The Difference Between a Higher Power of My Understanding and Higher Power – Stevie B.

Hey, thank you. Well, as you all know, I scour the earth every week to find the best example of the incredible sickness of alcohol and synonymous. And today, I think I've outdone myself. He's got 18 years of undetected drinking. He's everything that saves a 19th year. I was going over my mind, because I've known him for all that time, of all the incredible things I could say, you know, the good things, the wonderful things I'd say about him, but I drew a fucking blank. You know, so he's brought... He's helped many, many people over the last 18 years. He brought them all here today. That's what he does. He overwhelms the group with his people so you can get the applause or whatever it is that's going on here. You know? Nice. Right. He's a great guy. He's great. He just spoke down at the Homestead. I heard that tape recording done that you did on the Homestead groupies' side. It was very... A lot of familiar shit to me in that. So in any event, without further ado, no more of this time, I'd like to introduce Stevie B. Hi everybody, my name is Stevie B, I'm a recovering alcoholic. It's so nice to be able to drive down an alley and be abused by your sponsor. and uh and i've always wanted to be here i've always wanted to come to the south dixie group so i have arrived as they say a lot of you heard my story before some of you haven't it's not going to really be an entirety type of story because i really want to speak about when i got to meet russell and uh and and truthfully i'm not slamming it i i really want to speak about when i met russell on how the course of my sobriety changed um i am from long island new york i'm a product of half jewish i'm half jewlish and i'm halfway italian which is uh it's confusing in its nature just by itself and um my parents good pair i have great parents i praise god they're both still alive and uh my mom went in for a total knee replacement yesterday and that was successful and my dad is 87 and he's still doing great and he has a 27 years came into the program at 60. my mom has 44 years in overeaters anonymous and um my dad uh he's a double winning as uh ethan was anonymous and alcoholics anonymous so i but i didn't grow up specifically in a 12-step home i grew up in a dysfunctional home that's why we're all in the program now great god um so my childhood in long island was great um i had um loving parents as i said i had a loving loving family and myself i think there's nobody that i've ever heard in the 27 years i've been in the program there's nobody that ever described alcoholism as great as russell did for me that i had alcoholism before i ever picked up a drink and i love that description for myself because i was restless irritable and discontent um before any substances ever arrive now i realize this looks like a room of very serious traditional people and i am not going to do a drug a lot i'm not going to speak about drugs uh specifically but i i do want to say i am not a pure alcoholic i'm a real alcoholic i am just not a pure alcoholic so if part of my talk i say i was rolled up in a rug because I thought the police were going to rush in and I was hiding in the middle of the floor, rolled up in a rug and you say, that never happened to me on scotch. Right, exactly. It's not going to happen to you on scotch. And if I say that the reason, I don't know if you can see that my eyes don't meet, they're a little cross-eyed because I spent an entire week looking out of a peephole in a hotel in New Jersey. Jim Bean doesn't do that. So you're going to have to fill in the blanks As I'm speaking, there's things that wouldn't add up if I was a pure alcohol. So I always felt that I was less than than everybody in my neighborhood. I always thought and I attributed it to that my that everyone in my neighborhood might be in the Northeast. Everything is separated in blocks and your block is your home. And in my block I knew the reason that I didn't feel well Or good about myself Is because I didn' t have any big brothers I was one of the only kids on the block That didn' T have big brothers And where I'm from If you walk to the playground And you don' Thave big brothers You don' t get any juice You don't get any respect So In my block there's the Mundingers They have three brothers The Woolies, three brothers the Coens three brothers me I have a short chubby sister so when you walk to the playground with a short Chubby sister you get no juice nobody's like oh wow here comes Steve and the gang it's nothing so I knew at like 8 that I was dealt a very bad hand and I was always fantasizing that if my Listen, it was a little different. If I was like the third kid, if I didn't have to bring my little chubby sister to the playground, I had so many fantasies when I was a kid of being somebody else. And so I started to develop low self-esteem. I'm not saying it's as a result of that. I'm sure I had low self esteem, but that's what I thought it was for. And then my life changed when I Was in seventh grade and a new coach came to town and he's reading the roster and he gets to my name. You know, I have to tell the story because it's so telling of my whole life up until I came into AA the second time. So he gets to my team and my name on the roster and he says, Boyarsky. I say, yes coach. And he says does your brother play for the Pittsburgh Panthers? Now number one if you don't have a brother the answer is no if you a brother doesn't play for the pittsburgh panthers the answer's no but for me i knew my whole life was about to change so i said in front of my entire school yes he does coach yes he done and everybody that had shot at me all my friends because i did have a stepbrother that lived in massachusetts he's a plumber so i said i said that's what i've been telling you guys about i knew that if i could become somebody else then i would feel better about myself and temporarily in school it did change my status on the playground i did get more juice because my brother played for a very serious now you understand how i just said that that just slipped out my brother first of all i don't have brother number two he didn't play for you it's very serious this thing i've told this lie so many times in my life i just need to uh digress off the story for a second 10 years ago i'm 52 at 42 years old i'm in a locker room listen to how serious my alcoholism i'm gonna lock a room in hollywood with my grandfather jc and my dad stan boyarsky and i'm going to locker room with these guys i'm helping my grandfather he's going to get a massage there the attendant comes into the locker room and says mr boyarsky my dad says yes and the guy in their locker room 10 years ago says are you guys related to jerry boyarski of the nfl my head flipped around and i almost saw the words coming out of my mouth i was like this and i had to pull myself back and like go sit down I mean, talk myself off that that's not your brother. So I had deep-seated mental situation. I don't want to say mental illness. I don' t want to downgrade anybody with serious mental illness, but I had serious mental peculiarities very young. And when Russell said that alcohol is the cure for alcoholism, not the problem, it made sense to me Because I was making bad decisions my entire childhood. I was taking decisions that would put me at risk. I was decision that would make my friends at risk I did not care about the outcome, I only cared about the feelings inside And the feelings in side always told me when I woke up in the morning that I was less than I always woke up less than I never woke up same as you I always woke up less than. So whatever I did during the day would at least get me to be equal to you, and then if I really did something fantastic or used a lot of substances, then I could at least become okay. Every day, I was shooting for okay. And to give you the perfect example for this is that my mother was in the hospital, my dad was at a funeral parlor, And it was the first time at 12 years old that I was ever alone during the day in my house. I had had babysitters, of course, and I had other situations where there were parents watching me. But this is the first day of my life where I was totally alone, no supervision, and knew nobody was going to be able to come in. My mother's in the hospital, my dad's at a funeral. And so I got home from school, and the toughest kid in my neighborhood, who I knew would never hang out with me. Back then we called it play with me, but now if you say play with Me, it's a whole different era. So I'm going to use modern-day technology, modern-days terminology, to hang with Me. So I said to Kevin, I said, Kevin, would you like to... You know, I did say play With Me, but I'm just going to modernize it. Would you like To hang out With Me? And he said, why would I want to hang out with you? And so in my neighborhood, I was not great in sports. I was nicht great in anything. But one thing that I had that nobody else in my block had was guns. My dad is a Korean War hero. He fought on Porkchop Hill. And so we had guns in my house. And I knew never to touch the guns. I was trained well. My dad showed me gun safety. And I new never to do that. But he was not around. And I know the one thing Kevin did not have was guns So I said to Kevin, why don't you come over to the house and we'll shoot at stuff. And that did make him excited. So he came over to our house, we started shooting at stuff, and because Kevin's older than me and tougher than me, shooting at cans bored him, and as my feelings of I was about to be abandoned happened, I reached out to him and I said, wait, wait. Don't leave. We can play a different game. And I came up with the game, shoot at me. And I thought in my mind, in my incredible magnifying alcoholic mind that this is going to work out just fine. If I move faster than the bullets, I should be totally fine in this game. I didn't have an outside counsel to go to. I didn' t have a sponsor. I didn''t have a parent. I didn ''t have babysitter. So to me, I thought, I'm going to move fast. And he shot at me. I went to move past. It's a one-a-million shot. Came, blew out my right eye. And at 12 years old, now i'm in the hospital for a year i'm getting reconstructive surgery and all this kind of stuff i'm 12 i'm the kid that you know everybody's parents are saying see i told you not to play with guns and um and so now this also lends to another reason why i'm different than everybody because in my school i'm only a kid with one eye at that you're not that time and so um i'm the kid with one eye i'm the half jewish half italian kid it then turns out i'm adopted that's another one that's a whole that i'm making my list i got a list to tell you what my brother my brother now plays for the nfl at the time he got drafted to the end of a big day for us for me my parents didn't know anything about it they saw me buying jerseys but they didn't know i was telling the school that it was my brother so it's a big date for me so I've developed this incredible alter ego of why I'm different, and then came Manischewitz Jewish table wine, which is my drink of choice. So on one of the nights, which is Friday night, that was Jewish table white night, and Sunday is praise the Lord, you never get the two confused, because we say praise Jesus on Friday night. You get the look like. Obviously, your kid's messed up. So I took a drink of the Manischewitz Jewish table wine and I felt better. There's nothing that cures my alcoholism quicker or better than a drink. And it doesn't even have, I'm not even talking about getting drunk. I'm talking about whatever i have going on inside here right now a drink cures that almost 20 years later sugar cured that temporarily now but the drink used to cure i would take a drink off the table my family would retire to another room i'd get the manischewish jewish table wine on a friday or Chianti on a Sunday and I'd be like this. This is nice. And I really never thought to go drink 10 of them. Now, I'm not that guy that went to go drink 10 in a day. I'm the guy that was very happy with the one because the one cured what I had going on inside me which is restless, irritable and discontent. Now, of course what happens is then the one you need more than the one but the one worked for a while for me from 13 to 16 when I would have won on a sunday or or friday uh it would really did work i want to tell you and and obviously i was at a party last night which i don't usually do i don t i know that a lot of you can do this but i don' t usually go and hang out with people that are drinking it's not something but last night i was had a party because it was my wife's friends 45th and they're all normal people and um they were drinking and uh and they didn't seem like you know they were drinking heavily and i would imagine all of them most of them i wouldn't say all of them but i would say most of today probably are still taking care of their kids and probably still some of them maybe even went to church this morning some of the are going to go play baseball with their kids and that that is not my experience My experience is once I go past the one, then the next day is totally, you know, alcohol's going to tell me what I'm doing on Sunday. If I'm drinking on Saturday and the plans I made for Sunday, they're going to need to phone in to alcohol itself and say, well, what exactly are we doing today? Because it seemed like Steve thought he was going to play baseball with his son. That doesn't seem like there's a lot of alcohol served, and my life goes and takes an entire other turn. We got one up here for you. Well, glad. So, you know, why am I here at the South Dixie Group 40 years after this story? Why? Because I'm a guy that loves more. I love everything more. I've never tried something that I like and ever said, I'm good. Including the cake last night because I'm... Yeah, I'm sorry it happened. but I'm my new thing is no sugar, no flour and all that kind of stuff and I've been doing that for a couple months and then last night I had a piece of the cake and then until 2 o'clock in the morning it was a situation so I'm a more guy I love more and so I'm a product of the 70s and 80s and in New York during that time there's a lot of stuff you could do more And I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you could do more now, but I'm just going to speak in Long Island. It was the time of New Jack City. It was a time of – I want to thank my friend Gonzo and all the people that made the product cheaper down here for us in New York. I wantto thank you very much. And you guys were shipping up the white powder up into New York, and I was just having a ball. We were having a fall, Studio 52, Studio 54, and dancing and disco and Saturday Night Fever. and I'm a huge John Travolta fan and it was great and the kid was here and it went on and it wasn't a good time. It didn't have any consequences yet. If you know, it's, I've heard it said that it's a good times and it's good time with problems than just pure problems. During that time it was a good thing but there were a little bit of problems and really the only problem I had is that I would run out of money fast. There wasn't like a, there was no consequence. You know, when you're doing stuff other than alcohol and even alcohol you need to have money to do it and then when you don't have money That's the only problem I was running into. I liked to do stuff, and then I didn't have enough money because I was a waiter in the Poconos, which is like the Catskills, but in Pennsylvania. And people would go to these resorts, and they'd come there all week, and I would schmooze with the people, and then they'd give me envelopes at the end of the week. And they loved me, and I was the waiter to the stars, and we did acts on the stage, you know, like they do in the movies. And it was great. I would get the envelopes, But when you're doing substances other than alcohol, in addition to alcohol, that envelope doesn't go very far. It really doesn't. And when I was in my junior year of college, something happened to my uncle, my hero. My uncle was the smartest guy I ever knew for me. He was my hero, he was Italian, he's Italian, and just a genius. He went to Italy without knowing how to speak Italian and went to medical school in Italy While they were teaching in Italian. He was learning Through your doctor in another language. I suffer from learning English in America Like a hero of mine So he was He drove Jaguars when nobody drove Jaguar He imported his Jaguar from Europe and picked it up on a dock. And we were driving around in Jaguars, convertible Jags. Nobody ever saw it. It was just... He was just the coolest for me. He had a home... He was single, and he had a homie on the intercoastal in Fort Lauderdale. He was a chief at Holy Cross. He was big deal for me, and anything that he said, I hung on to every word. This is what Sicilians do. Oh, yeah. And then we get the call. He drowned on the bottom of his swimming pool. it turns out that my uncle has what we have he had alcoholism we just called it eccentric i didn't know anything we didn't know anything about alcoholism in my family we thought my uncle was eccentric but he's a genius and he's the millionaire and he is eccentric but one night when he was alone and he had the disease of loneliness he went to Ruth Chris Steakhouse and ordered a couple bottles of Dom Perignon drank them with the waiters because he had disease of being alone and then died on the bottom of a swimming pool after he tried to go um swimming so i tell you that story one it was crushing to me number two is i i inherited a lot of money for a 21 year old in college i'm not saying in terms of today's money but in terms my money when when i'm waiting all week for 150 dollars so that i can do a little damage i inherited a bunch of money fast from my mentor and and i got a case of the efforts i'm like my uncle's dead you know what's the point and so um and so i never really tried even though i was dabbling in in some of the miami substances i had never really tried to get crazy but after i inherited money things got bad real fast anyway i just want to fast forward i go home i tell my parents that i have a problem with the substance And in my neighborhood We didn't know anybody that was sober There was one guy in the Cobaltack His name was Mr. Woolley And Mr.Woolley went to AA And so we called Mr.Woolley We said, you know, what do you do? He says, you've got to send your son to a rehab You know 35 years ago it wasn't like rehab Was like a common term Like everybody uses now Back then you'd go to college You'd go into the military You'd get a trade now the fourth category now is treatment, we didn't have that back then we only had a couple categories so we called up a friend and we called him a cousin who had a problem with drugs and it turns out that he went to Minnesota and said that you need to go to Minnesota his mom said send him to Minnesota I was 21 she said send me to Minnesota and first of all I want to be honest with you and I'm not there's not a stick this is the truth I know I knew I should have known where Minnesota was okay I'm already 21 I'm in college we should know where all the states are and you should know what things are about the state you know like corn or freezing cold you shouldn't but for some reason I didn't know where Minnesota was I knew it I knew as west of Pennsylvania somewhere between here in california and i just said yeah it'd be fun and uh my parents they they said listen you're going to rehab and i you know i i got asked to leave school uh by the uh by school itself so re i said that sounds good and they said and when you get your life together you can go back and finish college so i said perfect they put in the tape of um clean and sober with michael keaton they said watch this this way you're going they had never seen the movie so they thought it was gonna be like serious like scare me straight but it didn't scare me street it looked like a good time you milkshakes and and you know romance and a dance there was a dance at the end I like all that kind of stuff because I'm a spring break type of kid the four states that I knew was New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Florida so so I had known spring break and so I I dressed which I thought which you know like spring break tech address I put in my four types of guinea peas my gold chains my balloon pants which is where i wore every day everyday balloon pants you know the muscle pants but every all those things are very thin they're very thin muscle balloon pants are like pajamas for adults and so i i i fill up my suitcase for like a spring break in minnesota type of situation and it's february and uh and then i arrived there in Minnesota for the first time ever in my life going west of Pennsylvania and then just shocked at the obscene coldness of what is going on. You cannot prepare yourself mentally for this type of situation and especially if you're ill prepared in your dress. It was a whole shocking situation to me. The treatment center was shocking. The word alcohol on the world on the wall was shocking that was shocking i was shocked i'm 21 i had never really even started my drinking otherwise other than a little chianti and manischewitz i got involved in one substance and one substance only i show up at the treatment center in the middle of a like fargo type of situation i'm wearing a guinea tea and a members-only jacket my hair gel is completely frozen at all ends. And I see this situation where it says alcohol. And I was not prepared to not drink. Nobody even mentioned that you're going to go to Minnesota and we're goingto teach you how not to drink. I only wanted to get off to one subject. and I just wanted to say this we're all here you know we are all here regardless of how we got here whether it's wife ordered court-ordered family ordered husband ordered we are here I went to Minnesota to get off one substance which was non-alcohol i arrived and could not escape because it was a one-way ticket and it was freezing outside so they said listen you can leave but you know nobody has ever attempted escaped from this center in this cold so i mean you definitely could leave this but you but you know it will never make it and and i stayed i stayed till it thought out in the spring i stayed and during that time they took me to the oldest clubhouse in minnesota uh i mean i don't know if it's a minnesota but in minneapolis called 2218 old timer and i saw alcohol synonymous and i didn't fall in love with it in the first meeting but i learned to fall in luck with alcohol and i was in love without the hawks anonymous for five years i was in love with the idea of being with you people i loved going to meetings all around south florida i moved down to south florid to be with my grandfather and my grandmother and i loved it and i had a sponsor by the name of myron the locksmith one of the locksmiths of broward county may god rest his soul he died with 40 years of sobriety just an incredible mention incredible person and he took me around this young kid and he showed me aa and i liked it but there was something inside me that never admitted to my innermost self that i was powerless over alcohol i knew i was powerless over this other substance other than alcohol but i never admitted to my innermost self that i was powerless over alcohol and if we can't admit to our innermOST self that we're powerless of alcohol we're going to drink again and i married the uh and then and then what happened was i started to feel like a was a bunch of losers because i'm like 28 and my biceps at the time were like huge and my hair is huge and mine teeth are white and i'm driving a triple black Mustang Cobra and my sponsor's like driving a truck once again my sponsor is driving a truck and I'm like these people in AA I am in a different track I am on like track to the stars and these people are like track from X bars and I'm like this is not what I want to be and I started to think that I was better than the people in AA and I started to drop slowly out of AA I just stopped in for a meeting and what happens if you're not connected alcoholism returns but and then it could definitely return to active alcoholism and and i and i married this beautiful girl that i thought would fix this this god-sized hole that i had developed because i was restless irritable and discontent i was taking steroids so i was fixing everything on the outside yeah yes i know i see all these people going like this i get it i mean i i'm thinking the same thing now in hindsight too but back then i wasn't asking anyone just like i didn't ask anyone should we play shoot at me I just did it and I'm getting sicker and sicker I married this beautiful girl from the country of Colombia and and I thought she would fix me and then on our first dinner after we got married I saw a fine wine presentation next to me on the table next to you I never seen a fine one presentation what that means is they pour wine in a decanter and then they let it breathe first and I was I was 30 I'd never seen it I was shocked and I said to myself that's the problem you could have stopped at fine wine that needed to breathe for and you wouldn't need to be an AA you went right from Mad Dog to crack you missed by one you would've stopped in the middle you don't need to be an A those people aren't even drinking it they're talking about it I watched the people next to me. They didn't even touch the wine. They're talking about drinking it like five minutes from now. I'm like, that's your problem. You need to get into a fine wine type of situation. So I picked up my seven-year medallion in AA and I tried the fine wine, but I'm a more guy and I try the fine one. First of all, I never found the fine line. You really need to know what you're doing. You can't just stop at a Chinese food restaurant, which is what I did, and say to them, do you have fine wine? It didn't work out. And so, what happened was the fine wine experiment turned into everything experiment. And I got six felony car crash. And my dad, I couldn't drive anymore. And I was in treatment down here in Miami and I had heard this amazing speaker which was Russell. Now, I'd been in AA seven years and I heard some incredible speakers. But I never heard anyone quite speak to my heart, to my soul, the way that Russell did. And I'm not talking about after I relapsed. I had like four or five months. But after I got into my sixth felony car crash, I said to my dad, Dad, you've got to take me down to Miami to the West Dixie group, the different group. And we got to hear this speaker, Russell. And I went and I heard him. And in my first meeting back after my sixth felony car crash, Russell had the Bible out. I know this is not a Christian meeting. I just want to tell you the story. He's talking about the 12th step. And he just wanted us to know where it's what a good Samaritan is. And I didn't know what a Good Samaritans. I heard that thing a million times. We have to act the Good Samaratan. I just took it all that, you know, like that's something from the Bible. But Russell read how it is to be a Good samaritan. and I knew that they were going to do some serious damage to Russell, I told my dad what that guy is doing up there this is going to be bad it's a serious situation I've seen it now you understand I smoked crack yesterday and I'm worried for the speaker that's got 20 years and my dad's like just relax and he reads to us from Luke 10 in the Bible on how we need to act in AA and my jaw dropped and no one screamed at him. And I realized there's another AA. There's an AA that doesn't believe the way that I was believing that you could make up a God of my understanding, that there's God as we understand Him. Like God's got a first name and it's God. I had made up some higher power that went with me to strip club. We were going together everywhere. I'm like, come on. Come on, let's go. And that day something changed in me and I started following that man around here in Miami like a puppy. And he told me to read certain books and he told me to open my mind up to certain things and my mind was as closed minded as you can possibly imagine but I was desperate enough to listen. He took me to California and showed me different AA there. He took me to the caddy club in California and my mind and my heart opened to Alcoholics Anonymous like it never did before. And I started following Russell and guys like Russell and his sponsor Joe Schneider and then his sponsor after Joe passed away, May God Rest His Soul, which was John Glenn. And I realized what Russell said was true. The people that you hang around with, the books that you read will help shape the person you're going to be over the next five years. And people say to me all the time, and this is the truth, they say tome when I go and speak at a place or when I do a step series or I'll go up to Montreal and I'm doing a step series in Montreal. They say, you know, there's a guy in Miami that sounds a lot like you. I go, I know. Yeah, he does. He sounds a while. You take a lot of my stuff. That's because I... Because I want to emulate success in alcoholics and honors. I wantto emulate people that their lives are worth in the alcoholics industry. And so that has worked for me. Surrounding myself with a team of people. Surrounding myself with people that are going in the same direction Or better than this Ahead of me Going in a direction that I want to be And that has come true in my life I have followed a team of men And women That I really respect, that I honor That I love and that I cherish And during my Eighth year of sobriety My wife and I were doing great She took back This is all true, she took back the restraining order she tore up the divorce papers that she went and got with my parents she let me move back into the house my wife is a serious Al-Anon she's no joke she follows Russell sisters of perpetual condemnation she eventually allowed me to come back into the house and our marriage is working we go through four years of counseling because I married her and then relapse. Imagine the damage I did to that poor woman who never knew anything about alcoholism. I married her, sober Steve, and she got drunk on the street, Steve. So we went through four years of counseling. And then four years after that, we decide we're going to have a baby. And now we're like in our late 30s. I'm 40 already. And we get pregnant, then it doesn't work. And then we go to a clinic and that doesn't look good. Then we go back to South America where my wife is from and we have eggs donated from one of her family members and that doesn't work. And then we hire a surrogate and that doesn't look good. That doesn't work. And then we finally get pregnant, which is like the best. And we're walking around, we build the baby room and it's just the best time in our life and we go to that same clinic which is an in vitro fertilization clinic and everyone in there is hoping to have a baby but we're already pregnant. So you walk in there and it is like you know like you planning sober or being sober is two different things and so we're pregnant and and we just cannot get enough of each other it's just the greatest time in our life and then and then the nurse says I'm sorry no heartbeat and I just what happened was I wasn't prepared I wasn t prepared because I just believed if you're doing God's work and you're serving him and you serve people in AA and you're doing meetings all over town then you're starting meetings everything for free and for fun and you doing seven days a week in service I just was not prepared for a no I just wasn't prepared in hindsight I see that we need to be prepared for all things at all times but I just didn't know and it was my first real blow and and so my wife is crying I'm crying and and I just can't get my head around it and thank God I had a team of people in Alcoholics Anonymous that came around me because there's some bad information in AA and every talk I ever do I want to just just put this out there people say in a well-meaning and I've done it too that God only gives you what you can handle but that is not true that's a terrible thing to say to someone that just lost a baby or their son has leukemia or their wife just died that's terrible thing saying it's not God's heart God doesn't give you something a billion times harder than somebody else life gives it to you and God will get you through it life will deal you sometimes some very serious blows and God will gets it through the God always gives us the strength to get through the situation that is true and thank God I called the guy in my home group and he said listen Steve you just need to pray for the willingness to understand that this is God's will you need to pray for the willingness of God's will. God does allow all bad things to happen as well, or some bad things to happen, and He does allow some incredible things to happened, and you don't need to pray for the acceptance of God will, the acceptance of that work. And then he also said, and then you need to also know that God will give you the strength to get through it. This too shall pass, and that's true. But we still have a baby's room that's built, and our hearts are broken. And we go into an adoption clinic, and then we get kicked out the adoption clinic because in my first sobriety because i was such a great guy i went and picked up a prostitute on the way out of an aa meeting on a wednesday night and that and that prostitute was a police officer which i see in some of your faces you realize that's not a good thing excuse me i'm sorry the prostitute she wasn't a prostitue she was a police officer i said it wrong and uh well we got it yeah i said this came out wrong like the police officer was being a prostitute no no it was a setup and my wife didn't know and so now i'm in an adoption clinic and they say listen you need to leave a man like you will never be able to adopt a baby in the state of florida and my wife looked over at me and i said yes and um and it didn't take the pain away that we weren't married when it happened. It didn't take the paint away. We have no baby. I have charges on me that we can't adopt, and so I just needed to fast-forward the story because I just got to tell you how amazing AA is. In almost every AA group you go to, there's specific experts in all different areas. There's accountants, there's lawyers, there're adoption people. I wouldn't highly recommend getting relationship advice, but other than that... and uh and in my home group there's a guy named happy bob and happy bob as you guys know paul is a very famous attorney i mean until he got caught with three kilos but but still he knew his people he knows people so i called happy bomb and i said happy bob do you know somebody says call this woman and this woman says callthiswoman mindy from boca and so I call Mindy from Boca and Mindy says I'll come down and I'm going to check your house we're going to do a home study and I just want to tell you that at this time my wife and I now are over the top religious people at this top you know we're the people with the t-shirts and the bumper stickers and we got sayings all over the house we got statues of every different denomination on the way in holy water at the entrance and I know that Mindy from Boca is going to be the one that's going to be doing the evaluation so I say to my wife sweetheart maybe we should tone down some of the artifacts in the house let's take giant Jesus off the wall put him in the closet and let's just bring it down one level for Mindy and Mindy comes in the house and my wife says we're not going to change who we are we're taking down one statue we're changing anything holy water was a joke and she says we are who we are if God wants us to have a baby, we're not going to have to pretend when some of them were not. And Mindy comes in and she looks at all the stuff around and she says, do you think that God gave you another chance? And I said, I know he gave me another chance. I'm 12 years, I'm 10 years sober and look, my life has changed. My wife loves me. My parents love me. She says, so how can I not give you another change? And she signs off on the adoption paper and a month later we get a call from, I don't know if you know anything about adoption but to get a call a month later is a miracle that you cannot even understand you wait years after the home study just means like you're you're approved now you have to wait for someone of the entire united states or world to choose you to give you their baby it's very difficult but somehow god chooses us to go up to by california on the northern border between here in canada to meet this beautiful little girl 25 year old that is like white white uh like american girl and how she chose me my wife is dark-skinned colombian i'm italian from new york how she shows us it's just it's another act of god i mean what was attractive about us in florida to the first i don't know it's not like we had money but god chose her and we go up there and she holds up this beautiful translucent white baby. She says, what would you like to name him? And we say Joshua. And she says, why? And he said, because in the Bible in Joshua 24, 15, it says that for me and my house, we choose to serve the Lord. And she said, well, we're not religious. I said, Well, I want you to know all that means is that your son, our son is going to grow up in a godly home free of any alcohol or drugs or disturbances that you would, and she said, that sounds like a great name. And two and a half weeks later we brought Joshua home and there was people on the lawn from AA with signs, welcome Joshua, welcome Stevie B, and AA people were taking care of my house and taking care OF my dogs and then God gave us another cherry on top of the sundae because our baby was always very white and always very bald he never had any hair and then about eight months into his life Joshua his hair sprung out completely red with the beautiful green eyes and my mother has the most beautiful red hair and the most beautiful green eye and so when joshua walks with my mom they're like oh now i get it because i didn't understand why i thought steve and sandra but the first year they asked us for three forms of id every time we picked them up and so and so god just just wanted to just just hey listen i gave you the baby i i pulled you up to the top of the united states i overturned your terrible charges from before i i'm now going to just show you one more time i got you're it you're i got you here's his red hair and here's green eyes now he's going to match every one of his three cousins that look exactly the same and when you go on a cruise or you go away when you take a picture of the four of them they're all going to look like they came from the same list not for you steve just because this is what i want to do and and over the last eight years it hasn't been easy it hasn't been perfect i'm saying eight years of joshua's life it hasn t been perfect he has uh he has some things going on now and um and but it's the greatest gift of my life that's the greatest gifts of my wife's life because it it's never going to i don't know it just seems like my situation my situation is never easy i'll have an amazing month in business and then four months nothing i'll has a incredible uh my son will hit a home run and then break his arm Nothing is ever easy for us at the Boyarsky Residence. But God continues to keep us in the palm of His hand. And I'll give you an example. I didn't know I was speaking here today. Okay, I know I should. My sponsor asked me, put it on the calendar, it was a big deal, it's very important. But my mother went in for knee surgery on Friday and I'm their helper right now, 87 and 77, and I completely forgot about it. So Tony, my good friend from Broward, texts me, I'll see you Sunday. And I text him back, what Sunday? He says, you're speaking. I said, of course I am. But my initial reaction was to cancel because I have to take care of my parents. But my mother is totally doing fine. He's watching. I know I'm going to end right now. I just want to say this. He's watch me. He's been watching everything. And one of the things that people attribute to me, but it's really Russell and I want to say this is, I would have settled for sober. I would've settled for sore. And I heard Russell say this and I say it definitely better so I'm going to just say it now. Is that settling for sober is like going to the buffet and you go to the front area and there's salad and crouton and you only take the croutons and you'll go back to your seat and you have your crouton and you're selling for sober and people ask you how you're doing and you go hanging in there and you've got the faith and people that have God and sober they're on the end of the buffet they've got prime rib juice falling on their chin crack crab you ask them how they're doing they're like light beyond my wildest dreams you have a job? no but I'm living a life beyond my own wildest dream you have car? no but someone's going to pick me up The people that sign up for Sober With God, those are the people that are happy, joyous, and free. Thank you so much.