Steve's Journey: Long-Term Sobriety, Deep Dives, and Honest Community

(indistinct)

- Hey everybody, my name is Steve.

I'm an alcoholic and I'm grateful to be here.

Thank you, Scott for the invite

and thanks Robin for the cheery welcome

and everybody else who said hello.

Nice to see you, Greg and David F, how you doing buddy?

I hope the folk guy holding the towel

doesn't get a sneezing fit during the meeting.

I am really grateful to be a sober member

of Alcoholics Anonymous for several thousand days in a row.

And I appreciate coming out, being invited anywhere

because where I came from,

there was a time where I wasn't really welcome anywhere,

including my own home.

So thank goodness for AA's love and tolerance

for people like me.

Do we have any drug addicts here tonight?

Okay, let's check in.

You know, I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict

and I think there's a fundamental difference.

I think most alcoholics share this feeling

they grew up with where they feel they never fit in

and all the drug addicts I know never wanted to fit in

and I'm both.

So, you know, I was never gonna be okay on my own.

So I'll thank God for the 12 steps.

We were talking outside before the meeting

and I love that we have this exchange of ideas

about what makes a group

and what makes you stick to a group

and what makes you start a new group.

And, you know, that's how it has grown

and I think it's an awesome, you know,

we have nobody governing us so to speak.

And I think it's great that we have this autonomous feature

built into this thing where we can, you know,

make it what we need it to be for us.

And I think that it's sort of like holding onto a dove.

You know, you wanna let the dove go,

but you don't wanna kill it by squeezing the Dubai

to keep it from flying away.

And I think that's how we have to handle our AA membership.

Like I've always believed

that there needs to be a little bit of flexibility

and there needs to be a little bit of rule 62

in everything that we do,

which is where you just don't take yourself

too darn seriously.

I'm real serious about not drinking today.

And I firmly believe that AA is,

the world's record is 24 hours.

And I'm pretty close to tying the record again today.

I've done that over 11,000 times in a row,

but that's not even a record

'cause there's people that have got way more

continuous days than I do.

And the longer that we stay sober,

the more we realize how precious.

It's actually better than 24 hours.

It's like each minute, especially when you get to be 66,

you start realizing each minute you have

is pretty freaking valuable.

So I wasn't 66 when I got here, I was 33.

And my sobriety date is September 20th in 1989.

So if you haven't started taking my inventory yet,

you can start with that.

You know, when I went to speaker meetings,

when I was new, I knew within 30 seconds

whether I was gonna hear anything I needed to hear.

Or so I thought.

'Cause I sized that.

You know, I always thought I was a guy

that really knew how to size up people.

And I was clueless, you know.

So I would pass judgment on the speaker right away.

So if you're doing that, raise your hand.

Come on, somebody get honest.

I mean, I had such a preconceived notion

of what everybody was about.

You know, I thought I could size them up so fast,

but I was wrong.

And I'm glad I found that out here.

I like Bruce was talking about how we get,

you know, this level of honesty with ourself.

You know, when I got here,

things were really crazy upside down and sideways.

And when you're trying to handle the garbage you brought in,

you don't really have much time to look at yourself.

You're trying to put the fires out.

You're trying to get people off your ass.

You're, you know, you're just trying to get it together

just to be somewhat functioning.

But when you stick around for a while,

that's when it gets really interesting

because I call it the deep dive.

I think we all have to be prepared for the deep dive.

And if you're new, that may seem really sound scary,

but it's an awesome process.

And you don't also,

you don't have to do the deep dive all at once.

I've been given the truth about myself

in little tiny pieces,

just enough that I could face it

and admit it and own it and then do something about it.

They used to say, you have to feel it to heal it.

So if I don't know what's wrong with me,

what chance do I have of fixing it?

So thank God I've been around a lot of guys

that weren't afraid to tell me the truth about me.

And you know, you're not really an AA

if you haven't pissed somebody off.

You know, you're gonna say stuff

that may hurt somebody's feelings.

And I've learned how to say, you know, I love you, right?

Okay, well, I'm telling you this 'cause I dig you.

And you know, I want you to know

that this is just annoying the shit out of a bunch of us.

'Cause I had people do that to me

and my buddy Nathan here, he came with me tonight.

He's heard me share a hundred times.

I've heard him share a hundred times,

but he's so bored.

His wife's in Russia right now.

So it's like, yeah, I'll go hear you again.

So thank you.

But we're like 100% honest with each other.

There's no BS between us.

We call it, you know,

if one of us feels the other's out of line,

we could definitely say, hey buddy, wanna have a cigar?

Anyway.

So I come from a very long line of alcoholics, drug addicts,

bipolar, anxiety, riddled, schizophrenic overachievers.

And they all died from alcoholism.

They all had gone to Alcoholics Anonymous.

They'd all gone to Narcotics Anonymous.

They all had very brief periods of sobriety,

but in three generations, they all died from alcoholism

and none of them raised their children.

So if my family auditioned for the Jerry Springer show,

they would not let us on the show.

They would be like, no, you're too dysfunctional.

We can't go that far.

So I was raised by my maternal grandfather

and his second wife,

'cause my mother was very busy when I was nine months old.

I wound up in foster care.

I don't know how long,

all the people that would have been able to tell me

that information are dead.

I don't know how long I wound up in foster care

'cause my mother couldn't take care of me.

And I don't know if she was in jail,

in the hospital or just drunk,

but I wound up in foster care for a time

in Worcester, Massachusetts.

And my step-grandmother actually flew from Detroit

to Massachusetts in 1957 and got temporary custody of me.

And then when I was five years old,

we moved to Glendale, California.

And I grew up in Glendale,

went to Catholic school for grade school for eight years

and then high school for four years.

And I saw my mother when I was about eight years old

for a week, she came out to visit.

Saw her again when I was about 16.

I was on tour as a musician.

The first tour I did, I was 16 and I got to see her

on that tour, spent a little bit of time with her.

And then she actually got sober in Binghamton, New York

and she put together about six years of sobriety.

And she also had been diagnosed at that time.

This is in the early eighties.

This is when bipolar disorder was first,

like they knew what it was.

They knew how to diagnose it and they knew how to treat it.

And she was on some medication for it.

And the well-meaning folks in AA in Binghamton, New York

told her that she couldn't claim to be sober

if she was on those medications.

So following her AA direction,

she got herself off the meds

and she wound up killing herself

'cause she couldn't live sober without her meds.

She couldn't live without her meds to stay sober.

So, you know, we are very valuable to other members of AA,

but we're not doctors.

And because I think it's important for us

to know our limitations, it's like Clint Eastwood,

man's got to know his limitations.

And the big book, you know, it's incredible

that this ragtag group of guys got together

and wrote this book.

On page 133, they talk about it.

You know, it's like they could see into the future.

They said, you know, we have to make use of these outside

resources.

So if you have anybody that's struggling with that,

please encourage them to get the medical help

that they need to survive it.

Because half the guys I've sponsored are bipolar

and they're all on meds and they're having an awesome life.

They're living sober, they're staying on their meds

and sometimes there needs to be adjustments.

So that's one of the things that we talk about, you know,

every few weeks or months, I'll say, hey, how's your meds?

How are you feeling?

How's your anxiety?

You know, it's one of the things that we have to

pay attention to around here,

but I will never tell them what they should or shouldn't do

about it other than gets professional help with it.

So anyway, so that's how I wound up in the care

of my grandparents.

My grandfather was an awesome guy.

He was one of the original teamsters in Detroit

and he became a crane operator and we moved to California.

One of his former work mates had moved here already.

And as God would make it happen,

we moved across the street from one of the founding members

of the Windsor Club in Glendale.

And it didn't take very long for that couple to figure out

what the hell was going on at our house.

So Ole Olson was the guy and his wife, Margot,

she was a black belt Al-Anon.

They became, the four of them became friends,

my grandparents, and then Ole also was a music fan.

He was a jazz buff and he took a real interest in me

'cause I was a musician.

I was classically trained and I was just getting into jazz

when I got a little bit older

and he could start talking to me

and he took me to jazz clubs.

I remember he gave a $50 bill.

I'd never seen a $50 bill.

This was probably in 1965.

Took me to a Concerts by the Sea down at the beach

and got me into see Earl Hines

who was a legendary jazz pianist.

He paid the dormant 50 bucks to let me in.

It was illegal for a kid to be in that place,

but he paid the guy to let me in

and it was a wonderful experience for me.

So anyway, had all of these mentors that popped into my life

even before I got to AA.

So I'm a big believer in the mentoring system

and I've had great sponsors.

Nathan and I had a great sponsor named Brian James

who was a big, tall guy, very charismatic

and he played bad guys in movies.

He played Leon in Blade Runner.

He's a guy that uttered one of the great movie lines,

"A good day to die."

And he was an awesome guy and he was a great sponsor for us.

So anyway, I believe in the mentoring system.

I've had great sponsors in my 32 years

and I've sponsored a ton of guys also.

So if you need my qualifications,

I can tell you that I'm still sober and I'm still sponsored

and I'm still sponsoring.

And I've gotten away from the activity

that is prescribed for me.

So anyway, one other week at 16,

I was the youngest person on this tour.

It was a great opportunity to go see

if I wanted to play music for a living

and I really dug life on the road.

What's not to like?

There were 15 beautiful women in the troupe and 15 guys

and about 12 of the guys were gay.

So these 15 beautiful women were like,

that was it for the band.

We had a band at the whole tour.

Very little competition out there for us.

So anyway, they were all drinking and drugging

and I was very young and they all looked after me

'cause I was 16, they were all 18 to 22.

And they kept me from doing weird shit

and they didn't force me to get loaded.

You know, they asked me if I wanted to get off the joint,

if I wanted to drink or they were also,

there's a lot of smoke and a lot of psychedelics going on.

And I was curious about the psychedelics for some reason.

I was scared of the alcohol

'cause I'd seen what it done to my mom and my grandfather

but I was curious about acid but I decided not to try

'cause everybody else gave me the same answer

which was, well, if you do it,

make sure you're in a very controlled environment

with people who really dig you

and that just scared the hell out of me.

I mean, everybody gave that same answer.

So I don't know if that's a reflection

on how I was at that point in life

or that was just really good advice.

So anyway, didn't try it, stayed away from it

and decided at the end of that tour

that is what I wanted to do while I was on that tour.

My father dragged himself to come home for a week for that tour

in the middle of it and be here for his funeral.

And then my grandma said, "We need to go finish your job."

So I went back on the road and finished that tour

and came back and set some goals for myself professionally

that I wanted to accomplish.

I really wanted to learn how to conduct

and arrange music for orchestras

and wanted to try to get a job working for somebody

that at that time there was a lot of headliners

in Las Vegas, people that needed conductors

and I wanted to get in the job with Doc Simpson

when I was 22, he was his conductor for about seven years.

And that was an awesome gig because he was an incredible,

he still is 93 and he's still playing his ass off.

And that's the hardest instrument on the planet to play.

But it was a great opportunity for me

to work with legendary musicians

and play great music and incredible arrangements

and just the classiest of situations, it was a gift.

Feeling really grateful every night.

What about the tuxedo we have?

It's really short, which my grandmother really loved.

She loved when I had a job where I had to wear a tuxedo

and worked, so she was thrilled.

So I did that gig for many years

and then I knew that I wanted to make records

and write songs and produce records

and wound up getting to do that with a bunch of people.

And I drank and used like a normal person for years.

Most alcoholics I know can tell you

when they took their first drink,

they can tell you the feeling it gave them.

I don't have that memory, it was like a not event for me.

I knew, I know that I didn't have a drink really

until I was maybe 20 or 21,

but it was like I said, it was a not event.

And what happened to me is I wound up getting in a band

where we had a song, a hit song called Smugglers Blues

and that band drank and did cocaine every day.

And that's really what swept me up

into that insidious disease part.

You know, that stuff took over my life without me knowing it.

And that's what insidious means.

It's overtaking you without you being aware of it.

And I came back from that first tour with that band

and I was like a different person.

I was, it's like my DNA had been switched,

had been rewired or something.

And I became obsessed, there's a Japanese problem

that says, you know, a man takes a drink,

then the drink takes a drink and then the drink takes the man.

That's what happened to me.

It was a very fast progression for me.

And after about three or four years of that,

at the peak of my career at that point,

everything was going great in my career

and I was sabotaging it.

And I was usually free to apologize for the success.

And I picked up the phone one day

and I knew that I had a problem with cocaine

and I called cocaine anonymous.

It was a Sunday morning, I got their answering machine,

which did not make me very happy

because I thought it was pretty important.

So I left a message.

And I'm grateful some guy named John called me back

the next day on Monday and told me about a meeting

or he told me about two patient treatment programs.

And I thought, well, I'll call them up

and to interview them.

And then the last thing he said to me was,

where do you live?

And I said, well, then how is it?

He said, well, there's a meeting right here

in the neighborhood tomorrow night.

You should go check it out.

So he gave me the information

and I called those two treatments first

after I got on the phone with John.

And I went actually and met with a guy at one of the places

and he did seem to understand that, you know,

I didn't need to sit in a group counseling

and I didn't need to go to,

I didn't need them to take me to meetings.

And you know, I didn't need to fill out their questionnaire

and all that.

I thank you very much.

And never went back there.

I did go to the meeting the next night

and it was a little Baptist church,

right down the street from my house.

And there was about 40 people in there.

And I was a CA meeting and the girl leading the meeting,

everybody was very excited

'cause she took a six month shift that night,

which seemed like a big deal to everybody there.

I didn't think it was such a big deal.

We were all very excited about it.

And then there's a break and we all went out to smoke.

'Cause everybody smoked.

And I go out to the parking lot

and I see this guy that I knew.

And the reason I knew was I'd been smart and blow with him

in a bathroom at one of my band gigs,

like two weeks before that.

So I walk out to my buddy Nathan,

I'm like, dude, what are you doing here?

And he goes, I got 10 days clean.

And my first thought was,

he must know everything about recovery.

In 10 days, that seemed like an eternity to me.

And he seemed totally cool with 10 days that, you know,

it wasn't like, he didn't say it was tough.

He just seemed all happy-go-lucky about it.

You lying bastard.

So as it turns out, he did know everything about recovery

that I needed to know that.

Because after the meeting,

I was like a beeline to get to your car.

And he's like, hey man, what are you doing tomorrow?

I'm busy.

I'm busy, I'm working.

I go to session, you know, whatever time it was.

He goes, well, maybe I'll pick you up tomorrow.

There's a meeting at noon you should go to.

So that's what I needed to know that night.

There was a meeting the next day.

'Cause I said, oh, I have meetings on Wednesday also.

So I met him the next day at that meeting

and I met his sponsor.

His sponsor, Pine, had just taken a one-year gig.

So for sure, Brian invited me.

So that was a logical choice to be my sponsor too.

So the three of us were very happy trio for one month.

Nathan, this is next.

And we did see him for like years.

I will tell you that he met her at my band's gig

at Josephine's and Sherbrooke's,

which used to be the hotspot.

And they had sex in the parking lot.

So when he told our sponsor that,

our sponsor said, do not call her back.

So they got married.

And we adopted her two kids and had two kids with her.

So that lasted a while.

So anyway, I'm really grateful he came back to my life

about 20 years ago now 'cause he disappeared for a while.

But he stayed sober through all of that craziness.

And I did too.

So anyway, I just jumped into AA at that point.

And my career also, like I said, I was very active.

I was doing the stuff I really loved doing.

And I had also just done a project with Richard Simmons

called Sweatin' to the Oldies.

It was a big hit and Richard was very proud

to tell people that he outsold Jane Fonda.

That was not on my bucket list of things to do,

but I was the musical, the director for it.

So I took that from producing the music

and it was a great project

and I was really glad to be done with it.

So that was not like the hip guy I wanted to work with.

And I was doing some other projects that I thought were cool.

So I was happy.

And after I took a one-year cake back then,

there used to be musicians meeting on Tuesday nights

in the calling booth.

And it was a bunch of people that I had either worked with

or wanted to work with.

And they too were all excited about recovery.

And I just thought, man, I have one fine misting here.

They're just so excited to be here every Tuesday night.

And I'm like, time is this thing over with, you know?

But they were so excited that enthusiasm was contagious.

So, you know, whenever I managed to share,

I always, you know, say this prayer to God,

which I don't even know about,

but I go, okay, God, please help me help somebody

and help me sound really good.

Now, not wanting to sound really good

because I need you to say, wow, he sounded really good.

I want you to know how genuinely enthusiastic

I am about this stuff, you know, 32 years later.

So all of this enthusiasm was in that room.

Enthusiasm was there, but it wasn't organic for me, not yet.

But I went, I was swept up in all the energy

and I took a one-year cake there.

And it was a speaker meeting.

So after the speaker meeting or after the break,

the speaker got in and I was sitting right in front

'cause I had taken a cake.

And this guy at the podium, a very tall guy,

and he had a few commanding braces

and he kind of looked at over everybody

without saying anything.

And then he leaned into the mic and he said, "Grow up."

And I'm sitting down in front and I'm like,

'cause I think he must be talking to me.

And he said, "My name is Mike Ross

and Alcoholics Anonymous taught me how to grow up.

I'm an alcoholic."

And it was a great pitch.

I related, and, you know, Mike Ross is not a guy

that I would have looked at and said,

I'm gonna relate to this guy, but I did.

It was a great pitch and it stayed with me.

And three months later, I was on tour

and had just produced a record that went top five,

which was a big thrill.

It's really fun to hear yourself on the radio,

like 20 times a day.

And we were on tour to support that record.

And I went into a bathroom for a gig and restaurant

and a guy in the sound crew walked in

and said he didn't want to bump.

And I said, "No, thanks."

And he went into a stall and I heard him start up cocaine

and I washed my hands.

No thought of the guilt or remorse

or any of that feeling that I felt that morning

when I called Cocaine Anonymous and went to a meeting

and hooked up with Nathan and got a sponsor

and he's going, "None of that came to mind."

'Cause I was very busy and very cool.

I was that hip, slick, and cool guy.

I mean, I thought I was hip, slick, and cool.

I was not hip, slick, and cool at all,

but I really thought I was.

And I went into that stall and did that cocaine.

The first thing I said was I needed a drink.

And I had been trying to convince my sponsor

for 15 months I wasn't an alcoholic.

So that night I got drunker than I'd ever been.

And that night I got back to my hotel room

about five in the morning after buying,

I think, an eight bottle of Blaux.

And this insane night, like my disease,

I didn't pick up where I left off.

I picked up like 15 months later.

The insane night, I stopped around seven the first time.

Now it's like at 9.8.

And I realized all this stuff that I had been hearing

in meetings for 15 months that I didn't relate to,

that I didn't think applied to me,

it was all making sense to me.

You know, I remember in that morning hearing people say,

"Well, just listen for the similarities."

I didn't even know what they were talking about.

They did not register with me.

But in that morning at being loaded

and recalling all these shares that I'd heard

and the people that I really respected

and came to admire in AA and CA,

like, "Oh, now I know what they're talking about."

And I said, "Okay."

And I said, "I gotta get back to the hotel room,"

called Ryan, 'cause I was going back to LA that morning

on a plane.

And I got into LAX and I literally thought

the AA police was gonna be there to meet me at the jetway.

I mean, that's how goofy and stupid I was.

They were not waiting.

My sponsor was not waiting.

He did not somehow second for, you know, I'd got loaded.

But my wife was waiting in a limousine in lingerie

because she thought she was gonna be the one

that took me a bit this morning.

They just went top five.

And she was very exciting for everybody.

And we got in that limo and went home.

And I didn't ride in limos every time

I got home from the airport.

You know, that was like a special occasion.

And I thought, "Everything's fine."

And I just got to get sober.

And didn't remember to call Brian,

did not call my buddy Nathan.

I just was, I had let that monster out of the cage

and he was not going back in until he was done.

And for about six months I'd battled.

I had that debate going on inside of me,

that true moral of, "Am I where I might not?"

Do I really need the private habit?

Do I not need it?

And all those hit projects were starting to kind of go away

'cause my attitude got bad.

And, you know, I was struggling every day.

If I wasn't loaded, I was detoxing.

And if I was getting loaded,

it really wasn't working for me anymore,

but it wasn't going to keep me from trying.

I switched dealers.

I switched types of booze I drank.

I had a roadie that worked at the Kaiser pharmacy

during the day.

And he got me a giant bottle of Calcium,

which is a hallucinogenic sleep aid.

So I developed an addiction to that

during that period of time.

And then after six months of the debate,

I just said, "F it."

A short version of the serene prayer.

And I went after it like the guy who was on a mission.

And I was loaded right at the clock for 18 months.

And actually at the beginning of that 18 months

is when I hit bottom.

And I'm so smart.

I dragged along it for about 18 months.

And all those cool projects went away.

And I was, the only project I could do

was sweat into the oldies too,

which I was not thrilled about.

Anyway, I was working on that

and I was working at a studio in Burbank

and I had started at noon

and finished about six the following morning

and then got in my car.

So loaded and drunk, you know,

and I had a half an ounce of blow with me.

And I had a theory back then,

the faster you drive, the less chance

you have of getting pulled over.

So I went roaring into my driveway miraculously,

made it home safely without getting busted.

Went back into my house.

I had a studio in the back of the house.

I was gonna go listen to whatever I'd done the day before.

And I went and got a long night Budweiser

out of my fridge in the studio.

And I went to light a cigarette.

I couldn't gain the strength to flick my Zippo lighter.

And I just sat there and Scott Redman,

the late, great Scott Redman used to say that

he got sober when he realized

he was hollow, alone and terrified.

And that's how I felt.

It was a lot of ideas and all those phrases

that I'd been hearing, you know,

were now like running in my head,

like little internet banners.

And I was trying to figure out how to kill myself.

I had, during that crazy time,

I had acquired three guns, a Smith and Wesson 357,

a Colt 45 semi-automatic

and a 12 gauge riot defender shotgun.

Not really necessary tools for record producing,

but I was trying to figure out

which gun to kill myself with.

And then I, thank God I had enough codependency in me

that I didn't want to leave my wife that kind of mess

because she had been a sweetheart through the whole thing.

And she was just confused about what I was turning into

and it was overwhelming for her.

And in a moment I just said, "Okay, I need another option."

And I heard Mike Rouse's voice say, "Grow up."

And I realized at that moment that I had to grow up.

I had been such a child.

You know, I was given like all these adult toys

and opportunities and responsibilities at 16.

And I was just a kid, I was a baby, emotionally.

And also this was the key for me.

There was nobody to blame for the situation I was in.

I had been looking to blame people.

I had acquired some resentments during that two years ago

and I had lots of resentments that I was chewing.

And I realized, you know, none of this is anybody's fault.

This is me.

I'm the one that did the blow.

I'm the one that did the drinking.

I'm the one that committed to, you know,

being a power maniac around the clock.

That's the reputation I wanted.

I had all this bullshit bravado built into me

that was so ill and so self-centered

and so self-destructive.

And in that moment I was done with.

And all that shit just fell off of me.

And that same feeling happened a few years later

when I quit cigarettes.

It just fell away from me.

And I suddenly felt light.

And I felt like, "This is going to be okay.

This is going to work for me."

And then I heard a voice say, "Oh yeah, by the way,

get your ass back to AA and do it right this time."

And I don't know, I still don't know whose voice that was.

It was pretty real.

So that was pretty much my plan.

Oh, by the way, I dumped a half ounce of blow.

I had left over.

I dumped out the beer that I opened up and not drank.

I didn't throw the cigarettes away.

But I threw away my executive dairy kit.

And as I was kind of cleaning up after myself, my wife,

I hear the phone ring in the house.

It's like seven o'clock in the morning.

My phone didn't ring at 7 a.m.

And I hear her talk and I can't quite hear what she's saying

'cause there were two pocket doors between my studio

and the rest of the house.

Anyway, she made her way into the studio and said,

"I just want you to know I'm all done drinking

and using it."

She just kind of looked at me.

'Cause I had, you know, said that more than once.

I said, "No, really, I'm gonna call Brian.

I'm going back to meetings. I'm done.

I can't, you know, I know what I need to do."

She said, "Well, that's great.

You're gonna have plenty of time to go to meetings this week."

I said, "Why?"

She goes, "Well, that was Richard Simmons on the phone.

You're fired."

I said, "Richard Simmons fired me?

Oh, it gets worse than I thought."

So I did get fired.

Very humiliating.

And I got sober.

And I went into treatment to show my wife

that I was sincere this time.

I had no doubt I was sincere.

I just did the treatment thing.

I'm glad I went to treatment.

I learned a lot there.

And I started going to meetings.

I called our sponsor, Brian, and he was still sober.

And he welcomed me back and said, "Yeah."

He said he was going to Africa to make a movie.

He said, "I'll be back in time to give you a 30-day chip.

If you get a 30-day chip, I'll be your sponsor."

So I got a 30-day chip, and he was my sponsor again.

And I was that sickeningly enthusiastic new guy.

I'm the guy that people are going, "Slow down, partner.

Just take it easy. Easy does it."

You know what I mean?

My goal was, since I'm such a maniacal overachiever,

I'm going to go to, oh, 90 meetings in 90 days?

No, I'm going to 180 meetings in 90 days.

So I went to a meeting every day at 7 a.m.

I went to a noon meeting that had just started,

a stag meeting in Encino,

and I went to a meeting every night.

So I was going to get supercharged with alcoholics.

I also knew, Greg and I were talking about this outside.

I found my seat in AA because AA was nice and calm.

I related as a drug addict to NA and CA,

but those meetings were too wild and crazy for me.

And there was a lot of young, beautiful women in there.

I was trying to keep my marriage together.

The girls had better cars than I had in CA.

So I knew that was, like, not the place for me.

So I stayed in AA, and it was nice and orderly and quiet,

and I needed orderly and quiet.

And I started doing stuff like wiping down the tables.

Nobody had elected me to be a secretary,

even when I had, like, 60 days.

Like, people don't understand I manage my material.

So I started wiping down those tables at the Valley Club,

and I did that for 11 years.

Never elected me secretary.

That's okay. I had a commitment.

So I didn't need to be secretary.

So I just dove in, and I did all the H&I stuff early on.

As soon as I could, I did CA panels really early.

Only needed, I think, 90 days to do a CA panel.

And Dick Forrest, a great trumpet player and musician,

took me to my first AA panel when I had a year.

And he was a funny guy, a quirky guy, died sober.

I just did all the stuff that, you know,

people talk about here.

I was not going to miss any part of it.

And I did not get a music job for several years.

I was like, part of it was,

near the end of my drinking,

the news that people didn't want to be around me,

they thought I was going to die on.

You know, in that case.

But once they realized,

"Oh, this guy's cool. You know, he's okay."

They were at least talking to me.

They weren't hiring me, but they were talking to me.

So, you know, I just focused on AA.

I was not going to let my career get away in my recovery.

I knew the first time around here,

I was way too interested in being hip,

it's like full of sobriety,

it's like secondary to everything else.

Plus, I discovered in the first couple of years

of my sobriety that, you know,

I'm not defined by the fact that I'm a piano player.

That's not who I am, that's what I do.

It's not who I am.

And I wanted to find out what else there was in me

that was worthwhile.

I never knew that there wasn't anything else worthwhile.

So anyway, AA trip has been really interesting,

and especially the last two years with this pandemic.

Nathan and I started a morning meeting, a Zoom meeting,

you know, when they shut down all the churches.

And I asked him, actually, I said,

"Hey, I'm thinking about starting a meeting."

And he's not a morning person.

And I said, "I wanna do it in the morning when you come."

And he's like, "What time?"

I said, "Well, how's seven o'clock?"

He said, "No fucking way, I'm not coming to a seven o'clock meeting."

I said, "Eight o'clock?"

He goes, "That's too early."

I said, "Well, I know you get up at nine to go to work."

He goes, "Okay, nine o'clock's fine."

So I start this nine o'clock meeting,

and I can tell you that in the last two years,

I've crammed more learning into my life

because it's seven days a week,

it's like 60 guys a day now.

We have guys from all over the world that go to that meeting.

I've learned so much more about me and about them

than I ever learned in my first 30 years.

It's like, talk about a cram course in recovery.

I mean, we're forced to do that together.

And the other thing I discovered is Nathan's an atheist,

and he started a secular meeting.

I didn't even know there was this whole secular movement

going on with people that do the Stamps for Life God component.

I thought, "That'd make it," he says,

"but I'm gonna go support the meeting to support my body."

So I show up at the meeting, and I can tell you now that,

you know, I don't think I have

any kind of traditional God that's in my life,

but I do have higher purpose.

I have an HP.

And how did I figure out the higher purpose?

Well, obviously the 12 Stamps.

You know, the principles that are in the Stamps

are really obvious once you spend time

taking the Stamps with your sponsor

and all of the guys that have taken through the Stamps.

I understand what those principles are.

That's what I live by.

Stay sober no matter what.

Remain monogamous to my wife no matter what.

Take care of my daughters no matter what.

Be a service to me and my community.

That's the whole deal.

So I discovered that the only rule around here is that

if you want what we have, you do what we do.

And we're not keeping that shit a secret,

especially in a group like this.

You know, you show up, you get a commitment.

I need to see you every week in that seat.

I need to see you every week in that seat.

That's what I learned around here.

That's why I go to those meetings

and the guys that go to our Zoom meeting,

there's 25 guys over 30 years sober.

They're there more consistently than anybody.

He's got 35, still 35.

- He's built.

- Damn it, he's got enough time to do it.

So anyway, life's awesome in recovery.

And if you don't feel that yet,

please stick around until you feel that.

Thank you.

(indistinct)

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