The Difference Between Meeting Makers and Working the Steps – David P.

Hi everyone, my name is David Palmer. I'm a recovered alcoholic. And for clarification, I'm from Westfield. I'm in the phone booth if you ever want to call me. This is my sponsee, Kevin. Hi, my names Kevin and I'm an alcoholic. Kevin's visiting from Bakersfield. We're supposed to have a theme. That's what Chris said. You know, when they said, you know, don't be one of those rude morons who text, I immediately went for the phone to send Chris a text. You know? Tell him what the topic was going to be tonight. I decided against it. but Kevin and I talked about it, and we want the topic to be what have I done for my sponsee lately? All right. And I'm going to qualify for a couple of minutes, and then Kevin's going to qualify for quite a few minutes. And then we'll talk about what it was like and what happened and what it's like now. And in an attempt to undercut this meeting, we're giving away three big books if you need one. We brought in a handful. So if you needed a big book, we've got a couple small pocket editions up here you can have for free. Now, I don't know why you guys are here tonight but I drank and drinking worked for me. Drinking really, really was a solution for me If drinking is a problem for you, stop drinking I don' t know how else to say it For me, drinking was a solution that I just could not live without I like it so much I try to do it every day all day long and it was a problem I was 12 years old I'm riding my bike It's the middle of summer It's a beautiful day It's summertime in between school My friend comes up to me goes, hey Dave, you want to get some beer? And what I heard him say that sunny day at 11 o'clock in the morning was, hey, you wanna get drunk? And I said, yes I do. What do I gotta do? He goes, give me two bucks and meet me down by the river after dinner. I said I can do that. I had like two dollars in my pocket. It was 1973, I had $2.25 for the whole summer and I was willing to part with two bucks for a beer. I met him down by that river that night and there were some older kids smoking pot and my normal reaction to new situations is to run, is to hide, is to avoid them like a plague because I don't fit in. And I know what you're thinking. I'm looking at your eyes and I'm reading your mind. You're thinking something bad about me and it's all true. He hands me my warm six-pack of Schlitz where you need like a hammer to get the top open and I drink that first beer and it just is kind of warm and bubbly and it' s kind of nice. Two and a half beers in total and you're all my friend. Every single one of you became my friend. The world got a nice glow to it, and I fit right in. And I didn't care that that guy over there was 16 years old with long hair smoking pot, and I didn'y care about that guy over there who was whatever he was. You're all my friends now. I've never felt that way. I mean, when I was a kid, I used to cross the street to avoid saying hello to people. I'm serious, man. You wouldn't know this by the way I talk nowadays, but I was very introverted. I did two things that night that I would never do again. One is I gave away the last three beers. And the second thing, the most astounding thing was I said, that's enough. And I went home that night like Fred Astaire and dancing in the rain, you know? I was just like, this is just awesome. I'm skipping. I get home. I'm 12. I'm drunk. And I don't get busted. I wake up the next morning. It's Tuesday. I hop on my bike. I go find my friend. I say, let's do that again. And he looked at me and said, no. No. And I thought immediately in my mind, you must have gotten busted last night. It's not humanly possible that you're going to say no to that feeling again. And I said, why? I don't want to. I don'T get that, folks. The difference between him and I is that it does something for me that it doesn't do for the typical drinker. It set something off for me. It made all of you people nice. Unbelievable. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't drink again until I was 15. When I drank again when I was 16, and somebody said to me, hey, we're going down by the river. It's a Friday night. We're going to get drunk. Smoke some pot. You want to come along? I said, yes, I do. What have I got to do? Well, give me ten bucks and meet me down bythe river. I said I can do that. That night I dragged myself into a blackout. The next morning I woke up with my mother hovering over my bed looking down at my face going, you could have died from alcohol toxemia. Don't ever drink again. I'm going, I'll never drink again and all the time I'm thinking I'm gonna drink again first chance I get That was like a two-day hangover. And I was drinking on the third day. I drank like that because it solved my problem. My problem was that when I was sober, I did not fit in. I was a square block and a round hole. Being sober is the most uncomfortable position I can put myself in. And drinking solved that problem. I dranklike that and I would get in trouble. And then I'd change the booze. Wouldn't drink beer or I'd drink vodka. Wouldn't Drink Vodka, I'd Drink Bourbon. I wouldn't drink bourbon. I'd drink beer. I wouldn'T drink beer if I just smoked a hell of a lot of pot and I'd go back to drinking. This, that, didn't matter. And the problem was I found was that the times between getting in a lot of trouble and being okay kept getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And the quality of the person I hung around with started getting lower and lower. I mean, I hung out with you guys basically. You know? It got real bad for a while. And I also found that I couldn't hold a job so I became a full-time criminal. And that's a tough job. You know, there's no health care. You know? There's no human resources. I was 23 years old. I weighed literally like 140 pounds. I was as yellow as a Ticonderoga number two pencil. I was dying from alcoholism. And I knew I had to stop. I hadn't stopped for a year and a half. I hadn'T slept a full night in over a year and a hat. I'd go days without sleeping. I was psychotic. And people that were hardcore criminals were afraid to be around me. I had reached the jumping off point. My life was unraveling. And I said, I'm going to stop drinking. AndI'd done it in the past where I would white knuckle it for months. You know, I said, I'm just going to stop drinking. And I went to my mother's house and I laid on her couch and for the first day all I did was sleep and forthe second day allI did was throw up you know, and drink cranberry juice and on the third day I slept and ate normally and onthe fourth day I woke up and I said I've got this thing licked. Got it licked Two hours later I had a glass of white wine in my hand Now folks, I did not want to drink I had no choice And I realized at that point that I was a defective unit. I'm not going to make it. I am not going to make It. There's no way in the world that I'm going to Make It. I can't live without alcohol, and I can' t live without it. So I had to come up with a plan. My plan was to kill myself. That was the only plan where I saw I could stop living and feeling the way I felt. So I convinced a friend of mine to go over to New York City with me to 23rd Street where I gave him a couple hundred bucks and sent him out to buy some pills, and he came back with the pills. And I ate the whole bag of pills he gave me. And I said, I'm going to give him a couple hundred more dollars and send him back out. And he goes, what happened to the first bag? I said it's in my pocket. And he went back out and didn't look at that again. He came back and I ate those. And he says, I don't want to go on back out again. And I don' t remember much after that except waking up in a hospital in a dark room off to the side in the emergency room. And from what I'm told I had my stomach pumped and I ended up in there and I'd almost died. I woke up in that hospital and I'll tell you something It was dark. It was late in the night or early in the morning, I don't know. And I was not dead. And boy, was I pissed. My first plan had not worked out the way I had hoped it would work out. So I got up and I started rummaging around that emergency room looking for something to kill me. And I could not find... You know, I'm not a big fan of pain, so I wasn't looking for anything sharp, by the way. I was looking for another bottle of pills or something. And the only thing I could find was, you know, Benadine solution. You know that stuff they put on a wound or something and it turns yellow and brown? I started drinking that. Big brown bottle of Betadine solution, and it's running out the corners of my mouth and down my shirt, and it tastes bad. And it doesn't kill you. This is my second plan for the evening, and it does not turn out any better than the first plan. Well, I figure this isn't going to work. First off, it just tastes like crap. It's not going to kill me. I've got to get out of here. If I can get out if here, I can go find something that will kill me so I nonchalantly walked into the hallway covered in betadine solution holding the wall to keep myself up and I spotted those big beautiful glass doors down at the end of the hall freedom, a chance to go do it right unfortunately there was a nurse's station there and there was also a police officer talking to the nurses and I figured I had to come up with a new plan because he probably wasn't going to let me out because I'm working my way down the hall so I spotted one of those crash carts right next to the nursing station with a big bottle of rubbing alcohol on it and I ran over to that I grabbed it, I encorked it and I doused the cop with it and then I went for the matches in my pocket because I was going to set him on fire and I figured that would create a diversion allowing me to wander out of the hospital nonchalantly he had other plans he took me down so fast and then he tried to fit my skull in between the crack on the tiles using only his knee and his baton. And he almost got it there. And I had taken a lot of painkillers that night and I felt a lot pain at that moment. I found myself in four-point restraints on a gurney back in that same room. And I remember seeing a movie where a wolf chews through its own paw to get out of a trap. And I thought to myself, I'll chew through my wrist and get out. Now, that hurts. So, and I've had a lot of trouble with that. And it wasn't until about 20 years later when I was in a meeting telling the story and I realized if I had chewed through my wrists, I wouldn't have a hand to unbuckle the other buckles with. So it was another bad idea. Kind of glad I didn't make that one. But the next morning they, oddly enough, a judge said that he was a danger to himself and to others. I don't know where he got that from. And they shipped me off to a psychiatric hospital with locked doors. And they put me in the room with the only other guy in four-point restraints right across from the nurse's station. Now, let me out of that stuff, by the way. And I looked over at him and I said, How you doing? And he looked at me and he goes, Pretty good. I said alright. He said, What have they got you on? And he said, Thorazine. And to me, that sounds like a Nordic god. Thorazine. I said, that sounds good. I hope they put me on that. That was my chemical body and that is what it was like. And I'd like to introduce Kevin. He's going to talk a little bit about what it was like for him. Then we're going to talk more about what happened. Hi, my name is Kevin. I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Bakersfield, California so I'm a little far away from home. I was about 12 years old when I drank the first time too it should have given me a little hint as to what the future was going to hold my dad was a drinker he was an alcoholic died from this disease and I used to watch him pour drinks into big glasses and I always wondered what it was like now I had taken little sips off the drinks and they didn't taste all that good But I wanted to see what it was like for myself. So, I grabbed from his liquor cabinet a bottle of gin, a bottle whiskey, a bottle vodka, a bottle slow gin, a barrel of this, a bottled that, and poured it in a big old tumbler about 24 ounces worth. And I proceeded to try and drink that down as fast as I could. I got very drunk. And I wound up in the backyard under a rose bush covered in wet grass and thorns. The very first time I drank, I went into a blackout. And I don't remember my dad coming out, grabbing me by the collar, and throwing me in my bed. I think it was maybe a day or two after that that I wanted to do it again. And for me, alcohol became an everyday love affair. It was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I mixed alcohol with every special effect you can name. And I did it every way that you can do it. If you put it up your nose, in your arm. If you huffed it. If you swallowed pills. I didn't care. Alcohol was always there because everything I always did made me thirsty. I always wanted a beer. If I smoked a joint, I wanted a bear. If I did a line, need something to wash down that yucky flavor in the back of the throat. Drink a beer. For a long time when I was a teenager, it made me feel good. I went to a lot of parties with a lot, a lot of teenagers in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. And I went to a lot of beach parties and did a lot of things out there. But it got old after a while because I started going to juvenile hall and I started getting busted for little things. Eventually, I got arrested only about three months before they decriminalized marijuana in California for a pound and a half of marijuana. I got a three-and-a-half-year sentence in the California Youth Authority. While I was in there, I did a little soul-searching, and I asked God to show me how to get away from all that because I knew I had a problem. When you're 17 years old, you don't go to California Youth Corps. It's not something that normal people do. And I knew I had a problem and I asked them to help me. And to the best of my knowledge, because I had never met AA before that, I did steps one, two, and three on my own. And I turned my will and my life over to the care of God. I stayed sober and clean for quite a number of years. I met my wife in a church that I went to when I got out of that sentence. I met my wife and I had a job and things were going really good. The problem with it is I still carried a lot of resentments, a lot or remorse, a lot regret, a lot fear in my life because I never carried any other steps into my being. I had turned my will and my life over to the care of God and I was going to church and things weren't going pretty darn good. God had changed my life. But here's what happened. I started to have a life, a life full of pressures, the normal pressures. Some of those old resentments and those old fears started popping back up. One day, one day, after my daughter was born and the bills started coming in and she was crying at night and my wife and the job and this and that, the best thought came to my mind, let me go get a joint. Oh, relax me. Never quite made it to get that joint. In fact, I ran into a guy who was hitchhiking and I pulled over and I gave him a ride. And I was going down to this area in Hollywood that I knew I could go pick up some weed. And when he got in the car, I said, hey brother, you know where to get any weed? He says, no, but I can get you high. I said well what do you got? He says I got some rock. Rock, what's rock? He goes, you don't know, crack? Now I had been sober for a lot of years And before that, there was no crack. So I said, well, let me get it a try. Sure, you know. Wrong thing to do. Wrong thing to do anyway. I got stuck on that stuff for a while and all it did was lead me right back to alcohol. I never wanted to touch alcohol again, but when I did touch it again, it was on and I couldn't stop. I basically almost sold my entire life down the tube. I had a good job with United Airlines. I had I have a wife who's sitting in the back and my daughter, very young daughter and I pretty much sold my entire life away my thoughts of God and the things that he had done for me up to that point were all gone the only thing I could think of because of those old resentments those old fears as soon as I got loaded they were gone they were Gone and this went on for a good number of years I ended up throwing away a relationship with my wife and my daughter and my family. I wound up on the streets of Orange County, California. Pretty much panhandling and working out of day labor places just so I could get enough so I can drink. There was a month, I think it was either July or August where I wore the same shorts and nothing but shorts and a t-shirt for that entire month. But being that I was living in Huntington Beach, California, every day I'd just walk down to the beach, go into the ocean, come out, hit the little shower there, go back under the pier, grab the bottle I had stashed in the sand and pass out there under the peer. Did that for an entire month Things got really, really ugly. I actually got fired from this place called Labor Ready. Now, I don't know if any... Do they have labor-readies out here? I got fired from labor-ready because of my drinking. And I ended up having to wash windows of businesses in Anaheim, California and panhandle. And I was living in a motel with this guy. And things were getting really bad, really ugly, really fast. Drugs up in Anohime, California were mostly methamphetamine. and we were the weird ones. We drank. So all the tweakers would come over after 2 o'clock because they knew we had a refrigerator full of beer and they would share their methamphetamine so that they could get a beer or two. It got real, real strange. And me and Mark, the guy I was living with, we both had been working this one Mexican restaurant as maintenance crew on weekends and we needed out. And we said that we would like to leave. And I said, well, why don't we go to Bakersfield? My wife and my daughter are up there and they're taking care of my in-laws who are sick. And maybe we can get away from this trap because I'm stuck. I can't stop. I can' t stop drinking. And he said, I'm the same way. So after we finished and got paid, we got into his truck and we went and got some booze. We figured if we were going to go up there and try and get sober, we might as well get drunk one more time. And we got a fifth Yukon Jack and a fifth vodka and a case of beer and had a few and he said, you know, I don't know where Bakersfield is. Do you? And I said, yeah, it's a five. Well, why don't you drive? So I did. And my blood alcohol was .20 and I was in and out of a blackout and I took a left-hand turn a little too fast on the red light and I hit another car. And at that point, that car accident caused the man to go into a coma and into a, for four months, I woke up in a hospital in Anaheim cuffed to a bed and the cop was standing over me and said, we got you now. Mr. Carnahan doesn't look like this man is going to make it and he didn't so I had no way there was no way that I could deny the fact that my drinking had caused harm to other people I'd always said I didn't really hurt my family only one I was ever hurting was me how wrong I was I've been hurting my family for years I've been hurting my wife and my daughter and my mother and a lot of other people in my family for years but now I really couldn't deny it two people got seriously injured and one of them died in the car accident and at that point when I was put in Orange County Jail and I was looking at an 18 and a half year sentence for vehicular manslaughter and that's when I met Dave I'll let you tell us what happened so after 30 days of being in that psych ward behind a locked door they couldn't keep me any longer because I passed all their tests I don't know what tests they were giving but I passed them all and they couldn'T keep me because I wasn't insane see I was a garden variety alcoholic you know those, they had like those hundred question things I'd make you take if you went to rehab. You know, I was in the salad days, by the way, for rehab. I went in March of 85. You know? Insurance companies had no idea there should be a limit to this stuff. So I had, you know, I was like, you Know, Fair Oaks. $1,000 a day. You want a lighter? It's five bucks. You know. But they gave me this 100 question thing and I answered them all yes, except for one, drinking in the morning. I never drank in the moring because I never went to sleep. You know there was no morning for me. There was just a long day that went over three or four days. So after passing all their tests, they sent me up to the... They had to give me a choice. I said, you can go to prison. Well, you'll be arrested and then you'll eventually go to prison. Or you can do it. You can go into a drug and alcohol unit. And I said so for arrest, do you mean right away? And they said yeah, there will be cops out front door. Is there only one way out? And they go yes. I said alright, give me half an hour. Let me think about this. Okay, I take the drug and alcool unit. And they put me on another lock board. And the crazy thing happened. Now, you ever see those people at A&E who walk in like this? You know, the ones who have that stupid smile on their face, like everything's okay? And you know it's not. I mean, come on. If you feel like me, nothing's okay. I went up to that unit and there was this guy up there. And he walked around with that kind of smile. He worked there. And after a couple of days of him being sure I didn't have any sharp objects or anything, He came over and started talking to me. He worked at the rehab, he was sober, and he was clean. And he told his story to me I was up there no more than two weeks and this guy told his stories, he had two years of sobriety and he told my story. He had hung out with bikers he had done all the things that I had done and he had clear eyes a happy demeanor and was working in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous every day trying to carry the message. My God! this might actually work for somebody. I don't think it's going to work for me, but it might actually work for someone. So I thought, I've got nothing to lose. You know? I've gotta do this thing because they're building a case for me outside these walls. And I thought alright, I'll give it a try. You know. And I started to listen to him. You know, and I started to get a feel for what it meant to be a sober alcoholic. And what it means to work the steps. And I was as skittish as you can imagine. I mean, two and a half months after being separated from drugs and alcohol I was still having flashbacks and stuff. They'd take us out to the ballpark, softball or stuff like that, and the trees would be alive. I'm like, wow, that's cool. This sobriety is working for me. Interestingly enough I was cured on the day that my insurance ran out. And they gave me my $110,000 our big book patting me on the ass and said don't drink, you can go to meetings. Now I used to carry a gun and I scared the criminals because I was honestly insane. But I went to my first AA meeting on the outside and I remember I had a couple of quarters in my hand because they wouldn't let me out of the house with a lot of money. A couple of corners in my hand and that basket came around and it wouldn't even fall out of my hand. My hand was so sweaty. I was so nervous because I just wanted to belong guys. I just wanted to be part of this group. I had no belief whatsoever that I was going to make it. Absolutely none whatsoever. And what I had heard when I was in rehab, and what I'd heard at many of the meetings I went to is, don't drink and go to meetings. Now, I can do that. I'm not going to drink and GoToMeetings in 90 days. After not having a drink and having gone to 90 meetings in 90 days, I shot some heroin. And I mean, most people get a coin. And I don't recommend it to the new guys. but that night it didn't do for me what it had always done for me it always solved my problems alcohol solves my problems the problem is when I don't have alcohol I'm left with me and nobody wants to be with me right and it didn'y do that that night and all of a sudden I realized this isn't the way to go and I had this big criminal case that was kind of being built against me not for trying to set fire to the cop they actually let that one go and I figured I couldn't talk about this little slip so I kept my mouth shut for 17 years and I don't know about you but a lie in sobriety is corrosive to my sobrietry a lie is the worst thing I can do right I threw myself into the fellowship of alcoholics I was a guy who became I made the coffee, I was at GSR I got early, I stayed late. We had cigarettes in the meetings. Imagine that, huh? Smoking, it would be like a cloud hanging over the meeting. It was great. And you have to cut through it to get out at the end of the night. And, you know, I went to rodeos and roundups and conferences and conferences and everything. And I didn't work the steps. And I did not get a sponsor. I shared five years, really four years and nine months, by the way. And I had no solution to give you from the podium. It was a drunk log with no end. And it was boring. Even I was bored. Started making less and less meetings. After five years, I was making a couple of meetings a week. After seven years, I was taking a couple meetings a month. After ten years, I was doing a lot of things. I was working a couple meeting a quarter. But my life got amazing. I was a high school dropout. The only skills I had was weighing powders and carrying a gun. I got my GED. and I talked my way into NYU and I went to NYU at night while running lunches on Wall Street and I built up a business. And I got married. And I bought a house. I started to have children. And I started thinking it was me. I started believing it was me who accomplished these things. It wasn't just simply sobriety. I was dry drunk. I don't need alcohol to be suffering from alcoholism. I can be dying from alcohol without ever having another drink. Fifteen years I wasn't making meetings. It was all me. I had built a business. Five offices, two countries, four cities. And I really thought I was important. If you had asked me, I would have told you I had evolved out of the rooms of AA. No arrogance, right? Where does humility go in that statement? I could not stand being with me anymore. I planned a business trip to Arizona solely for the purpose of drinking. And then I got drunk on white wine. I hate white wine, and it did not do for me what I had hoped it would do for me. It did not solve my problem. It caused me as much pain as it always had, and I woke up the next day with a screaming hangover. I remember opening the door of my hotel room, and there was this big glass window right there, and the sun was just coming up at 7 o'clock in the morning, and actually bore holes in my skull, my head caught on fire, and I had to go meet this guy. It was horrible, and I came back and decided not to drink anymore. I'm not going to drink anymore. It doesn't work. It didn't do for me what it was supposed to do for me. Alcohol is my solution and it's not working. I'm screwed. I go back two years. My wife has a suggestion. I want a divorce. And I looked at her and I said, what can I do? She goes, why don't you try AA again? And I picked up the phone and I called my cousin, Buddy, who's going to celebrate 33 years of continuous sobriety. He's 80, I think, this year. He makes 10 meetings a week. He's not Spanish, but he started two Spanish-speaking meetings in his hometown. Okay, buddy. Intensive work with others in your own language, please. I said, buddy, I'm going to come back to AA. He goes, that's great. We've been waiting for you. What should I do? He goes... Get out of the driver's seat. I said... Buddy, I'm sitting on the porch. He goes.. No, no. Get out the driver seat. It's over. Okay. See, I knew I had one chance. I had to get a sponsor and I had worked the steps and I was going to have to be honest because those are the three things I didn't do the first time around. All I did was make meetings. Don't drink and go to meetings. I did that. I was the poster boy for don't drink and go meetings. I went to 74 Trinity Place on August 8th of 2004 and I raised my hand and said I'm Dave and I have one day back And all you people welcomed me like I was a lost cousin. It was great. No one judged me for the things that had gone on in my head. Nobody judged me for the slip at 90 days or the drinking in Arizona. You all just said, great to have you back. And I made meetings there every day. It was 12.15 I think the meeting was. And at the break, we'd have a speaker for 20 minutes. We'd have an open discussion session. And every day at the breaks there was this guy who'd get up and he'd raise his, you know, he'd say, hi, my name is Jared. He had one of those stupid AA smiles, by the way. And I do the temporary sponsorship program here at 74 Below. If you need a temporary sponsor, come and see me at the break. My God, that man's so happy. I'm not going to ask him to be my sponsor. I'm either going to get what he has or wipe that smile off his face. He had got a year. When I had 90 days I asked him to Be My Sponsor. And he took me through the steps. And in doing so, he shared with me the steps, the way that they had been handed to him by his sponsor. Right? Not the way he thought they should be worked, but the way they had given it to him. And he took me through the steps one by one. And I started to know a new freedom. I started getting released from self. And one of the things that I found was... When I did my fifth step with Jared, I went up to my office on a Tuesday night. Now, I've read in the 12 and 12 that provided you hold nothing back, the damned emotions of years will burst forth. I did mine. I did it. I did five steps with Jared and it was dull. It was dull, but I shared with him, he shared with me and I went home that night and there was nothing. The next morning, I'm walking through the Trinity Church graveyard on my way to work. My office was on one side of it. The place where I worked was on the other side of it. I'm walking through the graveyard and all of a sudden I feel physically lighter in my shoes. I'll never forget this moment. I thought to myself, brain aneurysm. But no, it was the fifth step taking hold of me. I started to know a new freedom. Now, I didn't even know what the promises were. I had been introduced to alcoholics in 1985. In 2004, I did not know what the promises Were. I had never known what the Promises Were. I'd only read the stories in the back of the big book. I'd never read the first 164 pages. I started making my ninth step in men's. And I started to know a new freedom. I started knowing a freedom from self. And the promises started to come true in my life. And I took that same job at 74 Below. I'd get up and be that idiot with the smile on his face. Hi, I'm Dave, and I'm an alcoholic. And we have a temporary sponsorship program here. And people would come up to me and think that I actually knew what I was talking about. They'd say, well, you sponsored me? I'm like, yeah, come on in. This is awesome. It's like dating again. And, you know, I had six guys ask me to sponsor them. That was great, but ultimately they'd fire me and get somebody else. God, God, I hate rejection. What is it, God? We don't leave. Shit. So, I'm sitting on the toilet one day, reading The Grapevine. Now, that's where I do my spiritual work, by the way. And I'm reading the grapevine. If you don't get the grapevine, please spend the 12 bucks for one year. Or whatever it's, 18 bucks. The worst that comes happening is you feel guilty because it's laying on the table and you never read it. I put it in the bathroom and I always read it cover to cover. Then a little blurb in the corner said, Guys, we need guys to write to guys in prison. I had one of those aha moments. Aha! I can write to these guys in jail. I can go to prison and they can't fire me. They can only not write back. So I started writing to guys in Priddy. And I started writing to a couple of guys, and this one fool in Bakersfield What was the name of that town again? The mountain you're on? Palmdale. Palmdale! And some fool in Palmdale at some work camp kept writing back. Jesus, now I've got to write him back. He wrote me again. Jesus, why won't he stop? And I started to develop a relationship with this fellow. I was never a good letter writer but I knew one thing that a message of hope and recovery was carried to me by my sponsor and I had an absolutely sacred obligation to carry it otherwise I'm a taker and if I'm not sober that's how my life is and he and I started to talk and we started to talk about the stash and we agreed to work the stach through the mail I'm going to turn over to Kevin Kevin, I'll call it just before I got arrested I had gone in and out of several different rehabs in Orange County and detoxes all kinds of different places problem was I went to a lot of meetings didn't have anything to do with God didn't read the big book just lived in these recovery homes and went to meetings well ultimately every time and I was in dozens of them I got drunk in fact one time I went to I was going to go to the Costa Mesa Lano Club which is a club where they have meetings every day and get a 60 day chip and on the way I stopped at a bowling alley to get change for the bus and noticed they had a sign on the wall two for one on beers so I walked up to the counter and I said give me some change and give me 12 and she brings out 12 beers I said, no, I thought it was two for one. Don't I get 24? And she said, okay, yeah, that's right. I thought you just wanted six for... No, I said 12 for 24. She said, where's the rest of your party? I said just bring the beers, lady. I had nothing to do with anything that this program really had to offer although I went to a lot of meetings and I kept getting drunk. And eventually it brought me to a point where I was looking at 18 years in prison. and I knew that I had this big bad problem with alcohol. Not just physically, but now my freedom's gone. I could have still drank in there. My celly made some of the best hooch that anybody said that they had ever tasted. Five gallons at a time. You bring back the orange juice from the chow hall, you smuggle in sugar, a spoonful of yeast in a big garbage bag and make hooch and sell it. I did not want to drink anymore. On April the 20th, 2003, thanks to the grace of God, I got down on my knees and I asked Him to help me stop drinking. And I asked him to forgive me for the things that I had done in my life. And I turned my will and my life over to the care of God. See, because I had gone to all those meetings, I knew about the steps now a little bit. I didn't quite understand how they interpret them. And I had started reading the big book there. I read the big books cover to cover. And when I got to the back, I noticed this address. And it said, if you want a copy of the big book for yourself, write us. So I did, and I wrote World Service Office in New York, Grand Central Station. Not only did they send me a copy of the Big Book, but they also sent me this letter saying you can have somebody in the AA program write you. Sure. Hey, I'm on my way to prison. I need all the addresses I can and who's going to want to write me? And the first thing I thought was Maybe I can hustle them for a package or some stamps or, you know, a little money on my books. I mean, the old hustle was still there. I was trying to stay sober, but listen, I'm trying to self-preserve as well. So I got one of these guys to write me and he wrote me for a few months. And in the meantime, my sentence was dropped from 18 years and I ended up signing a six-year sentence and I was sent to prison. And this guy that started to write to me, he actually went out and he said, he wrote to me one time and he says, Look, I've got to hide. You better come right back and get somebody else. And I had read the big book a few more times and I really wanted what this program had to offer. I just really didn't know how to do it. So I wrote to the World Service Office again and this man wrote. And we wrote through several different reception centers and then an orientation to the fire camp that I went to. I eventually ended up in a work camp on the top of a mountain and we worked with the Los Angeles County Fire Department putting out wildfires. The most disgusting hard work on the planet, cut and brush that with fire coming down the mountain. To tell you the truth, I didn't know much about that kind of work and I lost 50 pounds, but through all of that, having to go through prison and be in a work camp and knowing that I had caused the death of another person, I realized that God had offered me a chance to stay sober. He had forgiven me of the things that I'd done. Not only that, but he had offered мне the chance to meet a person who could tell me how to walk the steps. You better believe it or I'm going to write it back because I wanted to stay silver. I knew it was in my best interest to stay sober. I knew I never wanted to go back to prison. I knew I never wanted to drink again. Because not only was I in prison, but before I went to prison, daily I'd wake up and green bile was coming out of my mouth. And I know my liver was just about shot out. I was drinking at least a fifth a day, probably more like two, on top of all the drugs I was doing. I was killing myself. And God had better plans for me. So we started to write. They sent me up to this place where there were no meetings. Thank God the camp assistant commander was willing to let me have a chance to get some CDs that he was willingto record of some of these speaker meetings. And my only meetings were a grapevine, those speaker meetings in church on the weekends. No A.A. meetings. But I stayed sober because I worked the steps. because I actively got active with this program. I can tell you for a fact that 90 meetings in 90 days is not the way to stay sober. The way to Stay Sober is to work the steps, get yourself a sponsor, and occasionally call him or contact him. In my case, I had to write him. And I was able to Stay Silver that entire prison sentence even though in the work camp guys were bringing in ounces of speed, ounces of heroin, and 1.75 of real booze through the forest. There was a riot there one time because a couple of guys got into it over a 1. 75 of rum. Plenty of booze there, plenty. Plus they were making 55-gallon drums with this stuff back in the forest but I was able to stay sober because God freed me from that by working the steps. not only had turned my will and life over to the care of God but I had actively worked through my resentment. I wasn't able to actually work a fifth step with him because cops read the mail. How do you write some of your fifth step in the mail? So a lot of this stuff was asterisked out. He actually told me how to do a six and a seven and eventually we did a pre-eighth and ninth through the mail Anybody that I could write a letter to like my wife and my daughter, I wrote. And my mom, my stepdad, my sister, my other sister, friends if I had their addresses, I actively wrote them and did a ninth step to the best of my ability, a pre-ninth step. All this freedom came to me and even though I was locked up for the first time, I truly felt free because I knew I was going to get out and I was gonna be alright. I even knew that my wife who at that time was thinking about getting a divorce whether she took me back or not I was going to be okay I thank God she took him back our 21 years marriage still to this day my daughter didn't want anything to do with me but because of the things that this program had offered me and that God did in my life and the help of this man right here and now I have a relationship with my daughter. I don't know, I really appreciate what AA has done for me and if anybody questions the need for a sponsor, I can tell you, you need one because the sponsor is somebody who knows the way and then who goes the way and then he shows the way and the one thing that David showed me through his letters was that he was going the way. Because he would write me back. I mean, who else but a poor sap AA would write ME back, man? I mean I'm a prisoner who took somebody out and I'm up in a prison in California and here's this guy writing from New Jersey every couple of weeks, man. He'd answer every one of my questions in the mail. I was like, cool. That's what I want to do when I get out. I want try and help somebody. And so through these steps That's where we're at. You know, the thing that I don't understand is the math behind AA. Now there's no math behind EA, but I don'T want to understand it anyway. You know I work with math all day long. And I used to think okay if I take actions to help me that's like one plus one I've got to end up with two. Right? It's not complicated. I come into Alcoholics and Honest and they say, no. Don't do something for yourself. Do something for somebody else and your life will get better. And I'm like, no, wait a second. My life's going to get better because I'm trying to make your life better. That doesn't make any sense to me. A guy like me is designed to put my wants in front of your needs. AA teaches me to put your needs in front OF my wants. And I start taking actions that don't make any sens to me Now, I used to work on the floor of the American Stock Exchange as a trader. And I did for many, many years. It's a very aggressive business. You're in people's faces. You're screaming at them. You know, you're trying to get that trade to try and make that money. And I'm working this test with my sponsor, Jared. And, you know, I'm on the 10th step. Now, as I'm doing 9, we're essentially doing 10, 11, and 12 every day. So I'm trying to learn this stuff, you now. And the 10 step, I was supposed to take a, you known, a daily inventory. and what I found for myself that really annoyed me was I'd get in an argument with you and I'd go home at night and I would be upset. It wasn't spiritual somehow even if she was wrong. And I'd have to go back tomorrow and make amends. That really bothered me, the making amends part. Then I found that I would be on the floor in this confrontation and I could scream at you and two hours later I started making amens because I couldn't stand going home at night feeling bad and then coming back tomorrow and making amends. And I also looked stupid the next day, right? So then I started screaming at you and like five minutes later I'm like, no, I'm sorry. Is that a line? Jesus, I hate that. And then I found I'm on the floor and I'm screaming at You and I's stopping in the middle of screaming. Going, what am I saying? That's just growth for me. I thrive in confrontation and the floor is a great place for that. And you want to know something? I learned something which was incredibly amazing to me. If I don't open my mouth, there are no problems. Now for those of you who are married, don't know any fellows by the way in case you're wondering, this is the secret to a happy marriage. I went home and I stopped saying shit. I walked through the door and just have lost $50,000 at work that day. And my wife would go, you know. And she'd say something that was important to her. Now the old David would be like, what are you talking about? Leave me alone. The new David wouldbe like, oh really, honey? Tell me all about it. And in my head I'm saying stuff. You know? But I'm not letting my mouth move. Because my mouth is the thing that gets me in trouble. So I take these little mental 3x5 cards down. And I start writing down the things I'm going to say to her when I get a moment. I start putting them on the shelf, take another card down, put them on the shelf. An hour later, I'll look back on those cards. Are they important things I need to share with my wife? Let's take a look at what I was thinking when she was telling me about her W. Did you think of that yourself? Probably not a good thing to say, huh? Just like your mother. Glad I didn't say that one. And my all-time favorite, when monkeys fly out of my ass. But that's not Dave. My natural reaction is to put you in your place because I'm so afraid of who I really am. But now I keep my mouth shut and the world around me seems to be a far better place. It doesn't make any mathematical sense to me. One plus one no longer equals two in Dave's head. And I read about this in the big book. And I read it back and I see it in people's actions. I see other alcoholics going out and carrying a message even though they don't feel like it. Even though they want to stay home, even though it's raining, even thought it's not a convenient thing for them to do. And I see them as the happy, smiling morons in AA that I so want to be like. Kevin got sober I had nothing to do with it except I was a pipe of the message that was carried to me and I took the opportunity to write and I didn't always want to write and I always didn't have anything to say and I almost felt awkward but I wrote for one simple reason he was willing to write back you know and I would have written until he stopped writing back and then I started getting jealous of Kevin Kevin gets out of prison and starts saying well what should I do now we need to work the steps he said first off you need to fire me he goes you're in California, I'm in New Jersey and that ain't going to work I said that's what my sponsor tells me to tell you and he said I ain't firing you I said well you ought to think about it because I'm rotten so I asked him again a month later I said, you really want to fire me? He goes, nope. I'm not going to do it. There's something wrong with you, Kevin. You should fire me. They didn't fire me, so he goes, what should we do? I said we've got to work the steps in an official manner because we could not do that through the man. We could only hint at things. I mean, I could write, I set fire to a cop because I wasn't behind walls. You can't say that if you're behind the walls. So we start working the steps on the phone. He's writing stuff and emailing it to me and I'm reviewing it and we're spending time and we're actually doing the work and the labor. And we're both changing. Kevin asked, I said, for me, Kevin, I made amends to my mom first. I went and made amenders to my mother. I didn't think I had any amends to make to my moms because I kind of already made amendes in the past. But you want to know something? She lives nine miles from me on Saturday mornings. I'm never thinking about driving her grandkids down to her house. Never. Why can't that bitch come to my house? That's what I think. I make amends to my mom. We're sitting there crying. I don't even know I had it in me, you know? And what do I do? I find out. The next Saturday morning when I wake up, I want to drive the kids down to Grammy's house because I want her to be happy. I didn't know the freedoms I would get. Okay, I said, what should I do?" I said,"Well, I made amends with my mom first." She goes, "'What should I say?' I said,'What does she like?' She goes,"She likes fruit.'" I said.,'You should go down to the food stand and hand-pick out a nice bag of fruit. And he did. Just about every other day, right? Well, once a week. Once a week, and he'd make sure that his mom got that bag of food. And it's simple actions that I take in everyday life to try to make other people's lives better. I've learned something about marriage also recently. It just blows my mind away. When my wife says, I'm going to take the kids downtown to get shoes, you know what she's really saying? I'd like to stay home. Would you take the kids downtown and get the shoes? holy cow I'll be married 18 years this year I just learned that in the last year I would not have learned that except for alcohol I had no idea my kids want to be with me nowadays I walk through the door I get home, my son goes let's play some ping pong I'm like how about a hello how was your day how about letting me put down my briefcase that's what I'm thinking I'm not saying it. I'm saying, okay, as soon as I finish eating, we'll play some ping pong. My children want to be with me nowadays. That doesn't make any sense to God. I just want to leave you alone. But I know a new freedom from that thinking because I take actions that are contrary to my popular belief. And somehow my life just keeps getting better. You know, when I first got sober and I was one of those meeting makers, I built the business out there. I need a lot of money. I mean, ridiculous amounts of money! Oh, it's very important in my mind. I got sober the second time. I lost so much money you have no idea! And I kept going back to, fear of financial insecurity will leave us. When? When? Oh, God! And I learned to be okay without the trappings of the things that I thought were so important. I learned to be okay with the very moment that I'm in to make my children happy. I was supposed to go to Aruba a week ago this past Saturday. We had bought our tickets nine months ahead of time. We have timeshares down there. It saved the perfect time to buy them before they got expensive and all that. We go to the airport and my wife packed everything. She was awesome. Drive to the airplane. I said, honey, just go park the car. I'll get everyone through check-in. I go up and I hand my passports in, all the kids' passports scan fine, mine's expired. Honey, don't park the car! I'm not going to Aruba. You know, and in the past, I would have been full of a variety of thoughts. I'm going to kill somebody, take their passport. You know? I mean, just a variety of things. I just said, well, what's my next action? My next action is going to Manhattan, see if the Department of State's open. Saturday morning I'm driving, you know, and they're not open on Saturday, by the way. And when are you going to talk to the people in my town about who do the passports? What do I do? They go, just go to Philadelphia with a copy of your ticket, your old passport, be first online in the morning, and you'll be out of there relatively quickly with a new passport same day. I can do that. I catch the train. I'm the 16th person online out of like 160 people. I handed my check and my filled-out forms and my old passport, and they go, great, come back at 12.15. I come back at 12 15, I have a passport. There's a cab in front of the place. I get in the cab. The cab takes me to the train station. There's the train right there. I get the train. It goes right to North Penn Station. There's that train right here. I go to Westfield. It's like, this stuff didn't happen to me in the past. And I didn't worry. No matter what, it would be okay. And I'm free from all thoughts of trying to control the situation. I asked for help, what should I do? They said, do this. I'm a little constrained by the thinking that goes through my mind. I have lived with Dave for so many years and now I don't have to. I've become a new person because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been given an opportunity to change. You know, and it's not the alcohol. The alcohol was a solution. You know? I can be dying of alcoholism without ever taking another drink. I can be a miserable, dry alcohol. And I don't know about you guys, but if I go to the meeting makers make it, let's share about our troubles today, therapy sessions, I will open a vein in a warm bath. Because I will be left with no solution just with my own thinking. You know? Chris is my sponsor. At least he was before the meeting started. I mean, probably would be afterwards because he's on a spiritual quest or something. I don't know. But the sponsor I had before that was the most spiritual guy I'd ever met down in South Jersey. It's over, it's like 38 years this year in September. He was my sponsor until he fired me. He fired me for not doing the things he had asked me to do. And I just couldn't be like him. It was okay, you know? But when I went looking for a new sponsor, I wanted to make sure I got a sponsor who was carrying the message every day. A guy who I could get dragged along by when I'm not feeling that rambunctious. I got a sponsee, Kevin, who's got like five or six sponsors out in California. He goes to the Salvation Army and bribes these guys with free big books and boxes of cigarettes. And he drags them to meetings. So I get dragged along by the guy I sponsor and I get dragging along by my sponsor I'm right in the middle of the wagon. It's awfully hard to fall off the wagon when you're right in middle of a wagon, you know? And every day I get a chance to watch somebody else do AA a little bit better than I do because there's always somebody that can always aspire to do a little more work, spend a little time and be more active. I think that you guys have asked for a topic and the topic that we chose, Kevin and I, what have we done for our sponsee lately. So I'll open up to the floor at this point.