The Transition from Street Arrogance to Humility — J.B. B.

Welcome back, my friends, to AA Recovery Interviews.
I'm your host, Howard L., and I'm an alcoholic, sober since January 1, 1988, one day at a time.
I'm grateful you've joined us.
AA Recovery Interviews is the podcast where Alcoholics Anonymous members from around the world
share their extraordinary stories of experience, strength, and hope.
My guest today, J.B.B., grew up amidst alcoholism and drug addiction both in his home and his community.
By the time he was using at age 12 to escape family dysfunction,
his heroes were neighborhood drug dealers who drove fancy cars
and swaggered with large amounts of cash from their illegal trade.
Even those who served time for their crimes became role models to J.B.
as he watched them emerge from prison buffed and ready for more action.
Though he spent a lot of time in prison, J.B.B.B.
spent his teenage years becoming a star football player in Northern California.
He still managed to reap cash and cars by dealing drugs on local street corners.
Jailed at least a dozen times for his illicit behavior, J.B.B. twice landed himself in prison in his 20s.
Aspiring to his earlier role models, J.B.B. used his time behind bars to condition his body
in the hopes of playing pro football at some point.
Though that opportunity came and went, prison had provided his first experience with AA,
but each time he was released, the old life beckoned him back.
By his mid-20s, J.B. finally had had enough.
He emerged with just the right amount of desire to get sober once and for all.
The caring people J.B.B. had met during prison AA meetings and throughout his probations
coalesced to help him build a new life in the program.
J.B.B. has turned his life completely around.
In addition to coaching football and impacting the lives of many young men,
J.B.B. is also a self-proclaimed hero.
J.B.B. is a self-proclaimed foot soldier on the streets.
His mission of serving others involves helping addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill
find community resources for recovery.
He also helps the homeless and displaced veterans find shelter and assistance from social service agencies.
In the midst of his very full life helping others, J.B.B. stays quite close to his AA program
and never forgets what it took to save him from despair and ruin.
His special brand of experience, strength, and hope are revealed daily,
both in AA meetings and on the streets.
With raw courage, J.B.B. goes into places of destitution and hopelessness
with the message that the hand of AA is always there for those who reach out for help.
In the process of giving it away, he has crafted an admirable message of service
that attracts others to him and to the program.
I'm grateful that I get to see J.B.B. at a weekly men's meeting.
His infectious smile and good cheer brighten that meeting.
He brings strong testimony of the power of AA
and its impact on fellow alcoholics.
I think you'll enjoy J.B.'s story on this episode of AA Recovery Interviews.
It's the 82nd interview in the podcast series.
Coincidentally, 82 is J.B.'s number on football jerseys throughout his career.
So, I hope the next 65 minutes are as enjoyable for you as they are for me
with my good friend and AA brother, J.B.B.
I'm J.B. I'm an alcoholic drug addict.
Hi, J.B.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thanks for being on the AA Recovery Interviews podcast.
I've been waiting to do this for a long time.
You're one of the people that I really respect in the program.
I've been seeing you for a number of years now at a men's meeting that we go to.
And I was real pleased that you agreed to do this interview today.
My pleasure.
I've heard bits and pieces of your story, you know, like everybody else.
And it's always been very captivating to me, you know,
how a man like you becomes a man like you and joins the fellowship
and really adds to the quality of the meeting.
Now, the very first time I saw you at the meeting that you and I go to,
and I anonymize this show, just so you know.
I always try to make sure that I'm not using the names of people or facilities
just because of anonymity reason.
But we can use people's first names.
When I very first met you at this meeting,
and you came on the suggestion of, was it Avery?
Yes.
What did he tell you about that meeting that made you want to come?
Well, he heard my story.
Yeah.
And he thought that inviting me would be a good fit for me.
Yeah.
What did you think the first meeting when you walked in there?
A lot of men.
A lot of men?
A lot of men.
I hadn't been to a men's meeting of that size or that magnitude in a long time.
So it was maybe 70 to maybe 80.
Sometimes 80 to 90 for the pandemic.
A lot of people there.
Yeah.
That's been a big meeting for a long time.
So once you went to one meeting, what was your thought about coming back?
I had to come back just to make sure it was the real deal, you know.
I had a good feel for it.
Yeah.
So it wasn't a fluke.
Now, how long have you been sober?
May 31, 1989.
So you're coming up on your 33rd.
33rd year, clean and sober.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
So what was happening on May 30, 1989, right before you came in?
I was transitioning from, you know, using drugs, drinking occasionally, to going in
to do some time.
Incarceration.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Was that the culmination of a long time of doing those kind of behaviors?
Yes.
I was selling drugs, using drugs, drinking occasionally.
I never liked alcohol.
My dad was an alcoholic, so he used to come home and destroy our property and pick fights
with my mom, stuff like that.
So I've always had a big resentment and not a hatred, but just I never liked alcohol.
When I drank alcohol in high school and college, it was kind of like peer pressure, kind of
like.
I never liked it.
That's interesting.
And my last guest was just the opposite.
He was the flip side of that.
He never liked the drugs, but he liked the alcohol.
Right.
Me, I liked them both.
I mean, but it was always my drug of choice was what you got, you know.
And if it happened to be beer or liquor or pot or whatever, I would do it.
So you grew up in this difficult household, it sounds like.
Yes.
It was difficult.
You know, I played football.
I played a lot of sports.
As a way to get out of having to deal with the home life?
Kind of, sort of.
My dad was, I guess he was kind of like a binge drinker.
He didn't drink all the time, but when he drank, he went on those deals.
And then, you know, he can always go to the VA hospital.
And I don't know if he was ever introduced to sobriety.
I always ask myself, why am I the only person in the entire family that goes to meetings
that's got it clean and sober?
But I found out that I had a cousin, my first cousin, Pierre.
He passed away in California maybe three or four years ago.
He was in recovery.
He did big AA in Los Angeles where he sponsored people.
He chaired meetings.
He did a lot of stuff.
And you never knew that until much later?
Later on, yeah, when he got clean and sober because he had an alcohol problem also.
And he got clean and sober in either New York or Florida.
And then he moved to Long Beach, California.
And so we kept kind of like in touch, but we knew that we both were clean and sober.
So in the house that you were growing up, there was you.
Were there other problem drinkers in your immediate family or looking back at grandparents,
anything like that?
My dad, based on what my mom told me, my dad and my uncles were all drinking buddies when
we lived in Miami, Florida.
So my dad used to drink with my uncles.
So alcoholism probably runs.
I know on my mom's side definitely.
My dad only knew his sister, my Aunt Connie.
But I don't know my dad's people on that side.
I'm not sure.
But once I do research, I'm pretty sure it's going to be some stuff there.
Do you want to know?
Yeah, I'm doing a family, I'm doing a genealogy thing where I'm trying to track my dad's father
who passed away when he was like maybe three.
But his grandfather, from what I'm told, was some kind of professor.
He worked at Fish University in Tennessee.
So I went to the genealogy library and I kind of, I think I found them.
And so you ask that question.
So I'm in the process of finding them.
I'm in the process of, because I can trace my mom's side.
They're in Miami, Florida.
They came from Georgia to Florida.
I know both of her parents.
And they came from South Carolina.
My grandmother came from South Carolina.
My grandfather came from Georgia.
She moved to Georgia from South Carolina with her people.
And that's where my grandfather met my mom's dad and mom.
That side, which would be, I guess, the maternal side, that's going to be really easy to link.
The dad side is the one that I need to connect the dots
and find out more because it was just my dad and his sister that I know of.
I don't know if his dad had other children.
But, you know, it's his genealogy deal.
I'm going to be able to find out some stuff real quick.
How about DNA?
Yeah.
Michael Strahan just did his deal, you know, by me being a former athlete and a football coach.
You saw that show.
Yeah, I saw that.
And so that made me, I mean, I'm going to pick it up here in the next week or two.
I'm going to go grab all my information because I had already been doing a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
I'm going to take the ball.
I'm going to run with it here in a minute.
Was Michael Strahan the one that they were able to trace him back like 30 generations?
39.
And somebody like King Charles, somebody, he said, I'm a grandson of a king.
This guy went crazy.
By him being a former football player and I'm a former football player and a coach,
our stories kind of correlate.
And so when I heard his story, I was like, wow, man, I got to get on that.
From your dad, there was the alcoholism in your immediate family.
Do you have siblings?
Yes, I have three sisters that's living and I had a brother in Oklahoma City who passed away in 2019.
And my younger brother, my dad had a son by a woman in Stockton, California, where my brother, my 34 year old brother last year,
and I think I shared this in all of the meetings, he was hit by a train in California last year.
Yeah, I remember you saying that.
So I had to go there.
How tragic.
And bury my 34 year old brother.
Who might have been intoxicated off of alcohol and drugs.
I'm not sure.
I got the autopsy.
I read it one time.
But I'll probably, I'll probably read it again and just get in depth with it and see exactly what he was on.
He had mental issues and some other stuff.
But alcohol might have been in there.
Where are you in the stratus there?
You've got, you're in the middle, it sounds like.
I'm the middle child.
From my mother's children.
My mother had two daughters before me and then me.
And then I had a brother who passed away in Oklahoma.
And then my younger sister, she's in Miami, Florida.
So I'm right in the middle.
I'm the middle child.
If you look back to your early years as a kid, let's say 10 years old, a little bit earlier, or maybe even as old as 12,
what was going on in your house that might have predicted you becoming a drug addict and alcoholic many years later?
I guess the environment that I grew up in in East Palo Alto, California.
Palo Alto is Stanford.
That's on the other side of 101.
I worked there as a high school student.
My dad worked there.
And then the other side of US 101 was East Palo Alto where the predominantly blacks, Hispanics.
We moved there in the late 60s.
And so the drug and alcohol deal was kind of like, the drug thing was really big there.
People were selling marijuana.
And I guess I looked up to those guys with the nice cars.
And those guys was kind of like my role models.
They used to go back and forth to prison, come out all buffed.
And so that's just kind of like I looked up to some of those guys.
How old were you when you first tried drugs or alcohol?
12, 11, somewhere.
I can remember my friend's brother was in the military.
And when I used to spend the night over at their house, his brother had a briefcase full of weed.
And all of those ounces.
And so we would go pick weed out of each ounce.
I remember smoking weed for the first time.
I was scared to go home.
So with that, I smoked the weed.
And I was like, wow, this is marijuana.
That was in the 70s.
And when I got to high school, I smoked a lot of weed in high school.
Even though I played football, smoking weed in California was kind of like a regular deal.
I smoked weed for a long time.
And then at some point in time, I came to the point where the marijuana, even if I snorted cocaine before I crushed the rocks and put that in weed, at some point in time, it just stopped working.
The marijuana or the cocaine?
Everything.
Everything just stopped working.
It wasn't worth it.
I had to put too much effort into using even when I was selling the drugs.
And just here recently, I'm just overwhelmed by so many guys that actually sell drugs.
Oh, yeah.
This is an AA meeting.
But it talks about drugs and alcohol in a big book.
You know, when I first came to this meeting, you asked my perceptions.
I mean, OK, these are mostly all alcoholics.
Like a guy picked up a 50-something year chip today.
He was a stumped-down alcoholic from way back where you had to be one way how you do it.
But I call it the triangle.
Alcohol can be at the top.
Sex can be right here.
Drugs can be right there.
And the dollar sign is in the middle, money.
I drew that up.
And so that's amazing how the three correlate.
And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
And at the end of the day, it's about the money.
When the money runs out, all the other stuff runs out.
Yeah.
It's quite a perspective to have on the total disease itself.
Yeah.
I mean, I came up with that analogy.
I mean, all of the years that I drank and I smoked weed and I used, I mean, like, what
am I getting out of this?
Because I'm one of those kind of guys.
I have to get something out of it.
I have to have a personal gain.
I mean, why am I taking my money and giving it to someone else?
Once I came to that realization, I knew it was over with.
Yeah.
So, to escape what was going on at home, you got involved in sports.
Right.
What did that look like?
I played football, Pop Warner football.
Uh-huh.
How old is that, Pop Warner?
Now, I think I was like 10 or 11.
Okay.
Because my brother's Pop Warner coach was Y.A. Tittle.
Y.A. Tittle used to come to my front door and pick my brother up, the one that passed
me in Oklahoma City.
And my brother was a good football player, but he was a hot-tempered type guy.
Uh-huh.
But Y.A. Tittle saw something in my brother.
I mean, this guy's an asshole.
Yeah.
I mean, he was in the NFL Hall of Famer.
Oh, yeah.
This guy came to my front door and picked my little brother up.
So, I got a chance to brag about that story.
Uh-huh.
And even at my brother's service, I meant to tell the people that my little brother
played for Y.A. Tittle.
And if anybody's associated with football, if you don't know who Y.A. Tittle is.
Yeah.
No, he's over there with Johnny Unitas, Frank Gifford, all those guys.
So, it's big.
When you started playing football, were you still smoking pot at the same time?
No.
When I first started playing, I don't think I was smoking weed yet.
I might have tried it, but I don't think I was smoking marijuana then.
I think that came after.
It had to come after that.
Uh-huh.
Junior high school, maybe.
I was smoking it every now and then.
Never really liked drinking.
I can remember being at the park drinking that Old English sometimes, but I never liked
the way the alcohol made me feel.
Well, based on my dad acting, when he came home and that smell from the alcohol, that
stench.
It's just like, you can smell it in the liquor store parking lot, like in the alley.
It's a bad smell.
Yeah, isn't that something?
Yeah.
The way it smells and sights can affect us later on.
Oh, my gosh.
I see that right now to this day.
I see it.
I smell it.
I'm like, man.
So, you played straight on through from the time you were 10, 11, 12 years old, all the
way on through college?
Yes.
13 years, 14 years.
I had the chance to play pros.
I had a try with the 49ers, but I was already too far into selling the drugs.
I had the pretty Cadillac.
The money.
Why would I?
I mean, because working out for football, that's like a job.
It's a lot of running.
It's a lot of lifting.
You have to take care of your body.
You got to get the proper rest.
Drinking and smoking weed, a lot of those guys did that, but we call that dissipating.
So, when I trained my senior year, I went to Stanford and I ran the bleachers the whole
summer.
I used to work at Stanford, so I ran the bleachers the whole summer.
And so, when we came back for training camp my senior year, the coaches was amazed what
kind of shape I was in.
I mean, I wasn't the fastest guy on the team.
I was like the second fastest guy on the team, and I played the whole game.
I played corner and receiver.
I never came out of the game.
Wow.
I played the whole game.
So, while you were playing football, how did you feel about yourself in general?
I felt really good about myself.
That was just a way for me to be, I guess, noticed, because I was a real popular person
in the Bay Area.
I was probably one of the best football players in that part of California in my senior year.
My junior year, I kind of dogged it, but my senior year, I had a point to prove that other
guys, because my freshman year, the guys dared me to run through the varsity locker
room, and those guys caught me, and they put me in the trash can.
You're not supposed to go through the varsity locker room.
This is in high school.
High school, yeah.
You're not supposed to run through the varsity locker room.
I could go around.
So, you're 15, they're sticking you in the trash can.
They grabbed me.
So, the guy said, JB, go run through the locker room.
I said, man, we're not supposed to.
I said, man, you can do it.
You can do it.
So, I ran through, and they was waiting.
They grabbed me.
So, that was something I'll never forget.
So, all through high school, I said, well, you know, these guys are going to come see
me play one day, and it worked just like I said.
My senior year, I got really big.
I got some height.
I had some size on me, and those guys coming to see me play, I'm like, yeah, look at me
now.
So, you had something to prove.
Yeah.
Sounds like, especially after that trash can incident, you knew who you had to prove
it to.
Yeah, and I'm one of the top players in the history of the school of football.
I'm one of the top players.
All these guys are there, and we went to the playoffs.
Yeah.
And the game was packed with all former players, coaches, and everything.
And I'll never forget Coach Ratliff.
He said, man, you're a hell of a football player.
I said, thanks, Coach.
But during that time, were you involved in selling drugs yet?
Yeah, I was selling weed.
I sold weed in high school.
Yeah, I was selling a lot of weed.
Three joints, you could buy $3 or $4.
And I was gambling shot dice.
I had a car.
So, I was on my way.
I was on my way then because I was at the threshold right then, and so I was smoking
weed.
All of my friends, which were pretty much, they were white guys, they had all the good
weed.
And we just smoked it at lunchtime, and I would stay there until football practice started.
So that was a time too, the 70s and 80s, when marijuana was still pretty criminalized, wasn't
it?
Yeah, you could get arrested for marijuana back then, yeah.
You could get arrested for it.
Because my first arrest was for marijuana.
How old were you when you got arrested?
Probably 19 or 20, something like that.
I sold a lot of weed.
What was the outcome of that?
I went to jail, and I was on probation.
I sold a lot of drugs on the corner.
And ironically, the police station was like, they could literally run from the police station
and raid the corner.
So they said I had a lot of heart, and I had no regards for the law.
And of course, I'm an athlete.
I'm a ball player.
I went off to college.
I had everything I wanted.
I had a car.
I had money.
I'm already rich.
I'm a young guy.
I'm only like 19.
You know?
So you wanted it all at that point, didn't you?
Yeah.
And all those guys I looked up to, remember these guys I looked up to that was coming
out of prison with these drugs, with these cars.
And basically, those guys were my role models.
And they were selling inside?
Well, they were selling inside, but on the streets of East Palo Alto.
That's a major, major drug hub in California, the Bay Area.
People came from San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland.
They came to this small little town on the peninsula.
That's where Facebook headquarters is right now.
They would come there to score.
This is a small shotgun town.
Palo Alto, Menlo Park.
My friends call me all the time from over there.
They're like, man, when you coming back?
I'm like, man, man, I come visit.
I'm 72 hours on an hourglass.
I'm out of there.
They love me.
I mean, people love me there.
What a lifestyle.
You were their connection, weren't you?
I set a good trend in some ways by me being in recovery now.
And then back, it's a two-fold deal.
Well, yours is an important story.
I mean, I've had a lot of friends.
I mean, I've had other people on the show, a couple of the men who were in the meeting today,
who, like you said earlier, have stories about prison, selling drugs to undercover agents.
So it's certainly not unheard of in the meetings that you and I go to.
Right.
So you were selling while you were in college?
Yes.
So you're selling.
You're trying to play football.
Right.
I'm playing football.
Ain't no trying.
I'm playing.
I'm playing.
How about studies?
Nothing to it.
I went to school for two things, football and the females.
Ah.
And, of course, I was making money.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I was an arrogant, cocky 19 to 20-year-old.
I was arrogant.
Mm-hmm.
I was already, like, 10 years ahead of my time.
And so I already knew, I understood that, like, when I got my first paycheck when I was 15,
my first check was, like, $307.
I put half of that I put on the table at my parents' house and had groceries in my hand.
And when I went in, my dad said, hey, that's the kid right there.
That's him.
Mm.
And I said, you know what?
Tell me what to do.
I already knew what to do.
Mm.
So I'm the middle child.
So everybody looked for me for direction, leadership, moves, or whatever.
So I had a lot of responsibility.
Yeah.
Did your folks know that you were engaged in selling?
My mom didn't ever want me to rent a house.
She told me, because I had a lot of cars.
I got a lot of cars now.
She's like, I'm going to get these cars towed from in front of my house.
I'm like, please don't do that.
She said, well, you need to get some of these cars.
You need to leave the keys here.
So if your dad needs to go to work and use one of these cars, he can.
My mom was like not a deal breaker.
You know, whatever she said went.
And then I had to leave the keys there.
And then sometimes she would be looking for me.
So my sister was only probably like 12 or 13.
Her and my mom would come up on the corner in my prettiest car, which was a Cadillac.
I'm like, what are we doing?
She said, shut up, boy.
I told her to drive this car.
I'm like, come on, really?
I mean, my nicest car.
Yeah.
My mom and my sister's in it looking for me.
Driven by a 12-year-old.
Yeah.
My mom riding shotgun.
I'm like, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
She said, shut up, boy.
I told her to drive this car.
I'm like, oh.
Because I had to leave the keys at her house.
Yeah.
I couldn't park my car there.
So all of that was part of my story, man.
And, you know, it's just the kind of lifestyle I live.
And then, you know, the deal breaker is when I got incarcerated.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
What were the circumstances that led up to that?
Well, I started selling marijuana first.
And then I graduated from marijuana and started selling cocaine.
Well, OK.
So time frame wise, we're talking about from the time you were a kid.
But from the time you were 16 or 18 or 19, through what age were you doing that?
26, 25.
Yeah.
So probably for about five or six years.
Huh.
And so I hit that wall.
And I'm like, oh, man.
I don't like the way this feels.
And so I had a chance to go to San Quentin prison, where I saw Charles Manson, like maybe
from me to you.
Huh.
Short guy, white guy with a swastika on his forehead.
He was in the child hall.
And so when I got to prison, I was scared to death.
Not bad.
Oh, my God.
This place looks like a dungeon.
And you can see on a clear day, you can see Alcatraz.
From San Quentin Bayside, you can see on a clear day, you can see Alcatraz.
Yeah.
Well, I had a good job.
I worked outside the prison.
But unbelievable.
What were the circumstances that led up to you being caught, tried, sent to prison?
Just going back and forth to jail all the time.
Jail, jail, jail.
And then, you know, you graduate.
You know, county jail, county jail, probation.
And then you graduate to the big leagues, go to prison.
Okay.
So were you violating probation?
Probation.
I told them I wasn't going to be on probation anymore.
That arrogant stuff again.
And I thought I was bigger than the law.
I told the probation officer.
I said, well, I'm not going to comply with the probation no more.
So you need to contact the judge and tell her we need to set a date so I can come turn
myself in.
I'm not pissing in a cup.
I'm not doing anything.
Matter of fact, when I used to go to probation, I would hide my drugs and my gun outside the
probation.
I was in the bushes.
And I would go see her.
How many times were you arrested before you went to prison?
Oh, shit.
Too many to count?
10, 12.
And it was always for dealing?
Yeah.
I mean, I had some, I had domestic violence, a lot of stuff, a collaboration of a lot of
stuff.
But at the end of the day, I just had no regards for the law.
Police, DA, judge, people, nothing.
I mean, come on.
I'm a young guy.
I mean, I'm a former ball player.
I play football.
Yeah.
Cards, money, all of that stuff.
And then, you know, and my mom used to always say, you're going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're not going to prison.
You're going, they're going to take you down.
Did she say that early on?
Yeah.
She saw me.
She saw it.
You know, sometimes your mom and your parents can see stuff that people don't see.
Yeah.
So, based on my lifestyle and my behavior, you know, and I came to a point where, at
the prison, that's where I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on all day
at the door and tried to take the money.
OK.
On a suggestion from my counselor, Teresa said, I want you to go to a meeting.
I'm like, what are they doing in there?
I'm like, come on over there.
I went.
And so that's where my recovery started at.
I went to one meeting, and then I sat in the back.
Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit more in a minute.
When you were getting arrested and going to jail 10 times and breaking probation,
and you were fed up with it, the system was fed up with it, so you went to prison.
And were you just ignoring what was happening to you in terms of the behavior?
You know, people don't just go to jail because they break a shoelace.
Did you ever kind of put the two of those together and say, yeah, I'm getting in trouble all the time
because I'm dealing drugs all the time, or was that just an accepted risk that you took?
It was more like an accepted risk that I took.
I know everything had a cost, you know.
I remember, again, all of the guys that I looked up to, my role model guys that I looked up to,
they were coming in and out of prison.
Going to jail a lot.
These guys came out big.
I'm like, damn, these guys are huge.
So you aspired to go to prison?
Pretty much.
I mean, when I came out of prison, I was like, I mean, I was huge.
I got some pictures.
I mean, I was unbelievable.
I was there.
I played sports in prison.
I was like football.
We played football, baseball.
I was like the dominant person there.
Nobody bothered you?
No, no, no, no, no.
But I was a young person.
I was only 26.
What was the charge and the sentence?
Possession of cocaine.
For sale?
Mm-hmm.
I had two, and then I had three.
So I went right back.
So you went two years?
Yeah, and that wasn't enough.
I got back out.
I wanted to start going fast again.
And I think I stayed out 63 days, and I went right back.
How long was the sentence?
Four.
Four years.
That's not too bad, is it?
Well, I got lucky.
I stayed at San Quentin both times.
So the people already knew me there, and they were already betting that I would come back.
The guys inside were betting that I would be back.
And then I said,
The second time I went out was it.
They won some money on you, didn't they?
Yeah, they were betting.
They was gambling, like,
JB's going to get out.
You know, they called me from the government.
He's going to get out.
He's going to go back out there.
You know, I had a street name.
They were like, he'll be out there.
His mentality is, you know, this guy's big, buffed, looks good, don't smoke.
And by that time, I stopped drinking and smoking.
I didn't do anything.
I was on zero.
I didn't touch nothing.
I didn't smoke or drink or nothing.
I told y'all when I went, I found recovery when I went.
And so I just never thought that.
There would be a personal gain in me smoking weed or drinking anymore
because of the type of person I am.
I'm a selfish person.
Yeah.
And I like nice things.
And I understand making money and saving money.
I understand that part.
And I just didn't see myself taking my money, giving it to you.
Yeah, I get that.
So that was a revelation for you early on in your prison sentence?
Yeah, it was over.
I knew it was over as far as you know.
It was over.
One of my earliest guests on the show was Tom D.
And he spent literally half his life.
And he was paroled after being in for a life sentence.
And he just managed to get out.
But one of the things he told me was that drugs and alcohol were no more difficult to get in prison than they were on the outside.
True.
Why is that?
What's going on with that?
I don't know.
I can't really say.
Because, you know, I'm still connected to a lot of people.
I have a CFC shirt on.
I'm a member of the Correctional Facilities Committee.
I go and do meetings in the prison.
And I'm connected with a lot of guys still in prison.
You know my friend Larry.
Yeah, that's my guy.
He always tells me, J.B., stay out of trouble.
This guy is crazy about me.
Yeah, so they heard about me, Chuck, Roland, Roy, and Harold.
They heard about my story.
They heard about me when Chuck brought me in.
And so when those guys heard about me, they hurried up and grabbed me.
And I'm a part of this other group.
It's two groups, CFC.
And so you know Chuck.
Yeah.
So I was with Chuck at first.
And so Roland stole me from Chuck.
They said, J.B., you need to come over here.
And I'm meeting him.
So these guys sent me all over the place.
Competing committees, huh?
Yeah, they heard my story.
But they didn't hear the full story.
They just know that I've been a part of this deal.
And I deal with a lot of people, homeless people.
I deal with the Coalition for the Homeless.
I guess I'm kind of like a foot soldier.
I deal with the people in the streets and homeless and veterans and formerly incarcerated,
the people that no one want to really deal with.
I deal with those people daily.
Yeah.
And thank God for that, you know, because there always have to be the foot soldiers
and the guys who are not hesitant to go into harm's way to save people's lives.
Yeah.
So I'm the guy that nobody never really talks about.
I'm the behind the scenes guy that's willing and understands that men and women have needs
that has to be met.
There's always somebody that has a story that's in need that's a lot worse than your story.
Well, in your story, you're incarcerated and you find AA behind me.
And I'm a young man in my early 30s.
And I'm a young man in my early 40s.
And I'm a young man who's been in a lot of big bars.
Tell me what that was like.
Man, I don't know, man.
I got to thank her and Ms. David was my original sponsor.
I gave his flyer.
I'm going to give you one of his flyers.
I gave his flyer to two of the guys at the hotel.
I said, this guy is my original sponsor.
They came into San Quentin and I rode the bus in with him.
This guy was a career heroin user.
Bill Moyer did a documentary on this guy.
This guy is a powerful guy.
me, man, when he came into San Quentin with a lady named Priya, Indian lady from Stanford.
I thought David was smuggling drugs in because I sold this guy drugs. And he said, man, he
said, no, I'm not with you. I got this recovery thing. When he said that, I wanted what he
had immediately.
And this is in 1989.
Like 90, 91, somewhere in there, 90, somewhere in there. 89 is when I went in. David came
in at like 90 or 91 with the recovery. They had a program called a re-entry program.
Okay.
Getting guys prepared when they get out of prison to reintegrate back into society.
Yeah, I get that.
And so we're working on something like that here in Texas, a re-entry program for men
that's getting released because when you've been gone for a while in the world, it's moved
so fast. It's just four essential things that a man needs when he's released. He needs a
place to lay his head. He's going to need a cell phone.
And a Texas ID. He's going to need a job. And he's going to need to know how to walk
on his two feet, not a car. And he's going to learn how to catch the bus, the train,
and then the bicycle before we even start talking about a car. Those are the four depth
absolutes that a man needs when he's released. And so that place that we're talking to you
about, that'll be one of the vehicles that we'll be using. But you have to have a job
to move in there.
Yeah, yeah.
And so that recovery deal, it's just so big.
Yeah, so when you first went into AA in prison, you were already sober or clean for a couple
of years by the decision you made that you wanted to get buff. You wanted to live a cleaner,
healthier lifestyle.
Yeah, because guys in there smoke weed and drink. I mean, this is drugs and alcohol in
a prison. I mean, I made a conscious decision not to deal with any of that stuff while I
was in prison.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I had a body and everything. I came to the conclusion that, you know, because
I ran, I jogged, I worked out every day. I did everything. I ate good. I got the proper
rest. My body was like, I was in like great shape. That's when I almost had to try. I
had to try with the 49ers. And they took me to the deal. My friend took me up there and
said, man, we're going, you know, they got you set up to see if you're going. That's
when they had the strike year. And when I went in there, Ronnie Lott and all those guys
were in there. I'm like, man, I don't know if I'm going to do this.
And that was before prison?
That was when I got out.
I'm like, man, I don't know. I don't know if I want to do that or not. That's a commitment.
So you got out after how long?
Two and a half years, three years, something like that.
Somewhere in between the time you stopped in 89, at the end of May in 89, on your own
volition, you just quit it.
Right. I got introduced to AA in prison. And then when I got released out of prison, the
last time I went to Oklahoma, I went through a 90-day drug alcohol program.
Yeah, I went to 90 meetings in 90 days.
As an alternative to continuing on in the penitentiary?
Yeah, David and Dorsey were the first two men. One guy was an NA guy, and the other guy
was an AA guy. And they introduced me to a transitional living-like place, a 90-day
place where you sleep at.
So you get out after two and a half years, and you go to Oklahoma. That was a choice
that you had when you came up for parole?
Right, yeah. When I transferred my parole, I did it from within the prison.
Yeah. So you were already ready to do that, because you were...
Yeah, I was at the threshold right there. I had to make a decision. Either I was going
back to the streets of East Palo Alto, or I was looking for a change. That was the fork
in the road right there.
Now, the sponsor that you had while you were in prison, when you were having to make that
choice, what kind of feedback did he give you?
He just told me, man, you got to do this, this, and this, man. If you're going to be
with me, you're going to try to do what I'm doing. You need to do this, this, and this.
When you get out, somebody's going to come pick you up. They're taking you straight to
the... You ain't going to Palo Alto. You're going straight there. With your story, you're
going to go. But your history and your reputation, I want you to go. You're going there. Somebody's
going to pick you up at the gate, and they're taking you straight there.
He really set you straight, didn't he?
David, oh my God, yes. This guy came. This guy was a career heroin user. This guy, I
used to sell this guy drugs. He came back into the prison. So immediately, I immediately
wanted what he had right away. When I saw him, I already knew it was officially over.
When he told me he's not... Because I thought he was smuggling drugs in or something. Man,
what are you doing here?
So that was the change.
That was a fork in the road right there.
Sounds like a divine intervention or divine moment. Did you think of it as that at the
time? What did you chalk it up to?
I don't know, man. I just know when I saw David, I'm like, man, really? And so this
guy was my immediate role model. This guy gave out needles. They tested people for HIV.
He went around and did seminars with probation officers, parole officers, the governor of
California, all kinds.
This guy did a lot of things.
He did a bunch of stuff, man, before he passed away. A lot of stuff dealing with recovery.
Bexar County, he came out here and did a seminar for the probation and the parole people in
Bexar County. He said, man, this is going to be one of the worst places in Texas in
a minute. He called it, and it is. Because I guess they took him around in a car, and
he did his assessment, and he was like, man, you know Bexar County, man? Yeah, that's San
Antonio. He said, man, this place is going to be out of control in a little while.
We'll be right back.
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And we're back.
Now, you're out of prison. You're in Oklahoma for this 90-day program.
Well, I did a 90-day program in California, and when I finished that, I went to Oklahoma.
My parole was transferred.
So you went to Oklahoma?
Right.
Into another program?
No, I went there with my son's mom.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
And she lived there.
Okay.
And that's when I got introduced to the college, Langston University, and I met a guy named
Coach. He gave me an opportunity to be a student coach. And so I started working with the football
team as a volunteer student coach.
And you've been doing that?
Ever since.
Ever since. That's amazing. So that was back in 92 or 93.
Right.
How did you connect with AA when you first got into Oklahoma?
Got through Oklahoma. Bobby, my sponsor, I found a sponsor. He sponsored me and a guy
named J.W. J.W. was a police officer.
So J.W. couldn't come to many meetings that I would come into, but we met at Bob's house
every Wednesday for step study and book study. And so I did my first four-step with Bob.
What was that like?
Oh, man. He said, man, you sure? Is that everything? He said, you sure? Because it's
always one thing that you left out. He was right.
Yeah?
Yeah, great sponsor. These guys, these men, all of these people were like stepping stones
in my life. They played a major role in my life.
And me, as far as transitioning from the street life, drugs and alcohol, and reaching out,
doing outreach work with people that look like me.
That's an amazing path from where you were to where you ended up. So you were in Oklahoma
then for how many years after that?
I was in Oklahoma for six years. And then I went back to California trying to save my
kid's mom. She was on drugs and that didn't work out. So I went back to California and
I went back to jail for like maybe about six months for like domestic violence. She
was using and I wasn't using. And, you know, they would say, man, you know, that's not
going to work, man. That woman is still using drugs. You can't change her. I can't change
somebody that's using drugs or still out there. It's a process.
So you went back anyway, even though he was probably telling you don't do it?
They was coaching him saying, no, you probably need to go back. You don't need to move back
there, man.
Yeah.
So I tried it and it didn't work.
So you went back to save her or try and get her?
I don't know what you call it, but if somebody's out there actively using, there's nothing
you can do. David took me away from that situation and took me to his house and said, you don't
need to be over there. Those people are doing that. Whatever's going to happen over there,
whether your kids are there or not, it doesn't matter.
So here you were sober. You had this good job out in Oklahoma. You went back to the
West Coast to try and deal with your wife being on drugs.
Right. My kid's mom, I wasn't married to her.
Common law.
Common law wife, let's say.
She was like my wife. We got kids. I thought it was going to work.
Right. So you thought you could save her.
Right.
And in the midst of that, there was this domestic violence. And that's what you went back to prison
for.
No, I went to jail. I didn't go to prison.
Oh, you went to jail. You didn't go back to prison.
I got lucky. I went to jail. They was trying to send me to prison. I went to jail. I got a chance
to go to the honor camp. I'd never been there. It's a privileged place. And so when the police,
the sheriff, they already knew who I was. When they saw my name on the roster and I was down
at the honor camp, they called me up to like the birdcage. They called my name on the roster.
They said, come on the birdcage. I'm like, man, what's up? They said, man, how in the hell did
you get down there? I'm like, shit, I got a sign down there. I said, oh, no, no, no, you shouldn't
be there. No, no.
Did your involvement in AA at the time and having a sponsor and doing what you were doing at the
time in Oklahoma, did any of that factor into them going a little bit lighter on you than they could
have at that time?
Yeah, because I had people come to court with me and they knew that I was in recovery. I made some
bad decisions. I made some bad decisions. I made some bad decisions. I made some bad decisions. I made
some bad choices. And I just had to take responsibility that I can't, you know, it tells
you, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, courage to change the things
that I can't, wisdom to know the difference. Man, that's big if you just listen to that and you play
that tape in your head.
When all that was going on with your wife and trying to do what you could for her, with it
ending up in some kind of violence, how old were the kids and did they see it going on?
They were young, probably.
10? Yes, they did see it going on.
How did that make you feel at the time?
Bad. I mean, it's like, violence is never the answer, man. Sometimes you're in a situation where
you're powerless, you know, and then you're recovering. And I say this in meetings all the
time. You have to guard your recovery like it's in a safe, you know. Your recovery is so important.
People will be lost.
It's in your recovery. Everybody's not going to make it. And it sounds like a negative statement,
but it's the truth. You know, recovery, being clean and sober, it's kind of like a job.
You know, if you don't work, you can't get the check.
So somewhere along the way, you reclaimed your position of power and manageability
when you went back there, didn't you?
Yeah, they saw me come back. They were like, man, you back here? And so, because, you know,
I had left, you know, and I was doing really good.
Yeah. So you left for a better life. You come back.
You spent some six months in jail.
Yeah. And so those guys, all those guys, because I still got friends and people that's still there
that never left. So I left and reestablished. I even brought my brother to Oklahoma. I brought
my sister there. And I was in Oklahoma when they had the bomb. And I saw the bomb blow up. I saw
the bomb go off.
At the federal building there in Oklahoma City.
Yes. Man, I was on probation. The coach that was in Oklahoma that I was doing the student
coaching with, he came to Texas. And so when he came here, he wanted me to come with him,
but I couldn't come.
Right. We had to get the probation thing taken care of. But when I finally got to take care of,
I came here. I was trying to bring the woman here with me, but luckily it didn't happen.
It didn't happen. So I came here solo, man. And then I got a chance to get back on with
coaching them, man. And then, you know, I started coaching and I got, you know, I got another shot.
Was that the last time you ever went to jail?
Yeah.
What a turnaround, huh?
Right.
Later on, did you have the opportunity to make amends, formal amends?
Some. I made some amends, but I wasn't able to.
I didn't make, you know, all of the amends. And, you know, even in recovery,
I made some bad choices too in recovery.
Yeah. We all do that, don't we?
That I'm not proud of. Yeah, I'm not proud of. And then, you know, God's always given me an
opportunity to, you know, clean up what I messed up, bounce back, you know, with the support of,
you know, Alcoholics Anonymous. And I do attend some other kind of meetings also
that I'm a part of this, you know, through the CFC. And it's just, I'm connected with sobriety.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I guess the title that I hold is I'm like a recovery and a substance abuse coordinator.
Mm-hmm.
That's pretty much what I do. And because, you know, I can't lend an AA name, NAC, and none of that.
Right.
So what I do is I'm like an outreach substance abuse coordinator. That's what I do.
Yeah.
I deal with people that's pretty much in need. And as a person, I always have to hear the person's story.
Everybody has a story. I don't care what kind of shape they're in, shape, size, color, whatever the situation is.
I just need to hear. And somebody talked about that in the meeting today. I have to be a good listener. I need to learn how to just listen.
Yeah. So can you kind of walk us down the road? Once you got back to Texas, what did you start doing and how did that look over the years?
I was coaching. And then I started going to meetings. I was trying to deal with, you know, I met my wife here.
We had some problems, some issues, and some stuff that we had to work out.
Overall, I was able to still stay connected with recovery. I was going to, they had a meeting out in Brookshire. It was a campfire.
Pastor Dan was the guy out there. And I had a sponsor there. And then I used to go to the men's center downtown and do meetings there.
And those were some really good meetings. I look back, man, you know, sometimes you just can't change situations.
And especially if it's been like an abusive situation and where there's a lot of drugs and alcohol, I guess my past, all of the lives that I affected, good and not so good, you know, that stuff is still there, you know.
And sometimes people come up to me and say, man, thank you for the service work or what you've done. Like a lady, I gave her some money one night when I came in and the woman said, well, I was able to go pay my light bill.
Oh, man, that made me feel.
I didn't even know. Sometimes you can change people's lives, man, and not even knowing that you're doing that. And it was just out of the kindness of my heart. I just thought this woman might need some help.
And, man, she told a story later on. She, man, my life was able to stay on because you. So I guess those are some of the things that I can look back on.
Doing meetings, helping guys in recovery, people, homeless people.
Sounds to me like you found the intersection between your AA program and what you do out in the community.
Right.
And one kind of feeds the other.
Right.
Is that a fair assessment?
Yes. Yes, it does.
Yeah.
Before I came to this meeting today, I just did the meeting over at the hotel with those people over there.
Yeah.
And a lady came in the meeting and she said she was struggling with sponsorship. So luckily I had a brochure on sponsorship and I put it in her hand. I said, this is my last one right here. And you came and meet kind of late. It was like a divine appointment.
Isn't that great?
Right.
I put my last one and I got from Integral.
I mean, I put it in a woman's hand, and it was like, man, it was a life changer for her.
And so I guess those are the stories.
Our stories are disclosed in a general way, you know, what we used to be like and what we are like now.
Yeah.
And so I'm just proud to be a part of this deal, man.
I know some great men in these meetings.
Yeah, and I'm grateful for your involvement because you bring a really unique perspective.
And I've known guys in the program who've had different parts of your same story.
Right.
But everybody seems to move in different ways in response to how they work their program.
Right.
Do you sponsor men in addition to the work you do out in the community?
I do, but I guess I'm so attached to so many different guys, I try not to sponsor those guys.
Yeah.
Because I don't want them to feel like, how can I say this?
I don't want them to feel entitled.
Yeah, yeah.
To what I have.
They are, but I have to keep that.
I have to keep that wedge.
I have to keep that because I'm not saying I'm so vulnerable, but I am.
You know, like if I give a guy a phone or I see a guy has a need of something there, I got to be real diligent.
I got to be, you know, I have to be standoffish too, kind of like.
Yeah, it's a different relationship, isn't it?
Yes.
It's like the difference between a professional relationship and a personal relationship.
Right.
And so I got to really be diligent because a lot of people depend on me for meetings.
They call on me.
They want me to take care of this, take care of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
I do that a lot.
Do you?
I take a lot of men to a lot of different kind of meetings, especially with the veterans
like the U.S. Vets meeting that I go to on Tuesdays.
I don't know if you know Reto or not.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
So Reto, I'm connected with Reto through the CFC and he has a Tuesday meeting.
As a matter of fact, I'm chairing that meeting on Tuesday.
I had the month of May, so I chaired the meeting on Tuesday,
and I shared about step one, admitting defeat.
I mean, are you defeated yet, man?
Man, that's a hell of a statement.
I read that in the meeting.
I read that in the meeting this morning, and I read it in the meeting Tuesday
to the guys over there, and they took that topic and they ran with it, man.
Yeah, for a man to admit defeat, it's like impossible for a man to say,
hey, man, I give, you know, I give.
Yeah, and when it comes to things that we think we can control, you know,
sometimes the idea of surrender just seems counterintuitive.
It seems like, wait a second, I've got to try and make this thing happen,
and everybody around you is saying, turn it over, turn it over.
How do you do that?
It's hard, man, and so at the end of that meeting on Tuesday,
a guy shared at the end of the meeting.
This is an old guy, man.
He's been doing.
He's been doing it his way forever, and he said, man, I'm not surrendering.
I'm not defeated, but I want to share this with you guys, man.
I got a lot out of you guys' story today.
So basically, he surrendered.
He gave in.
He just didn't say it, but by hearing our stories, this guy was like, man.
I shook his hand after me, and I said, man, thank you, man.
You did a great job.
Can you think of a couple of men in your sobriety that you were able to help,
that went on to help additional people who helped additional people?
Do you have that kind of lineage in terms of service work that you've done?
Now, the CFC, I'm sure that because you're helping guys you might never hear from again or see, right?
Right, and so I have a couple of guys that I can think of that took something from what I had
or I shared with them, and I want to say that they ran with it.
They're helping others now.
Is that right?
Yes, my story, because sometimes people watch you and they pay attention.
You know, I'm a detail.
Look, I write a lot of stuff down, have a journal.
In the mornings when I get up, I read a daily reflection thing that a woman gave me.
I read scriptures out of the Bible.
I believe that, you know, everything in the Bible don't pertain to me, but some things in the Bible grabs me.
I believe when a man first comes to recovery, he might not be ready for God.
God will be in there somewhere down the line, but I don't try to push God on people right from the beginning
because a man is just probably trying to figure out how am I going to stay?
God is in there, but I can't shove God down your throat.
Yeah, I had, when I came in, I was really repulsed by that whole idea,
and fortunately people were pretty gentle on me and saying,
don't worry about it, just do the work.
Don't worry about it.
Pay lip service to it if you have to.
You know, say you believe when you really don't, but at least say the thing.
Yeah, but it's not true.
Don't worry about whether it's true.
Just say it.
Because sooner or later, if you say something enough and it's actually true behind the scenes,
it will become true.
It will become true in front of you as well, right?
Yeah, no doubt.
And so I don't try to really push God on guys.
And one thing I'm an advocate of, I just believe that, man, in recovery, man,
it's just a struggle trying to just stay clean and sober in the beginning, man.
It's a fight.
You fight with a lot of different things.
And so I know that believing in God, I believe in God,
and sometimes in life, here comes sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
You know, but I'm so grateful, man, that I can,
I can actually sit down and take an hour out of my day and go to a meeting.
Meetings are important.
I took like four days off from going to meetings and everything
because I believe one of my friends in another meeting said,
man, he said, JB, you got to do that self-care stuff.
You got to take care of yourself sometimes.
Sometimes you got to step back and just, you know, rest.
Do you go to the ocean?
I shared this in a meeting the other day.
I went to the ocean and, you know, the ocean is full of a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
The ocean brings peace.
It brings quiet, tranquility, serenity, a lot of stuff.
And then sometimes you can just dump everything in the ocean
and you'll feel cleansed and refreshed.
You know, I kept trying to dive through the waves, but they kept pushing me back.
I could never make it to the deep end.
I couldn't defeat the ocean.
It kept pushing.
I was diving through the waves with my goggles on,
but I still was able to stand up in the water.
I couldn't get through those waves.
So it's kind of like recovery, you know.
That's amazing.
And you actually physically do that.
You go and...
With the goggles on.
I was diving through the waves.
The ocean had to be calm, you know, for me to be able to swim out there.
Yeah.
But the current was coming.
The waves were coming in.
I couldn't get through.
What a beautiful metaphor for that kind of meditation.
Yeah, I shared that in a meeting.
And the people, the lady in the meeting, she said,
Oh, man, I feel that.
I feel, man, that is so surreal.
I went to the ocean the other day.
I said, it's just something about the ocean that brings peace and quiet and tranquility
and all of the stuff you're going through, whatever it is.
You know, for me,
some of the relationships that were fractured years ago when I was a kid,
as much as I try to do an AA to deal with them and to, you know, set them straight,
because of the way things were laid out in the very beginning of my life with those individuals,
I've never really been able to get any kind of sense of closure with them
on anything regarding our relationships.
When you look back, especially when you look back on your first common-law wife, right,
and the kids, what do you see now?
What do you see now with them?
It's a lot of damage.
It's a lot of stuff that happened that, you know, I'm not proud of.
And, you know, trauma, again, in my life, I had trauma as a young person.
I was, my dad abandoned me in L.A., and I remember I phoned him.
He was talking about my childhood.
And he kept driving around in a circle.
I don't know if he had a breakdown or whatever.
I'm like, Dad, we're going around in circles.
The next thing I know, I was out of the car.
And I remember.
I remember my mom's, my dad's name, my mom's name, my phone number.
So that was a tough deal.
And so with these people, sometimes in life, you know, you want things to work for you.
And then, you know, by me having all these different kind of families and, you know,
these different women and stuff like that, you'll never be able to satisfy everybody.
Somebody's going to be not happy with you.
That's what kind of world it is.
Even with my own personal family, my mom says sometimes, son,
your family can be your worst enemy.
And that's a true statement.
I'm not saying negatively, but when I decided to stop using drugs and just try to clean myself up,
it was like an uphill battle for a long time.
I lost a lot of people.
I mean, either they were for me or they weren't.
Either you're for me or you're not.
And then they know that I was sincere.
And then a lot of my friends, the guys that helped me along the way, you know,
they used to get ridiculed like, man, you know, all those dudes are fake, man.
It's not real.
They're fake.
And so I'm like, really?
But if they were or they weren't, they still played a major role in the steps that I had to take.
All of these people, even that woman in prison, Ms. Teresa and Ms. Addie,
these people were staples in my life that helped me.
David Priya, all these people, David, two Davids, Bobby, and all these other people.
My sponsor just passed this year in January, David B.
I have a guy that sponsors me right now, temporary sponsor me right now.
You know, just talking to somebody and having a sponsor,
it's really important, man.
But you have to have people you can talk to that's in the deal.
And sometimes it's hard, you know, like when I leave here, I'm going to go to work.
I have a little part-time job that I do.
I deliver lost luggage.
I get a chance to interact with a lot of people.
And then my personality, my mindset is I have an outgoing mindset.
I've always been a good talker.
I've been sociable.
I guess from being a football coach, I have to deal with a lot of different people, young people, you know,
teenagers that's going into manhood.
And all of those guys used to struggle with the drug and alcohol deal.
Coach would assign those guys to me.
Those are my guys.
And, man, I need you to go.
If you can't talk to them, I'm kicking them off the team.
So you're still the coach, no matter what goes on.
And that's why your nickname is Coach.
That's what it is, man.
And so everybody's going to identify.
And Coach would tell me, say, man, sometimes some of the guys are not going to identify with the streets.
But the ones that was in the streets and went through struggle,
a lot of those guys are going to.
I'll tell you a story.
And they did.
That was me.
Some of the guys that I'm still connected to right now, we have the same stories.
You know, one of the things I like to ask towards the end of the interview is,
if you could go back with what you know now,
if you could go back into your life and talk to the JB at a certain age of your choosing,
how old would that JB be and what would you say to him that you think would,
make a difference in his life?
Was it the 10-year-old JB?
Was it the 15-year-old?
Where would you have made the most difference if you, JB, were able to go back and sit in front of that guy and talk to him?
Coming from junior high and high school, I had an opportunity to go to a Catholic school.
Bellarmine was a Catholic school.
And my dad said, well, son, the priest is on the phone.
You need to talk to him.
And you need to give him an answer.
I said, well, OK, I'm going to talk to him.
I said, well, how are you doing?
Um, such and such.
I said, well, how are you doing?
I said, well, how are you doing?
I got his name.
He said, um, he said, well, have you made a decision?
And this school had a powerful football team.
They used to beat us all the time.
And I was mad at our coaches that we didn't play in my senior year because I know we would have beat them.
Um, I said, well, I said, well, this is a Catholic school, right?
He said, yeah.
I said, you guys have girls there?
He said, no.
I said, I'm not coming.
So that might have been the fork in the road for me right there.
Really?
Yes.
No doubt.
Um, cause I would have been swayed the other way.
Cause when I got to high school, I started getting, I got introduced to a lot of different
kinds of things.
Yeah.
Whereas if I was going to that Catholic school, I would have been living out of it, standing
there.
I would have, it would have been probably more structure for me.
Yeah.
In high school, I didn't have that.
My dad and mom, there was there, but once you get to a certain age, I had a car and
my freshman year in high school, I had a car.
I was one of the only guys that might've been one of the reasons why they put me in a garbage
can too.
Cause I had a car.
My car used to be parked out back.
I would hide it.
So I had a car.
So we play football, upcoming star on the football team.
And all those things probably wouldn't have happened had you gone to the Catholic school.
No, no, no.
I would have probably been, ain't no telling.
I probably went to one of those schools like Notre Dame or something.
Ain't no telling, man.
Cause I, I was it.
I mean, I was really it.
Yeah.
So, um, I think that would have been the deciding factor right there.
And who knows?
I wouldn't have met, you know, the kid's mom and a lot of stuff.
That was, I think that was the fork in the road right there.
Yeah.
It sounds like it.
It sounds like a real pivotal time in your life.
But of course, as I'm fond of saying all, all roads lead us back to where we are right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My junior high school teacher exposed me to the, uh, stock market, Medford, Oregon.
Um, that's how I got connected with Bellarmine at private school.
Cause he told me I was really gifted student and he wanted me to go to a private school.
He didn't want me to go to a public school.
So he was, he was going to make it possible for you to go there.
Oh yeah.
He was at Stanford.
He was, he played basketball at Stanford university.
My junior high school.
My junior high school teacher, when he, when he found out that I was in the streets and
I went to, he was just, man, he was hurt because he know I had a talent.
He saw something in me.
So that, that was the fork in the road, junior high school, junior high school.
Isn't that something?
Yeah.
That's amazing how you got all this information out of me.
It's like, I just did a, I just did a synopsis of my life.
Like, you know, um, but you know, it was good.
I'm glad you, I'm, I'm just honored to be interviewed.
Well, I, you know, it means the world to me that you would do this and open up like you
have.
I think people need to hear the stories like yours, even if they hook up to one little part
of it.
Catch into something, something I'm going to say is going to reach out to somebody.
Little hooks along the way that kind of snag people and they say, oh yeah, that I remember
that guy.
Like the, the interview I did with Tom D, you know, when he talked about selling soup
in prison and giving it away, I know you've heard his story.
No, I didn't hear it.
It's one of the stories on the podcast.
I'll pull it up.
The way he talks about that, the kind of man he is today.
So I look forward to it.
I look at you as the man you are today.
And the only way I could ever imagine the way it was for you was if you told me.
Right.
Because I look at you and I say, God, what a beautiful man.
And there you are with this story that makes my hair curl.
You know, now you're talking about that.
When I was in San Quentin, man, cause see, I sold cigarettes.
I had one of the best jobs in the prison.
I was a shoe shine guy.
So I shined the warden's shoes and his wife's shoes.
His wife would bring all these shoes.
Her kids.
Her kids shoes and her shoes.
And she said, JP, I need you to sign these.
I'll sign them up.
She said, what do you want me to bring you?
Food or cigarettes?
I said, just bring me a carton of cigarettes.
So I had a cigarette store.
If I give you a pack of camels, you have to give me two back when you go to the store.
So I was already a businessman already.
And I left those guys tons of cigarettes when I left there.
They were like, man, I had a lot of stuff.
I've looked at where this podcast has been listened to.
And I've seen countries from around the world.
I've seen places around the U.S.
But if there is a message that you were wanting to leave with the world, what would it be?
You know, you got to sometimes in recovery, you got to allow people into your life.
You know, all of these people came into my life, man.
And they understand they saw something.
So I always want to see the best in people.
You know, I can't help the world.
I can't save the world.
But I know that my story and my testimony is monumental for not only men, women and young people.
And like you said, you got it out of me.
If I had to do it all over again, there's some things I might have done different.
My life is a book, man.
It's not all good.
It's some things.
So, you know, and I'm connected with so many different people, man.
You know, they said this at a meeting last week.
I don't know if it was one of the guys in the outpost.
I try to stay in the middle of the herd.
As long as you're in the middle, you don't have to worry about falling off.
Right.
Because there's so many men.
Even if I got problems, legal problems, civil problems, whatever.
There's somebody I can help.
I can go to and say, hey, man, I'm struggling with this.
I'm in this situation.
I'm in this kind of situation.
I give it to God.
I pray.
You know, I got my little deal I do.
And I believe that every man, I can't speak for women, but every man needs some time to himself in the mornings,
whether it's in the evening, where you can just process, put the world on hold and pause.
So when I went to that men's retreat, it was a fear of me.
I didn't know what to expect.
But when I went there, that was like on my bucket list.
That's like in the top three things I've ever done.
In my life, I got a chance to pause.
Yeah.
And for me to be able to do step four and five and 10, I didn't know why my name was on the roster.
Like, so I felt really honored and privileged, man.
And I shared it in some of the other meetings that every man I believe need to go to one of those retreats.
No doubt about it.
Just the peace and quiet and the serenity and the phone being off the TV, the radio.
It's like I hit the pause button for two days.
To me, I think of it as, and I've gone to like 30 of them over the years.
To me, it's like living inside of AA for 36 or 40 hours, you know, where you're taking your meals with other men, you're socializing with them, you're going to meetings all around the clock, you're having ice cream at 10 o'clock at night, and you just have the opportunity to just let your hair down and relax and let AA kind of wash over you.
So I know the feeling that you had.
I was so glad to be there with you.
That was very, very cool.
And I invited three guys to the CFC from that deal.
And what I did, I got everybody's phone number in my black book.
And did they come?
Yeah, they came to the CFC last past week.
Did they really?
Yeah, they did.
They showed up.
They wanted to be involved.
So I have to give away what I have.
I still do.
That's what you're doing right now.
You're giving away what you got.
And I absolutely appreciate you being on the AA Recovery Interviews podcast with me, JB.
You're a hell of a man.
I love you.
Man, I love you too, man.
You're a big part of my program these days, and I'm so glad our paths crossed and we've become such good friends.
Yeah.
Your handshake is so important.
Like today when I came in there, I didn't see you.
I felt abandoned because the handshake is so important.
When I come here, I look forward to that.
It's kind of like a kid.
I'm looking forward for that shake.
It's so important, man.
It goes a long way, man.
I just wanted to tell you thank you, man, so much.
You bet.
Well, my friends, that's a wrap for this episode of AA Recovery Interviews.
I want to thank my guest, JB, for sharing his story.
And thank you for tuning in.
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