The Gift of Desperation and the Family Tree – Dave

I've started all my talks the exact same way. You guys see the jacket? Good. My sponsor says you're representing the program, so dress like it. I'm powerless over alcohol and drugs. My name is Dave Fredrickson. Wow. Wonderful group you have here. It's like, with that intro that you guys read and the meditation, I feel right at home. This is going to be a fun time. Like I said, I do have a sponsor. My sponsor is OC Freeman. I always like to tell people that be careful where you're getting your message from. If their message is 35 or 40 years old, then they haven't done a lick of step work since. There's probably no accountability and they're probably drinking from an empty well. So one of the things I make sure that I do is, I've always tried to maintain a sponsor. You'll hear in my story, there's a period where I didn't have a sponsor, and by God's grace, working the 12 steps on a regular basis and great, fantastic sponsorships, I've been sober since December 5th, 1981. So I just had 31 years in December, and that's kind of unusual, and I was looking around for the gray hairs, I'm wondering where they are. I get sober as a teenager, and I'm living proof that you don't have to relapse. You don't Have to go back out. You can come in here and get the gift, and it is truly a gift. If you don' t feel like it's a gift, you've missed something, and you can stay around here. I literally grew up in the rooms, and so my story is not the typical story from a lot of people. And my story is one of mistakes, you know. I've done this, as you'll hear, I've gone the steps just about every possible way you can do them. I've down them wrong according to what the book says and the literature and everything else. But the fact was, I was still attempting to do them and I stayed sober because of it. The people that I see that don't stick around, that are constantly retreads, they never do the steps and we'll be talking more about that as we go through. So just to give you a little background where I come from, alcoholics and addicts everywhere on both sides of the family tree. My mother's got eight brothers and sisters and they're all either alcoholic or married alcoholics. Several of them have died of this disease. In my nucleus family, my father, my brother, and I between us we have 97 years of sobriety so we have been completely and totally blessed by the gift of this program. It's made a huge difference in my life, yet I have family members that are dying of this disease and I can't do anything about it until they have the gift of desperation. Growing up in an alcoholic household, you know, my dad was a drinker, straight drinker. He didn't do any thing other than that. If you've been exposed to any kind of addiction, you'd know what that household was like. As a little kid growing up, you're waiting for him to walk through the door and see what kind of mood he was in because however mood he was in, that's what kind of move you were going to be in. You know, and you always walked around on eggshells never knowing whether you were gonna get loved or slapped. It just wasn't, you weren't really sure. And one of the earliest things that I can remember from that whole thing is I knew something was different about our family. I always felt that differentness. I never felt like what I seemed to think like other people felt like. I just didn't feel okay in my own skin. And, one of things I learned is it was almost as if everybody else had a playbook to life that I never got a copy of, you know. And so I'd kind of sit in the back and figure out what was going on and then I'd join in once I really kind of understood the rules. And so, I did the same thing in my family, you know. I would kind of say something's not right here. I don't understand what's really going on. I kind of stood in the background watching when it was pretty easy to see. When dad got home, didn't matter what time it was, we had happy hour. You know, dad came home at 6 o'clock and dinner was at 7, he had a happy hour. We had to have a few cocktails before we'd eat. If dad came home at 7 and dinner was at 6, we'd still have happy hour, be waiting on him. And as his drinking progressed, I learned the value that alcohol had in his life. And at that time, alcohol was fun for him. He was having a good time. And so it ingrained in me at a very young age, I can't wait until I can drink that stuff because there's obviously some magic. The whole family is rotating around. I figured that piece out. The family stopped when that stuff was introduced, and so whatever that stuff was that was that important, I can't wait until I get the secret handshake and I can start doing that stuff. As my dad's drinking progressed and it got worse, the emotions that came up in me, I didn't know how to handle. And so I was always one of those kids, you know, today they would have classified me as ADHD you know, and they would have put me on medication because I was one of those kids that even without sugar, I was on a sugar high all the time. I was ricocheting off the walls. If there was something that I could climb, I would climb it, even if it wasn't supposed to be climbed, especially if it weren't supposed TO BE CLIMBED. I WAS ALWAYS DOING STUFF LIKE THAT, AND SO I WAS A HANDFUL. BUT I WAS THE YOUNGEST IN THE FAMILY. MY SISTER AND I, I HAVE A TWIN SISтер, AND WE WERE THE TALENT CHARLIES, YOU KNOW, SO I HAD THESE OLDER BROTHERS AND SISters THAT KIND OF CORRALLED US AND KEEPED US IN, But when I got to school, there was nobody to rein me in. So I was always getting attention. I realized if you acted out, you could get attention. And so I thrived on that. But I didn't know how to get rid of the feelings that were inside. And I was getting very aggressive. I was mirroring what I was seeing at home. As my father's drinking got worse, the more aggressive he would get. And so that would carry that stuff inside me. And the only outlet I had was at school. So by the time, I mean, geez, on the playground, you know, all the equipment on the playground was mine. You know? And if I decided to play king of the mountain, I was going to play King of the Mountain. So at a very young age, they stopped sending me out on the playground. Instead, they'd send me to the principal's office, you know? And I'd go to the principle's office and the reason I mention this story in all my talks is because there was this woman who worked in the principal's office. And I don't know what her connection was, but this was a lady who just exuded love. You know, and every time I'd come through the door, she didn't look at me as this troubled kid. She just looked at me and loved me, you know. And I'd walk through the drawer, and she'd give me a big hug, and she would say, hey, I've got a job for you to do. And then I just lit up, give me something to do, and some of you are probably too young, but in the old days there was this thing before Xerox machines that were called mimeograph machines, and you typed on this little thing that had these little mechanical levers called typewriter. It would put a thing on a piece of paper where you put a piece of carbon behind that paper and you'd get a copy of it. And they would take that copy and stick it on this drum and then you had to crank it manually and it would roll over the top of ink and then it would role onto a piece of paper and that's how you made copies. They were called mimeographs. And so she always, all the teachers, she would say, hey, bring your mimegraphs to the office because that's what the machine was. I'll have Dave do them because I was in there, I never went out on the playground. I just sit there and I would crank away and I had this job. I had a purpose in life, you know? But if you didn't rein me in, I was a loose cannon. I was always in trouble. I mean, I did stuff like in kindergarten, I brought live ammunition. I wrote shotgun shells to show and tell. You know, that should have given you kind of a clue because I wanted to be different. I was looking for that kind of difference because I didn't feel okay. I needed some validation. I wasn't getting it. Needless to say, school was brutal. Growing up and my dad's drinking was getting worse and you couldn't bring friends home because you never knew what home was going to be like and his drinking really started bringing bizarre stuff. I remember he came home one night and we had lived in this, our house was like 1740s up in New Jersey and this old, old farmhouse and it had a slate roof and he was drinking in a bar one time and he met a roofer. You know, slate roofing is very unique skill set. It's not any rooher can do slate roofING and so this guy goes up there and they're half in the bag and they come to the house and he's like, oh yeah, I'll show you how to do this and so they rip off the slate roof. This is like late October, early November. They're ripping off the slate roof and they only get a patch of it ripped off and so they grab these giant blue tarps and they put them over the top of the house and they hammer in these big stakes in the front yard and the back yard and they cut ropes over the Top of the House to hold the blue tarp down. We lived like that for several years before their roof ever got fixed. Now, that's a little dysfunction but to a kid, you're the guys with the ropes over your house and the blue tariffs. you know he became a pariah emotionally really didn't feel good inside um and so i was looking for an outlet now we lived on this little family farm and so my dad his dream was to become a gentleman farmer so he'd go off to work and he'd come home and he go out and drive on the tractor and plow the fields and stuff and one of the jobs that was always there to do was at the end of the day was to bring him out two quarts of paps blue ribbon you know and so mi mom would always say, who's going to take this out to dad? And I'd always volunteer because whoever brought it to him could start on the first one while he was drinking his. So he'd allow you to pop the top and you could take a few sips. And of course, it was only maybe two minutes before he finished his first quart and he was on to the second one. But I can remember as a little kid those first couple sips and that warm flush feeling. And I was like, ah. It confirmed for me what I already knew. There was magic in that stuff, whatever it was. And I was going to, my chase began. I started my search for that for the rest of my life. I would seek that kind of a high. It got real ugly. My mom and dad separated. My dad went and lived in Bermuda, which was great because he was gone. He was an airline pilot. So if I wanted to see him during the separation, my mom would write me a note from school on Fridays, please excuse me, from school on Friday, and I'd hop on an airplane And I'd fly to Bermuda to meet with my dad and hang out with my dad. It was kind of advanced, you know, child rearing at that point. And then I'd flight home and she'd write, please excuse Dave. And so I'd go to school three, sometimes four days a week. You know, I'd leave on Friday and go to Bremuda. I'd come back on Monday and I'd going to class Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And if I could, I tried to do back-to-back weekends, you know. What my mom didn't realize is sometimes my dad was in Bermudas, sometimes he was out on a trip at work. And I go down and hangout in his apartment in Bremudas. And Bermuda is really funny that way because they really don't frown on drugs. And I was too young and stupid to know it, but I'd be smuggling dope in my toiletries. I'd take out the underarm deodorant, and I'd fill it full of dope and put the top back on. So I'd party in Bermudas because I couldn't find – it was one place I couldn'T find drug dealers, and now I understand why because if you get caught in Bernuda with drugs, you go to prison. They don't mess around with it. But I was on that chase to get away. And if that meant getting away out of state, I'd go out of state. I'd just go wherever I could to get away from the normal process of life, you know? As I got older, all hell broke loose at house. My dad moved back home. The fighting got really terrible. And one of the things that was kind of interesting is my dad in New Jersey, he could become a temporary police officer. So, of course, he was a temporary police officer in town. And so all the cops knew who I was, you know, which worked to my advantage a lot of times because they would let me go. But a lot OF times, you couldn't get away with anything because everybody knew who you were. And everybody knew your last name and you were going to get busted. So I even stopped going to my town if I could to go cop dope. And we lived on the main train line to New York City. So I got in a habit where I'd go to high school. I'd sign in for the morning period and I'd go hitchhike to the train station, jump on the train, pass train into New York City. I'd got to Needle Park, cop some dope, sit on the museum steps, get really stoned, hop on the train. Get back just in time to catch a late bus home. My parents thought I was at school all day long. You know? The next morning I'd get up and I would go sell my wares to pay for the next round trip and that became my deal. And I learned very quickly there was this wonderful cop. His name was Wandy Cox. He was the truant officer. And he always would get off at 3 o'clock. I don't know why he was always getting off at 3 o clock, but he drove up the main highway from where the train station was. He'd always see me hitchhiking. He'd stop and pick me up and say, Where are you going? And I'd say, Back to school. He was the coolest cop in the world. He would say, Front door or back? I'd always say, back door please. He'd pull into the back parking lot and drop me off. I'd get out. He had no clue that I had a whole bunch of dope sewn into my jacket, you know. I'd be stoned to the gill. He's always like, Hey, how's your dad? I haven't seen him in a while, you know. But that was my life. Then one of the greatest things that happened in my life, but it was also one ofthe worst things, Dad gets sober. Now, when you have a sober, newly sober alcoholic in the household, that should be a blessing to the family, but at the time, he knows exactly what I'm up to. And so now I have to avoid my father at all costs. If you wanted to see him, you either had to go with him to work or you had to get rid of Amy because that's really what his life was. He'd go to work, he'd come home, The next day he'd get up, he'd go to a morning meeting. He'd come back. He'd go into a noon meeting, he would come back, he'd do an evening meeting, and he'd come back. And when we got, at least when he got sober, when I got sober they had a lot of noon meetings that we called them eating meetings where they would have a lunch spread so that the people that were business people could come there and have their lunch at any meeting. You know, so people would volunteer to bring sandwich meats or bake a casserole or whatever and there was a sign-off sheet for it. And so, you know, usually the food was better than me having to cook at home by myself. So I'd go to the eating meeting with my father. And I realized very quickly some of my favorite people in the entire world were in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. These guys weren't drinking and weren't drugging, you now. And so I'd got to the eat-in meeting. I'd eat like crazy because I'd be stoned every time I'd get up pretty much. One of my favorites things to do is go really hammered to an eating meeting, you kno. And I literally, I was growing up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And then another thing happened was my oldest brother turned 18. The key to this is until 9-11, in the state of New Jersey, there were no pictures on your driver's license. It just had a description. So the day he turned 18, I went into his room and I stole his driver's licence out of his wallet because we match identically. We're the same height, same hair colour, same eye colour. I know how to spell the name. He's not going to trip me up on the address or the birthday. I got this one. It was the best fake ID in the world because it was a real ID. And I started going back to the same places that I learned to drink with my dad because at the end of my dad's drinking, my mother would always say, dad would be like, I need to go out to the hardware store to pick up something. And she'd say, okay, which one of you kids wants to go? And I'd be like take me. Because my mother would think that if he sent one of the kids with him, that meant he'd come home for supper. But if we stopped at the Old Mill Tavern or one of one of the bars, you know, it was a beeline to Shirley Temples for me, which we weren't allowed to have soda in our house. So I'd sit there and I'd drink Shirley Tembles and I'd eat the bar nuts and just have a blast in these bars while my dad would drink. And then finally around 7, 8 o'clock at night, my mom would eventually pull around and pick me up and take me home because she knew that he was a lost cause. And so I knew all the drinking established and all the drinking establishments near me. And now all of a sudden I started showing up in there with these IDs and everybody knew my dad and they'd known me for years, and they'd be like, oh, Dave, hey, it's great to see you. Let me buy a drink. How's your dad doing? I haven't seen him in a while. And so I was able to drink real cheap. What was going on in my life at that point, up until my dad got sober, my brother turned 18, was my first time I got busted for dealing drugs, I was 13. Twice when I was 14, twice when I Was 15. I was heading down that path. And then all of a sudden, because drugs and alcohol was much easier to get, or drugs were much easier to get than alcohol was. Once dad gets over and my brother turns 18, now all of a sudden I have the license to drink. And so that went on. I got busted one more time after I had that idea and I realized, I'm not stupid. If I keep on this path, I'll end up in juvie. Or I can just go drink. So I switched pretty much straight to straight alcohol. Because at the time I was doing anything I could get my hands on. You know, there's an expression, you know, that's one of the expressions I can't stand is your drug of choice. Well, to me it's a drug of no choice because once you get to the point where you're using and you have no choice over it, it's your drug or no choice. And my drug of not choice is more. Just give me more. I just want to away from reality. And that's pretty much where my drinking and drugging took me to. And, you now, I loved cocaine, but the problem was it was so expensive. You know? I hung out with a bunch of rich kids. You know their parents were all dealers. They were all Wall Street people. And it was amazing to see what was going on at Wall Street in the 70s and early 80s. It was amazing. These limousines would pull up, and the drug dealers would literally pull up right in front of the stock exchange. And the guys would come in there, and they'd buy whatever they were going to use for the day, and they would walk right into the exchange. And they'd snare a little bit, and it would keep the energy up. And that's where several of my friends from high school and middle school, their parents were in stock exchange, and their parents, anytime they wanted coke, they'd just go to their parents and say, hey, can I have half an ounce or whatever? and parents would be like, sure, no problem. They had plenty of money floating around. One of the things that I realized that I'd get in trouble really fast is if I got caught with cocaine, that was a different class of drug than marijuana, at least in the state of New Jersey. So I'd always take the cocaine and immediately cut my joints and stuff and roll it up so that I could smoke it with a joint and really get off on it that way. But like I said, it was so much more expensive than booze. So when I finally got this ticket to ride, basically. I stopped doing the drugs and started almost exclusively alcohol. So I went off to college, that's a whole other story. But it got ugly for me. And I had this distorted reality. I was thinking I was having fun. And it wasn't fun. When it came time to go to college I put a stick pin in the map basically a 2,000 mile circle around New Jersey because that's where my father was. Anything outside of that I would apply for college. I graduated from the lowest quintile in my high school class. You know, I was straight B's and F's because I was hardly ever there. I was cutting in school and drug dealing. That was my life. About halfway through my junior year, I realized if I want to get away from him, I'm going to have to get into college. And nobody to this day, the teachers can't figure it out. I went from straight B'S and F'S to straight A's and B's because now I had a purpose to get a way, you know? And when I wantto apply myself, I can apply myself. And so I got into a college and, you know, it's funny. When I was younger, if you'd asked me the one thing I didn't want to do, I would say I'd be like my dad. You know? But when it came time to go to college, I went to school to become an airline pilot. So I went through an aviation university out in Arizona. And off I went. Now, it was the first time I was away from home, so I really, man, my drinking and drugging really took off. It got really ugly. My first semester, I did fine. I had good grades. the second semester my parents had put my tuition money in an account and I went and drained the account and called my parents up and said don't call me I'll call you it's very nice appreciate this you know it was looking at like it was a like my grub state to start my life with and I was going to be fine without them because they were really holding me back on doing what I really wanted to do and drinking the way I wanted to drink um and I started doing crazy stuff uh I hooked up with a bunch of Native Americans you know what's legal for them to pick peyote wonderful stuff and I started the problem was that they had blue cards which allowed them to use that as part of their spiritual ritual so they were down in Phoenix and I was up in Prescott Arizona so I would fly the airplane down to Sky Harbor and I'd go make my deal and there was a big cardboard box with this fresh peyote one day I'm walking back out to the airplane and I get up to the airport I put it in one of them hits me on the shoe and the bottom of the cardboard box didn't line up there's like a little hole there. And I looked back on the ramp and I had dropped peyote from all the way from the terminal all the at the airplane. So what does a good addict do? Go pick them out! And so I'm walking along, picking up my first peyotes, load them in the airplane, fly them out, you know. But I didn't see that as dysfunctional, like there was something wrong with my life. To me that was normal, you know, and I couldn't understand why I got up to Prescott and none of the guys on campus wanted to do the peyoti with me. I had to go downtown and hang with the people downtown because there were some people there that wanted to do it. I just couldn't figure that out. I wasn't in my class of people when I was at college. I didn't quite fit in again and when I didn�t fit in again, that was another trigger. On October 19th of 81, my parents flew out to Arizona and they were basically saying hey what's going on? I hadn't talked to them in quite a long time, maybe a year and a half and My twin sister and I were born on my father's birthday. So all three of us share the same birthday, which is really kind of unique. And they had flown out for my birthday. And they weren't invited. So my parents came out, and I basically said, Guys, you know, I was turning 18 at the time. No, 19. I just turned 19. And I said, You know what? You're getting in the way. I don't want to do this with you. Thanks for coming, but I'll see you later. I'm going out with my friends tonight. So I blew my parents off. They flew 2,000 miles to come see me. and I was like, yeah, I'm not going to have dinner with you. But the town we were in, only one really nice restaurant, and I can never forget it. I was sitting up at the bar looking down at the restaurant. I could see my parents having dinner down there, and I'm standing here at the Bar with my friends drinking. They could see me, I could them, and we were 1,000 miles apart, you know? I learned about service work from that exposure because my dad, when he was out there, had gone to local meetings and said, hey, I mean, I need pallbearers or I need somebody to 12-step my kid. From that day, from October 19th to December 5th, I did not draw a sober breath. I was doing anything I could get into my body to make me feel numb. I had a little refrigerator next to my bed because I knew that I was getting to the point where I couldn't get out of bed. I'd roll out and I'd open up that little refrigerator and I would just pray that there was something in there. If there wasn't, you'd start to crawl. There'd be bottles and stuff all over the floor, empty pizza boxes and stuff. I'd find half a bottle of beer or whatever, I'd pick it up, stick out the cigarette butt that was floating in there, it didn't matter. just whatever it took so that I could stop shaking enough so I could go use the bathroom. And for some reason, my roommates didn't think it was funny. I started to have the habit of thinking I was someplace that I wasn't, like I'd come home in the middle of the night and kick them out of their beds. What are you doing in my room? Drunk. Or I had this wonderful habit of peeing in other people's closets thinking I wasn'T in front of the urinal. And the wonderful things we do when we're under the influence. So they had a real dim view of what was going on in my life at that point as well. I got into a series of fights. What started to happen to me is I became the classic Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. When you talked to me, I'd be very nice, but you put a drink in my hand and after one or two pops, I became this different person. You could be my best friend in the world. If you bumped into me and I spilled my drink, I literally would put you in the hospital. And when you're my size, that's not a real healthy combination to have a violent streak and be under the influence all the time. And it got real ugly And my last drink, I ended up in several fights. The last one I didn't even realize. I beat up a whole bunch of roommates, and one roommate had been off at work, and he came back from work, and he tapped me on the shoulder, and as I turned around, he punched me down instead of stairs, and I landed on my face and crushed my skull. It's a long, drawn-out story. This just happens to be my last rink. I'm told that when the ambulance was coming up to pick me up, they saw me with their headlights, they pulled the gurney out, and I laid down. By the time I got to the hospital, I was in a coma. When I came out of the coma, they said, who can we call? And who did I call? Dad. The one person I swore I would never be, I'd never wanted to talk to again, was the first person I reached out to. And there was people in recovery that were in the emergency room, in the ICU with me. I don't know how they got into the ICU. They probably said they were family. But they got Into the ICU within an hour of that phone call. There was people in recovery in my hospital room. They nursed me long enough to get me on an airplane. I flew back to New Jersey. I went and saw the doctor, and they rebuilt my head from the inside out. My face was so crushed that you could touch my nose and it would kind of slide across my face, you know, and it kind of sound as it moved. It was really ugly. It was an amazing repair because back then, they didn't have anything but cocaine in order to be able to set it. So they, it's pure 100% cocaine on these claws and they started shoving up my nose until they got it where they needed it and they casted my entire skull. So when I came into the rooms, I was truly anonymous because all you knew was my name was Dave and I had blue eyes because my whole head was in a cast. You know? And I went through that process until they took off the cast. And when they took the cast off, that was one of my first resentments because people would come up to me like I was a newcomer. They'd be like, oh hey, how you doing? I'm like, no, no. It's me. It' s Dave. I've been coming for weeks, you know. They just didn't know who I was. I was unemployable. My brother had gotten sober. My brother Don had come into the rooms about a month and a half, I think, before I did. And so we had these two teenagers, and we started doing what I learned my father to do. We went to a morning meeting, we went to an evening meeting, and if it was a Friday or Saturday night, we went home late. If we weren't at a meeting, we were smoking cigarettes, hanging out in an arcade. Those were places that had computer games for those of you who are old enough to know. We'd hang out in the arcade and then you know, that was our lives. And one day we're at a meeting, we're out at an evening meeting, a lunchtime meeting, and this guy came up and said, hey, you guys got a job? I said no. He says, you do now, you're working for me. And that man, Carl Rozelle would become my first sponsor. And what I didn't know is everybody on the crew was in recovery, his entire crew. So it was literally like being in a meeting all day long, you know? So we'd be mixing concrete and throwing cement blocks, you know? And of course it was just like in the rooms where when you're new they kind of like poke at you a little bit and joust with you a little bit. And they would do that to me on the job. And something wouldn't go your way, they'd throw out things like easy does it, you know? But for the grace of God you've got a job, you which is not the thing I wanted to hear, you know. And they'd get me so angry, I just want to reach up on the scaffold and drag them down and just beat on them. And they would laugh. And I'd be like, you guys don't understand how close you are to me putting you in the hospital and you're laughing at me. But it was therapeutic. They got the anger out of me. And then at lunch we'd sit around under a tree or something and we'd have a meeting at lunch. And then we'd go back to work and weíd finish up. We always finished up early. By 4 o'clock, 4.30, didn't matter, we were done. We'd drive home. The car would drop me off at the house and say, get yourself a shower or something to eat. I'll be back in an hour and pick you up. And he'd come back an hour later and pick me up, and we'd have a meeting on the way to the meeting. We'd have the meeting, we'd had a meeting, and I'm going home for the meeting." So literally, I learned the steps by direct immersion. It was better than any rehab around because I was shown by way of example. One of the issues that I had, though, is I didn't believe in God. Now, I had the gift of desperation. I had been hurt so bad, if you told me to stand with my head in the corner, I would have done it. Anything to get the monkey off my back. I hurt that bad. But this God thing, it wigged me out. So when people start talking about God, I'd go outside and I'd smoke a cigarette or whatever, and I come back in. And one day, I'm walking out behind the barn with my brother, and I said, You don't believe this God crap, do you? And he stopped and he squared off to me, which he would never do unless we were going to throw down and fight. and he got right up in my face and he said, oh yeah I believe in God and you could have pushed me over with a feather. Here's somebody that I implicitly trust who believes in God. I'm thinking what is up with this? I still wasn't ready to commit but I was like wow now the doors open a crack huh, alright so now we're back at work and it's cold right and we're driving down the road and it'S crack of dawn and we'RE driving this masonry dump, and the heat doesn't work very well in the dump. And the sunrise is coming up over the Black River, and Carl rolls down the window, and he's cold air is just blasting. I'm like, Carl, what the hell are you doing? He's out there. He's doing this wave in his arm back and forth. I said, Carl, where are you going? Are you crazy? So I'm waving to God. He says, have you ever seen anything that beautiful? You know, it's the colors and the sunrise and the mist over the water. And I'm thinking, wow, here's a second person that I trust implicitly who believes in God. Maybe there's something to it. Then the third thing happened, which was a complete accident. For somebody who doesn't believe in God, my brother says, oh yeah, I'm going to do my fifth step. I said, really? Fifth step? Who are you doing that with? He says, Oh, Leo. Well, one thing is, I am very competitive with my brother. There's no way he's going to beat me at anything. So the next meeting, I see Leo and I go, hey, Leo, can I do a fifth step with you? He's like, oh, yeah. I said, well, how about if I come over tomorrow? He said, sure, no problem. where do you live? Well, I live next to the church in town. I said, okay, I'll be over there. I go over there, I show up. Now, mind you, I haven't done a four-step. I haven'T done any step-ups. So I show up and I whip through the 12 by 12 and it says, you know, we're prepared for a long talk. I'm like, I can do this. So I knock on the door and the door opens up and Leo's standing there and he's wearing a collar. And I said to Leo, where are you going? Costume party? He says, no, I'm a priest. Oops! Somebody that doesn't believe in God and he'S about to do a fifth step for the priest, and he was the coolest priest in the world. He handed me an ashtray, he said, come on in, have a smoke, cop a squat, and we started talking. He says, well, where's your paperwork? And I went, I was just glad I was here for a long talk. He said, well who's your sponsor? I told him, he's like, well maybe you should talk to Carl, you know. So we had a nice long chat, and um, he was very kind to me. And he says, why don't you come back in two weeks, and then we'll do this again, you know, after you've talked with Carl. So now my ego's involved. I'm not about to go explain to Carl what I just cut him completely out of the picture just to beat my brother. That makes too much sense. So, I don't tell a soul. This time, about 30 minutes before I'm supposed to meet Leo, I've got an envelope and I'm in my car and I've written some stuff down on the back of an envelope. And I go and meet Leo the second time. And Leo gives me the same thing. He goes like, maybe this time I'll talk with Carl and we'll get you where you need to be. Why do I tell that piece of my story? Because like I said when I started. I was at least doing it for the absolute wrong reasons, but I was doing something and I'm still here to tell you the story. It kept me sober because I was willing to commit even if it was for the wrong reason. So the third time through was my first time formally with Carl when I went through and I learned how to write an inventory, four column inventory out of a big book. And let me tell you life got good. Life was fantastic. I started working, I was doing masonry, and then I started doing excavation work, and during the day, and I went to college at night, and I got my degree, and went off to another four-year school, and I decided, you know, I still had this dream from maybe when I was five years old that I wanted to fly airplanes. So I got out of college, andI went to the military, and I said, you now, I learned in this program that you never know where God's going to take you until you ask. So I went into the military and the one thing I'd learned in these rooms is you tell the truth. So I said, have you been to these drugs? He said, yep. I said how long has it been? I put down all my arrests and put the whole thing down there. It's been longer than seven years at that point since I've been arrested for it. And they're like, okay, you can get a security. Come on in. I'm like, really? I can get security clearance? You're going to let me in? So I got accepted and I went off to fly airplanes for the Air Force. Only God can allow that to happen, to be a drug dealer, to become a pilot for the Air Force when that finished. The day I got off out of training from the Air force, I got hired by the airlines and I started flying airplanes for the airlines. And my life was really getting good. I had gotten married, and, you know, well, my life is full. You know, I'm going to five, six meetings a week, but now my life has filled with stuff. So what do you knock out? Well, I got this. I can knock out a meeting. I don't need that meeting. Oh, I can mock out that meeting, and before you know it, I am going to one meeting a week or one meeting every two weeks. Guys are still calling me because I am sponsoring, but I had got to the point where I stopped taking guys through the big book because it was too much work. It took time. I didn't have time. My life was so good, I didnít want to do that. So I started saying, ìHey, go read Step 1 out of the 12 by 12.î And then weíll talk about it afterwards. I started cheating these guys. I wasnít giving them the gift that had been given to me. And my ego started to rebuild. I started taking credit for all this great stuff that was going on in my life. And at about 11 years, at that point, dry, I had my service weapon. It was around in the chamber. And I was cleaning it, knowing full well I had it around in my chamber because I was too chicken just to stick it in my mouth and blow my head off, you know. And my wife came home early from work, and I was like, shit, not today, you know. I had a very good friend of mine. My sponsor had died at that point. I had gone for about a year without a sponsor. So my buddy Dave and I were kind of that sick co-sponsoring thing, which basically means you both have a title of somebody that's got the title of sponsor, but neither one of you is willing to call each other on each other's crap. You don't call me on mine, I won't call you on yours, that kind of relationship. So I was doing that stuff and I was really wanting to die because I really didn't want to get back and do what I knew this program was going to take us. Sobriety is not free. There's a price that has to be paid and it means you have to sacrifice your time. And so I was flying one day and at that time I was instructing, I had been moved up into management for the airlines and we were over in Europe and I was flying with his captain and you know, I'm God's gift to aviation at this point in my mind. And it got to the point where this captain got so pissed off at me he basically said Dave why don't you just sit down and shut up? And I completely alienated myself from the crew on this flight. We were taken off from Milan Italy and when you take off from on if you know your geography you can't get to United States unless you cross the Alps, which are pretty big. So you have to climb up, and this guy takes off, and I see he's making a mistake. And I try to tell him that he's making a mistakes, but my arrogance had driven a wedge between us. And so basically he turned around and said, Dave, I told you to shut up. And so then I tried to tell the other pilot that's there, we're making a mistak and he's not going to get in the middle of this and he was just not listening. And with several hundred people on board we almost flew into the side of the Alaps. for years I blamed the captain until I did some serious inventory work and realized it wasn't his fault it was mine from my arrogance that I was being paid to be part of a crew that I wasn't able to be a part of because I was walking fire hazard I was so damn dry you know so I lost my career at that point there was an investigation the NTSB, the FAA and everybody's telling me to lie. Nobody in the airline wants this to come out in the press, the union doesn't want it to come out, everybody's saying you know we learned a great lesson from your conviction I can't remember works just fine and I said guys I will not lie if they asked me what time it is I won't build them a clock but if they ask me a direct question I will give them a direct answer and tell me exactly what happened and it got to the last final hearing and finally they asked the right questions and I was able to tell the truth. And in that process, because what I learned here was you tell the truth. I'll never forget my program had been a secret up to that point. Nobody knew that I was an airline pilot and I was in recovery. I kept it all secret under the radar. I drove from Kennedy Airport after that event to my home group in every single exit on the Bilt Parkway. I had to stop and I'd say God please help not pull off and get drunk. I drove to a meeting with my home group in uniform for the first time and said, I couldn't say it. I just was like, they said, come on. And they put their arms around me. They didn't ask a question. They just let me cry for the whole meeting. You know? And then these hearings start. And the only advice I got was don't lie. And when the dust finally settled and the truth came out, they fired everybody except me. They put a letter of commendation in my file and said you were the only one who told the truth. It wasn't a week later I started taking credit for that. My ego was so rebuilding, but God's got a sense of humor because about three or four days after that, it was maybe week 10 days, the phone rings. I'm still in the Air Force. I mean, the Air Force Reserves, right? That's a flying club. We don't go to war. I pick up the phone and they said, you've been activated for the Gulf War. I might excuse me. You want me what? So I give everything to my wife and said, honey, I'll see you when I see you. And off I go. But I had been taught the right things from the beginning. Carl had taught me. I always flew with a big book in my helmet bag and a 12-in-12. I carried that wherever I went. You didn't get caught without a big book at your meeting. I brought one tonight. I don't go anywhere. We were getting out of the car to come in for coffee. I said, do I need my big book? He's laughing at me. He's going, no, I think you're safe in Caribou Coffee without your big book. You know. But we were going into the combat zone one day, and it's a long, drawn-out story, but we thought it was under chemical attack. And we're reservists. You put on your chem gear once a year. We don't know how to put this stuff on. You put it on, you go through the checklists, yeah, check next, let's go off and have some fun. You know, now we're going in and we're putting this stuff for what we think is for real. And everybody's freaking out. Like, do you remember how to do this? And there's this panic that just takes over the crew. And I don't know what possessed me, but I reached into my helmet bag for the first time in the cockpit, and I pulled out the big book, and it flops open to the third step. What are the odds? And I turned my will and my life over to the care of God right there on the spot. I believe for the 1st time in my life, I was probably 11, 12 years old or dry, I should say, at that point. You know? Now, I'm not stupid. I put the chem gear on. But when I got back, I decided, you know what? It's time to go through the inventory process. That was my breaking point. And I went back and I started doing this program the way I had been taught to do it. I went black and I made amends to every one of the guys that had taken through out of the 12 and 12 and said, hey, I've shortchanged you. I've given you a short shift. Would you do me the honor of letting me take you through the big book? So I would take them through and they'd be like, well, you don't have to do that. You know, I got two sponsees. Can you do it with the three of us? They'd say, sure, no problem. And then it was five at a time and then 10 at a times And then somebody says, hey, would you do a workshop? And I said, sure, not a problem. And I started doing workshops. And next thing I know, I'm getting called to go around the country and I'm doing these workshops all over the place. And one day the phone rings and it's this guy and he says, hey, are you Dave F.? And I say, yeah. He says, are You the guy I'm listening to on CD? Actually, I got cassette tape at that point. I'm listened to on tape and I said probably. He had gone through 12,500 names at my airline looking for a D. Fredrickson because I always use my last name. And they're not in order. They're not alphabetical. It's the day you get hired, you get a number. So it's by this number, this random number. And he found a D. Fredrickson and called me up, and he was new in the cover. He says, I want to get to Maui. And I said, sure, not a problem. And Tom and I became friends. He was out in Chicago. My life is so good at that point. I've got a wife. I've had these program babies that are absolutely wonderful. But we've outgrown this tiny little house that we live in in North Jersey, which is ludicrously expensive. I can't afford it. So I said to my wife, you know, we need to move. And she's like, yeah. And I said, well, we can't afford anything around here. Why don't we look in Pennsylvania? So my wife says, okay, when are we going? And they said, no, I don't have time to go to Pennsylvania. There's this thing called the Internet. Let me show you how it works. She said, I'm not driving to Pennsylvania, so I showed her how to use the Internet because for her it was brand new at that point. To put it in context, she just started using email about four years ago. But she's like, why can't we move somewhere else? Why can't We go to Chicago? I said, it's too cold and windy. Why can' t we go to Miami? It's too hot and muggy. So she's asking all these questions about what, and I said just get on the internet and go to Pennsylvania. So she says, well isn't there any place, and now I'm wise, I'm realizing if I nix every opportunity she throws at me, then I've lost this battle. So I have to throw her a bone. So she asked me all these places, she said, what about Texas? And I said, well, there's only one place in Texas I would even consider living. It's a place called Flower Mound because I know there's a whole bunch of people in recovery there and there'sa bunch of pilots there, so big mistake. Because now she's looking on the Internet in Pennsylvania and she finds the only builder that builds in Pennsylvania and Flower Mounds, Texas. So I got to go to Flower Mount and look at houses. So I call my buddy Myers, Myers Rammer, if you know him, Myers. And I say, Myers, I need somebody that does real estate that's in the program in Texas. So he gives me the name of Jan and I call Jan up and I say, Jan, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I want to waste your weekend. I do not want to buy a house from you. I will not buy ahouse from you I'm just calling to get my wife off of my back. Rigorous honesty, right? Of course it's just filled with lies of omission to my wife but in my mind that was rigorous honesty so we fly down there and we look at all these houses I've learned to listen to the still small voice in my heart and we kept driving past this sign I keep looking at the sign sign. And my heart jumps every time I see this stupid sign. So we look at houses Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday. We're on our way back to the airport and I said, do you want to stop the car? She's like, what? I said stop the car. Take me to that builder. Okay. She goes it's not in the neighborhood. I said take me to the builder. I don't care what neighborhood it is, just take me there. So, we drive over and she's looking at my wife and my wife's just shrugging her shoulders and we walk into this house. Now, I used to be a builder during one of these long parts of my stories, but I build houses and do the renovations. So I walk in this house and I'm pointing out everything that's wrong with it. The crown molding's off. The tile's floor isn't level. I'm putting out all the negatives and my wife walks in and she looks at it and she goes, oh, I love this house. Oh, damn! So now it's time to negotiate. So I sit down with a guy and I said, I'm not going to buy your house. It's too expensive. And he says, well, I can't really negotiate on this price. I said well, if it's that price, I want this, and I want that, and I want to expand it. And he comes back, and he says, well, let me talk to my partner. He comes back and he counters me. And I said, well, if you're going to counter me for that much money then I want a triple garage, I want an apartment above the garage, and one extra staircase, and one ceiling fan, and everything. I threw everything I could think of in the deal. Goes back to his partner, comes back, he says you got a deal. I'm like, oh. I said I don't have any money. He says what do you mean you don't even have any cash? I said you don't need any money to give you. I haven't sold my house up in New Jersey. He's like, well, you got $2,500? And I said, yeah, but I want a weasel claws. But up until sheetrock stage, I can walk away from this deal and I get my $2.500 back. He says, deal. So now I'm flying back to New Jersey and I just bought a house in Claremont, Texas and I'm thinking, what did I just do? Right? A couple days later, the phone rings. Guy says, is this Dave Frederson? I said yeah. He said, are you the guy I listened to on tape? I said yes. He says I'm management at your company. He says, I want you to take over the drug and alcohol program. One catch. You've got to live in Texas to do it. I started laughing. He said, what are you laughing at? I said, you're not going to believe this. A couple days ago, I bought a house in Phenomenon, Texas, but they didn't know why. I gladly moved to Texas. right? So I moved down to Texas and I take over the drug and alcohol program. I don't know how to run a drug and alcoholic program, but what did I do? I started teaching Big Book. I just, every guy that came through the work, I went to my management and I said one caveat no penalties whatsoever. I said the moment you put a penalty, you're going to spank somebody if they get in trouble. It's going to drive addiction underground. I said anybody that wants to, if they've got a problem, they can come to me, hands off We're going to treat them, and then we're going to process them through the system. And they said, okay. Backing it up a little bit, before that, the Air Force had come to me and said, hey, we understand you're in recovery. I said, yeah. They said, would you help us set up the drug and alcohol program for the United States Air Force? I said sure. So I did the same thing for my airline. Now I'm starting to keep statistics. We achieved and this is no credit to me, it's just applied big book, we achieved 97% recovery rate through the first year. At five years, it was 93%, and for the life of the program, it never dropped below 90% recovery rate. That's the power that this program has. The only requirements I had were no penalties, and you must work this program. I held everybody's feet to this program, that was the benchmark. If you do this test, and if you have a spiritual awakening, I'll give you your license back and you can fly airplanes. That was the deal. Absolutely amazing, right? 9-11 happens. Terrible, terrible tragedy. They're looking for people to volunteer to become federal officers. I've learned this is a volunteer service. I volunteer, pay my own way, go to the federal training school. Right? In order to do that process, they have to do background checks. To do the background check, once again, I tell the truth. Alcohol, yes. Cocaine, yes, heroin, yes marijuana, yes just going right down the list, right. You have to get a psych eval. I go in for the psych evals. I'm the psychiatrist. He's got his glasses down, he's reading through and he's calling out these drugs. From where he looks up over his nose, he looks at me and he goes, you look familiar. And I said, yeah, I'm that guy who used to teach the FAA drug and alcohol school. That's where I know you from. He goes, yeah I'll give you a gun. That was the end of the interview. The rest of the time he says, tell me why there's all these positives here. this point, and I just started telling them the power of God in my life. How can somebody go from a teenage degenerate to an airline pilot to a military officer with a security clearance, and now I'm a federal officer? How does that happen? Only the power of God can do that in your life. And it comes from working and reworking the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In this process, I realized that just the 12 wasn't enough for me so i started applying the 12 traditions because i'm in a long-term stable relationship right if 12 steps are really kind of for us 12 traditions deal with a family or dealing with a group of diverse people and now i got these kids these program babies you know my kids were seven years old or so both of them looked at me one day and said dad would you give me a big book i said sure not a problem like would you show me where those prayers are in the big book. I'm like, sure, no problem. I'll highlight it for them. My kids realized at such a young age, the power of God in our family comes from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and they were seeking that power just from being around us. They grew up with it. What a gift that is. Beautiful gift. So I started applying the 12 traditions and then I found out about the 12 concepts. I was doing a workshop that Mark Houston mentioned. We did one in New York City called Fellowship in Spirit. The next year we did one up at the Wilson House, and I started talking about traditions, concepts, and new relationships. And somebody said, hey, can I get a copy of those? Well, I'd never formally written them down, so I actually wrote out that night, sat on my computer, typed out how I was applying the 12 concepts in my relationship and the six warranties, you know? So my household is run by the 12 steps, 12 traditions, and 12 concepts. If you're at my house for very long at all, before you know it, somebody's going to say, I make a motion. Okay, we have a motion on the floor. What's the motion? You know, we go through the process. Here's the motion. Do I have a second? We have a second for that motion. All in favor? Aye. Minority in the nays. They get a second chance to pitch their idea. I don't know how to run a household. That's not my job. My job is to be a member of the household. But God, as he expresses him through our group conscience, runs my household. It's a wonderful way of life. You know? I was over in London a couple years ago, back in 2010, and it was my anniversary. Matter of fact, it was December 5th. I came around the corner. It was one of those beautiful snowy days. It's very unusual in London to get heavy snow. And snow had started to melt and there was a break in the sun and the sun was shining on this church spire. It almost deals with snow still stuck to half of this fire and the sun was shiny on the other half. And I'm looking up at it as I swung the corner and it was black ice and I slipped on the black ice. And after 20 plus years of martial arts, rather than falling and doing the break fall I tried to catch myself and I broke my back. Right? Long story but in the process of that I declared him into workers' comp. It took me eight months to get surgery and the entire time I was broken my nerves were getting ground in my spine. I lost my medical so I'm no longer flying airplanes which means I lost becoming a federal marshal So that piece of my life was taken away and I was like a fish without, for me flying is spiritual. You get above all the clouds and you just at night flying across the Atlantic with your aurora borealis and shooting stars. You can't find the presence of God there and figure out how to meditate when you've got that kind of front row seat. I don't know what you're missing. It sent me into a whole other direction so what did I do? I threw myself back into working. I had taken an eight year sabbatical from doing workshops. workshops. I got off the speaking circuit while I was running the drug and alcohol program. I started talking and speaking more and taking more people through the work. And one day I was having a conversation with my wife, and she stopped and she squared off to me and she says, you know, you've hurt me more in the last two years than the entire time we've been married. You could have pushed me over with a feather. I said, geez honey, I'm doing it. I still do my, I buy in your inventory. Every January, every June I go through the 12 steps formally. I have a sex ideal that I stick to. I do, I'm doin' everything that I'm supposed to be doin'. She says, no, you're not missin' the point. You're doin' the work with all of them but I'm a widow at home. You're gone workin' with people all the time. You're not meetin' my needs. You're here. You're home but you're, it's just like you're flyin' airplanes. You're right here. So for the last two years I've pretty much devoted myself to learning how to be the best husband I can be. Anything I can get my hands on as relationships go, you know? Because I'm living with a black belt Al-Anon. She's got 25 years in Al-Alan, you know, and she's hardcore. She's absolutely hardcore. And now I'm finally starting to understand what being sober in a relationship is about, you know? And I'm starting to bring that to the table and bring in these principles. You know, 12 Steps is practice these principles in all our affairs. I was practicing 99.9% of my affairs. I wasn't bringing them all at home. I wasn' devoting enough time because my home is where I'm supposed to carry this message the most. So I stand before you, one of the most blessed people in the world for this program. I am just absolutely on a high. If you're on the pink cloud, don't let any of the old timers knock you off. If you are not feeling like this program is just so cool, it's so, you're just alive with the spirit, you're missing the deal. I missed it for far too many years. If your not sponsoring, you You know, if you've got, I take people through the work now. When I get a wet one, a real wet one right off that's still itching and scratching and twisting, I've got to give them some relief and guilt, shame, and remorse that they're carrying. We go through the steps old school the way Bill Wilson did it. In about six hours, I got him out making their amends and I got them sponsoring within a couple weeks. Now, if a guy is working with me, if it's at the three-month point, he better have a sponsor. He better be carrying this message because it's one of the keys for us to stay sober is to carry this message. The people I find today that don't want to sponsor are the people that have only done part of their amends. Because they know if they start telling somebody else, that means they're going to have to finish what they don't want to finish. And there's far too many people sitting in the rooms that have gone through the steps once, have a whole bunch of amends that they haven't finished and they want to go right back into the steps again. Let's go through the stairs again and become addicted to the good feeling of going through the step and they don�t finish the program. And the program is like Swiss cheese. I hope you guys aren't in that boat. If you are, come see me, because I'll kick you through it. We'll get you out. This program is one of the coolest things that is out there. And I could talk for another two hours about it. See, my time is up. There's so much more I'd love to talk to you about. I'm going to be talking on Saturday someplace, he'll tell you. We're going to talk in advanced spirituality stuff. We're gonna be talking about prayer meditation and deep meditation and some other stuff, because Bill Wilson and Dr. Baldwin wrote the book in four years. The book is fantastic, but there's a whole other level for me. At 30-plus years, I got to the point where I needed something more, and so I've been trying to figure out what that next more is. Unfortunately, Bill Wilson died and wasn't able to give me the next step. I don't know what that was. So I've Been Working on it, and part of that is bringing the message home to my family. That's been a huge piece. But doing some stuff to really knock out what I call the spiritual plaque. It's one of the things that I see, emotional sobriety. People get basic sobrietry, and they're going through life, life's going well but there's this underlying irritability that just kind of sits there and festers and that stuff will bite you when you least expect it you know and so one of the things that i work on really hard is to knock out the spiritual plaque to make sure that i don't sit in that because that's a relapse beginning right there that's the start of a full-blown relapse if i sit in the spiritual spiritual part so from my heart to yours i thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you. I hope I represented the power of what this program is, you know? I am no longer that drug-addicted teenage kid. Today, I work this program as hard as anybody I know and the coolest thing in the world is I've got the blessings to prove it. You know, I won't tell you what to do but I would love to have you shoulder to shoulder with me and I'll show you what I do as we go through this life together. I've been doing that with Teric and I'm blessed to have him in my life today because we do this deal shoulder to shoulder and we have accountability. We're not afraid to call each other on it, you know? So I give you all spiritual icing with me. If you see me as a spiritual being, please, by all means, take a baseball bat to my knees if you have to and get my attention because the one thing, when I was ready to blow my head off, after that happened, I went to everybody I knew in the program and said, did you see anything wrong? And without an exception, everybody said yes, but we were afraid to approach you. Do not fall into my pit where you're so arrogant that people are afraid to approach you when you're about to die. Because if you can't come here and be honest, where else can you? Amen. Thank you very much. God bless you. Good night.