Step 1 — Powerlessness – Rick H. – Wilson House Big Book Workshop Retreat – 2024

um hello everybody welcome my name is tanya and i am an alcohol I've been to this retreat, I think it's my fourth year, and I've always learned a lot, and coming to the Wilton Hills is like coming home to me. My heart just always feels full, and the people are always so wonderful who attend and he put it on as well so it's just always a place i look forward to coming so uh my sober date is october 24th 2012 and um i don't know i was really blessed because it had gotten really bad for a long time but of course i didn't know it was as bad as it was a lot of other people saw it but i didn't um i was really blessed one morning i woke up and um it was my higher powers that came in and i forget that's what came there and i didn t know what it meant but it was the first time to this day i remember uh feeling hope at that moment I had never really felt hope in life until then and it was a really magnificent moment and I had no idea what to do or what it looked like but I knew I would be okay and that was a really amazing feeling because I had never been okay so I'll think that's like crying I want to cry because it's so so wonderful that I listen you know I heard that message that and so I literally picked up the phone and called my mom and said I don't know what I'm doing but I need to go to recovery and she said okay there's a lot of alcoholics in our family but none that have been into recovery so that was a new concept and so I said can you come down and be me and be the mother of my and I said to my girl, which is why I figured this out. And she said, OK. And she lived two hours from me, so like two hours on the dot went by, and I picked up the phone, and she answered. It wasn't her cell phone. That's not my mom. And I'm like, what are you doing? You're still at home. And she's like, I didn't know it was crucial. I'm, like, well, I got to do something. She's, like what are doing? I'm Like, I don't know. So she came down, and the road I grew up on is called Barrett Hill, and I have a lot of family still there. She said, well, I've alerted Barrett Hills already. They know the deal. So I was like, okay, whatever that means. So, I mean, I was still taking all kinds of pills and whatnot. welcome and um you know keeping myself kind of myself and i was smoking a lot of pot because i quit drinking through antidepressants a couple days before it had started the bts so i was just a mess and i said to my mom when she got there i'm gonna go to barrett hill and she said okay your godmother's there waiting for you. And I said, okay. So I'm halfway there. I can't believe anybody let me drive at that point, but I think she couldn't believe I was still alive at that point. So, okay, one last rodeo and halfway home was Hartford. And, uh, I just remembered one of my friends his name is Ethan and we used to work together and I know that he left um our you know state politics to go to DC politics but he's been in recovery and I thought oh that's who I can call he might know something so I called him and I was like wow what are you taking what do you and I'm like nothing I'm so sorry he's like oh my god you have your drugs with you? I'm like, yep. And he said, you need to pull over and take some blah, blah, blah, because I was starting to get drugged, and he kicked out. So I said, no, no. I am fine. And he says, did you call me to fight, or did you called me for help? And so it be there. And I said okay, I'll pull over right now. Boom, right on 384, popped some of the things I was to pop in I said I don't know what to do and he said just get to Brooklyn and when you get there have your family figure it out and I you know my godmother was there and my brother and sister-in-law everybody now and it was wonderful Ethan said he'd find a place that had a detox as well as 28 day program i could go in and so i did and um my brother brought me um he had a really good good ride up and before he left my sister-in-law was arrived i had two humongous suitcases and um she said to me i don't think you need seven patent leather different color heels like Like, I just don't think you do. And I'm like, you don't? And she's like, perhaps just bring the beige ones. They'll match everything. So I was like, okay. Oh, my God. So anyway, it's a lot of fun. But yeah, so, you know, so I did that. And then I, when I was just about done with the 28-day program, and I loved being there because it was the first time I was plucked out of society and, like, you know, pulled to work on myself. And I only brought one picture with me, and it was a picture of me when I was about 2 and 1⁄2 years old. I didn't bring any of my children or anything. And I don't know why I brought that picture. I just did. and um when i was there it was just amazing my family would bring my kids up they all kind of took time because it was up on cape cod um and it was really great and i was so ready like just ready that i was you know good school girl i you know did what i was supposed to do and they let me have phone privileges every night at 4 o'clock I could call my children and talk to them that was really hard but I knew I had to get better so yeah when that came to be done I was like thinking I knew it all and I have to eat them every single night and he said, what are you doing after? And I said, well, I'm going home. He was like, you'll be drinking in no time. And I'm like, oh, no. And he's like, I've been here. He went to a place called Karen and he says, I thought the same thing and I was drinking in a month. He said, I had to do something different. He said if anything, can you just please learn from my wisdom? them and I said okay and um I said but I can't be this far away I need to be in Connecticut and he said I'll find you a place so he found me this wonderful place welcome come on in no you're fine um he found a place in Caney, Connecticut where I did um almost two months of um living at a woman's house which was amazing and they were wonderful and they let me have my kids come on the weekends my roommate and I were really tight everybody thought she was my daughter she's adorable and her name is Sarah and Sarah and I just held on to each other her dad died unexpectedly while she was living there and um i found out i had cancer while i was living there and both of us just said we're holding on to each other we're not drinking and so i went and stayed with her at her house when they did all their father's burial stuff and she was a big support with me when i had my surgery and so it was really beautiful and um she started her aprn yeah she she was 21 when she came in and she was like married to two kids really beautiful so um yeah that was really important those extra two months because it really humbled me and it taught me how to live with other people who were trying to live with other other people too. And I went to three meetings a day. It was the only place I felt safe, and it was really wonderful. And then I came home and had my surgery, and i've been cancer free for 11 years which is great amen okay um and you know oddly enough my mom she was like why aren't you like freaking out because he had just buried my dad who's kind of spun me into recovery that was like really bad when he died so i just went off the rails pretty much so um but um she said yeah and i said mom i am not afraid of cancer god could have gotten me at any time he had so many opportunities he did this to teach me to pay attention and i have to do the right thing and the next thing will happen you know she was just blown away because i would be always just hysterical and oh my god just a mess all the time so it was nice to be able to give my mom and my family the gift of me not reacting and it being like this huge thing and i mean it was important but um you know it didn't feel as important as you know alcohol and getting sober from that because that worked for me so yeah so that was you know the beginning for me and my kids they were wonderful and they like I said they were with me the whole run and they'd go to meetings with me and many people and I was told it was a family disease so my older child went to a psychotherapist talk about their feelings and my younger child became a member of Allotine for many years and got really involved and would do conferences and weekends and it was really nice we all the three of us sort of cohorted through sobriety um and it were funny because i had to like keep coming and growing up emotionally i started drinking at like 15 years um i had like grow up before my kids grew up like i had be able to give them something and they weren't very far behind me so emotionally so I was like you know save the course though and that's where I met my sponsor who it really isn't she is I had it before, I'm certain, but it was the first time I recognized what a condition was and that I was lovable and that give love and she just loves my kids she still does and we're still really close and now she's kind of in like my pseudo mother my sister my best friend like just she's like a little bit of everything left in the one that i call yvonne and um she said to me after i was sober for years um you know in the program pick somebody who has what you want and i never met her she just happened to be at this speaking commitment because somebody didn't show up so they called her and she came and right after the meeting i pounced on her and i was like will you be my sponsor and she was like whoa slow down there honey i'm like she's like okay all right so she I said, here's my number. And, you know, call me. So I got in my car and called her. And she was like, hello? I'm like, hi, it's me. She's like, who's me? I'm Like, Sonia from the meeting? She's Like, oh, wow, you are a quick one. I'm, like, when do you want to go out for coffee? Like, tomorrow? She's, like OK. Where do you even live? She was thinking Mars, but Bridgeport? and uh so that was the beginning and um and like i just fell in love with her so she said to me years later she's like what did i have that you wanted she said i am like an older she's 75 now she says i'm an old woman compared to you i'm a little short black woman i'ma lesbian she said what did you see that you wanted and i said well yvonne at the time i really had no idea i said but today i know that it was your spirituality i said i hooked on to it i didn't know that's what it was in the moment but that's What I Wanted More Of and um she looked at me I'm glad I didn't ask you any sooner. Because I wouldn't have known. So that's my beginning, and I'll let Rick qualify. Thanks, Sonia. Rob, I'm glad to see you found the snacks. I knew it wouldn't take long. everybody I'm Rick alcoholic and my sobriety date is June 5th 1997 I've been coming to this retreat for what is it that 17 18 years something like that and I'm sorry if I get emotional, but I've sat in this room for that long and listened to people share their stories up here. And I'm honored that you guys thought I had enough in my tank to give you something, and hopefully I do. you know I have been how many people been to bingo anybody ever been to bingo all right so you know you get that big ball and then the ball spins around and there's all numbers in there and they're all spinning around like crazy and the guy flips the trap door and a number comes up and that's what they call all right well that's what my head's been doing for a month for a month all this crap has been spinning around in my head of what was going to come out of my mouth so I have no clue when that trap door opens called my mouth I can't guarantee what's coming out it all depends on what gets called so I hope I can keep my emotions in check because like I said, this is very emotional so give you a little history on rick because uh i started my uh my drinking career i'm going to call it my my first structured drink i mean i grew up in a household where where booze was prominent and um my mother never drank but my father did and and always had people over that drank and um i was the guy the little kid that would go to the get the beers fetch the beers out of the refrigerator and um I'd get that swill from the empty or I'd gets that first sip off the top of a new beer and that's probably where I got my taste for it but um My dad, I looked up to my dad. My dad was my hero. Saturday mornings, I would get up and he would take me with him and we'd go to do those things like go to the dump and we'll go to a hardware store and we do all of the things that our fathers did on Saturday morning. And in the afternoon, he would take me to the bar with him. And he would prop me on a bar stool and give me a roll of quarters and get me a Coke and a bag of pretzels. And I'd sit there and play pinball while he sat at the bar and settled world affairs with the buddies and talk sports and whatever. You know, I looked up to him. I wanted to be like him. Little did I know that not too many years later, I would be that guy sitting at that barstool. And I remember my first structured drink I mentioned was, I was 10 years old and I grew up in a neighborhood where there was a lot of kids. Back in the 60s, we played sports and all the kids got together and we played everything from baseball, hockey, basketball, doesn't matter what we did depending on the sport of the season that's what we did and i grew up with older kids so when they started picking up drinking at 12 13 years old i was right there with them and um and i the memory is like embedded in my head i can i remember that day of of making the plans that's that's what we were going to do we're going to sweep out and the fort that we built up behind the house and um we went down and one of the kids knew somebody to get some pots so we went to the drug dealer's house we uh we we got some pot and then we went down one of people knew somebody had to buy him some beer and we got some beer. And we went back to that fort and that was the first structured drink that I ever had and um i loved it i was off and running you know you don't you can't go down to the package store find somebody to buy you beer when you're 10 years old so um at least i at least I couldn't so um you know so i i got in the habit of uh of swiping beers and doing those kind of things I grew up in the 60s, the Bobby Orr era of hockey. And I'm a big hockey fan, big hockey player. I've been playing hockey since I was eight years old. And I wanted to be Bobby Orre. I played hockey, street hockey in the summertime and ice hockey in the wintertime. I was that kid that was at the pond skating and playing even when nobody else was there. And when the pucks all went through the ice and you didn't have a puck to play with, you used a shoe or you used, you used stone or a stick or whatever you could find. And I wanted to, that was my ambition as an eight-year-old kid. And little did I know that alcohol was going to start removing that ambition. and that's what it did for me. It removed that ambition to become that hockey player and I still played, I still did all kinds of things but it gradually as I get into my teens and hockey was prevalent and I was making my way towards that dream of becoming that hockey play I started missing practice because drinking was more important I started showing up at practice with a buzz, and I started doing those kind of things. And little did I know that alcohol would eventually remove that ambition. I never had the ambition to become an alcoholic. Little did I now that that's what I became, but alcohol took over, and alcohol made all the decisions for me from that point on. And I got cut from my junior hockey team. And the coach told me that they were moving in a bigger direction. You know, I'm a pretty small guy. And in the beginning of my hockey career, small guys could play. And he told me they were going to be a little bit more active. They were moving into a bigger Direction and that's what I got caught for. and what I really got cut for was because of my drinking and my drug use and my lack of ambition and my lack of drive to do what was necessary to become that. And I can look back on it today and know that that's what it was. Alcohol started making all the decisions for me. I remember when I graduated high school, I was a mess in high school I did everything I could possibly do just to skate by. And when I got my diploma, the principal of the high school put his hand over the microphone and he handed me my diploma and he said to me, he says, you know, you don't deserve this. He said, but I'm not putting up with another year of you. And you read in the big book, in Bill's story where Bill says, you know i had arrived that was mine i had my diploma i had arrived i was out of school i could do what i wanted i could drink like i wanted i couldn't do anything i wanted and i started i put my parents through hell i really did i um they loved me anyways the stuff that i did i i I remember one story, and I'll tell you this quick. My parents had gone away for a weekend. We had a place in Vermont, a snowmobile place that we used to go to. My parents have gone to Vermont, and now I'm 17 years old. And what's a 17-year-old do when his parents aren't there? I mean, you can only imagine. and had a big bash at the house, and things were crazy. One of the guys was too drunk to drive home. What do I do? I'll give you a ride. Somebody's car was blocking mine, so I said to the girl, I said, Donna, give me your keys. I need to bring Peter home. So I'm driving Peter home, I get pulled over, I get arrested for DUI, So remember, there's a party going on at my house. So I get arrested for DUI and the cops let Peter drive the car home. I guess, who was the sober one? I guess. I don't know. But anyways, you know, here I am. I'm in jail, and I'm waiting until the morning for the bail bondsman to come and let me out. Of course, the party's still going on at my house. 6.30 in the morning, they come down, and they bail me out, and Peter and Donna both come down to pick me up, and they come downstairs. They come down in my car to pick you up because her car was out of gas, and um so they uh they come down to pick me up and we're driving home and that night it had a light rain and um froze and there's black ice everywhere and and they're driving back to my house and i got to be in court now it's monday morning i gotta be in caught at 8 30 and um you slide through an intersection smash into a telephone pole donna breaks her nose there's blood all over my car, and I've got to take her to a hospital now. We drive this smashed-up car to a hospital. He's driving. Peter's driving because I don't have a license. They took my license. And now I've Got to Get to Court at 8.30 in the morning. So you just picture the map of how much time I've GOT to do this. I end up in court, and I go through all of that, and they sentence me to go to a dial program. Back in the day, they called it a dial program and it wasn't, they didn't. And it's funny, you know, you look at what happens to people today that get arrested for DUI, they're sentenced to AA. Back then they were sentenced to a dial program, which I can't even tell you what it stands for, but they basically showed you pictures of what happens in car crashes and all kinds of stuff and it was I'll be honest with you, I paid no attention. I drank before I went And when I could get out, I went across the street, the corner of the bar, and waited for me. I went to my car and made sure that everybody kind of got out, and the instructors were gone, and then I'd walk into the bar. And it didn't teach me anything. It didn't teaching me anything taught me I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We've all been in the right place at a wrong time, little did I know. I know how different that is today. Another funny story for you before I move on here. I'm 17, I'm probably 18 years old and a bunch of us go up to New Hampshire to have a party at one of my buddy's friend's house. His mother and father had a place up at Winnipesaukee so we all go up there and there's 10 Harleys and two pickup trucks and a lot of people a bunch of people. It was probably 14, 15 of us. We go up to this house to have a party. Parents aren't around and we're having a party and we decide to go down to a bring your own beer bar in Laconia, New Hampshire and we load up the back of the pickup truck with all the guys and cases of beer and coolers and everything else and we drive down to the bar and we have our time at the bar. We get in the truck and we grab him back and they get pulled over. And they arrest the drivers, and of course they look in the back of the pickup trucks and there isn't anybody sober enough to probably drive. But again, this is back in the 70s now, so they basically just let somebody drive and they let them bring the vehicles to the police station. So now here's 14 of us at the police stations boy and uh and if you ever been in the police station in laconia new hampshire and in in the 70s it was in an old bus terminal and um and the center of that bus terminal was the police station and um so we're all in inthe waiting room at the police station and picture 14 bikers um drunk trying to bail out their buddies And it was the time. That's all I've got to say. But I had to take a leak. And I walked out of the front door of the police station and what I thought was around the back of the building. But it's the front of the build. The next thing I know, I got a cop grabbing me by the back of my sweater and my back of my sweatshirt and I'm still trying to zip my pants and he drags me into the police station and they throw me in jail they arrest me for indecent exposure and a couple other things so now again this is the 70's there's no cell phone there's not ATM machines and now I'm stuck there because all those 14 people had pulled their money to get the drivers out of jail. And so nobody's got any money to get Rick out of deal. Rick's got to sit there. So they drive all the way back to Massachusetts. They find some money. They drive alltheway back to New Hampshire again to bail Rick out. And I got out ofjail. They brought me back to my motorcycle, and I drove it back home. and this is on a Sunday. I drive it back home. Monday morning, I got to get back. I got be in court in Laconia, New Hampshire from Ashland, Massachusetts by 8.30 in the morning. So you do the math. I got leave the house by 5 o'clock in the morning and I'm riding a motorcycle in the pouring rain. My dad was like, you made your bed and you're not taking the vehicle. You're going on your bike and I rode it to Laconia, New Hampshire. Now I get up to court and I walk in and I'm leaving puddle because I'm so wet. My leather coat probably weighed 80 pounds and the judge just took a look at me and shook his head and reading the report and he said, you rode all the way up here from Ashland, Massachusetts. I said, yep. And he just shook his hand and he says, well, this is I'm going to he gave me a fine and he let me go and he said good luck riding home and it was, I had to ride back home and that's all I made and he didn't teach me anything he taught me I was in the wrong place at the wrong time again that's always been so now I have this girlfriend that I'm dating And we'd been together for about three years. And Robin was her name. And she's putting up with my lifestyle and what I'm doing. And she comes over the house one day, and she walks in my bedroom, and there's an ashtray on my bed stand. And now she's looking for her picture that was on my nightstand, and that's not good. Alcohol brought me to a place the night before where I cheated on her. And I'm not proud of that, but that's who I was back then. And that's the kind of person that I was. You know, if I'm drunk, I'll bet so wrong. I don't know what I'm going to do. And she left me. And I was devastated. I was a bastard case because I never saw that coming. I never thought it would happen. And she laughed at me. and wouldn't return my phone call, wouldn't call me, again, no cell phone, nothing that I would say. So it was very easy to hide from somebody like me if you wanted to. And so now she leaves me and after I recover from that breakup, I'm out there. I'm drinking and drugging, and I'm partying like a rock star. And we moved into my grandparents' house. My grandparents owned a duplex, and we moved in next door. And my sister Rita, who's a couple years older than me, she moves in with me. That's how we got the apartment. My buddy Tom moves in avec me, one of my biker friends. And it wasn't long before Rita couldn't keep up the pace. And Rita moves out, and now it's just three bikers in that household. And we were no respect to my grandparents at 11. You know, alcohol just took all of that away. I didn't have any respect for anybody. I was so selfish and self-centered, I didn't care if 10 bikers would pull in the driveway at 2 o'clock in the morning after the bars closed. And, you know, just nobody came in quiet. Nobody left quiet. And I think all the neighbors there that were there when I was a kid were afraid to say anything. Nobody said anything ever. And we just, we terrorized that household for three years. And to make a quick story short, that girl that had broke up with me three years before that came back into my life and we ended up starting to date again and within six months we were getting married. And I thought that was going to slow Rick down. That was going to be Rick's geographic cure that we hear in the program all the time. That's going to keep Rick from being Rick. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. And so now we get married. I move out of that house. I move away from those guys. I sell my bike and I think that life's going to change. and um it did for maybe a month and um and then i'm back to drinking i'm back to partying i'm going back to doing my thing and i took that hostage for a lot of years she was she was with me for we were married for 17 years I had two kids, and we lived in Ashland, and I grew up in Ashlands, so I knew everybody. And things were really getting out of hand. Things were really... My drinking was crazy, and my kids were getting bigger, and we needed a bigger place to live. And we decided to move to Webster, and there's Rick's second geographic cure. I'm going to move from Ashland to Webter, and I don't know anybody in Webster and it didn't take long before Rick knew everybody in Websters, everybody that drank and drugged and did those things. It didn't long before I found those friends and I found those drinking buddies and alcohol made all of my decisions. If I was supposed to be home for a birthday party for my kids you know if somebody said hey let's have a beer and i'm missing that birthday party and that's what happened to me made all my decisions that's all right come on in welcome um i'm married to that girl for 17 years and and i worked for a family-run business you know so i never lost the job and this is a funny story And I worked for a family-run business. My dad owned a radiator shop at that age, an auto repair business. And my mother did the books, so my mother was in the office, and my dad and I had other employees. My dad would get pissed off at me because I'd show up in the morning with that hangover. And finally he got mad at me. He'd fire me. And my mother would say, you can't fire me as your son. And she'd pay me. I'd still get the paycheck on Friday. And she's say, just stay away for a couple of days. You'll be fine. And that happened many, many times. I never lost that job. I never loss that kind of stuff. because of it um and uh you know it's it it's crazy to me to think about it today you know but my um my parents were there for a long time and my my dad came to me in november of of 96 and said to me get your shit together because i'm leaving in March and I said what do you need where are you going he's retiring they're gonna sell their house they're going to move to Florida and he's leaving me the business and I'm still a mess I'm supposed to drink I'm like a rock star I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm My bookkeeper is going my other mechanic is going my you know everything's going i'm like i'll be okay i think i'll do it and um in march of that year i caught my wife cheating on me um we stayed together and um and things just gradually got worse again my drinking never got never get changed never get better and um i raced motorcycles back in that day my son and i both raced motor cycles and we went away for a uh a weekend race up in derby vermont and um we were all supposed to go the whole family was supposed to go through this thing with a weekend memorial day weekend event and uh at the last minute my wife says to me uh i can't go i'm gonna work Somebody asked for some time. She was a bartender at one of the local Polish clubs in Webster. You know Webster? I mean, Webster has more clubs in Polish bars than Poland, I think. But so I went to the race and I'm up there and I come back from being away and we get in a big fight And she says, I think we need some time apart. To me, that meant, I guess I'm leaving for an hour or I'm coming back or I're leaving for a couple of days. So I made up my little duffel bag of clothes and I come down from the bedroom and she looks at me and she goes, I think you're going to need a few more clothes. The exact words she said. So I packed up a few more, and where do I go? I went to my buddy's house that I drank and drugged with for all these years. And Johnny's laughing because here comes the motorhome story. So I move in with my buddy. I go over to his house. I tell him what happened. He goes, hey, you can stay here. He says, you didn't stay out in the motor home. The motorhome is this old broken down motorhome up on blocks in the backyard with no engine in it and uh and i'm i'm thinking yeah this is cool so i'm like all right this will be good until the until the storm blows over you know just until the fire goes out so so i'M THERE FOR ABOUT FIVE DAYS AND I'M DRINKING AND DRUGGING like a rock star in that motorhome you know and i think i'm doing okay and um i remember i remember going to uh get up in the morning i got up in the morning and i walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and the brad the bathroom had a mirror on it and it had a big crack in the mirror and i'll never i can picture it today i can see my face in that mirror and I'm crying like a baby I'm saying to myself here I am I had the world by the ball I had a business I had wife and kids the dog the cat the house with the picket fence and all the toys you can imagine and I am living in a broken down motor home with no engine that's what alcohol brought me out in the table in the kitchen area which is arm's length from the bathroom is the Coke mirror, the weed box and all the empties on the table. And I'm saying to myself, you know what? I can't believe this is where it's brought me to. Remember I called up Dick and you guys I know most of you people And you guys that don't know Dick, Dick's my brother-in-law. And Dick's been sober now, I think it's four or five years more than me. And I called him up on the phone and Dick's might be a bigger brother. I have a smaller brother, or a younger brother, I should say. He's definitely a little bigger than me, but I have two sisters and a younger brother, and Dick's my older brother. And I looked up to Dick all my life. He met me when I was probably 11, 12 years old. And here I am, 39, and broken. And I call him up on the phone, and I go over his house, and he's out leaning against his garage door, smoking up a guy. And he's just looking up at this guy. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing? And he says, I'm meditating. You know, I looked at him kind of funny and I'm like, OK. And he said, you might want to try it maybe someday. A little did I know that I'd be doing it every day now. But anyways, I am crying to him telling about how bad my life is and how much of a mess my world is because of alcohol and because of stuff. And he looks at me and he says, do you think that drugs and alcohol have anything to do with why you're where you're at? And I'm like, absolutely not. It's that bitch of a wife. It's the guy she's cheating on me with. It's my business that I'm in a struggle to try to run. It's all this other stuff. Now Dick's known me all my life. He could have easily come to me and said, you know, Rick, I've been watching you drink and drug your way through life all these years. He could've told me at that time, but he let me suffer for another six months. And I say that jokingly because he did exactly the right thing. You know, we have to, our drinking has to become objectionable to us. And obviously he knew at that point that it wasn't. My drinking wasn't objectionable for me. it wasn't the reason I was in my place. And six months goes by, I put down the drink on June 5th. That was, you know, in 97. So I stayed sober for those six months, white knuckle in it, on my own. No AA, no nothing. And I went skiing with Dick one day and now here we are after skiing, we're sitting at dinner and I'm crying like a baby telling them where I am and how my life sucks and by now I'm out of that motorhome and I've got to go home. And I'm in a two-bedroom apartment because my dogs got exiled and they got kicked out too and they're not even alcoholic but they ended up having to move in with me and so he asked me that same question. you know do you think that drugs and alcohol is a reason for that and i finally admitted and he said great you could show up at my house on saturday morning i'm gonna let me get an aa meeting at my house on Saturday morning. That was the beginning of my day-to-day with that Saturday morning meeting at this house, you know, and I'm so grateful for that, and, um, what time do we got? 20 minutes left? All right. Um, so, I'm showing up at that meeting, I show up the first day, and all the guys are sitting around the kitchen table and um and they're making room for me when they see him there and i'm like i'll sit up at the counter i'm okay i don't want to catch what you guys got i'm just on i'm gonna sit up with the counter and i'll be okay right here i don t need this down and um that only lasted a week or two and i i ended up in that circle and i ended up being one of those guys and i was there a month or so a couple months maybe and um in the door walked this guy i'm getting better i'm starting to clear up a little bit i'm trying to to be able to laugh a littlebit you know the the pain in my eyes is going away and uh and in the door walks this guy named paul and paul was going through a divorce he's just getting And his wife just left, and his alcoholism has got him down to where he's looking for some eggs this year. And one of the guys sitting at that table was involved with a telephone company at the time. And Paul was a telephone repairman. And that's how Paul ended up there because Jack, the telephone guy, was there. And Paul and I became friends. And Paul lived, come to find out, Paul only lived about three miles from where I was living with my dog. And him and I became real good friends. And him an I kept each other sober for a while, just together, just by hanging out together because we wanted to stay together. And he said to me one day, he says, you need to go to a Goya meeting. And I was like, what's a Gonya meeting? There's a couple people here that might know what that means. But it's a meeting over in Whitensville, and it stands for Get Off Your Ass. And I was like, you know what? I'm game. Let's go. So now we go into this meeting, and It's a big meeting. There's probably 50 people in this meeting. And I sat in the back of the room so nobody could sneak up on me. And I watched what happened in that room. You guys have all been here. You guys are all been in AA. We've seen this happen. you see the laughter and you see the love in that room and I wanted some of that I had none in my life I wanted some of that and I kept going back on Thursday nights to that meeting and then before I know it I'm one of those people you guys are all probably wondering what job I got next the next job they gave me was the greeter job. That's the first one you get when you come to AA because they know you can't do much. You might be able to say hello and say welcome or whatever, but it wasn't long before they gave me the coffee job. It wasn't along before they handed me the keys to open the door. And then before I knew it, I had every job in that group. i was doing everything i was selling the raffle tickets i was meeting people at the door i was opening the hall i was closing the hall I was making the coffee i was the guy going to the going to the store to get the donuts and the cookies and that kind of stuff and um and i'm doing that for a long time and um four years to be exact I did every job in that group for four years. And Dick's watching me again. Dick's great because he doesn't do some things that probably would keep me out drinking, but he did some things that kept me here. And sometimes we have to just let people have their own experience in this program and let them have their on experience and let the natural consequences of their life happen for a reason. And he let that happen for four years. And he looked at me and he watched me and he said to me one day, and he says, hey, you're still, how's your inventory? What are you doing with your inventory ? I'm like, yeah, that's on the refrigerator. I'm not doing that. And he said, well, I said, I don't have time. I'm doing seven meetings a week. I'm going to do this and doing that and he asked me about the Goya meetings and he's still doing every job over there. And I said yep. And he said the best thing he could have ever said to me at the time. He said, when are you going to give somebody else a chance to stay sober? And I went, huh. Never thought of it that way. But those jobs kept me sober for four years. And I gave up that. I went in one day and I handed the ticket keys to everybody. I handed them the book. I handed all the money and everything else. I handed everything back. And I said, look, they've got to go away on vacation for two weeks. So you're going to have to find somebody else to run this for two years. And I walked out of that meeting that night after it was over and I never went back for 10 years. And I worried about that meeting. I said how the hell is that place going to survive without me? But I went back after 10 years and the place is still there. The banners were still on the wall. Somebody was still making the coffee. So, you know, I kind of held you guys hostage for a long time. And, you Know, I hope you got something out of this. I hope that somebody could say, Bingo, that happened to me. Or, Bongo, I recognize what happened. And I hopethat happened in your life. I hope that someone in this room hears something this weekend. That's my goal. I don't have a clue what's going to come out of my mouth when we start talking about steps and you start talking about it, but I hope that what came out of your mouth came out of my mouth. You heard the powerlessness of alcohol and how we just don't see it when we're in it. We don't see that alcohol is making all of the savings, and you don't see that alcohol was running your life. It did that for me. And I could sit here and talk to you for days and tell you a story, but my life has gotten a gazillion times better since I put down alcohol and I'm grateful for that. I'm going to leave the last ten minutes to Sonia, because I'm sure that I touched a note that's something that she probably got in her head. No? Anywho. I don't know. One thing I really loved when I came in was um i went through the steps the first time with my sponsor through here we did a big book style but we used the 12 and 12 and i remember early on reading this and it said under the lash of alcoholism we are driven to aa and there we discovered the fatal nature of our situation then and only then do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be we stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us and I read that to a lot of people when I first came in to family and loved ones. Because that described me, you know, I had been so powerless in my life had become unmanageable, manageable, but I didn't even know it. And I can remember the week before I got sober, there were three things throughout my life, I said I'd never do. One was drink vodka at home. Two was have my other kid raise the other kid because I was too twisted and three was never drink in the afternoon so it would end up like me picking my kids up and so that week I went to the package store to get a to make a gift bag for my friends and figured I'd grab a bottle of vodka for me too and the thing of cranberry juice and there we go I failed there. And, um, and I knew the whole time, like literally pulling that off the shelf saying, I said, I wasn't going to do this and boring it and making that drink at home said I wasn't gonna do it, but just couldn't stop. And then like two days later, I heard my oldest child say to my younger um let me zip that for you mommy is really tired and i heard that and i was like number two here we go and then a few days later my uh kids went to private school so you had to drive them so i had to drive across the city and you never knew traffic so sometimes it took 10 minutes and sometimes it's 40 minutes so i got there really early and there was like two or three boutiques i'd go into and look around waste time well that day i decided i was hungry so i went to the bar and i said i'll have a you know vodka and cranberry and a menu because it was only 2 30 and um okay and so i'm looking and what would you like to order well i'm okay but i'll look another day so then i thought and when you picked your children up it was like you were this close to a teacher and i'd get to sign them out it was a really small school so of course i stopped at the bodega bought like gum i'm chewing it all the way up to get them out of school and and then soon i hit that morning what that's what drove me to my psychiatrist who i hung out with like partied with like he was my drug dealer it was crazy um yeah so that was just really crazy um he did go to jail for many years not due to me he's back in macedonia and is not allowed in the united states of america any longer not because of me um but um others the feds were tapping his everything So anyway, he was not just my drug dealer. He was everybody's. I wasn't special. But I went to him and he handed me a prescription. He said, do you want to quit drinking like forever or just like kind of like cut back? And I'm like, no, I quit. So that's when he gave me the anti-abuse prescription with no directions other than don't drink or you'll get sick. Okay. So I started the DTs, and my former husband was a mayor. And so I was like a train wreck, and I was going through the DTS. And I didn't trust anybody, andI didn't trust him, but I trusted my driver, who was a cop. And so literally, Paul had to babysit me for two days while I was doing the DT because I was like hiding in my basement thinking people were going to kill me and it was really bad and um and two days after that i woke up and that's when my higher power said you don't have to live this way but all of that being said i didn't realize i had a problem which is like crazy um and so when i had failed in those three tasks about what i would never do and so So, you know, it was really something that I actually knew I was dying. And until I knew I were dying, I was not, I did not become willing. And, you now, the first principle that goes to step one is honesty. and it was the first time I ever was honest with myself and said, I can't do this. So my sponsor asked me to write a list of three things I was powerless over and three things I had unmanageability over. And it was so crazy because it was the beginning that I realized I had been doing everything in my life backwards. I made the list of powerlessness. I put that under unmanageability and vice versa. And she said, you're close, Sony. She said, but. So, you know, it was, you know, that was step one. And I had heard, you know, I'd been crying to my mom, my sister, my dad, my brother, whoever would listen about how to change my life. And they would all say to me things like, oh, you know, do this, do that. And I couldn't, I couldn't and here my sponsor showed up saying to do the same darn things and i couldn't wait to do it and um she would say to me um well i would say to her i know i know oh i know i know i knew everything and one day she looked at me and she said all right tell me what do you know and i was like the voice tone she said it and i was like uh and she said yeah that's what i thought she said you know what all you know how to do is drink or drug and she says i'll tell you right now i can do that better than you she said so you don't know shit she said i don't want to hear i know out of your mouth again okay so then i tell my mother this story and she's like who is this woman she is like god you know and we all know her name is yvonne and she is a little bit godlike so anyway thank you and i look forward to seeing you all tomorrow