Children of Alcoholics Repeat What They Swore They’d Never Become – Carlos S.

Hey everyone, let's have an AA meeting. My name is Mary Lourdes and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describe in their own language, from their own point of view, the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on abluchipspeakers.org will be able to learn more about their relationship with God. Thank you. Desperately in need, we'll hear our speaker. And we believe that it's only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must have this thing. So tonight I got asked to chair the meeting because my friend Carlos is going to tell a story. And I got sober in Syracuse, New York, and so did Carlos, but I had already moved away. When Carlos got sober. But when he moved to Atlanta, an old friend of mine, Gene, his sponsor, called me. And he said, Mary Lawrence, you've got this pigeon. You've got to find him. He needs help. I said, Gene, Atlanta's not like Syracuse. It's a big town. I mean, I don't, I'll look around. I'll try and find out, you know. I asked Gene where he moved, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, two days later, I'm in 8111. And I hear this Bronx accent. And I look, and there he is, just as Gene described. And I put my hand out because we both know, we owe people like Gene. And how grateful I am that I got to know Carlos. And I'm grateful you're going to get to know him too. Here's Carlos. Carlos, an alcoholic. And actually, I was raised in the South. But I said, I'm sorry. I've spent a lot of years here in Atlanta. I moved here in the year 2000. And as Mary Lawrence had said, I got sober in Syracuse. That's where I found sobriety. He said, there was this Irishman, Gene Mack, who actually spoon-fed me sobriety. You know, all I had to do was show up. And Gene's a funny type of guy, you know, like that word pigeon. You know, that's something that Gene would use. And, you know, he made it very, very simple for me. You know, he used to say, he used to call me lad, even though I'm really not from Ireland. And he says, all you got to do is keep the plug in the jug, lad. And I think about it, you know, sometimes that's the only thing that I can do. It's not pick up anything and get high, you know. But I'm originally from way south of here, you know. The island of Puerto Rico, that's where I was born. And I spent the first seven years of my life there, you know. And moved where most Puerto Ricans, you know, like a lot of ethnic groups, you know, we kind of congregate to areas where there are other like-minded people. So we wound up in the South Bronx. And my dad worked, he was a district manager with Barcati Rum in Puerto Rico. So he had his own alcoholic story. But we moved here in 1957. I was born in 1951. I'm 67 years old. And we moved here to the States in 1957. And my dad was a vet. So a year after I got to the States from Puerto Rico, my dad wound up at the VA hospital in the Bronx. And he basically never came back out. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And he spent eight to ten years in the Veterans Hospital dying of cirrhosis of the liver. You know, and he died in 1965 at the age of 49. And he was a big, big man. I mean, he was about 6'3". And, you know, he was a good-sized guy. And he wasn't an angry drunk. He was a sleepy drunk. You know, he would drink and pass out wherever he was. You know, and by the time I got here, I was a sleepy drunk. You know, I was a sleepy drunk. You know, I was a sleepy drunk. Like I said, a year after that, he wound up in the hospital. And I was too young to go visit him. Back then, the VA wouldn't allow anybody to go upstairs who was under the age of 16. You know. So my dad would go into the hospital. He had stopped drinking long before he died. But he had already done all the damage that his liver was going to take. You know, and I can remember even back then a doctor saying that the liver is a resilient, resilient, resilient organ. But once it's gone, it's gone. You know, and that's what happened to my dad. You know, and my dad probably weighed like 330 pounds, most of his, the life that I knew of him. You know, and when he died, he weighed about 120 pounds. And I'll move through this very, very quickly. In 1965, a day before he died, I wasn't allowed to go upstairs to, uh, see him. So this nurse, she snuck, she snuck down the stairs and came over and she says, are you Louie's son? And I said, yeah. She says, come with me, honey. And she took me upstairs the back way. And, and, you know, that was really, really like one of the ugliest things I had ever seen. Not ugly in that sense, but what a traumatic experience it was for me to see my dad. His body had gotten to the point where he was in a fetal position most of the time, you know, with his knees up like this here. And he had just a white sheet. Over, over him and his, his knees looked like he was holding up his fingers like this. That's how, that's how skinny and emaciated he had, he had gotten, you know, and, and when he saw me, he opened up his mouth in happiness and he started to cry and he was basically toothless. The teeth were falling out of his head. You know, I, I experienced that one time at home in, in, in, in the, in the kitchen where he went up and he went like this here and, and outcomes like a witch, uh, eye tooth. And, you know, it's kind of weird, you know, as a, as a, as a young, as a young kid to see that. But, uh, my dad died, uh, 13 days short of about 13 days short of his 50th, uh, 50th birthday in 1965. And, uh, you know, uh, his, his, uh, his alcoholism, my alcoholism turned out to be very much like my dad. You know, there was, uh, there was no, uh, physical abuse, but there was a lot of mental abuse. You know, with the arguments, mom and dad always fighting and the kids are over there worried about mom and dad fighting, you know, that's a pretty scary thing for, for most children to hear, you know, their, their parents, uh, barking at each other. And, uh, you know, when, when, when he died, uh, I didn't, I didn't even cry that, that day. I started to cry like maybe, uh, 10 years later in, well, I would, uh, uh, lay down to go to bed and I would start thinking about my dad and I would, and I would start crying. You know, and, uh, I got, I got married at the age of 17. I was almost 18. I had to have my mother's signature to get married. I got married, of course, in, in, in New York state. And the age, uh, the, the, the age of consent was you had to be 18. Otherwise you had to have your parental, uh, consent. And I, uh, I, I presented that to my mother. And of course, you know, my mother was dead set against it. You know, and, uh, but she, she gave in because, uh, I had been taking care of myself since I was 13 years old because my, my, my mother was bringing up five kids in the South Bronx. You know, the, the neighborhood we lived in was all about heroin, heroin and drinking. There was no, no coke, no, no, none of the high class stuff. You know, you're, you were either a drunk or a, or a heroin addict. I didn't choose to become a heroin addict. I'm an alcoholic. That's my drug of choice. You know, and, uh, and I started very, very early in life to, uh, experience the first, the euphoria of drinking and, uh, you know, uh, drinking, drinking because of the fact that, uh, that I was, I was, uh, uh, a young, a young boy that was, uh, basically my mother was working two jobs and, uh, I was, I was, uh, what do they call it? Lockheed child. You know, I, I took care of myself and, uh, I learned how to cook. I learned how to cook. I learned how to sew, iron, you know, I know you ladies might think that's a hell of a catch, you know, but, you know, so I, so by the time I was, uh, 16, when I met my first wife, you know, I was kind of ready to get out on my own, you know, start, start a family. And, uh, I think about it and I said, I, I was, I was probably alcoholic at that, at that age. Of course, I wasn't drinking like I wound up drinking when I got sober, but, you know, I was drinking every weekend. A cousin of mine who was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, much older. I'd go to his house and, uh, uh, walk to wash his car. He had a nice convertible Buick 1968, I think it was. And, uh, and we'd buy, uh, uh, a bottle of, uh, Gordon's, uh, I think it was Gordon's vodka, a quart and have, have, uh, have it with orange through screwdrivers. And, uh, you know, uh, and this, and this, and this started to happen every weekend, You know, and first it only started like on Saturdays, but then, you know, like a lot of people who start drinking alcoholically, they extend it into Friday and Thursday. And that's the way it started for me. It was a very, very harmless weekend thing. I would get a little drunk, go up to his house, take a shower, go to bed, pass out for three or four hours, and then wake up. And then we'd go out, you know, in the car that we just washed and waxed. You know, and then I met my first wife, Shirley. And immediately I fell in love. Or so I thought. And in actuality, I said, you know, well, let me not get ahead of myself. And within maybe six to eight months, we were going to get married. And we did. And, you know, I... I became an elevator, an elevator apprentice. That's what I did from like late 1969 to the year 2000 and 2005. Five years after I got here to Atlanta, I retired from the elevator industry. I put in elevators and serviced elevators for 38 years. And because of the fact that I was an alcoholic and didn't do too well with what a lot of people do, who aren't alcoholics, you know, they amass a pension and some savings and stuff for the future. You know, when I retired as an elevator mechanic, I went ahead and took a job with the state of Georgia inspecting elevators. My office was right over here off Claremont, you know. And they put me at the airport. I was the inspector at the airport for all the elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks, you know. And, but, you know, at this... I forgot to say that... I got sober. 1997, November 21st. This November 21st, I'll celebrate 21 years. As old Hank used to say over at 8111, by the grace of God and this wonderful program that I call Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I'm sober today. And, you know, when I got... Let me go back real quick to where I got sober, open house. When I got there, I, for some reason or another, I had that moment of clarity and that willingness at that particular time. You know? Because my life was not about... My alcoholism was not about jail, institutions, or anything. It was all about... I did a lot of work up on the Canadian border, servicing prisons, elevators in prisons. And I was out of town all the time. And, you know, a lot of... Anybody who likes to drink going out of town, you know, we don't have to answer to our loved ones. You know, it's like... Open all the time. You know? And I can remember I used to stay in this dumpy hotel because they had a great bar downstairs. You know? And I would... Every time I came into town, I would drink to the point where I could hardly walk. Walk right upstairs to this dive of a room that we would get at this place called Bob's Steakhouse up in Tupper Lake, New York. And, you know, a little, little ski town in upstate New York. And the barmaid, her name was Pauline, she would wake me up in the morning because I would sleep through the alarm clock. You know? And she would come up and wake me up because normally somebody in the town would be looking for me to service their elevator. Because I would be in that town for like two days to service specific elevators like a prison or a mental institution. There was one of each. And in that particular town. And people, after a while, you know, after a couple of years of doing this, they knew where to find me. Bob's Steakhouse. Upstairs. I'd be passed out in one of the rooms. You know? One of their finer suites. This place here. I mean, I can remember one time getting a room where there was a hole in the sheetrock. And the wind was... It's cold. Tupper Lake. Every... You know, you pull up... You pull your car up and everybody there has got... Block heaters on their cars. And you plug your car in just to keep things from freezing over. And, you know, I'm laying down there and I woke up and my face was ice cold. Because the wind was blowing down from above and then through the wall. That's what type of place this Bob's Steakhouse was. But, you know, at this point here, my alcoholism is... You know, not like... Some of the alcoholism that I've heard about in the years that I've been in recovery. You know, I think about, you know, how strong we are in our drinking. You know, how... I mean, we face all kinds of hell. And we just continue to drink. You know, and I was just talking to another AA and I was talking about that's what addiction does to us. You know, it makes us incapable of being honest with anybody including ourselves. Excuse me. You know, the biggest problem that I had in my life is all the hell that I would bring home with my... I turned out just like my dad, my arguments with my former wife, Shirley, right? And, you know, later on when I got sober and I started to do an inventory of my life. I've got three children. They're 39, 42, and 47. And my baby, her name is... Jenny Lee. Okay? And Jenny was the one that suffered the brunt of my addiction to alcohol. You know, every time that Shirley and I would get into it because Shirley... I mean, she just couldn't take it anymore. You know, she would plead with me constantly. 26 years this woman stayed married to me. And she would plead constantly, Honey, why do you have to drink all the time? You know, why do you have to pass out? You know, just like my dad. Not so much a... I'm a lot mouthier in sobriety than I was in my drunkenness. You know, my drunkenness was about drinking, drinking, drinking, and drinking, and then passing out. You know, and I can... You know, when I started to do my inventory on life, I always pictured Jenny in a corner sobbing and asking, Daddy, please don't fight with Mommy. You know, she would... She would cry so much that her voice would start cracking. And I always think, You think that I would have had enough compassion and love for my child, which I did, but I had no capacity to give her this one little thing. Shut up. You know, Dad, don't... Why do you have to torture us with this argument all the time? You know, and... You know, I always think about... You know, some of us have some great war stories, you know, that include jails and institutions. You know, and all other kinds of things. But my alcoholism, for me, was so ugly. You know, in hindsight, when I started doing my inventory, and it was all about the fact that I walked all over my children's lives in my drunkenness. You know, and... In 1997, Shirley took... She invited me to go see a marriage counselor. He wasn't a marriage counselor. He was an addictionologist, I think they call him. He was an addictions counselor. And Shirley and I attended the first session together. And then he says, Okay, I'll see you guys next week. And the next week came around. I went to... Jim McSweeney was his name. You know? I went to see Jim. And as soon as I get there, he says, Okay, let's get... Let's get started, Carlos. I said, no, no, wait a minute, Jim. You've got to wait for Shirley. He says, Carlos, we're not here for Shirley. I don't know if you understood this in the first session that we had. We're here because Shirley seems to think that you've got a problem with drinking. You know, and I've only had one session with you, and I think you've got a problem with drinking. You know, and... You know, one of the reasons was because, you know, I think a lot of alcoholics who just get that moment of wanting something other than the hell that I have right now for myself. And we hear Jim McSweeney happened to be a former Catholic priest that was an alcoholic. He left the priesthood, and he started counseling alcoholics. And so when Jim spoke to me, it was like anybody had a meeting talking to me. It was an alcoholic talking about my life. You know, he was talking about exactly what I was feeling. And, of course, I did what... What I did for a while, I would cry a lot. First, I started to just try to cry inside because I didn't want to seem like a punk, you know, like less of a man, you know, crying. But, you know, I would start to... I would cry so much during the meeting, hearing people share their story, that I'd get a sore throat. And, you know, I wound up at Open House where Mary Lodge was talking, about Open House right on Fayette Street in Syracuse, New York. And, you know, I got just the perfect group of alcoholics that day that came into my life to help me get that first day of abstinence from my drink. You know, and it's funny. Gene had told me. He says, look, lad, I don't know what you do for a living. You might be a hitman for all I know. If you are a hitman and you got a hit to do, just do the hit, but don't drink. And come back tomorrow. He was kidding around, of course. You know, he just wanted to elaborate to me how important it was that I just don't drink for that day. And, you know, I detoxed at Open House. I mean, you know, I sat in the rooms of AA, right? I mean, I vibrated in my chair. You know, but one thing that Syracuse, for a small city, has a lot of AA meetings. And, you know, there was so much... There were so many people that saw how quickly I started to grab on to go to meetings, go to meetings. I wound up sometimes... I was taking care of Syracuse University at the time. I had half of the campus, 250 elevators that I serviced. So I would go to the campus, service an elevator, go to Open House. Go back, fix an elevator, go to Fellowship Hall. Go back and do something else, go back to Open House for another meeting. Morning, right up. And then the last thing I would do is go to a midnight meeting on Lake Ontario, which was about 30-something miles away from the city of Syracuse, and go to a midnight meeting there. So by the time I get to that midnight meeting... Oh, by the way, I was never a coffee drinker. And I fell in love with coffee. And I was a smoker, but, you know, I fell in love with smoking a lot more. And, you know, I would drink and smoke all day long. It was like I was on Thorsey. You know, as I was doing it methodically. You know, and I'd wind up at Lake Ontario, 30 miles away. I'd shoot out to Lake Ontario to that midnight meeting. You know, and then by that time, I had been working and going to meetings all day long. So by the time I got back to Liverpool, which is just outside of Syracuse, I would just fall into the bed and pass out. I said, and that's the way it started for me. You know, I said... I did that every day, seven days a week. And after a while, the people at Open House would feed me meetings at Fellowship Hall or any other church around town that was having a meeting. You know, they would say, hey, Carlos, there's a meeting at Fellowship Hall in 15 minutes. If you hurry up, you'll make it. And I'd get into my car and shoot out. And I'd be flying around all day long, servicing elevators and going to meetings. And, you know, like a lot of... AAs, you know, when we find that little bit of hope, you know, I said, I started to feel really, really good. Pink cloud? Hell, I was on a pink cloud for probably the two years that I was at Open House. You know, I thought, as they say here in the South, I thought I was all that and a bag of chips as far as AA is concerned. And, you know, immediately I started to talk the language of recovery. I heard you guys talk. I heard you guys talking about it. I would mimic everything that you guys said. You know, and I tell people, I spoke at three months. Oh, by the way, Gene had me. This guy tells me, hey, can you be my sponsor? I was about three months sober. And I go over to Gene. I said, Gene, this guy wants me to be his sponsor. But I can't sponsor him. He said, go ahead, sponsor him. All he wants you to do is drive him to his parole officer. You ain't going to hurt him. Sponsor him. What do I do, Gene? I don't know. Take him for coffee and talk about not drinking. And, you know, that's when I started sponsoring, guys. You know, eventually, you know, I started working through steps myself, you know. And I said, but, you know, never did a thorough fourth step. So in the year 2000, I left Syracuse because my new love in my life, my now wife, okay, we had been living together for a little while. And she lost the job. She worked for money in Syracuse. And she lost her job there. And I said, let's move down south. I can get a job anywhere. So I put in, I'm about two years sober. And I put in a bid for a job in Atlanta. And within three days, they called me up. They said, we've got an opening at Northside Hospital. We've had that contract for 12 years. And there's a lot of the equipment that you know well. Do you want it? Oh, shit. It's a pair of shit in the woods. Yeah. And, you know, my wife took a job with a woman. And she had her own some kind of financial company where Georgia Power was one of her biggest clients for managing retirement plans and stuff like that. So she got a job with that lady right across the street from Northside Hospital. And I took over all the elevators at Northside Hospital. I was there for about five years. You know, and going to meetings, going to meetings, going to meetings. And, you know, I find, you know, lately so many people talk about, you know, that it's not all about meetings and so on. And I know that it's not just about meetings. But I said, but without meetings, I don't do anything else, you know, with any kind of purpose. The only thing I do perfect so far to this day, right, is that I don't pick up a drink and I go to a meeting and I'm always willing to help another alcoholic. Start getting sober. You know, I help them help themselves to stay sober. You know, and that's something that I've done. A lot of people say, oh, well, you have a lot of ego. Yes, I do. I don't worry about that. You know, because somebody had talked about doing things for the right reason. And I told that to Gene. And Gene says, don't listen to these idiots. Just do it. Okay? You know, and that's where Gene made things so simple for me. You know? So we read all the time about AA ought not be organized. And, you know, one of my home groups, I have four home groups right away. People say, you can't have four home groups. Says who? Where does it say in the big book that I can't have? These are just meetings that I frequent. I frequent 8111, the primary purpose group in Johns Creek. There is a solution in Roswell and the Alpharetta group. And the Alpharetta group is my, is my, my, my, the only meeting that, by the way, I'm, I'm, I'm married to a woman who is clean and sober for 31 years. Okay? Suzanne. That's my now wife. We moved here and we were just living together. And we got married in Fayetteville, Georgia. She's a Jersey girl. And we, we find out that her old priest is now a, an Episcopalian minister in, in Fayette, Georgia. You know? And he, we, you know, it's a much too long story. For me to go into how that, how that, how that, uh, worked out. But, uh, you know, uh, we, we, we, we got married and, uh, we, uh, uh, we, we rent, we started renting in Roswell, you know, and I didn't know if I wanted to stay here. So I rented for like six years. I probably spent like $75,000 on rent. And, uh, you know, there are, there are so many meetings that I could go, that I could attend. In, in, in, in, in, in, in the Atlanta area. And that's, and that's a good thing because I, I'm a, I'm ADD. Okay. And I have a problem. I get bored very, very easily. You know? So I, I, I go to a lot of different meetings. That's how I wind up having four meetings that I constantly go to. You know? And, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a full-fledged alcoholic, chock full of character defects. You know? I said, I, I, I, and, and I... And I practice principles, but I don't practice them in all my affairs all the time. You know? I, I try, I try my best at, at doing a lot of the stuff that you guys have taught me merely by telling me what they were. Okay? And by, uh, uh, uh, sharing with me how you do it. You know, like acceptance. Accept that, you know, all of a sudden I, I hear that love intolerance is our code. Well, it's not my code. Okay? I don't have to love everybody. And I don't have to tolerate everybody. And that's, to me, love intolerance just means, like, I gotta, I gotta love everybody. You know? And, uh, so that, that, that in itself makes me, uh, sometimes fight, uh, getting my, my, my share of peace and tranquility. You know, I said. And it's, it's not something that, uh, that, that, that I enjoy. And, and let... Let me, let me tell you something. That's not a day that goes by that I don't pray in earnest in the morning, in the evening, and sometimes during the day. And I always tell the God of my understanding, God, take this crap away from me. Take this anger away from me. Take this, these character defects. Because, you know, you guys, you guys told me that, you know, we ask for, for, uh, for these things to be removed. The big book tells me that. You know? And, and, and I know that there's so much in the big book that's... that I know is true only because it has worked in you and then in me. So, I don't know, I, you know, I, I, I was going to say, you know, that I, I've been around NABBA here for about 19 years. I've been telling stories here for a long, long time. But today I'm telling you my story. You know what I mean? It's, and I, and I, and I tell people that, uh, I've heard a long, long time ago that every time I told my story, it changed a little bit. And the fact is that... As a native alcoholic, I was nothing but BS. And, and that hasn't gone completely. You know, I find, I find out little by little, there are some things that I remember in my life that really didn't happen. But I, I spoke about them and, and, and, and thought about them for so long that they became like a part of my life. No big deal. I haven't killed anybody or anything like that that I don't remember. You know, but it's, it's just little, little, uh, little, little garbage that, uh, uh, at, you know, you, you, you, you think that at the age of 67, I'd be adult enough to be, uh, past or that type of, of, of, uh, behavior, you know? Uh, but, you know, to tell you very, very quickly today, you know, I have, uh, a wonderful relationship with my three children, my son, Alex, my daughter, Rena, and my, my little girl, Jenny Lee, you know? And, uh, you know, I'll go, I'll go to New York every night. Now, my children live in, in the state capital, Albany and Long Island. So I go out there to visit them, you know, from time to time. Uh, my son owns a pizzeria right near the, the water over there. He's had a pizzeria for 10 years. Uh, I had a pizzeria at one time near Syracuse University. I took a leave of absence from the elevator industry and, uh, bought a pizzeria up near Syracuse University and, uh, with a, a lifelong friend of mine who's, uh, well, he's now a citizen. But back then he was, he was from Naples, Italy. And, uh, you know, we, we, we were always great friends. And, uh, three years after we bought this, uh, pizzeria, he begged for me to leave. You know, uh, he says, look, I want to continue to be your friend, but this is not going to work, you know? And, uh, I mean, Tony was very, very honest about, about that. Tony is not an alcoholic and I am. And, you know, the fact is that in. In my alcoholism, I, I sold money from this guy. And there's one guy that I made that amends with, offered that amends, you know, I, I let him know exactly what I was doing, you know, always going into the till and then going across the street to this joint that was up there. It was called the Orange Grove, you know, right across the street from the pizzeria. And, uh, you know, I had money of my own. Why the hell did I always have to be taken out of the, out of the register to go, to go drinking? And, and I, and I shared that with Tony. You know, and, uh, and I offered to make an amends, a monetary amends to him. And, and, and he says, oh, you know, and he says, I'm just glad that you don't drink anymore, you know, and, and, and we, and, and we let it go at that. And, you know, I have that relationship to this day. Tony now lives in, in Florida, you know, and, uh, where we, we, we love each other as friends, you know, and, and that's something that, that I, I would have never really, I, I have the capacity to feel loved. You know, to me, love, you know, with, with my wife, Suzanne, I said, and, and his, I don't like to say this ever in front of my, my first wife, but I'm probably in love for the very first time in my life because as, as an alcoholic, I didn't know what the hell love was. You know, I knew, I knew what, what, uh, uh, earning a salary and, and bringing money home and stuff like that. I, I did that fairly well, a provider. I was a, I was a good provider that way. And, and then of course I, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I didn't make that much out of my alcoholism because I never physically beat up anybody in the house. But, you know, uh, just, just maybe a year ago, this guy Calvin from 81 11, he spoke about what he thought he did to his children, that he walked all over their lives. So now I'm using that, that term too. That's what I did with my children and my ex-wife. I walked all over their lives without any regard to their, uh, to their feelings, you know, and you know, for the, for the first, for the first year I said, I, I, I, I, I, I did a lot of crying and, and because of my, my soul searching and, and I did a lot of crying about my former wife, Shirley, about how, you know, I can remember the last thing that I remember with, with that, with that, uh, with that woman was that one day I come in and of course the alcoholic bullshit would start, you know, I would start lying about everything that I was, where I was, who I was with. Oh, by the way, infidelity, physical infidelity was not in my story. Mental infidelity. Mental infidelity. But I was never unfaithful to, uh, to Shirley. I, I tell people I can't even handle one woman, much less two. I said, so that, that's one of the things that I didn't do that, that, that, that really went over well. You know, it was like one of my saving grace, the saving grace in, in my, in, in that, in that marriage. She knew that I, I was that way, you know, but, uh, a year after I got sober, she, she initiated a divorce because I was never home. I was at six, seven, eight meetings a day. But, you know, I felt that's what I needed to do. And, and, and, and as much as my sponsor would tell me that, you know, uh, why don't you get out of here? You're in here all day long. You know, I, I just kept going to meetings and, and that's, that's what, uh, worked for me. You can tell I'm all over the map now. It's good. It's getting to the end of my story. Okay. And, uh, but you know, I have, I have this relationship with my children. That's wonderful. As a matter of fact, I just got off the phone with my son. He had called me once. You know, I'm a space cadet with things like that. And I forgot to call him back and he called up to, to, are you all right, dad? Cause I've been through some health issues in the past, uh, uh, eight years, heart attack, cancer, you know, and, and, and so on and so forth. And, uh, and you know, and I, and I told, when I found out I had cancer, you know, I told the doctor, I said, you know, they did the testing and I said, doc, don't call me into your office. Make me travel all the way over there. To tell me that I have cancer. Tell me over the phone. He says, well, you know, because of HIPAA and what have you, I said, well, get whatever information you have to get. I don't want to go all the way to your office. Then I'm going to, you tell me that I have cancer. Then I'm going to be all bummed out and have to drive back home like that. You know, so he told me, and when he told me, of course, you know, with cell phones, you don't hear the click, but I just, you know, he told me that I, I had cancer that I, and, and I just hung up on him. I said, Oh, and you know, immediately, you know what I did? I said, you know what, God, please. Don't let me get all fricking negative about this crap, you know? And immediately I realized I had Dr. Fred Shessel, his name is, you know, I realized I had hung up on him and I called him back and I said, Dr. Shessel, so what's the next step? You know, what do we do? So he says, well, you know, fortunately your cancer is very, very treatable, you know, so it was, it was prostate cancer, you know, and, uh, I wound up going to, uh, eight weeks of, uh, radiation five days a week and you know what, I used to go, uh, to my, my one o'clock, go to my radiation, uh, uh, treatments and then go back to another meeting and I was a little weak and stuff like that and very lethargic, you know, but nonetheless I, I just stayed real, real close to the, to the rooms of AA and you know, that's, that's something that I, I like to offer to anybody, you know, that a lot, a lot of us, uh, what happens is we, we get sober. And when, when the shit hits the fan, we want to, we want to retreat by ourselves, you know, stay by ourselves instead of staying in the rooms of AA and sharing the misery with other people. You know, uh, I, I believe that, you know, uh, misery shared is misery half, you know, very quickly. You know, I said, I know a lot of faces in here, you know, Cliff in particular, you know, I said, Cliff and, uh, his dad and I were, uh, good, uh, friends in, in the rooms of AA. We rode bikes together and, uh, went paddling a lot and stuff like that. And, and I mean, Bob Marshall, his dad is like the least person like myself. You know what I mean? A real professional and I'm not. Okay. And, uh, and you know, uh, uh, he, he got fired by his sponsor and he asked me to sponsor him. I mean, this guy had like 37, 38 years of support. And he asked me to sponsor him. And I said, I'll sponsor you as long as you don't treat me like you treated your last sponsor. I said, I want to continue to be friends. And we did, you know, I sponsored him for like the last three years of his life, you know, and that's all these, all these experiences that I've had with, with, with the men in, in, in, in AA have, you know, have, have been something that, uh, uh, has helped me tremendously. You know, it just gives me, it gives me a, uh, a big, big group of people. So that, that helped me to stay sober. And, you know, even though I have no desire to pick up a drink, I have, I always have desires to do things that aren't healthy for me, you know, and I get, and I can fight those most of the time, but, uh, but I can't do it by myself. No way. I said, there's no way that I could live life sober without having, uh, uh, uh, the men that I stay sober with, you know, and, uh, and you guys here have been a part of that. You know, I've, I've heard, uh, a lot of sharing here at NABBA, uh, over the past 19 years. And, uh, and I'm sorry, my, my, my story went, but that's, that's just the way, uh, my mind is sometimes, you know, but, uh, uh, but I'll do, uh, uh, fortunately I've done what Jean told me to do. Just keep the plug in the jug, you know? So thank you. Thanks, Carlos. That's terrific. Um, oh, it says, thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. And say something positive, but keep it short. I love you, Carlos. I'm great. I'm grateful that you moved here. Thank you.