The Truth About the 45 Pages That Guarantee Recovery – Eddie C.

my name is Eddie Cordy and I am an alcoholic I'd like to thank Bill for inviting me up not quite as tall you know when I came through the door this group I gotta commend you they were having a business meeting and there was no screaming no yelling demands for to be heard I was forbidden when I got sober in Sinaloa, Missouri by the way from going to business meetings and for good reasons but anyway then I proceeded I needed to use the restroom I was directed over here to the corner and I walked in there and I'm looking around and I see women, women, women, and I am asking where is the men's room and they pointed me to the women's room And, you know, some of our meetings down in Long Beach, when that happens, we kind of look around a little bit and make sure that we're all not gender specific. But anyway, I'm going to share that bill when I get back to Long Beach about this group. We don't have a sense of humor when it comes to that men's room, women's room joke. But anyway, I'm really honored to be here, to speak to this group. I'm one of those guys, you know, by the way, and I grew up in Hawaiian Gardens, which is nestled between Cypress, Lakewood, Long Beach. And Hawaiian Gardens is only one mile by one mile. And when I was growing up there, bytheway, we didn't have paved streets. almost every house either had an outhouse or a cesspool we didn't have some of the amenities they had in Compton or South Central and it would rain, it would all turn into mud and we'd walk to school and walk out of the mud into these cute schools that were actually sitting in Lakewood or Long Beach and you felt a little different when you were a kid and you were doing those kinds of things especially when my family originally, I was from Brooklyn, New York, born there, came to California in 1955. And this gentleman back here had mentioned he was in Long Beach back in 1960. I was 10 years old then. And I've got to tell you, downtown Long Beach was full of white uniforms, sailor uniforms. It was beautiful back then. The pike was there. my mother's best friend was a beautician he and his wife owned a place downtown Long Beach and I'll never forget this 1959 they had the AA convention in Long Beach I don't know if a lot of the younger people are aware of that but when I was nine years old I remember that convention and I remember everybody kidding about all the drunks coming to Long Beach well about four doors down five doors down from my my mother's friend's beauty salon, there was a bar there. All bars in Long Beach, by the way, had swinging doors like you see in the cowboy movies. They didn't close the doors. And when you walked by that door, you could smell that beer and cigarettes from 20 feet away. And I'll never forget that. One day I was walking by there and this drunk got, I mean, picked up, slammed through that door and I was about 10 feet this side of it And that drunk came slamming out. Two guys had a hold of him, dumped him right on the cement and proceeded to kick his head. I'd never seen anything like that. And I'll never forget that. And no teeth, just a – we all know what they look like, okay? We look like. And I've got to tell you, I swore that that would never be the guy that's speaking to you this evening. My idea of alcoholism was like that, There's really no drunks in my family, no drug addicts. Most are educated. I'm a rare bird in my family, so I can't blame it on the bloodlines. A lot of people now call it synonymous, and that's your opinion. This is my opinion, by the way. Anything I share up here this evening is my opnion, and only my opinion. I don't speak for Alcoholics Anonymous, but I do have some experience. I've also I've been gifted with the strength that's available to some of us in Alcoholics Anonymous and I try to carry that message to people who don't believe that they're capable of staying in Alcoholic Anonymous because I'm one of those individuals who showed up to the promised land and I know what it feels like and I really respect the newcomers that stood up and identified and I Know There's Some in the room that couldn't, but the bottom line is those feelings of sitting in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous and looking at you people and listening to the honesty, the stories of the incomprehensible demoralization, the more honest you got, the less I felt I could stay here. The insanity that was going on with me outside of these rooms, I just never thought that I could get outside of that long enough to tell anybody the truth. And I really identified with Alcoholics Anonymous similar to what Moses identified with, looking across at that promised land and never getting to go in. I loved drinking more than life itself. I didn't know that. I'm going to kind of fast forward here. You know, in this little town that I grew up in, Derry Valley, it was all cow pastures in the 60s, 70s. They began to tear it down and build homes throughout that area. But when I was growing up, I got active, by the way. I didn't want to feel sorry for myself. I learned how to fight at a young age in that neighborhood, primarily Hispanic. By the way, I'm half Syrian, half Lebanese. You'll not meet many of us in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know why. But in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I didn't know I wasn't Mexican. And most people didn't Know that I wasn' t Mexican. We never thought about that. But we did think about survival. We did think About not being afraid of bullies In the neighborhood. I'd just as soon get my little tail beat Than be afraid of somebody. I learned something about fear When I was really young. I was playing carom in a park I was about 7 or 8 years old and I had a hold of that carom stick and this big kid walked up and grabbed that caron stick from me with his left hand and tried to pull it away from me and I was locked onto that caroom stick and I waited in line to play carom he reared back and I wouldn't let go and he told me to let go of it and I would not let go and I thought at this go back and I saw that fist coming at my face. And that was the first time that I'd gotten my nose broken. This guy hit me three times, and I couldn't move. I was frozen to that Karen stick. And finally some other big kids grabbed him and stopped him. And I still couldn't let go of the Karen stick, I was stuck on stupid, okay? And what I didn't know, what I didn't know back then was fear. Fear anesthetized me. I couldn't move, and all I know is bleeding all over the place, and I couldnít believe that I couldnít move. I didnít know it was the fear. I went home that night. I had to sneak into the house. My mother wouldnít have let me go out and play. By the way, I had divorced parents back then. I was in Catholic school for about three years when this had happened, and nuns didnít Know I was divorced. My parents were divorced. I didn't know any divorced kids, by the way, until I got into the fourth grade, but back into public school. But this particular experience, I found myself laying awake just not believing that I couldn't do anything. And so I swore to myself, I cried, I was crazy then. I'd been up all night, swore that would never happen to me again. About three, four days later, I'm back at the park, okay? I waited my turn. I got a hold of the carom stick, and I'm down, and this kid started walking up, and I was waiting. And he walked up. He had this big smirk on his hands. He went out to reach for the carrom stick, and he was smiling at his friend. That was the first time that I was introduced to the rage that I Was capable of. They had to pull me off this kid, and he didn't know what hit him. What I found out, What I found out that day was that as long as I didn't feel the fear, couldn't feel it, I wasn't anesthetized. That's all I cared about. I didn' t care who was in front of me. I didn''t care whether I was going to have to tight walk across the tree, which I tried to do with older kids to get into the club. As long as i didn't experience the fear I could do anything. And I began to live my life that way. And frankly it was my best friend for a lot of years. I got into some trouble fighting. I finally was able to overcome some of that. I got popular in school. I got in the high school. I ended up in the varsity club my freshman year. I was a wrestler my freshman years, lettered varsity, accepted by some of the tougher guys in the school that were wrestlers and football players. And my sophomore year started varsity football, and it was on. I was class president, freshman, sophomore, all that stuff, okay? And we had a lot of fun drinking and carousing in the 60s. I mean a lot OF fun. It all broke loose back then. Ultimately, what began to happen to me, I got into college. By the way, I couldn't really read. I was dyslexic, didn't know it. I cheated my way through high school. I had a whole lot of girls who did homework sharing it with me. Didn't care. I just needed to get it done so I could get on. And in college, I wrestled in college and eventually I got hurt my sophomore year. I was bucking for a scholarship back to Michigan State for wrestling. It turned down a football scholarship so I could go to a bigger campus. When I got hit my sophomore years, my career was over in athletics. Went to work with my parents. They were in the magazine business, door-to-door sales, selling books, Bibles, magazines, encyclopedias with strictly black sales agents in white neighborhoods. I was introduced to that. My dad was in that business, got into it in the 60s and spent a lot of time around high-powered salespeople who taught me a lot about how to sell books and a lot shortcuts in life, if you will, that I used frequently, even now once in a while. But what began to happen, and I got into a relationship, wanted to go to work. I didn't want to be the jock that didn't make it, okay? I just didn't wants that to happen to me. And I ran a sales crew in the magazine business. My wife at that time couldn't, she was prejudiced, couldn't handle being around blacks. She was thin-skinned and had no sense of humor. And so we got out of the magazine biz, I went to work and was working at an armored car company, actually, selling armored car services. And my career began to move along, move along. Left that industry, went into another one, and began to experience some blackouts. Problems with alcohol. Problems With Some Drugs, by the way, because of the alcohol. I'm a drunk. I love to drink. But once I've had a few drinks, no telling what I'm going to do. And what began to happen was the wife, I got very successful. I got lucky in business and got successful. The wife and I, things didn't work out. She went her way. I went my way. And I was about 34 years old and was making a lot of money. Was in Hollywood, living in the San Fernando Valley at that time. And I had a good friend of mine who owned a strip bar. And I used to hang out there a lot. I know a lot of you don't or didn't do those kinds of things. But I used to spend a lot of time in there and one night I came home and I let a guy stay at my house, he was a drug dealer and I came back and I said, I came him home, he had his girlfriend tied up and was talking very mean to her. She had stole his drugs and one of his buddies came over and we were sitting trying to play backgammon while she was nude tied to the chair And I've got to tell you, it was really hard to concentrate. So this guy and I decide that I didn't know to go down to the strip bar and leave him and his girlfriend alone. He needed to finish his discussion with her about where she hid all of his drugs. So we leave, and we go down into the strip car. We're having some fun. I'm drinking scotch. By the way, I'm a scotch drinker. Any people here drink scotch? Yeah, there's some old people here. That's it. There's three of us in the room. Anyway, we're hooting it up in this strip bar. We're in the back with the dressing room where the girl's having fun. And now it's time for us to have a little fun. Well, while we're having a few drinks, she says to me, I got a little counterfeit money on me. And a few weeks earlier, he had been down in the same neighborhood. And back then, and I'm talking 83, 84, there was a lot of streetwalkers on Hollywood Boulevard. And so he suggested maybe we should indulge, okay? He was going to buy. He'd used the counterfeit money before, and it was good stuff. So when I drink, there's things that sound like good ideas to me when I drink, okay, and he's going through the fact that he had picked up three girls, they spent three days together, and she had a ball, and pretty soon it's a real good idea. Next thing I know, we're in the car. I'm driving. We're up and down Hollywood Boulevard in Sunset, and it was one of those nights that they were sweeping the boulevard. I know there's not many people here from that neck of the woods, but about every two, three months, they would sweep it. It was full of black and whites, period. I'm drunk, and he's drunk, and we're driving, and I wouldn't leave. He wouldn't lead. We kept driving up and downs. and we were on that boulevard an hour before I finally got pulled over, okay? And when that cop pulled me over, I jumped out of my car like thinking, who does he think he is? And when I did, the guy I was with began to empty his pockets, all the counterfeit money, all the cocaine he had, dumped it all over. Well, the police watched him do this. When I was walking towards them, they had me put my hands on the hood of my car, because they all had their guns out by then, and proceeded to search the car and found the money and the drugs. And so here we are locked up in the Hollywood Police Department at about 4 o'clock in the morning, and then the agents show up. They're not nice guys, by the way. When you fool around with counterfeit money, they came in, they wanted to talk to me. And I'm from Brooklyn. We don't tell anybody anything, okay? It wasn't on me. I didn't want to tell them what the guy had said to me, so I didn' t cop to anything. So then they went to talk to him and he proceeded to tell him it was my money. It was my idea and he was sitting on the seat and he wanted to get it away from him because it was all mine. And so by the time my lawyer showed up about 6 o'clock in the morning, things were just totally out of hand. To make a long story short, what happened basically is they found a vial in my pocket that was empty. They took some of the cocaine from him and put it in that vial. And you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys sometimes when you get mixed up in those things. But they had a misdemeanor cocaine possession that they wanted to talk to me about. Fortunately, what happened was about three days later, they found out, my lawyer found out this gentleman had been arrested in Pasadena for trying to pass counterfeit money. And so they obviously didn't believe his story. The problem I had, you know, when you got counterfeit Money in a car, they confiscated. Well, the car I was driving belonged to my employer. And unfortunately at that time, by then I'd become a vice president and manager of a corporate services division of a major California bank. And when I tell you the bank was a little bit uncomfortable when they got a seizure notice on my vehicle, it was one of the worst days of my life. And, you know, I was really blessed without working people, just getting after it. Never letting my handicaps stop me for a lot of years. And I love that bank. And a couple days after this had been brought into the light, I couldn't handle it, okay? I was 34 years old. I was reporting directly to the Board of Directors. I was on a special committee for the bank. I didn't have a college degree. I don't know why, but when I walked into a bank, the back office of a bank and I looked at what was going on there, it just made sense to me. I was majoring in accounting in college. It's the only thing I really liked. And I ended up running from that bank. If I would have accepted some help and done something about my alcoholism, I could have stayed there, okay? But my ego wouldn't let me do that. I left there. Not more than two months later, since I was on probation, I had to stop smoking reefer because they were going to drug test me. Once I stopped smoking reeher, all of a sudden I started drinking a lot. When I started drinkin' a lot, I'd want to wake up a little bit. And I'd find myself makin' the phone call, findin' out I had go do a drug test and didn't care. Once I'd had a few drinks, I was on. And I'm one of those kind of guys that's reliable. I show up, look at a probation officer in the eye, give him a dirty test, and go back to the hotel room where I'd left the girls and finish. They finally locked me up. I got locked up at the Impact House in Pasadena. I could not stop drinking. I'd gotten over the line. That was my first introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous. That was 1985. and I lasted about three months in that treatment center and I got to tell you I was in there about four or five days and like this thin came off of me I didn't know what was on me I didn' t care I kept giving them dirties they kept threatening me and I didn''t care not that I really understood about caring the fact of the matter is I was alcoholic and didn't know it okay I could not stop drinking and I had a black probation officer. He was the first one to look me in the eye and tell me I was a drug addict. I thought he was prejudiced and jealous. I had all the money in the bank. I was the vice president of the bank, left the bank quick and took off running and this old man turned out to be a beautiful guy. He got me into treatment and about four days in there it was my first experience of getting that beast off me and that obsession And I've got to tell you, the first time I got down on my knees, took a third step in that facility, took a fourth step and got rid of some stuff and proceeded to feel that I was armed and dangerous. I got out of that treatment center about three months, a little over three months into it, and I lasted for about six months. But I used to sit next to a guy. His name was Bill Honeycutt. And I used to sit next to this guy at this place, the MWA Club, every day. This old man, he'd fall asleep on his cane and a god-awful head, just bald and overweight. But Bill was the guy that started H&I down in Long Beach, by the way, and really was an unbelievable guy. But this man never, ever asked me what step I was working. I can't explain it to you to this day, but all I ever felt from that man is feeling his good ass. I didn't feel judged by him and I really loved being around this guy. But that day came again when I picked up that drink. And when I pick up that drinks this time people, it took me five years to get back. And when I did, I had gotten married, took a hostage. That woman and her kids took off to New York. My last few years of drinking and having a little bit of fun was in New York City. And 88, 89, it was on. She finally, I sold the house, got a bunch of cash. She got a hold of $10,000 and she escaped. And I mean escaped. And I was glad to see her go. I was sitting on close to $100,000 and real happy for by then I had fallen in love with a crack whore. And I'm a guy who can tell you, okay? And listen up, newcomers. Abnormal behavior can become very, very normal, okay, very, sehr normal. and I was glad that woman that I really loved was gone and she loved me enough to start calling me a couple months after she was gone and we began to talk and patch things up I ended up following her to Sedalia, Missouri only one reason all my money was gone and the street was looming I had a couple thousand left she had a few thousand left and I ended in Sedalia in Missouri. That's where it happened. I was sitting on a bar stool in a god-awful bar, smelled like that bar I mentioned earlier, you know, with that beer smell and just cigarette and it was the Bud Bar. That was the name of it. That bar was 50 years old. Old town Sedalia. But anyway, I'm sitting and I've gone out. I got sober for about three months, went back out. Now I'm having trouble, really, really having trouble. I'm a second bottle of beer, okay? By the way, I'm one of those people that didn't have a head full of Alcoholics Anonymous and a belly full of beer. Okay? Booze, feeling guilty. I'm looking at this long neck Miller, okay, and this is my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm look at this Long Neck Miller, the light shining down on it, and I'm looking at this, the second bottle, and I realize for the first time how much I love to drink. And in that instance that I'm look at this bottle, I got this image of that old man I mentioned earlier that got awful, and it was like it came into my third eye where I could picture the top of his head and the next feeling, and I am getting it right now, that I felt was love, okay? And I got chills as I'm getting right at this moment, okay, and that feeling of love the next conscious thought was alcoholics and us I'm an alcoholic I gotta go back and within two to three seconds what we heard a little while ago chapter 3, more about alcoholism we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost self, we were alcoholics it's an individual thing Okay, God comes to us in many different ways people And it came to me He came to be with bottle in hand Okay, and I felt I got to go back And I felt better Okay, set that bottle down And just was kind of amazed At what had just happened to me And that realization of how much I loved it About three days later Went home, drank that beer Went home Didn't fight with the wife that night. A couple nights later, picked the fight, ran down to the bank and grabbed the 70 bucks that we had in the bank account because I was going to show her. That's what we used to do is chase, beat each other down tothe bank to get the money. We didn't have debit cards back then. By the way, my sobriety date's October 15th, 1990, so a little over 20 years ago I'm talking about. And what had happened to me is about three nights later, I got mad at her and went out. Woke up in a blackout, after a blackouts. And when I came to you that morning, it was like the hand of God had just touched the top of my forehead and ran it all the way down the back of my leg. So I had this feeling of impending doom that I couldn't get off me. I could not get that feeling It was like death And I mean, I was terrified And It was a breakdown But I've got to tell you The only place That that feeling of fear And death That spirit of death that was on me Came off of me Was sitting in one of those chairs About ten minutes into the meeting It began to subside And I felt like you weren't staring at me, like it would be okay. Finally, step two came here. Not here, but it finally came here, okay? And for about 50 minutes, Sedalia one-hour meeting, about 50 minus, I was okay. And then I'd see the meeting was coming to an end and that fear would start coming back. It took me 100 days to get that beast off of me. There was a guy that used to come to that little town, he was about 6'4", 6'5", wore reading glasses, straggly hair, big overalls, had his 12 and 12 in his AA book, tied together with leather, and a coffee mug, and chain-smoked, I used to call them F's Pega cigarettes, but I won't say that here, Shermans, you know those long skinny cigarettes? and he chain-smoked them, okay? And this guy, I'm telling you, I heard him, the first time I met him, he was telling somebody about the six-step program and how if you're going to work the AA program, if you've never worked the AA problem, it should never take you more than three days. If you had drank, been in the AA programme and drank and came back in within two, three hours, okay, you're back on the beam. And I didn't come from that. I came from a treatment center, and it didn't work that way. It was a slow program. It came over years. I thought I heard in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I challenged this guy about 20 days, 30 days into my sobriety of what program was he working. He wanted to know which one I was working. He opened that book up, and if you've got a third edition or a fourth edition, go to 291. If it's a fourth addition, goto 262. There you will find the six-step program as it's outlined, okay? The original program was six steps, and that's what this guy did. That's what they did in Sedalia, Missouri, was six-steps. What the original 50 to 75 people did to get states to stop drinking. and he showed me and I would suggest strongly and I started doing this that you begin to open your big books and check you hear things in meetings take your big book to a meeting open it when you hear something and check on some of us okay and he told me it's there and it took three to four hours to formally go through the six step program as it was back then that's how Dr. Bob did it And about, oh, two and a half months later, my sponsor in town couldn't deal with me anymore. And finally, I was, you know, asked this gentleman to take me through the steps. I showed up at his house the next morning, and he took me through The Six Step Program as it was back then. And for the first time, see, I'm not one of those guys who can deal with fear. I told you that earlier, okay? I'm almost illiterate. when I start journaling about things I get so eaten up with the guilt and the shame of what I have done I couldn't stay objective long enough to see what in me was predicting the outcome of my behavior I never really took a fourth step in Alcoholics Anonymous he enabled me and helped me because there is a we in Alcoholic Anonymous we took those steps together he didn't sit across the table we both took those steps that day and as we began to look at the things in me that were attaching me to the simple list that I put together for the first time, I became armed, armed with some facts about myself. Then I had a 50% chance of defending me against me. Then you had a 15% chance. You had a 10% chance or 50% of me defending you against me, okay? When I say that, people, I'm not being facetious. I didn't understand the defects of character could attach me to resentments, could attachme to fear, attach me sexual issues. It's not by accident that those sections in that book are laid out that way. I'm going to fast forward. We've only got a couple minutes left here. Let me just mention this to you. There's 45 pages only in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that specifically guarantee recovery from alcoholism. If you're new here, in that back table back there with some of those brave people, okay, who are on the firing line of alcoholism, listen up. Okay? 45 pages, page 58, how it works to 103. Okay? That's it. And it absolutely will guarantee you the right to live free on this earth. Okay? My business takes me to Amsterdam. Okay? I spend a lot of time in Amsterdam. Prague, France, Germany, Spain, Russia. I've been really blessed. I got back into my own business. I won't go into that, but it leads me to places around the world where people drink. Okay? I can walk in a grocery store and go down an aisle that's just full of alcohol and not see it. Okay? The problem's been removed. Let me make one other quick suggestion if you're new. Go to your big book. Read the 10th step in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. You want a gift? Okay, I got it. It'll tell you right there. It's the only place that it defines the miracle that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous and that miracle is this, okay? We will recoil from alcohol like it was a hot flame. It'll come naturally. It'll become without effort on our part, okay, so long, so long. And it'll tell me this, so long as we're spiritually fed. That's my experience. That happened to me at about 100 days of sobriety. A lot of guys with a lot of time, and women, who said, get off that pink cloud. I wanted to know where it talked about the pink cloud in the big book. There is no place, okay? There's some places in the family after that talk about having your head in the clouds. But the bottom line is that I am able to go anywhere on this earth freely, okay, and live the kind of life that I always wanted to live and not be a slave, slave to what my desires are. I love to drink. I'm going to close with this, and this is my truth. If I could get away with drinking, I'd be drinking, okay? Until I don't fight with it. I had to learn to cease fighting with anything or anybody, and that is my proof, okay. I never learned to hate alcohol. I learned to love, okay? And that old man that made me feel as good as and not less than because of what I was doing or what step I was on or how long I was sober, I'll never forget that. But that is the essence of Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, I'd like to thank you all for permitting me to be humbled in front of you, to share a story of freedom that I got through those 45 pages that I mentioned earlier. Thank you for letting me be of service.