Internal Disturbance – 12 Step Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Chris S.

Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Good evening everybody, my name is Chris and I am an alcoholic Live from Joe Hawk Hall on Saturday night This really is an absolute pleasure for me To be asked to come down here is when Mark called me up and said, hey, I want you to come down and do a workshop speak. I'm like, I couldn't believe it. Mark's been a hero of mine since 94 or 95 when I first got a hold of some of the workshop tapes. And to be able to come downstairs is really, really great. On or around December 28th, 1989, the grace of God separated me from alcohol. It was a brutal period of time for me. And willingness only born of desperation shoved me toward what I thought was my only possible hope, the only plan that was out there, and that was to go back to Alcoholics Anonymous. I did that with a fervor. And through a course of events and being exposed to some really wonderful people, I haven't seen the need to take a drink since that day. I'm very, very grateful for that. I want to start my story at the beginning. I was born at a very early age. One of my first memories, okay? Here's one of my First Memories. I remember my mother came up to me. I'm about five when she said, Chris, kindergarten starts today. you're going to kindergarten. And I'm like, what? And she's like, yeah, you're gonna really like this. I'm taking you to kindergarten, get dressed. I get dressed, I don't know, I doesn't really know what's going on. She throws me in a car, she drives me across town, she parks at the top of this hill, she opens up the door and she says, see you later. And i remember walking, i remember getting out of the car,she drives away and i'm standing up on top of this hill looking down at the school. And the kids, the kids are already down there, they're running around, theyre playing tag and kickball. They've already like, they've already made friends with each other. There's already peer groups starting. I'm standing up there on top of the hill going, oh, there's something wrong here. This is not a good idea. You know, I was filled with self-centered fear. I was thinking, you know, what if they don't accept me? What if I get beat up? You You know, what if they ostracize me? I'm worried about all this stuff. I'm fine. But, you know, I know enough that I need to go do this deal. So I act as if everything's okay inside me. I'm freaking out. I act it as if every time I do something, everything's OK inside me and I walk down and I start the kindergarten thing, OK? Now, what I remember of school, what I Remember of the first six or seven years of school It's really not pretty I mean, I was not having a good time I was in the wrong place at the wrong time With the wrong people I was never comfortable with myself Or my environment I was always worried about what you were thinking About me I always had this anxiety There would be like An oral report Where I'd have to get up in front of the class And I'd cut school that day Then I'd Cut three days after that Just in case there's a make-up I mean, you know, I just, I was just freaking out and I was acting as if everything was okay because you had to be cool. You know what I mean? So I was actin' as if everythin' was okay and it was, it was traumatic for me. You know, uh, I wa lookin' at you guys and I wa thinkin', how do ya do it? How are you like okay with this whole thing? You know? I'm like freakin' out but I can't tell anybody. so i get to about seventh grade or something like that i've got a couple of friends and we decide that we're going to cut school we're gonna go back to my mother's house and we're to get drunk okay this sounded like a really cool thing to do we could brag about it at school the next day you know it was like you know there was like dangerous and on the outside a little bit and uh that attracted me so um so that's what we did we went back to to my mother's house we cut school and i didn't know anything about drinking at this period of time the only the only exposure i don't come from an alcoholic family you know people that did do you know god bless you you you understood probably more than i did uh the only thing i knew about drinking was the john wayne movies you remember the johnway movies he'd bust through the saloon doors he'd go a bartender whiskey you know the bartender would pour a big water glass of whiskey out. He'd drink like the whole glass down, grab the bottle, go back to the table, shoot somebody in a little while, you know? So that's what I did. I poured these big water glasses of Four Roses Canadian whiskey. You know, to this day, I have like a Pavlovian response to this. If I smelled that Four Rouses, forget it. Here's what happened. Let me first tell you what happened to the two guys I was drinking with. They never became alcoholic. As far as I know, they never became problem drinkers. What they did was they drank about two-thirds of their glass and they had had enough. You ever drink with people that have enough? Isn't that annoying? No, thanks. I've had enough! Are you crazy? Let's go to the city! You know, I mean, that's the way I drank. It's only one in the morning! You can get to work still. They'd had enough and they sat back And they watched the show Because here's what I did I drank my whole glass, the rest of their glass The rest of the bottle And I went into my first blackout Any blackout drinkers in here? Whoa! That's the most amount of hands I've ever seen, Mark It's disconcerting to be a blackout Drinker, isn't it? You ask your buddies By the way Hey, last night was fun, wasn't it? What did we do? You ever lose your car, forget where you parked your car? You ask an Earth person, I need to go look for my car. You need to look for your car. Well, where did you put it? I don't remember. What do you mean you don't know? I don' t remember. Well, blackouts are really disturbing. I mean, I've done some crazy things in blackouts. I got increasingly violent as I drank. I remember, I don't remember this one time I called up my boss in a blackout And threatened his life I'm going to kill you And I quit Now, I'm in a Blackout So I get dressed, I go to work the next day He's like, what the hell are you doing here? I'm like, why? You threatened my life last night I did This type of You know, you wake up in Topeka with one shoe you know, Topeka. Hello, Topika. And because you can't look stupid, you got to pretend that you always go to Topeka with one shoe, you know? Oh man, I would come to in some very, very strange places with some very strange people. And you know it was, it's really disturbing. But anyway, I went into my first blackout the very first time I drank. I went to my first blackout, trashed the house, you know, busted windows, made a whole, did up, made a whole scene, ended up waking up in a field, you know, coming to in a feel like what am I doing in a field? And the thing was, was after that I was horribly ill. Do you remember your first real drunk? I mean, you had to be horizontal for like two days. I mean you're poisoned, you're poison, And you're like, oh, like vomiting all over yourself. And here's the thing. I mean, I was so sick it was unbelievable. If anything else would have made me that sick, I never would have gone near it again. If I would have ate a rutabaga and got that sick I never could have gotten near a rutaba again. I wouldn't have needed to go to a 12-step rutabega anonymous fellowship. I wouldn't have needed to get a rutabaga-eating sponsor. You know, I wouldn'T have needed to get coffee commitment. You know I would have had an adequate mental defense to not eat rutabagas. Here's what alcohol did for me though. And I don't believe that it does this for non-alcoholics. It may but I don'T believe so. You know that scared kindergartner that was always in me that repressed anxious you know, really worried about everything kid that was inside me. When I started to drink that alcohol, all of a sudden I knew a new freedom and a new happiness from that repressed anxiety. All of a suddenly I'm like, ah, you know? Like this is the secret elixir of life. Now I can finally feel like you guys. Now i can finally feel that I fit in. I felt larger than life. Okay, I was the funniest guy. You were lucky to be hanging out with me. Who cares what you think about me? I mean it was a complete shift in perception and it was an unbelievable amount of freedom. And then I learned how to projectile vomit. You know, but listen, the part that made me so sick, that memory started to fade. But what didn't fade was what alcohol did for me. And from that moment, I became preoccupied with alcohol. I figured I'm never drinking Four Roses again until, you know, I never did. I started to drink things like, remember Boone's Farm apple wine? I'm like 12, you know, Strawberry Hill, Budweiser, Schlitz. I mixed it up a little bit. I never drank the Canadian whiskey. But I started to plan where I was going to drink, who was going to buy it because the drinking age was 21. I was 12. That was problematic. But you can always work things out. You can always find a way. You know, I started figuring out where I wasn't going to drink it, who it was going be with, where we were going to So I became very, very preoccupied with alcohol. Now, I come from a really smart family. My sister and brother are both college professor PhDs. My mother and father, Phi Beta Kappa, you know, just a really, really smart family. And the moment I started drinking, things started to change with schoolwork forming, okay? I started to not pay much attention to that. And my grades started to slip, if you can imagine. Now, you know, you always see things in hindsight. I did not say to myself, geez, I'm becoming preoccupied with alcohol. If I keep on like this, you know I may not get into college of my choice. I didn't say that. You know what I said? Things like who cares? Leave me alone. Get off my back. I'm not hurting anybody but myself. You're the war cry of the alcoholic. You know, just stay away from me and my booze, okay? It's my business. And I started to do things like take Wednesdays off in high school just to break up the week. Hey, where's Chris today? It's Wednesday. Oh, that's right. It's his day off. You know, I mean, I just quickly became incredibly irresponsible. Now, this is the late 60s, the very early 70s. So guess what, folks? There was some non-conference approved materials around that you could get your hands on. And believe me, I partook of such things. Whatever it was, I'd eat it and then I'd ask you, by the way, what was that? You know, I mean, it just, I was looking for anything to get me out of me. I wanted to escape the bondage of Chris like you have no idea. And I was always drunker than anybody else, took more drugs than anybody else. I mean we had some real times back in those days. i remember i remember the basking ridge quaalude epidemic of 1972 now here's what happened uh one of my really good buddies brings a big sack of quaaludes into school he got them from his brother way late the night before he goes hey these are quaalodes and we're like well what are those oh they're great you know how many do you take because i have three or four so like 50 of us It took like three or four quaaludes before first period. Okay, by third period I'm walking down the hall, hanging on to the lockers like this. Finally I go, I've got to make a break for it, okay? This is too much. And I see the exit sign, right? Boom, I go through the exit. Now what I don't realize is the whole 400 wing is watching me. They love this. They said, Chris, it took you 15 minutes to go 100 yards. You know, I make it outside. Now, you know, I had a lot of fun in the early days with some of this drinking and drugging. But very, very quickly there came problems. There came problems and I would minimize the problems but they started to become severe. I crashed a lot of cars. I totaled nine cars in drunken blackouts. Got three DWIs. I mean, you know, some of these accidents were unbelievable. I remember allowing myself to become over-served at this one bar. And I'm leaving the bar and the car spins around on some black ice and hits a bridge abutment going backwards. I get thrown out the back window. And I come to it. I'm looking up at the stars. I'm laying on the trunk with my feet still in the car. You know, laying on a trunk. And I'M going, hmm, this isn't good. I should probably get out of here. Now, the car was bent like a boomerang. There wasn't a window left in it. It had three flat tires and the drive shaft was slapping the frame. What am I going to do? What do we do? We go home, right? We try to head home. So I get in the car and I'm going about a mile and a half an hour down the road. Whack-a-da-boog-a bam! Whacka-do-booga-da bam! With this car. And I go by cops giving radar. I can still see the guy. I mean, he didn't even pull me over. He, like, walked me over, you know what I mean? And he reaches through the window, and he starts shaking me. Where'd you have that accident? I'm like, what accident, officer? I got glass sticking out of my head. I don't know about you guys, but the cops were always hassling me. He goes, where are you going? I go, home. He goes where's that? I go Baskin-Royce. He goes that's 28 miles. What are you thinking? You got no tires. Leave me alone. DWI number one. Another time, I'm in Florida and I'm doing Quaaludes and Whiskey again, which if you're new, we don't recommend you drive on that. It didn't work for me. I misjudged the trajectory going across traffic and got T-boned on like a highway. Rolled me down the road. I come to and I am laying on the roof of the car because the car is upside down And my shoes had been knocked off. This is another important warning sign. If you're ever in an accident and your shoes have been knocked off, that's probably a pretty bad accident. But people are looking in like, is he dead? Is he dead?" I crawl out of the car, and I had been thrown through the passenger window and then thrown back into the car. Now, I had glass sticking out of my head really bad. I mean, this was a head wound. It was bleed. I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I mean covered with blood. And I'm standing there talking to people And they're looking at me like, this guy's crazy And the cops come up I grab a bystander I say, listen Call my wife And tell her I'm heading to the hospital The ambulance is coming and everything And the cop's like, we're going to give you a blood test When you get to the house At the hospital So I'm like, alright officer, I only had one You know, you're not an alcoholic If you admit to more than one When they pull you over I just had one I get to the hospital, I'm in the emergency room they wheel me in, the cops are coming and then they don't pay attention to me so I'm laying on the gurney, I look around I'm getting out of here so I jump up off the gurnee I bust through the emergency door through the waiting room now people are horrified because I'm covered with blood I bust though the doors and I'm heading for the woods meanwhile in comes my wife her sister and her sister's boyfriend driving this way. I see them, and I start heading for them. I dive through the window onto their lap and go, you got to get me out of here. They want my blood! They're like, ahhh! Okay? Now, here's how good the alcoholic is. I talk him into taking me back to the party I was at, okay? And my wife did drop me off. I go back in the party, a couple of biker chicks are yanking the glass out of my head with pliers. You know, I'm wondering why she wants to leave me, you know? What's the matter with you? Another, here's my last DUI. I'm driving another evening. I'm allowed to be over-served. I'm on my way home and supposedly I cross the double yellow. You know how this is, supposedly. I get pulled over. Now, the cop comes the window knocks on a window says license registration insurance card and i'm like okay and i am so drunk i open up the glove i'm fumbling in the glove compartment for like five minutes i'm so drunk finally i just grabbed the entire contents of the glove department because i can't do it i just hand it to him you know maps and combs and pens and tissues and everything you know the cops are always hassling me now he goes get out of the car gives me the sobriety test I remember very little of this because I was just about in a blackout. But I remember nailing the ABCs, okay? I get taken to jail, you know, booked, everything. Now, the next morning, I remember nailed the ABC's. So I get a lawyer, okay, $1,500 lawyer. We're going to go there. We're gonna fight this. The first thing they do, I don't know if they still do this around here, but they videotaped me up at the police station doing all the sobriety tests. Now, I remember getting the ABCs. Now, I'm here with a lawyer. He's in a three-piece suit, $1,500 worth. He's professional as hell. We go up and we ask for the videotape and the cop is sniggering when he hands us the tape. He's like... Like this. Now, he puts in the tape and I'm horrified. Okay? Has anybody in here ever seen yourself taped like really drunk? You need like therapy after that. Now, did I nail the ABCs? I sure did. Here's how I nailed them. A, B, and then there's me walking the line and I got my arms on the wall. He's like, you know, Mr. Schroeder, please take your arms off the wall while you're walking the lane. I'm like, every five seconds I'm asking for a cigarette. I was horrified. And this whole time, This whole time, the attorney is like, you know, very, very professional. I'm like hiding my head in shame. Then comes the end and the cop goes, Mr. Schroeder, before we turn the camera off, is there anything you'd like to add? I look at the camera and I go, no! The attorney just loses it. He's like, no, no. Because I've never seen anything like that If you ever had any chance at all Oh my god So I'm like, I guess we gotta plea this one So I get another You know, the cops are always Hassling me Now, these things are happening to me Like, you know, I gotta tell you One thing after another But problem after problem after problem after problem after problem. Now, somewhere along the line I become an electrician. Okay? You know, I came to in recovery and I was an electricians. I was a really bad one too. Because, you know, it takes some intelligence or else you start fires and, you know, you get electrocuted. I was every day I was getting electrocute. My hair was like constantly you know some of the things I did I I remember this one time the people I worked with It just couldn't stand me because I was just so lame. I couldn't remember things, and I'd always be shaking. They don't like electricians that are shaking, you know, these people. Now, I remember this one time. I'm working with a guy, and I had done a bunch of heroin the night before, and a lot of whiskey, which is something else we don't recommend. And I had, you know how you're dehydrated in the morning, and you gotta rehydrate? Well, this morning I got a half a gallon a grape drink you know just you know i rehydrated up and off to work i go and i'm sitting there and i'm putting an electrical panel on somebody's house and my partner is like over here messing in the truck and all of a sudden it's like i'm like oh and i've got experience with this right i have about 7.2 seconds to get somewhere because i am going to be very very sick so i figure what am I going to do? I don't want this guy to see me. So, I know what I'll do. I'll tear around the back of the house. So I tear around the backyard. I just make it around the back of that house and whoa! It's like a fire hydrant. Whoa! Purple vomit. I like stucco this house. Just stuccoat this house! Now, I thought I was alone, okay? Now, I look over and about this far away is a family from a neighboring house on a a deck. A mother, a father, and three kids have a nice tea. And you could tell they were related because they all had the same look on their face. They were like, Mommy, Mommy is a purple puke monster for now, Mommy! Now, you've got to act cool, right? I mean, you don't want to look stupid. It's like get the hose, wash it out. Yeah, this always happens. Another time, I swear this is true. This is bizarre. I'm working as a maintenance electrician in a department store place was called Epstein's it was like a Macy's or a Bambergers or something and they were putting in the computer cash registers at this time so you had to loop data cable around this is a mid 80s or something. And so I had this big drill it was one of those big huge steel like four horsepower with the bar handles in the locking trigger and I'm drilling with a big auger bit with an extension down into the floor to drop the cable into the ceiling below. And I'm in the lingerie department, okay? So I'm preoccupied, if you can imagine. Oh, you know, lingerie. All of a sudden, the thing hits a beam and catches. Boom! And it grabs me and it starts spinning me around like this. It's, the drill spins me around, ties me up in the drill, and then rips the pants off my ass and it finally finally it unplugs from the wall and i'm tied to a drill like this with no pants in the lingerie section you know all these women are like you know again you gotta act cool you don't want to look stupid oh yeah this drill always does this Another time, another time I'm wiring a kitchen addition for some people. You know? Wiring a kitchen edition and I'm running the sub-panel fee for everything in the kitchen down into the basement. And I tie it into the wrong panel, the wrong junction box. What I tie into is the timer meter junction box for the hot water heater. Now, if anybody knows what that is, it goes off at 8 o'clock in the morning and goes on at 8 at night. So I leave the job and their kitchen doesn't come on until 8 o´clock at night! They call up my boss and they go, hey, you know, we eat at 6, this isn't going to work for us! I was always getting in a lot of trouble, always electrocuting myself. You know, it was a mess. Now, you know, I had friends that didn't even have names toward the end of my drinking. They were called like Bear Man and Weezer and Green Man. And, you Know, these were like guys that were just like they had their own parole officers. And they were like, you Now, aliases and stuff. And these are like my buddies toward the End of My Drinking. You Know, and talking about like relationships with women. I mean, I wasn't hitting on all cylinders with this. The last girlfriend I had when I was drinking, I met through a prison pen pal thing, which somebody I knew had gone to prison and met her, and oh, she was a sweet girl and everything, and I started writing to her, and she was like a career criminal, okay? She was like an adult. She'd spent like 20 years in prison for really crazy, violent crimes. Oh, I love you! So she ends up moving in with me and mom, okay? Because I'm living with my mother. They didn't get along, if you can imagine. Got really involved with a lot of serious drug. One of these times, because I was drinking so much alcohol, I really was detoxing every morning. I was a heavy-duty, daily blackout drinker. So I'd get up in the morning, and I'd be anxious. I'd be like, you know, like noises and things. I mean, just really on edge. And I remember I went to my doctor one day, and I said, Doctor, you're always nervous. You've really got a lot of stress. And he goes, you Know, I think he put his stethoscope on my heart, and my heart was going, He goes, Oh, you've got a protracted mitral valve that's leading to hypertension and anxiety and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah! And he goes, well, I go, what do you got for that, doc? And he says, well we've got this new drug called Xanax. So I go well what kind of milgramages you got that in, doc I'll take the big ones, you know? And so all of a sudden I start eating XanaX like candy. I mean, you Know, I'm doubling up the prescriptions. I am weighing them in my hand. I'm not taking two, I'm like, and washing them down with whiskey. Big letters on there, no alcohol. It's like bigger than the Xanax, no alchohol. That doesn't mean me, you know. They're amateurs. So I remember allowing myself to be over-medicated this one time. Actually what it was, it was like a suicide attempt, it really was. I had gotten to the point where, you know, I'm eating a whole bottle. And I ate the whole bottle of Xanax when I was really drunk. And not only did I wake up the next day, but I decided to go to work. Now, much to my boss's chagrin, what happened was, you Know, I made it out to the road where the guy was picking me up. He goes, man, Chris, you Now, go back inside. You Know what I mean? You should know, You Know, go Back. I'm going to work! Well, I end up getting to work and there's the window where my boss was. And I remember walking serpentine up to the... It took me like 10 minutes. I'm like walking... He's like, God damn it! Take him home! He shamed me in front of my peers. Go home! It was just insane. I was suffering from so many things. Now, what really got my attention? What really got my attention, and this is just crazy, but the first thing that got my attention was I was at work, and the guy who was in charge of me was a 19-year-old kid. I'm 33, okay? And the boss puts a 19 year old in charge for me. I mean, that's how much responsibility I was able to handle. And I was putting a ground screw in an outlet box on the ceiling, and I was shaking so bad that I just kept dropping the screw. I could not do it. I mean I was shaken so bad. And this kid was looking at me like this, like you pathetic, good for nothing, no account loser. Okay. Cause I could hear him thinking at you, you know, when you're detoxing, you can hear people think at you and I knew what he was thinking and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I signed myself in to a place that I had gone to actually to get one of my licenses back for a DUI. I went to like some outpatient thing. I went drunk every single night to the outpatient, much to the counselor's chagrin. And I would critique the Father Martin movies while I was doing it. Anybody seen any Father Martin films? Well, as soon as the movie would be done, Chris, do you have a comment? The Father Martin doesn't know anything about the... You know, and I'd go off and on. Oh, well, thank you for that comment, you know. It was just horrible. But I heard that there was a place to go if you were in real trouble. So that shamed me so bad that out now I'd lost my family, my driver's license three times, a million cars. I mean, you Know, every car I had was like a $100 car. You know what I mean? It was like fictitious plates and, you know, bald tires, no insurance, no registration because I was busy. And every once in a while I'd like run into like a late model BMW, you Know, I'd crash into it or something. And I'd be really pissed at them for having an expensive car. I'd go up and I'd say, what are you thinking buying a $20,000 car? You know how much trouble this is going to be now? I get $100 cars, I crash in my throngway, I get another one. And they usually weren't real happy to, you know, have me share that wisdom with them. You know, they weren't very understanding. But anyway, you Know, I go to this rehab and I sign myself in. And, you Now, I'm looking back on it. For many years, I thought, You Know, It was a good place. It was not a good Place. They did not do right by me. I don't know whether they didn't know what they were doing or they didn' t have the funding. I don't know, but it was really, really inadequate because it just didn't offer me anything even close to a solution. A couple of suggestions, get out of here. Go to outpatient, you know, get outer here. But I really, wanted to stay separated from alcohol. I ended up relapsing. I talked about that a little bit today. It led to about a five-month period of the worst drinking I ever had. I'll tell you what a typical day would be. Here's a typical date. I would come to in the morning In the clothes I was wearing the night before Just reeking of vodka or bourbon And, you know, I'd go Time for work You know, and I'd be like You know I'd do my vomiting calisthenics You know I'd brush my teeth And I'd find my way down to the car The hundred dollar car I'd try to make my I'd make my way to work All the while Swearing to God I'm never going to drink again I didn't I never wanted to feel like this again You know what those They're not even hangovers They're more like they're more like you know you're dying you know it's not like a hangover you're like dying and i would be swearing i'm never ever going to drink again and what would happen is i'd rehydrate you know with a half a gallon of something for lunch i'd get maybe half a sandwich down and i'd start to feel just a little bit human and i said to myself you know that decision i made earlier about never ever drinking again That's pretty extreme As a matter of fact I'm going to have to modify that decision Today And I would zoom to the liquor store Right out of work I'd buy a quart and I'd just start drinking And I'd do this whole thing And I drank with such a vengeance That in about two hours I was tongue chewing, knee walking Not able to operate my own Pants zipper drunk In about two horas You ever been that drunk? and this was cutting down on my social life you know i mean you can't do much when you drink that much now what happens is christmas at the schroeder's 1989 i'm drinking my mother's there my brother and sister come home nieces and nephews cats i mean the whole deal uh the christmas tree is decorated there's presents you know there's a fire the christmas you know stockings are hung by the chimney with care you know the whole thing is everybody's home for christmas and i get a resentment and i got really pissed off and i start walking around the house with a 38 caliber handgun saying i'm gonna kill all of you i'm going to kill every one of you that's not the festive mood that they were looking for i can tell you so what they did was they picked up and they took their Christmas elsewhere. I came to, you know, this was a multi-day blackout. It was just horrible. I was as shattered as I've ever been. I remember staggering into the kitchen and seeing a pile of vodka bottles like this in the sink. I didn't even remember buying them. I mean, I must have been out for days. And I started to go into these unbelievable dts i mean hallucinating vi you know violently going into convulsions i was hearing things there was little animals running around there was maggots all over me there was big animals scratching on the house to come in i remember laying down on a couch you know like this and a demon came out of the ceiling like one of those monitor type demons like with a bull head and the big horns and he was coming out of his ceiling to eat my face i swear you know And I go, God help me. I mean, I cried out from the depths of my soul. God help me. I'm telling you, when you cry out with that kind of desperation, there's something that hears. I haven't had a drink since I cried out to keep that demon from eating my face. Okay, what happened was I was so shattered I couldn't even leave the house for a couple of days. I couldn't sleep. I'm coming out of it. And I know, I know that, that, you know, going back to the 28 day thing is not really what I need to do. I need to get back to Alcoholics Anonymous because I had tried AA, but I hadn't participated. I'd sat in the seat, but i hadn't done any of the deal and I just felt inside that that's, that's really my only hope. Now I had a 19, a 1976 Ford Granada with white walls, no heater, no clutch, no emergency brake, no heater core. It's December and because it has no clutch I have to find a flat meeting to go to. So I look in the meeting book and I find a plat meeting and it's in Morristown and I remember driving to this meeting. Now because there's no muffler or clutch there was a little hill going up into the church parking lot okay and 150 people are having cigarettes out on the porch all my new peers and i have to gun this thing to get up a tiny little hill like this about a mile and a half an hour you know they're all looking like this must be a new guy you know i go into that meeting you got to understand i'm shattered i haven't slept in about four days i'm there out of desperation. I sit down in a chair and all of a sudden somebody hands me a step book and goes, they're reading from the step 12th. And I look down the row and they're reading paragraphs one after the other. And they're coming for me. Okay. I like panic. I'm going to have to read from a book. So I freak out and I go outside. I mean, there's no way i mean that's just too much they want me to read i mean that's how shattered i was and i'm having a cigarette out on the stoop thinking yeah i don't think i can do this you know it's just two months i don' t think i'm gonna you know it was one of those those seconds and inches moments where it could have gone either way and this guy named jorge comes outside he saw me leave and he goes up to me and he says kid what's your deal and he goes well why don't you come on back in the meeting with me and I go well there's a meeting tomorrow night that I'm going to go to he goes no he knew what tomorrow meant so he grabbed me by the arm and he said no come on Back in the Meeting so I didn't want to make a scene so I went back in The Meeting and we sat out in the second row and they're done reading now and now they're sharing so i'm sitting there like this like totally totally freaking and he leans over to me and he goes now raise your hand and tell everybody you're coming back and i'm like well there's a meeting tomorrow night everybody raises their hand everybody says they're coming back he's like no raise your head he's starting to get loud now and you know he's trying to get loud now people are looking my way okay you know what's going to happen next they're going to be thinking at me, right? So finally I just panic. I can't shut this guy up. And I raise my hand right in the middle of somebody sharing. I've never seen this happen before or since. Right in the midst of somebody's sharing, I raised my hand. And the person sharing the meeting is a little confused and shuts the person up who's talking and calls on me. And And I said something profound like this, and it's really quiet, okay? And then all of a sudden the whole room goes, like this. Now, you know, I took that as acceptance back then. You know, I now know that it's, oh man, that guy's pathetic. I feel so good. Oh, I thought I had problems. Thank you. Oh, you know, I know that that's what it is now. But but I took it. I took his acceptance. And and there was a wall of fear between me and being able to engage in Alcoholics Anonymous. I just did. I was just I had too much anxiety, too much of that self-centered fear. I just couldn't do it. You know, it was too much to deal with. And by raising my hand and saying I was coming back, I knocked a bit of that wall of fear down. You know, this Jorge guy saved my life. I learned later he had like seven days himself. You know? I couldn't believe it. So I started to go to meetings. I got myself a sponsor. He told me, go every single night. And I just, I'm going to like a million meetings. I'm doing whatever they ask me to do. I was a secretary here. I was a treasurer over here. You know, I was in no-show GSR here because that's what you do in New Jersey. You know? I was driving people from, you know, treatment to the meetings. I was doing everything. I wasdoing everything. Now, here's the thing. That scared kindergartner, he was still all over me. That just repressed, you now, always worrying, really attached to, you know, what you thought of me and, you know, just overly shy and overly sensitive. And this went on for about a year. And it was getting to the point where sobriety was becoming untenable. That's what happens to a lot of us who don't engage in the recovery process. Sobriety becomes untenable and we can't take it after a while. Here's what I believe. I believe that if you don't put enough into the 12-step process. You don't get enough power back from the 12 step process to be able to stay. And what happens is you either relapse while you're going to meetings or you leave meetings and relapse that. That's, that's what happens from my experience in my experience working with others. There has to be a level of participation sufficient to, to get back enough power to be able to stay i didn't understand any of this stuff at this period of time but what i was doing was i was buying a lot of tapes and i got i talked a little bit about this today i got exposed to uh some serious uh recovery tapes and what they did was they changed my life they talked about the actual spiritual mechanicals of a recovery process you know a lot people were talking about the steps and philosophizing about the steps and reading them, and they're up on the wall, and you know, oh yeah 12-step program. Hey, hey it's a 12-stepped program. Did you ever do the steps? Well, no. And there was a lot of that going on. These specific tapes showed me as clearly as I had ever seen the actual answer, the actual recovery process. And I started to do that and i only started to listen to these tapes and actually put it into application because i had what's known as a sober bottom uh there comes a period of time in all of our lives where we're we're thrown a bunch of challenges what my challenge was is is i met god's will for me in the rooms you know she was exactly what god wanted for me okay and um and i fell completely in love with her and we started to do our dance of death you know two ding-a-lings trying to make a bell and and what happened was she wasn't as interested in this relationship as i was and and she basically told me to go pound and and i and i you know i was not in the spiritual state of mind to be able to handle this really well and i remember i remember going over to my sponsor's house and i never did this before i knocked on his door and I couldn't even talk he knew something was wrong so he goes come on in Chris what happened was he asked me do you pray and I'm like no and he goes well Chris from now on what I want you to do is in the morning I want your to get on your knees I want to say a prayer to God to show you the strength and direction to get through the day sober and at night I want you to get up get on you knees and thank God And, oh, Gary Ville. So I started to do that and I started to listen to these tapes again, which I had a big resentment to. Now, what happened in my life from that period of time on is basically this. I was unbelievably selfish, like going to a lot of meetings. I'm going to all the meetings, I'm doing this and I'm doing that, but I'm not really helping others. There's a place in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that explains why we relapse. We have a million excuses, but it basically says in the big book that we relapsed because we failed to perfect and enlarge our spiritual condition through work and self-sacrifice for others. Now I wasn't working and self sacrificing for others and I wasnít working on my spiritual condition. I start to do these steps and all of a sudden I start to recover from alcoholism. Now, there's a difference between sobriety and recovery. There's a huge difference. Sobriety, I really think is just abstinence from alcohol, just not drinking. And you want to get sober, you can punch a cop and it'll happen really quick. But recovery, recovery is that shift in perspective, the healing of that kindergartner who was so tortured. The healing of the emotional states, the spiritual states, all the disturbance that's going on in your life. Recovery is a shift. Recovery has a shift toward recovery. Recovery is a ship toward healing of all those things. And I started to personally experience it through the step process. Now, over the course of time, I was sponsoring people. Anybody that gives good share in the rooms sometimes can get sponsees. Now, I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground, but people were saying, Chris, would you sponsor me? You sounded pretty good. And I was saying, yeah, sure. Here, give me a call before you drink. I mean, I Didn't know what to do. And a lot of times these sponsee's were drinking on me. Now I'm involved. I'm involved in the recovery process. And now my, a lot of my sponsors are drinking on it. Does anybody in here ever had sponsors drink on it? It really makes you look bad, doesn't it? Is Harry yours? Do you know he's drinking and he's hitting on the women and he is borrowing money? Yeah, Harry's mine. I had a lot of these guys so I figured what the hell, I'm going to get them over my house and I'm going to have them experience what I've been experiencing with an open big book and a pen in my hand and doing these spiritual exercises. So let me tell you what, you want to learn something, teach it. It's a great way to really learn. So I start teaching from the big book. I don't know that much. I've heard some tapes, but I start teaching from the big booking. Guess what? Very, very significant. The people who actually did the fourth and fifth step actually went out and made amends. Every single one of those guys is still sober. They're card carrying, AA member in good standing. They are working with others and their quality of life is out the roof. the people who didn't do that stuff and didn't stay consistent with the spiritual processes they're gone I don't know if they're drinking or not but they didn't get enough power back from the 12 step fellowship to be able to stay they're going so I learned something very very significant through working with others the solution the treatment for alcoholism the spiritual process what is my life like today just this year I'm just going to name some of the highlights of this year Being asked to speak here is certainly one of the great highlights. I mean, you know, it would be like if you were a physicist and Albert Einstein said, I'd like you to do a lecture on physics at Princeton for me. You know, having Mark ask me to do this. Unbelievable. I've been asked to be a board member of the National Council on Alcoholism. I'm a board members of C4 Recovery Solutions, and I've being asked to do an amazing project that involves people worldwide I'm carrying information out to whoever needs it of best practices for addictive illness processes. We're talking sex addiction, gambling, everything. I'm interviewing the best of the best. And it's just unbelievable that I get to do that for a living. You know, I've bought a house. I remember in my first five years people would share like, yeah, I bought a home. I bought another house and then I bought an other house. Now I can't sell my other house, I got real problems. Like how do you get a house? You know what I mean? I got like five bucks. I bought a house. You know, I drive some nice cars. I've got some great friends. You know What I mean. You know I met somebody in AA and boy met girl on AA campus and trouble soon followed. You know and this is the longest I've ever been in a relationship. Thirteen years. That's a world record. I was able to start a home group there's a promise in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that says you can create the fellowship you crave, I've done that with the Burnsville Spiritual Awakens group this group has become very very influential many many things that have happened at Burnsville have gone online and influenced other groups around the world unbelievable I just was asked a couple of weeks ago to moderate a political debate with senators and congressmen And talking, you know, putting them on notice that there's a constituency of people out there in recovery that are going to want to know how you feel about certain issues revolving around people in recovery. You know, insurance reform, et cetera. You know me, putting senators in Congress, you got to, that's just unbelievable. That's unbelievable. I was living with mom. You know what I mean? i was just a commencement speaker at drug court they want me to be the commencement speaker speaker at all these drug court graduations you know you know these are all these are judges and prosecutors they're calling me up hey you want to help me out i gotta tell you that's not what was happening in the 80s you know i was avoiding them prosecuting now i've got i've like five friends who are prosecutors for guys You know, I could go on and on and on all night long. All I want to do is tell you, I swear to you there is unbelievable things in front of you. Sometimes they're not going to be the most comfortable things in the world but I got to tell you the journey is worth every single moment, every single effort. Put your recovery first and you'll have a chance to get it all. That's all I got. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.