High Bottom Drinking – Threads of Recovery Workshop – Part 3 of 4 – Markey F.

Hey, thanks everybody. Good to be with you. I just came from another meeting in south of Knoxville, so I can use this as my nightcap, right? I guess that's what all you guys are doing. This is the nightcap. um so i will take uh 20 minutes and talk to you about a few things um last friday i celebrated my 22nd year of sobriety so um i've got a little bit of time under my belt and what i wanted to do is just give a brief lead and reference the big book a few times on uh you know what's helped me stays sober, you know, really for 22 years. So I'm going to just share with you kind of what I used to be like, what happened, what I'm like today. So my sobriety date is August 2nd, 2002. And I probably am going to break down my drinking career into three sections. You may have heard this before. It was fun, fun with problems and problems. And so I started drinking at a very early age in my mid teens. You know, alcohol was very available, accessible to me. It was my father was a heavy drinker. Everybody that I associated with drank and it wasn't a big deal never thought anything of that so I drank pretty heavily in high school I went to college and it really escalated I know my first night at college was a gin blackout and I took a can of paint that was on these this fraternity house just got done painting their fraternity letters on the sidewalk and for whatever reason i thought it would be cool to take a can of paint and throw it over all their letters and destroy that and so um i drank uh alcoholically all through college um and uh after college i uh i got a job that was in sales and allowed me to continued to still drink. It was seamless, nothing changed. And so I drank until my mid-30s is when I got sober. So I drank for about 20 years and the first probably two-thirds of that was a lot of fun i loved it i loved the feeling that alcohol gave me um and had a blast with it but then uh some things started showing up they say you know that's where the disease showed up and i had a new boss that pretty much told me i needed to to settle down i was in a leadership position within my company and i led a team and he said you just can't behave like this anymore And he was a new sheriff in town and was really going to straighten out the sales force. And I basically told him to go pound sand. I wasn't interested in what he had to say. And so also, I had three kids and another one on the way. My relationship with my wife was strained because I wasn't around a lot. I was kind of that absent dad, which is what my father was. He just was absent. The drink was more important than being around family. So I had some strained relationships. um i also you know when i first got sober on page 21 in a big book i could really identify with that and i'm just going to read that real quick it says he is often perfectly sensible and well balanced concerning everything except liquor but in that respect he is incredibly dishonest and selfish. And when I read that, I thought, shit, that is me because I couldn't figure things out. I was a problem solver. I could solve all kinds of problems, but the alcohol thing just kicked my ass, you know, that cunning, baffling, powerful. I would wake up, you know, after a bender and just say, what in the hell happened? I was going to only have a few drinks tonight and uh and so it it always just just uh you know was something that i couldn't couldn't figure out and i i never knew really knew what was wrong with me but um when i read that in a big book when i first got sober it was like an aha moment for me um i did seek help through an outpatient program that our company offered at one point in time. I talked with a counselor and she said, I just kind of told her about my drinking career. And she said hey you're at the beginning stages of alcoholism. She kind of got out this map and put me at the top of it and said you're a high bottom drunk right now and things are only going to get worse from here. um you know at that point in time I hadn't lost my my job I hadn'T lost you know my health was still intact my relationships were still pretty good but she said if you continue to drink the way you're drinking you're going to lose all of that and so um you known I said I'm not an alcoholic I just drink too much I remember telling her specifically that and she just laughed and she said, I'm a recovering alcoholic. And, you know, I get what you're saying. You don't want to own this thing. And I didn't. So what was interesting is I went home and I told my wife because she was curious how the meeting went. And she said – I said, well, the lady said that I'm probably at the beginning stages of alcoholism. And my wife said the exact same thing I said which was funny she said you're not an alcoholic you just drink too much and so it was just like you know we look back on that and kind of laugh but uh so i did what most of you guys did is i said well hell i'm just gonna quit on my own so i quit for six months it was the longest that i'd ever gone without drinking since i was probably 14 years old and uh i was proud of myself so so proud that I, you know, decided that I eventually go out and celebrate. And then I was off to the races for several more years. And finally what happened was my boss, the boss that I had, he was cool, but I had one last blowout at a company function and I got fired over that. and um basically that was my identity you know climbing the corporate ladder and i was the big shot getting all these promotions and you know all all of a sudden all that got taken away from me and i would i kind of stood there and i had that moment of clarity and i thought shit you know i do have a problem with alcohol and i just at that point in time i i cried out you know and basically said, I need help. I can't figure this shit out. And so I went to a IOP program to really learn about this disease. You know, you get to see it on the other side and how it is destructive and so forth. And, you know, I know Bill Wilson in his story, he too cried out and for a brief moment you know he said I wanted God and I kind of was in that spot where I realized that you know there's more I have more potential than what I'm displaying here and I need to kind of get my shit together and grow up and you know most of us have reached that point otherwise we wouldn't be on this meeting here at 10 30 at night right um so so I had that that moment where um I decided that it was time um in addition to losing my job I had some health issues I was dealing with where my I had a physical and a doctor questioned me about my drinking and my liver counts were off so my health was declining I had some legal issues that I was trying to get through I was spiritually dead all the things that that happened to us when we come in here all that baggage that we have to you know unpack and get rid of i had all of that and so um you know the good news was um i went and i talked to a uh a counselor about a recruiter actually to reposition myself to get a job and she said hey i understand that you were terminated over alcohol and i said yeah that's true she said have you ever thought about going to aa and i said well i've heard about it but i don't really know much about it she said well if you're interested i know a guy that could put you in touch with with the program so i called this guy and on a that was on a monday and uh around noon he said well there's a meeting at five o'clock tonight and i said well shit you know that's not yet you know uh saint augustine said you know lord make me chase but just not yet right and that's where kind of i was i'm like well yeah i know i got a problem but do i really want to address it right now and uh so i went to this meeting in the church of abasement and um it was you know something divine that first meeting is all centered on you and they're talking about their experience with alcohol and I just had this overwhelming sensation that I'm home you're home, it's over you don't need to fight this shit anymore and I don't know if any of you guys have had this feeling or not but I just knew in my heart of hearts the jig is up it's time for me to grow up and uh to get my shit together and for the first time in my life it's like it was like a rubik's cube that all of a sudden all the colors matched up i'm like this is it there's a solution there's a solution to my problem that i've been trying to figure out on my own for all these years you know i i can't tell you how many times i swore it off or said it's going to be different this time And it always got worse. And, you know, for me at the end, I was a bourbon drinker and I didn't reach the point where I was drinking daily. But what happened in the last six months, it says that we get drunk in rapid succession. And so those last six month were really violent times for me as far as my drinking. um and you know i used to get so sick from drinking that i would go a week or two until i started feeling again and i'd hit it hard well toward the end there everything just unraveled and i found myself just just all i really wanted to do was when i drank was to get obliviated and so um anyway that's where i ended up at my first aa meeting and um right away you know i i never went back out after i went into aa i never found a reason to go back out and drink again because i really felt um that i was going to work this program and i started working it i soon after i got in the program i went to a 12-step workshop to really understand that i got surrounded by a good group of guys we worked the program together and um and it's worked for me but i want to talk a little bit about my recovery how am i doing on time monica what do we have here 10 10 more eight eight minutes okay i can do it thank you um you know i heard a saying once that uh adversity introduces you to yourself and i love that saying because i think that was uh where i was with with aa was um my world was turned upside down my identity had been stripped my income source was gone i'm trying to raise kids It's basically, you know, you're in a tough spot. And I started working the steps. And one of the things that was very helpful for me was with step three, I was all in because I was raised in a religious household. and i just put god on the back burner when my drinking you know um took off and i thought man i i just need to dust that piece of it off of my life and really get reacquainted with my with my higher power with god he was there all along i just put him on the black burner but when i really understood the steps and step three was all about um you know turn on our will and our lives over the care of god i just said i'm all in i am all in and um and i hit the reset button on my life and you know sometimes uh those dark times are a great time to break bad habits and uh for me that was the case so i did some things outside of a a not just put the plug in the jug i uh i got into shape um you know i never really took care of my health um i started running and and um and that calmed my nerves i ran so much that um i ran like three marathons um and if you would have told me that i was going to run three marATHONs I would have told you you're crazy, but that was a big part of my recovery was to restore my health. I started my own business. It was pretty successful, but I never had the guts to do that when I was drinking. I always had these grandiose ideas. I'm going to do this someday, one day, and I said, screw it. God, if you want me to do This, then I'm Going to Do It. I started a wealth management business, and I just sold it this past January and retired. But I ran that for close to 22 years. And, you know, I just listened to God when I the day I started my business or figuring out what I wanted to do. I was doing a reading out of 2 Timothy in the Bible, and it was basically that God did not give you a spirit of cowardice. He gave you one of power, love, and self-control. And I was reflecting on that reading that morning because I did a combination of getting back into the Bible plus AA. That was part of my recovery. But I remember the meditation for that said, are you struggling with a big decision? And I said, well, hell yeah, I am. I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to start this business or not. And he just, the reading just said, just know that God's got your back. Go for it, man. And so that's how I made the decision to start my business. But I would have never done that if I wasn't sober and I didn't work these steps and I had some power behind me that I knew that God was going to take care of me. So I did some things that I never would have done because step three is we're all in, right? And I truly believe that AA is just a renewal of your mind. You change the way you think about life. Two days ago in the Daily Reflections, if you've read it, it talked about we have a hundred forms of fear. We are driven by a hundred form of fear, and that really was how my life was when I was drinking. I was bullied as a teenager, and I also was abducted when I lived in California, and that was a real i had some ptsd with that and so fear is what you know my life was driven by and today you know it's more faith-based and i truly think that we have a choice you know am i going to approach life fear-based or faith- based and aa has taught me that i can approach life, you know, faith-based. And that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned is just that thinking. And so, you know, today I think it's very important to carry the message. I'm pretty involved. And you know on page 77 it says our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people around us. And so when I'm of service to other people, I'm out of my selfish little world. And, you know, love is our true identity and our destiny. And you know I'll just leave you with this as someone said that, you now, to love others is slowing down and try this. He said, try loving people 30 seconds at a time. And it's really hard when you're talking to someone and you're like, I'm going to focus just on this person for 30 seconds. I'm not going to think at all about me or what I'm gonna do or whatever. And it'S really hard. And so anyway, I think the golden rule is alive and well. If you want to see a miracle, you have to be a miracle. And I'm glad I'm sober today. I'm glad that, babe, you reached out and wanted me to share my story with you guys. So that's a wrap. That's all I got. Thank you.