Son of an Alcoholic, Bouncing Between Two Houses — I Learned to Manipulate Before I Ever Took a Drink – Wesley T.

And tonight's speaker comes to us from the Freedom Group in Gainesville. Having gotten sober in 2014, he is active in his home group, maintains a service position, and I bet I can guess at least one interest he's had in his recovery. With that, we have Wesley. Hey, everybody. I'm Wes. I'm an alcoholic. I appreciate the invitation. You know, Tim came to our clubhouse back in June, and he was our keynote speaker for the Hall Club, the house up in Gainesville, for our, like, 42nd anniversary, whatever number it was, and he was our keynote speaker, and he kind of asked me after his lead that night if I would consider doing this, and I was always kind of taught that if you are able to do it, you should do it in recovery, and, you know, we're from Gainesville, the big group of us back there, most of us are from up the road, and, you know, I mean, it's not like it's too far, but it's just far enough to where you kind of think about it for a second, and you're like, yeah, I think I can do that, and then he saved it by saying, it'll be in September, and I'm like, okay, that's fine. That gives me some time to kind of, you know, figure out my schedule, figure out what's going on to make it down here, but I am happy to be here. I've been here once before for just an afternoon or a noon meeting. One of the other guys that's in ARM, if you can't tell, we're a biker group. It stands for the Association of Recovering Motorcyclists, and y'all had a home group member here that was also in ARM that we came down for one of his celebrations, and, you know, so I've been here for a long time. I've been here before, so it feels very familiar. It's very nice to be back. Like Alex said, I got sober. It was August 17th of 2014. That's a day that I can, it was a watershed moment in my life, I suppose. You know, there was the life before and the life after, and I know that from up at this podium, keep it just alcohol. Obviously, like most of my peers that I know and talk to, there are other substances involved in my story, and I have no qualms about this program being beneficial for all of us. It's beneficial for all problems of the mind and addiction in our life. There is some of that in my story. I want to use that language up here. My five-year-old's back there, but he has headphones and a tablet, so he probably, the building could be on fire, and he probably would not notice, so we're safe there. But, you know, I get to tell y'all, so just a quick little back qualification time. Born December 15th, 1981. That puts me at 43. I'll be 44 this December. Childhood, I'd like to say that their childhood was normal, and I think to myself, you know, my childhood was normal for me. You know, it's what I knew. I look back at it now, and I see that there was alcoholism involved in my life from day one. I'm the son of an alcoholic. I'm the son of a very codependent, very in need of Al-Anon mother. They did not stay together for very long. They separated before I even had real memory. I mean, I think I was maybe four when they got divorced. So from that point four onward, we would do like a week at mom's house, and then a week at dad's house. You know, I think for me, it's a root area where I learned to, like, manipulate, because I could get away with stuff at my mom's house that I would never try at my dad's house. And then he wasn't always the most attentive, so there were things that I could do over there that I would not be able to do with a mother who's helicoptering around. You know, watching our every move to your advantage. And again, that's not how I came to y'all. But I can see that, no, my childhood was not reassured and learned that, like, I don't think anyone did. Some dyslexia and some other learning disabilities that I received some help from, like a school counselor or whatever, and then you go to, like, the special needs class or whatever one period a day, and they let you cheat on your homework. That's what I did there. I cheated on my homework. I got to come for certain tests that I didn't think I would do well in, like biology. And math tests, they would let me go into that room, and, you know, I got to cheat on them, essentially. That's not what you were supposed to do, but that's what I did. To the best of my ability, I took advantage of that program as much as I could. Somewhere in middle school, I discovered that certain people had weed, and I stopped at my station. And his dad flickered back at it that I was into that stuff with my crowd, if you will. And I desperately just wanted to be a person. So that's the crowd that I got in with. The stoners and the drunks and the skaters and, you know, all of the above. You know, through high school, again, still cheating my way through high school, essentially, we moved on to harder substances, more alcohol, more house parties, more trouble, trouble with the law. I think I remember one time, I know, I don't think I remember, I know one time, you know, the drug dogs came to the school and they spotted my car. And I got called out of class, and the police officers were over there scraping carpet fibers and shaking little vials. They were shaking little vials of fluid up in the air, like, you know, checking it to the sunlight to see what the hell I guess it was reading. And just this big show that scared the ever-loving crap out of me. Like, it scared me. Like, I thought I was going to go to jail for some carpet fibers, some, you know, whatever they found. Had some Visine. They wanted to know what that was all about. Told them I had contacts in. They said, it doesn't say, it says you're not supposed to use this for contacts. I said, you know, just whatever. It was just, they were shaking me down. They were trying to see if I could say, well, you didn't catch something on me, but X, Y, and Z over there, those are the two you need to go look at. You know, that didn't happen. And nothing came of it other than them calling my parents. It was just, it was one of those stretches on the main roads they got behind me. And as I turned into my neighborhood to the back roads, they, you know, they flagged me. They pulled me over. And they got me for underage consumption and for possession of marijuana. I fought the case, and I got, you know, a conditional discharge, which is great for a 19-year-old. I think a first-time offender, having a little bit of alcohol on their breath, you shouldn't get the book thrown at you for something like that when you're doing what I perceive as a natural progression in lives, to experiment. The problem with me is that the experimentation just kept going and going and going. It wasn't just a, this is scaring me. I got arrested for this. Let's not do this again kind of thing. You know, I started to keep it kind of covert. You know, I started working at a Ruby Tuesdays, and there were people I was, you know, actually, I guess I started that job while I was still in school. But, you know, I started working full-time out of high school. And, you know, there were people that worked there. They were kids. You know, I'm 43 now, and looking back at it, these were like, you know, 24-year-olds, 25-year-olds working over there. And, you know, they were some of my early idols, man, because they had the things that I wanted. And they were happy to hand it to me to let me go do what I needed to do in the bathroom. They were happy to let me have any of the bar drinks that I wanted throughout the day. I didn't use the way Wes wanted to drink and use, and I did for a few years there. You know, the restaurant industry holds bar. You can get away with any. It's got a low bottom of, or maybe it has a high bar. I don't know. It takes a lot to get fired from most restaurants if you show up for the scheduled shift, and you're halfway able to do what they need you to do. That's been my experience in it. And I was in restaurants for like 17 years, so I'm certainly not knocking it as an industry. I was able to get away with the life I was living, drinking and doing these other substances daily. I got involved with a woman, and we got married. I'm going to speed this up because, you know, we've all heard these stories, right? We got married. We were married for several years, and eventually she was fed up with the way I was living. My mother had gotten so 10 years old, and my brother and I were drugged, much like that five-year convention down in Macon. And, you know, all of these things that I perceived, you know, that I was being drugged to, we had the opportunity to be exposed to this lifestyle at a young age. And I knew who to call when I had that realization that one day that, you know, I don't have to add to this story anymore. You know, I've proven to myself enough that I'm an alcoholic. You know, I came in here thinking that I only really am, and it encompasses everything. You know, I called my father, and he's definitely one trip with my stepmom. And I called him and said, you know, this and this. And I'm done with all of this. And he said, well, what you do is you go to the Halt Club, you pick up a white chip, and you go back tomorrow. And so he kind of 12-stepped me, just as he would any other alcoholic, just as hopefully any of us would if someone called and said, I'm done. Because we know the answer, and the answer is here. And it's a simple answer. It's a chip, and then repeat it. Come back tomorrow. Initially, that's the only answer that I could understand. If you hit me with doing 12-step work, and speaking, and service positions, and prayer life, and meditation, and, you know, pay attention to what's happening. And so those are the two first pieces of AA advice I ever got. And they're some of my favorite advice to give newcomers when they come in because it's so simple. Coming in and being new to sobriety, I could tell that something was different. I'm one of those guys that up until this point, 11 years and 2 months or a month later, I haven't picked up another white chip. I think about that a lot. But that's not appropriate. But I meet seven nights a week at 8 p.m. And in our little readings, they say, you know, solution-oriented discussion meeting, or our speaker meeting has a different little intro thing, but like solution-oriented. You know, so I was hearing the solution at the meetings. And, you know, you guys were telling me that if I wanted what y'all had, I had to do what you did. And you were saying things like get a sponsor. I didn't know what that looked like either. But somewhere in that second or third week of coming up there, my father introduced me to my sponsor. He's here tonight. He and I have been working this program together. I'd love to say that the work is near completion, but we met today and talked for an hour on the phone today. And I can tell you just from that phone call, the work is not anywhere near completion. This is a road that I choose to trudge. I choose to be here and trudge it with y'all. . . . . purpose of this AA way of life because it's given me a life today. You know I came in with no formal education beyond high school and I had no real life was going to look like when I age. The business I'm in now is such an important component of what I see daily. I'm an IC towards a medical system. I see people that are at the end of their life. I see people that are in the middle of their life. People that are young in life from things that they that was in their control to things that wasn't in their control and I see alcoholics and drug addicts and you know all all of the things you can imagine that you see in that environment. I deal with that on a daily basis and I bring this this program with me every day to that occupation and that doesn't mean that I 12-step every person who comes in jaundiced from alcoholism. In fact I don't do that but if that door is open in the conversation that I have with them it's a perfect opportunity for me to at least say to them that hey on August 17th of 2014 I picked up a white chip and I haven't had to drink or do what you're doing whatever substance that may be in that amount of time since then and if they ask what what I did then I can at least tell them the simple fact is I go to AA and I do what they tell me to do. I've become obedient to working these steps and that's that's a big term for me is obedient to live this way of life. I certainly don't always want to live the AA way of life. I don't always want to do what's right. I don't always want to go to meetings. I don't always have time to go to meetings. I have to make time for it you know and I do I have to because you guys tell me that it ain't getting any better out there and when you come back in and I say what happened usually the first thing you say is either I got into a relationship and then the second thing is I stopped going to meetings. I picked up that white chip in August of that year and through that next year we you know think that it was by nine months I was done with all of the steps. We talk about in our home group about if y'all do the green chip is the nine month chip that that's like the least picked up chip. It's just that it's the least purchased chip because not every group gives out a green chip for nine months. The point is that if you get to nine months you might as well go for the blue and if you get to that first blue you might as well see if you can get another one. What's it going to hurt to keep doing this thing? These steps it looks like you know the hardest one the character defects six and seven to this day going through those inventories you know we go to meet at his house and he reads his fourth step to me before I could read mine essentially. No it put me at ease to know that the things that I was so this guy's done that and and he's been sober for I think at that point 13. I did start a lot of ego wrapped up. I wanted them to like be the one chip wonder and like say it's not going to work. I wanted them to be the one chip wonder and like say it's not going to work. Because of Wes Thompson my sponsor. A A lot of ego wrapped up into that and, you know, thank God I had a sense of humor because that did not happen at all. I worked with a bunch of men before I finally had somebody that I was working with that got some real time and it never was because of me and I know that today I was just a vessel to do the work with. I had to do some amends one of those the guys I worked for it at a restaurant another restaurant not Ruby Two 갖고 Barcelona y für einen buiter. Tuesdays, they were already shut down by this point. At another restaurant that I had worked in for several years, this is where my alcoholism really kind of like, you know, got its like higher level education. This is where I just started doing, you know, substances all day long. I would open up the restaurant and go to the bar before I would even unlock the door for the dishwasher to come in at nine in the morning. I would go and pour myself a couple of shots and then go open the door to let the guy come in. I had it timed out. The alarm system had a 60-second delay where it would beep. And I could go and pour that first shot and get it down and then go turn that alarm off and then go back and get the second one. And so, I mean, you know, I had it down of the disease, down. I showed this guy some money. And I had saved up money in the first year because guess what? I wasn't spending all my money on, you know, handshake drugs. And I don't care. I reluctantly took it. He didn't want it. And I, you know, I talked to some other alcoholics about how to do that because I had a lot of fear about bringing this guy an envelope of money and I was still working for him and saying, this is money that I owe you for all the alcohol that I've stolen out of your restaurant. And I met him at the park in a neutral location, right? I didn't go to the restaurant where he's boss. We met at the park. You know, he didn't want it. Don't take it, man. I'm going to give it to a charity because I'm not going to keep it. And he was a businessman and his business, you know, could have used the cash. And he was a businessman and his business cash influx. So he took it. More freedom from that than even from that fifth seat lifted off of me to know that I had done what was right for me and I had done what was right for that guy. It was the best feeling, one of the best feelings I've ever had in my life. Based on that, you know, I felt free from that job. I moved in my second year of sobriety. A buddy of mine opened up a restaurant in Savannah and he asked if I would come and be one of the two chefs down there, which is a fancy term for like kitchen manager. It is. Sorry, if there's any chefs in the house. You know, he asked me if I would come down there. And I said, yeah. You know, and so I moved my life down to Savannah. One of my aunts, when I was preparing for that move, she was like, you know, you know, your buddy and his partner, she said, besides those three people, you're not going to know anybody down there. Are you going to be okay doing that? The question was not me. I turned to her and I said, Aunt Wendy, I said, I'm going to be okay because I will have the A ring. And that's what it was. Within my first week there, I remember the AA club there because I had traveled back and forth several times before I moved and I had a re-condom. And so I knew some of the people from the AA meeting that I was going to go to. And so within my first week there on my job, this whole group of y'all showed up, like 20 people from the AA meeting, like 9, 15 at night. They come into the restaurant and they ask if I'm there. And the manager that wasn't my friend, the 20 people in this town, when you've been here for like four, days, I said, because I'm in AA. And that's what we do for each other. Being down there, something inside of me was like, are you going to do this when you're in your fifties? You know, do you want to be down in a hot kitchen cooking and doing that when you're in your fifties? And, and, and, you know, I came to the conclusion that for me, that wasn't right. I did not want that life. So I got rid of that apartment I had down there, moved back up to Gainesville and back in with my mom at 35 years old and started going back to community college at Lanier Tech. And I got an LPM license, which is an entry-level license, practical nurse license. And I started working at a nursing home for the same company I work for today. And I've gotten my RN listed online. And all of that's been, you know, since 2018 is when I got my license for the first time. So I started this school journey back in 20. It's taken me to do that because I've done it once. So much fear. About it, like still egotistical and worried about what y'all think, right? Maybe not y'all, but the people out there, like I'm 35 living with mom. You know, I had a lot I needed to do to better myself. You know, I got all of that completed and I was so worried about, can I do this? Look at how much time this is going to take. And y'all just told me, you said, just do it one day at a time, one piece at a time. And that is that I've taken a few years off here and there. It's not been nine straight years of doing it. It's not been a huge financial burden that was so, so unsurmountable that I'm like in debt up to my eyes. I'm not in debt at all for any of my education. I applied for federal aid money through the FAFSA program and received those fundings to this day. I still get a little bit every time I register for classes. I applied for some scholarships through my school that they told me about. I didn't know that, that they had a scholarship program and they helped me get, you know, get it paid for. So first license that I ever got, I came, zero. Things are available to us if we do the work. You know, through those schoolings and all of that stuff, you know, I kept working with that company, Northeast Georgia. At a certain point through this AA journey, you know, I dated, of course, I was single, dated, you know, casually saw people, all of the things that, that, you know, not all of the things, things that I hear others doing, you know, I did those things. You know, I had this kind of rule that I just wouldn't do that. You know, y'all told me that wasn't good. I talked about this ridiculous 13th step thing. And, you know, I saw people that did that, the rehab romances, the hooking up with that, preying on people, really hooking up with that brand new person, that new woman that comes in with like nine hours of, and I'm there with four or five years to save them. And it's predatory and it's not right. And I wasn't going to do that, but I am a man and I did look and I met somebody in the room, had, and I was attracted to, and I liked and felt a connection with, and that's as far as it went. We had no further conversation for a year, no conversation for a year. And then one day after that year, she came back to that meeting and she had been there, came back and we started talking and, you know, we've, we've had a kid and it's, it's been very nice, but it's been also very, very difficult because to alcoholics, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hooking up and shacking up. It's not necessarily a recipe for a happy marriage, but we have had a happy marriage, but that does not mean that I haven't had to call my sponsor with my pants on fire, that I haven't had moments of doubt, moments of doubt, moments of worry, and all of those trouble things that I believe come with any relationship, but it's acutely more aware to me because it's happening to me. But I think those are normal. I feel like pretty normal things that people go through when they're in a relationship. And I think that's a good thing. They're in committed relationships with one another. There are moments of high glee and moments of sorrow and everything in between. And I think that's just normal, appropriate human behavior. I'd not be so hard on myself for that because I want it to be perfect. And I'm a, I'm a big perfectionist. My sponsor and I, we work on the Al-Anon program because like I told y'all earlier, my father was an alcoholic and as much as I didn't think that affected and shaped me, it did. It shaped me. And there are ways that are still uncovered. It's just, it is what it is. We are products of our upbringing to a large degree. And that doesn't mean that we don't have the choices to change the pattern. Of course we have those choices. We worked that program together too. And that's one that there is no coming back from. There is no that says, I have this amount of top serenity because of alcoholics in my life every single day. And that's just, it is what it is. For me, you know, to think about the differences between all of that versus what we're doing here in this very much AA, Alcoholics Anonymous meeting are very blurred because this is all recovery. And this is all for me, recovery from alcoholism, whether it's my own that I participated in, that disease is still the same disease, you know, and we call it a disease. And I, you know, I, I loved that part in, in the doctor's opinion, where we really just get that message out there. And I, you know, I, I, I love that part in, in the doctor's opinion, in the medical, this is way before I loved it before I became a medical professional, but I just loved that. That actually makes a lot of sense to think that I have this allergy that I trigger with that very first drink. And that then because of that allergy, I have this obsession. That means that I'm just going to keep chasing it until there's some physical barrier that stops me from it. And that makes so much sense to me. And I would, you know, extrapolate that medical opinion of this disease, to go further to say that it's also a disease because you can track the symptoms and everybody exhibits some form of the same symptom just like any other disease would and it's throughout the book they talk about that you know you don't want to you wouldn't get mad at a family that that analogy comes to these substances and we are all the same when it comes to alcoholism the acts of what we do while doing those can be completely different polar you may have this whole you know being on paper for 25 years and you're not a one-shot one of the great equalizers of this that's that's one of the great benefits of coming here is that we get to meet sex of life but we're all the same and and I think when I was new I didn't buy into that that seemed a little like idealistic kumbaya kind of Larry got up here he talked about his road name he said his road names Monday we give ourselves these you know we think they're really cool and they are cool names right but my road name is is ripple which is a grateful day that song which also is a brand of wine if you're old enough to know that you know I got that name because somewhere in my travels I really you know got latched on to a certain style of music and scene where we got to take a lot of different things and do a lot of wild stuff and and hear a lot of really cool things I would like to say that that's you know something I'm still able to do in sobriety I'm able to to still go to concerts I'm still able to go to you know I don't because I have a five-year-old like festivals and things like that but um I'm able to participate in all of those things that I was so worried about not being able to do when I got here years after I got sober two days after I picked up my white ship I had to report into bartending at not drinking that night so I said how am I ship on a Sunday it was three days later go in on Wednesday and do that take your big book take the phone list to the big book and put the big book by the register but that's exactly what I did because I was terrified to go in there and go behind that bar and pour y'all drinks and not pour myself one I wasn't sure if I was able to do that but I would say but I was able to do that because I followed the suggestions that y'all laid out for me now I'm not an advocate of saying that someone with three days of sobriety should go and get a job bartending advocate of saying that but if you come in and you're still employed you know don't kind of stuff or at least we want to think that we don't do that you know I feel like we think we don't make suggestions we think we don't give advice maybe we don't but you know since I've been here all I've gotten is suggestions and advice from you guys on how to live a sober life it's really not my come do this I think I do this about once a year you know we have people that that speak and they're elegant and they're able to do it and they do it more often than that but my track record's been about once a year I'll come and share my story and every year it gets you know the drunk part of it gets shorter and shorter the very first time I ever did it I think I had less than a year but not quite maybe I had over a year probably did and I think I spent the whole time telling you about how I drank and I realized that that's really not that important I don't think you guys are gonna think that somebody would get up here and talk like I don't need to convince you that I was one because I know in my heart that Tim's asked me to do this I've been listening to the bluechipspeaker.org speaker tapes your tapes on my way in something got into this habit when I was working at this urgent care listening to AA audios there's a good website that has a lot of they're from Iceland xaspeakers.org and I've burned through all of theirs in the last like five years so I was very happy to like finally log into the to the one that y'all run through this group um and not you know have all of these years of people to do it and it's it's a it's kind of a cool thing because this other one that I was into they're from like their groups are in Iceland and so they're flying and so they have all the big songs like Chris R. they have all the Joe and Charlie stuff they have all these big people on there that have flown over to Iceland that have told their stories so it's cool to hear them say stuff like we got to go see the Fjords and I saw you know whatever that but it's it's really cool to hear you know people talk about getting sober in Atlanta and hear the stuff that we do here and and give references to what we do around here because it really brings it back home and it really is just another another layer of proof that we are all the same and that we all do go through the same struggles because for so long I wanted to be completely different from everybody as much as I wanted to fit in and be part of something I also wanted an identity my own and this program has given me that identity and so much more it's given me a life today that that you know I have to I have to have a few months of notice to go 40 miles from my home to come and speak on an eight o'clock speaker meeting because I just have to schedule it nowadays because it's just the way my life is and none of that absolutely none of that is from me you know all of that is from you guys and 100% I believe you hate y'all thank you thank God for changing patterns and and we have asked Lenny to do the chips everybody I'm Lenny I'm an alcoholic thank you Wes I've been I don't know if I know all the colors, so I may need a little help. But I do know the white chip. Anybody need to get a white chip tonight? 30 days for a silver chip? 60 days. How about a red chip? 90 days? Anybody for a six-month yellow chip? Nine-month green chip? Anybody for years or multiples thereof? I'm Larry. I'm 40 years old. 14 years ago I came in here. I didn't come in here to find God. I came in here to get the course off my ass and stay out of jail. But while I was in rehab, something happened. I started working with a sponsor. I was sponsoring myself to begin with. I was going to do that one year in rehab and go back out. That was my plan. I wasn't looking for God. Me and him had to understand it. I didn't go in his house. He didn't go in mine. I was sponsored in discovering the difference between the shittiest one in my life. I got a God of mine. In 2023, I tried to take it back. He let me take out just enough rope to hang myself. And when I turned it back over to God, things turned around again. I didn't take that first drink. I did do it one day at a time. God meant through the day and at the end of the night. And if you got up before 730 this morning today, you got more surprise than I got. Anybody else for the... You were right. Hi, my name is Miss... I'm an alcoholic. Four. So usually I write nothing else because I remember when I was... I picked up my white chip in this room. I don't remember much of anything except for the one day at a time. Trust God, clean house, and help others. And that's it. Thank you, guys.