The Online Meeting That Taught a Pessimist How to Live – Tom S.

Thank you, and thank you, babe, for inviting me here. That's who you people will have to blame when we're finished here in case you have one of the file complaints or organized tar and feathering, however you take up your discipline. At any rate, I'm really, really thrilled to be here. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. I mean, I'm going to give my usual experience strength and hope. But I would just like to say that I really am grateful to be here. This is just AA is the wildest, craziest thing that I ever did. That's one of the reasons I was out there drinking and doing other substances was trying to do crazy stuff. And this is crazier than anything that I could ever find to do. I mean just this little experience is just really weird. Anyway, so I drank a whole lot, you guys. And I drank for a long time. And I did other substances as well. And at certain times, I would have told you those were the problems. But my real base, my foundation was always alcohol. And I have the usual range of great experiences from alcohol. a couple of DUIs, two or three suicidal gestures where I kind of either nobody noticed and I just continued on with my evening or I talked to the police. I convinced the police I really wasn't going to drink Pine Sol or, you know, those kinds of things. You know, the usual no relationships ever really lasted or even had a chance, although there were many of them, but nothing ever lasted. I was at it a long time. I was at after 20 years after I knew I had a problem. I had been exposed to AA with the DUI in 1993 and um and I will humbly say that I was probably not an alcoholic at that point and but I did enjoy the meetings I thought it was I you know I almost wished I could join like you guys seemed like a great group I enjoyed the stories the redemptive you know the redemption stories the dramatic arc uh I really loved it and um but I was like you know i was just listening and being entertained, and I was looking in on other people's problems. And I went to an inpatient out treatment about seven years after that and went to some more AA meetings and went to some other kind of counseling. And then that was to try and save a marriage. That was another gesture, and that didn't work. And then three years afterthat, I got another DUI, And I found AA much less charming that, you know, a decade later because I could see the writing on the wall. But really, I have to tell you, like, I am a huge, huge believer, a huge fan of this program. And I can't tell you all the – well, I really can't because I don't have enough time to tell you all of the problems that I had, all of them. But I will try to summarize it in this way. i went you know i i have suffered um from depression and anxiety um and um there was that and at first alcohol um treated those it gave me relief in fact somebody clued me into this the other day that um there's a version of the promises that where alcohol is what is making them come true and alcohol did for me what i couldn't do for myself It introduced me to the world, to the word serenity. It made situations that were baffling, made them feel intuitive to me and how to handle them, gave me peace, did all these things. And what I don't know and what I can't identify is where it went from treating and giving me relief to all those things to causing all those Things. But at some point it did. And it just kept getting worse and worse. And kind of, when I look back, the scariest... Oh, guys, I have 999 days sober today. I'm about to go into four digits tomorrow. Anyway, so here's what I can't do. I can'T judge anybody else's path because I was convinced that it was bullshit. it um it was not i had seen just enough to know just enough they have just enough to build my case against it which is easy to do you guys know like if you don't want it then there's plenty of stuff to to pick out and pick apart and you know if you're looking for an excuse it's there um like anything else like any other experience you have but so i uh so these things happen so i became aware and and even wrote in my journal much to my surprise when i was going back through it 2001 i wrote i am losing the battle with drugs and alcohol i you know i i need to do something about this obviously um i didn't do much about it and then uh so there's a difference we know you have a problem and then knowing you're an alcoholic, admitting you're an alcoholic. Then knowing or realizing you can't stop. That's what I realized. I couldn't stop At certain points I could get 30 days Later as time went on I could gets 17 days. I'm thinking about specific instances like I did it all the time. I was talking about these are my career bests before I finally they got sober so I think I got 17 days something about one of those awards ceremonies just made me insane with a with anger and jealousy so that's that ended like hearing the these people having a great day like getting an award for their movie or their script or something it just made me so insane that I had to drink after 17 days then it got down to like three or four days and that was all I could do even with full intentions and so what happened is a character defect of mine is that I just am a pessimist, I seize upon doom and I just saw it like well I have alcoholism I can't handle it myself AA is not for me I was convinced of that the specific thing for me was um the god stuff um and so um i just thought that was it that was my story i got a i got disease it's terminal i'm doomed and um and so all of these things that i had exhibited up to that point the self-destructiveness all of these things just sort of resigned themselves resolved themselves into um i would i moved to the city i live in now pasadena i tried to stay i picked a place that was within about 10 or 12 different bars and restaurants i tried i cut down on my drinking and driving i was out of a relationship my drug dealers had died i couldn't get anymore so i just can't really focused on the got down to business and really uh focused on drinking and um i guess so what i started to say was what scares me the most is i didn't realize how bad it was like i just did not realize that like i was just um i think i did every now you know maybe every now and then i would just have a glimpse or a feeling but some combination of boredom and laziness just reinforced itself with the self-destructiveness and the futility the the the notion that it was futile that I was helpless that I wasn't just going to die this way and I turned into a falling down drunk I am nasty and what that's another evolution from from me causing alcohol began to cause me stress anxiety shame I would do shameful things the other thing that happened is in the early stages, uh, I was pretty nice. Like I got friendlier and happier. Um, in the later stages, I just got nastier and meaner and people like people did, I would get yelled, I would cut off. People would yell at me in bars. People wouldn't want to fight me. Um... I would get thrown out. I was just out looking for trouble. You know, I went one time two or three times into some skid row areas on some very self-destructive journeys. One time I offered a guy money to kill me. another time you know i just um it's like that thing in the big book or you know where we're familiar with it i just didn't want to go on living but i uh couldn't do anything else and so um what i will tell you is is that um it just got shittier and shittnier and shattier and faster and faster the cycle just kept going like that. And somehow through all of that, I was able to keep the same job. I was able to my professional license against every, you know, against all my efforts to throw it all away. And I got to a point where I was going to be able to retire and also then the pandemic and the lockdown hit right around that time. whether I see I saw I had a year and the pandemic hit and I had all everything I needed then to really the isolation the self-pity the doomed outlook were all just came to fruition and I and so I got to telework for my job which means I got this stay home and drink and I saw what would happen to me if I retired which is I would just drink every day and instead of that seeming like an absolute reward something just happened i just i can't explain it uh i went through some things in the relationship and i was talking to my sister one day on the phone and i said you know i i need to stop drinking and i hate aa she said you no they have them on they have these meetings on zoom now and i said maybe maybe it'll be different i said i've been to it i hate it i don't you know it's just like so i tried it and a gentleman named uh so i got on this meeting called One Day at a Time. I thought I got on the LA local thing, and it turned out to be a meeting that started right in the pandemic. It had hundreds of people on it. The first time I got one, it was a gentleman named Peg, and he was down in Key West, Florida. And I recognized something in there that I'd recognized from other AA meetings, which was just there was something about him some calm just he didn't he just got on and just started talking but it was something there there was some peace in his voice that I knew I wanted and I recognized it from my other experience with AA there's just certain people in AA that you recognize that just humble down to earth everything's gonna be okay we're just here and so I found I could sit in that meeting and I sat in there every day. And I even shared a few times. I did not do anything else. I didn't do the program, but I went to that meeting. And what I saw was because it was such a huge meeting as day after day, I realized that everybody could not be bullshitting. I realized the program really did work, that they were not going to shovel me into a church basement and ask for money. There was going to be no tithing involved. And I heard enough to realize that the higher power thing was not a car trick to get you into church and get you to Christianity. And i realized that it really did work, that people were not bullshitting, that their lives were so much better, that it wasn't just that they could stop drinking, that their wives were good. And so I realized it worked. And then I started to realize it worked for me. And I got so scared. That was so scary. I did my sixth step right then. I was not willing. I was now ready to give up. I went out for six more weeks. It was like a movie sped up again. and i was back and i i went back to that meeting i said i'm done i will do whatever you guys tell me and that's the short version of it i just at that point i i got a sponsor i got an internet what they called a temporary sponsor it was a gentleman i had never laid eyes on before he emailed me he was in australia and we started every saturday we started spending an hour or two going over the book and starting on the steps and then gradually i realized i needed something local and I found a local meeting here even though it was on zoom and I got a sponsor here and we started I went months without ever meeting in person another um recovered alcoholic I it was all zoom there was no meetings out here in person and I did not meet my sponsor until several months after I had him for my local sponsor and then all I can say is is that And I finally had a way to live, and I had never, never had that. I just grew up not knowing what was important to me, not knowing how to get through a single day. All I did was bounce in between one frustration to another, maybe one positive affirmation to another. Nothing lasted. Nothing meant anything. I did not have any structure. And the program gradually taught me how to live, taught me how to get up every day, taught me that how I treated myself mattered, how I treated others mattered. It taught me that every moment is important, that every movement is of interest. You have many, many decisions every day and they can all be important. It got me, I pray. I'm still an atheist. I pray because that prayer just means asking for something. And I did not screw around. I don't care. I will call it God. It's a nickname for my higher power. I have a higher power as in nothing to do with God. But it's something that makes me feel less alone, makes me feeling like I'm not doing it all by myself. And it's somebody that I can, something that I can say, ask for some help from. and early on my prayers were profane i'll warn you all i did was i just want to stop effing feeling this way uh i just wanna stop feeling this way and um and then um you know the program just and when i when i finally got back in the promises were what got me i swear i was like if you can And the fear of other people, that encompassed so many other defects for me. I was like, I will sign up for that. You guys had me with that problem. And I thought, as I was going through it, I'll tell you this, I thought I was gonna fail. I thought that your sponsor could, at some point, your sponsor would look you in the eyes for about 30 seconds and just say, you're out. You are constitutionally incapable of being honest or they would find some other problem like every time my any of my sponsors told me we had finished that step i was really really i honestly thought that they could just like find you um you know find you to be one of those unfortunates like sorry buddy you know or refuse to keep taking along. So I feel so privileged. Every meeting I go to, almost every meeting, I am touched by somebody. I'm certainly made to think by somebody, I think this program and the weird anarchic, what is it, syndicalist, whatever approaches to everything are fascinating that there's no rules nobody's really in charge and the people who think there are rules can't tell you what they are there's all these unwritten rule i mean i really i tried to fit in a lot and then i it took me a while to realize that uh there aren't really any rules there might be a group conscience for a particular meeting but so um but that doesn't mean that that's an a you know that's a rule and i was like this is this is nuts crazy stuff and you can just go and hang out with 35 strangers, and somebody will get up there and start talking about how they were in despair. You know, during the week, they were in despair, you know, people share their inner lives, the stories in the big book. One of my sponsors took, in the lockdown, we just would meet every Sunday and read the whole thing, so we read the stories, and so you have these people, just everyday people, and they're sharing their stories, they're showing their life stories, and those stories are magnificent because they're cliffhanger because you can get to a point in there where you're like how is this person going to get out of that how in the world is thisperson going toget out ofthat and the answer every time is because of aa then you go you know you can stop at the middle and go to the end and look at what happens and that's what happened to me like something happened i just didn't want to die anymore i didn'twant to die an alcoholic death i didn'wantto do the slow organ failure I didn't want to do the William Holden smash your brain out, you know, smash your skull and, you know, because you fall down drinking by yourself in your apartment. That could have been me about 100,000 times. And I just did not want that. I just didn't wanted anymore. And so what I will say is that a this program not only gave me life, it gave me a reason to live, gave me life worth living um it made its first it started out it just made not drinking possible and it made it tolerable then it made it like absolutely essential like my life revolves around this and for good reason um and so i will just end with this this is from the stories this is page 374 in the fourth edition from the story called flooded with feeling it reads as follows um the last paragraph basically. I do know that my life is different now. I haven't had a drink since I came to AA. I have fewer resentments and I don't spend much time thinking about the past. I found that my experience can be of help to other people. I've come to believe that hard times are not just meaningless suffering and that something good might turn up at any moment. That's a big change for someone who used to come to in the morning feeling sentenced to another day of life. When When I wake up today, there are lots of possibilities. I can hardly wait to see what's going to happen next. I keep coming back because it works. I should have just read that and saved you guys 20 minutes. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you so much, Tom. Please unmute and help me thank Tom.