Michael M. at the Saturday Night Flakey Group – 2025

hey everybody i'm michael moran i'm an alcoholic and it's wonderful to be here tonight and uh i want to thank uh kenny and brenda for uh coming to our group last night and the congratulations uh james uh this is a beautiful program i firmly believe that this is the god given program I just want to give you a quick background. I was born with congenital glaucoma, and my parents didn't know what to do in those days, so they sent me to a residential Catholic school for blind children that was run by the Good Sisters of Perpetual Revenge. And we had beautiful, beautiful women, Sister Rocky McDuckles and Sister Mary Menopause. She was the principal. And they specialized in fear and guilt and shame. And I thought that God was just waiting to toss me into the bowels of hell at any given moment. and uh you know that was the god i came in here with and uh so i i went there for eight years and uh it was a residential school and the nuns would you know we would go to confession on fridays and uh the nun's would have you put your head on your desk and read your sins to you like did i lie to sister or whatever and of course they get to the part like, did I touch myself in impure parts of my body? And, like, I'm 11 and 12. I'm going, yeah, well, of course I did. And so there was about, you know, there was About 10 of us guys there, you know, and we'd have to go to confession every week and tell the priest the same thing. And the poor priest, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't tell us, don't do that, you'll go blind. We're already blind, Father. we don't you can't scare us but uh we so we uh well things progressed and i i i managed to graduate from there and uh i was one of the first um blind students to go to a regular high school i went to catholic high school of course and uh in jersey city so uh the nuns thought they were were going to get this nice blind boy who was going to sit home, do the rosary and read Braille books. And it didn't happen. I found that, you know, I found the people who, you know, had people who would good students who would offer to help me. We'll help you with the homework. And I thought these people are boring. And And I found the guys who were on the corner, and I hung out with them, and that was where I belonged. It was crazy stuff, I mean crazy stuff we did. We had a guy, his name was Pinkney, he had a five o'clock shadow at ten o' clock in the morning and uh we we used to use him to buy booze so we put a hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth and send him in a liquor store and uh the first time i drank i have to tell you i thought god this is this is heaven this is the best i will never ever forget that feel i don't want to forget that feeling because I kept chasing that feeling forever. I kept chasing it and chasing it but it never quite got there and when I couldn't get there with booze, I added other stuff on top and I still couldn't get to that first one and I'd get pretty whacked out but I wouldn't get to that feeling, that special feeling that made me feel like I was okay, I wasn't afraid. I didn't have to be self-conscious of anything. I felt normal, whatever that was. But to me, that was like, I want to feel like this all the time. And so my drinking progressed and as I moved along, I started hanging out in the bars and I loved the bars. I was as comfortable in a bar As people get in their recliner You put me on the stool With a Zippo lighter, a pack of Marlboros And a glass of scotch on the rocks And I am holding court I am rocking And I hung out in Jersey City With all the wise guys There were always people Coming in the bar People were selling stuff Like, hey, I have tires and they fall off the truck. You know, guys who come in with shirts and leather coats. And I loved all that action. Then we'd start betting on the football games and baseball games. And, you know, we'd get all whacked out over the weekend. And the motto was don't panic if you lose all weekend because you can bail out on a Monday night football, which you never could. And and I love that whole action. and eventually uh i got married uh i uh had kids bought a house but i never stopped drinking and uh i could never never be a good father husband i couldn't fill any of the roles that i was uh that that i should be filling when i was drinking and i always had an excuse not to be home for supper you know i gotta see a guy you know it's the whole thing in jersey city everybody's got to see a guide and they know a guy once i met a guy who said he was the guy but i'm not sure people say things you know and uh so eventually uh you know to try to make a long story short But my alcoholism progressed very, you know, at first I thought I had good control over it because I would only drink on the weekends. And then it progressed to where I had to drink every day and it was my friend. I used it to wake up, to go to sleep, to be funny, to Be Romantic, whatever I needed it to be. I had to have a booze involved and uh I uh I just uh couldn't see my life without a drink and I used to say hey you know uh alcoholics drink I'm an alcoholic so let's have a drink and I took pride in this you know I had no idea what I'm talking about I'm just a loud mouth arrogant drunk and hanging off the barstool, running around from bar to bar two or three o'clock in the morning, walking the streets of Jersey City and doing anything that's crazy. And I discovered the true test of driving while sober. How do you determine this? And the way it works is if you have a blind guy in the crowd and you say, let's let the blind guy drive. And people say, what are you crazy? They're sober. If people say that's a great idea, they are stone cold drunk. I was driving up Newark Avenue in Jersey City these guys that you know left right hold it this guy behind me is beeping you know and I stop at the red light at least they told me it's a red light and uh I got out of the car I walked back said with this my seeing eye dog I said you got to give me give me a couple of minutes to get used to this these guys are drunk and I'm just trying to get them home. And it was crazy stuff like that we'd do, you know, just nuts. And I just loved it. I loved it all until – and it worked for me until it didn't work, until eventually the highs were not high, the lows were really low, and I became miserable. and uh i got divorced i uh i you know thought oh now i'm divorced i can do what i want to do meanwhile i was doing what i wanted to do anyway and uh so i would meet people who were in aa like i'd meet them in the gym and they or the ymca and they say why don't you come to an aa meeting i'd be like who the hell are they to talk to me like that you know when i get as bad as them because i know what they did i'll go to a meeting and uh eventually uh i was coming back from the jersey shore one monday morning uh i wasn't driving i was it's like 6 30 in the morning i'm drinking i'm trying to straighten out nothing's happening and uh i had a couple of phone numbers and i call up this guy whitey murphy at seven o'clock on a monday morning he says uh i get my apartment you know i'm like shaking i can't i don't know what to do you know i'm a mess and and and i saw like it's like my life went before me like saying what up you know what have you done and uh so i had two choices either pick up the phone or go around the corner to the bar and get to scotch and try to straighten out. And I firmly believed that God's hand was there, and I picked up the phone, and Wiley said to me, how you doing? He said, never mind, don't answer that question. You're calling me at seven o'clock on a Monday morning, you're not doing too good. I said, come and bring Valium. So I was like, anything to make this go away. And he took me to his house, put me on his couch, fed me, took me to meetings. And, you know, at first I was like, oh, all right. And I'm going to meetings and then, you know, the arrogance kicked in. The arrogance of us alcoholics. It's amazing, isn't it? As soon as I got the wrinkles out of my belly, you You know, I was like, I spilt more than you people ever drank. And what are you talking about? You know. And what do you mean with the steps? I don't need to do that. So the day after Christmas, nobody threw a parade for me in Jersey City for being sober. I don'T know why. And I said, I'm going to go down to the bar, have two drinks, and that's it. I'm coming home. I went to the bar, sat up on the stool, threw the Marlboros and the lighter on the bar. Got a glass of scotch. Two drinks later, guy says to me, there's a party in Hoboken. Let's go. All of a sudden, I'm in Hobaken, starting cocaine, drinking scotch, and forget about it. Now I'm off on a run. Well, eventually through one thing and another, I made it back to this program. Thank God. And I did a lot of wrong things in this program I don't know how. I mean, through the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't found it necessary to pick up a drink since February of 1982. And it's a miracle because I did everything wrong. I got married 90 days into the program That lasted 90 days. I was a mess. I did it all wrong. And I have to tell you, through hitting a lot of emotional walls and tripping over myself and really getting to the point of almost drinking, thinking about suicide, all kinds of terrible feelings of depression, I got, you know, started going back to meetings and started feeling better, but I still wasn't getting it. And about four years ago, I was sitting in the chair. My current sponsor, who's now my sponsor, Matt, was giving me a haircut and we were talking about stuff. And I said, you Know, I feel like I stormed through people's lives and I just have all this mess behind me. He said, me too. I said, would you be my sponsor? And he goes, oh yeah. And he's still sober today. It's amazing. But we go to his barbershop on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we have Bible study. And you know, this program is so wonderful because until I really started connecting with the spirituality of this program, I mean, really doing it, you know, not doing it. You know, I thought half measures would avail me half and that would be good enough. I until I really started working this program, I was really struggling. And now I understand things so much differently, you Know, and I get concerned because in this program, I see people come and go. Sometimes we see people 15, 20 years, and they're gone. What happened to them? People come in tent, there's this gap. There's people with 40 years, but there's nobody with 30 years. People say, oh, they died. No, they didn't die. They drank, or they went out, or they're leading miserable lives. And I really believe that what happens to us, many of us, is we do steps one through five and we forget about steps six and seven. And it is my firm belief that our character defects will kill us until repeated humiliation and the crushing of my self-sufficiency. Can I confront these characteristics? Can I confront the things that drive me? You know, I was Mr. Romance and Finance. I had anger issues. I had all kinds of resentments. And I was, you know, couldn't feel good when something good happened to somebody else. All these character defects, lust, All these things that, you know, are extreme. And so how do I get rid of all that? And I have to humbly ask God to remove them. And he doesn't remove them all at once. You know, he removes them if I do the work. And I do the work by talking about these steps and working the sixth and seventh step and talking to my sponsor and really confronting my character defects because only then, only then can I try to live in the image and likeness of my creator. Only then can i try to do that. because when I confront these things, it really helps me work 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 better because I know who I am. I know me. I know that I am as sick as my secrets. I love the book Drop the Rock. Drop the rock. I need to get rid of all the things that bother and burn me, All the things that make me not a good person. And they're all in there. You know, I mean, how many times in sobriety do we sit home and go, well, chair's comfortable. The Yankees are on. The weather's nice. I'm good. I don't need to go to a meeting and I need to go to meeting not for my drinking, I need to go a meeting for my thinking. My thinking is the culprit. My thinking is what's going to put me... Because I think that the show still goes on, Kenny was pointing that out last night, and also I believe that my perception of God—Brenda was saying this last night. I was paying attention, Brenda. My perception of god is different today than it was when I first came in here. And I'm so thankful for that because if it was the same god now as when I came in here, I wouldn't be here. But the only way I got here is through pain and which drove me to be willing, then willing to seek that God and willing to learn what God is trying to, wants me to be. You know, I truly believe, you know, there are people that run around this program. I'm trying to find out who I am. It's no mystery, you know? I'm a child of God and I am enough. That's it. I don't need to be an astronaut, I don�t need to the first blind neurosurgeon, Although once in a while my grandiosity kicks in, and I think maybe. But anyway, I mean, I think that I just have to, you know, it's not something that comes to me on my own that I'm enough. It comes to be because I'm working this program with my friends, with my spiritual peeps, with the guys who are in my crowd. Because it's who I'm hanging around that makes a difference. If I'm a bank robber, I'm going to hang around with bank robbers. If I want to grow spiritually, I'm gonna hang out with people who are growing spiritually. and uh i hear people get up here sometimes and say i don't deserve to be here and i say hell you don't god wants you to be hier you don t deserve hanging out in a crack house you don d deserve hanging off a bar stool drunk you don ll deserve to b e in uh situations that are risky situations with all kinds of bad stuff going on. You don't deserve that. God is rooting for all of us, and we all need to be here, and We All Deserve To Be Here Because God Loves Us. And I want to thank all of you for being here. Thank you so much.