Little Miracles Stack Up Into a Spiritual Experience — You Don’t Need the White Light — Jeff C.
About This Speaker Tape
Jeff opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NABBA Club with 28 years sober, dating to November 6, 1986. A 24-year alcoholic and addict who spent his career in the record business, he frames the talk around "little miracles" — the educational variety of spiritual experience described in the Big Book, where God shows up in small, specific moments rather than one white-light flash.
The wreckage starts young. At 8, Jeff came home from a movie with his dad, ran into a dark house, and found his mother dead on the living room floor after she completed suicide. He spent years blaming God and then his mother before AA taught him she was an untreated alcoholic from the 1950s mental-institution era. His first drink at 12 ended in vomiting all over himself, a fist fight, and jail — and instead of scaring him off, he woke up wanting the party again. Music became his escape and his career; he and his first guitar partner lived on cocaine scooped with butter knives until the partner died of a speedball overdose with friends too high to call an ambulance.
The miracles start piling up in sobriety. A treatment-center orderly paged as "Dr. Strong" — a giant with no neck — blocks the doorway when Jeff tries to bolt from Bronner's Psychiatric. His car dies the one afternoon he slips out to find the dope man and starts fine hours later when his wife asks him to run for bread. At 7 a.m. in Central Park, hunting a dealer in a city of 12 million, he runs into the one woman there who knows he's in AA. A semi passes him at 80 mph with "Let Go and Let God" painted in six-foot letters on the back. His first Atlanta sponsor slams the brakes at lunch and a machine gun slides out from under the driver's seat — "this is my guy," Jeff thinks. A new job leads him to a small label where 28 of 30 employees are sober.
The hardest miracle lands at 27 years. His wife and daughter leave for a week-long camping trip; Jeff opens a garage cabinet and finds two bottles of her wine. An overwhelming craving drops him. He grips the mattress all night, gets to a meeting, calls his sponsor, and finally prays — the obsession lifts, and the message comes back clear: no free pass for time served. Put down the drink and never pick up the first one. Become teachable. Be willing to change. Every day, no matter how much sobriety is on the shelf.
Topics
Timestamps
Full Transcript
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NABBA Club, where a member
of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
This reading is based upon a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of...
of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
This reading is based upon a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of...
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NABBA Club, where a member
of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
This reading is based upon a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and 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, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and
our problem that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must
have this thing.
Tonight, I think Tinsley is going to introduce our speaker this evening.
My name is Tinsley, I'm an alcoholic, and it's an honor to introduce the speaker, especially
when it's somebody I've known for over 30 years, which means we knew each other on the
other side.
And you know, I've known Jeff a long time.
But I really don't know what his story is, and I'm looking forward to tonight, and I've
been looking forward to tonight for a long time.
So with that, I give you Jeff's seat.
Hey everybody, I'm Jeff, I'm an alcoholic and addict.
And thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the God of my understanding, and people just
like you in rooms just like this all over the world, I haven't found it necessary to
take a drink or a drug since November the 6th, 1986.
And for that, I'm very grateful.
That's 28 years in case your math ain't so good.
But you know, I'd like to tell you, I'm really happy to be here.
Not necessarily just at this meeting.
After 24 years of drinking and drugging the way I did, I'm just happy to be here.
All right?
And that's the truth.
Yeah, we rolled back in the day, Tinsley and I, and I don't remember any of it.
I hope you don't either.
You know, if you don't hear anything else that I say tonight, I hope you will hear this,
that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works.
It works 100% if you do three simple things.
One, you put down the drink and you never pick up the first one after that.
That goes for drugs too.
Two, you become teachable.
I wasn't very teachable when I got here.
I had to learn how to become teachable because I thought I knew everything.
And the third thing is you've got to be willing to change.
And alcoholics, in my experience, are not very willing to change.
I struggle with every part of this program.
I'll just say that.
You know, when I first got here and looked at those steps, I wanted to change every single one of them.
I did not relate to them.
I didn't think they made much sense.
And why not?
Because I was using it and I couldn't see a different way.
So, what I'd like to talk about tonight in the book,
it talks about the spiritual experience.
And what you read is so apropos to what I'm going to talk about.
You know, they describe two different kinds of spiritual experience.
One, the sudden white-like experience where you experience God and your whole life changes.
And then they say, and then there's the educational kind, which comes over time.
And most people have that.
Me, I like to say I had little miracles.
That was my experience.
Just...
Just one little miracle after another.
And I'll tell you a little bit about me first.
And that is I was born in Denver, Colorado on Easter Sunday a long time ago.
I won't say the year.
But I had a perfect childhood until I was about six.
And then my mother started going in and out of mental institutions.
And then she would disappear and not come back for days at a time and then show up again.
So, by the time I was...
About seven, they divorced, my mother and father.
And I went to live with my mother.
And one Saturday night, my dad came to pick me up when I was eight and we went to a movie.
And during the movie, I had this weird feeling.
I just had this feeling wash over me that something was weird or wrong.
So, after the movie, we went back to the house and the house was dark.
And so, my dad said, I'll just wait here.
You run in and make sure everything's okay.
So, I ran.
I ran in and my mother had committed suicide on the living room floor and was dead.
And that was the beginning of my spiritual crisis.
You know, I prayed for God to bring her back many, many times in many, many ways and it never worked.
So, I got a huge resentment toward God.
And the AA program helped me work on that after I'd gotten sober.
And after about five or six years, I realized that wasn't God.
It wasn't God that did that.
She did that.
Then I got mad at my mother.
So, I stayed in AA a little bit longer and I came to realize she was sick too because it turns out she was an alcoholic.
You know, and that's what they did with alcoholics back in the 50s is they put them in mental institutions.
They didn't know what to do with them.
And then she came back out and was untreated.
I guess never found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and she killed herself.
You know, it says that we will die, you know, if we don't treat our alcoholism.
So, I just want to talk to you about.
Some random little miracles that I have had.
First of all, I just want to say that I had my first drink when I was 12 years old.
And here's what happened.
I got drunk.
I threw up all over myself.
I got in a fist fight and I went to jail.
I woke up the next morning and most people would have gone, Jesus Christ, I'm never going to do that again.
I woke up and went, when can we get this party started again?
It says in the big book that there's a point.
There's a point in your drinking career when you go from casual drinking to determined drinking.
Personally, I believe that my first drink was the only casual drink I ever had.
That from then on it was determined.
I wanted to get as blotto as I could in just a race reality.
Because I didn't like the way I felt.
I didn't like how I couldn't control the fact that people were dying in my life and whatever, you know.
So, from the age of 12.
At first.
I was very disciplined because when my mother died, I escaped into a love of music and music was about the only thing that gave me joy.
And so I became a musician and I, but let me just say right here, I didn't study to become a musician because I didn't believe in rules.
You know, like when I was 10 years old, my father would bring home a model airplane for me to put together.
And I'd open up the box, I'd throw the directions away and I just struggle with trying to fix that.
Put that airplane together.
I just didn't.
I just didn't follow rules or regulations or directions, you know.
And so I just, I lost my train of thought.
This is great.
At my age, it's forgivable, I assume.
But let me just get on.
So I drank, I was disciplined at the beginning because I played music.
I would practice very hard.
And, you know, drinking after a while became a reward for a hard practice session.
Never did I ever consider drinking while I was playing music or whatever.
Well, anyway, we started little bands around where I lived in Denver and I had a pretty good band that was playing around town.
And one night we were rehearsing in a dress shop in the bottom of a store and we kept hearing the door rattling, door rattling.
Finally, I went up to see what it was.
Big blizzard, snowstorm, and there's this skinny little kid standing at the door with a guitar.
But you know, I'm like 17 or 18.
This kid's maybe 15.
You know, he's like, hey, man, can I jam?
Can I jam?
No, no, no.
I tried to blow him off.
He said, no, please, please let me play.
So he came in, he plugged in, and the guy was a genius, genius musician.
And we fired our guitar player the next day and hired him.
And I was blessed to play with this gentleman for many years and until his death of drug overdose and alcohol.
We wrote many, many songs together.
We had a lot of success, you know.
I don't like to name drop, and I try not to do that when I'm speaking.
But we were living the lifestyle.
We were taking limos.
We had big, giant bags of cocaine, and we were doing it off of butter knives, okay?
So we were excessive.
We were definitely excessive.
And it's not surprising that he died at such an early age.
He was actually in a, he was on tour, and he came back after the tour, and they started partying, and he started having an overdose.
He was doing speedballs.
And in...
All these people in the room, they were high, too.
So instead of calling an ambulance, they didn't, they were paranoid and high.
They just pushed him in the shower and left, and he died that night.
And even though my drinking and drugging was increasing, I still remember the denial of this thing is amazing.
I still remember thinking, gee, that's tough.
He just couldn't take it, you know.
I do better.
You know, I'm better.
I know how to handle this shit.
Well, that kind of thinking landed.
It lifted me up in my first treatment center.
I got to the point where I was so toxic, I couldn't work.
By this time, I was...
When he died, I started working for a record company, which was amazing, because now I had an expense account to use on my drinking and drugging, and that really helped my cause.
It moved it right along, you know.
But, so, after he died, I started working for these record companies, and I went into this first treatment center.
Well, you should never let an alcoholic try...
Pick their own...
Pick their own...
Pick their own treatment center, because I picked this place that was swimming, tennis, horseback riding, gourmet food in a mansion, no AA, right?
So, I went there for 30 days.
It cost $10,000 back in the 80s.
That was a lot of money.
But my record company that I worked for paid for it.
They said, you know, we're not unaccustomed to this.
People with drug problems in the business, go, right?
So, I went in, had a great time.
Didn't find out anything about how to stay sober, but ate a lot of good food.
Got out and white-knuckled it for about six weeks, and then I went out with a vengeance.
I remember being at a club in Atlanta, and I had one scotch, and the next thing, I was on the phone to the drug dealer,
and the next thing I know, I was in Gainesville in a shooting gallery.
I'd been kicked out of a bunch of clubs, and I woke up in a place that I'd never been and didn't ever want to be again.
So, I knew it was very serious, so I decided I was going to call my boss and tell him I needed to go to treatment again.
And he said, well, fine, but this time, you're paying for it.
And let me tell you, from the minute I had my own money invested, I took it a lot more seriously.
You know, and that's why I always put something in the basket, because I considered investing in my own recovery.
If I'm willing to take a dollar out of my pocket and put it in the basket, that means I value my sobriety.
So, here's some of the little miracles that happened to me along the way.
The first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable.
Well, I thought that was a deal breaker.
I could see that my life was unmanageable, but I did not understand how you could be powerless over alcohol.
Until one day, I was in a meeting, and a guy said, I'm not powerless over alcohol until I put it in.
Then I don't have any idea what's going to happen.
And I could relate to that, you know.
Because that alcohol doesn't bother me.
It doesn't bother me when I'm not taking it.
But when I take it, bad things happen.
Simple as that.
So, that helped me understand.
And he was in one of the first AA meetings I was in, in treatment.
And he came in and sat down next to me.
I was sitting in the front row.
And this guy in a suit came in and sat down right next to me.
And I'm this guy in the treatment center, you know, in my pajamas.
And the guy had a pin on his lapel, and it said, attitude.
And I went, yeah, attitude, man.
He goes, no, man, you don't get it.
If you've got a good attitude, life is good.
If you have a bad attitude, life sucks.
And I had to admit to myself, my life sucked.
I was trapped in this treatment center.
So I had about four or five days in the treatment center,
and I decided I had about enough of that treatment crap.
And I announced to all the nurses in the place that I was leaving.
Now.
. .
The word God does not appear in our steps until the third step.
And I tried to make God another out for me.
Hey, I don't want to have God here.
I don't want to deal with that.
I'm done with God.
He killed my mother, all this stuff.
Anyway, so the second step actually says, came to believe that a power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Here's my first little miracle.
I announced to these ladies that I was leaving.
And as I got up to walk to the door, they paged a Dr. Strong.
And by the time I got to the door, there was this gigantic muscular guy with no neck.
He's just huge, standing in the doorway, and he wasn't going to let me out.
He was my first higher power.
I turned around and sat back down.
. .
So that was a wonderful miracle.
And in the very next meeting I sat in, they were talking about the second step and being
my resentful, sick self,
I challenged him.
I said, you know what?
I might be an alcoholic,
but I'm not insane.
It says, you know,
good restores the sanity.
I said, I might be an alcoholic,
but I'm not insane.
And this guy looks at me and he goes,
hey man, did you ever
spend all your grocery money on booze?
Yeah.
Did you ever get spit-mouthed,
drooling, drunk, and drive?
Yeah.
And he had about four other questions
like that.
And by the end of that,
I realized that I had been insane.
You know, it was very clear to me
and there was no dodging that bullet.
And by the way, they asked me,
do you know where you are?
And I said, yeah, I'm in a treatment center.
He goes, yeah, but it's
Bronner's Psychiatric Institute.
It was crazy.
It was a loony bin
and I didn't even know it.
So the next thing that happened,
I get out of treatment
and I go back home.
And it's four or five days later
and I'm sitting at home
and all of a sudden,
I get this unbelievable urge to use.
So I tell my wife, listen,
I'm going out to get a pack of cigarettes.
I'll be right back.
But I was going to go find the dope man.
That's what I was going to do.
So I went out to my car
and I turned the car
and the thing wouldn't start.
I tried and tried and tried
and that car would not start.
Finally, I gave up.
I went back in the house.
And the urge to use passed.
About four hours later,
my wife said,
hey, can you go to the store
and get some bread?
I ran out to the car
and I'd forgotten all about it.
I turned the car
and it cranked right up.
That's another little miracle.
That saved my butt that day.
You know, that was beautiful.
When I had about a year sober,
I was going to meetings.
I had a sponsor.
I did all the stuff
that I was told to do,
not because I wanted to,
but because I did not
want to get drunk again
because I knew
where it was going to lead me.
So I did what I was told.
And at about a year sober,
I got an offer
to work for one of the biggest
record companies in New York City
running the promotion department
dealing with radio.
And I thought to myself,
hey, I got a year sober.
I'm a miracle.
You know, I'm a spiritual giant.
I'll go.
Problem was,
I was in love with this woman
that worked at another label
here in Atlanta.
And she had a great job.
So she wasn't coming with me.
And I had to go
because it was one of the opportunities
of a lifetime.
So I went thinking I'll be fine,
you know, and I got there.
And within the course
of two or three days,
it was really apparent
I was full of fear.
I was shaken.
I was thinking I wanted to use.
I knew it wasn't going well.
And I spent one night
in my apartment,
which was actually 600 square feet,
not much room,
pacing back and forth,
peeking out the windows,
looking out the little hole,
just old behavior, you know,
and I wanted to use,
wanted to use.
And I stayed up all night long.
And in the morning,
I still wanted to use.
And I thought to myself,
I don't know anybody here.
How am I going to score?
Oh, I'll go to Central Park.
Surely there'll be a dope dealer
in Central Park.
So seven o'clock in the morning,
I'm on the subway
coming up to Central Park
to try and score.
So I'm walking through Central Park
and I'm looking down.
And all of a sudden,
I hear Jeff.
And I look up
and it's the one person
in New York City,
what, 12 million people?
The one person I knew
that was in AA
and knew I was in AA too.
And this woman says to me,
man, you look like shit.
We need to get to a meeting.
And she took me to a meeting.
Saved my butt.
That is another little miracle.
You know, and
so this meeting that I went to
is at Al-Anon House
in New York City.
It's in Times Square.
It's in the big book.
They talk about it.
And it's the kind of place
where you sit down next to
a guy might get out of a limousine
and get, sit down.
And then the next guy over
is, you know,
puking on his shirt
and passed out.
Street guy, right?
So all kinds of people
come together there.
And it was powerful, man.
The message of AA
was just strong in this place.
And I noticed there was a guy
that shared sitting
a couple of chairs away from me.
And he had sick glasses on
and he was wearing cowboy boots
and a bolo tie.
And I'm thinking he ain't from New York.
I'll tell you that.
But he had such a spiritual message.
I went up to him afterwards
and I said, my name's Jeff.
And would you,
he said he happened to mention
he had 17 years sober.
And I asked him if he'd be my sponsor.
He said, yes.
In New York, they say
you're never more than
eight minute walk from a meeting
anywhere in Manhattan.
And we tested that theory.
Every weekend we'd get together
and we'd start down
at the bottom of Manhattan.
We'd just start going to meetings
and we'd have lunch
and then we'd go to meetings
working our way up.
And we'd,
we'd spend all day,
both days,
Saturday and Sunday,
going to meetings.
It was incredible.
My first sponsor in Atlanta, though,
he was quite different.
I didn't really want a sponsor
and I was too shy
to ask for a sponsor.
And so the guy
at the treatment center
said to me,
I got a guy for you.
And you need to call him
and have lunch with him.
And I said, okay.
And I'm thinking,
finally,
this guy gets that
it's going to take somebody
really special to sponsor me.
And that's what I'm thinking, right?
And I said, well,
so,
so you think he's the right guy for me?
And he goes, yeah,
he's the only one
thicker than you are,
but he's more sober.
So,
so I,
the guy comes to pick me up
and we're driving to lunch
and he has to slam on the brakes
and a machine gun slides out
from under his chair.
And I'm thinking,
this is my guy.
This is my guy.
And he was my sponsor
until I left for New York.
He was great.
Crazy as a loon,
but he was sober.
And he helped me stay sober.
So,
after working in New York
for about three years,
it was really stressful
and I really wanted to be
with my girlfriend,
who's now my wife,
in Atlanta.
And we could not figure out a way.
And then all of a sudden
this little miracle happened.
A guy who was credited
with being really
the man who discovered
and started Southern Rock
and he started this label
down in the South
that was really famous
and he signed a bunch
of great R&B artists.
And a guy called me
and said,
this guy's looking
to start his record company
up again
and they'd like to interview you
for a job.
And I'm like,
oh my God.
I'm going to have
an opportunity
to be back with my wife,
get back to Atlanta
where I love
and to do my dream job,
which is run a record company.
And so I took the job
and it was an amazing time.
It was very exciting.
We had such a great time.
We broke a lot of records,
a lot of big bands,
had a great time.
But when they,
when they started,
they were in Nashville
and I was living in Atlanta
and they actually
let me do that.
But I would have to go up
for meetings
once in a while.
And one time
I went up for a meeting
and it's a four hour drive,
right?
And the meeting
went terribly.
We were fighting
and it was so tense
and negative
and by the end of it
I was ready to quit
but I just got in the car
and I'm driving home.
I'm going 80 miles an hour.
I'm banging on the steering wheel.
I'm totally twisted up
with fear and anger
and, you know,
and I'm driving along
with my teeth clenched,
you know,
clenched and
all of a sudden
I'm going 80 miles an hour.
A semi passes me.
Boom!
Like that.
And you know what was written
on the back
in six foot tall letters?
Let go
and let God.
On the back of a semi.
That's another little miracle.
I got the message.
I relaxed.
I had a sip of water
and I let it go.
Okay?
Nothing's that important
that I should get
so twisted up, right?
So, one other thing,
you know,
in the book it talks about
we have a disease of perception.
That the disease of alcohol
centers in the mind.
And I believe that 100%.
It's my thoughts.
You know,
it's my thoughts
that get me drunk.
It tells me in the book
I'll get restless,
irritable and discontent
before I pick up a drink.
Wow, that's the way
I lived when I got here.
I was always restless,
irritable and discontent.
But to show you
how skewed your mind
can still be
even after you get sober.
I had a couple of years sober.
I'm still working
for this same company.
And my boss,
who was famous
for being a crazy man,
but he had calmed down by then.
He says to me one day
very casually,
Hey Jeff,
I need to have a meeting with you.
How about next Tuesday?
And I went,
Okay.
And this was like
on the previous Monday.
And for a whole week
I twisted up.
Oh God, he's going to fire me.
I'm going to lose
the biggest job in my life.
I have all this money.
It's great.
Everything's perfect.
I'm going to lose my job.
And then I thought
on Monday
before the meeting
on Tuesday,
you know what?
I'll beat him to it.
I'll quit this job.
I'll show his ass.
I'm going to quit.
I'm going to tell him
where to stick it.
You know.
But my sponsor suggested
I just go to the meeting.
And I did.
And you know what he said?
You've been doing a great job.
I want to give you a bonus.
He gave me the biggest bonus check
I've ever gotten in my life.
That was another little miracle.
Because I didn't deserve it.
But, you know,
it just shows you
how wrong your thinking can be.
You know,
that's why I need a sponsor.
I need somebody
that can tell me,
Hey, that don't sound right.
You know,
I need that.
Because it sounds right
to me in here.
But when I say it out loud,
it's a little creepy.
Then I lost that job.
This huge job.
This wonderful, perfect job
that had me living in a great house
bigger than I'd ever lived in before.
Married to a woman
that I love more than anything.
Just had a baby.
Everything was perfect.
And then,
life happened.
I lost the job.
And I didn't have another job
for over a year.
Went through all my savings.
I took a job selling cars.
Didn't know how to sell cars.
But I thought,
Oh my God,
I'm a super promotion man.
I will ace this.
My ego, right?
I failed miserably.
I hadn't done math in years.
And the car business
is all about writing up deals
and making...
They went,
I'm sorry,
but this isn't going to work.
So again,
I had no job.
And the money was running out.
I don't know what to do.
I just prayed about it.
Kept going to meetings.
Talking to my sponsor.
And he'd say,
You know,
it'll be okay.
Just don't drink.
Go to meetings.
And so after about a year and a half,
all the money's gone.
I hear this record on the radio.
And it's one of the guys
that I love the most.
You know,
I've loved him for years.
And I called somebody and said,
Man, this guy's got a new record.
I didn't even know he was on a label.
And they said,
Oh yeah, he's on this label
out of California.
This little bitty label.
And I said,
Well, who's promoting his records?
And they said,
Well, nobody.
And I thought,
Oh,
so I'm going to reach out.
I'm going to talk to these people
and see if I can get them to hire me
so I can get them to hire me.
So I can help work
on this guy I love, you know.
And so I called him cold.
And the guy's like,
No, we don't need anybody.
We're a small company.
We don't have any money.
Blah, blah, blah.
I said,
Please, please,
let me have a shot.
Please.
So finally they said yes.
Now let me tell you how God works.
The company I was at before,
not the one here,
but the one in New York,
we had the two biggest
heavy metal bands in the 80s.
When I,
my first thing to do
when I was sober
was go on the road
with these two heavy metal bands.
Fresh out of treatment.
And thank God for the fact
that I knew that if I shouldn't,
if I just didn't pick up
the first one
and I think it through,
that I'll be okay.
And I did get through it.
And you know what I noticed?
Those guys didn't have nothing on me.
I used a lot more than they did.
I just didn't notice it
because I was so blasted
most of the time.
But anyway,
so it turns out,
I get this job
with this record company
and it wasn't three weeks.
Before I had this conversation
with the guy that runs the company,
the president.
And he goes,
yeah, you know,
I'm sober by the way.
What?
You're sober?
He goes, yeah.
And there's 30 people that work here.
28 of them are sober.
I said,
if that's not a God thing,
what would be?
That's a little miracle right there.
So all of a sudden,
I'm working,
going from working
with heavy metal heads
to working in a company
where there's all kinds
of sober people.
And it was amazing.
Everybody treated everybody beautifully.
Everybody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
They didn't mind each other.
It was great.
You know?
I was really the biggest liar
at the company.
Because I always believed
that the good lie
was better than the truth
any day.
And I really had to unlearn that.
You know?
Here's what my sponsor did.
He made me do.
You know,
my job was to call radio stations
and convince them
to play records, right?
So I'd call a station
and I'd say,
you know,
this record sold
a million and a half copies.
Man, you've got to play it.
You've got to, you know,
blah, blah.
My sponsor said,
you know,
that's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lie.
I said, yeah.
And he goes,
well, you know what you need to do?
You need to stop
in the middle of that lie
and tell that man
that you're lying to him
and tell him the truth.
So I get on the phone.
Hey, man,
this record sold
a million and a half.
That's not right.
It's a million.
Make it 500,000.
Okay, it sold 25 copies.
But you still should play it.
And that was so embarrassing
that I just quit lying
because I didn't want
to have to admit
that I was lying to somebody
face to face.
And that really,
you know,
didn't work.
Now,
I've been sober 28 years
and one of the great joys
is the fellowship
of Alcoholics Anonymous
and the people you meet.
Extraordinary human beings.
You know,
we haven't just these.
We're not,
you know,
we're exceptional people.
We know about pain.
We know about hardship.
We know about struggle.
But when people get sober,
they change.
And it's beautiful to watch.
And it's amazing to watch
where their lives go.
I have one guy
I've been sponsored by
for 22 years.
You know,
I've had a relationship
with him longer
than I ever had with a woman.
You know?
And, you know,
it's just great
to see how his life,
it gives me hope
watching how his life blossoms
and becomes more and more
positive all the time.
Had a kid,
raising a kid,
doing great,
having a good job.
You know,
life just smooth.
And he still goes to meetings.
You know,
and my sponsor
has 40 years sober.
And he still goes to meetings.
Because you know why?
I'm going to tell you why.
Are we about out of time?
Yeah.
We're getting close.
So here's what I'm going to tell you.
And I don't want to tell you this
because my ego
doesn't want to tell you this.
But this is the truth.
27 years sober.
Coming up on my 28th anniversary.
It was a week before
my 28th anniversary.
My wife and daughter announced
that they are going
on a camping trip.
And they'll be gone for a week.
Great.
Have a great time.
I love you.
Please go have fun.
They leave.
I go into the garage
to get something.
And I open this cabinet.
And there's two bottles
of wine sitting there.
That my wife drinks
wine occasionally.
I don't begrudge her that.
I don't care.
It never bothers me.
Except for then.
All of a sudden,
I saw that wine
and I had this overwhelming
urge to drink.
27 years sober.
And you can imagine
what I'm thinking.
Myself, what the hell
is going on, right?
So,
closed the cabinet.
I went upstairs
and I went to bed.
Could not sleep.
Was up almost all night long.
Toss and turn.
I finally hung onto the mattress.
The urge to drink
was so strong.
I'm holding onto the mattress
to keep from going down there.
And I'm thinking stuff like,
shouldn't this AA
kick in?
What's going on?
Why am I...
So, I thought,
well,
what I need to do.
I got up the next morning
and it wouldn't go away.
I was still thinking about that wine
and I was still obsessing.
And I thought,
well, I need to get to a meeting.
So, I went to a meeting that day.
And I shared about it.
I told them
and I didn't want to
that I had been thinking about drinking
and I got great feedback.
And I went home
and I kept obsessing about that drink.
It was unbelievably powerful.
It was incredibly powerful.
And I just thought,
Jesus, what do I need to do?
Oh, I'll call my sponsor.
So, I called my sponsor.
I laid it out to him.
And he said,
don't drink and go to meetings.
What?
You know,
he's full of wisdom,
that guy.
And so,
I'd run it by my sponsor.
So, now it's the third day
and I'm still obsessing.
And I'm still trying to think about
how to get this drinking
out of my head.
And finally,
the thought occurs to me,
maybe you ought to pray.
Okay, I'll try that.
I'm desperate.
So, I prayed.
And it was lifted.
It was absolutely lifted,
the urge.
But,
I wasn't ready to accept
what had just happened.
And I said to God
as sincerely as I could,
God,
please tell me
what I'm supposed to learn from this.
27 years sober
and want to drink
like I've got two days.
You know?
And you know what the message
came back was?
It's still just one day at a time.
No matter how much time you have,
you've got to get up,
you've got to pray,
you've got to work the steps,
you've got to go to meetings,
you've got to call your sponsor.
It doesn't matter.
You don't get a free pass
because you've got time.
This is a disease
that still lives in me
and so I still have to treat it
on a daily basis.
And I'm grateful for that.
I just got back from a cruise.
One of the artists I work with,
gifted my family,
another little miracle,
gifted my family with a cruise for a week.
And all these musicians are playing.
It was so much fun.
And were the AA meetings good?
Hell yeah,
there was like 40 bands on there.
So we had a great time.
It was just beautiful.
But, you know,
it is just one day at a time.
And if I can get through today,
then I got tomorrow.
That's the blessing, you know.
The potential to do
and be whatever I want to be.
The freedom.
Happiness, joy,
happy, joyous and free.
That's the promise AA gives me
if I'm willing to do those three things.
Number one,
put down the drink
and don't ever pick up the first one.
Number two,
become teachable.
I had to let so many people
in so many rooms,
so many sponsors,
so many treatment people,
I had to let them teach me how to live
because my way wasn't working.
And the third thing is
be willing to change.
And for me, change is a blessing today.
Because I don't like what I was.
I like what I am and I want more.
Like a good alcoholic or addict,
I want more of this.
And the only way I know to get it
is to keep coming back.
And I hope you heard something that will help.
If you don't,
just know I love you in spite of your damn selves.
All right?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jeff, that was powerful.
I appreciate it.
I was having a conversation with a young man at Talbot
and he asked me, he said,
you know, you've had time in this program.
Could you sponsor me?
And I said, well, unfortunately,
I'm not a counselor here.
I'm a patient with you right now.
But I got a really good guy you need to meet.
I met him up at 8111 on a Sunday evening
and I introduced him to Jeff
because I knew he'd be there
and I knew he'd do it.
If I asked, you really do work
the program you talk about.
Well,
I was living high
a big piece of the pie.
So many things got it rough.
Asked for me
when I wanted too much.
Ain't never enough.
I know how it is to live and die.
Always fearing that I'm going to run out.
Keep the good stuff to myself.
Hide it from everyone else.
Save it for rainy days.
If you want to have it all the time,
gotta give it away.
All I had been loved
and kept it on a shelf.
He showed me how to love the world
till I could do it myself.
If you want love all the time,
If you want love all the time,
give it to someone else.
I want everyone around to see
just how much your love means to me.
Baby, wear it on my sleeve.
It'll never leave
if I give it
and dress on tape.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
If you want love all the time,
Give it away.
If you want love all the time,
Give it away.
Give it away.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
Give it away
Give it away
Give it away
Give it away
of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
This reading is based upon a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and 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, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and
our problem that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must
have this thing.
Tonight, I think Tinsley is going to introduce our speaker this evening.
My name is Tinsley, I'm an alcoholic, and it's an honor to introduce the speaker, especially
when it's somebody I've known for over 30 years, which means we knew each other on the
other side.
And you know, I've known Jeff a long time.
But I really don't know what his story is, and I'm looking forward to tonight, and I've
been looking forward to tonight for a long time.
So with that, I give you Jeff's seat.
Hey everybody, I'm Jeff, I'm an alcoholic and addict.
And thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the God of my understanding, and people just
like you in rooms just like this all over the world, I haven't found it necessary to
take a drink or a drug since November the 6th, 1986.
And for that, I'm very grateful.
That's 28 years in case your math ain't so good.
But you know, I'd like to tell you, I'm really happy to be here.
Not necessarily just at this meeting.
After 24 years of drinking and drugging the way I did, I'm just happy to be here.
All right?
And that's the truth.
Yeah, we rolled back in the day, Tinsley and I, and I don't remember any of it.
I hope you don't either.
You know, if you don't hear anything else that I say tonight, I hope you will hear this,
that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works.
It works 100% if you do three simple things.
One, you put down the drink and you never pick up the first one after that.
That goes for drugs too.
Two, you become teachable.
I wasn't very teachable when I got here.
I had to learn how to become teachable because I thought I knew everything.
And the third thing is you've got to be willing to change.
And alcoholics, in my experience, are not very willing to change.
I struggle with every part of this program.
I'll just say that.
You know, when I first got here and looked at those steps, I wanted to change every single one of them.
I did not relate to them.
I didn't think they made much sense.
And why not?
Because I was using it and I couldn't see a different way.
So, what I'd like to talk about tonight in the book,
it talks about the spiritual experience.
And what you read is so apropos to what I'm going to talk about.
You know, they describe two different kinds of spiritual experience.
One, the sudden white-like experience where you experience God and your whole life changes.
And then they say, and then there's the educational kind, which comes over time.
And most people have that.
Me, I like to say I had little miracles.
That was my experience.
Just...
Just one little miracle after another.
And I'll tell you a little bit about me first.
And that is I was born in Denver, Colorado on Easter Sunday a long time ago.
I won't say the year.
But I had a perfect childhood until I was about six.
And then my mother started going in and out of mental institutions.
And then she would disappear and not come back for days at a time and then show up again.
So, by the time I was...
About seven, they divorced, my mother and father.
And I went to live with my mother.
And one Saturday night, my dad came to pick me up when I was eight and we went to a movie.
And during the movie, I had this weird feeling.
I just had this feeling wash over me that something was weird or wrong.
So, after the movie, we went back to the house and the house was dark.
And so, my dad said, I'll just wait here.
You run in and make sure everything's okay.
So, I ran.
I ran in and my mother had committed suicide on the living room floor and was dead.
And that was the beginning of my spiritual crisis.
You know, I prayed for God to bring her back many, many times in many, many ways and it never worked.
So, I got a huge resentment toward God.
And the AA program helped me work on that after I'd gotten sober.
And after about five or six years, I realized that wasn't God.
It wasn't God that did that.
She did that.
Then I got mad at my mother.
So, I stayed in AA a little bit longer and I came to realize she was sick too because it turns out she was an alcoholic.
You know, and that's what they did with alcoholics back in the 50s is they put them in mental institutions.
They didn't know what to do with them.
And then she came back out and was untreated.
I guess never found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and she killed herself.
You know, it says that we will die, you know, if we don't treat our alcoholism.
So, I just want to talk to you about.
Some random little miracles that I have had.
First of all, I just want to say that I had my first drink when I was 12 years old.
And here's what happened.
I got drunk.
I threw up all over myself.
I got in a fist fight and I went to jail.
I woke up the next morning and most people would have gone, Jesus Christ, I'm never going to do that again.
I woke up and went, when can we get this party started again?
It says in the big book that there's a point.
There's a point in your drinking career when you go from casual drinking to determined drinking.
Personally, I believe that my first drink was the only casual drink I ever had.
That from then on it was determined.
I wanted to get as blotto as I could in just a race reality.
Because I didn't like the way I felt.
I didn't like how I couldn't control the fact that people were dying in my life and whatever, you know.
So, from the age of 12.
At first.
I was very disciplined because when my mother died, I escaped into a love of music and music was about the only thing that gave me joy.
And so I became a musician and I, but let me just say right here, I didn't study to become a musician because I didn't believe in rules.
You know, like when I was 10 years old, my father would bring home a model airplane for me to put together.
And I'd open up the box, I'd throw the directions away and I just struggle with trying to fix that.
Put that airplane together.
I just didn't.
I just didn't follow rules or regulations or directions, you know.
And so I just, I lost my train of thought.
This is great.
At my age, it's forgivable, I assume.
But let me just get on.
So I drank, I was disciplined at the beginning because I played music.
I would practice very hard.
And, you know, drinking after a while became a reward for a hard practice session.
Never did I ever consider drinking while I was playing music or whatever.
Well, anyway, we started little bands around where I lived in Denver and I had a pretty good band that was playing around town.
And one night we were rehearsing in a dress shop in the bottom of a store and we kept hearing the door rattling, door rattling.
Finally, I went up to see what it was.
Big blizzard, snowstorm, and there's this skinny little kid standing at the door with a guitar.
But you know, I'm like 17 or 18.
This kid's maybe 15.
You know, he's like, hey, man, can I jam?
Can I jam?
No, no, no.
I tried to blow him off.
He said, no, please, please let me play.
So he came in, he plugged in, and the guy was a genius, genius musician.
And we fired our guitar player the next day and hired him.
And I was blessed to play with this gentleman for many years and until his death of drug overdose and alcohol.
We wrote many, many songs together.
We had a lot of success, you know.
I don't like to name drop, and I try not to do that when I'm speaking.
But we were living the lifestyle.
We were taking limos.
We had big, giant bags of cocaine, and we were doing it off of butter knives, okay?
So we were excessive.
We were definitely excessive.
And it's not surprising that he died at such an early age.
He was actually in a, he was on tour, and he came back after the tour, and they started partying, and he started having an overdose.
He was doing speedballs.
And in...
All these people in the room, they were high, too.
So instead of calling an ambulance, they didn't, they were paranoid and high.
They just pushed him in the shower and left, and he died that night.
And even though my drinking and drugging was increasing, I still remember the denial of this thing is amazing.
I still remember thinking, gee, that's tough.
He just couldn't take it, you know.
I do better.
You know, I'm better.
I know how to handle this shit.
Well, that kind of thinking landed.
It lifted me up in my first treatment center.
I got to the point where I was so toxic, I couldn't work.
By this time, I was...
When he died, I started working for a record company, which was amazing, because now I had an expense account to use on my drinking and drugging, and that really helped my cause.
It moved it right along, you know.
But, so, after he died, I started working for these record companies, and I went into this first treatment center.
Well, you should never let an alcoholic try...
Pick their own...
Pick their own...
Pick their own treatment center, because I picked this place that was swimming, tennis, horseback riding, gourmet food in a mansion, no AA, right?
So, I went there for 30 days.
It cost $10,000 back in the 80s.
That was a lot of money.
But my record company that I worked for paid for it.
They said, you know, we're not unaccustomed to this.
People with drug problems in the business, go, right?
So, I went in, had a great time.
Didn't find out anything about how to stay sober, but ate a lot of good food.
Got out and white-knuckled it for about six weeks, and then I went out with a vengeance.
I remember being at a club in Atlanta, and I had one scotch, and the next thing, I was on the phone to the drug dealer,
and the next thing I know, I was in Gainesville in a shooting gallery.
I'd been kicked out of a bunch of clubs, and I woke up in a place that I'd never been and didn't ever want to be again.
So, I knew it was very serious, so I decided I was going to call my boss and tell him I needed to go to treatment again.
And he said, well, fine, but this time, you're paying for it.
And let me tell you, from the minute I had my own money invested, I took it a lot more seriously.
You know, and that's why I always put something in the basket, because I considered investing in my own recovery.
If I'm willing to take a dollar out of my pocket and put it in the basket, that means I value my sobriety.
So, here's some of the little miracles that happened to me along the way.
The first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable.
Well, I thought that was a deal breaker.
I could see that my life was unmanageable, but I did not understand how you could be powerless over alcohol.
Until one day, I was in a meeting, and a guy said, I'm not powerless over alcohol until I put it in.
Then I don't have any idea what's going to happen.
And I could relate to that, you know.
Because that alcohol doesn't bother me.
It doesn't bother me when I'm not taking it.
But when I take it, bad things happen.
Simple as that.
So, that helped me understand.
And he was in one of the first AA meetings I was in, in treatment.
And he came in and sat down next to me.
I was sitting in the front row.
And this guy in a suit came in and sat down right next to me.
And I'm this guy in the treatment center, you know, in my pajamas.
And the guy had a pin on his lapel, and it said, attitude.
And I went, yeah, attitude, man.
He goes, no, man, you don't get it.
If you've got a good attitude, life is good.
If you have a bad attitude, life sucks.
And I had to admit to myself, my life sucked.
I was trapped in this treatment center.
So I had about four or five days in the treatment center,
and I decided I had about enough of that treatment crap.
And I announced to all the nurses in the place that I was leaving.
Now.
. .
The word God does not appear in our steps until the third step.
And I tried to make God another out for me.
Hey, I don't want to have God here.
I don't want to deal with that.
I'm done with God.
He killed my mother, all this stuff.
Anyway, so the second step actually says, came to believe that a power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Here's my first little miracle.
I announced to these ladies that I was leaving.
And as I got up to walk to the door, they paged a Dr. Strong.
And by the time I got to the door, there was this gigantic muscular guy with no neck.
He's just huge, standing in the doorway, and he wasn't going to let me out.
He was my first higher power.
I turned around and sat back down.
. .
So that was a wonderful miracle.
And in the very next meeting I sat in, they were talking about the second step and being
my resentful, sick self,
I challenged him.
I said, you know what?
I might be an alcoholic,
but I'm not insane.
It says, you know,
good restores the sanity.
I said, I might be an alcoholic,
but I'm not insane.
And this guy looks at me and he goes,
hey man, did you ever
spend all your grocery money on booze?
Yeah.
Did you ever get spit-mouthed,
drooling, drunk, and drive?
Yeah.
And he had about four other questions
like that.
And by the end of that,
I realized that I had been insane.
You know, it was very clear to me
and there was no dodging that bullet.
And by the way, they asked me,
do you know where you are?
And I said, yeah, I'm in a treatment center.
He goes, yeah, but it's
Bronner's Psychiatric Institute.
It was crazy.
It was a loony bin
and I didn't even know it.
So the next thing that happened,
I get out of treatment
and I go back home.
And it's four or five days later
and I'm sitting at home
and all of a sudden,
I get this unbelievable urge to use.
So I tell my wife, listen,
I'm going out to get a pack of cigarettes.
I'll be right back.
But I was going to go find the dope man.
That's what I was going to do.
So I went out to my car
and I turned the car
and the thing wouldn't start.
I tried and tried and tried
and that car would not start.
Finally, I gave up.
I went back in the house.
And the urge to use passed.
About four hours later,
my wife said,
hey, can you go to the store
and get some bread?
I ran out to the car
and I'd forgotten all about it.
I turned the car
and it cranked right up.
That's another little miracle.
That saved my butt that day.
You know, that was beautiful.
When I had about a year sober,
I was going to meetings.
I had a sponsor.
I did all the stuff
that I was told to do,
not because I wanted to,
but because I did not
want to get drunk again
because I knew
where it was going to lead me.
So I did what I was told.
And at about a year sober,
I got an offer
to work for one of the biggest
record companies in New York City
running the promotion department
dealing with radio.
And I thought to myself,
hey, I got a year sober.
I'm a miracle.
You know, I'm a spiritual giant.
I'll go.
Problem was,
I was in love with this woman
that worked at another label
here in Atlanta.
And she had a great job.
So she wasn't coming with me.
And I had to go
because it was one of the opportunities
of a lifetime.
So I went thinking I'll be fine,
you know, and I got there.
And within the course
of two or three days,
it was really apparent
I was full of fear.
I was shaken.
I was thinking I wanted to use.
I knew it wasn't going well.
And I spent one night
in my apartment,
which was actually 600 square feet,
not much room,
pacing back and forth,
peeking out the windows,
looking out the little hole,
just old behavior, you know,
and I wanted to use,
wanted to use.
And I stayed up all night long.
And in the morning,
I still wanted to use.
And I thought to myself,
I don't know anybody here.
How am I going to score?
Oh, I'll go to Central Park.
Surely there'll be a dope dealer
in Central Park.
So seven o'clock in the morning,
I'm on the subway
coming up to Central Park
to try and score.
So I'm walking through Central Park
and I'm looking down.
And all of a sudden,
I hear Jeff.
And I look up
and it's the one person
in New York City,
what, 12 million people?
The one person I knew
that was in AA
and knew I was in AA too.
And this woman says to me,
man, you look like shit.
We need to get to a meeting.
And she took me to a meeting.
Saved my butt.
That is another little miracle.
You know, and
so this meeting that I went to
is at Al-Anon House
in New York City.
It's in Times Square.
It's in the big book.
They talk about it.
And it's the kind of place
where you sit down next to
a guy might get out of a limousine
and get, sit down.
And then the next guy over
is, you know,
puking on his shirt
and passed out.
Street guy, right?
So all kinds of people
come together there.
And it was powerful, man.
The message of AA
was just strong in this place.
And I noticed there was a guy
that shared sitting
a couple of chairs away from me.
And he had sick glasses on
and he was wearing cowboy boots
and a bolo tie.
And I'm thinking he ain't from New York.
I'll tell you that.
But he had such a spiritual message.
I went up to him afterwards
and I said, my name's Jeff.
And would you,
he said he happened to mention
he had 17 years sober.
And I asked him if he'd be my sponsor.
He said, yes.
In New York, they say
you're never more than
eight minute walk from a meeting
anywhere in Manhattan.
And we tested that theory.
Every weekend we'd get together
and we'd start down
at the bottom of Manhattan.
We'd just start going to meetings
and we'd have lunch
and then we'd go to meetings
working our way up.
And we'd,
we'd spend all day,
both days,
Saturday and Sunday,
going to meetings.
It was incredible.
My first sponsor in Atlanta, though,
he was quite different.
I didn't really want a sponsor
and I was too shy
to ask for a sponsor.
And so the guy
at the treatment center
said to me,
I got a guy for you.
And you need to call him
and have lunch with him.
And I said, okay.
And I'm thinking,
finally,
this guy gets that
it's going to take somebody
really special to sponsor me.
And that's what I'm thinking, right?
And I said, well,
so,
so you think he's the right guy for me?
And he goes, yeah,
he's the only one
thicker than you are,
but he's more sober.
So,
so I,
the guy comes to pick me up
and we're driving to lunch
and he has to slam on the brakes
and a machine gun slides out
from under his chair.
And I'm thinking,
this is my guy.
This is my guy.
And he was my sponsor
until I left for New York.
He was great.
Crazy as a loon,
but he was sober.
And he helped me stay sober.
So,
after working in New York
for about three years,
it was really stressful
and I really wanted to be
with my girlfriend,
who's now my wife,
in Atlanta.
And we could not figure out a way.
And then all of a sudden
this little miracle happened.
A guy who was credited
with being really
the man who discovered
and started Southern Rock
and he started this label
down in the South
that was really famous
and he signed a bunch
of great R&B artists.
And a guy called me
and said,
this guy's looking
to start his record company
up again
and they'd like to interview you
for a job.
And I'm like,
oh my God.
I'm going to have
an opportunity
to be back with my wife,
get back to Atlanta
where I love
and to do my dream job,
which is run a record company.
And so I took the job
and it was an amazing time.
It was very exciting.
We had such a great time.
We broke a lot of records,
a lot of big bands,
had a great time.
But when they,
when they started,
they were in Nashville
and I was living in Atlanta
and they actually
let me do that.
But I would have to go up
for meetings
once in a while.
And one time
I went up for a meeting
and it's a four hour drive,
right?
And the meeting
went terribly.
We were fighting
and it was so tense
and negative
and by the end of it
I was ready to quit
but I just got in the car
and I'm driving home.
I'm going 80 miles an hour.
I'm banging on the steering wheel.
I'm totally twisted up
with fear and anger
and, you know,
and I'm driving along
with my teeth clenched,
you know,
clenched and
all of a sudden
I'm going 80 miles an hour.
A semi passes me.
Boom!
Like that.
And you know what was written
on the back
in six foot tall letters?
Let go
and let God.
On the back of a semi.
That's another little miracle.
I got the message.
I relaxed.
I had a sip of water
and I let it go.
Okay?
Nothing's that important
that I should get
so twisted up, right?
So, one other thing,
you know,
in the book it talks about
we have a disease of perception.
That the disease of alcohol
centers in the mind.
And I believe that 100%.
It's my thoughts.
You know,
it's my thoughts
that get me drunk.
It tells me in the book
I'll get restless,
irritable and discontent
before I pick up a drink.
Wow, that's the way
I lived when I got here.
I was always restless,
irritable and discontent.
But to show you
how skewed your mind
can still be
even after you get sober.
I had a couple of years sober.
I'm still working
for this same company.
And my boss,
who was famous
for being a crazy man,
but he had calmed down by then.
He says to me one day
very casually,
Hey Jeff,
I need to have a meeting with you.
How about next Tuesday?
And I went,
Okay.
And this was like
on the previous Monday.
And for a whole week
I twisted up.
Oh God, he's going to fire me.
I'm going to lose
the biggest job in my life.
I have all this money.
It's great.
Everything's perfect.
I'm going to lose my job.
And then I thought
on Monday
before the meeting
on Tuesday,
you know what?
I'll beat him to it.
I'll quit this job.
I'll show his ass.
I'm going to quit.
I'm going to tell him
where to stick it.
You know.
But my sponsor suggested
I just go to the meeting.
And I did.
And you know what he said?
You've been doing a great job.
I want to give you a bonus.
He gave me the biggest bonus check
I've ever gotten in my life.
That was another little miracle.
Because I didn't deserve it.
But, you know,
it just shows you
how wrong your thinking can be.
You know,
that's why I need a sponsor.
I need somebody
that can tell me,
Hey, that don't sound right.
You know,
I need that.
Because it sounds right
to me in here.
But when I say it out loud,
it's a little creepy.
Then I lost that job.
This huge job.
This wonderful, perfect job
that had me living in a great house
bigger than I'd ever lived in before.
Married to a woman
that I love more than anything.
Just had a baby.
Everything was perfect.
And then,
life happened.
I lost the job.
And I didn't have another job
for over a year.
Went through all my savings.
I took a job selling cars.
Didn't know how to sell cars.
But I thought,
Oh my God,
I'm a super promotion man.
I will ace this.
My ego, right?
I failed miserably.
I hadn't done math in years.
And the car business
is all about writing up deals
and making...
They went,
I'm sorry,
but this isn't going to work.
So again,
I had no job.
And the money was running out.
I don't know what to do.
I just prayed about it.
Kept going to meetings.
Talking to my sponsor.
And he'd say,
You know,
it'll be okay.
Just don't drink.
Go to meetings.
And so after about a year and a half,
all the money's gone.
I hear this record on the radio.
And it's one of the guys
that I love the most.
You know,
I've loved him for years.
And I called somebody and said,
Man, this guy's got a new record.
I didn't even know he was on a label.
And they said,
Oh yeah, he's on this label
out of California.
This little bitty label.
And I said,
Well, who's promoting his records?
And they said,
Well, nobody.
And I thought,
Oh,
so I'm going to reach out.
I'm going to talk to these people
and see if I can get them to hire me
so I can get them to hire me.
So I can help work
on this guy I love, you know.
And so I called him cold.
And the guy's like,
No, we don't need anybody.
We're a small company.
We don't have any money.
Blah, blah, blah.
I said,
Please, please,
let me have a shot.
Please.
So finally they said yes.
Now let me tell you how God works.
The company I was at before,
not the one here,
but the one in New York,
we had the two biggest
heavy metal bands in the 80s.
When I,
my first thing to do
when I was sober
was go on the road
with these two heavy metal bands.
Fresh out of treatment.
And thank God for the fact
that I knew that if I shouldn't,
if I just didn't pick up
the first one
and I think it through,
that I'll be okay.
And I did get through it.
And you know what I noticed?
Those guys didn't have nothing on me.
I used a lot more than they did.
I just didn't notice it
because I was so blasted
most of the time.
But anyway,
so it turns out,
I get this job
with this record company
and it wasn't three weeks.
Before I had this conversation
with the guy that runs the company,
the president.
And he goes,
yeah, you know,
I'm sober by the way.
What?
You're sober?
He goes, yeah.
And there's 30 people that work here.
28 of them are sober.
I said,
if that's not a God thing,
what would be?
That's a little miracle right there.
So all of a sudden,
I'm working,
going from working
with heavy metal heads
to working in a company
where there's all kinds
of sober people.
And it was amazing.
Everybody treated everybody beautifully.
Everybody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
Nobody had principles.
They didn't mind each other.
It was great.
You know?
I was really the biggest liar
at the company.
Because I always believed
that the good lie
was better than the truth
any day.
And I really had to unlearn that.
You know?
Here's what my sponsor did.
He made me do.
You know,
my job was to call radio stations
and convince them
to play records, right?
So I'd call a station
and I'd say,
you know,
this record sold
a million and a half copies.
Man, you've got to play it.
You've got to, you know,
blah, blah.
My sponsor said,
you know,
that's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lie.
I said, yeah.
And he goes,
well, you know what you need to do?
You need to stop
in the middle of that lie
and tell that man
that you're lying to him
and tell him the truth.
So I get on the phone.
Hey, man,
this record sold
a million and a half.
That's not right.
It's a million.
Make it 500,000.
Okay, it sold 25 copies.
But you still should play it.
And that was so embarrassing
that I just quit lying
because I didn't want
to have to admit
that I was lying to somebody
face to face.
And that really,
you know,
didn't work.
Now,
I've been sober 28 years
and one of the great joys
is the fellowship
of Alcoholics Anonymous
and the people you meet.
Extraordinary human beings.
You know,
we haven't just these.
We're not,
you know,
we're exceptional people.
We know about pain.
We know about hardship.
We know about struggle.
But when people get sober,
they change.
And it's beautiful to watch.
And it's amazing to watch
where their lives go.
I have one guy
I've been sponsored by
for 22 years.
You know,
I've had a relationship
with him longer
than I ever had with a woman.
You know?
And, you know,
it's just great
to see how his life,
it gives me hope
watching how his life blossoms
and becomes more and more
positive all the time.
Had a kid,
raising a kid,
doing great,
having a good job.
You know,
life just smooth.
And he still goes to meetings.
You know,
and my sponsor
has 40 years sober.
And he still goes to meetings.
Because you know why?
I'm going to tell you why.
Are we about out of time?
Yeah.
We're getting close.
So here's what I'm going to tell you.
And I don't want to tell you this
because my ego
doesn't want to tell you this.
But this is the truth.
27 years sober.
Coming up on my 28th anniversary.
It was a week before
my 28th anniversary.
My wife and daughter announced
that they are going
on a camping trip.
And they'll be gone for a week.
Great.
Have a great time.
I love you.
Please go have fun.
They leave.
I go into the garage
to get something.
And I open this cabinet.
And there's two bottles
of wine sitting there.
That my wife drinks
wine occasionally.
I don't begrudge her that.
I don't care.
It never bothers me.
Except for then.
All of a sudden,
I saw that wine
and I had this overwhelming
urge to drink.
27 years sober.
And you can imagine
what I'm thinking.
Myself, what the hell
is going on, right?
So,
closed the cabinet.
I went upstairs
and I went to bed.
Could not sleep.
Was up almost all night long.
Toss and turn.
I finally hung onto the mattress.
The urge to drink
was so strong.
I'm holding onto the mattress
to keep from going down there.
And I'm thinking stuff like,
shouldn't this AA
kick in?
What's going on?
Why am I...
So, I thought,
well,
what I need to do.
I got up the next morning
and it wouldn't go away.
I was still thinking about that wine
and I was still obsessing.
And I thought,
well, I need to get to a meeting.
So, I went to a meeting that day.
And I shared about it.
I told them
and I didn't want to
that I had been thinking about drinking
and I got great feedback.
And I went home
and I kept obsessing about that drink.
It was unbelievably powerful.
It was incredibly powerful.
And I just thought,
Jesus, what do I need to do?
Oh, I'll call my sponsor.
So, I called my sponsor.
I laid it out to him.
And he said,
don't drink and go to meetings.
What?
You know,
he's full of wisdom,
that guy.
And so,
I'd run it by my sponsor.
So, now it's the third day
and I'm still obsessing.
And I'm still trying to think about
how to get this drinking
out of my head.
And finally,
the thought occurs to me,
maybe you ought to pray.
Okay, I'll try that.
I'm desperate.
So, I prayed.
And it was lifted.
It was absolutely lifted,
the urge.
But,
I wasn't ready to accept
what had just happened.
And I said to God
as sincerely as I could,
God,
please tell me
what I'm supposed to learn from this.
27 years sober
and want to drink
like I've got two days.
You know?
And you know what the message
came back was?
It's still just one day at a time.
No matter how much time you have,
you've got to get up,
you've got to pray,
you've got to work the steps,
you've got to go to meetings,
you've got to call your sponsor.
It doesn't matter.
You don't get a free pass
because you've got time.
This is a disease
that still lives in me
and so I still have to treat it
on a daily basis.
And I'm grateful for that.
I just got back from a cruise.
One of the artists I work with,
gifted my family,
another little miracle,
gifted my family with a cruise for a week.
And all these musicians are playing.
It was so much fun.
And were the AA meetings good?
Hell yeah,
there was like 40 bands on there.
So we had a great time.
It was just beautiful.
But, you know,
it is just one day at a time.
And if I can get through today,
then I got tomorrow.
That's the blessing, you know.
The potential to do
and be whatever I want to be.
The freedom.
Happiness, joy,
happy, joyous and free.
That's the promise AA gives me
if I'm willing to do those three things.
Number one,
put down the drink
and don't ever pick up the first one.
Number two,
become teachable.
I had to let so many people
in so many rooms,
so many sponsors,
so many treatment people,
I had to let them teach me how to live
because my way wasn't working.
And the third thing is
be willing to change.
And for me, change is a blessing today.
Because I don't like what I was.
I like what I am and I want more.
Like a good alcoholic or addict,
I want more of this.
And the only way I know to get it
is to keep coming back.
And I hope you heard something that will help.
If you don't,
just know I love you in spite of your damn selves.
All right?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jeff, that was powerful.
I appreciate it.
I was having a conversation with a young man at Talbot
and he asked me, he said,
you know, you've had time in this program.
Could you sponsor me?
And I said, well, unfortunately,
I'm not a counselor here.
I'm a patient with you right now.
But I got a really good guy you need to meet.
I met him up at 8111 on a Sunday evening
and I introduced him to Jeff
because I knew he'd be there
and I knew he'd do it.
If I asked, you really do work
the program you talk about.
Well,
I was living high
a big piece of the pie.
So many things got it rough.
Asked for me
when I wanted too much.
Ain't never enough.
I know how it is to live and die.
Always fearing that I'm going to run out.
Keep the good stuff to myself.
Hide it from everyone else.
Save it for rainy days.
If you want to have it all the time,
gotta give it away.
All I had been loved
and kept it on a shelf.
He showed me how to love the world
till I could do it myself.
If you want love all the time,
If you want love all the time,
give it to someone else.
I want everyone around to see
just how much your love means to me.
Baby, wear it on my sleeve.
It'll never leave
if I give it
and dress on tape.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
If you want love all the time,
Give it away.
If you want love all the time,
Give it away.
Give it away.
If you want love all the time,
give it away.
Give it away
Give it away
Give it away
Give it away
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