Step 11 and the Object He Uses to Meditate – Larry S.

We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on naboclub.org desperately in need will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I'm one of them too, I must have this thing. And Larry S. is a member of the 7.30 a.m. early morning study group here at NABBA, and he's here just about seven days a week since May of 2011. When I'm in town, I happen to see him here sitting on the back of that table there, and he shares every morning, and he always has something to say that I need to hear, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy what you hear tonight. Please welcome Larry with a big round of applause. He made all that up. He also turned the heat up, so I'm sweating like a pig. And I'm sober. I am Larry. I am an alcoholic. I started drinking like so many people I've heard of since I came in here I was 13 years old my mother had a gallon of homemade raisin wine that a neighbor had given her and my friend from across the street came over and like two 13 year olds we were playing in the basement we weren't even being bad and the wine just kind of said drink me And we did. We drank the whole gallon. We were drunk and silly as any 13-year-old you've ever seen. He went home, and Mother called me and said, Come upstairs, it's time for dinner. Mother made the wildest homemade chili with big chunks of stewed tomato. and if you just drank a half a gallon of homemade raisin wine the last thing you need in your throat is a big chunk of stewed tomato it was on the ceiling the walls the curtains, my mother my father and they're like what happened and my brother who's only 11 months younger than I am goes he's drunk and I was like well thanks they already figured that out they could smell the raisin wine that was my first drink and that was my experience with it and I knew right then that I wanted to do it again and that's insane that was in Pennsylvania we'd only lived there for a little while we moved down here when I was 14 and I went to had the great privilege of going to high school in DeKalb County, which doesn't teach you anything except how to drink. And I did learn a side hobby of smoking pot over at Sequoia. When I was 16, I met a girl in my class. I asked her out on a date. I dated her for eight days and told her I was going to marry her. Her response was, you're trying to get in my pants. I said, but I am going to marry you. I married her and I didn't get in her pants that night. Does anybody know what this is? Nope. I've got a puppy last week. Now, I'm old school. When you get a dog, they run around, they poop wherever they want to. Nowadays, you've got to carry this little plastic bag. You open it up. You stick your hand in it. And you've got to reach down and pick up your dog's ship. And I'm like, this is insane. I wouldn't do that when I was drinking, much less sober. And so I'm at home the other night bitching about this little plastic bag. My wife very politely gets up, walks out of the room, and she comes back in with a 55-gallon drum liner and goes, this is the bag I've carried around for 40 years cleaning up your shit. I quit bitching about this little bag. I got married when I was 20 and she was 19. By that point, I had given up Pat's Blue Ribbon for the most part and was drinking Jim Beam. I loved it because high school kids don't drink Jim Beam And they didn't have all the little designer bourbons that they had now back then, so it was pretty much Jim Bean and Jack Daniels. And I liked Jim Bean for some reason. And I drank it a lot. I loved the stuff. And I drunk it like a true gentleman right out of the bottle. Just unscrewed that top, tilted up, and I was fine. Like I said, I was 20 when we got married. I was working as an electrician. I was an electrician's apprentice. We were married six months, and I applied and was hired at the Gwinnett County Police Department. And I came home and told my wife I quit my job and I'm going to work for Gwynnett County as a policeman. And she cried and cried. I had to put her in the car and take her to Gatlinburg for the whole weekend just to try to calm her down. And being the good alcoholic that I was, we spent most of the weekend drinking and smoking pot. And I had a report for police work on Monday. And I was stoned as a motor scooter. And then I rode around with a training officer for a while. And then i was in the academy. and something came up and they were trying to find a drug dealer in Dorval and nobody knew how to find him. Well, I knew where he lived. And so I went to his house and talked to him and you know, we worked that out. Well, they decided that I would be really good if they put me in vice. And back then, this is in 73. Seventy-four. And they gave me the job of working narcotics, prostitution, and yes, bootleg liquor. And we had a lot of bootleggers back in the 70s in Gwinnett. And they made some fine moonshine. And it was my job. They paid me to drive a car into this guy's yard, go in the house, and drink moonshINE and smoke home-run cigarettes. And just get as wasted as I could get. And I'd go home and tell my wife, I found the perfect job for me. Because I knew the next night I could go down to North Cross and get stoned. It was heaven. And it was hell too. That didn't last but about three and a half years. While I was there, we had a son and my drinking was getting worse. And I'm one of those guys, I've had all the jobs the little boys want when they're growing up. After the police department, it was like, what do I want to be? So I got a job on the railroad. And I was a brakeman. I got to ride trains from Atlanta to Greenville. I got the chance to take trains from Gainesville to Athens. That was a great run. there's a bar, used to be a bar in Athens in an old railroad depot called T.K. Hardy's and we'd run around the train right there which means you stop and get on the other end but we'd go in T.k. Hardy'S and drink six beers talk to pretty college girls and that was a great job because then we'd get stoned on the way back at this point I was starting to see a pattern we screwed up one night and we violated about 22 rules almost ran over a train master and that's frowned on and so we got suspended now the railroad is unionized and thank God for the union because I was a member and you could take out what they referred to as firing insurance and I double dipped in that I paid extra so I could have extra pay if I got fired I got hired five times and I made more money when I was fired than I did when I was working so it wasn't a real big incentive to keep working we got fired this one time for 90 days and we started drinking in Gainesville and And it went down to Suwannee. We did the tour of Holiday Inns in North Georgia, going from bar to bar, seeing how much beer we could drink. And then we ended up at somebody's house, and I don't know what all we smoked. All I remember is waking up in my driveway. I probably didn't tell you that we were driving my car. and my friends drove my car into my driveway pushed me out the door onto the driveway and then drove off in my car and these were my closest friends I don't know how long it took me to get in the house I did it on my hands and knees I was throwing up curled up whatever I finally made it in the house and my wife's 5'3 Sweetest little baddest girl you'd ever want to meet. And I called out once I got in the house. I said, Debbie, I'm hurting and I need help. And my sweet baddest wife said, fuck you. I didn't get you that way and I ain't going to fix it. The next day she told me that I better think about quitting drinking. So I did. I quit drinking. I was 32 years old. I just quit. I didn't have a drink for five years. I got involved in church. I got real active in church I was doing a good job on the railroad. And it came up, I think it was our 17th wedding anniversary. I was dealing so good, I took her to Charleston. Our anniversary is next month. and it was a beautiful October night in Charleston. We had dinner at one of those little restaurants where they took an old house and made dining rooms out of it and we were sitting on the front porch and had dinner and had cheesecake for dessert. My wife said, this is perfect. I said, almost. I said I'd really like one glass of bourbon. And she's like, you haven't had a drink in five years. I said, I know, but I'd like one glass of bourbon. And bless her little heart, she said, you're fine. Go ahead and have a glass. And I started drinking. And I didn't get drunk that night. It took quite a few nights. It probably took a couple weeks. And I was right back where I was before. I collected wild turkey bottles. The birds, I had them all. I collected wild turkey models with a cork in them because everybody else had screw tops. I thought it was cool they had corks. I drank and drank and just got crazy. During that period we adopted a daughter. At first we thought that we were only going to have the one child and then we decided to found this girl at church and she was in a foster program and we adopted her. And I left the railroad. My drinking had gotten so bad that I couldn't catch up on the side of a boxcar. And our job was, you were supposed to train and be coming by anywhere from 15 to 20 miles an hour, and you were supposed to be able to catch up and get on it while it's moving. And that wasn't so bad because you could hang on and keep your feet moving long enough to step up. It was when you had to drop off at 25 miles an hours, I kept falling down. So they came in and they were trying to reduce manpower like so many people are doing now. And they offered me $45,000 if I quit. shit that wasn't even a I didn't have to think about that one nobody ever paid me to quit a job so I took it and then went out and got drunk I built houses for a while and then I started a business I started a cabinet shop and I built custom cabinets for new homes for about 16 years it was two businesses one of them went under and I started it right up again I did take a short break between the two businesses took an overdose of pills and tried to kill myself I thought my alcoholism had caused the first business to go under and it probably did that and just not knowing what I was doing and I tried to kill myself woke up in the hospital and you'll like this, Harish. I have this Indian doctor and she's about yay tall and I wake up and my wife's on one side of the bed and this little Indian doctor is on the other side of bed and I'm just kind of laying on my side and I look at her and it's like she goes what's your problem? I said I don't know. She said you just need to learn how to be a man and turned around and walked out. I'm going shit I didn't know it was that easy. This is a breeze. Crazy bitch. But, you know, at that point in my life, I didn' t see any options. I had reached what I felt like was a total state of despair. I saw no hope, no way out. I was drinking constantly. And suicide seemed like the only right thing to do. I had a lot of life insurance on me. My wife would be taken care of. And most of the people, I figured, would be better off if I wasn't there. Evidently, God had another plan. We closed the shop in 2009. Something about the economic crisis. They quit building houses. and we built cabinets to go in new houses. You're kind of fucked. My son who worked with me referred to it as owning a barbecue joint in Jerusalem. You're not going to sell a whole lot of pork ribs. The kids left home somewhere around the time I was 50 and they've given me they were both married and in four years they gave me five grandchildren and yeah now there's two kids I have two kids and they have wives don't it wasn't one child no you with me now okay but I had four I have five grandchildren right now there are five, six, six four and three and they're wonderful. But I've driven around with all five of them in my suburban, drunk as hell. And I wouldn't do anything to hurt those kids. Nobody who has grandchildren. Grandchildren, if you've got kids, trust me, grandkids are ten times better. You can spoil them rotten, hug them, love them, kiss them and then send them home. And that's great. After the economy went bad, my wife has got a pretty good job, makes pretty good money. She said, well, you've been working most of your life. Why don't you just go ahead and retire? Okay. I can handle that. So I retired. what I didn't realize that meant that I didn' t have anything to do and so I could sleep until nine in the morning get up and think about noon because that's when I would start drinking and and I had bourbon I had it in the in the garage I had a I had in the basement I had in the office I had it all over the house and I didn't buy these aren't pints I'd go to Tower and buy cases of the big bottles and they were all over the house and my wife knew about the one that was on the kitchen counter and I would drink from noon until about 6 out of one of the other bottles and then about the time she'd come home, she'd always call me, bless her heart. She'd always called me about the times she got to 285 and 85 to tell me where she was so that I could fix her drink because the only way she could put up with me was to drink. And so I knew when to start drinking out of the counter bottle and I could still slip the others in here and there and she'd go to bed at 10 and I'd stay up until 2 in the morning and then I'd go back to the other bottles. This is my life. This is what I was doing. I had turned 59 and I'm drinking anywhere from 12, 14, 15 hours a day and going through bourbon like it was done. My liquor bill would run anywhere from $600 to $800 a month. And my wife didn't understand why we couldn't pay the bills. One night, I got drunk. It was the last night I got drank. and she came home, and I just, I don't know, I was in a bad mood or whatever, drunk. And I just made an ass of myself. Was very verbally abusive to her. Accused her of, hey, she was the cause of all my problems. Every one of them. you know, she was the reason I had gas. You know, no matter what it was, it was her fault. And she was frigid. She did not want to have sex. And I wanted to have sex. And so she had to be frigid Now, I'm going to I could wait a few minutes to say this, but I won't. I want you to realize my wife is not free. My wife does not like having sex with drunks, especially me. So, but that's how crazy I was. This woman was supporting me, still is. And I'm telling her what her problems are. And she starts crying. She's yelling at me and I'm yelling at her. One thing leads to another. And she goes off. I don't really know what room she went to. And I knew she was downstairs, so I went upstairs and got into it. I keep all my clothes in another room because I don' t have any room in her closet. So I have to go to a different room. And I have a 9mm in there. And I loaded it, which involved putting a clip in it, and racked one of the chambers, sat down on the floor, and stuck it in my mouth. and then I cocked it. And then I heard her coming up the steps. And so I took it, and I put it behind my back. And she walked in the room, and I don't know how this woman knew. She said, what's behind your back? And I handed her the gun. I took the clip out, took one round out of the chamber, and gave her the gum. She went in our bedroom and proceeded to cry some more. I went downstairs being the sensitive husband that I am I fixed me another drink and I went out on the driveway I didn't know what to do but I knew that I had to have a drink to figure it out I went outside on the doorway and I just looked up at the sky it's May it's beautiful and I said God please just tell me what to do because I don't have a clue I do not have a clue and as clear as I'm talking to you God told me to go to Peachesford Hospital now I know it had to be God that told me that because I'd been drinking for 44 years and I never heard that before I never thought of that my mother had gone to Peachford for alcoholism but I never was going because I wasn't my mother. I wasn' t an alcoholic. So I know it had to be God that told me to go to Peachford. So I went in the house, packed a bag, went into the bedroom, told my wife, I said, I'm going to Peachfort. She said, I'll drive. Now I was kind of hoping she would say, why? But it was just like I'm going to Peaceford on a drive. You know, she knew exactly what was going on and we hadn't even talked about it. And I said, well, if you're driving... Now, Peaceford's only a mile from my house. Once again, I thank God intervened there and found me a house close. But I said I can drive over there because, you know, it's right around the corner. And she said, no, I want to go with you. I said well If you're driving, I'll fix me another drink. So I went in, got a 16-ounce glass, put some ice in it, filled it up with bourbon, and away we went. I knew there were no bars at Peachford, so I had to have one more. We went by the store and got a carton of cigarettes, and we went to Peachford. and the lady there in admissions young woman probably in her mid-twenties she said why do you drink I said she's frigid and she's sitting right there and she said okay he's probably wrote that down crazy as son of a bitch but I mean I was convinced at this point all of this I knew I had a drinking problem but it wasn't my fault I was a good person I did good things I helped people it wasnít my fault it couldnít be so I go into Peachesford and I tell this nurse thatís back in this ward where theyíre going to keep me she wants to know everything so I tell her all this stuff I told her my wifeís frigid She's like, you poor thing. I bet they get a kick out of lying to people. When you go in there, I think they just have fun with you. It took me... They kept pumping Ativan in me. The worst night I was there, I went to an AA meeting in Peachford. Brent was there. And one of the guys that's leading this meeting is up there talking about how, and he's talking to all these people that are in Peachesburg. He's saying, when I was here, they told me to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. And I'm like, how in the hell can you do that? He said, but let me tell you, I went to 287 meetings in90 days. Well, I'm over there wringing my hands like this. There's sweat pouring off of me. And I'm hyperventilating, and I'm having a panic attack. And two of the guys in my unit take me out of the room, and they're pumping Ativan in both shoulders. My blood pressure's through the roof. And they're going, what happened? I said, I don't have that much time. I can't do 287 meetings in 90 days. I did do 210. I got out of Peachford and I got up at 5 o'clock I was back in the door at Peachford at 6, 7, whatever it was for a meeting and I came here the next morning I came to the 9.30 meeting and one of the guys at the 9 30 meeting said you need to come by on Saturday come to the 7 30 meeting on Saturday because we had breakfast right after that. And I came here for that. Now, I also started, when I left that 930 meeting, I went over to 8111 and went to an 1130 meeting. And I walked in. There was a guy on that Wednesday that had come to Peachesburg to talk to our group, our wing or whatever you call it. He'd come in there to talk with us at 4 o'clock that Wednesday. and it was funny. He had these little circles on his knuckles where they were tan and the rest of his hand was kind of white. And he asked everybody, he said, you know, how do I have suntan in these little cycles? But you know don't you Frank? It's his motorcycle gloves because they've got holes up here so your knuckles will stick out. I don't know why. Is there a reason? Okay. That's a load off my mind. But he wants to know if anybody knows how he has his team. Well, I've already figured out he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer because he's got a shirt that says Harley-Davidson on it. And I'm like, you ride a motorcycle? Yeah, you got it! He's my sponsor. I went to 8111 that next day, and I walked into 1130, and he's standing there. And I told him, I said, I need your help. I said I can read these steps, but they're confusing. I don't understand. I said everybody tells me wait six months before you get a sponsor. I said i'm 59 years old. I ain't got six months. I need somebody to help me start right now so he said fine he'd be my temporary sponsor and that was almost 16 months ago in this program I've had the greatest 16 months of my entire life I did not know that there was a solution to my problem I thought I was crazy And now I'm convinced of it There's no doubt that I'm crazy And I have found the greatest place To come That's slapped full of crazy people Y'all are insane I mean we sit here and we laugh About stuff That we ought to cry about because we've all done stupid stuff. But when I come in here, when I came in these rooms and everybody welcomed me with open arms, nobody was like, well, you aren't drunk. You're not a big enough alcoholic yet. You need to go back out until you get to this point. This was my bottom and that's acceptable for everybody. and I know people who had a lot worse bottoms you know when I was at Peaksford in one of those AA meetings one of the reasons I knew I liked AA is because one of the guys that was leading it referred to himself as a Dunwoody drunk and I live in Dunwoady I grew up in Dunwaody and I like this it got my attention because a DunWoody drunk I didn't lose my house I didn' t lose my wife I didn''t lose my cars I didn't lose any of this. I have never had a DUI. If you doubt that there's a God, somebody watched over me all the time. But I was as big a drunk as anybody else. I don't know why I had this life and you may have that life. I don' t understand. But I do know that I thought that I was a religious person. I had quit drinking once and with the help of God didn't drink for five years and didn't understand why I couldn't do that again. I went to church. I went into Sunday school. I'm an ordained deacon in a Baptist church. And yes, most Baptists do drink. But... And I didn't understanding it. It made no sense to me. my wife about a year ago was at a conference and it's all preachers and this one guy from Los Angeles was speaking he's a preacher at a Baptist church in Los Angeles and where his church is located is surrounded by crime, alcoholism drugs prostitution and a huge gay community and they had AA meetings in the Baptist church and so one of the AA guys was coming in one night and the preacher was there and he said Pastor I've got to ask you a question do you know the difference between religious people and spiritual people and the pastor said I think I do but why don't you tell me he said religious people get up on Sunday morning and go to church at Sunday school They study the Bible and they pray so they don't go to hell. Spiritual people have been to hell and will do anything not to go back. I've been to heaven. I know what it feels like. Depression and despair are the ugliest thing that you can go through on this earth. I can't think of anything worse because when you lose all hope you're in trouble you're going to do something stupid this program is hope it gave me hope it gives me hope every time I walk in these rooms every time I hear one of you share I get hope every time I see a newcomer come in who is totally lost, I have hope. We've got guys in the morning group that have over 30 years of sobriety. Y'all probably got some in here too. But it's amazing to me. You know, there's one of the guys, Greg, and he's got 24, 25, 26 years, something like that. 26? Okay. And he got his 26-year chip. And I had to go up to him and say, Greg, you've been in this for 26 years. Why do you keep coming back? He says, because I don't want to go back to hell. He said, I don'T want to do that anymore. And if I quit coming to meetings, I'll go back drinking. And I didn't understand that. I was new in the program and it made no sense to me. I understand that now. You know, when I first got out of Peachesburg and started coming to AA meetings, my friends were like, how long you got to go to meetings? The rest of my life. Oh, come on. You weren't that bad. Well, I did all my drinking at home by myself. Nobody saw the bad part of me except for a couple of very close friends and my wife. My son saw it a couple times. But I hid it from everybody else. They cannot understand that I've got to come in here all the time. They don't understand that I'm here tonight telling you what my experience is and how this is going to help me. I'm not here to help you. I'm sorry, I wish I were. I'm hier to help me. What I'm doing helps me stay sober. It's the only way I know how to stay sober. This program has taught me a level of spirituality that I never knew before. I had no idea it existed. I'm stuck on the 11th step, and I'm stuck because I don't want to move. I like it. I love the 11th step. Because it's, and I didn't understand it at first. It said try to improve through prayer and meditation your conscious contact with God. And you know, I'm kind of like I can have a conscious conversation with you but it's a spiritual conversation with God And it's not. Not for me. My higher power, who I call God, I can sit here and talk to Him like I talk to you. The prayer part, I kind of had a pretty good handle on the prayer part. The meditation, I mean that's not... You've got to understand, when it said meditation, alright, I'm thinking I've gotto go out and buy incense. and sit with my legs crossed in a funny position with my hands like this on my knees and going, and wait for something to happen. I don't have to do that. I just found me an object that I can help slow my mind down or bring my mind back to where I want to be. whoever your higher power is find something that represents that hold it in your hand and just think about that higher power because that's what I do to meditate and it works for me I don't know what works for you but I never thought that I'd be standing up in front of a group and it's not supposed to be this big Tim told me there was only about 25 people here. And if y'all didn't know, Tim's a liar. But if I was going to be standing up in front of a group this size talking about meditating, I'd have told you you're insane. But I love this program that much. I love my sobriety this much. When I meditate and when I pray, I thank God for being there for me and the second thing I think I'm grateful for is my sobriety my wife my kids my son-in-law, my daughter-in law my grandkids, they all come after that because if I don't have my sobrietty I'm not here if I hadn't quit drinking 16 months ago I'm convinced I would be dead now because I couldn't stand the pain. And for me, it was pain. It was hurtful, physical pain that would bring tears to my eyes. But y'all showed me how to laugh. Y'all shown me how love. And y'alls showed me how to live a life without alcohol. Thank you. Well done Larry Here's your little bubbly You mentioned T.K. Hardy's in Athens That was one fine deck They had a jukebox where they had all you'd expect with the Allman Brothers and whatnot, but they had Glenn Miller. I always felt kind of cultured every time I got drunk there.