Putting Two Dollars Aside for Rehab and Only One for College Would’ve Been the Smart Play 😅 – Rhett M.

Hey, welcome everybody. Let's have an A.A. meeting. My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NaviClub, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for one year or more tells his or her story. Brian is going to do the introduction. Hey, family, again, Brian Price, alcoholic. Our next speaker is a friend, a colleague, and a guy I know in and out of the rooms through my time in the program. He's really one of my closest friends today. I'm not going to say anything else. This is Rhett. Everyone, I'm Rhett Mercer. I'm an alcoholic. And my sobriety date is September 21st of 2011. My home group is the Fifth Tradition Group. I have a sponsor who has a sponsor. I sponsor a bunch of guys right now. And life is good with that. You guys are getting the double. Those are a couple of northern guys tonight for speakers. I'm actually originally from Boston. So we have a little New York-Boston rivalry going on, I guess, tonight. Yankees fan, Leroy? No, I'm mixed. Sorry, you got us in 80s things. I won't spend too much time on kind of the early childhood stuff, but I was privileged beyond anything I could have or anyone could have ever had. I was born into a family that was fairly wealthy. Big Irish Catholic family on one side and a big Protestant family on the other side. So I had lots of uncles, lots of aunts, lots of cousins. And both my parents growing up were kind of the two outcasts of their families. They were the two kind of minimalist drinkers of these big, large families. And growing up, you know, the potential alcoholic I was, I had my own set of issues with unrest. But as my folks' marriage kind of deteriorated, somewhere along the line, I made this connection that, well, I see how unhappy they are in the home front, but all my aunts and uncles are the drinkers. And when we get together for big family functions, they're always the ones that are having the most fun, the most energetic, the most charismatic. And I did like Leroy. I started, you know, sneaking beers and stuff like that when I was like six years old. And, you know, definitely, had made some sort of connection that a Budweiser can in your hand was equal to happiness and something that I wanted. You know, the book talks about being restless, irritable, and discontent. So I guess I'll give you a couple snapshots of what that looked like in my childhood. And unfortunately, I had some family friends that told me about how early it had started because I had no idea. I wore a down, puffy winter vest year-round from like age two. I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to be like two to four because it was the thing that was going to protect me against all the bad guys. You know, I was in a constant state of fighting the world, essentially. And I guess some of that's natural for a young boy. But, you know, when you start getting kicked out of school at three years old for pushing kids off the jungle gym, I guess in retrospect, my parents should have been, you know, putting $2 aside for rehab and only one for college. I don't know. I, uh... With being ADD and potentially alcoholic as a child, I presented with a whole bunch of good, you know, behavioral and boundary issues and continue today to have some good boundary issues in spite of this program. But one of the unique experiences that I thought of recently was my folks started sending me to psychologists at like age five. And I had this guy, Dr. Joe, when I was like five, to seven years old, something like that. And I used to kind of try to work through all this stuff. And my parents then forced me back to go to psychologists and stuff like that once my drinking career had progressed to 21. And I didn't remember this, but he informed me that I had put permanent damage in the floor of his office that he was still in when I was seven when they did this, like, exercise where they put some light bulbs in a plastic bag and give you a hammer and see how aggressive you are when you beat him up. And apparently, I was doing all sorts of like kung fu moves, jumping up and down. And literally, you know, whatever it was, 15 years later, he showed me the dents that were still on his floor that I had put there. And so for me, kind of being in this constant state of just ready to fight the world and really uncomfortable with myself pretty much characterizes my childhood in spite of having so many great things. You know, kind of hand it to me, if you will. My parents did a really good job. They threw me into schools that had really great educational opportunities, you know, gave me opportunities to learn about my passions for sports and arts and all sorts of good stuff. And for a while, I really kind of, in spite of a lot of behavioral stuff, it was tracking pretty good with the rest of the folks. And then I got to the end of middle school, sometime middle school, I took it upon myself that drinking was something that I wanted to start doing because some of the cooler kids were doing it. And in a very short time, I was able to undo everything that had been given to me. My first drink was characterized by getting away with it, even though all three of us were throwing up. I got drunk. We had two foreign exchange students staying with us for actually Memorial Day weekend. They spoke very little English. There were two Japanese guys. We filled up all the liquor in these big, high bottles. All glasses and then put just this much Coca-Cola on top of some sort of gin, vodka, scotch, concoction. And they each had about half of theirs. And then I drank my whole one and finished theirs. And all three of us were found the next morning having thrown up and passed out. We claimed it was the roast beef subs. I got away with it until the next month when my dad sat me down and asked me to explain a $500 cable bill because I had proceeded to order every porno that was playing on the table. At which point he knew that there was some sort of behavioral stuff going on probably because he told me I was smarter than that. I always got away with stuff, so there must have been some other reason. So I got sober at 26 and I'd say that whereas a lot of people in AA have lost many things that were dear to them, I never had an opportunity to experience a lot of those awesome things until I got sober. So essentially, alcoholism kept me from really getting into living real life. And I got kicked out of a private school and lost my opportunity to go to a really solid college because I was selling pot to fit in. And also because I liked the way it made me feel in high school. I got sent home early from a semester abroad at a prestigious college in England. My very first year of college I went over there. And actually, I took a year off. To try to get back into that college. And I got fired from a teaching internship for smoking pot. And then I got sent home early because I cut my hand open drunk and stoned in a pub in England messing around with kitchen knives. And so you might say that there's all these opportunities that either failed or never really got started because my disease was growing. It was crazy. And I also left college in Southwest Connecticut at Fairfield University. A lot of my buddies were Yankees and Mets fans down there. And left college after I had gone on a six month bender. My first ever real alcoholic, drug induced bender where for every day for six months I got tore up until I couldn't anymore. And thought that that was probably the bottom. My parents shipped me out to rehab at 21. That was my first little time. I had a little taste of AA and kind of treatment. And there's a world of people out there that wanted to be sober. And two months after that, I relapsed the day I got out. And two months after that, I got in a really bad car accident. I used to tell this funny story. I went and I'll give you the newspaper quote. Oakley Road man drives the wrong way around the circle of death. Almost killing three people on himself. He was quoted as saying, there was no way I was driving that car. I'm way too wicked fucking hammered. That was, that's my claim to fame. Right? It's my alcoholism. The only thing that's ever been published on me is an article about me almost killing three people and me being quoted as lying and being dishonest. And most people would have probably like, you know, most people would have reached out to those folks. To apologize. Most people would have looked for a different solution. I had left the scene of that accident because I was looking for self-preservation because I had a lot of drugs and alcohol in the car. Got away from the cab driver, sort of. Ended up doing what every security kid does and drove back to my parents' house, hid all the stuff in the woods. The cab driver had slowly been following me in his damaged vehicle. And I ended up going to jail that night. And the first thing I read, I was like, oh my god. The first thing I ever reached for the next morning was the drugs and alcohol that I hid in my parents' bushes. And, you know, that pretty much is the story of me. I always reach for something no matter what. So at 21 years old, on serious probation and not much hope for myself or from anybody else that loved me, I went and worked for a mom in a mafia-owned restaurant in Boston. And surrounded myself with convicted felons, guys that liked to party and do drugs like I did. And that's the part of the book where I had arrived. I was with a fast-moving crew of people. They told me that I needed to start carrying a knife because if things were to go down, and this is a kid that went to private school and was raised in an upper class, like, you know, kind of preppy family. All of a sudden I'm going, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I got to protect myself. And that's where the delusion kind of set in or kind of looking back, I know that that delusion was in full effect at that point. I worked for them for about a year and a half with, you know, luckily not really getting into too many scrapes with the police or other people. And had an opportunity to move to Georgia. My dad had taken the job down here and I jumped at it. I said, whatever, geographical care, I'm going to get new friends. It's all where I'm at and a whole string of bad events. I moved down here and started working for a restaurant group. And then also I got a job that had somehow weaseled my way into teaching at a private charter school downtown, trying to educate kindergarten through ninth graders. And very quickly at that job, I'm showing up, you know, having been up till five, six in the morning drinking, showing up at 8.30, nine o'clock in the morning, still drunk, too drunk to probably work. And definitely having done some outside issues that, you know, get you woken up in the morning when you've been drinking a little too much. So after that year, you know, there's talk of whether or not I was going to come back to teach there. And I had my first kind of moment of clarity, not necessarily about needing to change the way I was drinking or partying, but that being a balding, overweight, 23 year old drug addict and an alcoholic gym teacher wasn't necessarily what I wanted out of my life. So something had to go, so I quit teaching. That was the easiest fix, because everybody else either I was stuck with or definitely wasn't willing to give up. So worked in the restaurants for about three years down here. Had found this nice kind of balance, if there is such a thing, as the disease of alcohol progressed. Because I guess I was in kind of like a, you know, a good point where I was willing to deal with whatever those consequences and that kind of progression downward looked like for those three years and was able to maintain a job. Took a couple of hostages in the form of girlfriends that were not alcoholic and immediately made them codependent to my alcoholism. And during that time, it wasn't necessarily some tragic event that happened again. They got me into the rooms, it was the last year of my drinking looked like a constant fight with a girlfriend, my family not wanting to talk to me. My friends basically only calling me for birthdays and breakups because they knew I'd be down to get messed up the way that they wanted to on those two special occasions that some regular people like to drink to excess on. And my physical health, you know, had deteriorated to the point where I was throwing up blood every day for over a year, every day. And I thought that was normal, or I thought that, uh, that, uh, that was normal. I thought that was normal. I thought that was normal. I thought that was normal. I thought that was normal. I thought that was normal. It was something I could handle. And I just got tired. I got tired and, and, and hopeless. And, you know, sometimes, you know, there's this guy say that, uh, you know, these things and bullet wounds can feel the same to different people. And so I don't have one of those really hardcore events that triggered me kind of coming into the room. So there was a, there was just a whole bunch of these things that had kind of gotten me here over the last three or four years that finally I'm going, right, something's got to change. I went to, got to Petra Hospital, and, you know, as dark and gloomy as a treatment center is, it's amazing that spiritual experiences can occur in there every day. I heard a guy that looks hopeless tell my story up to the age of 26, and I'm 31 now, by the way, and then he told me what happened to him from 26 to 45, and it was horrifying, and I really didn't want to end up like him. So I didn't know it at the time, but I had a spiritual experience in Petra, one of those white light variety ones, and I didn't know it at the time, nor was I willing to even admit that there was potentially God involved in what I felt. But I had a social worker ask me a very simple question, are you willing to go to 90 meetings in 90 days? And I had already executed a game plan that that was, I was going to go to AA and go to outpatient and do all these things, and that question broke me. I said, immediately started. I'm saying, Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up. There's no way I could possibly commit to 90 meetings in 90 days, and I stopped. And it wasn't me talking, and it was like the mother of all pins and needles. I had sat on one of my foot roms for a day solid, and I felt this warm energy come through me, and there it was. The words came out, I need help. I'm an alcoholic. And at that time, that was the most depressing thing. I thought being an alcoholic. And I drank too much, and I had like low moral standards. What I've come to realize through working the steps, through getting into the book, and working with a sponsor, is that being an alcoholic means a couple things. It means that I have a disease of mind and body. A lot of people throw around the kind of analogy to cancer. I like to think that this disease is something that is more like Alzheimer's. It's something that exists in my family. You know, I'm going to die an alcoholic. I'm going to die an alcoholic with the disease of alcoholism, no matter what, whether it's an active addiction, sober, you know, or, you know, otherwise. And it's going to continue to progress. Where it progresses to, I don't know. Hopefully, you know, I never have to find that out. If I can continue doing what I've done to stay sober up until this point. Yeah, I don't want to know what my alcoholism looks like if it gets a chance to come back out, because this thing is still working. And the more time that I spend in these rooms, the more scared I am of it, because it just means that it's gotten stronger underneath the surface, and I really can't see what it looks like. I'll try to just talk a little bit on service work. That's the most important thing in my life today. I was writing a letter today on behalf of a sponsee to a judge and two prosecutors, having to, one, describe myself and why they should be reading my letter and taking into consideration anything I have to say, and, two, describing a man that I saw. I've been in the worst of shape, and I've also seen him at the more recently best of times. And that triggered a few different emotions for me. One, when I reread the letter, when I was editing it for grammar and such, so that I can make sure I sounded like I was representing a 12-step program of recovery eloquently, I didn't recognize the man that I had described, yet everything that I wrote about myself is true. And that was a really cool experience for me. I also almost threw, maybe I threw like a couple tears at my desk when I was describing the experience that I had gotten to watch on another member of this program that I've had the privilege to sponsor. And understanding that watching that fellowship grow up around us and having a host of friends has absolutely happened in my life. It says in the book that we absolutely, when all else fails, working with another alcoholic saves the day. And that has been my experience time and time again. Thank you. I've turned away from prayer. I have turned away from service work at certain points in early recovery. But yet always working with another alcoholic has saved the day. My sponsor first told me when I was like three weeks sober. And by the way, I am that guy that was stuck up enough to think that when you go to treatment centers and then they force you to go to AA, that you all were going to fix me and the high-priced counselors were here to fix me and all I had to do was show up and say, all right, talk to me, do whatever it is that you do. But the sponsor, my first sponsor, my world, and I believed it. Three weeks in, he said, it's not about you. It's about helping everybody else. He said, right now, you can help a guy with one day, a week, whatever. You've got more time than them. You've had this much more experience. He finally asked him to sponsor you, and you've met me twice. You've read the doctor's opinion and Bill's story. You can share on that if you want to talk to someone. Other than that, you're really good for showing up early, setting up chairs, and staying late, and breaking them down. And that was what I had to offer at the very beginning. As I grew inexperienced, through working the steps and having cleared away a lot of the wreckage that I had caused through doing a sound and really in-depth fourth and fifth step, and then moving on to doing a really serious ninth step because I had harmed a lot of people, I found out that I was of use in other ways in God's light. And that's my truth today, is that God has allowed me the opportunity to help people. In ways that I could have never imagined because I live by myself for so long. Now, I'm a good alcoholic, so I also love some of the things that this program has given me. Don't get me wrong, but the best thing that has happened from AA is that I've learned about how I'm capable to help others. I went to a men's retreat recently where most of the sobriety was 25 plus years, and I made mention of how cool it was to be around that much time. And one of the things I've learned is that the crusty of old-timers there said it's not about the time, thinking that he was going to teach me a lesson or give me something to chew on for a minute. The reason why I was in shock of it was because I had known that how much I've helped some people over the last four years and could only imagine how many people that a guy with 38 years could have helped, how many different alcoholics he may have touched, whether he knows it or not. That was the really cool part. The scary part was also seeing that one crusty alcoholic and a couple others that had kind of rested back, and said, I've done enough. All I need to do is show up to my meetings on occasion and make sure I'm talking to a few other guys that have this time. And their quality of life was like black and white compared to the guys that we're talking about. My home group is a beginner's meeting, you know, this, that, and the other. And that's something that is amazing to me, is that it's about working with each other. God works through other people in my life constantly. I see that. I'm kind of like a... I don't know. I'm not good with dogs, but I'd probably be like the dumbest breed of dog if I was one, because I typically don't even recognize whether I'm being helpful or hurtful. I just kind of go through life. And when I was out there drinking, I definitely was hurtful. But more times than not, because I'm following the suggestions that were laid out to me from the beginning until now, the same, I've found out that I've been able and fortunate enough to have made an impact on some people's life in a positive way. When I was a kid, I loved being able to teach people something, whether as a younger kid and as a camp counselor studying or even that alcoholic year teaching, I did get a lot of joy out of helping others. God had other plans for me when he made me because he made me uniquely qualified to specifically help and potentially teach another alcoholic something that I have experienced. I'm really grateful for that today. It is where I get my source of strength. It is the thing that drives my moral compass. Hopefully as north as it can go and is absolutely the thing that keeps me grounded when everything else kind of flies off in a hurricane. I'm able to kind of stay put even when my emotions are taking me somewhere where I normally would have gone had I been drinking. So I want to be respectful of your guys' time. Thank you for letting me speak a minute. Thank you, Rhett. Frankly, after that, I really do get a lot of energy. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .