, I guess. I don't know.
Um,
I lived a town over
from where I grew up.
And, I was
barely in contact with any of my family.
What,
like I said, it wasn't because I was so guilty
to be around them that I couldn't handle it. It was
just because it served no purpose
to be around them for me.
Um, when I did see them, it'd be about
once a month and I would show up and,
I'd either eat three plates of food and pass
out for twelve hours or I'd show
up and just
not touch a thing of food and be gone
in, like, a half hour. Like, I was
just an animal.
And, uh,
all that came crashing down.
Why?
Hmm.
If I wanted to get intellectual about it, I
could give you all sorts of reasons, but
I don't really have an honest
answer. Um,
I just think my
threshold for pain was such
so low and I
had been doing it my way
for
so long without any
you know, regulation or
anything like that that I just burnt
out. Uh,
Carlito's way.
People don't get reformed, they burn out.
You know what I mean? And I just
got burnt out.
Um, so she left.
That may have
helped. And, uh, and I had no
other, like, it felt like someone
you know, stole my blanket.
Um, I could not
I could not
get this serial killer
mind to stop.
Like,
there's a lot of, uh,
one of the things that hooked me into
the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was
I'm not a
problem drinker, I'm an answer drinker.
Uh, alcohol
has never been a problem, it's always been an answer
for me. And that's very true.
There's something in the back of my mind that knows
even to this day, uh, if I
do not seek a
power outside, you know,
within myself, outside the bottle, that I
will eventually revert back to the mental
obsession and drink again.
But I can also tell you that there was not enough
booze on the East Coast in October
and November of 2002 to make this thing
stop. I somehow
got convinced that,
that it was no longer
an answer for me. Um,
why? Because I had enough, you know,
I had, uh,
you know, 40 grand
in cash and another two pounds of weed
sitting in my safe. It wasn't
like I had enough, it wasn't like
I was running out of options.
I just couldn't make it
stop. And
there's a, there's a lot of, like, different
sort of flavors of strange
mental insanity that happens in these rooms.
Um, but the one that is,
absolutely common for people that have recovered
is that spot.
Why can't I
make this stop? And,
um, I skidded in sideways to a
treatment center in November of
2002 when,
when I just, I, it wasn't like
my life was, my life was unmanageable.
Yes.
I was powerless. Yes.
Did I
know either of those things? No.
I came into a place
because my life was unbearable.
And I couldn't,
I could no longer, I could no longer live
with being myself. And I barely
knew that Alcoholics Anonymous existed.
Um, something,
something, uh, beyond me
happened in those first 30 days.
Um,
I went in thinking I was gonna
um,
not sniff pills,
but I was still gonna drink alcohol
and, uh, and do,
and still live that lifestyle that I was
telling you about. And
in that time, um,
I, I definitely don't get down
with some of us have to, to,
to die for some of us to live. I don't,
that sounds horrible. Um,
but there were some direct hits that happened to me
in, like, back-to-back fashions.
One was a friend of mine that
had really been the, the link for me
to, to be able to thrive in that
underworld, if you will.
Um,
he was the one who basically put my hand in someone
else's hand, if you get what I'm talking about.
Um,
he,
he overdosed and died.
Um,
and this is the, you know, I mean, like,
I already had guilt about this, because this is, you know,
I'm living like a king in my mind.
And this kid's like, you know,
just grinding it out and, like, not getting anywhere.
And, um, he overdosed and died.
One of my other friends, Mike, found him.
I had, for some
people I'd known die prior up into that,
but for whatever reason,
it hit me
that
this is you.
That there is no second chance
to what is going on here.
That, um,
that this is it.
And, uh, I started reflecting about some of my friends
who, uh, as my head cleared, I realized that they had already gone to treatment,
and they had already been out and were trying to drink whiskey and ended up gagged out again.
And, um,
the other,
the other piece that sort of helped contribute to this was that my,
Connection got arrested.
And one of the kids that I was working with in low-level distribution got arrested, too.
And so I was sort of, in one sense, like having my life come down on top of me
because I realized I was killing myself against my own will.
And I'm also looking at the driveway twice a day at the rehab,
wondering if there's going to be the patrol car that rolls in with a warrant for me.
Circumstances made me willing.
And it's the magic that happens.
There's nothing that I take reward for.
I mean, I don't take credit for any of that.
But something happened to me there that right after that point,
where it's like, you know, I make that transition to, I want to be sober.
And the next thought that just came from, I don't know if you ever had this,
where someone never told you something, but it's sort of just truth emanates from you.
And, like, there's like an intuition, like you know it already.
And when I decided that I wanted to try to be sober, not in a, you know, halfway kind of thing,
that I was really going to try to...
To get and be sober for good and for keeps, something emanated out of me,
which was, you've never been sober.
You're, like, you don't know it.
You can't be sober.
I was under no delusion that sitting in, you know, off silver hard metal chairs
and drinking coffee and listening to people that I sort of knew once an hour,
even if it was every day, was going to be enough to keep someone like me sober on a permanent basis.
I thought about drinking.
Drinking and drank every moment.
Like, that is not an exaggeration for me.
Like, I am not the binge drinker.
I am the multiple times a day, all throughout the day kind of drinker.
And I did it for eight years in a row.
And even though when I was drinking, my life seemed like the normal one,
like that this was just what I was doing,
there was also somewhere deep down buried inside of me that truth that I can't,
that there's something wrong.
So that truth that emanated out of me was you don't know how to be sober.
So when I got introduced to the literature in Alcoholics Anonymous,
when they said things like the physical allergy,
when you start to drink,
you don't, you know, there's no controlling it,
that there's no, like, moderating your drinking,
that shit, excuse me, that was, like, obvious for me.
And the,
the discussion in, in,
I don't even know where,
more about alcoholism,
about the mental obsession,
and why powerlessness doesn't stop
once the drink is taken out of my life,
like in the physical sense.
All, like, mental obsession, mental blank spots,
obsession of the mind, all this kind of stuff.
All it was for me was just language
that put to words things I intuitively knew about myself.
All I had to do was just look at my own experience.
And, and this stuff was just there for me.
Now, I told you that my,
my suffering from alcoholism sort of bookended my actual drinking.
Because most of my drinking wasn't suffering,
it was only at the end.
But I was, I, I had personal, on a personal level,
an anecdotal experience here is that I had some more suffering to do
from alcoholism as a result of not drinking.
And, uh, the number one cause for relapse is sobriety.
Um, see, for me,
like, I don't know how to put it other than
I went to God,
um, now, this is, I think, maybe the first time I've mentioned God in this talk,
I don't know, but
I gotta tell you, when I first sit down and start working with a new person,
and we start talking,
you know, as we sort of etch into the second step about, um,
open-mindedness to things spiritual,
uh, possibly, you know, maybe a power greater than ourselves,
uh, a design for living,
that I, um, uh, usually don't use the word God.
Because often, just like as it was for me,
there, there was some sort of mental attachments and mental things going on around that word
that really kept me from being able to
experience God.
Experience God on a real level.
Um, so, when,
I don't like to discount my early experience in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like, oh, I was doing something entirely wrong my first two years.
Um, or, you know, close to two years.
Because the truth is, is that obviously I wasn't if I'm still standing here.
And a lot of the things that I do today,
I was doing then as well.
It's just that I was looking some, like, looking for peace in some of the wrong places.
And, um, and there was a real,
I don't, you know, I don't care whether, you know, you get introduced to this stuff early,
um, early on immediately.
Or, like, you're someone like me who has to sort of wade through some 12 and 12 stuff
before someone presents you with the truth.
It's not really the way I meant for it to sound.
But, you know what I mean?
Like, before it becomes clear to you.
Because we were talking about this on the way up, about,
um, about why it's so powerful to listen to speakers with,
uh, like, fresh sobriety.
Um, and, and I,
when I, like, look at my early experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous,
there was an absolute realness
to my trying to bring myself
to that power we call God.
Um, now what I was, the willingness that I was, you know,
what I was bringing to God was very limited.
But what, but my genuineness,
the depth of my, what I was trying to bring to God was very real.
Um, so when I hit my knees in my first, you know,
with, uh, my first sort of introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous
and taking my first, you know, third step,
it was absolutely real.
There was a, there was a, a questioning,
uh, a, a, an ask for help.
Um, there was,
there was a realness to, you know,
of, of myself that I knew that I needed God for this.
Now, I stayed sober, um,
because I followed that with the actions that are,
you know, some of the actions, not all of them,
that are outlined in the, in the, in the big book.
Um, but really, for me, where,
why this thing did not really take hold
and, and my life did not really start becoming recreated
is because I was, you know,
not because of that I wasn't bringing
the realness in prayer to God.
It was more that I just wasn't bringing anything
but my drinking problem to God.
And as a result, you know,
so I pick up my one-year medallion,
and, uh, it's weird that this is like twice now
that that sort of happened.
Um, when I pick up my one-year medallion
and I say something to the effect
that this is not about me anymore,
um, I'm a year away from the drink
and somewhere from right around then
until about my second year
is that my, my, my awareness
that I needed God to the depths of my soul
really started to fade away.
Um, because now I've got some distance from the drink.
I'm in regular meetings all the time.
I'm in big book meetings.
I'm studying the bejesus out of the big book
even though my experience isn't really lining up with it.
Um, you know what I mean?
Like I'm just, I'm slipping back
into some of the very,
some of the very same things
that ended me up, um,
in such a crazed state
before I ever started drinking.
And what do I mean by that?
It goes, for me,
all the way back to what we were talking about
in regards to trying to, uh,
play the, uh, play the director.
And now using, now I'm sober though.
Now I'm sober a year at least,
but now I'm still trying to use the same,
you know, God-stamped instincts in me
in order to try to satisfy,
in order to satisfy myself inside again.
Um, you know what I mean?
So, but the, so the story is the same.
I don't need to elaborate it.
You know what I mean?
Again, there's, now there's,
I'm sober.
You know, I've got, uh,
maybe one or two girlfriends
who don't even know I exist.
You know what I mean?
Like this thing is starting to happen all over again.
Um, I'm working waiting tables
and I'm not getting my due
so I start stealing.
I'm, I'm, I'm patting tips.
And I'm stealing steaks.
And, uh,
now this is the,
this is the bizarre part for me.
Um, in that, in regards to that social instinct
is that now I'm not getting like
a million phone calls a day
for people to pick up shit from me anymore.
Like that's how I used to feel needed,
you know, how I was needed.
Um, but now I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And when you, or someone like me,
and you get involved in this a little bit,
you can become one of the scariest people out there
with this like need,
need to be recognized, noticed, wanted.
Like, AA is probably one of the most pure spiritual things
left on this planet.
And you get a like psychopath like me
coming in here trying to be the big shot
in the Anonymous program.
It's really scary.
Um, so what happened for me is that
eventually, um,
I just ran, you know, again,
I didn't get reformed.
I ran out of steam.
And I just basically came
to a place where I started to, um,
I started to question,
you know, what I was doing
or what was going on.
I started to realize that my experience,
as far as my experience with the steps,
didn't line up with
what the big book was talking about.
I did, I figured that out through a lot of studying
in the literature.
Um, there were some incomplete things.
I didn't have a sex inventory
the first time through the steps.
I mean, that was something obvious and tangible.
Um, you know,
the things that were going on in the big book,
that, um,
almost seemed like a history lesson
when you read it and studied it,
were obviously not lining up with how my life was.
And I, and I warned people of being, uh,
having a middle-of-the-road solution,
but walked straight down the middle of the road.
And the thing about delusion
and, like, self-deception,
for me,
is that
I can't spot it in myself.
Um,
it's just one of those
sort of strange,
uh, you know,
alcoholic human experiences
that, for whatever reason,
um, I can live through my thinking
without even knowing it.
And, um,
so what happened is that I, I didn't,
I didn't end up, like, having some sort of
mental breakdown and ending up in a
facility. Uh, I didn't have, like,
a meltdown in a meeting and say I'm living a fraud,
like, a lie. Um,
I got,
I got tricked
into, uh,
into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous
that's laid out in the 12 steps
in the big book.
I got, I got tricked. Um,
and the principle of attraction is what got me.
Yeah, if you're trying to, like,
you know, hide from this thing,
watch out for attraction. It'll get ya.
Um,
I got
12-stepped,
if you will, by, uh, someone who had
about 90 days of sobriety.
Who, and I had just about
two years, who
started showing up in my, uh,
my meetings.
He would show up,
this guy was, like, so blue
collar. Guy would roll in
with no shoes on, like,
cut off jean shorts, a ripped
t-shirt. He talked
about, he was from, uh, York,
which I could not
stand. Um, it's
not my favorite place today,
but then I was, like, I couldn't stand it.
Um, and this guy, but instead
of, like, taking some sort of intellectual
approach to everything,
he was not, he didn't give a, he was
not there to impress anyone.
That was the thing that I couldn't poke any holes in.
Um, and he just shared his experience
with the 12-steps about, in these meetings
he'd be like, I wrote my
four-step in detox, I did my fifth step today, I got
out, uh, made some amends,
I ended up coming down here to try to get
my life recreated, and
and I, and
after listening to this madness,
for, uh, a few weeks,
I eventually sidestepped
him outside of a meeting. I was like, listen, I got a
sponsor, but,
uh, you know,
so that's cool. He's got about 15 years.
He drives a Benz.
Um, but I was
wondering, you know, I, I sort of figured out
that this isn't, you know, my
experience isn't really what's going on in this.
Could you show me how to take other people through that?
Uh, and fortunately, he knew enough
about the,
the psycho-killer maniac mind that I
have, that he was willing to pass this
on to me without having to be
uh, noticed
in, in it.
And, uh, he walked me through the 12 steps
and that,
uh, he was, he was sort of like my
Ebby Thatcher, uh,
in Alcoholics Anonymous. He took me,
he started to introduce me to a way
of life that was more
shielded away from, you
know, satisfying myself.
He showed me that in, uh, in about
another 60 days later, he was gone.
And a little less
than 30 days after that, he was
on my couch. Um,
because he didn't want to sleep in his truck.
And
that, let me tell you, uh,
the
difference between belief and
experience for me happened there.
Because as all of my,
uh, you know,
friends that I had made in my early
sobriety were now
saying, thank God, this is,
you know, because people were like, who is this guy?
He's crazy. Um, he can't be doing
that. Um,
when he drank and
they were like, thank God this is, you know, this
happened, now you can, things can go back to normal. We were
really worried about you.
What, what
was obvious to me was like
that, no, I need to continue to follow
this because
I feel alive.
Like, I'm experiencing something that, up
until that point, I had never experienced.
It was almost,
um,
to try to put you, put you in the middle
of it, think about, um,
the Twilight Zone.
An episode of a Twilight Zone.
And think about walking through your life
and everybody else is looking at you
going, like, going, ooh, that's crazy.
And you're, like, the only one
walking through this life going,
like, oh my God, everyone,
everyone else is crazy.
Um,
I
followed,
I followed
what I knew to be true.
And, and I feel like that is
you know,
the hallmark sign
of a real
genuine
awakening and
a knowing that
I need that
power.
Um, because I followed it when it, it,
it wouldn't make sense to follow
it because it changed
me. And,
uh, long and short is that
I followed it, I did the only thing I knew
what to do, which was follow where,
um, he was going.
You know, and, uh,
and shortly
after that, I, I met, uh,
the guy who is,
is my sponsor today.
Um, the good news is, is that
Alcoholics Anonymous is about principle and honing
a relationship with God. So even when you think
your sponsor is crazy, which, uh,
I often do,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
uh,
um,
um,
um,
um.
He, I heard someone say this the other day at a big book meeting,
and he was talking about
the book
for sinners only,
and it was one of the
pieces of literature that helped us write
our big book, and he quoted a line
in there that just threw me off my
chair, not literally, but like, I was like,
ooh, I'm using that next time I speak.
Um,
and it was,
it's the essence of what that sponsor
has shown me.
Um, he took the
emphasis that I have, I have a tendency
just by naturalness to want to gravitate
towards studying,
understanding,
sounding well,
you know, articulating
the literature. And what he said
in the quote from the book is,
um,
study people, not literature.
And what he did
was he, he,
he didn't force me, but like, he regularly
pushed me away
when I would call, and it would be like
the problem du jour, you know,
because I'm sure, like, in retrospect, it wasn't that
important. Um,
he would regularly
push me back out into
getting my thoughts
and actions back out
away from me.
And he would,
and he would emphasize,
you know,
you know,
moving away from the self as being
an answer. And
that, um, you know,
I could, I want, ten minutes,
I sort of want to, like, wrap some things up, but
um, that as
a way of living
in positioning myself
um, to
listen, and then to serve,
that was
to, that was where
my life started to change
and
you know, we used the,
sometimes you hear the word
reborn, um, but for me, that's
where I, I got reborn
in my thinking. I got reborn, and
as a result of my thinking,
you know, what did Tom say?
Our thinking,
our thinking, uh,
predicts our actions
and our actions predict our destiny.
And, uh, on a
regular, consistent basis, as my thinking
started to change my actions,
my life has gone in a
direction that I didn't anticipate, but
I wouldn't change for
anything. Um,
you know, I'm not going to run down my resume
in Alcoholics Anonymous, but, uh,
I can tell you
that God has used
someone who was 130
pounds, strung out as,
you know, you have
no idea, you probably do,
um,
unemployable with no skills other
than simple math and, like,
how to not say certain
things on the phone, um,
he's changed me
to be, uh, not
by no means, like, a perfect person,
but someone who
has been able to be part of
other people's lives getting recreated
and has shown me how
to make decisions
and actions in my life
that if I get hit by a train
on the way home, that it,
that I'm going to be okay with going.
Um, I feel like I've done
way more good in this lifetime now
than I have harm.
Um,
and that for someone like me, you know, I,
there's a lot of things that have to
happen in that, and before that happens,
um, I had a lot of guilt
and a lot of shame about
some of the things that I'd done.
I have personally played
hands in the people's demise.
And I held a lot
of, a lot of pain and guilt
over that, and, um,
I'm not sure why I referenced that,
but
the power in,
in, in giving myself
up and,
um, and trying to serve
has been enough to somehow
heal those scars
that were there as a result of
some of the seriously bad
things that I've done in this lifetime.
And, so,
um, now,
that would be
the end of a, uh,
that would be a great way to wrap the story
up, right?
So,
what about the real talk?
Um,
alcoholism as a whole
is, you know, I got sober when I was 20.
Um, it's not
like I've got another, you know,
60 to 70 years
under my belt of alcoholism is dead.
Um, alcoholism
from the day that
we get sober
does not usually show up at the front door
in the shape of a bottle or a needle.
It shows up at the,
side door in the form
of a new or failed
relationship. Or at the back door,
uh,
um, or the other
side door.
With, uh, in the form of
a really
good job or
high, you know, uh, attempt
to
further ourselves
in the worldly sense.
Um, you know,
the real talk is that, uh,
as a result, and, you know,
I can put my, I can see my hands
all over my own, my own thinking
and my own hands all over my own actions
as to why I put myself in sort of a tough
spot here recently. Um,
but it's also sort of
part of, like, what life is.
You know, we have a way of, of design for
living that allows
us to, to be present to what God wants
for us. And, um,
the long and short, what I'm trying to dance
around here a whole lot is that I've made
a lot of decisions,
uh, based on some,
you know, based on a phantom life that I
wanted to create and design again.
You know, again, back towards, uh,
the actor.
All based on
God-given instincts, but
really in pursuit of trying to, to satisfy
this
outside things in order to try to make
myself feel better or look better.
Um,
I moved up to Pennsylvania not that long
ago because I was
at the time dating a girl that I was,
uh, deeply in love with.
Um, you know,
that now for someone like me is not
something all that, uh,
irregular. But, uh,
uh, the other thing is that,
you know, closer to family, that's a good
thing, right? But, uh, it would sound
good for me to, to be wanting to be close
to family. Really what it was is,
uh, I've got a
banging,
banging professional career
opportunity that I turned
down because, really, because I'm a
I'm scared to do it at the time. But, uh,
and then, you know, the best job I could ask for
um, on the, you know,
on the East Coast. And so all,
now everybody knows who I am
in AA already. So I got
that covered. Really what this is about
is now I gotta go satisfy all the other worldly
stuff. And, uh,
so to me I'm like superstar. I got
the spiritual world covered.
The worldly things are about to be
all-star status too. And
it's all, it's just, I gotta
be honest with you, it's a lot of,
it was a lot of more self-seeking and dishonesty
and, you know, um,
you know, the phantom, the phantom self
recreating itself. And
take a guess what happened.
Hashtag life fail.
Uh,
I didn't even get back here before
she left. Um,
I took
the job and
about, you know, after the three months of
orientation they were like,
it's just not gonna work. You can come back in a
year with some more experience, but
we're not, you're not at the place where you need
to be in order to fly on your own.
Um, my personal relationship with my dad
was in the crapper. And
um, all the things
that I set out,
you know, sought
to make myself feel better were ruined.
And, and in the last five minutes
I'd like to tell you that, uh, I'm
grateful for it. Because
it has, again, reintroduced me
to, to
some of the inherent
things that are necessary in order to,
to have a legitimate,
not a mental belief,
but back to that legitimate interaction
with that power we call
God. Um, my,
my big one, uh,
at least at, big two at least
at this moment is that, um,
every, every day is supposed to be anew.
And that, um,
I, that I
can't, you know, that, that life,
as much as I want to be like, this is where it's going
and this is how it's supposed to be,
is constantly changing. It's not some
sort of solid thing, um, that
God's hand is always in,
in moving and creating this. And
the other piece is, um,
and the reason I brought it up about early
sobriety and why that's so powerful,
um, and why it's so, uh,
re-emerged in my
life is that when I was first sober
and I'm first starting to try to build this
connection, there was a lot of
legitimate questions,
um, that I had for God.
A lot of,
a lot of asking.
Um,
and as a result of, of me managing
my life into the ground, to, to make
it sound right, is, uh, is that
I'm at, you know, I'm asking God a lot of questions
again. And
for me, any
life that is not, a spiritual life that is not
asking, there's
something missing. Um, I, I wonder
now, where the hell was I getting
all my answers for before if I wasn't asking
all these questions? Um,
my questions today involve
things like, yo,
like, is this ever
gonna happen for me in regards
to her? Like, why am I,
am I going to always continue
to make some of the same mistakes over again?
Am I, are you gonna ever, like,
how am I gonna, like, not see
these things, you know, these things coming? The job.
Um,
like, I'm sorry.
Like, I, like, dude, I did
this, I did it so wrong. Like,
well, what do you want me to do?
How long are you gonna keep
me out here? How, you know, um,
um, you know,
social instinct stuff.
Like, I know it's none of my
business who, what people think of me.
Um, but I feel
like an idiot.
Um, what am I supposed to do?
What do you want me to do? And, and these
are just some sort of,
you know, random questions that I've
probably asked a couple times in the last couple days.
But, um,
but, I ask these
questions in prayer, and
I go to what
is placed in front of me, or whoever's placed
in front of me. And the
only time that these questions
are present
in my thought or soul
are when they're in prayer.
And I'm not
experiencing, um,
huge fits of hopelessness
and depression. Not when
all that stuff crashed down, you know,
it took me about a day or two
and before I could start really,
like, putting my hands on what I did.
But, um, what I guess
I'm saying is that those instincts that I
have naturally stamped
into me, some of them are more important
in other parts of my life than others, but
they're really, you know, important
in this, they're supposed to be important
at least in my age.
Um,
I don't have a significant other.
And no, that is not an advertisement.
I am,
um, this is the good part.
I live at home with my
mother
and my bonus mom.
And, uh,
and, uh,
and I don't have a job.
Now, I do have some
interviews coming up, which I'm
very hopeful for, I suppose.
But, um,
you know, and I know I've been
around AA enough to know that
anybody or, you know,
anybody in at least this area just wants
you to be honest and help. That's all they ever
wanted. And, uh,
in my family life is
it's good in the sense
that nobody's butting heads, but it's not
there's not going to be any change,
fundamental change going on there, because
there's other people involved.
Um, and the reason I'm bringing all this up is that
I'm okay.
And there's no
reason from
an instinctual,
worldly sense that I should be.
Um,
now,
seasons change.
And I've, and I've been at high points
before thinking I'm like the king of the universe.
This happens
to be one of the lower points for me.
Um,
I really did a number on my life
this time. I really did.
But, uh,
but I do have a trust.
I know,
um, I know that I'm taking
care of now. I feel like I'm being carried,
to be quite honest with you. Um,
and really, I mean, can it,
can it get any worse?
The answer is,
the answer is yes, if I continue to try
to orchestrate my life. And, uh,
and I'm just done doing that. So,
um, one of my prayers is that,
um, when things change,
because if you're sitting here and you're new,
sorry to get, like, so totally existential,
um, but if you're sitting
here and you're new,
spacey, spacey.
Um,
if you're sitting here,
and you're new, and your life
is not, like,
rock star status yet,
um,
and that's what you want, like,
it'll happen if you get
excessive about it. Um, I'm here
to tell you that
you can get excessive about it, and it can own you.
Um, but,
I don't know. I feel protected,
and I know things, I trust that things
will always get better, provided, uh,
provide I stay
close to God, and, uh,
I try to do His work well. It hasn't let me down,
and I don't really see it letting me down
in the future. So,
I'm done. Thanks.
Applause
Hey, Matt Bennett.
And I'd like to thank you guys for asking me to come up and share my experience.
I'm going to keep my hat on.
It's not that cold. My hair is really just bad.
My sobriety date is November 16, 2002.
My home group is the Port Fishington Speaker Group.
We meet on Monday nights down right where Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Kensington meet.
So if you're ever in Philadelphia on a Monday night and you want to hear a good message of hope,
please feel free to come on out.
I'm supposed to, in a general way, share what it was like, what happened, what it's like now.
And, you know, you may be a little bit bored because I know a handful of you here.
And my story about what happened hasn't changed a whole lot.
So it sucks to be you.
I am very grateful for the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It has been by far the most influential thing.
This lifetime for me.
Not only in the fact that it has kept the obsession to drink away,
but it has also offered a way of living, a design for living,
that I did not know was really an option for me.
To try to give you a little bit of a background about myself,
I'm from outside of Philadelphia. I grew up in Malvern.
There's nothing sexy about Malvern.
It is.
Forty miles west and it is about as, like, middle class
and nothing exciting as a neighborhood as you can think of.
I came from a family that wasn't really middle class.
We were somewhere below that line.
And I come from a family that doesn't necessarily have, like,
a normal one mom, one dad kind of background.
That's how it started, you know, naturally.
But by the time I was growing up, things were a little bit different.
And that really is sort of irrelevant, to be quite honest with you.
It helped.
Some of that stuff helped form who I am today.
But in regards to alcoholism, it doesn't really hold that much weight.
Why?
Because I've talked with people and met people in all sorts of walks of life
that come from neighborhoods that were nothing remotely close to mine,
who look nothing like me, who are an entirely different gender,
who come from, you know, an entirely different socioeconomic background,
who still, without any prompting, share the same internal condition as I have.
So I know that alcoholism and also the solution
is able to reach across many different barriers.
So I heard someone say something the other day that I'm sure I've heard somewhere along the lines.
I just, you know, am a burnout and forgot.
But he said that we were talking, you know, we were getting in the age-old argument about alcoholism
and, you know, how much should we be emphasizing the drink versus the malady
and, you know, all this really life-changing conversations.
And somebody said, you know, I don't know.
He said something to the effect of that if alcohol was really the problem,
why does taking it away not solve alcoholism?
And it was, that's not exactly how they put it.
It sounded a lot better.
But I can tell you that my, the way that, you know,
alcohol being a disease of perception that just,
that the removal of the drink in my life was sort of bookended
by lots of personal discomfort without the drink.
And when I, to try to give you a quick background
about what it was like living in this skin
and why I was living, you know, why it was like being me,
I can tell you, you know, the long and short is that
I was a maniac before the drink ever even showed up in my life.
If you wanted to paint a picture to what I was like without the drink,
you would, you could basically just say I was either a polar opposite
of extreme anger or massive fits of hopelessness
and, like, feeling like I was the only one walking, like, a very lonely road.
And I was the one who, you know, I lived that sort of loneliness
until I was, you know, I was, you know, I was, you know,
I was, you know, I was, you know, I was, you know,
I was, you know, eventually I would just boil up
and I couldn't take it anymore.
And then that's where the other piece for me was,
was, like, the blinding rage.
You know, so being constantly all over the place,
being a wreck in my emotional states, I guess,
it was, as you could imagine, pretty difficult to develop
any kind of lasting relationships.
Even the ones that were closest to me,
i.e. my family, it wasn't even, they didn't know what to do with me.
And I guess the one, in retrospect, the reason that I ended up
selling my life out for the drink was basically when I look back,
I can see, in retrospect, when I started living my life
in a very self-serving and self-seeking,
type of way.
I don't, I don't have a date pinned by any stretch of the imagination
as to when I started feeling the big hurt inside.
You know, like an emptiness and being completely uncomfortable
with my own skin.
But somewhere, I would say around fourth or fifth grade,
is when I started to develop some,
I started to act out on the strange mental twist.
And the strange mental twist, for me, in the spiritual sense,
is that I try to,
to arrange things in my life that are driven by God-given instincts.
I try to start to arrange them in order to try to satisfy myself
in the hopes that by doing that,
I'm going to be able to live comfortable with myself.
And it's, it's, it's the most natural thing in the world
to try to do that.
You know, our big, our big book says
in the third step that
most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us, most of us,
most people, and when I was reading that,
that did not mean me,
but most people try to live by self-propulsion.
I don't really read that so much as, you know, most alcoholics.
I really read that as most people try to live by self-propulsion.
And in an attempt to, you know, fix this,
I try to make all this better.
And I started to do that very early on.
First example, Janine O'Donnell.
I probably shouldn't use her name.
She's not in these rooms.
But she was, she was the first her.
She never, I don't think to this day knows that she was the first her.
It just goes to, I mean, and I make a joke about it,
about how impactful, like, the pursuit of girls were in my life.
But it really, it just goes to prove, like, how strong, like, in my mind is,
is that...
This was, like, something that was completely fancy.
The girl never knew I even liked her.
For God's sake, we were, like, this tall.
But I remember spending days, weeks,
probably the majority of at least one school year, if not two,
thinking about this girl all the time.
It was so sad and, and, and honestly cute
that, that I would take my lunch money,
that, that I would take my lunch money,
that my...
You know, like, the little snack money that my parents gave me
and I would go and sneak it into her desk,
like, when she was away from her desk.
And then, and then she would come back and, like, I'd be watching all,
you know, super creeper status.
And she'd be, like, she'd pull it out and be, like,
you know, put it away.
And, and I knew that she knew that it was from me.
I mean, it...
This mind is, like, living with a serial killer.
So, I told you, you know, so,
in that aspect, like, chasing little girls around,
you know, I don't know if that's normal,
but it's, this is my story, so you're stuck.
Driven, pushed around by completely crazy emotional states.
I guess the, the,
the real sign that there
maybe is something seriously wrong showed up when I was in
as I moved into middle school and I was convinced that I was going to be
the cool kid. And when I could not make any friendships
like, now I'm trying to live by this
self-propulsion. I have a clear idea that I need to be hanging out with these
kind of people, etc. And I could not make a friend
to save my life. I was so pushed around by what other
people were thinking of me that I was just crazy.
I had one close friend and he
lived a couple houses down and
he was a couple years younger than me so he probably looked up
to me a little bit. And this kid
one day after school came back and he got stoned with his sister and I felt
betrayed.
I don't know to this day why I felt betrayed but
I felt betrayed and it was like
I'd just gotten like, somebody told me I was
an idiot or something at school and I was so fragile, like such
a mess. So I ran home and I wrote
a crappy suicide note
and got a bottle
of Tylenol and
sat in the front living room
in the chair and waited for my mom to start to pull up the driveway
before I popped the bottle and started eating Tylenol
so that she would walk in and see me eating these pills. You know what I mean?
Now it sounds ridiculous. It really does. It sounds
like really sad. But I've got to tell you that
that was what it was like being me.
And that's, it's really, you know, it's sort of humorous.
Now on the other side of it, but it's really, like if you want to talk about the essence
of selfish, that's pretty bad.
You know, to have, you know, wait for your mom to show up so you can start doing these things.
Instead of just saying like I need help and I don't know why I need help or whatever.
That's the kind of dramatic
insane alcoholic I am.
And all of that shit, you know, so that's
I've got to tell you that I've experienced that empty.
That, you know, it's sort of hard to put words to it.
It's one of the hardest things to put words to in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I experienced what
a lot of speakers try to describe as like the essence of alcoholism
from a very young age. And the reason I'm here in Alcoholics Anonymous
and not somewhere else is because alcohol had an effect on me
that was life changing. I started to drink when I was
between 8th and 9th grade. And there's a few things that I remember
and probably will remember to the day I die.
Working this way, going back, graduating college,
ending up in rehab,
first time I got laid, and the first time I drank alcohol.
And I remember everything about that day.
That's not true. Not that day. I remember everything about
drinking and first getting that effect produced by alcohol.
I remember, and I've said it a million times, dude, I remember
the couch I was sitting on. I remember being in the corner
of the L-shaped couch. I remember having my arms out like so.
I remember feeling the material. I remember the pattern
on it. I remember who was there. And more than anything,
I remember looking at the bottle that was like 95 bottle.
95% full. And I'm lit.
I'm good.
And if you know what I'm talking about, like I'm good,
like you may be in the right spot. Perhaps.
So I'm looking at this bottle and I'm taken care of.
And for me, if you want to get
like therapeutic wordy about it, alcohol always provided
for me a feeling like I was safe and secure.
Like I was taken care of.
No more of this constantly,
constantly neurotic thinking
and like on-edgedness about everything. And like, dude, I could
spend 20 minutes thinking about tying my shoe. Like
that's how I constantly live. And when I drank and that stopped,
it was like someone took a branding iron
into my mind and soul and just like stuck
it deep down inside of me. I did not make the
connection that day that you are about to spend the next
seven, eight years of your life doing this to the gates of hell,
to your death doorstep. But it obviously did something because, boy, did I take that to the extreme, man.
Now, when I say I feel safe and secure as a result of drinking,
that's just sort of the outcome.
That's the effect caused by it.
But what, at least like per me today at this moment, what I feel like,
is that there was something introduced into me at that time in my life
that I, up until that point, did not have.
The closest thing our literature uses
is the word power. And
from that point on, I was then able to
go ahead and act the way that I
felt like I was supposed to act. I'm like hugely right now
when we start working. You know, some of us are already
very willful, you know. And some of us are already
very willful in our lives. But even that
status quo that you're enjoying so much
we do that thinking is important and I agree with what we said at our
conversation today. Um, that's how you pricing all of that, that the people that do yourself, have Jane Lee Hop à cœur, there's just a very really simple attitude to that and for some people that look from another perspective, than you do not move from one somewhere else.
And so, I think in terms of that, well, I'm not saying that your strategy,
whatever it is that I do for you, you know, I do want
You know, I do like a lot of watching other people, alcoholic and not, and we were talking about this the other night, is that there seems to be some, like, just like alcohol was stamped into my mind at that point, I personally feel that, you know, this is the part where it's like Matt's opinion, but I personally feel that there was, you know, when I was born, there was certain hardwiring, certain things that were stamped into me.
Um, certain instincts that I feel like God loves me so much that he put those in me so that if I don't, if I just make some sort of path along the way that I don't even need God, he's wired me so that I'm able to survive and live even without him.
It's, it's really a beautiful thing if you think about it, like a very loving thing for, for, uh, for my God to do for me, that like, even if I'm like, hey, F you, he's like, okay, you're taken care of anyway.
Um, and I will naturally go ahead and try to satisfy those instincts and sort of try to touch on them a little bit about pre-drink.
I'm going to go and, uh, try to find her, you know, her, you know, the name is really irrelevant.
Um, that's not true, but, but I have, that's actually really horrible.
I didn't mean it in such a fashion.
But I'm going to, like, I have a, I have like a, a, a, you know, like a, I have that sort of instinct.
And listen, if you're, if you're anywhere between the age of, you know, 13 and 60, you probably have the same sort of thing.
Um, another one for me is like I want to feel part of either my family or my social setting.
And, uh, and I want to feel secure.
So, and, and, you know, some literal senses like, you know.
So, roof over my head, food and drink.
Um, so I want to have like some sort of security.
So for me that always comes out in what I do for money and stuff like this.
So, what, the reason I'm saying all this is because when I drank and that power was introduced into me,
um, all of that completely inability to have personal relations or sex relations,
any, inability to have any kind of self-esteem, any kind of ability to have any follow-through with any ambitions to make my pocketbook full.
I couldn't do any.
I couldn't do any of that before I started to drink.
It was incapable.
Like, I was trying to exert myself through self-propulsion.
It didn't work.
I hated myself.
I hated my life.
When I drank, the power showed up.
And all of a sudden, over the next seven, eight years, I orchestrated a masterpiece.
At least it's so it seemed to me.
You know, like, uh, I always make the joke if you're gonna, if you're gonna, uh, if you're gonna arrange and direct your life, at least try to make it an epic.
And, that's, uh, I go back.
The bigger I go home, that's what I do, uh, from the, you know, when I first started drinking and up into this day, um,
So, what did I do in order, now that I have this power, I go out and I start to, to attack with the vengeance, if you will, all those, uh, instincts, and so,
I gotta tell you that that's, that worked for a very long time for me.
Um,
I was also able, in that time, because of the effect produced by alcohol,
I was able to act in ways
um,
that were
totally self-seeking and dishonest and, you know, inconsiderate, would even be, like, fair to use those words.
But, um,
totally just an animal
in trying to get what I want.
But, I didn't feel the effects of my actions because of the fact that I was constantly drinking.
And, constantly, um,
introducing a false power or a false spirit into myself.
In other words, like, my, my guilt
and remorse
was dissolved by alcohol.
It just, I didn't feel it.
It was almost as if I was a sociopath.
Um, but, uh,
and that's why, you know, I gotta be honest, like, I developed, I drank so much
and, and, and used other substances so much that I feel like I warped my mind and body.
Just through regular, day-in, day-out use.
So,
where does that leave me?
At the end of, uh,
let's see,
I got sober in November of 2002.
What's the tenth month, October?
Thanks.
October of 2002.
This is what my life looks like.
Uh, I'm 130 pounds.
Strung out.
I am unemployable.
And I haven't worked, uh,
for probably close to a better part of the year.
Which means I'm not even trying to
cover my income at the time.
Um, I was living a,
such a delirious life.
Such a delirious life.
Such a delirious life.
Such a delusional world that
I was pretty much trying to emulate, like,
a half-Jewish suburban version of Scarface.
I drove around,
drove around in an
87, uh, Honda Accord.
The one with the lights that went up like this.
They were, I had to keep them up
because the, the little motor
wouldn't send them up anymore. So I had to always keep
them up. It was a car that my dad
had bought me, uh, you know,
a few years prior.
Um, I'm not
working. Uh, I stopped
going to school. Uh, I, I was
doing, like, one class at a time just to keep
fronts up, I guess. I don't know.
Um,
I lived a town over
from where I grew up.
And, I was
barely in contact with any of my family.
What,
like I said, it wasn't because I was so guilty
to be around them that I couldn't handle it. It was
just because it served no purpose
to be around them for me.
Um, when I did see them, it'd be about
once a month and I would show up and,
I'd either eat three plates of food and pass
out for twelve hours or I'd show
up and just
not touch a thing of food and be gone
in, like, a half hour. Like, I was
just an animal.
And, uh,
all that came crashing down.
Why?
Hmm.
If I wanted to get intellectual about it, I
could give you all sorts of reasons, but
I don't really have an honest
answer. Um,
I just think my
threshold for pain was such
so low and I
had been doing it my way
for
so long without any
you know, regulation or
anything like that that I just burnt
out. Uh,
Carlito's way.
People don't get reformed, they burn out.
You know what I mean? And I just
got burnt out.
Um, so she left.
That may have
helped. And, uh, and I had no
other, like, it felt like someone
you know, stole my blanket.
Um, I could not
I could not
get this serial killer
mind to stop.
Like,
there's a lot of, uh,
one of the things that hooked me into
the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was
I'm not a
problem drinker, I'm an answer drinker.
Uh, alcohol
has never been a problem, it's always been an answer
for me. And that's very true.
There's something in the back of my mind that knows
even to this day, uh, if I
do not seek a
power outside, you know,
within myself, outside the bottle, that I
will eventually revert back to the mental
obsession and drink again.
But I can also tell you that there was not enough
booze on the East Coast in October
and November of 2002 to make this thing
stop. I somehow
got convinced that,
that it was no longer
an answer for me. Um,
why? Because I had enough, you know,
I had, uh,
you know, 40 grand
in cash and another two pounds of weed
sitting in my safe. It wasn't
like I had enough, it wasn't like
I was running out of options.
I just couldn't make it
stop. And
there's a, there's a lot of, like, different
sort of flavors of strange
mental insanity that happens in these rooms.
Um, but the one that is,
absolutely common for people that have recovered
is that spot.
Why can't I
make this stop? And,
um, I skidded in sideways to a
treatment center in November of
2002 when,
when I just, I, it wasn't like
my life was, my life was unmanageable.
Yes.
I was powerless. Yes.
Did I
know either of those things? No.
I came into a place
because my life was unbearable.
And I couldn't,
I could no longer, I could no longer live
with being myself. And I barely
knew that Alcoholics Anonymous existed.
Um, something,
something, uh, beyond me
happened in those first 30 days.
Um,
I went in thinking I was gonna
um,
not sniff pills,
but I was still gonna drink alcohol
and, uh, and do,
and still live that lifestyle that I was
telling you about. And
in that time, um,
I, I definitely don't get down
with some of us have to, to,
to die for some of us to live. I don't,
that sounds horrible. Um,
but there were some direct hits that happened to me
in, like, back-to-back fashions.
One was a friend of mine that
had really been the, the link for me
to, to be able to thrive in that
underworld, if you will.
Um,
he was the one who basically put my hand in someone
else's hand, if you get what I'm talking about.
Um,
he,
he overdosed and died.
Um,
and this is the, you know, I mean, like,
I already had guilt about this, because this is, you know,
I'm living like a king in my mind.
And this kid's like, you know,
just grinding it out and, like, not getting anywhere.
And, um, he overdosed and died.
One of my other friends, Mike, found him.
I had, for some
people I'd known die prior up into that,
but for whatever reason,
it hit me
that
this is you.
That there is no second chance
to what is going on here.
That, um,
that this is it.
And, uh, I started reflecting about some of my friends
who, uh, as my head cleared, I realized that they had already gone to treatment,
and they had already been out and were trying to drink whiskey and ended up gagged out again.
And, um,
the other,
the other piece that sort of helped contribute to this was that my,
Connection got arrested.
And one of the kids that I was working with in low-level distribution got arrested, too.
And so I was sort of, in one sense, like having my life come down on top of me
because I realized I was killing myself against my own will.
And I'm also looking at the driveway twice a day at the rehab,
wondering if there's going to be the patrol car that rolls in with a warrant for me.
Circumstances made me willing.
And it's the magic that happens.
There's nothing that I take reward for.
I mean, I don't take credit for any of that.
But something happened to me there that right after that point,
where it's like, you know, I make that transition to, I want to be sober.
And the next thought that just came from, I don't know if you ever had this,
where someone never told you something, but it's sort of just truth emanates from you.
And, like, there's like an intuition, like you know it already.
And when I decided that I wanted to try to be sober, not in a, you know, halfway kind of thing,
that I was really going to try to...
To get and be sober for good and for keeps, something emanated out of me,
which was, you've never been sober.
You're, like, you don't know it.
You can't be sober.
I was under no delusion that sitting in, you know, off silver hard metal chairs
and drinking coffee and listening to people that I sort of knew once an hour,
even if it was every day, was going to be enough to keep someone like me sober on a permanent basis.
I thought about drinking.
Drinking and drank every moment.
Like, that is not an exaggeration for me.
Like, I am not the binge drinker.
I am the multiple times a day, all throughout the day kind of drinker.
And I did it for eight years in a row.
And even though when I was drinking, my life seemed like the normal one,
like that this was just what I was doing,
there was also somewhere deep down buried inside of me that truth that I can't,
that there's something wrong.
So that truth that emanated out of me was you don't know how to be sober.
So when I got introduced to the literature in Alcoholics Anonymous,
when they said things like the physical allergy,
when you start to drink,
you don't, you know, there's no controlling it,
that there's no, like, moderating your drinking,
that shit, excuse me, that was, like, obvious for me.
And the,
the discussion in, in,
I don't even know where,
more about alcoholism,
about the mental obsession,
and why powerlessness doesn't stop
once the drink is taken out of my life,
like in the physical sense.
All, like, mental obsession, mental blank spots,
obsession of the mind, all this kind of stuff.
All it was for me was just language
that put to words things I intuitively knew about myself.
All I had to do was just look at my own experience.
And, and this stuff was just there for me.
Now, I told you that my,
my suffering from alcoholism sort of bookended my actual drinking.
Because most of my drinking wasn't suffering,
it was only at the end.
But I was, I, I had personal, on a personal level,
an anecdotal experience here is that I had some more suffering to do
from alcoholism as a result of not drinking.
And, uh, the number one cause for relapse is sobriety.
Um, see, for me,
like, I don't know how to put it other than
I went to God,
um, now, this is, I think, maybe the first time I've mentioned God in this talk,
I don't know, but
I gotta tell you, when I first sit down and start working with a new person,
and we start talking,
you know, as we sort of etch into the second step about, um,
open-mindedness to things spiritual,
uh, possibly, you know, maybe a power greater than ourselves,
uh, a design for living,
that I, um, uh, usually don't use the word God.
Because often, just like as it was for me,
there, there was some sort of mental attachments and mental things going on around that word
that really kept me from being able to
experience God.
Experience God on a real level.
Um, so, when,
I don't like to discount my early experience in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like, oh, I was doing something entirely wrong my first two years.
Um, or, you know, close to two years.
Because the truth is, is that obviously I wasn't if I'm still standing here.
And a lot of the things that I do today,
I was doing then as well.
It's just that I was looking some, like, looking for peace in some of the wrong places.
And, um, and there was a real,
I don't, you know, I don't care whether, you know, you get introduced to this stuff early,
um, early on immediately.
Or, like, you're someone like me who has to sort of wade through some 12 and 12 stuff
before someone presents you with the truth.
It's not really the way I meant for it to sound.
But, you know what I mean?
Like, before it becomes clear to you.
Because we were talking about this on the way up, about,
um, about why it's so powerful to listen to speakers with,
uh, like, fresh sobriety.
Um, and, and I,
when I, like, look at my early experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous,
there was an absolute realness
to my trying to bring myself
to that power we call God.
Um, now what I was, the willingness that I was, you know,
what I was bringing to God was very limited.
But what, but my genuineness,
the depth of my, what I was trying to bring to God was very real.
Um, so when I hit my knees in my first, you know,
with, uh, my first sort of introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous
and taking my first, you know, third step,
it was absolutely real.
There was a, there was a, a questioning,
uh, a, a, an ask for help.
Um, there was,
there was a realness to, you know,
of, of myself that I knew that I needed God for this.
Now, I stayed sober, um,
because I followed that with the actions that are,
you know, some of the actions, not all of them,
that are outlined in the, in the, in the big book.
Um, but really, for me, where,
why this thing did not really take hold
and, and my life did not really start becoming recreated
is because I was, you know,
not because of that I wasn't bringing
the realness in prayer to God.
It was more that I just wasn't bringing anything
but my drinking problem to God.
And as a result, you know,
so I pick up my one-year medallion,
and, uh, it's weird that this is like twice now
that that sort of happened.
Um, when I pick up my one-year medallion
and I say something to the effect
that this is not about me anymore,
um, I'm a year away from the drink
and somewhere from right around then
until about my second year
is that my, my, my awareness
that I needed God to the depths of my soul
really started to fade away.
Um, because now I've got some distance from the drink.
I'm in regular meetings all the time.
I'm in big book meetings.
I'm studying the bejesus out of the big book
even though my experience isn't really lining up with it.
Um, you know what I mean?
Like I'm just, I'm slipping back
into some of the very,
some of the very same things
that ended me up, um,
in such a crazed state
before I ever started drinking.
And what do I mean by that?
It goes, for me,
all the way back to what we were talking about
in regards to trying to, uh,
play the, uh, play the director.
And now using, now I'm sober though.
Now I'm sober a year at least,
but now I'm still trying to use the same,
you know, God-stamped instincts in me
in order to try to satisfy,
in order to satisfy myself inside again.
Um, you know what I mean?
So, but the, so the story is the same.
I don't need to elaborate it.
You know what I mean?
Again, there's, now there's,
I'm sober.
You know, I've got, uh,
maybe one or two girlfriends
who don't even know I exist.
You know what I mean?
Like this thing is starting to happen all over again.
Um, I'm working waiting tables
and I'm not getting my due
so I start stealing.
I'm, I'm, I'm patting tips.
And I'm stealing steaks.
And, uh,
now this is the,
this is the bizarre part for me.
Um, in that, in regards to that social instinct
is that now I'm not getting like
a million phone calls a day
for people to pick up shit from me anymore.
Like that's how I used to feel needed,
you know, how I was needed.
Um, but now I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And when you, or someone like me,
and you get involved in this a little bit,
you can become one of the scariest people out there
with this like need,
need to be recognized, noticed, wanted.
Like, AA is probably one of the most pure spiritual things
left on this planet.
And you get a like psychopath like me
coming in here trying to be the big shot
in the Anonymous program.
It's really scary.
Um, so what happened for me is that
eventually, um,
I just ran, you know, again,
I didn't get reformed.
I ran out of steam.
And I just basically came
to a place where I started to, um,
I started to question,
you know, what I was doing
or what was going on.
I started to realize that my experience,
as far as my experience with the steps,
didn't line up with
what the big book was talking about.
I did, I figured that out through a lot of studying
in the literature.
Um, there were some incomplete things.
I didn't have a sex inventory
the first time through the steps.
I mean, that was something obvious and tangible.
Um, you know,
the things that were going on in the big book,
that, um,
almost seemed like a history lesson
when you read it and studied it,
were obviously not lining up with how my life was.
And I, and I warned people of being, uh,
having a middle-of-the-road solution,
but walked straight down the middle of the road.
And the thing about delusion
and, like, self-deception,
for me,
is that
I can't spot it in myself.
Um,
it's just one of those
sort of strange,
uh, you know,
alcoholic human experiences
that, for whatever reason,
um, I can live through my thinking
without even knowing it.
And, um,
so what happened is that I, I didn't,
I didn't end up, like, having some sort of
mental breakdown and ending up in a
facility. Uh, I didn't have, like,
a meltdown in a meeting and say I'm living a fraud,
like, a lie. Um,
I got,
I got tricked
into, uh,
into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous
that's laid out in the 12 steps
in the big book.
I got, I got tricked. Um,
and the principle of attraction is what got me.
Yeah, if you're trying to, like,
you know, hide from this thing,
watch out for attraction. It'll get ya.
Um,
I got
12-stepped,
if you will, by, uh, someone who had
about 90 days of sobriety.
Who, and I had just about
two years, who
started showing up in my, uh,
my meetings.
He would show up,
this guy was, like, so blue
collar. Guy would roll in
with no shoes on, like,
cut off jean shorts, a ripped
t-shirt. He talked
about, he was from, uh, York,
which I could not
stand. Um, it's
not my favorite place today,
but then I was, like, I couldn't stand it.
Um, and this guy, but instead
of, like, taking some sort of intellectual
approach to everything,
he was not, he didn't give a, he was
not there to impress anyone.
That was the thing that I couldn't poke any holes in.
Um, and he just shared his experience
with the 12-steps about, in these meetings
he'd be like, I wrote my
four-step in detox, I did my fifth step today, I got
out, uh, made some amends,
I ended up coming down here to try to get
my life recreated, and
and I, and
after listening to this madness,
for, uh, a few weeks,
I eventually sidestepped
him outside of a meeting. I was like, listen, I got a
sponsor, but,
uh, you know,
so that's cool. He's got about 15 years.
He drives a Benz.
Um, but I was
wondering, you know, I, I sort of figured out
that this isn't, you know, my
experience isn't really what's going on in this.
Could you show me how to take other people through that?
Uh, and fortunately, he knew enough
about the,
the psycho-killer maniac mind that I
have, that he was willing to pass this
on to me without having to be
uh, noticed
in, in it.
And, uh, he walked me through the 12 steps
and that,
uh, he was, he was sort of like my
Ebby Thatcher, uh,
in Alcoholics Anonymous. He took me,
he started to introduce me to a way
of life that was more
shielded away from, you
know, satisfying myself.
He showed me that in, uh, in about
another 60 days later, he was gone.
And a little less
than 30 days after that, he was
on my couch. Um,
because he didn't want to sleep in his truck.
And
that, let me tell you, uh,
the
difference between belief and
experience for me happened there.
Because as all of my,
uh, you know,
friends that I had made in my early
sobriety were now
saying, thank God, this is,
you know, because people were like, who is this guy?
He's crazy. Um, he can't be doing
that. Um,
when he drank and
they were like, thank God this is, you know, this
happened, now you can, things can go back to normal. We were
really worried about you.
What, what
was obvious to me was like
that, no, I need to continue to follow
this because
I feel alive.
Like, I'm experiencing something that, up
until that point, I had never experienced.
It was almost,
um,
to try to put you, put you in the middle
of it, think about, um,
the Twilight Zone.
An episode of a Twilight Zone.
And think about walking through your life
and everybody else is looking at you
going, like, going, ooh, that's crazy.
And you're, like, the only one
walking through this life going,
like, oh my God, everyone,
everyone else is crazy.
Um,
I
followed,
I followed
what I knew to be true.
And, and I feel like that is
you know,
the hallmark sign
of a real
genuine
awakening and
a knowing that
I need that
power.
Um, because I followed it when it, it,
it wouldn't make sense to follow
it because it changed
me. And,
uh, long and short is that
I followed it, I did the only thing I knew
what to do, which was follow where,
um, he was going.
You know, and, uh,
and shortly
after that, I, I met, uh,
the guy who is,
is my sponsor today.
Um, the good news is, is that
Alcoholics Anonymous is about principle and honing
a relationship with God. So even when you think
your sponsor is crazy, which, uh,
I often do,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
um,
uh,
um,
um,
um,
um.
He, I heard someone say this the other day at a big book meeting,
and he was talking about
the book
for sinners only,
and it was one of the
pieces of literature that helped us write
our big book, and he quoted a line
in there that just threw me off my
chair, not literally, but like, I was like,
ooh, I'm using that next time I speak.
Um,
and it was,
it's the essence of what that sponsor
has shown me.
Um, he took the
emphasis that I have, I have a tendency
just by naturalness to want to gravitate
towards studying,
understanding,
sounding well,
you know, articulating
the literature. And what he said
in the quote from the book is,
um,
study people, not literature.
And what he did
was he, he,
he didn't force me, but like, he regularly
pushed me away
when I would call, and it would be like
the problem du jour, you know,
because I'm sure, like, in retrospect, it wasn't that
important. Um,
he would regularly
push me back out into
getting my thoughts
and actions back out
away from me.
And he would,
and he would emphasize,
you know,
you know,
moving away from the self as being
an answer. And
that, um, you know,
I could, I want, ten minutes,
I sort of want to, like, wrap some things up, but
um, that as
a way of living
in positioning myself
um, to
listen, and then to serve,
that was
to, that was where
my life started to change
and
you know, we used the,
sometimes you hear the word
reborn, um, but for me, that's
where I, I got reborn
in my thinking. I got reborn, and
as a result of my thinking,
you know, what did Tom say?
Our thinking,
our thinking, uh,
predicts our actions
and our actions predict our destiny.
And, uh, on a
regular, consistent basis, as my thinking
started to change my actions,
my life has gone in a
direction that I didn't anticipate, but
I wouldn't change for
anything. Um,
you know, I'm not going to run down my resume
in Alcoholics Anonymous, but, uh,
I can tell you
that God has used
someone who was 130
pounds, strung out as,
you know, you have
no idea, you probably do,
um,
unemployable with no skills other
than simple math and, like,
how to not say certain
things on the phone, um,
he's changed me
to be, uh, not
by no means, like, a perfect person,
but someone who
has been able to be part of
other people's lives getting recreated
and has shown me how
to make decisions
and actions in my life
that if I get hit by a train
on the way home, that it,
that I'm going to be okay with going.
Um, I feel like I've done
way more good in this lifetime now
than I have harm.
Um,
and that for someone like me, you know, I,
there's a lot of things that have to
happen in that, and before that happens,
um, I had a lot of guilt
and a lot of shame about
some of the things that I'd done.
I have personally played
hands in the people's demise.
And I held a lot
of, a lot of pain and guilt
over that, and, um,
I'm not sure why I referenced that,
but
the power in,
in, in giving myself
up and,
um, and trying to serve
has been enough to somehow
heal those scars
that were there as a result of
some of the seriously bad
things that I've done in this lifetime.
And, so,
um, now,
that would be
the end of a, uh,
that would be a great way to wrap the story
up, right?
So,
what about the real talk?
Um,
alcoholism as a whole
is, you know, I got sober when I was 20.
Um, it's not
like I've got another, you know,
60 to 70 years
under my belt of alcoholism is dead.
Um, alcoholism
from the day that
we get sober
does not usually show up at the front door
in the shape of a bottle or a needle.
It shows up at the,
side door in the form
of a new or failed
relationship. Or at the back door,
uh,
um, or the other
side door.
With, uh, in the form of
a really
good job or
high, you know, uh, attempt
to
further ourselves
in the worldly sense.
Um, you know,
the real talk is that, uh,
as a result, and, you know,
I can put my, I can see my hands
all over my own, my own thinking
and my own hands all over my own actions
as to why I put myself in sort of a tough
spot here recently. Um,
but it's also sort of
part of, like, what life is.
You know, we have a way of, of design for
living that allows
us to, to be present to what God wants
for us. And, um,
the long and short, what I'm trying to dance
around here a whole lot is that I've made
a lot of decisions,
uh, based on some,
you know, based on a phantom life that I
wanted to create and design again.
You know, again, back towards, uh,
the actor.
All based on
God-given instincts, but
really in pursuit of trying to, to satisfy
this
outside things in order to try to make
myself feel better or look better.
Um,
I moved up to Pennsylvania not that long
ago because I was
at the time dating a girl that I was,
uh, deeply in love with.
Um, you know,
that now for someone like me is not
something all that, uh,
irregular. But, uh,
uh, the other thing is that,
you know, closer to family, that's a good
thing, right? But, uh, it would sound
good for me to, to be wanting to be close
to family. Really what it was is,
uh, I've got a
banging,
banging professional career
opportunity that I turned
down because, really, because I'm a
I'm scared to do it at the time. But, uh,
and then, you know, the best job I could ask for
um, on the, you know,
on the East Coast. And so all,
now everybody knows who I am
in AA already. So I got
that covered. Really what this is about
is now I gotta go satisfy all the other worldly
stuff. And, uh,
so to me I'm like superstar. I got
the spiritual world covered.
The worldly things are about to be
all-star status too. And
it's all, it's just, I gotta
be honest with you, it's a lot of,
it was a lot of more self-seeking and dishonesty
and, you know, um,
you know, the phantom, the phantom self
recreating itself. And
take a guess what happened.
Hashtag life fail.
Uh,
I didn't even get back here before
she left. Um,
I took
the job and
about, you know, after the three months of
orientation they were like,
it's just not gonna work. You can come back in a
year with some more experience, but
we're not, you're not at the place where you need
to be in order to fly on your own.
Um, my personal relationship with my dad
was in the crapper. And
um, all the things
that I set out,
you know, sought
to make myself feel better were ruined.
And, and in the last five minutes
I'd like to tell you that, uh, I'm
grateful for it. Because
it has, again, reintroduced me
to, to
some of the inherent
things that are necessary in order to,
to have a legitimate,
not a mental belief,
but back to that legitimate interaction
with that power we call
God. Um, my,
my big one, uh,
at least at, big two at least
at this moment is that, um,
every, every day is supposed to be anew.
And that, um,
I, that I
can't, you know, that, that life,
as much as I want to be like, this is where it's going
and this is how it's supposed to be,
is constantly changing. It's not some
sort of solid thing, um, that
God's hand is always in,
in moving and creating this. And
the other piece is, um,
and the reason I brought it up about early
sobriety and why that's so powerful,
um, and why it's so, uh,
re-emerged in my
life is that when I was first sober
and I'm first starting to try to build this
connection, there was a lot of
legitimate questions,
um, that I had for God.
A lot of,
a lot of asking.
Um,
and as a result of, of me managing
my life into the ground, to, to make
it sound right, is, uh, is that
I'm at, you know, I'm asking God a lot of questions
again. And
for me, any
life that is not, a spiritual life that is not
asking, there's
something missing. Um, I, I wonder
now, where the hell was I getting
all my answers for before if I wasn't asking
all these questions? Um,
my questions today involve
things like, yo,
like, is this ever
gonna happen for me in regards
to her? Like, why am I,
am I going to always continue
to make some of the same mistakes over again?
Am I, are you gonna ever, like,
how am I gonna, like, not see
these things, you know, these things coming? The job.
Um,
like, I'm sorry.
Like, I, like, dude, I did
this, I did it so wrong. Like,
well, what do you want me to do?
How long are you gonna keep
me out here? How, you know, um,
um, you know,
social instinct stuff.
Like, I know it's none of my
business who, what people think of me.
Um, but I feel
like an idiot.
Um, what am I supposed to do?
What do you want me to do? And, and these
are just some sort of,
you know, random questions that I've
probably asked a couple times in the last couple days.
But, um,
but, I ask these
questions in prayer, and
I go to what
is placed in front of me, or whoever's placed
in front of me. And the
only time that these questions
are present
in my thought or soul
are when they're in prayer.
And I'm not
experiencing, um,
huge fits of hopelessness
and depression. Not when
all that stuff crashed down, you know,
it took me about a day or two
and before I could start really,
like, putting my hands on what I did.
But, um, what I guess
I'm saying is that those instincts that I
have naturally stamped
into me, some of them are more important
in other parts of my life than others, but
they're really, you know, important
in this, they're supposed to be important
at least in my age.
Um,
I don't have a significant other.
And no, that is not an advertisement.
I am,
um, this is the good part.
I live at home with my
mother
and my bonus mom.
And, uh,
and, uh,
and I don't have a job.
Now, I do have some
interviews coming up, which I'm
very hopeful for, I suppose.
But, um,
you know, and I know I've been
around AA enough to know that
anybody or, you know,
anybody in at least this area just wants
you to be honest and help. That's all they ever
wanted. And, uh,
in my family life is
it's good in the sense
that nobody's butting heads, but it's not
there's not going to be any change,
fundamental change going on there, because
there's other people involved.
Um, and the reason I'm bringing all this up is that
I'm okay.
And there's no
reason from
an instinctual,
worldly sense that I should be.
Um,
now,
seasons change.
And I've, and I've been at high points
before thinking I'm like the king of the universe.
This happens
to be one of the lower points for me.
Um,
I really did a number on my life
this time. I really did.
But, uh,
but I do have a trust.
I know,
um, I know that I'm taking
care of now. I feel like I'm being carried,
to be quite honest with you. Um,
and really, I mean, can it,
can it get any worse?
The answer is,
the answer is yes, if I continue to try
to orchestrate my life. And, uh,
and I'm just done doing that. So,
um, one of my prayers is that,
um, when things change,
because if you're sitting here and you're new,
sorry to get, like, so totally existential,
um, but if you're sitting
here and you're new,
spacey, spacey.
Um,
if you're sitting here,
and you're new, and your life
is not, like,
rock star status yet,
um,
and that's what you want, like,
it'll happen if you get
excessive about it. Um, I'm here
to tell you that
you can get excessive about it, and it can own you.
Um, but,
I don't know. I feel protected,
and I know things, I trust that things
will always get better, provided, uh,
provide I stay
close to God, and, uh,
I try to do His work well. It hasn't let me down,
and I don't really see it letting me down
in the future. So,
I'm done. Thanks.
Applause
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