The Mechanical Application of Steps 8 and 9 — Tommy T.

Thanks, folks. My name is Tommy T., and I am an alcoholic. And I'm thrilled to be here. I brought my own water. I figured all these years ducking STDs, I don't want to catch it at a Roundup in Tennessee. So might as well lower the bar right off the bat. But I am thrilled to be here with such really powerful speakers. And my sober date is April 8th, 1995, and I'm the proud participating member of the Decker Avenue Step Group. We meet on Staten Island. That's in New York City. And if you ever visit in the big city and you stop down and see us, you'll get a warm handshake, a real bad cup of coffee, but you won't leave that room without a sponsor and a big book. If you stay with us there, you're going to get into the service structure and do some service. And we have a lot of long-time members there, so something must be working now. So come and see us sometime. We'd love to have you. And if you call in advance, you've got to be speaking, because we get a real kick out of all the accents. Might as well anger half the crowd and confuse the other half right off the bat. Yeah, so my task tonight is Steps 8 and 9. And I want to mention 8 and 7 a couple of times because 8 and 8 is very important. So this way if I don't get back to 8 and 5, at least I mentioned it four times. Just trying to cover all bases. But I love Alcoholics Anonymous and I hope only a couple of things come out of the talk tonight is that you realize Tommy T, he loves AA. Because I wouldn't have the life I have today because of it. And the other thing is if you knew or are struggling in any way, shape, or form that you can say maybe if it worked for a guy like that, it can work for me. Because I didn't think anything would work for me. When I got here, I was so banged up and so lost and so separate from and different then. All in my head. I mean, everybody told my story today. Well, see, I think I lived in your home. I think i was married to you at one point. I mean, but you know what? I want to call you out for a second because I went up to the room and I was nervous listening to all these good speakers all weekend because I'm a guy that doesn't feel he's good enough. I feel like my biggest fear is being judged badly or looking bad. I have all these things, and I think my God's just got a sense of humor. Like, yeah, I'll go down and speak to that thousand people. That'll really get you going. But I said butcher's prayer a couple of times, and I just felt the calm come over, and it's kind of like a big home group. It's pretty cool. So thank you. That was wonderful. When I came to you in 1995, I was busted up. I didn't come willingly. It wasn't like I was sitting in my basement and having a great time with the trophy wife, just hit mega-lotto and said, let me go hang out with those old guys and find God in a church basement. But New York City Police Department, the state courts, the city courts, they all had other plans for me. And I ended up with you folks. And little did I know, because I came in kicking and screaming, that it would be the best thing that God ever did for me in my life. Came in $138,000 in debt, and that was not to the IRS or credit cards where they're going to send you a nasty letter. Ooh, that's frightening. Now, that was the loan sharks and bookies and mob guys and drug dealers and just out on the street. so if a car backfired on Staten Island when I was in early recovery I'd jump over the hedges I thought somebody was taking a shot at me I was living on mom's couch all that debt waiting to get fired from a city job every day as soon as they found out about my fifth arrest it was my third arrest for DWI this one had a little twist to it I had a loaded handgun in my belt one in the chamber I didn't know when you do that you had a year to your sentence. And I had a whole bunch of non-conference approved party favors in the back seat and so they got me on my third DWI, they were going to make it a felony and they gave me felony possession of a weapon and then it was possession of narcotics with the intent to sell. And where I was in life, the best excuse I could give the judge was, no your honor it was payday. I buy in bulk, you know. So that's just a little picture of where I was at at 35 years old. You know, real picture ladies living on mom's couch and all, you know, a real catch. Come get me. So the fellowship in Staten Island in 1995 was super strong. There were some great old guys and women there that were just so kind and loving to me. I came in kind of on a sidewood entrance. I come in through a program called TASC, Treatment Against Street Crime, and I was mandated not to AA right away, but I did intensive outpatient programs and things like this, and then every day I would go to work, and I would think I was going to get fired. I used to have to wear a beeper back then. Yes, I'm an old man, and we had beepers, and you had to run to your probation officer and give them a drug sample, a urine sample and if you didn't make it within an hour you got violated so I owed all this money on the street I was ducking everybody I would just go to that outpatient program go to work, work as much overtime as I could try to hide the fact of the person that I was or had become and just to back up a little bit I found alcohol at 11 years old I had an alcoholic father and I swore I'd never be like him I blew that guy's career up in a few short years I got much worse we're going to talk about the eight step list and the people we've harmed if you were my friend and I was pursuing alcohol or other things I lied to you, I stole from you if you gave me the opportunity. I let you down multiple, multiple times. If you were foolish, ladies, if you were bullish enough to fall in love with me, I would break your heart. Not because I wanted to, because I wasn't man enough to be a boyfriend or a fiancé or a husband. Although I've tried that twice. I'm on my third wife now and it seems to be working a little better. I'd like to tell you AA works. So, you know. But I put sex before love. I didn't know what love was. I really had no skills in life. I grew up with all those old ideas that the men told you back there. You don't talk about your problems. What happens in this house stays in this House, you know? When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Put your shoulder up against the wall. Push. You'll get through this. You can handle this. You don' t need help. Men don' d cry. How about that one? What nonsense. What nonsense? And it fed this feeling I've always had in my life of anxiety and not worthy and separation. And it shows up in me in a tightness of chest. And I went through my life that way, my early life thatway, always afraid when dad's car door slammed. Oh, am I going to get the beating tonight or am I gonna be sitting on his lap eating lobster tails? You never knew. You never know what was going to happen at the house. And I started to build up resentments for that father. And I built up resentments for that mother who would never leave him and save me. Because it was all about me. I had a grandmother. Jason mentioned his grandmother, and I've heard Jason before. And every time he does, it just gets my heart. Because my grandmother was my higher power for the first five years in this program because I could not have a conception of God. I did not. God didn't want anything to do with a guy like me. I just did too many bad things for any God to ever love me. And that's where I truly believed. But Grandma, she never gave up on me. She always loved me. Grandma's house was the house that when Dad was busting up our house, Mom would scoop us up in blankets. And it was only about a half a mile, a mile away. And we'd get in the old Rambler and drive down there. And if you got into Grandma's front door and smelt mothballs, you knew you were safe. So right there, it was just like God's arms wrapping around you, you know? because none of her four alcoholic sons, my father and his three brothers all died from this disease, would ever disrespect their mother and go in that house drunk. So if you crossed that front door, you knew you were safe. And she used to give us a little box to play with. I'm really going to date myself here. I've never said this. But it had a little police car in it. Who knew? You know, like a piece of string, a tack, and like a paper clip. Kept me busy for hours. I was happy with that. Grandma's here. All right, she's over there doing that rosary thing, but it's good, you know? And it was just, it was what it was growing up. And grandma got cancer and she lost her leg. And I stole money from her when I was 16 years old. and one of the last things, not the very last thing but she said Tom did you take that money and I said no grandma I love you too much I would never do that with the stories that you've heard up to this point this weekend that's like a minor story let me tell you something that ate away at me for the next 20 years to the point when she was buried I couldn't even go to the cemetery I went to the bar at 16, because, again, it's about me. I can't see this. I can' t see this." It was horrible. It was terrible. When I was 17 years old, I got a 16-year-old girlfriend of mine pregnant, kind of an M.O. with me. And she was from a real religious family. And we put that boy up for adoption through the Catholic Charities, and all we knew would go to a good Christian home screened by them. And we signed pledges that we would never try to find him. And he's 48 years old. His name's Matthew. I've never met him. That still, to this day, is hard to say. 1986 rolls around, 85 rolls around. And another girl I was dating got pregnant. It just seems I picked the fertile ones. and she had a baby but what happens to a guy like me I said let's get married I wanted her to have the health coverage I wanted to straighten up I wanted the right thing and the guy that you asked to speak today just runs out on an 8 month pregnant wife and never turns around, never looks back in an argument she said he's not even your kid and that's all you've got to give me just make me a victim and I'll run with it And you could say, how could a guy do that? I have to be honest with you. It's a program of rigorous honesty. It wasn't hard for me. Because as long as I had somebody to blame it on, I would get twice as drunk on Father's Day, three times as drunk on Christmas and just blame her. I would tell every bartender I was a good tipper so they would listen and I would just to them. And that's how I was living life. There were so many other things. I played bass guitar in a punk band in the city in the late 70s, early 80s and you can just imagine all the havoc that came with that. All the sexual depravity and everything that comes along with that body of Barclay's nodding his head, he knows It was just crazy So, you know, coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and that fellowship was so strong but nobody was really mentioned in the 12 steps back then When my girl, oh you know I didn't do any thank yous I do want to thank a couple of the speakers. First of all, Amy and Katie. I've got a pocket full of cash right now. I'd pay money to see you girls fight. I mean, that's big money stuff right there. You know, I think that would be just a classic, just a class. And I don't even know who I'm betting on because, you know, she's a little smaller, but she's feisty. I don' t know. We'll see how that goes. But all the speakers have been wonderful. And like I said, Racine telling my story from a couple of different angles. And Jason mentioning his grandma and Victor last night. Just wonderful. And Joe. Today Joe is always great. Just wonderful to be a part of this. We're going all over the place, but that's where we're going. That's where God's taking me. But you know, when you come into this fellowship, it was enough in the beginning just not to drink. If you asked me those first, you know, 18 months here, how's it going, Tom? Good. What's going on? Nothing, not drinking. That was my profession, was not drinking and trying to hold it together. And when I finally started to go into meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with about 10 months sober, they graduated me out of those programs and let me loose. You know, like no aftercare, no nothing. I was just like, what the hell do I do now? I started to GoToYou folks. And the miracle of our fellowship is for that half hour before the meeting and that half hours after the meeting, and back then we went to the diners a lot, and we would sit and men would listen to me for hours and they're rambling about all that newcomer nonsense. They're like, oh my God, you know. And I felt good with you. I didn't feel so different then. Men matched my stories with their stories, but they had come through the other side of it. But I really didn't know how they did it. And many of them, they went to church. They did it different ways. It wasn't all about the big book. And why I mentioned Katie first is because when I hear Katie speak, I hear a gentleman, Mark Houston, in the back of my head. These three men came to Staten Island to do some big book workshops. It was a guy, Don Pritz, Mark Huston, and Joe Hawk. And man, they turned the island upside down in 1995. They turned it upside down. And I had a big car. I had the opportunity to host them. And I read the big book only to go to sleep. The old-timers used to say, you can't sleep because I'd complain about not sleeping at all in recovery. They'd say, read the literature. Nobody ever died from insomnia, you know? So I used to fall asleep with the big books on my chest. But I couldn't even tell you the 12 steps were in there. I read it like a story, you now. If that doesn't work, use our service manual. It'll put you out like a quaalude, I'm telling you. That stuff's good. It's killer. But when these gentlemen came in, they were saying something that was so foreign to us. And they said it in such a way that they made me believe that maybe, maybe if I tried that. So now they placed that seed of doubt. My mustard seed was of doubt, but then something happened. I'm in this job working, trying not to let anybody know that I got arrested for my fifth time and everything, and I'm just waiting for the hammer to fall. And AA tells me, put in for the promotion, Tommy, at work because I'm showing up to work now for a year. New thing. What do you mean I got vacation days in the bank? That doesn't make sense. I would use them for hangovers and jail sentences. And I lost that job. I put in för that thing. I wrote down all the arrests on there. They said, oh no, you're not working around New York City children. And I got fired. and I love that we live our lives forward and we see it backwards because back then I thought it was the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to me but I didn't see my first 18 months here with you folks I was all about the money if I get her, I'll be okay if I just pay that guy off, I'd be okay if I need a new car, I've got to get off my mother's couch it was all around the material nothing about the spiritual but when I lost that job My whole world seemed to collapse. And I ran into a guy. We always have, you know, sponsor, sponsor. I would say one other than the mother theme that we've had is sponsorship. I've always had the perfect sponsor. My sponsor, my current sponsor, is here today. So I'm really working hard on the lies. But the exaggerations, you know, I don't know about. He wasn't around then. He won't know. So but I got this guy, Lucky George. He was a bald-headed bookie from Brooklyn. Tattoos, chewed a cigar but never took the plastic off of it. It was bizarre. But he could drop the F-bomb with God in the same sentence. And he saw me sharing at a men's meeting crying. Don't ever ask the guy for a burning desire that's crying. Don't pick on him. I kept those guys hostage. I qualified longer than the guy that was telling the lead. You know, it was bad. It was bad, and he came over to me, And he said things to me that I heard from Mark and those guys. But he just said it in such a plain language way that it was very attractive to me. And he says, you never have to feel this way again, Tom. And that started the journey. He said, but it's directly proportionate to the work that you're willing to put in in your own recovery program. Nobody can do this for you. The one thing I can't give you is willingness. He said are you willing to come to my house two days a week and read this book and do what the book tells you to do? Now I don't know at this point that he went through with the guys that went through with Mark and these guys. And I'm his first pigeon. He's excited to get me, you know. And I'll be like, I'm crying? Oh, this is perfect, right? He tells the story much better than me. I won't tell his side of it, but, you know. And he said, look, I'll cook dinner. I will read the big book. You'll do what the big books tells you to do. I don't have a program of recovery. AA does, and it works just well. It's all 12 steps. He said, after we read, I will give you a cassette tape. And it was one of our treasurer's Glenn's cassette tapes of Joe Hawk doing a Salvation Army talk in 1990. And that's how I went through the big book. And I loved it. I loved It. I had to spice that tape. I had used a pencil to wrap it back around. And, you know, like that was my golden go-to, you Know? And I'll tell you, I was so willing that I would get to George's house at 7 o'clock. It was 7.30, and I would sit there like a little kid. Now I'm 36 years old at this point. I've got 18 months of sobriety. My world's in shambles. I live on my mom's couch, and I'm sitting there saying, am I too early? Am I too old? I'm having that conversation, the pong conversation in my head. And all right, it's 25 after. I'll go in now. You don't want to be too early, too late. So I have no patience for sponsees that walk in 10 minutes late right now with a cup of Starbucks. I gotta tell you, just slap it out of your hands. Like, you know, look, I'm a busy guy. I gave you an hour and a half. Like, like, you got to fit it in, all right? You know, get to the house on time. But I did that, and I listened to that tape, and I did it, and it was amazing. And I'm not going to go through seven steps for you to get to eight and nine, but that first step, I had hope. It was the first thing I did for myself in recovery that was for me. I wasn't BSing anybody anymore. I wasn'T just getting a signature. I wasn't just trying to fake it. I really said that mustard seed of doubt was, well, I'll do everything you tell me to do. Everything that book shows me, I will do it and I will show you that I am different. That is the attitude I came in here with. And then George reads the doctor's opinion with me after doing the prefaces and my mouth must have dropped open and George said, what's up? And I said, I can't believe they wrote this book about me in 1939. It started jumping off the page at me. We did this. We were so anal going through the big book back then. We had two-color pens. You had to have a red and a black. You had a highlighter that was double-starring, double-underlining involved. It was crazy. Every statement got turned into statements. All right, cross this out, write me, and then put the question mark at the end. Ask yourself that question when you go home. It was great. It was very mechanical. And I'll tell you, I swear by the mechanical way of going through these steps. It's not going to keep you sober for a long period of time, but it's going to get you the process and the procedures down and then it's up to you what you do with those and how you grow with those it was a wonderful experience it's step two, I didn't believe in God but I believe George believed he was too corny not to believe because he was just so happy like he wanted to slap on me he was so happy so I went through step two on the willingness to believe and Katie I love the way you laid out step three it's wonderful, I wish I understood I understand it now like that, but I did not understand it back then. And if he would have told me, your life is no longer none of your business. You're here to serve God and his kids, to demonstrate to others what this power can do, I would have ran out of there with my hair on fire. He really simplified it. He said, Tom, are you willing to turn your life to God and do steps four through nine and then see what happens? And I said, absolutely. All right. Next, we launch out on a course of vigorous action. He had a black-and-white notebook. He was all corny, and oh, man. And I'm like, two steps in a night spot? Slow down, you know? And he's like, it says next. It's a time reference. Let's go. I made my list, and I always do a little banging around on the fourth step because it took me nine days, nine days. I was unemployed. I get it. I had nothing to do. Pot of coffee, couple packs of Marlboros, and just writing. Oh, man, I was angry, and i was afraid. I didn't know that. And if you asked me back then, Tom, why can't you stay in a relationship for more than a year? I'd tell you, straight face. I don't know. I always date the crazy ones. I would have put a hand on a Bible and sworn. I didn'T know what was going on in my life. I didn' t know that these problems came from me, not at me. I didn''t know that How could you know that? I'm a victim. And I play that role very, very, sehr gut. But we did that in nine days. Now we've got folks coming into my home group. We're a 12 of 12, so we read a step every week. And then the speakers come in and blow it up with the big book. It's pretty funny. But when they come in, they'll say, oh, I'm in my fourth step for seven months. I just kind of put my head down. I say a prayer. In my evangelical stage of AA, I would just blow them up in the open meeting. But I would say, can I speak to you for a second? You're not really. That's an unfair comment to say at an AA meeting when there's newcomers in the room. What do you mean? I've been writing for seven months. No, you haven't. It's not a thesis. You've been balking for seven month. You've made almost everything else in your life more important than your fourth step if you're still doing it. Because I had 96 names on that. I had 31 resentments for that father. I had 29 resentments of that mother. I had multiple resentments from anybody who spent more than a day with me. More than a chance meeting, you got a whole list yourself. And I did that in nine days. And George was so good keeping me in those columns and getting me through that. And then I shared that with George. And the miracle of that short story is I went home that night after sharing it with George, I put my head on that pillow, and I went to sleep. I had never slept in those first 18 months. The chatter of a hundred, a thousand monkeys was always in my head. I'm worried about what's going to happen tomorrow. Oh, geez, they're going to catch me here. This is going to happened. That's going happen. I'm going to have to pay that guy. Oh, my God, how am I going to do this? Always, my whole life. was like that. It stopped. It stopped. And except for a couple of years of untreated alcoholism over the last 30, it's pretty much, I sleep pretty good. But there has been some slips. You can slip on other things than alcohol and substances, believe me. We went into 6 and 7, and Joe was great with 6 and 7. He gave us some good things to look at, but I didn't understand 6 and 9 at all. but I saw character defects. I didn't need my family to come into the room and give me a list, Bob. I knew how dishonest I was. I knew How Afraid I Was. I knew HOW Prideful I Was that I couldn't tell you how I really felt. I knew all those things but I just didn't know what to do with them. So I prayed. So now I've got my third step prayer. I've Got a Set-Aside Prayer. I've GOT a Third Step Prayer. I'VE GOT a Resentment Prayer. I'V GOT a Fear Prayer which if I did anything right because I still use the resentment prayer and the fear prayer to this day. If I did anything right, I prayed during this process. And then we got to 8 and 9, and I was just... You know, in the fourth step or in the eighth step, it tells us we have a list. We made it when we took inventory. Okay. For us big book enthusiasts, I get it. It says it. I don't want to commit heresy here. Do you know how short my list would have been if I just stuck to the people I had resentment for and then the relationships? I didn't have a resentment for Wawa Supermarket, but I stole $40,000 from them. I didn'T have resentments really for the drug dealers that I stole from, the mob guys that I borrowed from. Maybe a resentment because they wanted me to pay it back, but, I mean, that was a little silly, right? I mean because of the life I led, I used my fourth step. I got all that down on that eighth step. But then there was many more names I had to add. And my sponsor was not, I wish I had, was it Amy's sponsor that said you're not that important? He thought I was important. He made me go to all of them. It was crazy. But, you know, it says if we haven't the will to do this, we pray until it comes. I prayed a lot because I'm not stupid. Even in my fourth step, I was thinking about, wait, if I write it, I've got to tell it. And if I tell it, there's going to be an amends. I'm not stupid. I read ahead. So I'm doing the same thing with the eighth step. But there was a little line in that fourth step that my sponsor made me underline, double underline and stall, was we can't fool ourselves about the values. He said, if you pray to God and it comes through your hand, let it go onto the paper. Do not try to edit your writing. Just write it. He said it's not a writing exercise. We're going to get you through this quick. And he did. So I followed those directions. And it tells us on, I think it's page like 76 or something. It says, remember it was agreed at the beginning that we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. Then a little later, three pages later, it says, same line. It says remember it Was Agreed at the Beginning We Would Go to Any Lengths to Have a Spiritual Experience. There's like a shift there. They stopped talking about alcohol as we start to do this work. And I can tell you, folks, the two steps, or maybe the three steps, four, five, and nine, scared me the most. But I'm standing here in front of you, 30 years sober, 65 years old, and other than the birth of my son where I got to hold that boy, there's been no greater experience in my life than steps four, four and nine. see because there's a trap in AA now that I see with a lot of the younger guys a lot are doing steps on Staten Island a lot young women and good guys doing the steps but they fall into that eight and a half step trap where they do summer meds you know they're amazed before they're halfway through and then they just stop and I sponsor a ton of guys so when they come to me and they say you know I'm just not feeling it this has happened and that's happened. Okay. You have any unmet amends? Where are you with 10, 11, and 12? Nowhere. I get them to make a couple of amends. They start writing some nightly inventory. They're praying. They meditate. And then they call me in four or five days and say, I feel great. And that I'm a very sarcastic sponsor. And I will say, you mean it works. It really does. We've got to have some fun with this stuff, right? But then when we get to step nine, I looked at that list and now I'm seeing $138,000 and my sponsor was a guy with plus interest, you know, so I'm like, oh my God. And I'm thinking all worst case scenarios. You know, if I could ever channel back to Bill and talk to him about the writing of the big book, I'd say, Bill, nine out of ten times? Have you even made an amends? It's 10 out of 10. It never goes the way I think. It never goes to way I think. And you know, just a real quick thing. I was having a talk with an older friend of mine this morning. I have never sent a text or an email in a spiritual approach to harms I have caused. I just find that to be... Listen, if you can't even write out a card to the person, spend the money on a stamp. You all know what stamps are, right? The younger folks, you know what snaps are? Or deliver it to their home or make a phone call. Yes, we still do use the phone, folks. It's not just texts. If I got a text for an amends, I would say, call me. That's my response. Call me. Let's talk about it. This is a spiritual exercise and I was so afraid. George had to tell me. All right, so I'm so afraid I balk in eight. I was feeling great up to that point. I stopped going to the meeting George is going. I stopped calling George. We had landlines at that point, we didn't have the cell phones yet. And so it's pretty easy to duck a guy at that point, it's not like today they can track your location and stuff, that's a little rough. But so I did that and I'm down at a beginner's meeting because if you're balking the best place to go is a beginner's meeting because you sit around the table and they say, where are you? What are you doing? I'm not feeling good, man. Thoughts of suicide are coming back on me and I'm in a bad place. Well, what are you doing? Well, I'm supposed to be going out and doing step nine. And they said, step nine? You're only 18 months sober. You're going way too fast. What are YOU doing? Slow it down. I'm like, yes! Like, this is great. And I'm standing outside of that men's meeting. We're smoking Marlboros, and we're looking at the newcomer girls like we do. And this guy Tommy, a 30-year-old postman, comes walking by me. And he says, hey, Tom, I heard you're going through the steps with George. I said, well, yes, I am. I puff out my chest a little bit. And he said, would you like to speak at St. Mark's Step this week? And I said absolutely. I'm good AA. I'll take care of it. I'm with my raw dogs. I don't want to look bad. And he say, we're speaking on step nine. Well, you know, listen, let me take a rain check because I've written a list, but I haven't gotten out there yet. He just walks by me, the power of our fellowship, slaps me on the back and says, make a few amends, let us know how they turn out, and walks away. And then my friends say, oh, and we'll be there to watch. so that fear of not being good enough or being judged works in a good way I had to at that point make the most humbling phone call in my life and that was to George because I didn't feel confident just going out I sat on it, I hadn't read it in a while I could have read it by myself but George was so helpful going through that book I called George and again, I always play out the worst case scenario on my head. I can spin out in 15 seconds to a deathbed, you know, if I got a cold. It's just horrible. And I called George and I said, hey, George, I'm not feeling too good. I'd really like to get out there and make amends. And George just said, I've been praying you'd call. Come on over. I'm making coffee. Where do you get that? Call your doctor. I had a heart issue last year and I went to the doctor. He said, oh, well, I could see you November 6th. I'm like, it's August. I could die three times by then. Anybody ever go to a dentist and say, I have an abscess. Can you see me? Next Thursday. Take some Tylenol. I haven't slept in two days. TylenOL. But you call a good member of AA in good standing and it's come over, I'm putting on coffee. It's our unfair advantage here, folks. It is just one of the many benefits that we have. And I went over to George's house and we read those directions and we decided that I would go to my family and I would tell them how I now view life, how I'm seeing things now. And it was much different than the one before I wrote that inventory and shared that inventory. So I started with mom. Moms are great to start with. Here we go, the mother theme. My mom's name was Millie. She was in a 44-year very abusive relationship with my father. And my resentments all stemmed around the fact that she wouldn't leave him and give us a better home. Not the fact that my mother married him when she was 17, has never been with any other man, never loved any other men in her life. Why don't you leave him for me? So I sat down, and I was a bad kid. I stole thousands and thousands and dozens of dollars from the house. It was just brutal. I pushed my mother down one time. I lied to her consistently. I can't even imagine until I was apparent The nights of lost sleep, lost meals, lost things that parents go through when the parents are all nodding their heads in the room so we know. And I just sat down and said, Mom, I need to talk to you. She said, What's up? And I said, Well, you know, we had a pretty robotic approach back then. I'm going to program recovery, Mom. As you know. And we have steps eight and nine that say we make restitution for all our harms done and, you know, you're high on my list on step eight and I'd like to talk to you about making an amends. And she said, oh, don't worry. I said, Mom, just let me talk. And she did. And I went through everything and then I said Mom, these are the harms I'm clear on. Is there anything you need to tell me or anything? I'll just sit quiet and listen. And she says, oh you left out a bunch. And then she went on to tell me That she had never been prouder of me Than those last 18 months in Alcoholics Anonymous That she sees the change coming over me She thanked me for breaking up fights when I got older For letting her live a little life through me and she apologized to me for never having the courage to leave that man. She said, I knew you were taking the money but I figured if it got you out of here for at least one night, it was worth every penny because this house was hell. 29 resentments from my mother just fell. We became best friends. And I don't want to just talk about approaches. I hear a lot of talks on 8 and 9 about approaches that's just an approach that's an I'm sorry, I'm willing to do something but are you going to do it? so what does that look like? my mother had multiple sclerosis she was a cancer survivor she was pretty banged up and for the last seven years she was in her wheelchair the nursing home was going to take her home away and I stepped in and bought her home I moved into that home I wasn't out of it that long I've got to be honest, right? But that was my house, right, so she got a live-in lease. She had to pay me $10. She died owing me a lot of money. We put one of those riser chairs on the thing, and I paid $12 an hour for a nursing attendant to take care of her when I was at work. I changed her diapers at some points. I played cards with her and I wasn't perfect at it I lost my temper with my mother a few times she would sit all day long I was starting a new executive job in the Department of Ed at that point she would set up a meeting she would come home with a legal pad and write all things down that she needed all day Long I'd come home from a 12 hour day and there's the list she'd call me I need bread alright mom I'll stop on the way home get the bread, come home. There's like half a loaf of bread. Are you having a sandwich party tonight, mom, that you needed this? What's going on? Well, I'm thinking ahead, you know. All right. But at 11 o'clock every night for almost seven years, I would help my mom into the hospital bed that we had set up. I would put her little dog, I bought her a toy Yorkie to keep her company, put him in the bed with her. I Would put the phone near her because I'd be out of the house early and the attendant wouldn't come until 7. I'd check on her before I left every morning. I'd kiss her on the forehead and tell her I love her and she'd say she loved me. Does that make it right for all the shit I did? Excuse me, the stuff I did. No, I don't think so. I don' t think so but when my mother died I held her hand and she said son I'm going home and I said I'll be okay mom you can go. It helps I miss my mom we went to the grave the other day, my wife let's go up and see your mom, it was Mother's Day we both prayed and I said I think she's okay she's doing alright and Cheryl said she yelled at me I said what do you mean Cheryl knelt down and she said a prayer and she says I'm taking care of Tom, you don't have to worry and she goes be nicer it was just great so the second event I made was I went to my father and he was in a bar he was drinking three times a day so you had to get him where he was and I went into this bar and I saw him and I made the approach and I told him everything went through it and I said dad I don't even know how much money I stole And he said, $12,664. And he says, and I have it in my book. And I said, well, I'm willing to pay that back, Dad. And he say, well good, I'll believe that when I see it. He said, don't you have to go make coffee for those assholes now? I said yeah, I do, Dad, but you know what I started doing that day? My father was getting frail, alcoholism was getting him, he was older. I was big and burly back then working out in the gym, not like you see me now. But I grabbed him by the back of the neck, and I pulled him to kiss him, and he was fighting with everything he had, and I'd just kiss him on his forehead every day. And I told my sponsor about it, andI said, You know, that relationship's really strained. He says, Well, that's because you've put no effort into it. I want you to go down there and hand deliver 200 bucks every week and talk with your father for an hour. And when I say an hour, it's like when we're doing the fifth step. You go home for an hour, put a clock on it. You know what an hour is. I would sit in that bar for the next two years on Saturday mornings and look at the clock over my father's shoulder as he was pelting with insults. And I never knew. And one day I go in there, and he's not there. The bar's kind of crowded. It was a low-life place. You know, it opened at 6 o'clock if it ever closed. And all the guys had their load on already at 11 o'cock when I would get there. And the bartender said, Tommy, hold up. I want to buy you a soda. I need to talk to you. I said, yeah, what's up? Where's dad? He said, listen, nothing serious. He was having some stomach problems, a little blood. And he went home. He's fine. He's absolutely fine. He's got medication. But he was really sorry he was going to miss you. And I said well, you'd never know. I would have dropped the money off. He said Tommy, it ain't about the money. He loves when you come down here. He said he brags to all my customers about you and the things you're doing in your life. And he says, to the point that it's annoying them. And I said, you would never know it, all the conversations. He said, listen, as soon as you leave, I tell him, why are you talking to the kid that way? You see him every week. What are you doing? And he said, he'll be okay. I made him tough. The men of that generation, Korean War vets and things, they were just different. They didn't give a shit about your emotions or your feelings. Their job was to make you a man. How they knew how to make a man, it's not up to me. I held my father's hand. I've changed my father'S bedpan. I was with my father when he died. My mother and father died 35 days apart from each other in 2006. And it just blew up my world, you know. So I'm going to that meeting. I'm gonna share on a couple of amends and I've written a short letter to my grandma. And since I never went to the cemetery, I didn't know exactly where she was buried. So I get out, I parked the car, I knew the section on a beautiful, brilliant sunny day. I'm walking up and down the aisles and I can't find it. And I'm just like, oh man, I'm not gonna share with my wife. I had made amends to my sister, which was pretty uneventful. So I said, I'm going to have to make amends, do my qualification on three amends. Not having a spiritual experience yet at all. I just want to look good and have at least four amends to make. Let's be clear on my motives there. And I start walking from a diagonal from the back of the room about the same distance to the podium where my car was parked. And my grandmother's grave was right here. Right next to my passenger door in my car. The hair on my neck went up. I was like, all right, all right. I get it. I get it and I take out this letter and I try to read this letter and I'm an illiterate guy. I could not get the words out of my mouth. I just swelled up with tears. The nose started running. People were looking at me like what's going on over there you know and I'm just oblivious to it all and the letter was brief. It was like one long paragraph but the gist of it was Grandma, I know you can see me. I believe you can hear me. I'm doing good in Alcoholics Anonymous now and I pray every day and I always pray to you. I'm going to make you proud of me one day. That was it. Nothing dramatic. I do not remember walking to my car. I don't remember driving to the meeting. I don't remember the 15-minute qualification on step nine that I did that day. But I'll tell you that if we look in the book, it says our outlook on life will change. That was the day. In hindsight, I can point to that day that things changed for me. I went down there and I gave that qualification and like 10 guys came up to me and said, man, I don' t know what you're doing with George, but whatever it is, you keep doing it. Do not stop. You're a different guy than when you came in here. And I started to feel it a little bit. People see it before we see it in ourselves. and I went on a tear with amends. Now, remember, I'm unemployed. I'm going around like crazy. I mean, to the point where I'm going into AA meetings and people are like, Taracco's making amends! Hide! You know, I mean they're running away from me. And I'm just pounding them out. I want to be like sponsor of the year now, you know? I started to get afraid going to some of these mob guys and those guys and George told me the corniest thing to do he said, take God with you. Why are you going by yourself? Open your car door. Move your school books off this front seat. Let God in. Close the door. Get in and drive with God. I'm doing this. I'm following directions. My neighbors are looking like, oh, Jesus. He's got an imaginary friend now. You know, like it was bizarre. It was bizarre, and I blazed through that list, folks. I'm standing in front of you having done, I think, 10 or 11 fourths, fifths, eighths, and ninths steps. And I'm current with my conscience. I've made hundreds of face-to-face amends over the years. It wasn't the mob guys or the drug dealers that were hard. They were knock-around guys. They were happy. Some took money. Some didn't. It wasn'T a big deal. I'm glad you're doing better kind of stuff. I thought I was going to get killed at each and every one of them. You know what the hardest ones were? sitting with 23 women and saying you weren't man enough to be their boyfriend or their fiance or their husband that they had nothing to do with it there's no way they could have been successful in that relationship because I wasn't a man that's hard and then going to the fathers of some of them because the father I was like Eddie Haskell leave it to Beaver Show all the parents loved me I could BS them pretty well and then go treat their daughter poorly. That was hard. The ninth step for me drove my steps six and seven, if it makes sense. Because I've always had this willingness not to be that guy anymore. I don't want to be the guy. I don' t want to do that guy. I pray every day to be a better father, a better husband, a better employer, a bigger family. A better employee, all these things. I switched sponsors right after I completed that first list. Oh, let me jump back one. I'm going through that list. I don't even have the Department of Education on the list. And George says, don't you have to make an amends there? And I'm like, I'm in court proceedings with him, George. I really don't think I should go there. And he said, well, do you want to try to manipulate the outcome and fail as you always have? Or do you wanna put it in God's hands? I said, no, I put it In God's Hands when I put the application in and that didn't work out well, you know. And he says, you need to make it. And I said okay, and I did that. And I went to the director of, the executive director of the Division of School Facilities and I sat there and waited for him and he came in, big burly guy And I said, Jim, you got a minute to see me? And he said, Tom T., Guns and Drugs. Come on in. Your case is on my desk. Oh, Jesus. I go in his office. There's two seats there. Now, I've been an executive for a lot of years. I know that every desk has two seats next to them. But for me, as an alcoholic then, there's a seat for God. It's going to be okay. And I sit down and I tell Jim, I said, Jim, six months ago when I came in and interviewed and told you the circumstances around this arrest, I lied about everything except my name. I said I was drunk. It was my third DWI. It was MyGun, and they want my drugs in the back of the car. And he says, that's interesting. and I said but I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous now and I have a sponsor that tells me I have to tell you everything so for the 17 years I worked here I stole time from you, I punched other employees in and out I stole equipment, I stole supplies I was drunk on the job, I had parties in the boiler room I went through this whole litany of stuff and he's like do you know I'm the deacon? no iPhones, no Google I don't know what a deacon is I said, no. And I'm hoping he gives me a clue. He says, yeah, I do service in a church upstate. And I said oh, that's cool. He said, you know, we don't find God because things are good. Mine was drinking too. I never went to that AA stuff. I went to the Catholic Church. I haven't had a drink in about six years. I said that's cruel. He said so I know what it was like for you to come in here. He said look, I'm not the deciding factor here on your career. He said, but if you do get your job back, you come here and let me know. I'll tell you exactly what you can do to make this right. And I said, awesome. I walked out of there like I floated, like a hoverboard out of that office. I thought I was going through the play class window, the whole worst-case scenario. And I was in this court case with them trying to get my old union job back. The unions were fighting it for me. And it was stalled. It was going nowhere. It was over a year. and all of a sudden I get a certified letter that says they're going to hear my case and I go up there and my sponsor gives me some instructions bring an AA file with you all this stuff, what's an AA pile George? I'm going to write you a letter get a couple letters of the guys you're sponsoring get some home group members to sign it take all those lovely completion certificates you had from your outpatient put it in a folder and present it to them go in there as the man you are today not the man that you're trying to be or lying to be go in there as the AA member you are today. I just celebrated two years of sobriety, so this is six months after starting the steps. I got my coin in my pocket. He said, if you get nervous, you rub a hole in that coin. And I'm rubbing it and I'm rubbing it and I've rubbed it. These attorneys pound me on the stand for like two hours. And I'm telling you folks, they never heard testimony like I give, especially when I'm not, I know I'm not going away. I mean, I wore my jewelry there. I'm not going to prison. Like, this is about a job. They already took it from me. I was working again. I wasn't doing okay. And I went in there and I answered every question. Mr. Strackler, the details of this night are a little sketchy. Well, that's because I'm a blackout drinker and every time I drink, I can't stop. I have a phenomenon of craving that doesn't let me just stop. And even when I stop, you know, I have this mental obsession that will always take me back to the alcohol. And Iím big booking it at the testimony, you And they're like looking at me, and they go through this whole thing. Is there anything else from you? We have one more question. Ms. Taracco, are you telling us that you have not ingested any drugs or alcohol since April 8th, 1995? And I said, this is what my sponsor told me to say. I said gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to hear this case today. I know you're very busy, and I'm wasting a lot of your time here. And I said, but there's two things that I – whether I get my job back or not is irrelevant because there's three things I'm unwilling to give you. And they said, what's that? And I says, one is this. And I held up my coin. And they say, what' that? And I say, it's my two-year chip for Alcoholics Anonymous. I've had two years continuous sobriety. And with that, the arbiter gives me a wink. To this day, I don't know if he was just keen on me or, you know – Or if he was one of us, but I don't care, you know. But then I said, the other one is my integrity because Alcoholics Anonymous gave me that back. And they said, okay. Five minutes, they came back with a ruling and they said Mr. Tarraco, we're very impressed with your continuous sobriety, the work you're doing to help young men in alcoholics. They didn't mention anything about my job credentials. I have 18 engineering licenses, nothing, nothing about that. It was all about AA, about the work you're doing in AA and these people that were willing to write letters for you and all it says a lot about your character and the work that you're dealing with, turn yourself around. So we're going to give you that job back, that union job back you're working on. I was like, amazing. And then they said, because you've done everything, we said we're gonna allow you to go for that promotion you were going for when we fired you if you stay clean for another year. I said, okay, I can do that. And they said, because you've broken no laws here, we're going to give you $17,000 in back pay. Money rarely flows in this direction. I walked out of there like unbelievable. So what happens to a guy like that, that was that type of employee? Months later, a promotion comes up, and I put in, a year later it comes up and I'm looking at the things there's a tie. There's a man with 18 years experience, 22 engineering licenses. I got the same thing, but I got five arrests. This job was really prone to bribery and all. It was an inspection job with the mobs and stuff in New York. And Jim looks at it and he says, give it to Taracco. If he takes money, he'll drink. We'll know right away. my biggest fear and then i become jimmy's right hand guy his go-to guy and what he told me he wanted me to do was to work for the kids of new york city not the paycheck you work for god now i know that's what aa teaches you i just want you to put those principles and effects here and i worked my ass off in gratitude to that man promotions came fast and furious over the years Jimmy retired about 20 years ago, and I took his job. Can you imagine me being the boss of New York City schools, the facilities? I'm retiring June 30th. They're going to have to pay me the rest of my life. I can't even say that with a straight face. I'm going to be self-supporting through my own contributions. So it's just a great thing. It's a great day. And I really want to talk a little bit about the man that I was in those relationships. And I think you already got a good idea of what I was. It was about sex. It wasn't about love. And I wasn't man enough to stay in them and treat a woman the way she deserves to be treated and things like that. And I switched sponsors to a guy named Joe. And I'm at home group one night, this crazy-looking blonde chick with the white cowboy boots and ripped jeans comes in, and I'm like, oh, Jesus, this is trouble. I swore I would never date an AA again. I'm really trying to turn it around. I'm trying to be a better person. I'm, like, God, why are you testing me with this? This is ridiculous, you know. And I'm talking to my sponsor that way. No, she came to my home group. I didn't go out looking for this show, you know, and he's, like. No. No, you're not doing it. You're not prepared for that yet, you know. And then I didn't see her again. And little did I know, she was going through the 12 steps across the island. And we just didn't See each other for a while. Then she came back, and she was sharing about the steps. And I'm like, well, this is pretty cool. And slowly but surely over time, we developed a friendship. We would go out with six or eight AAs to dinner and things like this. It never paired off. It wasn't that way. It wasn' t that way at all. So if you ask my wife, she'll say, no, I didn't have that attraction to him in the beginning. And I think she had it before I did. But, you know, it's – but we went out a lot. And then one day two couples or four other people canceled and put me and Cheryl together one night. And we sat talking until 3 o'clock in the morning. She told me things that night that she still regrets 20 years later that she told me. all about her ex-husbands and the things she used to do to manipulate them and all. And I'm like, you told me that years ago. I'm not falling for that one ditto. But like a kid, I went back to Joe, and I said, Joe, I have feelings for this girl. And Joe was little red hair, parted on the side, wire rimmed glasses, soft-spoken man. He said, you don't lay your hands on that girl until you can come to me and tell me that you're going to take responsibility for her three children as they, if they were your own. I'm like, that's a little harsh. He said, tell me. I'm not going to listen to any more inventory about your bad behavior in AA. He said tell me, I had 10 years sober. I said okay, I'll do that. I reported that back to Cheryl. And we had the most wonderful courtship and love affair, I'll put it up against anybody's. The first time my wife and I were intimate, I made love to a woman for the first time at 47 years old. I loved her. I still love her. That deadbeat dad? My son is my best friend. He's 39. His name's Brett. He's got 11 years over with us this month. and the only reason i'll use this term is just to differentiate for you folks but cheryl's children they all call me dad they write me the best cards you ever want to see they can't really say this stuff they're irish they got a you know a disability there but they write great cards they write good cards and we got one i got one from my daughter on my uh her birthday is my sober date. So the joke in our house, she's 28, I'm 30 years sober. God got me sober two years earlier than her birth just so I'd be able to handle her. She was a handful. But folks, I am no longer a deadbeat dad. I am not longer a man incapable about loving the woman of my life. And I am retiring. That's pretty cool. but I don't think if you're stuck on some amends or you're stopping halfway through you're settling here you're selling yourself short here look harder, talk to your sponsor go, get this out of the way it's only holding you back and you could also free so many other people you don't know the effects of these amends 10 out of 10 times you have no idea what's going to happen or what it was like best experience a friend of mine, Jack from Colorado, I'm going to close with this did this interesting thing with the bedevilments on page 52 and we all know them we all have them lining them up with our nine step promises so I think it's an appropriate way to close this talk out so we were having trouble with our personal relations we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self-seeking will slip away we couldn't control our emotional natures we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace we will pray to misery and depression our whole attitude and outlook on life will change we couldnít make a living Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us We had a feeling of uselessness This is pretty spot on The feeling of self-pity The feeling that uselessness and self-pitie will disappear We were full of fear We will intuitively know how to handle situations we used to baffle us We were unhappy We are going to know a new freedom And a new happiness We couldn't be of real help to other people. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see that your experience will benefit others. We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it. And most of all, we suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. That is our nine-step promises. Every single one of them has come true in my life. And if it can come true for me, it can become true for you. This has been a wonderful experience for my wife and I coming down here. We've just had a ball with you folks, and I can't wait for the rest of the speakers and all. But the one thing, we come in here, we get all charged up, and we, ah, let's go get somebody sober, you know. And then we tend to go about our ways, and we kind of fade a little bit. God against the fate. Live these principles. I'll be at my home group Monday night and I'll be joking, I'll talk football with the guys and I will be joking around with the girls although they all call me dad now it's not an attractive role for me but folks all my sponsors taught me very well my eye is trained on that door for the newcomer and they don't have to say we're new I don't know why we ask is anybody counting days? We know half cup of coffee talking to themselves in the back We got an idea. You knew, right? That is the most dramatic and gratifying thing in my life is to watch those lights go on and those young men and young women and to watch them grow. And you want to know what the funny thing is? Guys seek me out on Staten Island to be their sponsor now that are having trouble in their marriages, that are Having Trouble Being a Father, that are having trouble at work. It's like, why are you asking me? Are you really that screwed up? Yeah, they are. That's Alcoholics Anonymous. And I am so proud to be a member and with you guys. So God bless. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.