The Genetic Predisposition He Saw at Age Five — Tom D.

Welcome back, my friends, to AA Recovery Interviews.
I'm your host, Howard L., and I'm an alcoholic,
sober since January 1st, 1988, one day at a time.
I'm grateful you've joined us.
AA Recovery Interviews is the podcast where Alcoholics Anonymous members
from around the world share their extraordinary stories of experience,
strength, and hope.
I invite you to scroll through my catalog of more than 130 awesome interviews
and follow us on any podcast app or at the website, aarecoveryinterviews.com.
Every episode is unique, inspiring, engaging, and meaningful.
Each story is a powerful testimony of the recovery available to all in AA.
Today's episode is an encore presentation of my interview with Tom D.,
originally released in January 2021.
On my show today is Tom D., a man with an incredible story,
whose life was turned inside out.
and upside down by alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime.
From a difficult childhood, he emerged into a troubled adolescence,
drinking at 14, shoplifting, and getting kicked out of high school.
Hanging with the older boys, his drinking increased beyond sociable,
and his drugs got harder, culminating in a ruinous heroin addiction.
His 20s and his early 30s saw him in and out of county jails and state prison
until his 30s.
His third felony conviction for armed robbery at age 36
finally resulted in a life sentence at a maximum security prison.
With alcohol and various drugs widely available from other inmates,
his life behind bars provided little chance of sobriety or parole.
Amidst the bleak realization that he'd spend the rest of his life in prison,
there came a small spark of hope ignited by memories of the early AA meetings
Tom had attended during his many stints in the county jails.
Though he hadn't succeeded with the program in the past,
he started going to AA meetings in prison,
brought there by a small group of dedicated members of the outside AA community.
He found his sponsor inside, who guided him in working the 12 steps.
Slowly, he began to turn his thinking and spiritual awareness around.
Ultimately, he found that service to other inmates from a genuinely humble frame of mind
gave his life newfound meaning and purpose.
But that's just part of his story.
You'll hear the rest in a moment.
Suffice it to say that Tom's AA program, Forged in Prison,
was burnished in the years since he was released.
He has become a cherished member of the AA community
and a vital part of the recovery scene.
He's a fine and trusted friend to many,
and one of my favorite people in the fellowship.
So, clear your schedule for the next hour or so
and enjoy this remarkable interview with my AA brother, Tom D.
My name's Tom, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Tom. I'm so glad you're here today.
And first of all, I want to congratulate you on an upcoming birthday.
That's the 6th, is it, of January?
That's correct.
And it's 28 years.
Wow.
That's astounding.
So, did you ever think you'd live this long?
And not this long or not this long sober.
Both.
Well, you know, you're one of my favorite people in the program,
and I see you.
On a regular basis.
And before the pandemic, of course,
we would see each other in meetings all the time.
And since the pandemic, we've been in Zoom meetings together.
And when you're going to meetings with people,
you get to hear little bits and pieces about their lives,
and you have to fill everything else in.
And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast
so that you can relate what it was like, what happened,
but just as importantly, what it's like now,
and it has been since you got sober.
Just by the way,
of a little bit of a historical perspective,
can you start us out on like where you grew up and what was life was like,
a brief synopsis of when you started drinking?
Sure.
Uh, and thank you.
So I grew up in West U, Bel Air, Bel Air for the most part.
Yeah.
My whole family drank and they drank normally, which I saw,
I saw everybody, grandparents, aunts, uncles, people that visited.
Drinking what I would call cordially, you know, backyard barbecues
when we went fishing or hunting and stuff like that.
Or like Thanksgiving, Christmas wine, wine, all kids got wine at the table.
This is what we had a little glass of wine just says other people as adults got a larger glass.
So did you notice anybody getting drunk?
Uh, were there any people who got tipsy that you noticed?
They, we, I had one uncle that ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Uh huh.
And, uh, I remember when, what they told me, and I was probably like five years old.
Uh, they told me that uncle Carol was sick and, and he was, he was falling down and throwing up.
And, uh, and so I just, and at that time, my def, you know, my definition of sick was he fit what he was doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, and no one, um, I never could tell the difference in anybody else.
They.
They seem to have, they seem to have a lot of fun when we're barbecuing, but, but I never noticed anybody.
They didn't get, they didn't start talking poorly to each other or did they start acting in a way that seemed uncivil and I can remember getting sips.
I kind of work the, you know, work the, the, the course, you know, I would go around the, everybody had their little stands is stuck in the ground back then.
And they have a mixed drink in it and they usually have fruit in them.
Yeah.
And they were, they would let me get the fruit.
So I would get the slice of orange or the marriage, you know, cherry out.
But in doing that, I always got a sip, you know, and it was kind of scolded, but you know, they never, no one ever made it seem like it was a bad deal.
And you get about 10, 10 sips of, of, of, of a mixed.
And you're a little kid.
Right.
Pretty soon you start, you know, uh, swinging on the swings becomes more fun and all that stuff.
Right.
A little bit.
That's tough when you're a little kid.
So the environment in which you grew up.
Kind of a middle-class, uh, environment.
Right.
Yeah.
So definitely, uh, it was, um, you know, my, my father was killed, uh, in a car accident when I was six.
And my mother raised us for the rest of our, you know, alive until we were adults and went home.
My mother raised us by herself.
She worked at the VA hospital.
She went back to where both of my parents were college educated.
And, uh, so after my, my dad got killed, um, she went home.
She went back to work and took care of the four of us.
Wow.
So for, are you the, where are you in the line of siblings?
Um, I was the oldest.
You were the oldest.
Still, I'm still the oldest.
Still the oldest.
Yeah.
Do you, lots of people get to alcohol or drug use as a way to escape from or treat whatever ills they suffered in their family of origin.
What was that like for you and in your family of origin?
Was it, was it.
Peaceful.
Was it chaotic?
How did that look?
Two things were true for me.
Yeah.
Cause I now do believe it's a family disease, um, so that I had a genetic predisposition for alcoholism and I didn't know that then, but I can remember before my dad died before anything that seemed what I would have perceived as really traumatic had ever occurred.
Uh, I can remember wanting to drink because my dad and my granddad were drinking beer.
I wanted to.
I wanted to have a beer because they were having a beer and I was like five or something then.
And my dad told me I could have a beer if I could take one of those old real thick, a beer and, and, and crunch it with my hand in the middle and then take the two ends and fold it over.
And he did it and showed me what to do.
And I went straight to the kitchen and got one out of the trash can and kneeled on the can and then took all my weight, my five-year-old weight and folded the can over and took it in and presented.
It to him and, uh, said there, and, and he, he looked at it, he pitched it in the trash, drained the beer he was drinking and, uh, told me to show him again.
So he knew that he knew I was, uh, that I had crunched that can with my hand.
Oh, man, what a right, what a rite of passage that was.
So did you ever get the beer after that?
Uh, that I felt like almost gave me permission to drink.
It was just a matter of when, and of course, uh, you know, were.
We're about the same age.
So there was a point in time when the cans got really easier to smash, but, uh, and it wasn't until like, I got sober this time that I actually tied in the fact that my dad's death when I was six years old was, was an event that I just tried not to feel that pain.
Yeah, I get that.
So I think that may have been what you were aiming for.
Yeah, I was aiming towards, you know, what your first experience was, but when it, when it comes to the first.
Experience of actually drinking based on your own decision to take a drink.
When did that start?
So we were probably 12, 10, uh, there was this, you know, guys trying to be guys.
We were not old enough to get out and do anything on our own.
And we started, uh, we would do odd jobs and sometimes people would, you know, think, well, you know, they could pay us with beer and it was a cheaper way to pay us.
And we would take beer course.
It didn't take much.
And then we, we drank too fast and we drank hot beer and we didn't know.
That it made a difference and all that stuff.
And we were probably about 12 and then we started sneaking in people's garages because they stored alcohol in the garages.
So we just, we would go in there and purloin something from someone else was a fifth of whiskey or, or, or whatever it might be.
Did that initiate that initiated your drinking plus other behaviors?
Yes.
Yeah.
Obviously I was stealing one, you know, like what anything my mother, uh, directed me to do.
And, um, and then we started drinking and we was usually weekends and we, I can remember we stole a, um, uh, a fifth of whiskey because my mother had a maid that came in and she's not really a part of our family.
Although she did not live with us, but she took care of us when we came home from school, she got dinner, uh, cooked and, uh, at the house, uh, clean, I went in and took a fifth of whiskey and poured it into another container.
And left a little bit in the bottle of the bottom of the bottle, and then broke the bottle on the floor and put a bunch of water with, and so there would be enough volume of water.
And then I went, oh my God, you know, and she came in and I said, oh, mom's going to kill me.
And, and, uh, and our maid's name was Vera and Vera says, don't worry about it, baby.
I'll tell, I'll tell her I did it.
So you don't get in trouble.
And I thought, thank you.
You know, we went right out that night and some guy that could was old enough to drive.
He drove us around and we got drunk riding around in Bel Air.
Wow.
And you were, you were how old?
Oh, probably 14, 14.
Wow.
Wow.
So you got to, you got to learn about, uh, uh, deception as a way to, to get alcohol.
Right.
Now, what was it like when you, when you drank, uh, w were you sick?
Did you get hangover?
Did, what was the feeling when you were that age and getting drunk?
Initially.
I started like sneaking beer out of once.
I'm.
I realized that the beer was always available somewhere in somebody's garage.
I started to sneak, sneak in a few beers and not drinking too much.
I would realize that I could drink like two or three beers and just get, I, it changed
the way I felt.
And, uh, and I would be up late at night in the summer, uh, same, about the same age,
you know, 13, something I was old enough, not that, that my mother didn't make me go
to bed when it wasn't school time, but, uh, everybody else was, had to go to bed.
So I was up by myself and I TV had to go off like at midnight anyway, so I'd be up just
watching something on TV, like Johnny Carson or something.
And then, um, then when we stole the whiskey, that was the first time we, we, we drank,
we didn't know that like the, the difference in alcohol content or anything, we didn't
know how much stronger whiskey was in beer.
So it had no idea.
And we, we drank that, uh, there was three of us and we drank a fifth of whiskey.
We were.
We were hammered.
We couldn't stand up.
We tried to get back in the house, holding on to each other's stamp type.
We could hold each other up and get falling down.
We got bus that couldn't get in the house.
I mean, I came, I walked in the house, trying to walk a straight line.
I'm just trying to get to my bedroom and I just veered off.
Like one of those jets or planes has been shot as well, crashed over into the kitchen.
My mother said, what's wrong with you?
And I said, nothing.
She says, have you been drinking?
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
And what'd you tell her?
I said, yeah.
And you know, she said, where'd you get it?
And I told her that we tricked the maid and stole it from her.
You know, you have a tendency to confess when you're drunk.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What were the consequences of that for you?
I had to mow the lawn on Saturday mornings and it was a Friday evening that we did that.
And she got me up at the crack of dawn and told me how embarrassed she was and how, you
know, what, you know, this was, you know, this isn't the way she raised me.
And, you know, get out there.
You're going to go mow the yard.
And I remember mowing the yard, puking, just, I'd push the lawnmower for four or five feet
and then I'd stop and hurl, you know, and just retch.
And it was miserable, but of course it didn't make me not want to drink.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not a bad deal.
Not a bad trade.
Uh, uh, getting drunk for mowing the lawn, even though you got, you got pretty sick.
So you were 14 when that's going on.
Were you hanging with a particular group, let's say in high school and, and beyond that
encouraged or supported or bolstered your drinking?
It seemed as if everybody I knew.
So we were, we were a group of people and we skateboarded, we were surfing and we would
do, you know, just the dumbest stuff just for, you know, entertainment.
We didn't have, we didn't, we weren't going anywhere particularly.
We would just be somewhere like at the park or something like that.
And then we'd start beating on each other.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When, when did drugs enter into the picture for you?
At about, about that time, you know, there was w there wasn't a diff.
It was hard to differentiate the one thing, you know, that people started having marijuana
was available first, you know, and then, and then, and then it was anything else.
And then anything else that came became everything else without going deeply into it in an AA
talk.
The, the idea.
That it eventually became everything that was around eventually I tried and some of
those things took me over.
Yeah.
Like what's your favorite drug?
What do you got?
Exactly.
Right.
You know, pill for every, every parent's medicine chest, if we looked at something that would
either help them reduce their weight or it was something that helped them sleep at night
or treat anxiety, we'd read the directions on the bottom and we sell, we want some of
those.
Yeah.
So you were, you were starting to have a problem with it or, or did you just go along and it
didn't affect you too much?
I don't think I saw it as a problem.
I can remember my, my, you know, once it became evident to my mother that, you know, they
took, I remember going, they took me to some sort of a group counseling thing.
I hadn't, it was a number of years before I got ever even heard about a 12 step meeting.
I mean, it was literally until I got sober the first time.
When I was about 21, but I went to some counseling groups where they talked, you know, like the
Texas research of Institute of mental sciences had had a group where we went there and talked
and everybody went, got high afterwards, you know, but we had a kind of a, we'd all have
a kind of conversation where they were, it's similar to what AA is, except for that nobody
was like committed to staying sober.
They were just committed to coming in, you know, once a week and talking.
Yeah.
At what point during your drinking and drug use, did you start to notice that there were
that, that it was a problem or what was your, what was the trajectory of your life like
between the social drinking in high school and the pilfering of people's medicine cabinets
till you got to the point where it was becoming a problem?
I suppose when I, you know, I started thinking that it would be easier to, people would say,
you can do this.
You can make more money.
So it became like a money thing.
So we started, we would sell drugs or do things like that, or take something that didn't belong
to us and everything that looked like, you know, somebody who's not keeping a close eye
on their things, particularly businesses and stuff like that were initially stuff that
we thought, well, taking advantage of all the regular people and we thought stuff is
regular people.
And we'd take advantage of them.
And it could be as simple as sneaking into the movies, which was to save a few bucks
like that, you know, shoplifting at the local drug store for nuisance kind of stuff, you
know, inconsequential, smaller things, then kind of just progressed and got worse and
worse.
Cause that went along.
Children learn from somebody a little older.
So there's almost always somebody older a year or two that's giving you the good information.
Yeah.
Whether it's about alcohol or whatever else you might do, girls or anything.
Sure.
So somebody you want to emulate somebody you look up to.
So whatever they're doing, you do.
Was the drinking and drug use, did that soften up your, your morals or was the influence
of drugs and alcohol in any way in your mind responsible for the other behavior, the stealing
and the, that kind of thing?
I would say so.
Yeah.
To me.
Yes.
So I think one, I lowered my inhibitions.
So like, uh, I was always felt like I was, I felt like I was a small guy.
Yeah.
I felt like I was kind of like not, uh, able to take care of myself by myself.
So, and, and, you know, and I learned when I was little, I had, I mean, when I was little
at a rifle, you know, so I already had been gone hunting with my grandfather and my dad
and everything before I was a whole rifle up, pull it out straight.
So, and.
And I think every boy in our family had a pocket knife, you know, and we learned how to sharpen our pocket knife.
And it was a tool, you know, so they cut string with or with a piece of wood or something like that.
But I started always, but I carried one.
And then as time went on, I kept getting a bigger one.
And then I would, you know, and if you're under the influence of alcohol or other things,
and sometimes the idea that, you know, do you think you could pick on me because I'm skinny or small or whatever it is,
and I'll pull this out and prove to you otherwise, which led to some incidents where I ended up cutting a couple of people just to kind of get them, get away, you know.
Pull the knife on my, my mother had one boyfriend in her entire post my father's death life.
And he was around for a few years and I got, he, he,
he got after me one day chasing me when I was about 10 years old and had me hemmed up in a corner.
Um, one of my other little brothers, younger brothers came and pitched me my pocket knife.
And I remember opening it just kind of like a little bitty kid waving something in front of him.
He, he could have taken me down and taken away from me, but he slowed down and stopped.
And I remember thinking, I remember that, you know, you learn lessons the way you learn lessons.
I remember that he stopped and backed up and remember that knife is why he stopped and why he didn't whip my ass.
And.
And so I, that's just like, I put that in a toolkit.
Yeah.
That was your, that was the lesson that made it okay later on to do that kind of stuff.
Right.
Could you give me an idea what things were like from the time you got out of high school until the next major, uh, milestone in your life?
So we were coming to the attention of the officials in high school.
So I never completed high school.
They asked me to, uh, in Bel Air high school, they asked me to move on down the road.
And.
That was directly related to, you know, uh, some of it was truancy.
Some of it was just being a rebel, not wanting to put my shirt tail in and stuff like that.
They were not catching us under the influence.
Although we were sitting out in the car, uh, smoking marijuana and drinking and stuff before we went to school.
Um, so they, they moved me out of there and then I tried to go to Lamar and, um, I had to wait a few months and get an extreme haircut.
And, uh, we went in there as the best I could look like I was going to church or something.
And, uh, uh, and, and the guy said, we really don't want your kind here.
I thought this is a losing operation.
So I didn't, um, that, and at that point I was, you know, off and running, you know, the, I was big enough then at, um, 15 going on 16, you know, that I just thought I was, you know, I'm always been tall.
So I was.
Like six foot five then.
And, and, and, you know, and I just thought I was grown, you know, and I started, you know, running around with guys that were a little older than me that didn't, that were already, you know, out of their family homes.
I wasn't not there yet.
And I started running with an older group of people that did a lot of things.
And I just, you know, those guys were sort of, I don't want to say heroes to me, but they were role models for sure.
They were guys that had fast cars and they were selling drugs.
And, you know, there were, and I would see them hurt people, but I thought, well, then people were scared of them.
Oh, okay.
That works, you know?
And so there, they, you learn a lot of lessons that aren't particularly beneficial to being a productive human being trying to, you know.
In emulating them or looking up to them, did, did you start to engage in that behavior yourself, hurting people and making them scared of you and that kind of thing?
Right.
That's true.
I did.
It didn't feel like it.
It didn't really until, I feel like that whatever I was doing, that once I got addicted, then I became, you know, one was I was addicted, you know what I mean?
And I would switch, like I would stop, stop using heroin and then I would be, I would be back to drinking, you know, and I always drank with it.
So whether I was doing whatever I did, alcohol and then marijuana were kind of a backstop.
They were always kind of a piece of the puzzle.
But if I would go into withdrawal, say this is doing.
It's going too bad, I would increase my drinking.
So I would have like a fifth and I would tell myself, um, they like tequila was like a drug.
So that's what I told myself.
So I didn't feel like I didn't think I didn't feel very favorably towards people that were alcoholic, but I didn't have a problem with heroin addicts, you know, it's curious, but you know, and so I would, so I would convince myself that tequila was really like a drug.
It wasn't like I was drinking alcohol and I have a fifth.
And I'd sometimes I'd have to wake up in the middle of night and get a couple of sips to get sleep through the night.
Yeah.
Isn't that interesting?
You know, a lot of, a lot of times when we're talking about drug usage, because I was co-addicted as well, but we always in linking it with alcohol, say I use drugs alcoholically and what you're talking about is using alcohol like a drug, like a drug.
So where did that heroin use kick in and where did that take you?
Well, it's a monster, you know, there's no, there's no upside to it.
And I had, um, some of the older guys I'd learned, I mean, I was definitely afraid of needles when I was a kid, but I became, you know, once you start doing it and you said, that's a faster way to get whatever you're trying to do done, I became a, an Ivy drug user and that, you know, and I stayed away from heroin for a couple of years doing a stimulants and stuff like that, because I thought, well, you know, enjoy life, stay awake.
And then,
you know, everything turns against you, as they say, you know, the reason we drew drugs and alcohol is because they feel good.
And they, they work, they work out and all work or would never drank it again.
And the same is true for all the other poisons.
And they, they, they have an initial effect that's, uh, you know, that works and you go, wow, that's, you know, and then it, and then it turns against you, even the most benign in my case, you know, marijuana became one of those things.
It was the last thing.
That once I quit using heroin and alcohol, I hadn't even considered stopping weed necessarily, because I just didn't think it was, it just seemed innocuous, you know, to me.
And then I remember, uh, uh, a counselor in the program I was in at asked me, somebody went up there and they said, Hey, those guys are smoking weed and then the living quarters and he came and said, are you smoking weed and over there?
And I said, that's a person.
And he said, not a personal question, Tom and say, yes or no question, you know, are you smoking weed over there?
And I said, yeah, but who told on me?
And he said, well, you're, you snitched on yourself by, you know, what you're doing in front of other people.
And then he asked me that at that time, you know, I had not ever really considered, you know, like it was that kind of like you would think it would be like a real aha moment.
You would know all that stuff.
I mean, cause I'd been sober before at that time, the last time when I got sober in 93, I'd been sober.
I, but I was just not looking at it that way.
I was thinking heroin and alcohol are kicking my ass.
Cocaine.
I know kick my ass.
Methamphetamine will kick my ass, but we, I just thought it was not that bad of a deal, you know?
So you, you turned to marijuana to kick the drugs and alcohol at the time.
Well, I was using it the last thing because it was just around a bit more.
I didn't go hunting for it particularly at that time.
It was just happened to be somebody who had some.
And so it was, I'd say, okay.
Cause I didn't have a defense against saying okay to that, you know?
And, you know, I think it always been a piece of the puzzle, but it hasn't been one of those, um, things were that I would go to extreme links necessarily.
There's a whole lot of stuff, stuff that you recognize later because THC is, uh, the, the way it's stored in your system, it's half life.
Doesn't allow for you to really experience if you're like really consume a lot of THC.
Yeah.
And then you don't consume any, you don't really notice the effects of the decline of the THC because it dissipates at such a slow rate.
So it's, and I, and I could look back in time and see where, when there'd be a, uh, you're old enough that there used to be droughts in the summer and then when, so when there would be a week or two where you couldn't get any, by the time you, a week or two had gone by, you were willing to go to any bad part of town and go get somebody, let somebody sell you something that wasn't even a close facsimile.
But just because you wanted some, whereas it, it, at day one or two or three, that, that craving wasn't that strong.
It took a while for the, for the THC to dissipate completely from a person that smoked on a regular basis.
Wow.
I never knew that though back then.
Can you give me kind of a, a, a timeline between when all this was happening and whenever the disease and or consequences finally caught up with you?
Sure.
I ended up, uh,
I'd, I'd robbed a, uh, a drug connection and got kidnapped by them.
They picked me up going to go rob somebody else.
You know, I was just doing a real kind of face street kind of crime.
And how old were you at that time?
How old were you when that happened?
21.
Well, actually I was probably 20.
So they, and these guys scooped me up, held me for hostage.
And by that time, my mama, my grandmama and all them were, they would not come put any more money.
On the table for me.
And so, um, I was out and they were holding me in a apartment complex in Southeast Houston and they beat me up some and were threatening to shoot me and all this stuff.
And I was calling around trying to find somebody that would, you know, pay the, the money that was owed a few hundred bucks that I'd cost those guys.
And, um, the, this guy that I went to high school with, that was a starting quarterback on our high school football team, valedictorian, most popular guy.
But he was also a guy that drank and used, and I ran around with him regularly on a daily basis, um, since we were in fifth or sixth grade and he, he came in and bailed me out, but he said, don't ever call me again.
And he took me to Ben Todd's emergency room and dropped me off that night.
And, um, they kept me there and ended up giving me something that was kind of like a psychiatric medication or something that made me feel real goofy.
But I was still in withdrawal form.
Drugs from out from opiates.
And, uh, I went back to the place I was living with a couple of scuzzy guys and, um, I realized something had to happen.
So I called my grandmother and my grandmother who wouldn't come up for the money, didn't mind, you know, trying to, and I told her I got to do something or I don't know what to do.
And she said, well, I have these meetings at the church and I'm gone.
And I thought, oh man, the church, I was trying to, you know, convert me back to, you know, going to church.
And I didn't want to do that, but I thought, well, I didn't.
I didn't have any solution other than that.
So I went and I had a friend of mine who, you know, drove that actually she came in and got her mama's car and came and picked me up and took me to my grandmama's house when they carried me over there.
And, uh, this two people from the church came, it was priest and a recovery and a guy that's recovering, uh, alcoholic, uh, and addict.
And he, he, they came in and the guy that was, uh, you know, a member of the.
Program came in and talked to me and the preacher went in there and talked to my grandmother and I, um, as they say, you know, the therapeutic value of one alcohol and working with another and what he did in, in the hour or so that we spent together, he convinced me that he understood what I was going through and I had never, I had never sat down with him and that there was a solution, right?
So I, and I, and I didn't ever, and I didn't really believe that I wasn't hearing about it anymore.
And he told me.
And he told me, if you're interested, we have a meeting at the church tonight.
And, um, so I came, I went, and I got that time.
I, um, I, I got, I got sober and stayed sober for about a year and a half.
And I, uh, I relapsed through a series of just getting overwhelmed with being an adult.
I say that hindsight at the time, if I would have known it, if somebody says, well, you're, you're fixing to get married to this woman, you're going to do it in the church, you're, you're holding down a job.
You're paying your bills and everything.
Right.
And, uh, people look at you as being a responsible member of this, uh, sober community.
That pressure was, was a real, but unacknowledged factor.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I was just going to interject that, uh, now this is happening in the early seventies.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Exactly.
So what, what was your program like for that year and a half?
I went to a meeting every day.
So a 12 step recovery meeting.
I was working at a treatment facility with people that were younger than me, but I always went to meetings with people that were, I went to also to meetings where older people went, went to some like Alder street men's group.
Yeah, man.
And I felt like we were in high church or something over there.
These guys, it was kind of, everybody was real kind of serious.
And the other meetings were a little less, but we went to some down on the waterfront and stuff like that.
Sure.
Yeah.
But I got tired.
Um, you know, what happened was, you know, cause my sponsor would tell me, you know, when you get a craving, I'll get a craving area now and then.
And he'd say, he says, just give me a call and we'll set up, you know, come on over.
We'll have a cup of coffee.
We'll talk about it.
He says, they'll, it'll start getting less and less, you know, it's almost like with the big book and Dr.
Bob thing.
It was, and I didn't really quite understand because part of it, I was internalized and as a young person, I just, I wanted to be seen as an adult and not some scared kid.
I always, there was like, I think there was a piece of me.
And maybe all of us that just doesn't want to be seen as a scared kid and where we experienced some portion of our life is being that frightened individual and right.
And so when, uh, the third or fourth time it happened, I thought, I'm not going to call that guy.
This is, I'm just showing weakness and I didn't want to be perceived as weak.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I now know, you know, in hindsight is that I made a deal with the disease.
It was like,
wrapped a warm blanket around me and said, hang on, buddy, we're coming to get you.
You know, we got you don't worry about it.
You don't need to call that sponsor.
We got you, you know, and I left from a meeting where I was talking to, uh, parents of students, teaching them drug education and talking to the PTA and left from that meeting and called this girl that I'd met, you know, in a kind of random way, the universe unfold.
I was buying a.
Concert ticket at a place.
And I ran into this girl.
I knew there was a cheerleader that I used to date.
She was working at this place and I could tell that she was high and I kind of just logged it in my brain because I didn't really have a place to go back to where people were that I knew were using.
And I saw her and I thought, I'll remember that.
And I went in and told her this elaborate lie later.
She told me, she says, I didn't really believe you, but I didn't care.
You wanted to buy heroin.
I was willing to get you some.
Yeah.
I, I got a really.
Complicated story.
That's not where, you know, but it was like, cause I just thought she was going to, cause I felt convicted.
So you leave, you leave the good side of town to go over to the bad side of town.
You, you leave service to others to, uh, to become service to yourself.
That's, uh, that's quite a, that's quite a downward, uh, downward roll.
Yeah.
And you know, what's curious is, is that I told myself, so because of what the book says, jails, institutions are dead.
So I was to just take some of that stuff.
Like real literal.
So I said, so I, so I'd been a, a night or two in jail and I found been in a mental institution on, I've been up on the 14th floor of a place that was like a, the, where they were keeping me separated from drugs and myself.
And, and so I thought, well, that's the only other thing.
So I bought enough heroin to kill myself with.
And, and then I went to back to this apartment where I stayed with, uh, other people in the program, they weren't there playing, they were playing bridge in the living room.
And I just walked by and said, man, I got the flu or something.
I'm going to my room.
And I went in there and never even tried to do enough to kill myself.
I did just enough to see how good it was.
And then I did a little bit more, a little bit more until it was all gone two or three days later.
And I called my sponsor and confessed.
And he said, he says, I knew it the other day when you called and told me you were sick and you couldn't come to work, you know, I can hear it in your voice.
He says, he says, are you done?
Oh my.
And I said, yeah, yeah, I am.
You know?
And he says, well,
And they were so kind to me.
They, nobody shamed me, blamed me.
They said, we'll take some weight off of you.
You know, we'll give you more time to go to more meetings for yourself.
And, um, my pride and ego could not take being the guy that only had one day when somebody, when somebody else that had 30 days, uh, now I had to see and perceive as someone that had, you know, that was doing better than me or whatever.
And I, and I viewed it that way, unfortunately.
So coming back.
After relapse was an admission of failure, as opposed to a cry for help.
And, and I've stayed in state until I got another paycheck, ego and pride, man, just, just huge, just, and I didn't know it then I didn't identify it as that.
I just thought, I thought, man, I'm out of here from that time when I relapsed the next time it was not a month within a month.
I was sitting in jail, going to prison.
I mean, literally.
Tell me a little bit more about that, about the, the.
Yeah.
Jail to prison, uh, experience.
Well, that time, uh, my, my, my brother, who's now deceased from alcoholism and I brought the drug store and we got caught almost immediately.
And, uh, and we went to jail and then we both ended up going to prison and, um, went down, did a couple of years, got out and went down there resentful and mad.
Never went to AA, never even tried to, uh, you know.
There was some people from recovery that stayed in touch with me.
And one of the guys you probably knew Greg Lovelage.
Yeah.
So Greg, who's now deceased, uh, liver disease, but he had 40 something years when he died and, and, uh, he, and Greg had always stayed in touch with me.
He, he, uh, he is one of the guys I had lived with back then.
And, um, so, so I'd get out and I'd go by to see what they're doing in recovery.
And, and, and you always feel like an outsider if you're not in, I'm not, I got this idea that, um, you know, the.
The world was against me or something.
You know, I had adopted a mentality of saying I was going to just go this, I'm going to be this best other bad person or something.
And I invested in that, unfortunately, for way too long.
We'll be right back.
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And we're back.
You went to jail and then to prison for the robbing of the drugstore.
How long were you in prison that time before you got out?
Three and a half years.
That time, first time.
So you get out of prison, you go right back to what you were doing and even more so?
So I went to prison, three and a half years, got out.
My brother got out about a month later.
We were out three months, got busted again.
He got out.
He got shot and didn't die.
Another guy in the robbery did die.
And we got convicted, went back to prison, stayed six years that time and got out, came right back out and did almost the exact same time.
You know, so it was three months, then six months, then nine months.
And it was each time I went right back to almost identical.
It's like not not much different.
And in prison, I was just learning more.
Stuff about nothing that was particularly productive.
I did go to some college, but I wasn't going with any kind of, you know, kind of a approach towards doing anything.
And then the last time after I'd stayed out nine months, I ended up I got a life sentence for for each each time it was for robbery, like robbery, robbery, robbery.
So by the time you're you're convicted the third time, that's where that sentence came from, that life sentence.
Right.
That's correct.
How did you get convicted?
How did you get convicted?
How did you how did you feel when when that went down for you?
I'm just curious.
I've never known anybody who's been in prison for a life sentence before.
That's why I was asking.
Yeah.
So it's so initially all the air goes out of the balloon, but you but you have by that time you're used to the way the system works and you realize that what you're facing.
So you realize it's a possibility.
And then you and so it's.
I.
I remember right before I thought I'd got away with a bunch of stuff that had I got caught, I would already been back, you know, and this friend of mine was going to was going through a financial difficulty as a guy I grew up with and like a brother to us and his family was like my second family there in Bel Air.
And he was going through some hard times and I didn't know it.
And then I.
I heard him out.
He had.
He'd gone out in his car, wouldn't start.
And I heard him, you know, cussing and moaning.
He came back in and was looking for a gun.
He said he wanted to go sell it.
And his wife, who I'd seen the gun and the bullets the night before.
And when he was looking for it, I says, give him the gun.
You know, he said, no, he's my kill himself.
He's I think he's, you know, she's not.
I thought, hey, you know.
He's not going to kill himself.
And she says, you don't know.
You haven't been around, Tom.
And I thought, well, give me the bullets and then give him the gun.
If he's, you know, he'll go sell the gun.
He's going to sell a gun.
He doesn't have to sell the bullets with it.
Right.
And so she gave him the gun and then he went back out in the car and I can hear
him beating on the steering wheel, you know, and crying.
So I went out there and said, what's up?
And he started telling me how he you know, he everything he was presenting to me up
there was a fraud.
That.
He was in debt in four or five different kinds of ways and was out.
Yeah.
And I told him, you know, that nothing's worth that.
I says, you know, I says the worst that can happen to me is I get a life sentence
by going to a robbery and which was, you know, eventually what happened.
You know, but I but I was it would have said and I want to make it sound like it's
him because I would have been I would have I wasn't on any path to doing something
better. I was just kind of in a holding pattern.
So you got how old were you when you
got the life sentence?
Thirty six, thirty seven.
OK, so thirty six, thirty seven.
And how how long did you or how long did you serve before you were paroled?
I did 20 calendar years to become
eligible and then I made my first eligibility for parole.
Huh.
So what was so you weren't sober yet when you went in for the life sentence?
How did how did AA or recovery materialize for you in prison?
So when I got busted, I got busted in Austin and which I've been kind of I don't
want to say live in there because I was, you know, but I was I was staying there and
I knew a bunch of people that the people a lot of people I knew from Houston and
particularly from Bel Air, there are musicians that had all moved up there.
So I knew a bunch of people in the area.
Sure.
And the jail and the jail.
There's a guy who you probably met, Kern.
So Kern was the counselor for the drug program there.
I did not know him then.
Didn't even know because he was in Austin.
I didn't know he was even that he was he had been raised in Houston.
And he was run this drug treatment program.
And they had all these guys like
Stevie Ray's band and all these other musicians that were coming into the jail
there, they were all sober and I thought, yeah, sober looked kind of cool.
Then with these guys, these rock and roll guys that have, you know,
more money and more money than I thought was, you know,
anybody could ever spend, they were up there doing volunteer work in the county
jail, bringing meetings in there to the county jail in Travis County.
And so I started going to meetings, you know, part of it was just something to do.
Part of it was, you know, but then I saw
these guys and I thought they all seemed sincere and pretty solid people.
But but I wasn't done yet.
But but I got like a year sober.
I was almost telling the truth, almost working the program.
Almost it was part time AA, right?
You know, I mean, it was it was like, you know, I was still thinking about
escaping would be better than going to prison for life.
You know, there's a lot of stuff I was
still like, you know, kind of thought was entertaining the idea.
And then when I got the life sentence,
which was fairly well was certain I would get a bunch of time, if not that much.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I would still hold on to a handcuffed key, you know, with a possibility of, you know,
trying to, you know, like go south if I could.
Sure. When I got the license, I remember it's
just like all the wind went out myself. Yeah.
And the lawyer that I was that represented me was a guy I grew up with again.
He was right there.
He was a surfer, rock and roll music guy that was from our part of town.
And and I had been sober a year and he said, what do you want me to bring you?
And I thought, well, it's to bring me some narcotics, you know.
And he did.
Yeah. I mean, you know, he just brought him up there to the jail.
And I got loaded for a couple of days and I thought, well, I got to get straight.
And I got straight trying to work on my appeal for a while.
And I ended up one of the time I got back
to prison where I went back to the same unit I've been to a couple of times
before because of a prior escape that I had on my record.
I went to a unit called Ellis where Death Row was.
Right. And
soon as I walked in, you know, I mean, guys were walking up to me
in the hallway going, don't worry about anything.
You know, we got we got a fan for you.
We got a radio.
One guy walked up and handed me a marijuana cigarette and a quick handshake
at the right in front of the like I'm sitting outside the major's office waiting
to get a cell assignment is my walk down here, man.
You know, it's good to have you back.
You know, I mean, I, you know, prison had become home.
I was home.
You know, I got back to my spot, but I didn't I didn't
use anything for a while, you know, and I went to some they had AA meetings
in the chapel and I went down there and then I realized that, you know,
there was a lot of I could do something different in there.
And it wasn't some get sober.
I started smuggling drugs in and drinking and we drank and smoke pretty much every
day. So that was I got arrested in eighty seven and I got to the actual
facility probably in late eighty eight, early eighty nine.
And then so and then by the end of ninety two, I had run the wheels off of it.
We were we were being addicted in prison and drinking all the time.
And, you know, we just it's amazing.
And there was Ann Richards was the governor and they had started a recovery
dormitory and the recovery dormitory gave us an opportunity to have, you know,
kind of a peer support, you know, what an AA gives you.
So then we had some really good people that are still active in Houston,
Rideau and Chuck and a bunch of those guys that are still do volunteer work.
Oh, yeah. We're coming in and doing bringing meetings there to the facility.
This was the Ellis unit you're talking about.
Right. And so they were they were bringing
meetings to the facility and they came every week.
And we were in a like a treatment program like where they actually we went
to stuff where we started processing things.
And I started looking at the things that had been blockages from the past.
And I got to the point where in there.
I became like a different person.
I started being able I had credibility as an inmate, convict, whatever you want to
call them, and so I had credibility, I built a world that I lived in
for I had the respect of people there because I'd come and gone so many times.
And what?
What I did in there and the way I lived as an inmate, though not as a convict.
And so
then I started changing that something happened.
You know, the actual compulsion that was removed was removed.
You know, I did what I didn't believe would work.
I got on my knees and prayed to a God I didn't necessarily believe in.
Yeah, I got a I got a big book.
I got a sponsor. I started working the steps.
I started going to meetings, started turning down things I used to say yes to.
I quit stealing.
You know, I didn't have a way I got rid of any weapons I had.
So I never you know, I've never used a weapon since then.
You know, I've never had one and was thinking about using one.
I've only been in two fistfights and one was both of them.
I made an amends immediately afterwards and neither one of them was very long.
It was a couple of quick, like emotional punches, you know.
So was that behavior that come out of one
burning bush experience or one turning point or moment of clarity for you or.
Or was that a gradual coming to the truth
once the compulsion was removed?
So once again, I mean, I can I remember talking to my sponsor.
There was like a point, like maybe three months in.
I don't remember exactly.
But there was an event that was
emotional enough that in the past I guaranteedly would have
would have I would have at least been overwhelmed with wanting to use
or drink if I hadn't have gone ahead and acted on it.
I would have had that.
You know, and it didn't happen that way.
I remember saying that to him.
And he said, we're going to start.
We're going to bear down on your character defects.
The amends was a piece of it, but it was that continuum.
You know, we say that our you know,
we ask for God to remove our character defects.
But everybody that's been sober while knows that not exactly how that works.
You know, it works that you that you ask God to remove them.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're all necessarily all gone.
Yeah, it's in the asking now was this the man who was working?
With you?
Was he your sponsor and was he an inmate there with you?
That's right. Is it different of a duck as a guy?
And I remember asking the counselor there, I said, well, who do I know?
What am I looking for in a sponsor?
And he says, somebody that's got something that you want.
And I want long term sobriety.
And this guy had come back to jail without relapsing.
So he was had like 12 years sober.
He had some other behavior that he you know, that he alleged he didn't do.
But but he was a had been
an officer, you know, in the Army Rangers.
He was raised in some rural Oklahoma town.
So he was like a small town guy.
He wasn't a dope thing guy.
He wasn't a criminal or nothing.
But I would see that he was active in the group.
He was participated in the group.
He was there all the time.
He he knew the book, you know, and he didn't seem disingenuous.
So he was like like he was maybe living it to me.
But he would be willing to be wrong.
And he.
He would be willing to be wrong.
He would be willing to be right.
And I thought, you know, so that's pretty cool.
Now, I just was wondering, as you were saying all that, how did you reconcile
the the hopefulness of getting sober and having the compulsion to use and drink
removed, how did you reconcile that with the hopelessness of a life sentence in
prison? So I thought, well, you know, at some point I accepted the fact that I
might not ever get out of prison.
world but i didn't like the human being that i was i didn't like i didn't like living in the skin
and doing things the way i'd been doing them and uh so what the program gave me was an opportunity
in there and there were some other people that also gave me permission to be able to do something
different so i started looking at practicing the principles of alcoholics anonymous
in all my affairs in prison so i would start there was a bunch of stuff that we did you know
i mean like uh for me as time went on in there if somebody stole something then what you would do
is you would you what they usually would beat them up right and and so i was had acquired a
path of non-violence and so i thought i don't endorse stealing from other people in my living
area and there was a thief and they were trying to
find out who it was and catch them and beat them off the tank so i put a sign up that said can we
come together in non-violence and pray for this individual you know for a for a non-violent uh
outcome in this situation and a bunch of guys signed their name that they would join me at a
particular time of day to you know pray about that particular outcome and the stealing stopped
for a few months it wasn't forever but the thing was it made a difference and then
uh i remember on uh 9999 threat of y2k was coming and at that particular time 9999 was going to be
the first indication that the computer systems were going to fail because all the everything
yeah i remember that right and yeah and so everybody people that were very spiritual and
all this other stuff were freaking out everybody thought the system's going to fail and we won't
be able to get our commissary from commissary and i
really affected me in a way that strongly and i thought man maybe we can do something about that
and so i got the idea that we could just i could give away soup the little ramen noodle soups that
cost a quarter but in in prison a 25 cent soup is uh can be a meal if the food's really bad and
you've got to eat something on your own if you don't have that then you're really hungry it
fills up the space yeah and so i got a bunch of soups and uh found another fella
that would give them away and i put it made a sign and started i said soups for free and started
giving away soup and i did it uh and my objective then was to start uh to go from 9999 or the very
right closely thereafter until my sobriety date on january the 6th and then see how that went so i
made a commitment to do it that however three or four months and then we did it i did it about two
years every day and initially people go this won't work
you cannot give with this in prison they have a inmates have their own little stores where they
sell stuff for 50 interest and they said you can't do this your people are going to take
advantage of you know so well if they do that's their karma wow i'm gonna give it away and we'll
see and so people would come a couple of guys came and just got soups when they didn't need them
to prove to me that people would take advantage of me and and i gave them the soups anyway and
then when they went to the commissary they brought the soups and they gave them the soups and they
brought soups back and in an excess of what they had borrowed you know because they weren't
borrowing them i was giving them they so i brought they said i don't know what you're doing you know
we're going to put some money into this deal because i don't know we've never seen anybody
do this before so it was it was a commitment to helping others that helped you keep your
commitment to yourself of staying sober is that right is that a reasonable way to put it so
obviously right now i'm not talking to you in prison
so somewhere along the way while you were sober you got out of prison can you tell us just a little
bit about that and then what happened in alcoholics anonymous for you around that time um so i became
eligible in uh 2007 and so after 20 calendar years and i long story short um i i made my
first parole which is unusual i found out about it uh i was curious the day that my dad got killed
uh 50 years earlier i i got informed that i'd made parole i i was released that's amazing
um the friday before mother's day in 2008 wow and uh and when i came home
john gordon god bless his soul who's not an
with us but had long-term sobriety he good man yeah he is Steve M mm-hmm
Russell L and all came and brought a meeting to to the house guy for three or
four days I had a monitor at one three or four days that I had a monitor but
for the so I could get in and get some travel permits and stuff like that I
they they came and brought meetings to me and they really didn't know me they
were friends of Greg's mm-hmm you know they and Greg was living in Austin
right around rock at that time and and so he called them and they they came and
brought meetings to me you know of course now I you know as you would know
I became you know friends with all those guys yeah and you later on would be the
guy who was doing that for others mm-hmm Ryan Ryan you know I remember you saying
something that stuck with me since then about the odds of you getting parole how
slim they were and then you drew on what you had been doing in a and and
credited that with being a big reason why that miracle happened right the
percentages were one in 10 huh there's a lexile 11% chance well based on their
system and the guy that interviewed me actually told me says man you know you've
gone to college you've got a degree now you go to hey a all the time you do
volunteer work you're doing all this stuff you know
And he said, on paper, you look good.
He says, but your criminal history is terrible.
So despite what you're doing right now, and he says, you know, you don't have any tattoos.
You know, you speak as if you're well-educated.
Right.
You know, so he said, normally, but he said, and he told me, he says, you won't make parole.
And I said, you know, I said, I might not make parole.
But according to your system, there's a, I have a one in 10 chance.
And I says, that's one square on a shotgun pool, football, football pool, you know, and I've won with one square.
And I haven't had a square on the pool, on the pool for 20 years.
So, you know, I'm going to take my little, you know, what I got.
And the truth was, I knew that if I didn't make parole, which I didn't actually expect to make parole.
Yeah.
I could be there for the rest of my time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Peace of mind and serenity that said, I can be there doing the work.
Wow.
I can be there doing the work.
And there was work.
There's always work.
There's always work to do there.
So, so you were in your mid, mid fifties when you were released.
Right.
So, and I know the men you're talking about and they're, they're just, especially John.
John was a very close friend of mine and you and I both sat by his bedside when he was dying and of, of liver, of liver disease.
And, uh, he was just a, a, a beautiful man.
I came to know you, I guess, shortly after you got out of prison, I never would have known from your demeanor or anything about it that you had been to prison until it came up and then it was like, what?
So there was something about you in the early days of seeing you over the Delta that made me think, wow, I, I, I found it hard to believe that you'd been in prison because you were well-spoken and you were well-versed in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, I've always, I've kept studying, you know, I mean, I, I, and I'm practicing.
I think it's part of his studying.
Cause there's, I, I love the literature and when they come out with the last book that they came up with all bills, um, the talks were, were phenomenally informative.
Our great responsibility.
It's, it's, it's, it's, it's just like full of just great stuff.
Yeah.
It was his talks at the, uh, at the various conventions starting in 1955.
And, uh.
And for anybody who hasn't seen that book, it's very informative and it kind of gives you a little bit different perspective because he wrote a book about the business.
Well, he didn't write the book, but all of his speeches and everything are in that book that talked about the business end and the formation of the traditions and everything else and the difficulties they had in the early days.
So, yeah, I would highly recommend that book as well.
So you're out of prison.
You're going to AA all the time.
The years are passing by.
You had been sober how long when you got out of prison?
That would have been 14 years?
Yeah, 14, 15.
Okay.
So in the intervening years between release from prison and, let's say, very recently, were there times in your life that tried your serenity or tried your commitment?
Were there times when you went to AA and could you speak to maybe a few times when AA was there for you to help you through?
Oh, I was going to say when my mom died, when my brother died.
So both my baby brothers have died from alcoholism.
Both of them had been in the program to a degree and had gone back out.
And so that my mother, you know, I mean, and people, man, the church was not only full of people.
There were people that were close to my mother, but there were so many people that came from my home group, you know, when they had the when they had the funeral that it was and it was an amazing and they handled everything.
The girls, the women came to me and says, just get out of the way.
You know, they took over, you know, you know, preparing, you know, for the stuff afterwards and everything.
So it was an amazing experience.
I think, you know, John is the one that got me to go back into the recovery field.
You know, John, John was actually, you know, we went to he he already had his diagnosis with with cancer.
And he had told me, he says, have you ever thought about going back into the field?
And I said, no, too much pain and suffering.
Get enough of that.
Just doing volunteer work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's and he told me, you ought to consider it.
Yeah.
And and then he, you know, and then what I've learned in the program and I've used this all the time is that, you know, my first thoughts is often not right.
Right.
And so and what I did is I called my sponsor.
Yeah.
I did was is I knew that John believed he said you'd be good at it.
You ought to really give it some consideration.
And then the fact that he had reiterated that before we left, he said at the beginning and then he didn't push it.
He was intelligent and I've known how to push it.
And then he just said.
You ought to, you know, make this phone call and see.
And then I thought, well, who am I to say no, because I don't know.
You know, and I was looking for I was looking for something another.
I was looking for something else to do right then.
Right.
And so I made a call and I talked to my girlfriend and I and everybody said, I don't know why you're not doing it.
And so I thought, well, you know, they're not going to let me the state of Texas.
I'll prove to y'all y'all are wrong.
And then.
The state of Texas said, yes.
So anyway, so I've been doing that for a decade or so.
Boy, talk about coming.
Talk about coming full circle, Tom.
That is that's that's really amazing.
I've seen you go through the things with your mother and the tragedies of your of your of your brothers over that period of time.
And what I know about you is that you are even before you landed in the recovery work.
As employment, I've seen you read you are the hand that's been reaching out.
You're the you're the the guy with the AA pledge or the responsibility.
I've seen that over and over again over the years.
And where did you learn that from?
Or is that just something kind of innate?
Well, it was how I was sponsored.
Yeah, I had a service work sponsor.
I didn't know that people, you know, get sponsored sometimes and they don't aren't.
Given us, you know, to take on a service commitment.
And so just like with you and some of the other people that we know that and you'll see like, you know, Larry, that makes the coffee or something like that.
I mean, it could be just as simple as the person that goes in and straightens up or puts the chairs out or whatever.
Yeah.
It comes behind people without saying, hey, what?
You know, here, look at me.
Right.
Yeah.
So it's been a where where my home group is there, you know, in normal times, non-COVID.
Times, you know, there's a lot of opportunities for service over there.
And new people coming in all the time.
Yeah.
And it's sometimes it's sometimes it's the you know, it's being there to, you know, welcome the new person.
Just have like your your handshake thing and getting to know people.
Initially, I've got I've developed over time.
I don't have a problem walking up to somebody and introducing myself and just saying hello.
Yeah.
Giving them my phone number and try to.
I feel like I've got a fair feel for if I seem like they're not open to that, that I can just let that go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't they don't have to do anything, you know, but I wanted to know that I can remember what it felt like to come in and sit on the back row and not want to be called on.
Right.
And not want to be there, perhaps.
Right.
Right.
Going back to your first exposure.
Yeah.
So you've you've lived this extraordinary.
Life for quite a number of years now, almost 28 years sober coming up when when you meet somebody that's new or maybe questioning whether or not they feel like they really have a problem, whether they really want to be in a maybe the court has made them come a certain number of times.
Given your experience and how vastly different as compared to most newcomers, a guy who was in prison for life and then he's out now he's in the.
How do you bridge?
The gap between the experience that you have and the way that they see that experience?
Do you find that they that that creates a greater reluctance to work with you or to talk with you or are they more drawn to you?
I don't know if I'm asking that question.
Right.
So it's a good question because I don't I don't keep from I'm willing to talk about having been to prison.
I don't think it's I don't think it's a selling point.
Right.
Right.
I've been to prison.
You know.
Well, if I spent thirty four years incarcerated and that's what this is, you know, so then by yourself, well, you need to be in a.
So there's an energy that I like to talk in energy.
But so there's an energy that that that I know is true.
I think it's a spiritual energy.
It's a product of being plugged in to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Yeah.
There's a line in the there's there's a there's a part in the 12 and 12.
And one of the things that it says that it's an individual, they're talking about meditation.
Sure.
And, you know, they'll say it's an individual adventure, each to be developed in his own way.
One of the first fruits is emotional balance.
And I thought I said, why wouldn't you want that?
Right.
So and I took to that.
I had practiced a spiritual practice before and I just fell away from it.
So when I got back this time, I was so anxious when I first got sober.
I understand.
I understand how people feel.
And for many new people I work with, and let's say you've been in meetings with me that I don't have a problem talking about it, but I don't have to talk about it all the time.
And for most people, as you might as well be saying, likes to live in Africa or some country somebody's never lived in before.
Right.
They can't relate.
You say, yeah, I spent 10 years in China.
And they think, oh, wow.
But that was weird.
And they just go right on to something that they're more familiar with.
Right on.
But but you have the kind of the rare.
Qualifications to talk to the guy who's sitting there comparing his insides to everybody else's outsides who's been to prison and may still be holding on to some of the things that would be barriers to being content in a you're the guy who can go talk to him with a level of understanding that surpasses a guy like me who doesn't have that particular experience.
But, you know, you're you're I'll say this.
And for when we were inside the people that came in initially, I was the people I was drawn to.
And this is just a kind of, I think, early recovery thing, no matter where you're located, is that there you're drawn to something that looks similar to you.
Yeah, they talk sort of the same.
They sound sort of the same.
But some of the people's whose sobriety that really impressed me were people that were coming into prison because the people in prison knew, you know, about getting into prison.
They didn't want it was how do you stay out?
Yeah.
And you stay out by learning to abide by the rules and regulations, not put alcohol and drugs in your body and stuff like that.
There's some things that a guy like you doesn't what you know well is what it took for you to not drink anymore.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And people, you know, you know, my first sponsor was like, you know, like I say, he was as different as night and day to any life I've lived.
Yeah, I get that.
The sponsors that I used after I got.
After him was the same way.
And Jimmy S, you know, but we love I love him.
Yeah, I do, too.
He's a good man.
And obviously he's doing a good job with you based on what I know about you and the way I see you interact with other people around around the club.
This has been pretty amazing and I think very inspiring to be able to talk to you like this and be able to share this as part of the recovery interviews podcast that.
It may reach some other people out there.
I want to ask you maybe just one other thing.
And I've been asking all my guests this.
And that is about the opportunity versus the difficulties that have arisen because of having to do meetings by Zoom.
How you just feel about the whole format and and what we have been elevated to or reduced to by the virus.
Oh, it's interesting.
It's a great because we reach more people all around the world.
Yeah.
And we can connect with people all around the world.
So what we can only do at an international conference on a really brief way for a weekend, we can do every day now.
So that's a blessing.
Yeah, that is guaranteed.
Comparably, there are enough small groups and you and I attend some, you know, where it's very intimate, not unlike the traditional home group feels.
Some of the other groups have been eaten up by a large number of people.
And it feels like a great big giant meeting where you might be at an international conference.
Yeah.
But and for some of those are uncomfortable for me because they're different.
My expectation is that this meeting I go to that has this name would be the meeting that I was used to from the past and it's not that meeting anymore.
Some of them have remained very close to what they are because I go to a number of Zoom meetings.
For me, it's family, Alcoholics Anonymous is my family and I can and I've learned wherever I went to a meeting anywhere in these United States and I have not been to any of them.
Yeah.
Any outside the United States other than on Zoom that but that I find my people, it's a benefit.
Now, it's also you missed the the the interpersonal communication.
Yeah.
And the ability to be able to just grab people after the meeting or one of the things I know that I miss the most, although I'm really grateful for Zoom and allowing us to continue to do what we need to do.
But the one thing I do miss is the spontaneous laughter.
Right.
Because when somebody is speaking.
It's almost impossible to be able to time it such that you can hear everybody laugh.
But I haven't found it to be too bad of a substitute.
I'm always grateful to see you on the Zoom meetings that you and I attend.
And you and I have a tendency to attend the same kind of smaller, more intimate meetings, although I go to several that are very, very large as well.
But I consider any group I go to my, you know, they say get a home group.
I consider any group I go to my home group because I feel at home in AA.
So everywhere I go, I'm at home.
And it's a, I don't know if you feel that way, but I kind of sense you do, given the number of meetings you and I have frequented together over the years.
Yeah, I can find, I don't need just a particular, I have my people, you know, and I know you've got your people, but I've had, I've had other people and, you know, and we've lost, you know, some through just like life and they get, you get old and you stay sober long enough, then sometimes things happen.
Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Well, Tom, thank you for, for doing this.
Was there anything else that, that you'd like to leave our listeners with as we, as we wrap this up?
I got a little thing.
Let's see how it goes across.
I'll take just a minute.
Let me think.
If we can begin to have dreams for each other, we can build something new.
It can be.
If we're building something new, we can ask God to help us.
And we will be busy while we are asking.
I think God likes to help people who are already busy working for their dreams.
Hmm.
Amen.
That is a beautiful, beautiful sentiment.
And I'm going to need to play that back for, so I can memorize it.
Tom D, you're a beautiful man and I love you.
You're a great AA brother and I really appreciate you doing this today.
Just taking the time to, to let other people get to know you better.
I wish you well.
And I'll see you at a meeting in the next day or two.
Absolutely, Will.
Okay, brother.
I love you.
You know how I love you, right?
I love you.
You're one of my guys, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I like being one of your guys, man.
This is definitely a posse I want to be in.
So God bless you, Tom.
And thanks for doing this.
Thank you for the opportunity.
God bless you, brother.
Well, my friends, that's a wrap for today's episode of AA Recovery Interviews.
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Bye.
Bye.
I say bye and I can't hear you anymore.
I got to eat and go out and work all day long, so I can't even see at all.
I just wanna move on right now.
I love that you look at mywriting routine again, Hamid.
You Suni, you're just the best.
Well, let me respond.
All of you, Bröndel do the best.
All right.
Until next time, goodbye.
Bye.
Bye, Ernie.
Bye, Ernie.
Bye, Ernie.
Bye, Bröndel.
Bye, man.
Yeah.
Bye-bye.
Bye, Ernie.
Thank you.