Sponsorship Without the Radio Stations – Aaron G.

My name is Aaron Giles. I'm an alcoholic, and I want to welcome all of our new friends to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want thank everyone who took cakes and especially thank that fine 10-minute speaker. Ooh! Ooh! She was hot, wasn't she? She's got a good story, too. But I want to say thank you to Bob for inviting me out and picking me up at the airport. And thank you, Jay, for that wonderful meal. You guys really know how to spoil a drunk around here. and I'm going to share in a general way what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like today. I'm born in St. Louis, Missouri. If you were from St. Louis, you'd drink too. Nothing but cold. Got a bike when I was six years old. couldn't ride it for two weeks because so much ice on the ground. Pissed me off. I was number 10 on the inventory list. Born into a family. Dad left when I was two years old, never saw the man. My mother raised me as a single parent. I'm an only child. I'm selfish, I'm self-centered from the gate. Captain of my own ship. Man who knows what to do and knows how to get it done, I thought. Five years old, my grandmother and my mother worried all day. Why? Circus was in town. Across the street, I decided at five years old that I wanted to go to the circus. They wouldn't give me any money, so I went anyhow. Spent all day at the circus without a dime in my pocket. Came home and got my ass beat. my grandmother she was this Baptist lady my mother was a child of the 60's got involved in all these rainbow colored stuff orange sunshine purple hay whatever you guys called it damn 60's children I used to watch her roll these funny little cigarettes And she was a cat My mother was You know I love Alcoholics Anonymous I hear people say Oh, I came from a middle class family And I used To sit there like Damn What was my family? Below poverty? My mother Was a cattle rustler You know, what that means is we would go to the grocery store and she would stick steaks between her legs with those dresses. You know. And, you know, and that's how we had USDA choice. She had a bad picker She picked the worst boyfriends And she would bring me along And I hated all of them All of them were on my list We moved to California Because I had asthma really bad as a child Couldn't breathe And the doctor said, you know, you needed to dry heat. Arizona, California. She chose California. We moved out here. Somewhere along the line, though, my mother read in a book or one of the doctors told her on the side, I want you to go around the meeting tonight. I want to every time somebody shakes your hand and says, how are you doing? I want You to tell them I lied on my resume. I got fired. The first 10-minute speaker at that meeting got up and talked about lying to get her kid into a school. The second 10-minutes speaker got up it talked about lion to get something done the main speaker got up and he talked about line and I said oh my god my God meets me at my greatest needs that did more for me than anything else. Because what it did is it taught me the value of the truth. Everything that I hold in darkness that I think needs to be concealed because of how you think about me or what you may think, it kills me. This is about getting rid of your deepest darkest secrets right here folks. This Is about sharing stuff that you normally wouldn't share and getting rid of things that you Normally wouldn't get rid of so you can be free. And that's what I did that evening. I want to thank you again for having me out and speaking this evening, and I wantto thank you for being here and making a 12-step call on me. Because the kind of lady my mother was, we would go to the doctor for my asthma and next thing I know, I'd see the doctor leaving my house in the morning. You know? I don't know. But one of them told her that if you smoke a little bit of that funny tobacco, it expands the lungs and your child can breathe. So every time I cough, she'd stick a joint in my mouth. I coughed all the time. Still today, every now and then I'm coughing Where is that from? You know I live in L.A. And You know the kids are bold nowadays They just They drive down the street smoking a joint Like it's a cigarette And every now I'm riding with my window down And I get a whiff And I'm like God, that stuff smells stronger than when I was out there. If I could only do it without consequences and repercussions. So when we moved to California, I always hung out with the older guys because I'm hip, I'm slick, I'M cool. And I'm a step above the guys my age. So I hung out with the older guys in the neighborhood. One night, the older guys in The Neighborhood are planning to get a six-pack of Old English 800. So they go across the street to the boys' market and you know, I'm an idea man and I'm always the one. Actually, just to tell you the truth, I live in constant fear of you're not approving of me so I overcompensate and how I overcompensate is if there's a trigger that has to be pulled if there is a bag that has to be walked out with and a theft if there anything that has to be done I have to be the one to do it just to show you how bad I am and that's what I did I got the guy I talked the guy into going in the liquor store and buying us a six pack of Old English and the older boys was like man you down you are the man And I lived for that I lived For you to tell me I am the man And I did a lot of things Just so you could tell me that We got that old English 800, two cans a piece It was three of us And I downed those two cans And my whole Life changed You see I was Probably in the 7th, 8th grade at the time And I had a lot of girlfriends. It's just they didn't know they were my girlfriends, you know. But after them two cans of Old English 800, I went home and they used to have a saying back in the 70s, if you said the right things to a girl, you blew her mind. And I went home and I said the right things. And from there on, I had no social environments, no parties, no barbecues, no get-togethers, no social interaction without that magic elixir. Now, my elixIR grew from Old English 800. You know, I began to graduate to Thunderbird. And after high school, when I went to the Marine Corps, you know. It was Mad Dog 2020. Wasn't until I was four years sober that I found out Morgan David never put a grape in that stuff. Cisco's. Liquid crack. And, you now, I never set out to be an alcoholic. And I'd like to share with you that one of the things I didn't do is I didn'T drink dark liquor. And the reason I didn' t drink dark liqueur is because my mother had a boyfriend. His name was Junior. And Junior drank Christian Brothers. And when my mother met this man, he was 6'3". He weighed 220 pounds. By the time she was done with him, he Was about six foot even, and he weighed about 140. And Junior was this type of drunk. We lived in this back house off of 110th and Broadway, South Central L.A., and I was ashamed to bring anybody to my house because Junior was this kind of drunk. You know, Junior would – and he was in the later stages of his alcoholism where when he took a drink just a little bit, you know, So he would pass out on the way to the bathroom and be laying in a pool of his own vomit. Or he would get up at 3 o'clock in the morning on theway to thebathroom, and he would take a leak in the refrigerator. He would cry like a little baby and share about all of the things that he could have been. And some mornings, you know, I would have to pick him up and put him to bed like a little baby. And I was in the ninth grade at the time. And I were so, so ashamed of Junior. So I didn't drink Christian Brothers because then – I mean dark liquor because if you drank dark liquor, you end up like Junior. so I drank vodka and gin if I drank hard liquor and gin and orange juice gin and grapefruit juice and I remember one day I was driving down the street and I was in the Marine Corps at the time and you know I was doing pretty good and I had a few stripes on my arm and life was wonderful and met this girl from Texas in a short short mini skirt I had to think for short short mini skirts and she wanted to go to the e-club with me that night so I drove by and I picked her up we stopped at the liquor store and I'd like to share with you I'm not really a bar drinker I'm more like a I'm a car drinker maybe some other car drinkers here you know I stop at the liquor store and on the way there You know, I get a couple cups and, you know, I got an 85 Camaro with the flat dashboard, you know, and we set our cups up and we start the rounds in the car on the way to the E-Club. I'm driving from L.A. to Tustin in Orange County. And, you know, I go to pour orange juice in hers and she's like, honey, what are you going to do with that? I said, I'm gin and orange. She said, I do not take anything in my gin. I like mine straight I fell in love and she had that Texas twang and we ended up at the E-Club and we drank all night just another one of those nights and I tried to hang by drinking mine straight But car drinkers, the way I do it is I stop off on the way to the club or on the way to party and, you know, I usually end up getting a bottle of Old English 800 is what my M.O. was and then I get a pint or a half pint depending on what kind of night I'm expecting and I pull in the parking lot of the club and I don't really, I don't really usually pay to go into the club because I'm looking for one of the stragglers in the parking lot that we can drink in the car with. And the good thing about car drinkers is you can mix your drinks in the card. Mix it with a little cocaine, mix it with aloe weed, you know. And, you know, I had the greatest pickup line out there. You get high? Worked for a long time. Alcohol eventually turned on me. 23 years old. I'm in a hospital program for the first time. Robert F. Kennedy Hospital in Hawthorne, California. I walked in. I was 90 pounds underweight, dehydrated. Doctor gave me an examination. And I had no idea at the time what I was walking into. The heat was on. You know, the Marine Corps kind of smiles they kind of they don't smile they frown on the fact that you don't show up for 30 days at a time they call that a wall and uh so the heat was on i hadn't been hadn't been showing up and uh i thought if i checked into a hospital program it would show good faith and they would be lenient on me and uh i go in and this doctor gives me an examination i didn't know it but he had 20 years he gave me an examination he asked me a question. I'll never forget it. He said, wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice if you could drink and use as much as you want, as much as you can, without any negative consequences? And I thought to myself, yeah, that would be nice. And I thought I was about to find out that answer, you know, the answer to the question, you know? And if you're new here to Alcoholics Anonymous, I just want to let you know, wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it been nice if you could drink and use as much as you want without any negative consequences. And I'll tell you like he told me, the fact of the matter is if you'd be a real alcoholic, that day will never come. And for nine years, I want to share with you, I bounced in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked in here, November of 1985, 23 years old, and I looked at all the differences and none of the similarities. Looked at all of the differences. I heard older people because, you know, it seems like the meetings I went to in Hawthorne, everybody was old. You know, I was 23 and I was like, people would share, I drank for 20 years! And I'd be like, I got about 15 left. You know, and I couldn't hear it, couldn't hear it. I couldn' hear that this you know, I thought it was and see, I came in here and I thought my real problem was I just needed to get this crack pipe out of my hand. If I got rid of that, I'd be all right. See, I can drink. You don't understand. I can drink. I just need to get this real thing that's killing me out of my hand. So I thought I had problems with other things and the book talks about it. Alcohol is a subtle foe. Subtle because it convinced me I didn't have this thing called alcoholism. I had a crack addiction. I was a crackhead. but every time it would start with one drink start with one drink and I couldn't make the correlation between ending up you know homeless eating out of trash cans wifeless kidless you know I had a wife and three kids that was my wife that shared earlier for you that didn't catch it and you know she changed the locks on me and you know I remember coming home and telling her I found the answer vodka And she was like, get out. I'm like, what? 1994, August of 1994. I'm homeless. You know, my mother, she wouldn't let me come there anymore. The wife wouldn't allow me to come there. I was out of answers. And, you know, my mother suggested that I go and look at the VA hospital because I was a veteran. So I went to the VA Hospital, and, you Know, I walked in the VA Hospital, and what happened was there were three guys there, and they were doing an intake evaluation. And I saw a guy out in the waiting room who I used to go to meetings with. If you stay around here bouncing in and out nine years, you meet some people in AA. And I met this guy. And what he said was, he said if you go into that intake evaluation and they don't give you a bed, what you do is you tell them you're homicidal and suicidal, they're going to put you over there on the lockdown ward for a few days, and then they'll ship you up to the alcohol ward. And I was like, okay, bet. Okay? And so they did the intake evaluation, and the guys sitting there said, look, call us back in three weeks. We may have a bed for you. I said, you don't understand. If you let me walk out of that door, I'm either going to kill somebody or I'm going to killed myself. And the guy in the middle asked the other two guys to leave out and he said, look, I know you don' t have anywhere else to go but you just saying you homicidal and suicidal. Those people over there in lockdown, they are homicidal. I was like, I played my last card. He said, wait outside for a few minutes. I waited outside for seems like hours. He came out. He called everybody on the list. If you can be here tomorrow, we'll have a bed for you. I showed up the next morning. They had a bed for me. Three weeks into the program, you know, if you've ever been in any one of those treatment programs, you come in like I would come in and make alliances. I'm the alpha male. I got to line myself up with the other alpha males. This particular weekend, we alphas were planning to go to 7-Eleven. Now going to 711 is no big deal until the VA tells you you can't go and leave the compound. And then it's a major strategy. How to get around the guards and get out the gate and get back in. You know, it takes planning. But there was a panel going on at the same time in the auditorium. And something said, and I don't know if you knew the Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, the thing I love about this program is you can choose a higher power of your own understanding. And that particular day, what I called God, I know was God working, but I called him something because something said go to that panel. And the other alphas went to 7-Eleven, and I went to the panel. And when I got to the piano in the auditorium, there were people standing there, and the women were wearing dresses, and the guys were dressed like me, and I'd heard about those people. Those were those, like she talked about, those were those AA Nazis on the west side. and I'd heard that you've got to go to Clancy's house and clean up after his gazelles I heard about them but I stayed and a speaker got up on an H&I panel and he shared that day and what he talked about He said that he was 22 years sober, and when you're in those programs, you get a lot of people that come in with maybe my time, four or five years, but not a lot OF people with over the 20-year mark. And this guy had 22 years of life. He was 22-years sober. But what he shared that day, he shared, and I would hear people talk about it all the time at Alcoholics Anonymous, and I felt so foreign. I felt like, you know, I felt like I was in a foreign land somewhere a lot of times because I would hear people share at the meetings I was going to if you just don't drink your life will get better that's what they would say and I would not drink I'm not drink for three and a half years at one time of not drinking and my life got worse you see I'm a real alcoholic. I'm restless, I'm irritable, and I'm discontent. And I wear a don't F with me sign at about 60, 90 days sober. Because see, you don't understand. I got unresolved issues. I got demons. I got humans that at 3 o'clock in the morning they come out and they plague my mind. I got stuff that's like a spring, and it winds tight and tight and tight. And I can't sleep at night because I got to contemplate. And yeah, I get the wife back, and I get the kids back. And then I'm like, if the kids say one more thing. just gonna launch him in the next week and the boss don't act right he doesn't understand how to run this company and that woman if only she would do like I tell her so no I'm not one of those people that felt if you just don't drink and use your life is getting better and I thought I would hear it and people around me like on pink clouds and oh I haven't had a drink in 90 days and I'm working the steps, and my life is wonderful. And I'm sitting there like, why is my life all messed up? And I felt like if I shared with you how messed up my life was, that I would be different. So I held it all in. This guy got up at 22 years sober, and he shared that he was 22 years sober, just got fired off his job. Not fired, he had just gotten laid off. He had a wife. He had three kids. He didn't know how he was going to pay his rent. He was writing checks that may bounce, and he was just hoping that the checks, you know, he wrote them on Fridays and hoped that the money would be there on Monday for the groceries so he could feed his children. he was not sharing at 22 years that life was good he was sharing that he had issues but what he talked about was that if you if you will get rid of the things that stand and the way he said it was just beautiful he said if you get rid of the people that stand between me and you you can stay sober and I honestly believe that today if I'll get rid of the things that stand between you and me one day at a time I have a chance to stay sober around here and what are those things the character defects, resentments, fears just a whole plethora new word after he shared, and he also talked about, you know, and I really identified, he had been to jail for 25 years of his life. You know, I didn't identify with that because the most I ever spent was 30 days in a county jail with $125 bail. I had a lot of people that loved me. I called him and I asked him to be my sponsor. And by the way, he told me that day after I got his phone number, he said, look. Now, he's going through all of these problems, and he gave me his phone number, and I couldn't believe it. He said, look, if you need to, call me collect because I know you might have hard times. I said, oh, he think all brothers is broke. First time I called him, I called and collect. He invited me out to his meeting I went to this meeting It was the largest meeting I ever attended in my life It was like a mini convention A lot of people I raised my hand as a new person And I got bum rust You know you go to some meetings And you raise your hand As a newperson And nobody says a word to you At this meeting It seems like 50 people Walked up and gave me their cards They gave me their phone numbers. They asked me if I needed a ride to the meeting, if I need a ride home. You know, and they just overwhelmed me. And, you know, I had people that were giving me a ride Home every night, and I had People that would come by and pick me up for work and take me to the meet-in. And, You know I didn't have a car at the time, and like I said I was separated from my wife. And my mother, what she did is when I got out of the VA, my mother she said well you can stay here. But what she didn't want it to be me to get the impression It was permanent. So she wouldn't give me a bed. What she did is she put two Ottomans together and she gave me a sheet and a pillow, you know, so I would have that temporary effect in my mind. and so i was going to meetings every night and and and in my group you know it's like they just they they kind of like throw you in and then you go with the flow you know and and and and my sponsor you know he directed me to go to you know seven meetings a week and have seven commitments and i got commitments at all of these meetings and i was like well why i got to go to seven meetings a week he said did you drink every day i said okay and i said well why you got to get commitments what does that have to do and you know i'm i've been around here nine years in and out so i what's that got to do where does that say that in that book and he says it says that you give back to aa and i was like okay so i started and he asked me he said have you before have you ever had a commitment in Alcoholics Anonymous, and under nine years that I've been around here, I had never had a commitment. Never. And you know why? Because I was a taker. I came to meetings to get the message. Where's the message? I was here to get the message! I thought that's why you came to meetings. I was looking for the message, And the message was going right over my head. Get a sponsor, get a commitment, work the steps. I never got it. So I got commitments at every meeting, and I did my commitments begrudgingly. People would say, what's your commitment? I'd be like, I'm the chairman. They was like, the chairman? I'd say, yeah, I stack chairs. You know, I would stack the chairs. Why do I got to stack chairs? And then they would give me like scraping commitments, scraping the gum up. I'll scrape the gum and I'll do it grudgingly. But you know what I started noticing? Is when I left the meeting, I will feel a little better. And I feel like, and I heard somebody share it at a meeting. They said, you know, a meeting's not really yours if you don't have a commitment there. And I was like, oh, that's my meeting. I got a commitment. That's my meaning. You know, and I started taking pride in what went on in Alcoholics Anonymous because it was my meeting because I had a commitment and that went on, you know, and I was sharing with my new friend here this, you know I got so busy in Alcoholic Anonymous. I looked up and I had six months sober And I was like, man, you know You don't have time If you get busy in Alcoholics Anonymous Doing what we do around here You won't have the time to drink and use But the thought didn't go away Because see One of the things that I suffer from Is the book, big book talks about it The main problem of the alcoholic Centers in his mind rather than his body And I believe that wholeheartedly And it's like Diane said You know, I would think drink and I would be drunk. Because whatever I thought, you've got to understand, I come from a place where I'm the alpha and the omega of my own life. I am God. I like that in Denzel Washington movie. I'm God. That's how I was. I was God. I didn't know it at the time. and I can you know, and I have a friend that often says it, Aaron, go to the cleaners and put your God suit in the cleanors I'm like, what is she talking about because I'm running around trying to run some stuff one more time, and when I run some stuff, I usually run myself right into misery and depression sober, I can do it I can play God in a heartbeat again And the whole thing is that I have steps and I have commitments and I am sharing with other alcoholics that keeps me from playing God and running my life in the dirt because that's what I do. So we are separated. I'm living on this ottoman. And I'm crying every night at meetings. And my sponsor gets wind of it because they got AA snitches. And they run around and they snitch you out to your sponsor. Did you know your baby was down there crying about his wife? So he's like, what's this wife thing? And I tell her, man, I'm separated. You know, she doesn't want to see me. I got three kids. And he's like, okay, this is what I want you to do. He's like instead of having seven commitments, I want you to have six. Go to six meetings on Sunday. What I want to do is call her up, tell her every Sunday you're going to come by and spend three hours with the kids. You don't go to meetings on Sundays. Sunday nights. But I said, she's not going to go for it. He said, try it anyhow. Called her up. She said, okay, you can come by for three hours and hung up the phone. First time I went by at two hours and 57 minutes, she was like, you got to go. I kept going, kept going every Sunday, every Sunday. Kept going back, kept Going back. A few Sundays went by and she was like, no, I cook some food if you want to stay. I thought I ain't got nowhere to go but back to my Ottomans a few more Sundays went by and she was like I got a movie when the kids go to bed if you want to stay a few more Sundays went by I had a toothbrush in the place A few more Sundays went by She was like, you might as well move back in You got all your clothes here I said, I gotta talk to my sponsor And you know That's the important part about sponsorship That I love in Alcoholics Anonymous If you turn all of these radio stations on Here at one time you can't hear what's going on and see this is my my mo i run around and i talk to like five or ten people to get a poll on my problem first and then i go talk to my sponsor about it right wrong i learned you go talk your sponsor first you know and i go with one direction around here And that direction has not failed me since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I state, you know, it's important for a person who likes to run their life like I do to stay under somebody's sponsorship. It's important. And so he told me to move back in. And, you know, I like to say that, you know, we moved back in and we've been skipping down the path of sobriety together. You know, but it hasn't been that way. And at about a year sober, it was directed, we were directed by her sponsor and by my sponsor to have a date night because we had three children and we were consumed, you know, we were being separated, you know, and we were on the brink of just going going at each other so uh we instilled a date night every fourth friday of the month we go out on a date come hell or high water and you know my first four years we had some broke date nights our date night consisted of some oroville rettenbacher and a video, you know, by the grace of God. And one day at a time now we go to Morton's, you know, and we have a good life, you know, most of the time, right? We had problems with our kids and one day at the yard. You know, we have a yard in my group at Clancy's house. He don't have no gazelles. And my sponsor noticed that my daughter was, at the time, she was a little distant. And he said, what's wrong with her? You need, you know, and I say, you knows, I have trouble connecting with her. And he said, what you need to do is spend time with her, and I heard it said at one of the meetings, how do you spell love to a child? It's not M-O-N-E-Y, and that's what I thought. You know, if I just gave her enough and showered her with enough she wouldn't love me. But how do spell love for a child is T-I-M-E, spending time with them. And so what I did is I instilled a shopping day and every Sunday I would go grocery shopping and one child would come with me every Sunday. Now their whole thing was if we go shopping with dad at the end of this, we get to get the candy line. And so they all went with me for the end when they could get whatever candy they wanted at the checkout. But it was my way of tricking them into spending time with dad you know and they still talk about that today daddy remember when we used to go shopping with you and my daughter she was real special because the boys i have two boys and my daugher you know the two boys they would go shopping at the grocery store and they just pull the cart or jump on the car and go man you know but she would be like daddy mommy really likes this daddy this is what we should get daddy You know, and we have a good relationship today, me and my daughter, and my boys too. Like I said, at four years sober, we were having a real difficult time financially. We ran across some real hard times. One car threw a rod, and then the other car, the transmission went out on. The kids were at a school that was like four miles down the road, and so we were all five of us were on a bus. And I shared that with somebody in our group, and they gave us a car for six months and let us drive their car. And I ended up getting another job, and then I quit that job to get another job. And, you know, in my first four years, I want to share with you, I had a resume that looked real sketchy. I was trying to find myself. So I was in and out of these different jobs, you know, and all without prayer and all without God, it was just like, honey, I quit today. She'd be like, what? And I'll call my sponsor and tell him my ideas and he'd be Like, what You're supposed to call me before you make a decision like that Oh, okay So one time I came up with this bright idea To get a job Somebody in the group offered me a job And it was at a You know, I was doing telemarketing at the time And they wanted me to come out and do some telemarketed And it wasn't It was at an ice company in Torrance And I went out to the job And they said, you got the job All you gotta do is show up And I showed up And then they asked for a resume and i said oh my resume looks pretty bad i need to show consistency and i got windows 95 at home let me take this home and i went home and i'd show consistency put together some dates you know left off some dates went back put together everything went back turned it in three weeks on the job they called me in the office they said we did a background investigation and these dates don't match. And they fired me. They escorted me off of the grounds, gave me my last check. It was on a Wednesday afternoon. I'll never forget it. And all the way home, I'm supposed to be four years sober walking this spiritual path. I'm sponsoring guys. I'm active in the Pacific group. I'm suppose to be spiritual, right? And I just got fired. so all the way home I'm getting thirsty on the bus I got home, I called my sponsor he said come to the meeting tonight we'll talk about it I got to the meet and he said what happened I told him what happened he's like what happened and I told them one more time they're trying to keep a brother down he said what really happened I told Him I put together some dates He said you lied on the resume man? He said, look, at about four years is when the ego rebuilds itself. This is what I want you to do.