Kevin's Journey: From Early Drinking to 18 Years Sober

Hello there, I'm Kevin and I am an alcoholic.

Thanks, Scott, Robin gave me a really good welcome here tonight.

I find that while a lot of things in my life, I still have a lot of fear in my life and

anxiety over different things, but anytime I walk into a room with alcoholics and all

this, it's not part of my experience from here and that's really cool.

I thank the people, I thank everyone who opened the door tonight, the coffee, who was still

in the AV.

I was told that the highest paying position in alcoholics and then I was a servant and

that really goes against my best thinking, which by the way is what got me here.

But it's true.

It seems to me like you have to surrender to win, where the hell is that at, when you

come here?

Surrender to win, if you hold on to it, you lose it, all these things that just run against

my best thinking.

Selfie blood to slogans, we used to call them the cheesy slogans, I said this, it can't

be that easy.

I'm a very complicated, deep person, it just can't be that easy.

One day at a time, that's genius and today, after going through the steps and living this

life for a while, you can actually live just by the slogans, if you really did it and paid

attention to it, you could have a pretty damn good life.

But anyway, like I said, I am an alcoholic, I'm 61 years old, I'm 18 years sober.

I came into AA 22 years ago, got sober for a few years and had the life threatening hiccup,

I called a relapse and I ended up in Costa Rica and lost about 60 pounds on some non-conference

approved potions.

It's a very quick way to lose weight, but let's just say it's not the best diet around.

By the grace of God, and you guys in that book, in these rooms, I was able to come back

and it wasn't easy to come back.

April 28th is my anniversary date, 2004, so it's been an amazing ride since I got back.

Anyway, I didn't realize it was going to be a long talk tonight, I thought I had a 10

minute spot.

I was telling Scott before me, I said, man, this guy wants me to come all the way here

and wear a jacket for a 10 minute talk, but it's really funny.

And that's still my ego, man, and I know it's not right today actually when I'm thinking

it, which is pretty good.

It doesn't mean it stops me, but when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1999, I had no

car, no driver's license.

I was looking at five years of prison time in New York state.

I had just got my 11th drunk driving and things weren't going my way.

I was the counselor that wanted me and I always thought everything happened to me, and before

me, I figured it wasn't my drinking, it wasn't my character, it was just this life that just

sucked.

My friends would say, Ken, every day is a new day.

I'll remember what he said, I can't remember what he said, but anyway, I had my first drink

at 11 years old, my first drink, and it was with three of the lunatics that I ran around

with.

We played sports when we were kids.

We all stole books from the house, and you've heard the story, it's kind of common with

alcoholics.

I found out a lot of people that drink or get drunk before they're 15 have a much greater

chance of turning alcoholic, so I wanted to be part of that curve, I guess.

But I can tell you, I can tell you with hindsight, and I didn't realize it then, that I believe

I immediately became, you know, how do you get an alcoholic just to get an alcoholic?

That was pretty much my story.

I don't know what was wrong with me.

I always hear my Sophie talking and I'm still part of, it was like this whole thing, it

was the university and there was a dot over here and that was me, and it was still outside

of everything.

And it seemed like everyone else had the instructions and everyone else had the connections and

everyone else knew what they were doing, and I didn't, and it was a really strong understanding

of myself.

It was false, but it was, it was, it was the only thing I knew.

And I know that night that the four of us got together behind the junior high school

and drank, you know, I mean, it was like whiskey and a ketchup bottle and, you know, we had

like five different kinds of beer, you know, and, and I got drunk and I heard, I see one

time it was like an exhale for the first time in my life and I can identify with that.

I didn't realize I was holding my breath, I didn't even realize the uncomfortability

I had with myself and my own skin until I medicated and alcohol was the perfect fit.

It was the perfect fit.

I got sick, I puked, I peed my bed, I got in a lot of trouble.

You know, by the way, like years later when I was sober, I remember my friend's kid was

11 and he came to hear his father speak at a meeting and my friend said, do you realize

you were his age when you drank?

And I looked at this kid, he's a baby, he's 11 years old, a child, like, what the hell

is going on?

And I started crying.

I felt, you know, for myself, you know, one of the ways I've stopped hating myself as

much as I did, you know, I do care about my life today very much.

It was kind of heartbreaking to see that I don't dwell on the past, like I don't say

I wish or could've, should've, would've, but I've stopped doing that.

It's a waste of time and it actually will stop me from living in my day, which is kind

of my purpose today.

Anyway, so I had this experience and it came from ramifications, the consequences, it never

did.

I got in trouble at school, I got in trouble, of course, the board, all the governors in

my life had been forewarned about, oh my God, this kid got drunk and next weekend I did

it again.

It's kind of hard, you know, like when we're teenagers and you go up to a package store

at 7-Eleven to get something to buy you blues, it's kind of hard to do that at 11, you know.

I think that we didn't try.

So we, but we found ways to get it, we found ways to get it.

And then within a year or two, I was in Queens, New York, drinking, I'll never smell a pot.

We walked into my friend's apartment, told him, "Hey, there's a half a house, a pot sitting

on the staircase."

So we knew it wasn't.

We ran down, it was a thing they used to call pit shops, bought a pipe and there was three

of us and my friend's parents were at work and we ran into his apartment and sat in the

tub and opened the bathroom window, started smoking this stuff.

We did not clean the pot, so it was like popcorn, it was blowing up all over.

And then the other key missing component was the third guy who took a hit off of it, breathed

it in, inhaled it, and the whole fiery ball went down into his throat.

We didn't put a screen in it, we didn't know he could even scream, so we brought it back

to the guy and we said, "This thing's positive," and he said, "You guys are idiots."

Anyways, so, okay, so we're not going to smoke pot, and now we're smoking pot.

And now we'll never do pills, never need pills.

A year later, we're doing this, we flipped whalers, they were called soapers, we did

those and they were dropping acid and, you know, like I said, law conference, land conference

approved potions.

Big part of my story, I have a huge reverence for alcoholics anonymous and I am an alcoholic

and I have no problems talking for the next 30 minutes about my alcohol.

I think it's important that we never talk about drugs and stuff, or I don't, that way.

Like I said, this is about identification, this is about, you know, if you know the history

of Bill and Bob, you know, this is the first guy who understood me, this is the first guy

I knew when he was talking to me about it, and that was a guy who was in a religious

thing and he was well educated and he was doing the drugs, so I respect that, I respect

that because it's simply about me being one of those totally losing end of everything

and I always think I know that, I don't know if that bothers you guys, you know, that hasn't

changed a lot since I started drinking, you know, every day is an adventure to learn more

about myself and how I interact with you guys, myself and my other pals.

I look at it as a game now, you know, people used to talk about perfection and, you know,

this guy said "affection is for psychoteer" and he showed me an addiction and that was

my second big expensive movie and it was one of the stitches that said perfection was a

continual state of betterment, how cool is that, right, if you had a life that it could

get better all the time, there's nothing wrong with that, I mean, to me, perfection

would be boring, I don't know about you guys, but if the sun is out every day for a week,

I don't really care about the vision, or if I'm getting what I want continuously, I want

more, or I want something different, you know, that's just by human nature, I don't know,

so starting off my life, you know, pre-transition from child to adult, medicated a lot without

all the drugs and I had an older brother who's excelling in school, he graduated early in

like Harvard and became a heart surgeon and he's just, well, he's got a 1600 on his college

boards and I was two years behind him here and "why aren't you more like your brother?"

you know, I heard that a lot and I met my dad came in, not for the applause they were

giving me for their grades, because they didn't know where I was, again, and the council said

to my father, "why isn't he more like his brother?" and my dad said, "well, that's why

we gave him a different name" but my father was, he got a TA in 1962, he flew off aircraft

areas drunk and he flew the first 77s for American Airlines drunk and he didn't really

get sober till 1977, he didn't do the steps because he was smarter and better than everybody,

he felt better for you guys but had to take the steps, he was really good for you guys.

Back then they used to give lighters, Zippo lighters for your anniversary and he got so

many Zippo lighters for his one year anniversary because he kept drinking, they said they wanted

to get a digital, they put your date on it and we just gave him one and changed the date

on the lighter and he was, my dad was a character, he asked for it a few years ago, later in the

story, I said, "he's T. Thompson, here's somehow surrounded by police" and that's when he was

working at that jail time and he got into a treatment center first.

So I'm starting off life, you know, with one hand tied behind my back, blindfolded, I have

an anchor on my ankle and I'm trying to swim and it's just not working, it's just not working.

I became a survivor early on in my life, I knew that I had to work, I didn't have, when

I was 14, my mom, my single parent mom, she had divorced my dad when I was like two and

because of his drinking and it was my brother, my mom and myself and my grandparents, my

mom's parents.

My mom passed away, she went out to a restaurant, she was going to borrow some guy and we knew

him for years and she died, she never came home.

I can tell you that that drove my drinking but that would be the lie, what drinking did

was it got me through it, it really did, it was a mechanism for me to find from the reality

of losing my mom and what dad also did was cement alcohol on me together, I never did

anything without drinking again ever, I never took time off from drinking.

I didn't drink on a daily basis, I get drunk every day, when I was working I found it difficult

to do even when I was young but you know, once I, if I waited till Friday to drink,

I drank one weekend you know and then when you're doing the drugs, I was in the cooperative

union in New York City and I would be usually like 5am Sunday morning, I'd be in some red

pole bar giving the last of my money to some guy, you know and I'd get back to work and

I'd work a 60 hour week and then I'd get back Monday and I'd be borrowing money for lunch

and for gas and whatever else because I was broke every week, every week and in fact in

Bob's story he talks about this terrible cycle he was in with taking sedatives and amphetamines

and drinking and that maintenance of that lifestyle and that one of the wildest sentences

in the whole book is, and then I did that for 17 years and it's like holy shit, how

can you identify with that, there's no learning curve for him always, you know, who uses the

word stupid a few times in your book, I think you could use it a lot more than a few times,

so I got into the situation where I was working to live this lifestyle and there was no money

coming in from anybody else, my family kind of, everything was kind of backing away and

they tried to help, my dad was always there in the court room, I got arrested a lot, hospital

situations he was always there for me but he never like gave me money, he never, you

know, it was never like that wasn't the relationship and how did he handle it looking back, I mean

as an animal, not practicing an animal but as an animal, he was there when I guess when

he just couldn't stand what was going to happen to me, if I was going to have a prison, I'll

tell you there's one more major lowlife at the beginning of my career on the planet and

alcohol, when I was like 22, I was in a blackout at a bar and I went to the city with these

guys that were older than me and they were not guys that, I didn't even smoke, I was

still playing sports and stuff and I was playing hockey and I went with these guys and none

of my friends were there and they were older, they were like in their mid-20s and they were

getting hurt, I mean it wasn't like a surprise for me, when I was in, when I used to call

a greyout and it was a full blackout, a little specks and bits and pieces but you know there

was an idea that I pierced my body with a syringe and did hurt and that, where I came

from, the way it was brought up, people hung around with it, it was not something in like

1979 that people did and I did it, I went on to, I overdosed that weekend and they showed

me the cough, it was slumped over in the front seat of the cough for 36 hours, I had a needle

in my arm and they showed me and told me, they gave me Narcan and brought me to the hospital,

means the hospital, I can't remember the name of it, the nurses were on strike, there was

no air conditioning and I just, I remember they brought me in and they had to battle

me because my heart was racing, it was beating like 300 times a minute or something, I heard

it, they did it, they did it, they did it and I said what's that and he says that's

your heart, that's all, what if there's an emergency or something like that, I kind of

got that feeling and I ended up having to spend seven months in the hospital, I went

into renal failure in the kidney shed, off to my right side, I compressed a radial nerve,

my sciatic nerve from laying in this car seat, so I was paralyzed on my right side, twice

I think they wheeled me down in a wheelchair to give me analysis and this nurse used to

cry at the dialysis nurse when they'd wheel me in, she used to upset me, I didn't want

to upset her, whatever, however I looked, it wasn't good, I weighed like 150 pounds

more than I do now because of edema and slough.

So you know, I was stealing drugs off the drug cart in the hospital because they wouldn't

give me the good drugs because I was a junkie, considered a junkie, I said you know, it was

just a mistake and we did it once, you know, I'm actually mitten, that's death to me,

justifying minimalized rationales, right, anything, anything, so I ended up getting

out of the hospital, I didn't do drugs for a while, for years after that, but the drinking

came back in vengeance and then I started doing Russian roulette with Geographics, you

know, because I realized when I got sober that I actually wasn't going anywhere, I was

always leaving some place, because I had to, because either I couldn't work, I lost my

family's license, had all the warrants for my arrest and I would just take off, you know,

down to Houston, Texas by myself, went to California, went to Florida, went to the Northwest

and the strange thing is, each place I went, and I didn't realize this until I did one

of those timelines in one of the seven treatment sets, where you go back and write out your

life and every place I went, within the first 14 months, I got a drunk drug and within a

year after that, I got a second one and the second one is usually a felony, it also means

you're going to lose your privilege to drive in that state, which means I couldn't work,

which means I couldn't stay, so then I, then I said, what the hell are we doing in L.A.,

I hated L.A., what, I'm going back to New York, and I go back to New York, I think it's

in the back of the book, in one of the stories, and I think it's a woman who wrote this story,

she says, she had a lot of Geographics and she said that she wished, you know those giant

big signs, the big green signs, the interstate signs, like welcome to Vermont or whatever,

she says that she wished on the bottom corner for alcoholics, and it would say, this state

doesn't work either, because it would probably save a lot of expenses in travel, you know,

lawyers in different states, which I got acquainted with, so that kind of summed up, I mean, there

was relationships in there, there was, there was, there was everything that I said I wouldn't

do, I did, I became a thief, I was a lawyer, you know, and during this whole time, the

other thing that got cemented was, I really hated, I would never admit that, I would never

say that, but when it came down to it, I really didn't care for it, it was on the planet,

my job was to get loaded, it really was, so I was a bar drinker for most of those years

in my life, my work, your relationships, everything was, the bond was the universe, and then that

kind of started slipping away later in the years too, I couldn't, I couldn't function

it, because you know, like, what I was doing, I never, I was very tired, in fact, I never

got 86, I was always asked to leave, but it was a lot of back, I thought that was a real

accomplishment, you know, it's just, you know, being asked to have standards, but I got asked

to leave a lot of bars at the end, I mean, I was just an idiot, I like, you know, I'd

lose my driver's license, I was riding bicycles, and you know, I got into the whole field,

how do you get around, one story, I was standing out on Long Island, and I was in a town called

Sand Harbor, this woman is really a well-meaning human, I'll backtrack one second, I was married,

I left out wife because of alcohol, I kind of abandoned her in Florida, I think I was

doing her a favor, but it wasn't the right thing to do, I went back to New York, went

back with the guys that I used to drink with, and one night, I was drunk, I was crossing

the street at Queens, New York, and I got run over by a car, and the car was doing about

60 miles an hour, and I was drunk, the drug was drunk, it was a stolen car, and I just

remember sitting there on the road, and I think it was pretty bad, and I remember sitting

there going, excuse the language, I said, man, you really fucked up this time, I knew

this wasn't like things that had happened to me before, this was really gonna be bad.

I spent two years in the hospital, well, two years later, I was in the hospital for months

at a time, the fixer was on my way, I had a 28 surgery, and the OxyContin came out,

that was great, it really helped, you know, my dad says, you know, I was getting really

drunk, so the doctor says, don't worry, this won't work, this is not addictive, and I guess

my dad was sober in the times, like when the rebellion came around, and they said that

wasn't addictive either, I don't think anyone's ever convulsed that, but it is, so I went

to this whole ordeal, they wanted to cut my leg off, and blah blah blah, I was like 37,

36, 37, I said no, and I went through the whole process of all these surgeries, so I

ended up at my dad's house, he let me stay there while I was recovering, I was in bed

for a while, and then I started getting up around, and then I ended up, I took his car

on a Monday night, went around the block to a Monday night football game, and he was loaded

on the pills, I couldn't drink in his house, because he was sober, so was his wife, and

I used to get resentment about that, I couldn't drink there, he was letting me stay there

for like months, and I went to this bar, and I walked out, I got my 11th drug drive, and

I didn't, they took, they encountered my dad's car, and I ended up going to jail, they took

my crutches away, it was just, you know, like crawling around on the floor, you know, it

was just, and I remember, I remember when I was at an AA meeting one time, my sponsor

was talking, and he was telling a story, and he went like this, he went, pitiful and incomprehensible

demoralization, and he was talking about his story, and I was like, that's it, I mean,

it wasn't like an incident, that was my life, my life had become a succession of pitiful

and incomprehensible, I couldn't believe this shit was happening, and I don't know about

you guys, but I could never focus on what was core of the problem, I could never focus

on, this is because I'm drinking, it was always because the bartender over served me, the

cop was an asshole, you know, it was always something else, and I was just trying to figure

out, looking back, because I was trying to figure out a way to drink without the consequences,

how do you do that, the other guys were at the bar, they were drinking, they didn't get

drunk driving, how did that happen, why did that happen to me, you know, life sucks, everything

sucks, and that sets you on a path, that my biggest problem at the end of my drinking

career was not alcohol, my biggest problem was being conscious, when I woke up in the

morning with the terror, being available, for this, for life, I was unprepared, and

the alcohol was diminishing my capacity to beep, and little by slowly, I mean, anybody

who's been on that cycle, the time between drinks becomes shorter and shorter, there

is no time between drinks, so you get up in the middle of the line to drink, and that's

the last five years of my drinking, I was, after my accident, there was a succession,

I had never dated, or like, sought out to date wealthy women, that wasn't like part

of my story, you know, me and a lot of them in the bars, I didn't have that, and I had

no idea what co-dependence was, but so now I'm like, I'm this guy with this really tough

story in this accident, and he went in together, these women are coming here for my life, now

living in the Hamptons, you know, I'm going to see a Park Avenue psychiatrist, who had

a bottle of Xanax on his desk, and every time he left the room, I would fill my pockets

with, you know, and they all tried to help me, and I didn't realize it at the time, I

was like, wow, I'm back, you know, and during the downward spiral, these women in succession

had more and more money, and tried to help me more and more, so towards the end, towards

the end, there was a woman, she's dead now, she's the daughter of a very famous painter,

and she sent me to like two or three treatment centers, she started out as a direct result,

she helped a lot of people, and I went to seven treatment centers, I think treatment

became, treatment is kind of like discovery, and AA's the recovery, you find out a lot

about yourself, and with other people, and you're not alone anymore, and you're any place

where it's a lot harder to get a drink, so you know, you can, you know, you don't have

that vast lean on your eyes, and you learn about that, you start to learn about the power

system, but you know, we got these steps here, these really cool steps, and I had problems

with that one, the doorstep, it took me from 11 to 39 to find the doorstep, because you're

not going to hear this shit out there, what happens in here, the magic, the alchemy that

happens in alcoholics, you're not going to hear it in treatment centers, you're not going

to hear it in bars, you're not going to hear it in group therapy, something really cool

happens here, that's why at the beginning of my talk, I told you how I feel when I come

here.

I have a very strong belief, not an understanding, but a strong belief in an endless supply of

experience that tells me that I have a love and care in God in my life tonight, my God,

and I learned about that, the idea of something outside of myself that connects all of us

here, and it was presented to me in a way through the 12 steps, where I was kind of

removed, my past was removed, my ideas were removed, and I was kind of left open, which

was really good, for a new idea, for a new understanding, for a new path in life, because

if drinking was my only problem, if you stopped drinking, you don't have problems, and that's

not my story, I'm not here, I was sleeping, my mind was racing, I had a lot of stuff going

on, it was an implorable context, so somehow, some way, this group of drunks, you know,

I got here from the gift of desperation, my sponsor said, gee, I got a problem with God,

he says, we don't have a problem with you, don't worry, you know, and I can understand,

gift of desperation, that this was not my first choice, you know, I didn't want to come

to it yet, once I got here, it felt different, I did, I kind of liked it, I did, I felt part

of something which I hadn't felt in my whole life, actually, and then I got introduced

to God again, and what God is saying is to get the group of drunks, we're doing it right

now, right now we're doing it, right now when we get together, that's why I love impersonating

you, that's why I love the fact that you guys are working hard to put this together after

we just had this COVID mess, and I thank God for, at the Zoom meetings, I don't know what

the hell we would have done without it, but I hope it's a bridge, and people will rise

up in AA as they always do, and people, you know, I always say, the barometer for me is

how am I doing this, if everyone was doing it, I'll do it in AA, AA exists, and sometimes

I'm doing luck, sometimes I'm busy in my life, I may not be sponsoring, I may not be more

expensive, I may not have a home, I may travel a lot, and I have to say, if I'm too busy

for AA, I'm too busy, if I'm too busy for AA, I'm too busy, because without this, without

what we have right here, right now, there's no existence for me, I never say, oh, if I

drink again, I'm going to die, if I drink again, I'm not going to die, or maybe I won't

drink and put a gun in my mouth, and that's what alcohols do, that's it, alright, we don't

need alcohol to kill us, don't tell God how big our crumbs are, tell my crumbs how big,

not that I was going to drink, but how am I going to handle this, and one thing led to

another, and I did a lot of praying, and had a lot of support, and I had blood in my eye

with me when I came to Thailand, to Florida, to burn my dad, and what happened was, his

wife, my stepmother, she had been with me for 40 years, she needed support, it wasn't

like I was a big hero, or anything like that, so I went there to support her, and guess

what happened, my perceptions, my attitudes, and my emotions can get better here, we're

out there, they don't, but I don't go to meetings, and I don't pray, and I don't meditate, and

I don't work for the other alcoholics, I get sick, and if you stay, do the work, reach

up to the beginning of every meeting, it says we beg of you, people who wrote this, and

we beg of you to be fearless, and tell them to be very smart, and then they say, is the

cup half full, half empty, my cup, I'm an alcoholic that's going to drink into that,

my cup's overflowing every day, and some of it's supposed to spill out to someone else's,

so that's it, stay sober, meet the other alcoholic, three chiefs of women, I want them all here,

anything of value I have in my life, has a stamp that says property of alcohol, so thanks.