Finding Belonging: Marty's Journey Through Family and Sobriety

My name's Marty, I'm an alcoholic.

I want to thank Oscar for asking me to come out and share tonight.

Carlos, Oscar, Juan.

It's interesting coming to this group, you know.

I knew this group when it was the Life's in Sessions group.

And I knew the guys and the girls that started that group

from a long time ago.

And to see it grow and still be in existence

is really, really cool.

I have a sobriety date since November 10th, 1977.

I have a sponsor, his name's Clancy Emeslin.

And I have a home group and it's called the Pacific Group.

We're on the west side of Los Angeles.

And those three things are really good to me.

You know, I was chatting with Clancy on Monday.

It's my day to check in with him.

And he invited me over to his house.

And that has never happened, right?

So I'm going, uh-oh, what's going on?

All right, now, Clancy's 91 years old.

So I could have been called over for anything.

I thought I'm gonna have to move to trash cans

or cut down a limb or move some furniture for him

or something like that.

And I get over to his house

and he just wanted me to go on his walk.

He has to walk three times a day, you know?

And so I went on this walk with him

and we got back to his house and I thought,

okay, is this it?

You know, do I just hop in my car and leave?

And he says, hey, kid, come inside.

I went, okay, so went inside with him.

I haven't been in his house for decades, right?

And so I go in there, we sit down.

He gives me a cup of coffee

because that's what AA's done to me.

It's messed me up with coffee.

And he says, so what's going on, kid?

I went, nothing really.

I mean, he says, well, I just thought

maybe you needed to check in.

And I like literally had to think for a minute, you know?

I was like, no, actually, sir, I'm current with you.

And I went, wow, I have nothing to report to my sponsor.

Here I've been waiting years for this opportunity

with this very busy man who sponsors a few hundred people,

right, and I finally get the opportunity.

I just have nothing to say.

And I says, Clancy.

I got to believe it's because I've been doing the right things

at the right time for many, many years now.

And therefore, I have nothing to check in with.

And it was just a weird feeling

because that's not normally me.

You know, I'm like Alex.

I got sober at a very, very young age.

You know, I got sober at 15 in Simi Valley, you know?

There's only two things to do in Simi Valley,

and that's get drunk or get sober.

And I took the latter.

I don't want to jump too far.

I don't want to jump too far ahead.

I know I see a few of you are judging me, you know?

Thanks, Tom.

A few people are judging me.

And I got a quepazo when I walked in.

I'm not Mexican.

I'm half Eskimo and I'm half German, you know?

And my dad, too, has been married a long time.

Neil, the first speaker.

My dad's been married 43 years.

Took six different women, but he's been married

for a combination of 43 years.

But see, that's who raised me. It was my dad.

My dad's the German, my mom's the Eskimo.

I never met my mom until my high school graduation.

It was the first time I met my mom.

I'm the youngest of three.

The divorce happened when I was about 11 months old.

The divorce was bitter and bad, and my dad moved

into a brand new house with us three kids.

And when we moved into the house,

pictures of mom didn't go back up on the wall.

So that became the missing piece of the puzzle,

because I looked nothing like my dad.

You know, Bruce and a couple other people know my dad.

My dad's six foot two, blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.

And I don't look like that guy.

Except for the blond hair.

Come on, gray is the new blond, right?

So I didn't look like this dude I was calling dad.

You know, I already felt inside things ain't right.

You know, I don't know what it was.

I didn't know how to articulate any of that stuff,

but I just knew it just wasn't right, you know?

And then I look at my outside picture,

and my outside picture, because of that cultural difference

of German and Eskimo, all three of us kids

look a little different from one another.

You know, my brother got a lot of my father's height.

He's six foot one.

You know, and his facial structure's

a little different than mine.

And if you looked at my brother as we were growing up,

my brother really looked Korean, you know?

And then my sister, who was the next one that came out,

a lot of people know my sister Cindy.

She does a lot of speaking in Alcoholics Anonymous.

She's a great lady.

But she got a lot of my mother's Eskimo features.

She got the really slanted eyes.

And so in school, as we were all teased growing up,

she was teased as being a Jap and a chink, you know?

And then there's me, you know?

And I was a thinker.

Before, I was a drinker.

And I put two and two together when I was a little kid.

My name's Marty, but my given name's Martin.

And I, too, when I looked in the mirror,

thought I was looking at a Mexican.

And I used to practice this in my bathroom mirror.

I used to cock my head back and squint my eyes a little bit.

And I used to go, it's a Martin, you know?

And that R rolled so perfectly, I knew I was Mexican.

So I feel bad on the inside, and it looks weird on the outside

because I got a white father, a Korean brother,

a Japanese sister.

I feel Mexican.

And we're all told we're Eskimos, you know?

And so the picture was messed up.

I was born and raised out in the Riverside, San Bernardino area.

And yes, that's what makes me an alcoholic.

There's three of us Eskimos back in the 60s.

There's none of them out there anymore, right?

And so, anywho, it's important like it is, I'm sure, today.

You know, when you're a kid, you got to find that little clique

that you're going to hang out with.

And so there weren't too many Eskimos cruising Riverside area.

So we all try to find our own little gang,

our own little clique of people to hang out with.

My brother, who some of you do know, Mike,

he's like really the book nerd, the geek, you know?

He was an ROTC before he went even to the military, you know?

And I don't know what ROTC stands for,

but it's military for kids in school.

It doesn't make sense.

ROTC kids, it doesn't.

Anyways, so anyways, that was my brother.

My sister hung out with these things called the stoners,

you know, and that's her story.

And me, like I said, the inside was messed up.

The outside looked pretty bad and I'm going to make it worse

because who I chose to hang out was with this kid

I met at Riverside City College.

And he was everything I wanted to be.

I'm nine and a half years old.

This kid's 11.

Now think about it.

Go back that far.

If you're nine and a half years old,

you get to hang out with an 11 year old.

You already got it going on, you know?

And so externally, he's everything I want to be.

I've always wanted to be white.

He was white.

You know, I've always wanted the blonde hair.

He had the blonde hair.

He had the green eyes.

Everything about this kid, he's older than me.

I wanted to be him, not me.

And I started hanging out with him.

And if you have low self-worth and low self-esteem issues

like I do, you hang out with people long enough,

you'll start dressing like them, walking like them,

and talking like them.

And what I did is I met a kid that just moved out

from Louisville, Kentucky.

And the only person that sounded like him

on My Little Bitty World out in Riverside

was Jethro Bodine on the Beverly Hillbillies.

So I met this kid that moved out from Louisville, Kentucky.

He's about as country as you can get.

And because of my low self-worth,

I did.

I started dressing like him, walking like him,

and talking like him.

You know, I became full bilingual after hanging out

with him for six months, because I started speaking Southern.

You know?

So my picture's all messed up, and I'm even

going to make it look worse.

Because I'm walking into my own family, into our own house,

and I'd say, how y'all doing?

You know?

And I'd make reference to things being about yea, long,

and stuff that was over yonder, you know?

And I spoke Southern for such a long time,

I still haven't gotten rid of those words.

I still use yonder a lot.

But I just messed up the whole picture.

You know, I needed a drink long before I took a drink.

And you know, I've been in trouble as far back

as I can remember.

I started smoking cigarettes when I was six years old.

I have now raised two kids of my own, and it's weird.

It was weird looking at my kids at the age

when I started doing X, Y, and Z.

Because I looked at my son when he was six years old,

and that chest cavity's not even developed.

And here I am smoking cigarettes, you know?

I started ditching school.

In first grade.

Yeah, now think about that for a minute.

Where the hell was I going, you know?

I don't know up to that sandbox.

Well, I don't know why, but I would ditch school.

I loved the excitement, you know?

And my dad at this time was a probation officer.

And part-time he was going to school to get his,

he has two PhDs behind his name.

I think if you get one PhD behind your name,

that's pretty good.

He's got two PhDs behind his name,

and he's a marriage family therapist.

So he's really, really smart.

But at this time in my life, he was a probation officer,

so I already knew what drugs and alcohol were about.

My dad's a drunk, so I know the effects.

I mean, I knew a lot before I even picked up.

And like I said, I've been smoking cigarettes.

And I'm hanging out with this hillbilly at nine years old.

It was the summer before I was getting ready to turn 10.

I went over to the hillbilly's house,

and he turned me on to drugs and alcohol on the same day.

And while my dad was a probation officer,

he was also a intern for one of his PhDs

at this place out in San Bernardino

called Patton State Hospital.

And it was a nut ward, you know?

And one of the only structural things

that we had in our family growing up,

that dinner was at 5.30.

You know, dad, Pappy, was a bad drunk.

So a lot of kids had to come be in at six o'clock at night

or seven o'clock at night,

or some of the luckier kids got to be out

until the street lights came on.

That was their time clock, you know?

Our dad was a drunk.

We didn't have to come in at all.

You know, we can come in at any time we wanted to.

But anyways, the only structure was dinner was at 5.30.

And I remember we were all sitting down,

and we hadn't had a mom for a while.

And he looked at all of us,

and he's interning at that nut ward, you know?

And he looked at us three kids and says,

you know what, you guys have always wanted a mom.

And we thought, yeah.

He says, you're gonna get one once she gets out, you know?

And he started dating one of his clients at the nut ward.

So sure enough, a weekend pass came along.

We met mom number two.

And that's a whole nother story.

But anyways, that became part of my story,

not his marriages, but what I saw.

You know, a lot of us, a lot of us have trauma as kids.

A lot of us have dysfunctional things as kids.

And I picked up a lot of women issues.

And conversely, I also picked up a lot of male issues, too,

because of what was going on in our household.

It's a totally different environment today.

I've got 41 years of sobriety.

My sister has 42 years of sobriety.

Our current mom has 43 years of sobriety.

My dad has 44 years of sobriety.

So I don't know if this is a family disease, but I know it can be a family problem.

So I don't know if this is a family disease, but I know it can be a family problem.

So I don't know if this is a family disease, but I know it can be a family recovery, you know.

And my older brother, he's been in and out a few times.

He has enough chips to mosaic this podium.

But he currently has 1999, 20 years of sobriety, you know.

And we found out much later on in life

that part of my dad's fourth step come up out of nowhere.

I'm 25 years old, I'm at work.

If I'm 25, it makes my sister about 26.

My brother, 27 or 28, depending on what time of year it was.

My brother, 27 or 28, depending on what time of year it was.

My brother, 27 or 28, depending on what time of year it was.

My brother, 27 or 28, depending on what time of year it was.

And I get a call at work and they said,

hey, we have an older brother.

I said, we've always had an older brother.

And my sister goes, no, we have one older than him.

And part of my dad's fourth step came out of nowhere.

And dinner at 5.30, right?

So we like questioned dad, I was like, what's going on here?

He's like, oh yeah, sort of forgot to tell you guys.

You might have an older brother.

And we do.

And now he has 36 years of sobriety.

You know, coming in our house is like going to rehab.

Yeah.

You're going to get sober.

So anyways, he's now in our life and that's his story.

And it's a good story as a matter of fact.

And so anyways, out in Riverside area,

everybody's doing their own thing.

Dad's doing his thing.

He's a really bad drunk.

Mom lost custody of us kids

because she's a really bad drunk.

She's still doing drugs and alcohol today.

My mom's 80 years old.

She moved back to Alaska where her people are.

And she's 80 years old and she's still drinking

and doing cocaine on a regular basis.

We figured nothing's going to kill that woman

because nothing can live

inside of her body, you know.

She drank and snorted it all out.

But God bless her, 80 and still kicking butt, you know.

And we have all at one point or another

taken her to an AA meeting over the years.

I'll share about that in a minute.

But anyways, so everybody's doing their own thing, you know.

My brother and sister are also tearing it up

and I'm not doing that good neither.

And I'm hanging out with this hillbilly family a lot.

I won't stick into my drunk-a-log too long.

I will just qualify real quick.

I picked up three break-in and enterings and two DUIs.

And as I said earlier, I got sober at 15.

You really should not have a DUI

if you don't have a driver's license.

But I got two of those.

And just to qualify one of those DUIs, I was at a party.

It seemed like everybody was making out but little Marty.

So I asked the guy that took me to the party,

can I just drive your car around the block?

He threw me the keys to get rid of me.

He says, yeah, just drive around the block.

And I didn't know how to drive.

I'm short today.

My first DUI I got when I was 13.

I'm short today.

When I was 13, I was really, really small.

And my view of the road was between the dashboard

and the steering wheel.

So I had this little half-moon view of the road.

And I made Essie and Marty look natural

because I was a low rider.

And I was sitting straight up.

But I get in this car and I peeled out the car

like they do on Starsky and Hutch and Beretta,

try to make it look good.

And according to the police report,

I hit the end of the street at about 65 miles an hour.

And I found out this is 19, I'm going to guess,

74, 75.

And back then, there was no power steering.

Rack and pinion just started.

So there's a lot of play in the steering wheel.

What I found out at the end of the street

is that this does not constitute a full turn, you know?

And evidently, I tore up somebody's nice green lawn,

hit the main beam of the porch,

and boom, I'm inside their house,

you know, with this Ford Mustang.

And like I said, I watched Starsky and Hutch and Beretta,

and I knew I was in trouble.

So I started wiping everything down

like they do on the TV, you know?

And you got to wipe everything thoroughly down

because, you know, they always leave something out.

They always leave something behind.

And I didn't want to be that dude that left something behind.

So I wiped everything down.

I swallowed this little roach clip

because I do outside issues.

Drank the rest of my Miller beer,

wiped it all down, threw it on the floor.

And I'm like cleaning my stuff up big time.

I'm drunk, but I'm coherent, you know?

And I'm a gentleman, too.

So I wipe everything down.

I get out of the car.

I go up the front door.

I'm trying to wiggle this front door open.

I could have went out this 10-foot hole I made in the wall,

but I'm a gentleman, so I'm trying to exit.

I go to the front door and start wiping all that down.

I start running down to the party.

And I guess this is when I blacked out, you know?

And according to people at the party and the police report,

I just went up to the car owner.

I said, here, here's the keys to your car.

He says, where is it?

I said, it's parked around the corner.

And I go get it.

He says, I can't.

I'll go get it.

He said, I don't think you can, neither.

And so, you know, it showed up as a big ordeal, you know, 74.

You can do a lot of damage in 74 and get away with it.

And I got away with it.

I got away with that one.

And my second DUI, just to wrap up my drunk-a-log, is I went out to this Hillbilly family.

It was on a Saturday night, just like this, you know?

The sun was getting ready to set.

It's a beautiful night in Riverside, California.

And I'm hanging out with the Hillbilly family all day long because they're all drinkers, you know?

And that's how you get alcohol when you're 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15,

is that you got to know old people that don't mind having kids drunk around them.

And the Hillbilly dad was this guy, you know?

And he'd buy us beer all day long.

We started drinking on a Saturday over there at the house.

And about the time the sun was getting ready to set, he yells out,

uh, we're almost out of beer.

And everybody goes, oh, and he says, let's go get more.

Yeah, you know?

And the Hillbilly dad said, you know, I'm too drunk to drive.

And he looked at his oldest son, Ronnie.

He says, Ronnie, drive us to the liquor store so you can get more beer.

And Ronnie goes, I'm too drunk to drive.

Get Tim to drive.

Tim's my Hillbilly friend.

And Tim goes, I'm too drunk to drive, too.

Let Marty drive.

He's driven before, you know?

And what can go wrong here, right?

And so I looked at Mr. Mercer, and I said, you know,

I really shouldn't drive because I'm drunk, too.

And he says, you know, the good old drunk line, you know?

Don't worry about it.

I'll be in the front seat with you if anything goes bad.

No, that didn't happen, you know?

And we take off to the liquor store,

and I'm just scared because my only episode of driving

is all the way inside somebody's house.

And everybody's having fun.

This is pre-seatbelt days.

It's pre-headrest days.

The two Hillbilly boys are in the back seat, lean over

in the front seat, all laughing and joking and having fun.

I got that petrified drunk stare on the road, you know?

And the Hillbilly dad is patting me on the back.

See, you're doing it hard.

Everybody's drunk.

But unfortunately, there's a car in front of me.

Stopped at a red light.

And I sort of freaked out.

When I freaked out, I was just stiffening up my leg,

and my foot was on the gas pedal.

So sure enough, I gassed it, and I rear-ended this car.

And this is when something bad happened,

because when I rear-ended the car,

their heads went forward, their heads came back,

their heads fell off.

And the Hillbilly dad just went, oh my god,

you just decapitated two people.

And he started throwing up on me.

And you know, if you throw up on me, I'm gonna throw up back.

And the two Hillbilly boys started throwing up on us.

It's just a big old puke fest in the 65 Chevy Nova

that I just ruined, and I rear-ended this car, you know?

And we're all drunk.

And the two people get out of their car,

and they start walking back,

and the Hillbilly dad freaked out.

It's like, oh my god, they're zombies.

They're coming back, you know?

And what happened is I just rear-ended two prostitutes

who were getting ready to go out and work for the night.

And when I rear-ended them,

their heads went forward,

and when their heads came back,

their wigs fell off.

And when you're drunk, that, was that you?

Marty, you go, girl.

But it looked like I decapitated two people, you know?

And so anyways, that's my second DUI.

Couple break and enterings.

No big deal.

I didn't steal anything.

On my last break and enter, this was pretty cool.

I was just chatting with somebody.

I went to that desert powwow that just happened,

and I was chatting with somebody before the powwow.

And we were talking about that,

you know that excitement when you're running away

from something?

You know, just that full rush.

He's talking about, he loved to steal cars

and look in the rearview mirror

as somebody's yelling and anything, you know?

And he loved that rush.

And I went, yeah, you know, my last break and entering,

police actually showed up.

And they started shooting at me and this hillbilly.

And there's nothing more exhilarating when you're running

and you hear something going right by your head going,

like, what was that, you know?

And that's just that rush.

It's that good stuff, man.

Anyways, calm down, calm down.

And so anyways, there's all that, you know?

My dad started acting weird,

because he's always been a drunk and a womanizer.

I mean, he gives up anything.

And that line in the big book where it says,

we cease to fight anything or anyone,

that's my dad's motto.

He doesn't fight anything, you know?

He just gives everything up.

And my dad started acting weird.

He started going to this place out in Riverside

called the Arlington Club.

We didn't know what the Arlington Club was.

And he's currently on mom number three.

And you know, when he got sober, mom number three left.

You know, and she had three of her own kids.

He had three of his kids.

We had this big house in Riverside

right next to Riverside City College.

And when she moved out,

we ended up with some empty rooms in our house.

And my dad looked at us kids and he says,

you know, I'm having a hard time meeting mortgage.

So I'm gonna start moving people in

from the Arlington Club to help me meet mortgage.

And we're like, yeah, whatever, you know?

We don't even know what the Arlington Club is, you know?

And so who my dad moved into these empty rooms

was the first person who moved right up my alley.

He moved in this guy's house.

He moved in this guy's house. He moved in this guy's house.

I named Cowboy Dave.

It seemed like everybody had nicknames back in the 70s.

Right?

And so Cowboy Dave moved in.

He's this big dude.

He could fill up the whole doorway.

And he was Southern like me.

And we sat around the living room

and we'd share stories back and forth.

And when I couldn't convince him

that I was hillbilly enough for him,

I'd start singing hillbilly songs.

Like, you know, what you gonna do when the pond goes dry?

You know, uh-huh.

Gonna sit on the bank and watch tadpoles die.

Yes, sir.

So anyways, you know, I just trying to commiserate

with my hillbilly friend, you know,

and he's this big Texan boy.

And the next guy, my person, my dad moved in

was this little lady named Dee.

I always use these names

because after 41 years of sobriety,

I have so many small world stories, it's ridiculous.

You know, I know a lot of you in this room,

but it's a trip.

I could be on vacation, Yosemite, you know,

and I hit a meeting and all of a sudden I'll see Noel there.

You know, it's like,

I have so many small world stories nowadays.

So I use these names because I'd love to run into them.

You know, I'd love to see Cowboy Dave again.

Next person my dad moved in,

is this little lady named Dee.

She's about four foot 11,

had this oily stringy brown hair,

and she about eight or nine teeth left

because she's doing something else, you know?

And man, she's about 19 and a half months pregnant.

I mean, she's like way out there, you know?

And she would moan all day long in her bedroom

because she's on disability from this pregnancy

and just, you know,

and then her boyfriend Dexter would show up on his Harley,

come on our driveway, come on our lawn,

rev his Harley engine because he didn't have a horn

on that bike.

And that was his horn.

And dude, she stopped moaning.

She'd run out and she put this blue jean,

me and my sister talk about this a lot.

She had put on this blue jean coat

and it didn't even go around her belly, you know?

And she was so pregnant.

She used to get on the back of this motorcycle backwards

and she'd interlock her arms onto Dexter's arms

and they're off to the Arlington Club, you know?

And Cowboy Dave would go to the Arlington Club.

And last person my dad moved in

was this guy named Leonard.

Now, not every kind of an Alcoholics Anonymous,

is wired right.

Leonard was a full on pedophile.

And the unfortunate thing is he just moved in the house

with three teenage kids.

And we lived a block away from Riverside City College

and his pickup line on all three of us kids

is that he's going to college

studying early childhood development

and could we help him with his classes?

And it worked on all three of us kids.

You know, all three of us have stories about Leonard,

you know, so love to run into him as an adult now,

especially with a mallet in my hand.

But anyways, that,

so that was the Arlington Club.

We still don't know what the Arlington Club is,

but it's got a eclectic set of people over there, you know?

And then my sister one night OD'd on Southern Comfort.

And when she got out of Riverside Community Hospital,

my dad gave her an ultimatum.

You either join AA or you join AA.

And we're like, what?

And so my sister that night went to the Arlington Club.

She came back, she goes, oh my God, you guys,

the Arlington Club is Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now us kids, we never heard of that.

We're like, well, what's that?

You know, we thought she's gonna learn how to drink

or get some new connections or something.

I don't know what we're thinking.

And Cindy goes, no, they don't drink.

And me and my brother were perplexed.

It's like, like, don't drink what?

You know?

And she says, they don't drink alcohol at all.

I have to go to AA and I don't get to drink anymore.

So the next night when she went to her meeting,

the Arlington Club, we threw a big old party

with all of her friends, all of our friends.

We're saying goodbye to Cindy, like she's dying, you know?

Bye, good luck.

And my brother ended up rolling a car

with the owner of the car that he was in

and they were upside down on somebody's lawn

and they got arrested.

They went to juvenile hall.

When he got out of juvenile hall,

he got the same ultimatum my sister got.

You either join AA or you join AA.

So I'm losing my whole household to this thing called AA.

And my dad got a job transfer from Riverside

to this place called Simi Valley.

At this time, it was my ninth grade year.

I'd already been kicked out of every school in the world.

Every school in Riverside, Poly High, Ramona High,

and some other high school,

I got kicked out of them all in ninth grade

because I have a hard time with showing up, I guess.

And so we moved to Simi Valley

and things got really, really weird for me, you know?

Because my whole family's going to AA every single night,

you know, and there used to be this thing back in the 70s

called the meeting after the meeting, you know?

And the meeting after the meeting seemed to be at our house

because there's three members in our house that was sober,

you know, and I'm in my bedroom trying to get my groove on

and you guys would show up, you know?

You talk about the speaker you heard that night.

Oh, he was great when he said that, or when she said this,

or gosh, she's so spiritual, he's so spiritual.

You just make me puke, you know?

And I started running out of everything.

And one night I did, I ran out of everything.

I drank everything I had.

I stole all the money I could possibly steal to buy whatever.

And I started scraping all the seeds and the stem

out of my jean drawer and I started smoking that.

I started smoking all my screens and things are getting really,

really desperate.

And one night I had nothing and you guys came over,

you really upset me and I had nothing in my bedroom.

I'm like, what do I do?

And I looked up in my closet and there's three bongs

up in my closet and I went, there's water in that bong.

This lady up here tried it.

There's no way you go, oh, if you didn't try it.

So I started drinking my bong water, you know?

And my whole family's smart.

My dad's got a couple PhDs.

My brother should be a medical doctor,

but his drinking career kicked him out three weeks

before he graduated.

He graduated medical school.

So my brother's really smart.

My sister just got her second master's degree last month.

And my sister's like, my whole family's smart.

But my brother walked in as I'm drinking these bongs,

you know, drinking my bong water.

And he goes, oh, you think you're so cute.

You should put beer in your bong.

I'm like, God, is he smart, you know?

And so I scored on some Old English 800,

threw that in my bong, hit that for a few days.

And I drank that and I guarantee that make your teeth itch,

you know?

Two day old, Old English 800 with bongs.

It was a bunch of resin in it.

It was pretty gnarly.

And so I went to A&A with my family, you know?

They talked me into going to a meeting.

This is 1977.

My whole family's sober.

Disco was in.

Polyester was happening.

And John Travolta was the man, you know?

And my whole family, unfortunately,

was really into disco.

And they put on their best John Travolta starter kit.

And what they used to do in Simi Valley for excitement is they

get dressed up.

On Friday night, and they come out here to the San Fernando

Valley.

Yeah, exactly.

That's hot, man, right?

I'm 15 years old.

I went, no, I don't want to do that.

And so my sister talked me into going to a meeting.

So I went, OK, I'll go on that Friday night.

You guys seem to really enjoy that Friday night thing.

And it was over here in Canoga Park somewhere

on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

There was a church, tall roof.

I think it's a garden center today.

We went to this meeting.

And they talked about the speaker I was going to hear that night.

You're going to love this speaker.

You're going to love this speaker.

You're going to love this speaker.

Heard it all the way out there, you know?

And I didn't know what I was in for.

But it was an interesting meeting.

It was about 200 people on a Friday night.

They went to this meeting.

It was just like this.

There's a podium with an aisle.

And there's five chairs on this side, five chairs on that way.

And it went way back in the church.

And this very first speaker I got to hear speaking

in Alcoholics Anonymous was this guy named Norm Alpe.

Now, a few of you don't even know who this is.

But Norm Alpe used to give one hell of a talk, you know?

Just a dynamite guy.

He loved Alcoholics Anonymous.

And he had so much energy.

You felt him when he walked into the room.

Norm Alpe was that dynamic, you know?

And I heard him speak that night.

And I was all ears.

My dad always believes in sitting in the front row, you know?

When you go to college, as long as my dad has gone to college,

he believes in sitting in the front row all the time.

That's where you learn.

You learn in the front row.

That's where winners sit.

I mean, I heard this my whole sobriety, you know?

And so sure enough, we're there.

There's dad in the first chair.

At that time, there's potential mom number four.

And then there is my brother, my sister,

and I had the last seat.

And Norm Alpe said this one line that night.

He says, it doesn't matter what you drank, how much you drank.

He said, it doesn't matter how old you are.

You can be 8 or 80.

And when he dipped down to that age of 8,

he looked at us three teenage kids.

I'm 15, my sister's 16, and my brother's 17.

And I felt like he was saying that to us three kids.

It doesn't matter if you're 8 or 80.

If alcohol's tearing up any part of your life,

you're in the right place.

And I heard it that night.

I didn't raise my hand as an alcoholic,

but it just resonated in me.

And I went back the next Friday night

to go hear Norm speak again, because I thought

Norm spoke there every Friday night.

And my little blessing is my second speaker

that I heard speak and the first time I raised my hand

as an alcoholic, I could hear this guy named

Chuck Chamberlain speak.

You know, to me, back in the 70s, you're not getting sober.

After you hear Chuck and Norm speak,

you're not getting sober.

That was the bottom line.

It's equivalent to today, like hearing Johnny and Clancy speak

back to back.

If you don't get sober after those two guys,

you're probably not getting sober.

So I got blessed with this guy, and he's 62 years old.

I'm 15 years old, and somehow I identified.

I know today it's called the language of the heart.

And I did not know what I was in for.

I didn't know how long I was going to try AA.

I didn't see the slogans up on the wall.

There used to be this one up there called One Day at a Time.

I didn't get a hold of that idea at all.

I joined Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 15.

And somebody stood up and gave a GSR report

at the end of the meeting.

Group service representative.

This group has one.

And the GSR at this meeting stood up

and said that the average young person coming

in Alcoholics Anonymous back in 1977 was 32.

And I thought to myself, because I was a thinker

before I was a drinker, I'm only 15.

And the average young age is 32.

That means I can try what you guys have to offer for 10 years.

And if I don't like what you guys have to offer after 10 years,

I can still go out and drink for another five years

and still come back in under the average young age, right?

And so that's what I did.

I joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

I joined AA.

I was scared.

I did everything you guys said that you did from the podium.

So I don't even care if people are glorifying their sobriety

and try to send out their AA resume.

I lived off of that.

If you said you got a sponsor, I got a sponsor.

If you said that you did the steps, I did the steps.

If you said you got commitments at every meeting,

I got a commitment.

I did whatever you guys said.

And I had a sponsor that didn't want

me to make a major decision in my first year of sobriety.

And my brother left Simi Valley, and he joined this militant,

group called the United States Navy, you know?

And my dad got a job transfer to Roseburg, Oregon.

And I'm now sober.

I've been sober a year.

I got to go to an adult education high school.

It wasn't even continuation school.

I got kicked out of so many high schools when I was drinking.

I even got kicked out of all the continuation schools

out in Simi Valley.

So I had to go in adult ed at night, you know?

And so I was able to go at my own pace,

and I was able to graduate early.

And you know, when my dad got a job transfer to Roseburg, Oregon,

I was still way under.

I was only 16 and a half years old.

And my sister, my brother went and joined that militant group.

My sister left and joined this militant group

on the west side of Los Angeles called the Pacific Group, you know?

And I just sort of watched the two of them, you know?

My brother, my gauge on my brother was he always had short hair.

He always had a pocket full of cash, and he never smiled.

My brother, the Navy.

My sister, my gauge on her was she was extremely busy.

She was always smiling.

She never had a dollar in her purse.

Those were my gauges.

So I got it.

My dad got this job transfer to Roseburg, Oregon.

I had to move with him because I was underage.

I'm coming up on 17 years old.

I'm coming up on two years of sobriety.

And I was bussing tables at Denny's in Roseburg, Oregon.

I felt like I should be at least CEO of the universe.

But no, I'm only bussing tables at Denny's.

And so I was bummed out, and I looked at those two gauges.

I'm going to follow my brother and my sister, you know?

And so I went and joined the United States Navy.

And I was 1,000 miles away from my sponsor, who told me not to make a major decision in

my first year.

And I stuck to that until I was almost two years sober before I made my first major decision.

And the guys up there in Roseburg, Oregon, told me that I'd be lucky to get out of boot

camp sober.

And so I went and joined the United States Navy, and I didn't tell anybody in boot camp

that I was sober.

I went to A school in Chicago.

I never told anybody in A school that I was sober.

But I always went to meetings.

One of the gifts about being in the military sober was I was able to go to meetings to

10 different countries.

Because the Navy took me to 10 different countries.

And I know that you can call up the GSO in New York and say, hey, I'm Marty.

I'm an alcoholic.

I'm in Singapore.

And they'll give you a name and a phone number all the time.

You know?

And that's what I did.

When I went to 10 different countries, I always called the GSO, and I said, my name's Marty.

I'm an alcoholic.

I'm in Pusan, Korea one night, you know?

So they sent me to this church in Pusan, Korea.

And I went around this church twice, and nothing was going on.

I'm like, what?

I thought there was supposed to be an AA meeting.

The door finally cracked open a little bit, and light coming out of it.

So I went over there, peeked in the door, and I saw a thick blue book and a thin blue

book.

And it had Korean writing on it.

And I don't speak Korean, you know?

But I really thought that was the big book and the 12 and 12, right?

The thick blue book and the thin blue book.

And I walked in, and they're boiling tea, you know, coffee, tea, whatever.

And so I sat down, and there's five Korean guys and no women.

And they're sharing in Korean, and I don't speak Korean, and they don't speak English.

And so some dude shares.

And it sounded like he got done sharing.

So I went, oh, I was the only dude clapping, uh-oh.

So somebody else shared, and when he got done sharing, I did it again.

I went, oh, you don't clap here, man.

And I think, I think they all got done sharing.

Because when they got done sharing, it was quiet in that room, and they all went, oh,

must be my turn to share.

So I shared in English.

And I'm going to assume they thought I was done, because they all looked at each other

and went, they clapped for the American, you know?

And I felt so good when I went back to the base, you know?

And I'm in the taxi driving back to the base, and it dawned on me.

I wonder if that was a meeting, because I really don't know.

I could have been in an elder's meeting.

I could have been in Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous.

I could have been in a lot of things, you know?

But what I do know is I shared, and I felt better after I got done sharing.

I left the Navy.

I joined the Pacific group.

I met a lady up there.

I had a couple of great kids.

We moved out to Temecula.

And that's catching you guys up to what you guys already know, a few of you old timers,

you know?

I was out in Temecula for 14 years, and things were going really, really good out there.

And I had this, I bought my dad's business eventually, and it really blew it up, and

it made it really, really successful, and the whole family's proud of me.

I bought this big old house.

Had the boy toys.

Had a lot of sobriety.

Had two great kids at home.

Things are going really, really good on the outside.

And I had my, I called my week from hell, and Uncle Bruce wanted to hear an update on

me.

This was the update.

You know, my week from hell went like that.

The son that I love so much, he got jumped and beaten so badly he needed facial reconstructive

surgery.

They beat him with a bat or a pipe.

He doesn't know what.

He says, I can tell what kind of shoes they were wearing, Dad, because I was on the ground

the whole time, you know?

And he almost hemorrhaged out and died.

We had to have a 72-hour watch on him.

You know, and Tuesday I found out that I was going to lose the office building for the

family business.

That's problems of abundance, but it still hurt, you know?

Wednesday I was charged with two felony counts of tax evasion.

I found out the hard way that my office manager was stealing all my money.

money, and because it exceeded a certain dollar amount, and it was payroll employee taxes, they

charged me with two felonies, and I was getting ready to be locked up for a thousand ten days down

at San Diego PD, you know, and it was just like, what's going on here, and then Thursday, I found

out I was going to lose the house we'd been living in for 12 years, because it was 2008 when the

market crashed, you know, and I looked at my wife, and we'd been married 18 and a half years together,

20 years, and I says, how are you doing, and she says, I'm not doing good with all this stuff going

down, and she says, I'm going to guess you're not going to be doing any better, because I just filed

for a divorce, you know, that was just one week, and thank God I have the people that I have in my

life, you know, I have this buddy named Matt Kimball, great speaker, by the way, Matt Kimball

has got this wicked, dry sense of humor, I'm speaking at a meeting right after this week

happened, I'm crying, everybody's crying with me, there's a thank you line going out the door,

everybody's hugging me, crying with me, and Matt comes through, and he says, Marty, that's a hell

of a week, oh yeah, it is, Matty, and I wiped off a couple tears off my cheek, and he says, I only

got one question for you, Marty, I says,

what's that, Matt, he said, what the hell happened Saturday, yeah, you know, thanks, Matt,

you know, but I need that type of humor, because the cool thing about it is, humor gets me back

here, right here, right now, and one place we don't do well at, is right here, right now, we'd

much rather be angst out about something in the future, or depressed about something in the past,

us alcoholics have a hard time staying right here, right now, and when I laugh, that means I'm right

here with you, that means I forget about how much money I have in my pocket, or how much money I

don't have in my pocket, you know, it makes me forget about if there's gas in the car or not,

and if rent is paid or not, you know, I forget about all that when I get to laugh,

you know, so I'll end with this, and it's just, I rarely know what my solution is, I can barely,

I barely know what your solution is, for sure, you know, but it reminds me of this guy who is

an alcoholic, and an Alcoholics Anonymous, and he's a pharmacist, and his pharmacy started doing

pretty good, so he went and hired his first employee, and it was a newcomer out of a meeting,

and the pharmacist walked up to his pharmacy the next day, and he started walking into it,

it's already lit up, people are inside, you know, and he walked, opened up the door, saw some guy

just leaning heavily up against the wall, and he acknowledged him, and he walked back to the

pharmacy, and he looked at this newcomer, he says, hey, thanks for opening up, he says, well, sir,

you gave me a job, and I was so happy and grateful, I thought I'd come in and open up early,

and the pharmacist says, well, that's great, he says, but what's wrong with that guy by the front

door that's leaning heavily up against the wall, and the newcomer says, well, sir, he came in for

a cough, and I couldn't get a hold of you, and the pharmacist says, really, so what'd you do,

he said, well, I gave him a whole bottle of laxatives, and the pharmacist says, you idiot,

you can't treat a cough with laxatives, and the newcomer says, you want to bet he's afraid to

cough, so I don't know what your solution is, I barely know what mine is, but coming to these

meetings seems to help me a lot, thanks a lot, you guys.