The Illness That Never Leaves Even on a Winning Streak – James M.

Hey everybody, my name is James Mazurka and I'm an alcoholic. This is kind of a homecoming for me. The original Mount Vernon group used to have a meeting at the Boy Scout hut up in the corner and that was the second meeting I ever went to in sobriety. Of course I judged everybody while I was there, you know what I mean, even though I was a train wreck, but you know, that was the second meeting I ever went to. Is there anybody here in the first 90 days of sobriety? Okay, there's a couple of you. What about six months? Okay. Nine months? The rest of y'all graduated? You're good? Okay. The reason why I ask is that it seems like most people identify with not the specifics of the story, but the feelings that come with it. And for me, I never really thought of myself as an alcoholic. I really didn't even know I had a drinking problem. Other people thought that I did and I bothered other people and affected their lives. But for me, I just didn't think I had an issue. And the reason is the same thing that affects me in sobriety is that I think that I know something. I think I know what it looks like. So when I think of a drinking problem, I think about that guy that's under the bridge or the person that's having to do things, sell their body for drugs, steal. and i wasn't at the point to where that was the case so my father is an alcoholic thankfully in recovery uh he just celebrated 40 years and uh he and i had never had a conversation about alcoholics anonymous though the only thing i really knew about it was is that he would go to a meeting he'd come home smelling like smoke because they used to let you smoke in meetings believe it or not and um it's one of the only reasons i stayed back then um that and the girls and so he would come home smelling like smoke but he always had a smile on his face like he would before the meeting he'd be pissed he'd go to the meeting come home and he'd be happy and that's really the only thing i knew about it we never had a conversation about drinking um alcoholism being a heavy drinker those conversations never occurred and And I'm pretty sure that most people in the family just looked at me and they just said, yeah, he's going to be one because I'm exactly like my dad, exactly like him. I was brought up here in Dunwoody. We moved into Dunwooty in 1978 when there was two roads, two horse farms, and one department store. And had a great childhood. I mean, just had a Great Childhood. Did all the things that kids do. Had a lot of fun. neighborhood full of kids, never wanted for a friend. There was always something to do. And as far as when I had my first drink, no idea, none. I can tell you when I have my first drank of intent, I was 12 years old, probably 12, 13 years old. White label, Scotch whiskey and drank till I threw up because I didn't know how to drink. That took time. I didn't have any earth-shattering effect on me. But what did start to happen was that as I started to grow and become more of an adult getting into middle school and high school, I startedto realize that I had a lot of these... Looking back now is a lotof fears. The school that I went to when I was younger was a small school, so all the kids knew each other. Then all of a sudden, we didn'thave a middle school back then, so you just immediately went to high school, and it was just like 2,000 kids. Now, one of the things that I did have, thankfully at the time, besides having a really bad temper, was sports. Sports was something that was important to me because it gave me an outlet. I didn't know that then, but looking back, that's part of it. and I remember when I was younger going out and trying out for the football team and it was Pop Warner down the road Murphy County Park and they have like the special teams called the Colts right and then everybody else plays normal football and I used to look at these little kids and I was like shitheads like all these kids just acted all cocky like they were something special, so it pissed me off. Like everything else in the world, it pissed me off, even as a kid. So my dad, I remember he looked at me and said, do you want to try out for football? And I said, yeah. He said, well we're over here. And I said, no, we're over here, that's where the kids with the orange jerseys are. And I remember looking at him and thinking, I want to destroy these kids. Even as a child, I remember thinking, really, I wanna hurt these kids, they need to learn a lesson. and that attitude stayed with me my whole life. My whole life, through all my using, it was about teaching people lessons. So one of the things that that did for me is, again, it gave me an outlet, and I was successful, and I enjoyed it. And I played up and through high school until I got in the way of drinking and drugs. And I'll get into that a little bit later. So I get into high school, and you're searching for an identity. You don't really know where you fit in and, you know, the people you're supposed to be hanging out with, what you're supposed to Be wearing. And that's like earth shattering stuff. You know what I mean? That's important when you're that age. And since I had football and a couple other sports, you know, I kind of already knew where I fit in. Again, my first drink of intent was probably about 13 years old. And I didn't really start drinking regularly on the weekends, and so I was probably like in the ninth or tenth grade. And I do have dry alcohol in my store, but it was because it was more readily available to kids. It's really hard to go out there and have alcohol on a regular basis. It is super easy to buy weed and get drugs from people. At least it was back then. So when I started my drinking and drugging on a regular basis, what it gave me was relief. And it's just like the book talks about. It's that sense of ease and comfort. But again, this is in retrospect. I didn't understand that back then. I just knew that no matter what was going on during the week, no matter how much pressure I was bringing on myself, I had a relief. I had a release that I could get to as long as I could make it to the weekend. Part of my story is I got in a lot of trouble with the law. I didn't consider myself a criminal, regardless of what they said. It just kind of seemed like bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. And it wasn't until I got sober that somebody had pointed out that every single time that I got into trouble with The Law, drinking and drugs were involved. Every single time. so my first arrest was when i was 16 years old second arrest 17 third arrest 18 fourth arrest 19 fifth arrest 20 and then i had one more i think after that when i Was 20 years old last one was in clark county athens georgia i had a large amount of drugs and And I got charged for it with intent to distribute because of how they called it. And leading up to that point, I've got to backtrack a little bit. So going through high school, I basically got through high school because I have a really, really, really, really great memory. I never learned anything. I was just able to go through the information, understand the concept of it and be able to put it back on a piece of paper. I was also a really good talker. I also was a little bit of a charmer, so I was able to kind of talk myself out a lot of situations. My brother and sister went to the same high school. My brother was one grade ahead, my sister was two, and they were really good students and really involved in school. So it's just kind of like James is kind of a, we're just going to push him through, right? We're just gonna let him get through on the legacy of his brother and sister and he's the last one so we'll just we'll get him out of here um i had worked out some deals with um not the vice principal um but the people that would patrol the school to try to catch people using drugs and drinking and smoking um so when i would go to school in order to make it through school um i would need some kind of substance and the way i worked it out was is that I would give them some. So it was just kind of a deal that I never had to worry about it, right? I had a little, they had a Little. Sometimes we smoked it together or drank together before class. You know, like I said, I just wanted to have a good time all the time. It didn't start becoming a necessity until I got out of high school. I remember my senior year of high school, I remember feeling a lot of pain and it wasn't specific to any situation you know the world was my oyster i could have done anything i wanted i had the capability i just didn't have the desire but i remember just feeling awful all the time and it didn't matter even at that point how much i drank or how much I used it was just a matter of just trying to get my brain to stop just try to get the pain to stop and what I thought it was was depression or something that was chemical again i could not correlate drinking and using any kind of substance and how it that could make me feel the way that i felt because that was my answer without that i wouldn't have made it i truthfully i would not have madeit i needed that in order to be able to not hurt myself or somebody else um so my senior year of high school everybody in my family went to college. There wasn't really a whole lot of options besides that. So at my last arrest, I was facing some considerable time and I remember telling my sister about it and she was terrified. She was terrified for me. And the truth is that I didn't give it anymore. I just didn't. I was tired. I was tried of feeling the way I was feeling. I was trying to pay my own legal fees because that's what my dad gave me when I was 18 years old. I'll never forget this. My mother had given me something that I had wanted that was something small, but it was significant and it was important to me. And my dad came to me and he gave me my lawyer's card. So he gave him my attorney's card and he said, I'm so glad you're 18 because I don't have to pay anymore. So if you choose, you can, or the court will appoint one to you. And those were his exact words. And that's all he said to me. Because of my ability to take tests, I scored fairly well. And I decided to go to University of Alabama because that's where all my friends were going. I had no idea anything about the school, anything academically. but a couple buddies of mine that graduated ahead of me said it was a really fun place to be so that's where I decided to go and um I went there I think I made it to probably six or seven classes I think before I quit going and I would just show up for tests so I would just cram all the information by taking some substances and then I'd show up and take tests and a real long story short I had joined a fraternity because at that school you couldn't be an independent not if you wanted to drink and party it just wasn't going to happen so I joined a paternity actually a really cool group of guys but in the middle of what they call a pledging I had hooked up with this girl who neglected to tell me that she had an ex-boyfriend who was a meth addict. He was about 6'4", and his nickname was Lumberjack. And I didn't know any of this. So, I'm now getting near the bottom of my using, okay? I got arrested twice while I was there. One of the great things about University of Alabama back then, though, was that if you had another student that would show up at the jail and sign their name, the school would post bond for you. It was awesome. It was like I was already off the hook. Like I didn't have any responsibility. It meant that the person that signed for you would be responsible not just for the bond but to go back to the school and explain what happened. So I was with this girl and she had never told me anything about this. I'm at the end of my using. I'm no longer functioning. I'm not able to make it out of my apartment. The paranoia is full-blown. I'm now looking for, you know, getting any kind of mail or even being part of society. I had become a shut-in and had for about a month. And part of what led to that or got me to that point as well was I had woke up to a knee in my throat getting my head beaten in by this guy because he thought he was still with this woman. And it was horrific. It was horrific, my ego was so bruised at that point back then I used to carry a gun so I was trying to find him so I could shoot him and I already planned out how I was going to shoot him and then make sure that it was self defense And it's the only thing that I could process in my brain was how I was going to shoot this guy because I was so upset and pissed by what had happened and how embarrassed I was that it actually occurred. Because when I say that I got my ass whipped, I mean, my head was swollen. I couldn't put on a hat. Like, everything was bruised and swollen. And I remember I had left my apartment for a brief moment, and I was sitting on the side of the Black Warrior River, which is like their Chattahoochee. And I thought, you know what? The banks are really steep. If I was to fall in, as cold as it is, I wouldn't be able to get back out. and you know what that wouldn't be too bad that really would not be too bad I said because I still have two court cases that were pending at the time and I just didn't want to deal with it this was before my last arrest and I couldn't bring myself to do it I really couldn't but if I had fallen in by accident that would have been absolutely fine that would have been absolutely fine because I had lost the ability to function and again, I had no idea anything to do with drugs and alcohol I had No Idea, No Clue but I had Lost the Ability to Function in Society as a Normal Person and the people that I was friends with were just as baffled by it I just couldn't you know, so the only way that I could get out was is a couple buddies of mine knew the whiskey that I liked to drink. They would go get a couple of bottles, they'd come over to the house. If I could get started, then I could make it out. Then I could take it out of the house and actually go do something. But other than that, it just wasn't going to happen. And at that point I had thought, well maybe it's the drugs. Never thought alcohol, so I decided I'd quit doing drugs, which as everybody knows all it means is you drink more. It's stupid, but it's an idea that we have. So long story short, I ended up coming back to Atlanta. That's when I got my last arrest. And I didn't care if I went to prison. I wasn't going to bring my family into it anymore. my mom and dad are really good people and really involved in the community really involved with their church and the only thing that people knew was that james was a piece of shit we don't know why he's a nice guy but he just keeps doing the same thing keeps hurting everybody he's just a piece of shit and truthfully that's how i felt so when i told my sister that i was facing this and my court date, she said, well, we've got to get you an attorney. And I said, no, not this time. So I went to court by myself. And for some reason the judge did not force me to go into Alcoholics Anonymous. He didn't ask me to go to DUI school. He just asked me back to his chambers, which I had agreed to go back and have a conversation with him. And he said, you know, for all general purposes it seems like you have a decent future but looking at your file he says the only thing that's in here is drugs and alcohol. That's the only things that's in here. So do you think you have a problem? Honestly it infuriated me. Like that somebody would think that somehow they knew something about me and drugs and alcohol addressed the relief that I needed. Not being part of the problem. I needed those. And you know what? I looked at him and I said, I might. Because it doesn't work like it used to. Not even close to what it used to. And he said, okay. He says, you know, the three strikes out rule was in place at the time which meant that if you had three consecutive arrests for the same thing that they could give you maximum sentence. I said yeah. And he said, I don't know why. He said, but I know why now it was God. But he said I'm going to give you an unconditional probation and what that means is you can be on probation the rest of your life. You're going to piss when I say piss you're going pay when I pay. And he said we're going do this until you either slip or something changes. And it was difficult for a long time. Even into sobriety I had to do this. and it was hard to explain it to your employer as well that they would call you and you had to leave in 15 minutes, drive back up to Athens and you would have to go through the drug test and then they would take more money towards your fines which are exorbitant. And a buddy of mine from high school was still living in Dunwoody. There was only a few of us that were still in Dun woody at the time And he was a junkie, and I loved him. His name was Felix. He's dead. but for whatever reason he had asked me a couple of questions about my drinking and he said would you want to go to a meeting I got nothing else to do I had stopped drinking because it wasn't working anymore and no matter how hard I tried it just wouldn't change so Felix said would you like to go? I said yeah I'll go to the meeting and I showed up to this meeting with Felix and there were four guys that I used to run around with that were in that meeting. Two of them, I had told earlier, about three years earlier, they needed to get sober because they had some drinking problems. True story. I said, you need to call my dad because you've got a drinking problem. Okay? You need to sober up or go to treatment. I don't know which. Hopefully one will lead you to the other but you needto go. And two of them did. And actually, my dad ended up sponsoring one of them. So I show up to this meeting and they're like, wow, man, that is wild that you're here. And I was just like, no, no. Like, I'm just visiting. Like, like, I don't know. I'm not in. Like,I'm just, you know, testing the waters, you now? And Felix just looked at me and just rolled his eyes. and i can't tell you anything specific about that meeting i remember looking at the steps on the wall they were confusing i remember looked at the traditions and thinking that's silly i remember reading the promises and that started to get my attention because to me that's the selling points of the program right that's about changing the things about ourselves and our lives allowing god in so that we can start to become happy you know useful and whole so i remember two things about that meeting i identified with what people were talking about how they felt when they were talking about the feelings that they had and what their drinking looked like mine was a little bit different but i could i could get with what they were talked about and um the girls the girls were really cute they're really cute and i was coming in young and there was a huge influx of young people when i was getting sober because charter hospital at the time it was one of the treatment centers was pumping kids out like happy meals i mean it was unbelievable they had the best marketing and advertising campaign on demand so you would just notice like you'd be at school one day and all of a sudden like the kid would like disappear right like he was snatched up where is it charter brook okay you know so it's just like fallen comrades and you're just like watching as they got absorbed. So when we were coming into the program, I just came in specifically through the meetings. And when they had asked that meeting if anybody wanted a white chip, I didn't. I didn' t even feel like I was all in. I just knew that I hurt a lot and I wanted the hurt to stop. And Felix punched me. And as I turned about jerked, and it attracted everybody's attention. So I had to get up and get a white chip or look like an a-hole. And you know how we are with ego, so that wasn't going to happen, right? So, oh yeah, I'm getting a white chip. So, I go out and get a white ship, and he said, well, what do you think? I said, I don't know. I don'T know anything about this. I DON'T know anything ABOUT what you guys do. And he said, well, I'm going to make a couple of suggestions. And he said, and we call them suggestions, but really they're a direction. He says, and if you choose not to take them, that's fine. He said, but this is going to be like chewing nails. He says, I don't know. I'm not going to blow any sunshine. He says, this is gonna be hard. And I'm glad he said something because I had an expectation that if I was to get sober, that all of a sudden all the things in my life would improve. Right? That all of sudden things would start to change. So that if I started to feel better, that would be good. But I expected the program to give me things, right? Like it was about the car. It was about getting back on track, finishing my degree, right, making that money, getting a house, a girl, 2.5 kids. And I thought that's like one of the reasons that people got sober. I thought it was supposed to give you some of these things. It's given me so much more, but that's what I thought. So, of course, I didn't take any of the suggestions. That was unnecessary. That was like for people really bad off. You know what I mean? That's like advanced AA. We don't need to get into that. So what I did is I got really involved in going to meetings and carrying the message. Now, I did not have a message to carry, mind you. But I could go to other meetings and tell people about being sober and how awesome it is. I got to about six months sober, and I was sitting in a meeting called the Kingswood Group, which is right across from Perimeter College, North Campus. And I always made a point, I guess it was ego, of just sharing in a meet-up. You always hear people talk about needing to share in a met-up Well, I felt like I had a lot to give, and it was important that people heard it. And honestly, my heart felt that way. So I'm sitting in the meeting, and I'm starting to share, and the words stop. And this wave of just sadness and pain just hit me. And it was like I had been running by staying busy by going to a lot of meetings and meeting different people and going to different groups. I couldn't speak. I just started to cry, andI was crying like a child. it wasn't like a teardrop it was like a real cry and I was so embarrassed but even more confused because I didn't know where it was coming from, I didn' t know what this was I walked out of that meeting in the middle of it and the two guys that chased after me saved my life and I didn''t like either one of them I did not care for either one I'd listen to them talk in meetings, and I'm like, they are arrogant. They keep talking about this book. Keep talking about the things on the wall. I said, I got nothing for them. But those were the only two guys that got up to come outside. They had explained to me that what I was experiencing was untreated alcoholism. And I said well I don't understand that. And they said well you will. One way or another. Because you're either going to seek relief by going back out there and getting a drink. And that's your choice. They said, or you can get involved in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, when I looked at those steps, they had zero, zero to do with the problems and the way I felt. Nothing to do with how I felt, my legal issues, my goals, my plans, my expectations. It didn't have anything to do it. And it's so hard to explain that to somebody that's either coming in or wanting to have a new experience in the steps. Because every time you go through them, and as you stay sober longer, they change. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is like a living document. Every time you read it, you can find something new. Now, it's a crappy read. It's not like a novel. But when you're taking somebody through the book, you'll see things that you've never seen before. You'll hear things thatyou've never heard before. And it's based on where you are at that point in time. So I started to go through the steps with this guy, and my life slowly started to change. Now, I need to preface this. I'm not proud of it. I don't say these things because I think they're cool. I say it because it's important for me to be truthful. For the first three years of sobriety, that man had told me it was imperative that I not tell anybody that I was an Alcoholics Anonymous. And I never really asked him why until one day he offered the information freely because he said if you were the only example somebody has of Alcoholics Anonymous, they're going to think it doesn't work and they don't need to be there. I damn near attacked him. But I was more scared of not having a sponsor because that was the only link I had to this program because you can't do it on your own. So I called him a couple of names and stormed out of his house and didn't talk to him for about a week, and pain started to set back in. I started to act like I used to. And I remember I said something to my dad, and he said, we'll go to any lengths as long as the pain's there. If the pain is in place, we will do what we have to. I have never made an effort to become more spiritual or change in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous because I was on a winning streak and stuff was going the way I wanted it to go. As an illness, it doesn't change. It's always with me. So I started to go through the steps with him, and I made it up to step four. And I remember thinking, this is going to be horrific because there's stuff that we don't want to talk about. We don't wants to look at a four-step because it's ugly. We don'T want to see those things about ourselves that we DON'T like, you know? And the truth is, is that once you start writing it down, you can't change that. You can't talk it away. You can put a spin on it. It is what it is. So I had to be in a lot of pain. I had put it off for a while. And then finally he said, just come to my house on Saturday, bring a pencil. That's all I need you to bring. He says, we're going to sit down. And we did it all at one time. It took like, I'm going to say eight or nine hours between me writing it and doing the fifth step because he wasn't going to let me out of it. i got to six and seven first time you go through them they're pretty easy because there's only two paragraphs in the book they took on more meaning for me later on in sobriety eight nine were fairly simple because i could only see certain people i needed to make amends to but really what i wanted to talk about tonight the part that was important to me is my sobriete because i can tell you what it was like. I can tell you what happened, that I came in the rooms what I thought was just pure coincidence. Looking back, there's no way I would have come on my own. If the circumstances were any different, I don't think I would've ever gone these doors, truthfully. It wasn't until I got eight and nine that I started to realize the effect that it had on other people's lives. I used to think that if I didn't involve my family in any way shape or form in my life that somehow that meant that I wasn't hurting anybody and what I learned through my amends process was that by not being a part of hurt just as much as the chaos that I caused so either way I was going to be a loser on that end of the street and I started to see what alcoholism looked like in my light and that was very important not just that somebody explains to me what it is as an illness and how it affects us, but what it looks like in my life. Because when you sit down with somebody that is really in tune to the steps in literature, we used to call it being in the middle of the bed, and they can show you exactly what your illness looks like in your life and how It causes you problems even in sobriety. I got to tell you, that's like the best therapy and it's free. Because you're getting information that's useful. You're not talking about my symptoms. You're talking about the root cause. That's different. So as he's explaining this to me, again, I have to be in pain in order for anything to actually work or set in. I was in pain. And he's explaining this too and we're starting to go through this amends process which for me was you want to talk about a leveling of pride I'd rather serve the prison sentence than go to some people and tell them I did something wrong. I mean, And when you put me in a situation like that, my back's up against the wall. And that embarrassment and everything is that real and feels that strong, for me it's stifling. But the most difficult amends I make were the ones that were most important. They were the once that had the most lasting effect. So I get through the steps. And back then, we still did a lot of 12-step calls. That was still available at the time. God, I'm dating myself. But yeah, we used to do 12-stepped calls. And usually what it was, was your sponsor would somehow be connected either to a treatment center or to a church in the area, right? So that pastor or somebody would call you up and say, we got a bad one. We need you to go talk to him. And when it talks about in the book the directions as to how to do this, it's not really as prevalent today, but you had to look at those instructions. So what you would do is you would ambush them, right? At like 7 in the morning when they're waking up from the bender or coming to. And you'd sit at the table with them and you'd watch their hands shake. And youíd watch them try to talk and their bodies would just be shaking. And the family usually would be somewhere on the outskirts like in a den or something, kind of keeping to themselves, hoping that somehow something would change. And that was the first time in my life that I realized that I had an unwritten contract with the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous. That if people had given freely their time to help me, that it was imperative that I do the same for others. Now, the book talks about nothing will ensure long-term sobriety as working with others. But I don't want to make it sound like I've been doing this regular since I've Been Here because I got better and I've experienced most of the horrific things that people experience in life, but I did it in sobriety, which I'm grateful for. Horrible breakups, watching people die, my best friend, my buddy, my dog, having to put him to sleep, family members passing, friends passing. We used to have a lot of funerals that we used to go to on a regular basis of guys that we had gotten sober with one of the worst ones i'll give you a quick story because again these are epiphanies that happen about once every three years okay this isn't that frequent but i'm standing at this funeral and there was two guys john and alex they were brothers they couldn't be more different except they were both addicts they used to go to my home group that i was involved in for 13 years and i was really involved in the service structure and that's what i was trying to get to was that back then for me at least my experience was is that you would get very involved in your home group and the service structure. And if you were involved in the service infrastructure, then people would start coming to your meeting, right? Newcomers, et cetera. So you'd get the opportunity to work with others. But anyway, John and Alex were at the time, I think John was 21. Alex was maybe 22. I had been in the rooms for, I Think of That Time, probably eight or nine years. And they both went out the same night, and they both OD'd, and they both died. I'm standing at the funeral at the Catholic Cathedral in Buckhead, and I looked at their parents' faces, and there wasn't a word to describe the look that I saw on their face, truthfully. I don't mean to say sad or in shock, like there was not a word that could properly identify the look that I saw on Their Faces. And the truth is, is I got pissed at John and Alex, because I thought, you know what? If you want to do what you want to do, that's fine. But we don't think about how we affect other people. We don't think about what we leave behind. We don' t think about those things because we're constantly involved in how we feel. Whether it's in sobriety or drinking. I don't mean to be that self-centered but I can only think about how I feel. That's just how I'm hardwired. So they both I am assuming felt like they could go out and do what they wanted to do and they'd have a second chance. That was the second lesson I learned. You don't know when it's going to be you. No one thinks they're going to die when they go back out. Why would you think it was going to be? You, you know, it doesn't look like me most of the time. So I saw a lot of people go in and out. I saw lots of people going in and now some of them still friends with some of us still struggling after 25 years, still coming in, still going out, still coming in, still going out. I don't wish that on anybody. I really don't. So I'm thinking about these things and I'm having these spiritual experiences, moments of clarity is what I'll call it. And they happen very infrequently. I got a job opportunity and I moved down to Florida, I think I was about 15 or 16 years sober at the time, and it was right where I wanted to be, doing what I wanted to do. And it was really cool. The challenge was is that when I go to new cities, I don't want to go to meetings. I don' t want to go. I would love to think at some point that there's a graduation in this frickin' program, but the fact is is that illness doesn't change. It's always with me, right? So I get down there. And truthfully, this isn't me saying a judgment call, you know, like the meetings are better where I am. Like, the meetings down there sucked. I mean, sucked. It had nothing to do with format. What it was was a lot of people talking about how they felt. And there's nothing based in literature. In all of the meetings that I went to, I couldn't find anybody that was actually in the program. It was a whole lot of different people just talking about things. now the one saving grace that i've always had is that at that time i was being sponsored by the same sponsor i've had for a long time john shires john got sober one year before me so i've known him the whole time i've been in sobriety and by the way when he tells you he was nuts young in sobrietty he was freaking crazy and i can tell you some stories if you ever want to relate them to him um so i'm down there i'm working and what i do is i travel back and forth between tampa and Miami. So I'm back and forth constantly. And so my meetings are getting skinny in a hurry because most of the time I'm spending traveling back and fourth. Oh, hey, buddy. So I'm being sponsored by a guy in Atlanta, and I'm not being all that truthful. And I'm starting to realize that I'm getting more and more volatile, right? The people that are bothering me that are causing me strife are really, it's starting to become volatile. And I can't really explain it to anybody. So finally I call John and I tell him what's going on and he says, well, what do your meetings look like? I said, crap, the meetings down here suck. And he says well, what are you doing to add to them? You're just walking in there and judging everybody rather than actually picking up a book and helping somebody that's new coming in the rooms then you're just as false as they are. I get a lot of those conversations from John. So, I'm sponsoring two guys while I'm down there that were having difficulty staying sober. And both of them have lived in the same area that I live in Tampa, so I was in constant contact with these guys. Now, I have to tell you, I think if that was God, because I wouldn't have sought him out on myself, then it saved my life just yet again. Previous to that, previous to getting John as a full-time sponsor, I didn't have a sponsor for nine years, and I need to let you know that. I had found every way I could to avoid how I think and every possible way of spending money to try to make myself feel better and staying as busy as possible, going to a lot of meetings and sponsoring but not being sponsored. Those are two completely different things. One of them requires humbling yourself and being truthful. The other one's about sharing a message that's been taught to you. One is very simple. One for me is very difficult. it wasn't on purpose that that happened. I just, one of my sponsors had passed and I just didn't really get too busy in finding a new one. Long story short, I had saw John at a meeting and the same thing was happening and I was starting to get emotional and couldn't explain why and he said, sounds like you could probably use some service work. and the truth for me my experience is that when it comes to service work and working with other people is where I actually get a chance to see the program okay and here's how I relate it if you can sufficiently recall the first time that you got that buzz regardless of the substance and you felt that feeling that you chased the rest of the time that you're out there, right? When I go through the steps and I get the opportunity to get that growth and that understanding of the illness and starting to feel better and starting change, allowing God in my life to actually play a role, I can only do that one time. One time. It is a peak cloud experience. I can go back through the stairs and have a different experience and they're just as awesome but I can only have that one shot when it's brand new for me and I don't understand anything about the steps and how they work. I get to sit down with junkies, drunks, homeless people, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, billionaires, priests, ministers and I get a chance to watch something change in their lives and that something is not anything that I do It's merely me being available to watch that person and to give them the experience that I had in the book about Alcoholics Anonymous and the steps. And when you get a chance to watch that, that's the only way that the program stays fresh for me. For me. Because I can go to meetings and listen to people all day long and go home and do what I want to do. I can do that. It's not a problem. But there is something long-standing that allows me to see that happening in another person's life allows me know that the program still works. I know that sounds weird, but part of this program for me was showing up at the same meetings, seeing the same old-timers say the same thing every single week. I would sit in those meetings and they would talk about how they lost both of their kids to illness, wife passing a cancer. losing a job, filing bankruptcy. And I would think, holy shit, that's horrible. But there they were in the same seats at the same meeting doing the same thing. For me, that was imperative. I needed to see it working on a regular basis in people's lives over a period of time so that I knew that it worked regardless of what I thought and most importantly how I felt. The program has nothing to do with how you feel. If I waited to feel better before I started the program, I'd be dead. Okay? I needed to have somebody look at me and say, James, I don't give a shit how you feels. That has nothing do with subriding the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It has nothing about changing as a person. God doesn't care how you fell. You know, at our group we always talk about Don't listen to the person. Watch their feet. Watch what they're doing. Watch if they're involved. Watch if you see them in a coffee house with sponsees. Watch and see how they carry themselves out in public. That's a big one. When you're in the Home Depot and you want to just snatch the kid's head in front of you, not realizing that there's people around you that are in the program, they're getting a chance to see what your act's in real life, not in the meeting. That's the difference. When I get a chance to not just experience helping another person but be involved in a group of people that allows me an opportunity for service work, for a lot of years we didn't have that. We really did not have that, that was not something that was strong in Atlanta. We didn't have a lot new comers coming in and the only way that that was happening was by circumstance if they lived in the area after they got out of treatment. That was really the only that it happened. So a lot those meetings got very stale for me. And when I went away to Florida and then came back, the company got bought. Circumstances don't matter. The long and short of it is that I hated the guy I was going to be working for and I couldn't trust him. So I couldn'T pick up and move my life down to Miami trusting that that was the case. And God saw fit for me to come back to Atlanta. And that's when I ran into John. That's whenI got a full-time sponsor. And that'S when I started to do the stuff that worked for me in the beginning. One of the things that you hear us talk about in the meetings Is they talk about for those who still suffer I was always under the assumption That that was just people that were new Rest assured, it is not There are people with multiple decades of sobriety That are suffering There might be a guy from one day to 25 years Regardless of the circumstances They may not be in a place To where they're spiritually fit and they're hurting My spiritual fitness is what I call a chase I go to feeling good and then I slack off I go into feeling good and I slack off and it's an ebb and flow thank God it's evened out a little bit over time but there are people that have an assumption that if you've been around for a while that you got it you know he's got it he's been around for a long time for a little while now um I can tell you I've known a few very good people, good men, that quit going to meetings. And honestly, I believe they forgot they were alcoholics. I mean that sincerely. One of them was at his son's graduation from the Naval Academy, picked up a flute of champagne, didn't think twice about it. He hadn't been to meetings in a long time, hadn't made contact with people of Alcoholics Anonymous, drank it, realized what he had done, nothing horrible happened. Three years later, he's dead. Couldn't get sober again. I know that I got a drink in me. I could walk out these doors tonight and stop by a liquor store. But I know for 150% of my heart, I don't have another sober in me anymore. Getting sober sucks. It's hard. It's difficult to get sober. It's really hard to make those changes and go through those processes. It hurts. but to have sobriety, experience sobriery experience people growing in sobrietry and then to go back out there I personally don't think I would make it back that's just my personal opinion most people with long term sobrieté don't necessarily relapse what you hear about a lot is people shooting themselves killing themselves and that does happen and I don't say it to be a downer I just want to express to people that don't think just because somebody has time that they're unapproachable. If you see somebody, and this takes an act of courage, and it looks like they're hurting and you're sitting in a meeting, just take a minute to say hello to them. Just shake their hand. You have no idea what effect that could have on a human being that hasn't been around the rooms for a while to see that people still care and they're still welcoming. We don't know. We don' t. Sobriety has treated me very well. and it has nothing to do with me. I have had really hard sponsors that don't giggle, they don't love me until I can love myself, they don'T ask me how I feel. My first, I guess he was a grand sponsor at the time, this will put it in a nutshell. He was a Vietnam vet, he did three tours, and still has effects from that war. I was about nine months sober, and I went to my first men's workshop at Rock Eagle. I'm sure you guys heard of Rock Eagle? And I'm sitting across from him, and he said, Boy, witch pissed me off. And he said it looks like you're riding a fence. He says now there's two sides to that fence. He says you fall off one side, he says you could drink and die. You go to the other side, you might find some happiness and some peace of mind. He says I need to let you know that if you die, I will go to your grave and I will laugh. Because I effing told you. Armed with the proper set of tools, what are you going to do? I leaped across the table at him. I did. I stayed sober another six months until I could make it back to the same workshop so I could stick it in his face. And I told him, I walked up to him and I said, do you see who's still here? And he looked at me and he winked and he said, boy, my plan worked. A day late and a dollar short. But sobriety for me is a matter of inches and seconds. Looking at my sobriete the way I've handled it callously, seriously something in between. I don't know that I should still be here. There's people that worked it harder than me that have been more involved Sponsored more guys Went to more workshops That aren't here So when I say God's grace is the reason I'm here I mean that with all sincerity Because I don't know why I'm hier as opposed to somebody else Maybe I can be more helpful Maybe there's somebody down the road That I might be the only guy that can help them I don' t know The last thing I want to leave you with Is Remember how I said that I thought the program was about getting things. I got things. You want to know what it does for your sobriety? Nothing. John had explained it to me, and he said this is a program of subtraction. It's about getting ourselves out of the way just enough so that God can edge His foot in the door. And when I'm doing service work that is extraordinarily inconvenient, time-consuming, early in the morning, that's when I get these brief glimpses of God. And I mean that. Just brief, brief glims. Because God has yet to come down and talk to James. He has yet to come down and tell me what the plan is. But I sit in the rooms and I listen to people talk about their lives and the things that they're doing and how they're changing. That's my God. That's where I hear Him. I hear him through you people. I don't hear Him up here. You can put me in a cloistered building and ask me to pray. I guarantee after three days, I'm going to be running out of there like a madman because prayer is not my answer. Being in the program and being active is. That's the only thing that has kept me sober over a long period of time. I finished college. I did a lot of things that I wanted to do, a lot o' things that i set out to do that had nothing to do with career paths, racing motorcycles, jumping out o' airplanes, everything i could possibly think of that i thought would be awe-inspiring. and the most amazing thing that I've ever experienced as a human being is being away from meetings for a couple of weeks when I'm on the road hitting them where I can but not having to be the same and coming home to my home group and seeing everybody sitting in their same damn seats with the same smile saying the same thing And I know that I'm exactly where I need to be. Thanks.