Sobering Up to a Failed Life Was the Problem — Not the Alcohol – Joe K.

Thanks, Brian.
Hey, good evening, everybody.
It's great to be with you.
My name is Joe Krogan.
I'm an alcoholic.
And it's always interesting to speak on Zoom, you know.
You never know what you're going to find.
A lot of Tinder profile pictures up there, you know, sometimes.
And I really like the live pictures.
So I feel like I'm at least communicating with somebody live.
And it's good to see some of my old friends.
Randy, one of my heroes, one of the really close buddies of mine, Randy Parsons.
Great to see you, Randy.
And I heard you say you disabled the chat.
I thought there was something wrong with my – I was trying to chat you back, Carol and Pat.
Thank you for your messages.
But I thought there was something wrong with my computer.
But it is great to be here.
And it's kind of funny because you dress up to sit in your own house.
And, you know, I heard somebody say we have to put on pants.
I bought a brand-new leopard-skin thong for this meeting.
So don't ask me to stand up, all right?
Yeah, that will get into your mind for the rest of the meeting, all right?
And I'm going to try and do what I was supposed to do and follow directions.
I'm not really good at directions.
I'm going to try and keep this, you know, end on time.
Okay.
Let me tell you something.
You couldn't get us out of a bar, right, at closing time.
You can't get us out of a bar.
But God forbid we run over in an AA meeting.
Jesus could be speaking.
And we'd be going, Lord, that's it.
Come on.
Let's go.
So we don't want to do that, all right?
I don't want to make anybody angry.
And I see there's somebody here from the Villages.
I lost them now because there's – yeah, Wayne from the Villages.
And I – when I first got sober, I moved back home out of a treatment center.
The Villages didn't exist, but there were some little mobile, you know,
manufactured home golf course community geese up there.
Water Oak, if you live in the Villages, you know where Water Oak is.
It's right there on 441, and it was one of the first ones before the Villages was there.
I got out of treatment at 40 years old and went home to Mom's house.
And there was nobody there.
And then a few years later when the Villages – I was talking to somebody who lived there.
They said, oh, we've got a big crime wave.
It's all retirees, in case you don't know what it is.
It's the largest retirement community in the country.
There's like 125,000 retirees.
And they were talking about there's a new crime wave happening in the Villages
because all these alcoholics and addicts are coming back home to live with their parents.
And this person was telling me about it.
And I go, hey, I started that back in – I started that in 1990.
Nobody did that.
And so anyway, my whole group is Life's a Beach.
We meet here in Palm Coast, Florida, and it's good to see everybody here.
Randy and I know each other from years of going to the Atlanta Men's Workshop.
I know a lot of folks up there in Atlanta and have a deep affection for you people
and for the AA community up there.
So thank you for that.
But I will try and tell you my drunk-a-log, and it's a real short one.
I don't want to talk about the good years.
Everybody had good years drinking.
We wouldn't be here, okay?
And I laugh when I hear people say, well, I came to AA on my own.
Nobody comes to AA on their own.
This is gun-to-the-head recovery, okay?
Listen, AA was never on anybody's bucket list.
I can't wait until I grow up and join AA.
I'm an alcoholic synonymous.
You had to be out of ideas, out of options to show up an alcoholic synonymous.
I mean, really.
And so I had a lot of good years drinking.
I lived down in Miami for most of that time, and that was my – I call it my Don Johnson period.
I thought I was Mr. Miami Vice, and it was a lot of fun.
I owned a bar on South Beach, and it was a lot of fun until it wasn't.
And we all know what that's like.
And all of a sudden, one day – and you don't know you can't quit until you can't quit.
Now, I'll tell you how I drank.
And right from the very start, I was not – I loved the effect produced by alcohol.
And I did not come to Alcoholics Anonymous to get sober.
You're going to hear my story might be a little different than yours.
And I know a guy – and I don't care how you got here.
They say you can't get here for your kids.
You can't get here.
I know a guy.
I know a guy who's 35 years sober, a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous who got sober because of the free donuts in the meeting.
He was homeless.
And he's a wonderful member.
So I don't care how you get here.
Sooner or later, if you're one of us, this thing might get you.
And it got me.
This is how I drank.
I'll give you my drunk along.
I don't stop.
I run out.
That's how I drink.
I don't know how you do it.
I'm not one of these.
Emotional alcoholics.
The book calls – they said there are those who are normal in every respect except for their drinking.
That's not me.
I'm the grave emotional and mental disorder guy, okay?
And the alcohol was the relief from the bondage of self.
And I don't stop.
I get stopped.
Something has to happen to me for me to take a look at my drinking.
The blue light's in the rearview mirror.
She throws me out, lose a job.
Something has to happen.
And those of us that know what I'm talking about, you know how easy it is to be remorseful in the back of a cop car?
Man, it's one of my most remorseful – it's like you want to get spiritual?
Get in an airplane with turbulence.
You'll get spiritual in a minute.
You want to be remorseful?
Sit in the back of a cop car handcuffed.
You will be remorseful and full of guilt and shame.
So – and I don't drink at lunch because I love drinking.
And when I drink – if I drink at lunch, I'm not drunk.
I'm not going back to work.
There's no – work is not a good reason to stop drinking once I start.
I don't drink at dinner because I'm one of these guys, if I'm drinking tonight, I'm not eating.
I'm fasting because I've got to be light on my feet.
So that's pretty much how – and I don't drink for the taste.
I guzzle.
And I love binges.
And in the beginning, binges are great, man.
There was a – and if you're young.
There's some young people out here.
And if you're wondering if you're an alcoholic because, you know, when you're young, you can get some time in between the binges.
Something – you know, you can burn your life to the ground.
But you can go a couple months.
You can get a new job, get a new herd, get a new place to live, get your license back, and everything looks good again.
But if you continue to start burning your life to the – continue to burn your life to the ground, as you get older, the time in between binges for me was measured in hours.
It wasn't measured.
It wasn't measured in days anymore at the end.
And I got to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I didn't come here to find God.
I came here because I was drowning.
And I wanted somebody to save me.
And I didn't know I was an alcoholic.
I came here – I got sober.
My sobriety date is September 12, 1990.
That's five days before my 40th birthday.
And I had never been to an AA meeting.
Never been.
Never been to a treatment center or a detox.
Never been to a halfway house.
I did not know anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Had no clue.
It's amazing how you could go that long in life and have alcohol and drugs be such a problem in your life and not know anything about it.
But I'm one of those guys.
I didn't know.
I didn't know.
I did a lot of drugs.
I find alcoholics like drugs.
So if there's any old-timers on here that I don't mean to offend you.
I am an alcoholic.
I'm an alcoholic as described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety.
But I did do a lot of drugs.
So if there's some old-timers who never did any drugs, I don't mean to offend you.
But too bad it's too late now.
You had your chance.
You should have done them while you had your chance.
Because I was one of these alcoholics.
Listen, from the moment I started drinking, I would always overshoot the mark.
I would always end up throwing up and getting sick.
And I couldn't figure it out.
It's really embarrassing when you're in public and you're in a bar.
And, you know, all of a sudden, it comes on you quickly.
You think you can control it.
And I threw up.
I overshot the mark every time I drank until I found out there was some medication for it.
And I took some medication.
It's called cocaine.
And then the problem with that is that once you start taking that medication, you drink to alcohol poisoning.
Okay?
If you're a real alcoholic.
So, you know.
Binges last three, four days.
And until your organs start shutting down from so much alcohol.
On September 12th, 1990, I said that's my sobriety day.
I don't remember.
That's the first day sober.
I do not remember a lot about that day.
I'll tell you what I do remember.
I remember a hell of a lot about September 11th, 1990.
Maybe you remember the day before you got here.
That was a bad day in my life.
Let me tell you where I was.
And I didn't know about treatment centers, detoxes.
You young guys.
I mean, I go to a men's group.
We have a men's group.
We started down here.
It's about 100 guys every Thursday night.
70% of them are under a year.
And they're all young guys.
Because people are coming in a lot younger nowadays.
But they're all in halfway houses and they're retreads.
They're going in and out.
Thank God I didn't know about detoxes and treatment centers.
And halfway.
They're kind of like Jiffy Lube for alcoholics, right?
You go in, they lube, oil, filter, rotate the tires.
They feed you, fatten you up, clean you up.
And they send you back out.
You're good for another 20,000 miles.
I would have played that card until I died.
So thank God I didn't know about that.
But I was one of those bitter enders.
I took this thing to the bitter end.
I can't believe this stuff is killing me.
And I can't believe.
It's like it said in the doctor's opinion.
Over emerging.
Remorseful with a firm resolution not to do it again.
And I would do that over and over and over again.
And I thought armed with a firm resolution was sufficient.
I really want to stop.
And I don't want to do this anymore.
I didn't realize there's an expiration date on that guilt, shame, and remorse.
Sometimes it's quickly, sometimes slowly.
But it always evaporates.
And I will always take another drink.
Until I experience the cycle.
I could change what we call a spiritual experience.
And I didn't want a spiritual experience.
I didn't come here for one.
First of all, I didn't know what it looked like.
Second of all, when you talk about the spiritual life, when I was new,
and they talk about the spiritual life, I didn't want that.
Here's what it looked like to me.
No fun, no sex, shuffleboard, and bingo forever.
Who wants that?
I didn't want that.
I'm from South Beach.
I owned a bar on South Beach.
I want to be Miami Jones.
People used to call me Miami Joe.
That's what I used to tell people.
Nobody called me Miami Joe.
I called me Miami Joe.
You're really lame when you've got to give yourself a nickname, okay?
But on September 11th, let me tell you what my best effort,
and I never woke up one day and said,
today I'm going to burn my life to the ground.
I did it over and over again.
But that was never my intention setting out.
Every day I would wake up, I want to be as happy and as successful.
I could, even if it meant just getting a six pack.
Because at the end, that would have meant success for me.
And I'm not a beer drinker.
But at the end, on September 11th, 1990, let me tell you where I was.
My best effort, the best thinking, the best ability that I had my entire life
took me to a Skid Row motel room in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
with my two-year-old son and his mom.
And that's where we were living and had been living
probably for the last two months, three months.
I don't, you know how us alcoholics are.
We move in, you can't get us out.
And we don't pay, but you just can't get rid of us.
So I'm living in this motel room.
And it was, if child welfare services would have walked through the door,
I would have been arrested.
We lived in filth.
I was unemployed and unemployable.
My little boy, two-year-old son, was in filthy diapers
with watered-down milk in a bottle.
And I'm going to tell you, I loved that little boy.
Two years earlier, I was at the hospital when he was born.
I had a job.
We had a little house.
We were like a little family.
And at that hospital, when that little boy was born,
I picked him up from the nursery, held him in my arms, and I cried.
For the first time in my life, I fell in love with another human being.
They talk about no human power.
And I had every other human power in my life.
You know, I had legal problems, relationship problems, finance problems, health problems.
Nothing could stop me.
Nothing could stop me.
I would walk over anything for my next, in my journey to my next drink or drug.
But that little boy, when he was born, I thought, maybe he'll straighten me out.
I really want to be a dad.
Maybe this, and I loved that little boy.
I knew.
I knew the moment I held him, that there was a human being alive that I would walk in front of a bus for.
And I made him all the promises.
I held that little boy and made him all the promises every dad probably makes his child.
I said, you're going to know you're loved.
We're going to be able to walk down the street arm in arm.
We're going to be able to tell each other we love each other.
I'm going to teach you how to play baseball, basketball, football.
We're going to have so much fun together.
And I meant it.
But I don't know what alcoholism is.
I don't know what it looks like.
I don't even know what the symptoms are.
And I sent that little baby down into his, in the nursery there in the hospital, I walked into the waiting room and there was a friend of mine and he said, let's go have a drink to celebrate the birth of your son.
Eight days later, I showed up.
I don't even know how they got home from the hospital.
See what I drink.
That's what I do is I drink.
I don't know about this.
I don't know about this.
I don't know about this.
I don't know about this.
I don't know about this.
I don't know.
This is the worst phenomenon of craving.
I don't I think the phenomenon of craving, when I heard that term, I said, that's not me.
That sounds like a guy sitting under a bridge shaking and shivering going, I need another drink.
Now it is that, but that's not what it looked like in my life.
What it looked like in my life is I think I'll have another one.
I think I'll do a little bit more.
I'll just stay another hour.
Then I'll go home.
And it just looks like that.
Over and over and over again.
This is repeated.
experience an entire psychic change, and so I'm in this motel room, and let me tell you what it
looked like there, because I had been there for the last two, I'm going to fast forward to the
end of my drinking, and we were in that motel room, and maybe you can relate to this, I'm sure
there's some people on here that know what it's like, remember the feeling when you would come to
after a binge, remember that feeling, was that fun or what, when you would crack your eyelids open
after you'd been drinking for two, three days, and the first thought that would pop into my head
when I was in that motel room, when I cracked my eyelids open and come to, the first thought that I
would think was, damn, I'm not dead, now I'm not suicidal, but I didn't want to wake up in my life
anymore, it was groundhog day, every day was the same, and I couldn't get out of it, I was in a
life, trapped in a life I couldn't escape, and then the horror would be on you, Bill talks about
it in his story, he says,
remorse, horror, and hopelessness of the morning after are unforgettable,
and they are unforgettable, I mean, that is absolute torture, the horror was on me because
it's all gone, the booze is gone, the drugs are gone, the money's gone, the job's gone, one more
time, it's all gone, I've done it again, and then I would do, and I don't know what this is, I would
do what I call the alcoholic dance, I would walk to the crib, look at my little boy, and I'd start
to cry,
because I didn't want to be like this, I'd say, that's it, I'm going to get us out of this motel
room, I'm going to get some food and some diapers, I'm going to get a job, I'm going to turn my life
around, I swear to God, and I mean it, see, I don't know what alcoholism is, I don't know about
this obsession of the mind, I don't know what the real problem is, that sooner or later, no matter
how strong, I would go from eight o'clock in the morning, swearing to God, I'm never going to do
this again, to all of a sudden, an hour or two later, and I just would, I would just, all I need
is a couple beers, just to go down to the store, get a couple tall boys, take this edge off,
because it is so hard to face a failed life in every single area, and I don't know what the
problem is yet, but on September 11th, 1990, I found out what the problem was, and I found out
what alcoholism was, and I didn't know you, I'd never been to an AA meeting, didn't know anything
about it, on September 11th, 1990, I came to from another binge, I cracked my eyelids open,
said, damn, I'm not dead, and then it's all gone, the money's gone, the booze is gone, the drugs are
gone, one more time, it's all gone, I've done it again, and I walked to that crib, and stood in
front of my little boy, and started to cry, and I said, that's it, I'm never going to do this again,
and there was a voice inside my head that said, yes, you are, and on September 11th,
reality pierced the delusion, and I couldn't buy my lie one more time, and I knew the truth,
the truth is, is that I would drink until I died, and I knew it, whether it be in the gutter,
whether it be in jail, I was not going to quit, it was all over, it was kind of like the feeling
you might get, I would imagine, if you fell out of a high-rise building, you know, on your way down,
you go, hmm, so this is how it ends, and that was the feeling I had that day, so this is how it ends,
there was no more hope,
that I was going to be discovered, that I was going to turn my life around, that I was going
to be president of General Motors, or some big successful executive, or make my fortune,
there was no more, and I knew it, and that day, I made a decision, and I knew what the problem was,
and I made a decision, the decision was, I'm going to quit quitting, I'm done, I'm done waking
up, and swear I'm not going to do this anymore, and pretending to be a non-alcoholic, see, that's
what non-alcoholics would do, they would screw up, wake up, make a firm resolution not to do it
again, and they would keep it, I don't keep it, I can't keep it, and I knew the truth, and I knew
what the problem was that day, and this may not be your problem, but it was my problem, my problem
was not alcohol or drugs, and I knew it as clear as anything in my life, my problem was not enough
alcohol or drugs.
See, if I
could have stayed drunk, and stayed high, I wouldn't need you, it was sobering up that was
my problem, waking up to this failed life, the remorse, horror, and hopelessness of the morning
after were unbearable, and I made a decision that day, I'm going to do whatever it takes to stay
drunk, and high, until blotting out the consciousness of our pitiful existence,
my intolerable situation as best I could, just like the book said, that was the decision I made,
and I'd never read the book, I didn't know about this book, I didn't know about you,
but, and you know what, later on, when I finally read the book, I read Bill's story,
and in Bill's story, see, I didn't come here to surrender to get sobered, it didn't sound like
Bill did either, in his story, it talks about it, he said, so this was it, the curtain, it seemed,
the end.
So I was to go on joining the endless procession of sots that had gone on before me,
alcohol was my master, quicksand stretched around me in all directions,
it sounds like he surrendered to this disease also, and that that was his first step,
well that was my first step experience that day, now that's the day before my sobriety date,
so I don't,
I didn't understand this, but it talks about it in the 12 and 7, it says, we had walked our
minds to such an obsession for destructive drinking, that only an act of providence will
solve it, and he's, and Bill talks about the flimsy reed, proving to be the loving hand of
God, well that was my night, that's where my best effort took me, now let me tell you where God took
me, because the act of providence happened that night, that flimsy reed was presented to me,
and I reached out for it.
And I don't know why I reached out for it, well I do, and it wasn't to get sober, there was a knock
on the motel room door on September 11th that night, and I was sitting there in a stupor one
more night, with my son in filthy diapers with a bottle that had cloudy water in it, and I,
and listen, when you get a, if you're at this stage of your drinking, you do not open the door,
okay, you don't answer the phone, you don't open the door, there's tape on the peephole,
so no light can escape,
and this is what happened that night, I walked straight over to the door, didn't even look at
who it was, and I opened the door, I thought about it after I got sober for a while, how did I do that?
I know today why I did it, I did it because of the decision I made, I didn't have to pretend to be
something I wasn't anymore, I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't an alcoholic anymore,
that I had nothing left to lose, and I walked over and I opened the door, and that night God walked
in, now he was short, fat, and bald, and he looked a lot like my younger brother,
and he walked in, and I believe that he said the only thing that would have got my attention,
that flimsy read, you know when you get here, if you're new, we know you come here, and your life
is hanging by a thread, we know that, you come in here with your human problems, seem unsolvable,
it seems like we lose hope of ever solving them, and, and,
just, you've got your bushel basket full of wreckage, your life is hanging by a thread,
here's the good news, I found that if you stay, and you do these things, that thread doesn't break,
that flimsy read holds on, it doesn't break, and that night he walked in, and I believe he said
the only, this was divinely inspired, I didn't know that at the time, but I believe he said the
only thing that would have got my attention, if he would have said you need help, you're an
alcoholic, it wouldn't have got my attention, if he would have said look at how you, look what you're
doing to yourself, it wouldn't have got my attention, it wouldn't have got my attention,
you're killing him, you're killing you, look at how you're living, if he would have lectured me,
or told me how bad I was, I knew how bad I was, I didn't need him, I hated myself so much that day,
the problem with self-loathing is that by the time you get to a point where you hate yourself,
everybody else hates you too, I didn't need him to tell me that, and here's what he did,
he didn't say a word, but I saw the horror in his eyes, he laid his phone number down on a table,
and this was the flipside,
he said if you want, I will watch your son, if you want to get help, now I didn't want to get
help, but I knew I was going to die, I just made a decision, I'm going to drink until I die, and do
whatever it takes, and I didn't want my son to go with me any further on this journey, and on
September 12th, 1990, I woke up, and I made that phone call, I used that number, hard, now I didn't
know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't
know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't know about it, I didn't know about it,
like I said, but I had heard of treatment, and I thought, okay, you know, it's funny,
there's a neat trick that we learn, you know, the moment, you could be the world's biggest dirt bag,
and you know, everybody hates you, but the moment you say, you know what, I'm going to go to
treatment, or I'm going to get help, all of a sudden, everybody's patting you on the back,
going, all right, that's great, we're so proud of you, right, I didn't know, I would have done
that earlier if I would have known about it, everybody was off my back instantly, they're
all cheering for me now.
Uh, so, uh, I said, all right, I'll go to treatment, what I really wanted him, is just him
to take care of my son, because I knew it was, the end was coming, I had sores all over my body
from a staph infection, my teeth were falling out of my head, the only food I was eating was,
was hops and barley, beer, that was the, that was the, the, how I sustained my nourishment, and,
um, the end.
It was close.
Uh, but I, I'd heard of treatment, I didn't know what it was, I knew very little, I knew it was
28 days, or 30 days, I didn't know what they did, I couldn't conceive, maybe they teach you
something, maybe they give you a pill, or a suppository, or something, and I said, okay,
I'll go to treatment, you know, and now I figured I'm going to go, I'm looking for the Betty Ford
Center, the Olympic pool, the weight room, you know, hey, I'm Miami Joe, I need to, you know,
get a little sun up.
30 days, I'll be back on my feet, I'll be back on South Beach where I belong.
Well, they don't take indigents, okay, and we finally found a treatment center.
About five days later, it's my, and we found a treatment center that had a bed open, and
on September 17th, I entered this treatment center for indigents.
My 40th birthday, September 17th, my first night at this treatment center.
There were 50 people in there, they were all indigents.
I would have traded lives with any, any of those people.
Today, I would not trade my life for anybody's life.
I am blessed beyond my ability to be grateful, and I know it's not what I deserve, but it's
what I have.
I try and share whatever it is I can.
So, I am in this treatment center, and you know how we are, man.
I still want to be the big shot in a treatment center for homeless people, right, and I'm
in there trying to impress them with tales of my, you know, I thought my life was going to be
like a movie, like Scarface, or like Miami Vice, right, and I'm trying to impress these
people in the treatment center that I'm the cool guy.
I really was just the old guy, is what I was.
I'm 40 years old in this treatment center, and I remember the night, but I remember the
feeling I had.
Look what my life had become.
40 years old, it's all over.
I wasted every opportunity.
I've squandered every relationship.
It was the worst.
The lowest point in my life.
We were standing outside the door that night, Friday night in Miami.
I remember it like yesterday, and I was smoking a cigarette.
We didn't vape back then.
We were real men, and so, and we were standing outside smoking, and this young guy pulls
up in a car, and I remember, I guess, he had a Nissan Altima, and it was a nice car, and
he gets out of the car, and he's got a collared shirt on.
He's got creased pants.
I'm thinking, what is he doing here on a Friday night?
I don't know what he's doing, but I'm thinking, hey, I wonder what they're paying this guy.
I bet I can do this gig.
See, I don't know what he's doing, because I don't recognize he's bringing an AA meeting
into the treatment center.
I'm thinking, Miami on Friday night is a pretty happening place.
It must be a job.
He's here getting paid to do this.
Well, he wasn't.
He said a couple things.
He started to hold this meeting.
I didn't know what it was, but he said a couple things I didn't agree with.
He said, first of all, he said, you never have to take another drink or drug again if
you don't want to, and I went, that's bull.
I'm drinking when I don't want to all the time, but he said something else that got
my attention that night.
He said, you never have to feel the way you feel tonight again.
I would have given anything to not feel the way I felt that night, and then he said something
else.
He said, I graduated from this treatment center.
Two years earlier, I was like, what?
He didn't look like me.
He didn't look like an alcoholic or like a drug addict, and there were 50 people there,
and it was a treatment center for six months.
He said this, too.
He said, if you stay to the end, your life will never be the same.
He said, but here's the bad news.
At the end of six months, there won't be five of you left, and he was right.
There were two of us.
I don't know why I was one, but I was.
And I didn't, this wasn't a big, this treatment center wasn't a big proponent of AA.
They would let meetings come in occasionally, but they weren't about AA.
They were about aftercare, okay?
And I remember the day I got out of treatment, everybody's patting me on the back, but I
had butterflies in my stomach as I was leaving that treatment center after six months, and
I'm thinking to myself, I know I don't want to use, but I wonder how long before I do.
See, I wonder how long before I do.
I wonder how long before I screw up.
See, I always screw up.
I'm a screw up.
I wonder how long I can do this, because I didn't have any hope of staying sober.
And then this is where God took me.
I got out of that treatment center, and I went where every good 40-year-old alcoholic
goes.
Mom, I'm home.
My folks had a manufacturer.
They lived in Lady Lake, Florida.
The villages is now, but there was no villages then.
It was a little one traffic light retirement community in central Florida, and it's not
Florida at all.
It's really South Georgia, okay?
And you've got to be 1,000 years old to even live in that county.
And I'm back home with mom and my stepdad, and they live in a manufactured home.
For those of you that don't know, it's kind of crossed between a trailer and a house.
I used to call it mom's halfway.
And I was sitting out there, March 23rd, I remember the date, sitting out there, March
23rd, on the front stoop, smoking a cigarette, and there's this old man next door watering
his lawn.
Most of us are here because of the kindness of strangers.
And this old man was watering his lawn, and he was an old guy, and you could tell he was
an old guy.
He looked like his wife bought his clothes.
He was the kind of guy that wore socks with sandals.
You know, he had nothing I wanted, nothing.
He was married to the same woman for 50 years, lived in a manufactured home, retired mailman,
and raised five kids.
He had zero.
I want to get back to South Beach and be cool again.
But this guy's watering his lawn, and I can see him kind of inching his way over, and
he introduces himself.
He says, hey, my name's Frank.
I said, hi, Frank, I'm Joe.
And he says, listen, I understand you had some trouble with alcohol.
I said, mom's been talking, huh?
And he said, would you like to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous tonight?
I had no plans, but I thought about it.
I said, well, it's either stay home and watch Murder, She Wrote With Mom, or go to an AA
meeting.
So, yeah, I'll go to the meeting with you, Frank.
It's got to be better than that, okay?
And let me tell you, and tell me if you can't recognize this.
He says, I'll pick you up at quarter to seven.
Quarter to seven, he was sitting outside in his little car, and he never peeped the
horn.
He never came to the door and pounded on the door.
He just sat there patiently waiting.
And I got into his car, and we drove off to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, my first
meeting on the outside.
And we sat in that meeting.
There were probably 50 people.
They were all 1,000 years old.
You couldn't put together a whole set of teeth from the people in that meeting.
And I'm sitting there thinking to myself.
I'm sitting there thinking to myself.
I'm so angry.
I'm sitting there going, damn, they're so lucky I'm desperate or I wouldn't be here.
See, Alcoholics Anonymous works, and it motivates us in three ways.
And if you're lucky, you go through these three progressions.
We get people to do things, first of all, through desperation.
Then we get them to do it through legislation.
And eventually, we get you to do it because of inspiration.
And this was my desperation period.
And I'm in this meeting thinking, damn.
And they're going, if you want what we have, and I go, I don't want a damn thing you guys
have.
Not a thing.
I want to get back to South Beach.
I want to shoplift recovery.
I don't even want to talk to you.
If you guys were in a bar and I walked in that bar, I wouldn't even drink with you.
I'd go to another bar.
And this is how I felt.
I was so arrogant and so ignorant.
I ended up, the next day, I'm having dinner with my mom.
And I look over.
Her shoulder and there outside is that little car idling in the driveway.
And I go, damn, I missed the part about us going steady.
I said, I bet I can outweigh this old guy, but I couldn't.
And eventually I got into the car and we drove off to another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In case you don't recognize that, that's called unconditional love.
We drove off to a meeting every night after that.
And Frank had me on tour with him.
I was his wingman.
We went to a different meeting every night.
And he taught me the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in the front seat of that Buick.
And he could motivate you in a way that nobody else could.
He was one of those, he worked at Intergroup answering the phones.
So every time we went to a meeting, he would always get a 12-step call during the day.
And he would pick up some new guy at night.
And I'd have to race.
I'd have to race out after the meeting so I could get my front seat.
Because these new guys always want to jump in the front seat.
And I'd go, I'm his date, all right?
Let's get something straight here.
But we'd go to meetings and Frank taught me about step one and step two on the front seat of that car.
He said, I'm going to tell you, you're a pretty smart guy, South Beach guy, Miami Joe.
He said, let me tell you about step one.
He said, step one is real simple.
You're screwed.
I said, what?
He goes, that's it.
I go, well, that's not good news.
He goes, step one's not good news.
He said, if you're not 100% convinced you will drink again, you will drink again.
And I knew I had always been waiting for the day when the shoe would drop.
I didn't think I was going to stay sober.
I didn't believe this was going to work.
I didn't even want to be here.
So when he said that, I knew, you're right.
I know it's coming.
It's coming down the road.
And I said, well, Frank.
It sounds like, if that's the case, that I'm going to drink again, it sounds like it's going to take a frigging miracle.
He said, yes, it is.
And that's step two.
And he was right.
Because that's all we got here.
That's what Carl Young, on page 26, Carl Young tells Roland Hazard.
After treating him for a year, knows he can't help him.
The only advice he can give him is this.
Go find God.
That's it.
That's what we got.
That's what the steps are designed to do.
Help you find a power greater than yourself that will solve your problem.
And there's a lot of powers greater than yourself.
You don't have to take the one we use here.
There's some other powers.
The military is one.
Jail is one.
Death is one.
Those are powers greater than myself.
I don't have to take this one.
We have the two alternatives.
Die an alcoholic death or live by spiritual principles.
And at this point, I'm willing to be bored.
I'm willing to play shuffleboard bingo.
No sex, no fun forever.
I'm willing because you know why?
I don't want to go back to what I had.
I don't want what you have.
I just don't want what I had anymore.
And I don't even know what you've got.
And Frank would get me to go to meetings and we'd go to, I remember he would say,
listen, we're going to Ocala to a meeting.
Now Wayne knows.
Ocala is like an hour away from there.
And I'm thinking an hour drive in this car with this old guy.
An hour meeting.
And then an hour home.
Jesus, shoot me now.
But he had a way of getting me to go.
He says, you're going to love this meeting, man.
There's a lot of ex-strippers there.
Okay, I'll go.
And now he didn't tell me that they were all about 80 years old.
But when you've been locked up in a treatment center for six months, they start to look good.
Okay.
And he would say crazy things like that.
But he got me going and made it.
He made recovery fun.
He made getting sober fun.
I'd like to tell you that all went well.
Things started to go good.
When you don't commit felonies on a daily basis and show up for work and aren't drinking,
your life gets better.
And my life got better in a very short time.
I'm going to kind of get to the end here.
I started to get promoted at work and things started to get good for me.
See, I really believe that now that I'm sober,
I'm qualified to be in a relationship.
I'm qualified to be an employee, to be a dad.
I got custody of my son within the first year.
His mom ended up getting arrested.
She was still using.
That's the reason I didn't go back and live with her.
And I became a single dad.
And she never did get sober except for short stints every once in a while.
But she never showed up in his life again except for two weekends.
Once when he was seven and one weekend when he was 12.
And but so life starts to get better.
I end up meeting Miss AA.
She works at Intergroup with Frank.
She's the most beautiful girl.
We ended up falling madly in love.
We have this big AA wedding, you know, and here's what happened.
I started to think these were the promises, you know, and I thought and I know what the book says.
Spiritual well-being.
It always precedes material well-being.
But, you know, I'm so I think I'm fooling somebody.
I'm going to get real spiritual.
Then I check my wallet.
Nope, not spiritual enough.
Let me get more spiritual here.
I'm going to check the bank account.
Nope, not spiritual enough.
See, I had a motive for doing all this.
My first five years, six years were like that.
I thought that my my alcoholism was the cause of my problems.
My character defects.
I didn't realize my character defects.
Were the cause of my alcoholism and I ended up meeting this girl.
She's got two kids and I've got my son.
We end up falling in love.
And now I start worse instead of worshiping the gifts instead of the giver and I started getting promoting.
I get a big job offer back in South Florida and big job more money than I've ever been offered in my life.
I'm not an educated guy.
I'm not really even qualified for this job, but it's running this big car dealership down there in South Florida and I take the job.
And I uproot this family and I leave my support group and my AA group and my sponsor behind and now I'm working, you know, and I'm not qualified for this job.
So you're if you're working 12 14 hours a day, six seven days a week, it's because you're not qualified for the job and that's what I was doing and I start being a little more dishonest.
I start hiding money just in case this marriage doesn't work out.
I started lying a little bit.
I'm going home and I'm putting a cardboard life-size cardboard cutout of a husband.
Up and I think I'm fooling her.
I'm too tired to be a real participant and I start putting a life-size cardboard cutout of a dad up and I think I'm fooling my kids and I'm not fooling anybody.
And after a year, she said I want a divorce after a year of being married.
And I'm devastated and I end up leaving that house.
Now, by the way, if you're leaving the house, it's not your house.
Okay, and I am leaving that house with my little boy in tow and the last thing she said to me is.
I left this can't you see all your relationships end the same and I couldn't see that because I did a four-step but it was a conditions for stuff not a causes and conditions.
And if you get rid of the conditions or if you fix the conditions, it's great for a little while.
But if you don't fix the causes the conditions come back and at five and a half years sober now, I'm so angry and so enraged that she divorced me and I can't she got custody of a so I can't go to a and tell everybody knows what a jerk I am.
So now I'm not even going to meetings and now it's affecting my work and I within a month and a half.
I get fired from the best job I ever had.
So now it's six years sober.
I'm fired from the best job I ever had.
I'm divorced and I can't tell you I can't tell you this is what it looks like.
It's six years sober.
And I remember wanting to drink and I'm not going to meeting and I wanted to drink more and I wanted to stay sober and one night I drove by a bar and it caught my attention.
It had a name that attracted me.
It said bar.
And that was the sign, you know, lit up and it had a parking lot in the back and it opened at 8 in the morning and I figured I could be Miami Joe in there.
I could be a big shot in this bar for a while.
And I went to that bar and one night I curse God while I was laying in bed and I drove across town left my little boy asleep in the back room and I drove across town to that bar.
I said if this is sobriety the hell with you, you can have it and I'm going to drink.
And I'm one I'm a traffic light away.
I can see the bar one block away and stopped at a red light.
I got the butterflies in my stomach because if you drink like me, you know, your lifestyle is about to change and I look over and on the side street.
There was a broken down van with its hood up and underneath the streetlight.
I could see the front license plate and it said have you prayed today?
And I ended up saying the serenity prayer.
And I ended up driving back across town to a meeting.
I've been to one time a year earlier and I walked in the back door didn't know a soul.
I sat in the back room and there was a guy at a podium and he's what he said.
He said is anybody celebrating an anniversary in the month of September?
And I went whoa.
Yeah, and I raised my hand like an idiot and everybody clapped.
They don't realize 20 minutes earlier.
I was going to drink and they said well, here's what we do.
We have about five or six celebrants.
They all come and share for about five ten minutes how they stayed sober.
Since we have a visitor.
Why don't you start us off?
And I walked to the front of that room and being an ex-car salesman.
Yeah, it's real funny.
It wasn't funny that night and I walked to the front of that room and I turned around got up on that stage and got behind the podium.
I turned around and I was speechless.
I couldn't talk.
I looked out the faces just like I'm looking at your faces and eventually I started to cry and then I started to sob.
And I finally.
It seemed like forever.
I finally got the words out of my mouth.
I'm lost.
I need help.
I don't know how to do this anymore.
And once again, the kindness of strangers two guys came and I stood there just crying and two guys came up on the stage and took me off the stage.
Walk me back to the kitchen.
They stayed with me till 1130 that night.
They didn't want to leave me alone.
Now as they walked me off.
I knew why they took me off the stage.
I could hear the guy come back at the podium.
The treatment center had brought the band.
And the whole front row was all newcomers from the treatment center.
And I could just hear him say that's not how it is.
It's six years sober.
He's just humble.
But these guys once again, they said we're going to show you how to do this thing one more time.
And I got me active and Alcoholics Anonymous and I went through the steps again and did a causes and conditions and at this point in my life.
I did a second surrender.
See the first time I came in.
I surrendered the alcohol and drugs.
This point.
I surrendered my life because at 47 years old at six years sober.
I had burned my life to the ground sober.
And I couldn't blame it on the alcoholic drugs.
And I made a decision that day.
You can have all of my life.
Now my relationships my money my finances.
I don't care and I'm okay.
I want to just simple happy life.
I want to be a dad be a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that's what my life has become.
Since then.
I took a crummy job so I can take my son to school in the morning and pick him up from school at night.
We could have dinner every night and I did that and I took that crummy job for the first time in my life with somebody else's interest at heart.
And I learned how to be a dad and I coached my son in Little League and baseball and basketball and football.
It was one of the best years of our life.
And then I took that and that crummy job would happen to me in that crummy job.
You know, I wouldn't didn't take it.
You for the first time.
My life.
I didn't care about being the boss.
I didn't care about taking a crummy job to get a better job.
I wanted to go and I did what the steps taught me to do go and use this as an act of service and I fell in love with that crummy job.
And I'm going to tell you I still do the same job.
I just retired from it and sold my business and I've never had to work a day in my life since.
1997.
And I went to an AA conference in my wife.
And I ran into each other.
My ex-wife we started to date.
We hadn't seen each other in a year and she had thrown herself back into her program and we started to date and we knew if we were going to have a relationship.
We had to be on a different basis.
We started to pray for our relationship every day and we got remarried and then God saw fit.
So I'm married to the same woman twice in recovery and with God saw fit to give the worst parent in the world.
Another opportunity at 49 years old 48 and a half years old.
I had twin boys.
And they are the love of our life and those boys know they're loved and and one just graduated from the University of Miami.
He really is Miami.
Matt not somebody like me lying about it for years.
So all I can tell you is is I am blessed so much beyond my ability to be grateful and I can't tell you.
I just love Alcoholics Anonymous.
I love being around you people.
I loved.
I love drunks when I was out there drinking.
So I love you now when I'm sober and thank you so much for asking me to be here.
It's been a real privilege and great to see all you people again.
Thank you.