The Value of What It’s Been Like Since — Howard L.

Welcome back, my friends, to AA Recovery Interviews Podcast.
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 AA members from around the world
share their timeless and extraordinary stories of experience, strength, and hope.
This is our 175th interview in the AA Recovery Interviews Podcast series.
The success of this podcast in touching so many people's lives around the world
over the past four and a half years has been nothing short of astonishing.
I invite you to revisit Episode 50, the interview in which I shared my personal story.
I've sought to share parts of my sobriety journey
during conversations with my podcast guests over the years.
But the mission of this podcast has always been to hear the whole story,
especially the what-it's-been-like part, since getting sober.
In the spirit of that commitment, today I'll share with you
the past four and a half years of my sobriety journey.
The past four and a half years of my life since starting the podcast.
To do that, dear listeners, I'm gratefully turning the microphone over to my good friend Adam M.
As my very first interviewee for the podcast,
it was Adam who first suggested doing an interview for Episode 50
with the creator, producer, writer, editor, director, sound engineer,
and host of this podcast, namely me.
And now he's helping me do it again.
So sit back and enjoy Adam's masterful job of interviewing me
in celebration of Episode 50.
Welcome to episode 175.
My name's Adam, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Adam.
My name's Howard, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Howard.
What do you think about that?
Hey, pretty good.
It's been a while since you and I have done this, hasn't it?
Since Episode 50, when we interviewed you,
and then Episode 1, where you interviewed me.
Yeah, you were my inaugural episode for the podcast,
and your encouragement and involvement in this project with me
has made me feel like I'm a part of the podcast.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You meant the world to me,
and you were very encouraging at places along the way
where I didn't know how I wanted to proceed,
and you came back with a very calming influence
by reminding me of the importance of doing this.
And so I thank you, and it's going to be a challenge for me
not to want to be the interviewer today,
but leaving it entirely up to you.
Yeah.
Well, I know the podcast has had an impact on a lot of people.
I know a lot of people I talk to regularly reference the podcast
or reference someone they heard their story
that maybe they'd never heard their story of before.
Plus, it's this repository of wisdom and experience,
strength, and hope for so many people.
So, yeah.
How long have you been doing the podcast?
I started doing the podcast,
the very first episode was December,
December of 2019, was it?
Or 2020.
2020, right.
And the very first episode was with you.
So, it's coming up on four and a half,
as of the date of this particular interview,
and this is number 175.
That was number one.
So, it's been four and a half years.
Yeah.
What were some of the challenges you faced
getting this thing off the ground?
Well, some of them were kind of fundamental
that I had never put together a podcast before.
Although I had done some recording
and other things in the past,
I didn't know how to do it.
But by the time I started doing it,
there were so many resources for how to do a podcast
that I glommed onto them pretty quickly
and found ways and workarounds
because I don't have a degree in sound engineering
or although I've done some recording over the years.
It's something that,
it was all brand new.
It was all brand new.
So, I kind of muddled along
and complicating things
or making them less complicated
depending on how you want to think about it
was the fact that we were in the middle of COVID.
And I was trying to interview people.
The great thing was because it was COVID
and everybody wasn't working
or if they were, they were at home,
people had a lot more time to do the interviews,
which I think is pretty cool.
The downside was Zoom has always been a little bit glitchy.
I've actually lost entire episodes of interviews to it.
And I've had to redo them,
cleaning them up when the sound quality goes down and so forth.
Those have been challenges.
In the beginning,
there was some concern expressed by people I knew
about the anonymity factor
and how could you do a podcast and interview people
and keep it anonymous?
And I got to explaining that so much that I decided
the best thing for me to do was to produce a white paper
on this whole process of doing an interview
while maintaining the traditions of anonymity
and making sure that people had their own privacy
built in to the interview.
And as I look back into the history of AA
and what Bill and Bob intend
and what Bill wrote in the big book
and in subsequent volumes
about different things regarding AA,
AA was never meant to be a secret organization.
It was always meant to be,
an organization where I could say I'm in AA,
but I can't say that you're in AA.
So making sure that we respect
and guard each other's anonymity is absolutely critical.
And that wasn't hard to do with the podcast
because at the level of press, radio and film,
the chief factor of violating the anonymity
is to show the picture of the person
or show them talking or responding
or having their last name.
Well, this is all audio,
so there's no visual of you.
And I'm only using your last initial.
Unless you had a completely outrageous first name
where everybody knew that that's the guy,
then that wouldn't violate any anonymity.
So that was important.
Making sure that any time there was any mention
of anything commercial, like the names of rehab centers,
and the names of companies people worked for,
and the last names of people
that my guests were talking about,
that I removed all of that in post-production and editing
so that no one organization anywhere
is going to be recognized.
Keeps the privacy for the individual who went there
and might be identified by knowing
about that particular facility.
It also makes sure that I'm not endorsing or lending the AA name
to any outside enterprise.
And certainly any treatment center or rehab
is going to be an outside enterprise.
So there were people who said,
oh, you can't do this.
And I said, well, we'll see.
And it's interesting, Adam, over 175 now interviews.
And I've also released, as you know,
encores of 50 episodes so far.
So there are really 220, 230 actual episodes of the podcast.
But actual interviews, there are 175.
Out of all the 175 interviews I've done,
I've not had one person come back to me and say,
you know what, I got a lot of blowback from friends
and people who listen to the podcast about anonymity
or infringing on anybody's privacy.
And I've interviewed a lot of people all over the place,
but some people who are prominent in what
they do for a living, sports, music, anything else,
people who would be well-known.
But I've always kept the interviewing
about their experience with alcohol.
Because if I'm interviewing a face,
I'm going to have to do a lot of work.
I'm going to have to do a lot of work.
If I'm interviewing a famous ball player or rock and roll star
about their own journey, people can go online.
They can go almost anywhere and get all kinds of information
about that person's career and about where they grew up
and blah, blah, blah.
But do people know the story of them getting sober in AA?
And so that actually has a twofold purpose for me.
First of all, it makes sure that we're not dwelling on stuff
that people could already get.
And not conflicting with anything that they've already
heard or read about that person.
But it also takes the ego in the situation down a few notches.
So me, in asking questions, I'm not asking as a fawning fan,
so to speak.
And them, in formulating their answers,
they can really get in there and be as honest as possible
without having to maintain something up to their image.
When you think about some of the concerns people
expressed around anonymity and is this somehow,
violating some tradition, which it's not.
I know you researched that.
What was some of the other feedback you got from people
when you announced that you were doing this
or started inviting people or releasing episodes?
I know you made some announcements
during the announcement portions of meetings.
Yeah, I did.
And I got mostly, if not entirely, good feedback
from people.
Some of the feedback was kind of implicit by people's response
whenever I'd ask them to do an interview.
And I'd always say, well, you know what?
I'd always ask if they're interested in doing it.
And people would come back with any number of reasons why,
if they couldn't do it, why they couldn't.
And some of those spoke to some of the challenges.
They're not notorious.
They're known in a way that they don't want other people
to be able to search them out.
Traditional anonymity means you don't use somebody's last name
or picture.
Some of the people we're talking about
was having people who are looking for them be able to find them
by virtue of the podcast.
Well, the thing is,
people will recognize your voice.
They'll recognize my voice.
But I've always said that the podcast is designed and meant
for people who are interested in our way of life,
in getting sober and staying sober.
Some people who listen who aren't in the program
don't have the disease themselves.
They want to listen to learn more because they've
got a spouse or a child or a parent who've
got issues with alcohol.
This isn't Joe Rogan.
You know, the guy on the street's
not going to tune in just to hear about the latest,
a rant, a rave.
They're going to tune in because something
about Alcoholics Anonymous piques their interest
and curiosity.
And just the human interest in other people's stories
is really important.
Yeah.
To your knowledge, is there another podcast
that does this type?
I know there's several recovery-type podcasts
where therapists or whatnot are interviewed.
But in terms of being a repository of people's stories
like this, anyone else doing this?
As a matter of fact, AA has a grapevine podcast
that they put out there.
I actually had the opportunity to be a guest on at one point.
I've had both of the people who were hosts of that on my show
as well.
But the majority of AA podcasts, a lot of them
are just about someone taped the person giving a speech
at a speaker meeting, and they put that out there.
There are some talk show-oriented podcasts
out there.
Some of them are better.
Some of them are better than others.
But yeah, they're out there.
And I knew that that was the case.
But I thought, if anybody's out there succeeding with it,
then I can succeed with it.
I have the experience and the background and the interest
and the knowledge and all the other stuff, I think,
to put out a quality show.
I don't have the market cornered on good podcasts.
I think the number of people who've listened worldwide
and the number of downloads I've had worldwide
is kind of indicative.
I don't know what the numbers are that other people get.
But mine, they're pretty good.
I checked last night as I was preparing for this,
and there have been over 600,000 plays of one or more
of the podcasts.
And there may be other podcasts that are more popular.
I haven't really gone out of my way
that I've had a lot of other podcasts, especially those run
by therapists and psychologists.
Other people want me to have them on my show as a way
to talk about what they do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, the response I always give them
is, did you get sober in AA?
And are you in AA?
Right.
And a lot of the podcasts that are out there
by people trying to tell other people how to get sober,
they don't mention AA.
Now, that may be because they want
to stay away from mentioning it for whatever reason.
But mine is the only one I know that kind of focuses
in on AA itself and people's recovery in it.
Well, it seems like the idea of a speaker meeting,
you go to a Saturday night deal and a bunch of people
come and some gal or guy stands up
and tells his story for an hour, her story for an hour.
And the advantage, I think, in the interview format
is you get to sort of ask more in-depth questions.
You get to sort of guide the conversation in a way
that I think gives much more value to someone who's
listening than sometimes you get at a speaker meeting
because sometimes those are, I mean,
it's hard to stand up there for an hour.
It has been my experience and try
to stay on course with conveying a certain message.
And it seems like your interview style really
helps make sure that that happens.
Yeah, I think it does.
And that's intentional on my part
because it's about crafting the interview into something that's
meaningful, easy to listen to, easy to understand,
not pretentious.
But what I've noticed is that I've
interviewed people who I know their answer because I've
heard it 100 times in meetings.
I've heard it 100 times before.
So I try and ask questions that get to the heart of the matter.
So you tried to commit suicide.
So what were the feelings after that instead of I just did it
and then I got sober and everything's great?
The other thing is, and this has been something that's
followed through the entire time,
I want to spend a little bit more time
about the present day and the days from sobriety
up to the present day as opposed to the,
the,
what it was like and what happened
part of people's stories.
Those are really juicy.
And even the guy with one day, one day of sobriety,
can claim, well, what was it like part of his story
because it was just that way yesterday.
What happened?
Well, I came, stopped drinking, came to a meeting last night.
And what it's like today?
Well, I'm sitting in a noon meeting and I'm sober.
That's an entire story.
It's when people have years of sobriety
and they're talking about the what it was like
and what happened part for 90% of their presentation,
and then they tack on five or 10 minutes
of what it's been like since.
The what it's been like since is such an overwhelmingly large
part compared to the one day, one minute, one hour
episode of going into AA and experiencing that.
Otherwise, I think what happens is people
lose sight of the fact that the reason AA works
is because it continues to work in people's lives
at all different stages of their lives.
I want to know about the challenges and the tragedies
and the triumphs.
I want to know about the challenges and other things
in people's lives in the period of sobriety
so that people listening can be inspired that, oh my god,
that guy got through that and he's still sober.
Wow, I didn't ever thought about that.
Or this woman did this for this other person
and it made a difference in their life.
Maybe I'll try that.
Right.
I guess all the experience, strength, and hope really
resides from day one, picking up that first desired chip
through whatever period of time they're sober.
Yeah, I think it does.
I think, and that's where I think
the personal enrichment part of the program comes from.
One of the things I've noticed over the years
is that treatment centers are really
good at getting people sober and even introducing them
to AA for the first time.
Or maybe they're bringing meetings in
or they're going to meetings out in the community.
So why do people so often slip?
I think it's because the handoff between the rehab and AA,
the handoff is not conducive to the person sticking around.
People don't get acclimated and attached to AA
sufficient to understand.
They understand that AA isn't about just stopping drinking.
You're drinking, you're not drinking.
But once that happens, OK, now what?
The now what part of that is, what do I do with my life now?
How do I stay sober and raise a family, get an education,
deal with difficulties, have a happy life?
I've been so miserable with alcohol.
How is this going to help me?
It's almost like a life enrichment program,
but you have to be sober to get it.
Sober and willing, I guess.
Well, sober and willing.
AA is for people who want it, not who need it.
When you mentioned earlier the process of interviewing people
and sort of probing into some of these more enriching parts
of their story, is there a process or something
you go through prior to an interview with someone
to prepare yourself?
Because I like to keep the interviews fresh and free
flowing, I typically review what I'm going to be doing,
but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that person's
story.
Because I want to listen.
I want to listen to the person with ears that have heard it
for the first time.
In fact, one of the most difficult things for me to do
is to interview somebody right after they've
shared in a meeting.
Because then it's like, oh, I already know that about them.
But I've interviewed so many people
who have been close personal friends
and in the program with me for so long.
I already know a lot about their stories,
but it never fails that I find out certain things about people
I've known for 30 years in the program that I never knew.
And that particular item that I find out about,
then puts things in real perspective.
And I like to keep things free flowing,
a conversation between friends in the program.
But I'm just more inquisitive than you are.
But you're the one answering the questions, not me.
So there's the getting ready for the interview
and inviting people.
How do you choose who gets to be on the podcast?
At the beginning, I tell you, the way I planned for it
is I just kind of prayed about it.
Which is kind of interesting, you know?
What's your booking method or your guest selection process?
Well, I pray about it.
A lot of it has to do with people who I just
knew had interesting stories.
I knew you did.
I mean, as long as you and I have been together,
I've seen you go through so many changes, any number of which
could have knocked you right down.
I mean, and several of them did knock you off your game.
From the beginning, I saw you go into a lot of meetings.
You were working with a lot of people.
I mean, the success you've had in the last several years,
with what you're doing for a living,
it is helping so many people in so many ways.
And I know that not just because of what you tell me about it,
but because I see them.
You've had a big influence on different parts of their lives.
That's always important to me.
And so when I select people, I like to look at the people
I know who fit the bill.
That being said, I know that everybody's
got an interesting story.
And everybody got sober in a certain way.
And what I would do is I would, first of all,
I would ask,
like the second interview was with our friend, Alex L.,
who's had multiple sclerosis and is in a motor chair for the last,
he's 78 years old now.
He's still plugging away.
He's still going to AA meetings.
You know, he has to have people lift him in and out of bed
and in and out of the shower.
And he's got all kinds of physical issues.
But he's as optimistic and absolutely centered in AA
that I say, if that guy, I need to know his story.
How does he do that?
And I hear other people, you know,
they've gone through a tragedy and then they're
at a meeting the next day.
Yeah, that's, I want to interview that guy.
And other people who, they didn't come from miserable
childhoods and drank.
They came from great childhoods and drank.
So what's up with that?
Why would anybody who was raised in a perfect home want to drink?
I want to know why, you know.
This guy's been married and divorced four times.
In sobriety, what was there about his sobriety that, you know,
he was a great man?
He was a great man.
He influenced all that.
So there are all these questions I have.
And it just seemed like people came along and I thought,
I know so many people in AA.
I'll probably never run out of people to ask to interview.
I'd say maybe 20, 25, 30% of the people I ask to be interviewed
for the show say they don't want to be interviewed.
And that's fine.
I'm OK with that.
I noticed, too, there's a male-female rotation.
Yeah, yeah.
And I decided on that in the beginning,
where I would have a male-female,
male-female.
Male-female type arrangement on along.
And then one day it dawned on me.
I was in maybe into 100 episodes or more.
I thought, if I'm modeling this after what AA is really like,
and the actual mix of men versus women in most AA meetings,
mixed meetings, that is, then a third of the people
should be women.
Two thirds should be men.
Because that's the makeup at almost every AA meeting
I ever go to.
I can learn as much from a woman's story
as I can from a man's story.
And in a lot of ways.
The way I've been raised, and a lot of males
of my generation, your generation, and so forth,
we don't spend enough time thinking
about the type of issues women might really
be dealing with as a result of being sober,
as we are just thinking about them with other ideas
and thoughts in mind.
And some of the stories that I've heard from these women,
they're just like, they rip your heart out.
And it's not because their story is any more poignant.
It's just that to hear a woman go
through that, I never would have thought
they went through that.
So that's the other reason I do it that way.
You also have guests from around the world.
How do you come across these interviewees who don't live
anywhere close to you or go to meetings,
in physical meetings with you?
So one of the gifts of the pandemic was the use
of Zoom to have virtual meetings really all over the world.
I would get to know people by virtue of going
to all these meetings in different places, because I just
thought it was cool to know different people
in different places.
I just started asking some of them.
My meeting out of London has a lot of people
from all over the world, including England,
and a lot who live right here in the United States.
I get to know a little bit about their stories.
I've interviewed people from Kenya, from South Africa,
from Australia, from different parts of Europe, Canada.
They all have interesting stories.
And even though I'm only using maybe five minutes of talking
about their lives, maybe multiple times,
to know whether or not I'm really
interested in their story, everybody
has an interesting story.
Sometimes I'm assuming while I'm doing the interview,
I don't know how this is going to sound.
Man, he's really focusing on stuff that may not be that.
And then I get to editing it, and I listen to it again.
I thought, man, that is amazing.
How listening to it the second or third time
gives me a completely different twist on it.
Does that make sense?
Do you have a minimum requirement for time sober?
Yeah, I decided somewhere along the way,
because I got asked by people.
There was one guy in particular who says,
I want to be on your podcast.
And he got sober during COVID.
And I said, how long have you been sober?
He said, I've been sober six months.
People need to hear the six-month story
and everything else.
I said, well, that's probably true,
but they should be going to meetings to do that,
not going to my podcast.
So maybe it was a little arbitrary, but I set two years.
And what I told him was, if you can stay sober for two years,
you come back to me, and we'll do an interview.
And I'll ask you.
How you were able to do what is so seemingly
impossible to the average guy on the street who's a drunk?
And how did you stay sober?
And sure enough, two years of the day,
this guy was back in my face saying,
can I do the interview now?
And I said, you got it.
And I've done that with several other people.
So when you see the number of years sober down
in the low range, some of those people
were not quite up to two years when
they asked me to do the interview,
but they always had at least two years in the interview.
So you find the people.
You do the interviews.
And then comes post-production, which
I know you mentioned earlier, not
having a background or technical training
and this sort of thing, broadcast and whatnot.
What's that like for you?
And how much time do you devote to taking an interview
and making it podcast ready?
Yeah, that is something that is, I'm
going to take a drink of water here.
Yeah.
And this is where I'll be going in and cutting this part out.
Speaking of post-production.
I did an audio version of The Big Book
where I read the entire Big Book cover to cover, word for word,
first edition.
It's available on Audible.
And I also did the lost stories of The Big Book, which
were the 30 stories from the first and second edition
that didn't make it into third and fourth editions.
I read both of those.
There are audio versions of that.
I also did an audio version of the second edition, which
I used for The Big Book podcast, which
is a podcast I have.
But through that process, I got to understand and got
a good feel for how long it takes, how many minutes it
takes, or how many hours it takes for each minute or hour
of finished product.
And certainly when it comes to the interviews,
I've often thought, do I really need
to be that particular about how things sound?
If I'm interviewing somebody and they're, they're, they're,
they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're,
they're just, and they can't quite get to the point.
Yeah.
I'm thinking to myself, if I have the ability and the resource
to be able to eliminate all of that vocal whatever
and make them sound good, A, it makes them sound good.
Nobody, when they go to speak, intends
to speak in a way that's difficult to listen to.
So I clean that kind of stuff up.
And as I go back through, what I've noticed is it takes about one hour,
of post-production time, to produce 10 minutes of finished audio.
So in a 60 or 70 minute podcast, I put in at least six or seven hours
into the post-production.
And then there's the additional work of writing the introduction.
Even if nobody listens to the podcast, they'll know the main points,
even just by listening to the introduction.
Right.
So I spend time on that.
That can usually take an hour or two to do.
Although I'm, I've gotten much faster at doing it.
And then I've got all the technical
issues.
I'm in a location where the air conditioning is going on.
I have to clean that up.
I've got software to do all that, but it's all really time consuming.
Anybody who's worked on this sort of project
knows that kind of work is a time sink.
I'm working on something, I'm thinking I'm only 10 minutes in,
and two hours has gone by.
That's just how it feels.
But I try and be meticulous about it, to make sure
that it sounds as good as it can sound, so that it is as listenable as can be.
I'm grateful I've been able to,
find the resources to be able to do that.
And some of it's the software, some of it's just the knowledge.
Stitching them all together with the software, that all takes time.
Yeah.
But it's been a real labor of love for me in that regard.
Yeah, and I mean the tempo, once a week, Wednesdays.
I don't know why I chose Wednesday.
I think because I heard years ago that you sent out a sales letter,
it hit somebody's desk on Friday.
There's a good chance they're not gonna read it,
cuz they're looking forward to the weekend.
If you send something to them or the ad comes out on a Monday,
they're still distracted from the weekend,
looking at a pile of things to do for the week.
They're not really too engaged.
I thought Wednesday is the day of the week that there's a good chance somebody's
in the middle of their week.
They're settled in from the previous weekend.
They're far enough away from the next weekend that they don't have to be
consumed with thinking about what they're gonna do.
I don't know, that's probably too analytical.
But Wednesday just seems to be the day I put it out.
Seems to be just the middle of the week, feels right, yeah.
In fact, I'll be putting one out
later today, which is actually an encore episode of my interview with a fellow by
the name of Bud S, who's 94 years old with 44 years of sobriety.
He actually passed away about a month and a half, two months after we did that
interview.
Wow.
And I think it may be the last time he ever told his story.
And it's a great story, it's a great story.
And the other thing is, I haven't heard back from anybody that too many people
have gone out.
Once they've done the interview, which is interesting.
I had one guy tell me that his sponsor recommended when he was going through a tough time, that
he go back and listen to his own interview, kind of set him straight.
We'll be right back.
My friends, if you're enjoying AA Recovery Interviews, I invite you to check out my latest
audio book, Alcoholics Anonymous, the story of how more than 100 men have recovered from
alcoholism.
This is the word-for-word, cover-to-cover reading of the first edition of the Bigger,
published in 1939.
It's a relaxing, yet meaningful and engaging way to listen to the Big Book, anytime, any
place.
Have a free listen at Audible, iTunes, or Amazon.
While you're there, search for my other audio book, Lost Stories of the Big Book, 30 original
stories from the first and or second editions, missing from the third and fourth editions
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's an engaging audio book that brings these stories to the next level.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot of the time, Mac entender.
Thanks a lot of the time I'm going to say.
I know in the years that we probably have been putting ourselves in trouble, there is
a book that brings these stories to life for AA members who have never seen them.
These timeless testimonials were originally cut to make room for newer stories in the
third and fourth editions.
But their vitally important messages of hope are as meaningful today as they were when they
were first published.
Many listeners will hear these stories for the very first time.
It's also available from Amazon as a Kindle book or in paperback if you'd like to read
along.
You're going to love it.
And we're back.
so a lot of time you spend a labor of love every week the the post-production being a big time
commitment i also know that in the past five years you've gone through some some serious challenges
health related challenges how has that factored in to your ability to devote energy and time to
the podcast and what's it done for you just in terms of a sober man well interestingly enough
i try in every podcast to engage with my guests in a way that will allow them during the interview
to get to know me a little bit better and and the audience will pick up little bits and pieces about
me in my life during those podcasts but the primary disease i have which is all around this
podcast is alcoholism
but i've had clinical depression virtually my my whole life and it's been treated and treatable but
there have been times i've approached having to do it in a podcast with the looming depression on
on my shoulders and kind of weighing me down and kind of telling me what's the use of doing this
nobody's going to listen and if a million people listen i'm bummed but because two million people
aren't listening and do i really want to do this and how interested is
how interested is my guest going to be and what if he's a dick you know and what how am i going
to handle this that's actually been an obstacle along the way i'm thinking wait a second you know
i'm spending all this time doing this what what else could i be doing maybe i could be cleaning
up my workshop in the garage or since i'm retired my wife's retired maybe we could be going doing
this or that we travel we do fun things together we spend an adequate amount of time but when
you're in a state of depression you're feeling badly you don't have the right
to the right things at the right time and that's been one of the things that's been there all along
but then just a little over two years ago i was diagnosed with bladder cancer
and man that hit me that took me by surprise in fact incidentally coincidentally maybe tmi here
but the first time i ever noticed blood in my urine was in a men's room of the church that we
go for our thursday meeting yeah and i remember thinking
man that's odd what's that about but one thing led to another to another to another
it turned out to be a tumor in my bladder and as a result of that i had a surgery to remove the tumor
there was a snafu with the way that the tumor was turned into the pathologist to see what kind
of cancer it was and how aggressive and etc where the urologist had failed to put in or got lost
a piece of healthy tissue
they have to have as a benchmark so the pathologist made his diagnosis based on insufficient data and
so what came back to me from my urologist was that i had a high grade non-muscle invasive
form of bladder cancer now high grade means that the likelihood of it recurring is quite
significant and that it would require additional chemotherapy immediately which they do which
they do for a
six weeks and six weeks off six weeks off but having to do chemo for x amount of time because
it's high grade and you're trying to keep it from from recurring and i thought to myself that can't
possibly be right based on how do we know how do i know for example how do i know this was an
incomplete thing so anyway i was able to get in to see a physician at md anderson cancer center
which is like the number one cancer center in the world and fortunately some friends in the program
this is where people came in and helped save my life or save my
humanity let's say right where people who've gone through what i went through one of the
recommendations they had to me was why don't you go down to md anderson have them check this out
md anderson wasn't gonna let me come in because i was under other doctors care at a different hospital
but when i told them about my concerns about the insufficient specimen and my concerns about that
they took me right away and one of the chief oncologists in in urology he said well let's
have another look at that sample and i didn't realize they keep these things
and and they were able to deduce from that sample that i did not have high grade cancer i had low
grade yeah and high grade versus low grade is chemotherapy chemotherapy chemotherapy whereas
the low grade is surveillance wow we'll watch it we'll take another look in six months and then
we'll do it every year we'll see if there's any trace any new growth and i've already had two of
those done and for all intents and purposes that cancer is in remission wow
but had i not known that because of people in the program giving me ideas about what to do in their
own experiences with cancer i i might not have done that i might have just settled for the
chemo treatment that the other oncologists had suggested so in a lot of ways aa kind of saved
me in that situation my involvement with aa right saved me in that situation so now i've been in
remission for a couple years um did i think about drinking or using drugs during that time
well i knew that the use of any kind of medications was probably going to be necessary at some point
um the surgery and the aftermath of having the bladder tumor removed and what it does to your
body was a real real drag and the pain that was associated with the recuperation again i didn't
i didn't allow them to prescribe anything with uh narcotics or anything else in there i got through
that okay with uh extra shen tylenol and some other things but i'm grateful i think that's
i thank god every day for the fact that it that could have turned out much different than it did
but what's interesting about it was i mentioned what happened you remember the meeting where i
mentioned it on thursdays where i mentioned what happened and how i had got diagnosed i i did that
before i had the surgery to find out what it was i did that right afterwards to tell people how it
went and everything else so people knew about what was going on in my life to the extent that those
who had experienced it and gotten through it
and i was approachable enough that they could approach me and say you know i went through the
same thing and this is what happened that that gave me a lot of sense of hope and a feeling that
i wasn't alone and much like alcoholism that's why we can get sober in a room room full of people
where we can't do it by ourselves these men and people with encouraging words kind of carried me
through that situation which was very cool yeah that made a big difference so you know i thought
okay i've i've i have enough on my plate i'm going to do it i'm going to do it i'm going to do it
but even going back into my sobriety there were other times when i realized that god was looking
out for me although the outcome might not be real great when i lost my sense of smell 30 years ago
now that was a very very terrible thing losing one's sense of smell is just awful and in fact
i was continuing to go to aa the whole time a lot of that's on the first interview that we did right
for the sake of this last five year period i thought well okay i have enough on my plate now
i had covid three times i got sick i got sick i got sick i got sick i got sick i got sick i got
through it without too much trouble you know i've had the surgery i had i mean my i have cancer it's
in remission but i still have cancer i've got plenty on my plate thank you god i appreciate
that'll be enough yeah i appreciate that uh i i i know that you'll you'll give me what i can handle
and hopefully that's all i can handle for right now and you know work on that guy over there for
once yeah and let me just be let me be sufficiently grateful that all i've got is cancer and and
clinical disease
depression and etc etc and then uh about five years ago right around the time of of the
beginning of this podcast i started noticing some shaking in my hand and i just thought that's kind
of weird i thought i put it off to the fact that i work out a lot so i put it down to the muscles
in my arms and forearms and hands being affected by my workout and because it was only happening
on one side of my body i thought well that's probably
associated with that and then somewhere along the way i saw a neurologist for a lower back problem
because i've had three back operations but that's in the first interview but i went to see a
neurologist and at the end of it he's getting ready to split and i said uh doc one other thing
i want to ask you about i've had this shaking in my hand this is about three years ago i have this
shaking in my hand and he said oh it's probably essential tremors which is he said that's not
parkinson's it's essential tremors he said it's not parkinson's it's not parkinson's it's not
he just took a look and said that in fact my primary care doctor said the same thing the
shaking don't worry about it you you know don't seem to have any other noticeable symptoms so
it's not parkinson's don't worry about it and uh so finally the shaking got bad enough and i
started to notice some other things going on like bumping into things losing my balance falling that
kind of thing walking difficulties sometimes and i uh
i went to the neurologist took six months to get to see the guy he did the full workup and at the end
of about an hour worth of looking and observing and having me walk and stand up and sit down and
turn and bend over and all those other things he diagnosed me with parkinson's disease and i thought
oh great just what i need yeah parkinson's is a disease that more people die with than from
parkinson's is is a disease that takes all the
autonomic functions the control and planning parts of our brain that automatically know when to swallow
when to raise our voice if we're talking to somebody or to watch out for that doorway that
we've walked through a thousand times that we don't bash our elbow into that are responsible
for us standing up and not falling over immediately all sorts of things that are
involuntary reflexes swallowing so what i've been doing to to deal with that there's no cure for
parkinson's there's none even on the horizon at this point but there's plenty of hopeful
medications and different things that can be done to abate a lot of the symptoms and so i've been in
a program of physical and occupational therapy and speech and language therapy to kind of prepare my
body for whatever decline may be coming down the road and i was told that at this point in
the disease for me that i probably had it three or four or five years before it showed up and i had a lot of hope.
up and got diagnosed. So I've had it for a while, but I, you know, until it shows up and something
really noticeable and you have it checked out, some people go through it for years without ever
checking it out. You know, I thought, you know, when, when my wife was saying, you know, you're
mumbling, I can't hear you. I always thought it was because of her mid range hearing loss. I'm
speaking plenty loud. You know, you need, you need hearing aids. And she says, you're just not
speaking loud enough. I said, that's impossible. It's your hearing, not my voice. And I came to
find out that one of the symptoms of Parkinson's is a decrease in the volume of one's voice.
And the reason that you don't notice it is because your mouth and your ears are about six inches from
each other. And you've got this head that's like a big sound chamber. So if I'm talking to you
across the room, it sounds plenty loud to me, but it may be at a level that you can't hear it as
well. Right. So I'm learning how to talk loud.
And with intent and, and swallowing, how to consciously intentionally swallow. Well,
whoever thinks about it, you never think about, I got to, I'm going to chew this up and I'm,
now I'm going to swallow. Because everything that is automatic kind of becomes unautomatic.
The muscles and the everything else is still there for you to do it,
thinking about doing it and then doing it. But it's not automatic anymore. Does that make sense?
Yeah. You were showing me before we started this today,
you know, these swallowing exercises you do, and they're, they're difficult. I mean,
things I would never pay attention to. Well, you never realize just how much the
strength of your tongue has to do with the ability to swallow. And so one of the things
they taught me to do, and any listener can try this too, stick your tongue out and try and
swallow. You probably can do it the first time, but keep your tongue out and try and swallow a
second or third time. That's an exercise that's developed to strengthen the muscles,
that are involved in the swallowing reflex. Right.
And there are other things involved as well. So talking loud, swallowing. So I've been doing that.
I've always done a lot of physical exercise, but now I'm getting involved in exercise that
involves balance, cardio, and that sort of thing. In fact, I think I told you earlier that I'm in
a boxing class. Right.
That's specifically for people with Parkinson's because boxing is an excellent physical therapy.
You know, overall, man, it hasn't stopped me from moving ahead. You know, I go to meetings,
I share about it. People always say, I'll pray for you, right? I always bug me when people say
they'll pray for me. And I always, I asked my sponsor one time, I said, it really kind of
bugs me. Are they actually, while they're on their knees saying, and remember Howard, God,
make sure you take care of Howard. And he said, no. He says, what it means when they say they'll
pray for you is that means they love you. But it's an easier thing for people to say to each other
than I love you.
Because how quickly do we get off the phone when we say, love you, man. You know, I'm going to say
it, but I hope you didn't hear it. No, I'm going to say it. Maybe you heard it, but if you didn't,
that's okay. You know, yeah, I love you, you know, so.
Or not say, I love you, just say, love you. Yeah.
And that's how I feel about you. I love you because you've been a huge part of my life for a long
time.
Well, and I have the same for you, Howard, a path we've walked together for many years now. I'm
deeply grateful for.
You've really been an amazing example. I always used to say to people, if you want a really good
model or example of how to work the program, get sober and improve your life, you're definitely
amongst the top models in my estimation. It's not just because we've known each other for so long.
We have a sponsor-sponsee relationship, but that's kind of given way over the years to a really tight
friendship that when we need to be doing stuff that looks like sponsor-sponsee work, you call
me.
And I like that because I hear people say, well, I can't sponsor him anymore because we're too good
of friends. Well, maybe you can, but you keep, you know, it's like you keep your business and
personal life separate. You know, this is how I treat you when you're my sponsee. This is how I
treat you when you're one of my best friends. You've been really cool about it all over the
years. You've never hesitated to call me when you've had some problems going on.
Yeah.
And of course, I haven't hesitated to call you. I remember succinctly when I was telling you,
you were calling me.
We were talking every day because, okay, just remember, I'm going to be sponsoring you. I want
you to call me every day. And then somewhere along the way, it was quite a bit of time had
passed. I said, you know, Adam, you don't have to call me every day. And you said, yeah, I do.
I said, why? He said, well, it's the commitment of making the call. Even if you don't pick up or I
get the answering machine or the line is busy, it's my commitment to staying sober and accountable
to you by making the call. And you still call me. And not every day, but we talk and we go to some
meetings. And I'm like, I'm going to call you every day. And I'm like, I'm going to call you every day.
And that, of course, is very cool. The other blessing I saw materialize so beautifully in
your life was when you met your wife and you guys were dating and you had a lot of challenges along
the way that were influenced by the fact that she's in the program too. And you put two people
in the program together. And no matter what's going on in their individual lives, that's a lot
of additional things to think about and feel about. Absolutely. Is that a good way to put it?
Well, it seems like.
People who maybe aren't in a relationship with someone in recovery think, wow, that's got to be
so great to be with someone in recovery. But all that really does is guarantee that you have two
people with trauma in their background, two people with abandonment issues and fear of intimacy and
all those things. So while it is wonderful to have a collective process, there's meetings like the
one we had last year. And it's wonderful to have a process. It certainly does bring many unique
challenges. But yeah, that is one of the highlights of my recovery is just being able
to be in a relationship, a romantic relationship, and one that allowed me to get married and stay
married to date and have a couple wonderful children who are getting to be raised to the
best of our ability with the principles of the program, being at the foundation.
All the kindness of your validation of my program and all that, I can assure you it's
driven by pain and pain avoidance. I found something that worked in AA and fortunately
have enough sense to be like, why not keep doing the thing that's working in my life?
Because, you know, AA was the first thing I ever really followed through on in my life.
Yeah.
When I got sober and gratefully to this day continues to be something that I hold at the
center of my life and every, you know, good thing and success that I've had is directly related and
attributable to the program.
I agree with everything you say about that. It's such a great opportunity to be able to
practice the principles in your own marriage.
Right.
And, you know, there's sometimes I wish that my wife was,
you know, involved in Al-Anon so that we could maybe talk the same, the same language, so to speak.
But I'm grateful that she's not because she's got a, she's, she's a normie.
Yeah.
She's absolutely a normie, but she's absolutely and 100% in my corner when it comes to staying
sober and the things that I need to do. So sometimes when I'm in an evening meeting and
people are going out afterwards, I think I'm, I need to go home. I need to be with my wife.
Right.
And I go to some of my friends and I'm like, I need to go home. I need to be with my wife.
So many meetings a week and I'm consumed with so much when it comes to AA that it'd be really
easy for me to start spending more time with those things than with the wife. And I see guys
doing that. They, they become workaholics or they, they use work as a convenient excuse to not
engage. But I remember when your wife got pregnant, all the concerns that you had about that and all
the fears. And I remember relating to it so well when, when you had your, your wife, your wife,
son, and then when you had your daughter a few years later, it was a beautiful opportunity in
talking to you to see how you were handling it and knowing what you went through from my own frame
of experience. But I was petrified to have children because I didn't know what was going
to show up as their father. Right. What was your experience with that? So I was 11 years sober when
our son was born and then 13 years sober when our daughter was born. And, um, I felt like that I had
enough experience in recovery and in my personal work to know that, uh, the stakes are pretty high
with kids almost in a way that I wonder if I would have been a bit more relaxed had I not known all,
all the ways that kids get wounded and sort of, um, but, uh, it was actually my wife's
Al-Anon sponsor who we were speaking with her, you know, we were still a,
a couple months from the due date of our firstborn. And, uh, you know, I was sharing with her some of
my concerns and fears and just neurotic wonderings. And her feedback to me was, you know, you're
supposed to wound your children, which I immediately halted me in my tracks. Couldn't
believe it. What are you talking about? You're supposed to, she's like, well, first of all,
you're a human being, so there's no way you can't wound your children. And secondly,
if you don't,
if you don't have something happen in your parenting of your children, your children will
never have a need to develop a relationship with a higher power because you'll be their higher power
and that would be bad for their life. And it's like, it really kind of took some of the pressure
off me. It's like, yeah, I'm going to do my best, of course. And I'm also going to fail. And of
course, in the, you know, years that we've been parents, I have, you know, failed a number of
times. And also, thank God, I'm not going to fail. And I'm not going to fail. And I'm not going to
fail. And thankfully, because of the program, I know how to clean up. I know how to make amends,
even if it's to a kiddo. And so I feel like that's probably as good as it gets when it comes to
parenting, you know, acknowledging our humanness, acknowledging our failures, cleaning up our messes
the best we can, and then also remembering that God has no grandchildren.
Right. That's beautiful. And it's about, it's very much about modeling the behavior of a sober,
strong, happy man to the kids. Right. Because I know my dad was never happy. I never felt like he
was the things that you were just talking about, you know. So the only way I learned how to parent
was from a dysfunctional parent. Right. Maybe there's no way around that. But I remember going
into meetings early on when my kids were small and saying stuff like, I mean, I don't know how
I'm going to get through this. You know, the kid is doing this and that. And I'd be like,
everything's going on. And men would come up to me afterwards and say, you know, you're right where
you are. Right. Somehow it always works out. They really do. The ability now to be able to
ask questions about that. And I don't always ask about people's children or spouses unless it does
come up in the conversation. Because in a lot of ways, that's an intensely personal thing. And
unless people want to bring up their kids. A number of people I've interviewed have
children who are addicts and alcoholics. Some of the people I've interviewed, they've literally
lost their children to the diseases. Right. And that's always hard to hear. But the encouraging
thing is that they are active in AA themselves. Being able to share that makes a big difference.
I feel like it does. Yeah. I feel like for most of us, we, like you were saying earlier, we just tend
to monkey see, monkey do. However, we were raised, we tend to raise our kids in that
way. And I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really important thing.
And it's just the generational nature of that. And in a way, for me, it's like, yeah, I've got
all that generational stuff. Not all bad, but some of it was hard. But then AA and men like
yourself and so many of the other men who were farther down the road of life than me, sort of
infuse us with wisdom and perspective and different ideas, different ways of being. So that we're
not simply relying upon what we learned in our own family of origin. But now we have these other
perspectives, which we can draw on, in addition to what the principles of the program teach us,
which, you know, in so many words is trust God and let go of the fear. And what a difference that
makes in changing the course, maybe, of the generational nature of not only the disease
of alcoholism, but some of the other
isms that most of us are also afflicted with. Yeah. And that's very well put. As far as
the other diseases, one of the things I've realized is that a lot of people I know,
and this comes up from time to time on the podcast, the fact that they've been in AA
kind of opens them up to the idea that they can solve other issues in their lives with a 12-step
program. Right.
I've personally sponsored people. I myself was involved in Al-Anon at one time.
I started off in Codependence Anonymous. But I, you know, that, in fact, I stayed away from AA for
two or three months because I thought, oh, codependence is at the center of my problem.
It can't possibly be alcoholism. But then someone said, you know, you're probably an alcoholic first.
And that made all the difference in the world. But I'm always gratified when I hear people talk
that they're involved with. And I think that's one way in which a recovery interview can kind of
bridge that little bit of a gap that there is so people can feel comfortable talking about it. And
whenever people mention other programs on the podcast, I'll very gently kind of walk into the
subject matter with them and see the degree to which they want to talk about it. But I try not
to ever do anything that's try and plug Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, or one of the
other 12-step programs. And I think that's one way in which I can kind of bridge that little bit of a
gap there. What's been your experience with guys that you've sponsored whenever they come to you
with those kind of things? You know, if someone is struggling with a specific issue outside of
just related to alcoholism, I mean, especially here in Houston, where the 12-step community
is so rich and there are so many programs available. I mean, for me personally, I got
tremendous value out of Al-Anon, ACA, DA.
There are, you know, a number of programs. I probably would have joined more programs
had I had the time in my meeting schedule. But, you know, what I learned is that so these other
programs are, of course, all rooted in the 12 steps from Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe they're
slightly tweaked to just really address the specific issues. But again, it's a fellowship
of men and women in these other programs who are also connected around trying to heal certain types
of behaviors. Why not give it a shot? So, yeah, when someone comes and is struggling with,
you know, a spouse or a loved one who's active in their addiction or they're personally struggling
with issues from their childhood or with money or with relationship issues, why not avail ourselves
of all that's available, especially when we have access to it in this community? And I know,
again, another benefit of the pandemic has been the accessibility.
It's been an incredible experience. And I feel like I've been able to offer these other programs on
Zoom now. I would never suggest, because it wasn't my experience to stop going to AA. AA is the
mothership. I need that. None of this other stuff matters if I'm not sober. So AA is at my core and
foundation, and I never want to drop those meetings or that program. But to add in as time allows,
these other programs have been immensely beneficial to my recovery.
comfortable sobriety to address some of these other issues that often do accompany people
with alcoholism. I agree. And typically when you're going into AA, you're usually dragging
the other issues in there with you. Well, yeah. It's the degree to which you can talk about those
issues in an AA meeting that's made other programs so necessary. Right. In the early years of my
sobriety in AA, when you were sitting in a meeting, you brought up being a pothead or
addicted to crack cocaine. The old timers would say, oh, no, no, no, no. Go elsewhere.
And I think people still do recommend it, though. I mean, you know, but people would very innocently
bring up other issues in an AA meeting. They'd be stopped cold and they get turned off to AA
for that reason. But I think over the years, the understanding nature of the program has really
evolved to the extent that people can now say, I'm in another 12-step program out there.
And I'm dealing with that issue there. And I deal with my alcoholism issues here. But because the
programs have a common lineage, the principles are the same for both programs. It makes a big
difference. And here in other men, especially like, you know, for example, for me, it was with
Al-Anon specifically, because in my mind, my ignorance, I thought Al-Anon was for mostly women.
You know, if the guy's in AA, the gal goes to Al-Anon. And then,
to hear other men who had what I wanted and who I respected talk about going to Al-Anon and how
valuable that was in their recovery journey sort of gave me permission to go and explore Al-Anon.
And golly, I'm sure glad I did. I don't think you can really count on any one program
to take on all of the issues. Like, we can't count on our wives to listen to us talk about
everything. We need other people to talk about certain things with, because no relationship can
sustain the weight of all of that.
All those different issues. Certain things I have to talk to my male friends about. They don't have
a place in talking about it with my wife. Not because they're secret, but she doesn't have
experience with that, not being a male.
Absolutely. And of course, you know, our book encourages us to seek outside help. And it also,
you know, warns us of what contempt prior to investigation will do to our spiritual growth.
It will. It definitely will.
So how do you publicize the show?
And how much money do you make doing this?
From the beginning, I decided that it was going to be my way of giving back to AA what it had so
freely given to me. And I say that at the end of every episode. There's no sponsors. I don't get
paid. In fact, I pay the podcast company to host the podcast. That means that technically they put
it out there when I produce. And there's a cost with that and cost with other things. So I cover
all that myself. So I'm not making any money on it.
It costs.
You money in addition to substantial amounts of time.
It does. And somewhere along the way, maybe because of my insufficient knowledge of and my
feeling that I didn't want to publicize it with social media like Facebook, where you can see
somebody's name and see their picture and know everything else about their lives. I decided not
to do it. So what I've counted on is word of mouth. It just lets me be a lot cleaner with things.
Now, if somebody wants to buy the audible book that I can narrate it of the first edition of
the Big Book, they can do that. And, you know, if they want to buy the lost stories of the Big Book
audio or the book itself, they can do that. Or if they want to listen to the Big Book podcast,
they can do that. But I'm not trying to encourage, you know, people to do anything that they wouldn't
normally do. Right. Right. You want to wrap up? You got anything else? Yeah. How do you want me
to wrap it up? Just well, let me wrap it up. Adam, I want to thank you. Just thanks a million for
doing this. It means the world to me.
It enhances the quality of our relationship, which has always been and continues to be quite
strong. And I look forward to many, many more meetings with you. And you were an inspirational
part of me launching the podcast in the first place and having you do this, especially when
you were the first one. And this is 174 episodes later. We're doing this. It blows my mind,
but I'm super grateful for your involvement in it. And, you know, thanks so much for doing this.
Well, and thank you so much for
the time and effort and energy you put into this. What I think is just an incredible service to the
AA community and to, you know, have these stories available for people to listen to. I've known
people who have been in tough places in their sobriety and happen to also be disconnected from
meetings or whatever, but was able to listen to a podcast and it changed the course of their day.
So those stories that I've heard are, there's probably many, many more,
I think, in the future. So thank you for your commitment to this and modeling,
you know, what it's like to be of service to AA.
Yeah. Well, thank you. You asked me to put together questions. And as I was doing that
last night, I got an email and talk about coincidental. I got an email from a guy.
Let's see if I can find it here real quick. Here it is right here. This came in from a guy by name
of Luke Howard. Thank you for your service in producing the AA Recovery Interviews podcast.
I regularly attend meetings, but have a,
family and a demanding job. Podcasts help me supplement my recovery by allowing me to hear
others share their experience, strength, and hope at my convenience while multitasking during
driving, doing housework, et cetera, and all at the touch of a button. Your guests are clearly
engaged in the program of recovery and share powerful examples of the power of recovery.
I value and identify with the tales from quote functional alcoholics who will themselves to
impressive accomplishments, but sadly are a success. I'm not a success. I'm not a success. I'm not a
success can mask the destruction. Addiction is actively reeking in our lives. I really enjoy
your work. Thanks again for being a wonderful part of my sobriety. I am truly grateful.
So I just, you know what, there've been times that I've thought about, maybe it's time for me
to fold this thing up and, and stop. And then I get something like that and man, it just feels,
it's the fuel for the next X number of shows. So absolutely. Thank you for your participation,
for helping me make this just a
really special podcast episode, Adam. And, uh, I love you and you're, you're, you mean the world
to me. Thank you. I love you, Howard. Thank you so much. Well, my friends, that's it for today's
episode of AA recovery interviews. Thank you for tuning in. If you've enjoyed the interviews in
this podcast series, will you do a little service work by spreading the word about this rich and
meaningful listening experience? This show is another helping hand of AA. We can all extend
to alcoholics everywhere.
AA recovery interviews is available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music,
and all other podcast providers, or visit our website, aarecoveryinterviews.com,
where you can listen to every episode of AA recovery interviews. And if you want to contact
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By the way, this podcast strictly adheres to AA's 12 traditions,
and all general service office guidelines for safeguarding anonymity online.
I pay all production costs, and no one receives financial gain from the show.
AA recovery interviews and my guests do not speak for or represent AA at large.
This podcast is simply my way of giving back to AA, that which has been so freely given to me.
The next episode of AA recovery interviews is on the way, so keep coming back. It'll be here soon.
Thank you for listening to AA recovery interviews.