John's Journey: From Family Chaos to Two Years Sober

- All right, all right, all right.

So John K., I'll talk real quick.

I got, normally back in the day with this meeting,

there was tradition that actually you get your first birthday.

In the group on Friday, you do your long pitch,

but we don't really have a Friday meeting anymore,

but not really, maybe don't at all.

So we're doing it here now, at least for the time being.

Which school is me?

So thank you, Scott, for asking me to do this.

So I'm John K., I'm an alcoholic, and of many other things.

My sponsor is the one, the only, Bill W.

He's not the only one though, but he is, yeah.

And then his sponsor is here as well, no one.

And I'm pretty sure he's even got a sponsor too.

And that guy probably has a sponsor.

It's a good family tree there.

But quality of life's my home group.

- Wow.

- And I celebrated my second year of sobriety.

So that's cool.

And also did the 12th step on Sunday.

So everything's coming together.

Which is usually about when things go wrong.

So it's a good thing I'm doing this today.

So what it was like.

So way back when, I'm originally from Chicago,

ran into a town called DeKalb,

which is 70 miles west of Chicago,

and it's the middle of a cornfield.

And so, I mean, that was kind of fun, you know?

'Cause I could go to the city pretty easily,

or I could like, you know, start fires

and blow stuff up in the country.

Which there's a lot of that.

But my parents, so I'm the oldest of four boys,

which I think is sort of relevant to me anyway.

'Cause my parents are, well, my parents,

my dad is an alcoholic.

My mom is an alanine for sure.

And he's, I mean, I'm 33 now and he's 33 years sober.

So he got sober like right after I was born.

His original story was he got sober right before,

but then that was obviously not the case

'cause he kept getting drunk afterwards too.

That was a problem for him.

He kind of did the same thing that like Dan was saying,

his brother did where like he saw the light, he saw God,

and he just kind of went back to AA for cakes and chips

and stuff like that every once in a while.

He did, I mean, he must just, you know,

be doing a more Catholic version of the program.

'Cause that's what his whole spiel is.

Which was kind of a problem for me growing up.

They were very, my parents are super Catholic

and they pushed it on me real hard.

At least that's how I perceived it.

'Cause my perception maybe is not exactly ideal.

So if I said I didn't want to do something

and someone told me I had to do it, that was a big problem.

My dad, like I said, he got sober like right when I was born,

which in hindsight, like totally now,

having gone through what is my first year of sobriety,

I can't imagine having a kid then.

That would really suck.

And I can't imagine like having to, I don't know,

give attention to this other thing when I'm like barely even,

I can barely even function correctly.

And then like, you know, I mean, him and my mom,

must have been getting fights all the time

if my experience is anything like his.

And so I'm sure that like,

I probably picked up on some weird vibes or whatever,

but like nothing really made,

I mean, they didn't make me an alcoholic.

And I guess that, you know, I'm trying to say,

like they, yeah, no experience made me an alcoholic,

but it probably exacerbated the problem.

Like if I was an alcoholic, I probably, you know,

that would have just been another thing that happened.

So I grew up and my dad wasn't really like,

he wasn't really around, like he was there.

He didn't like leave, but like, he was always at work.

It was kind of like, he became a workaholic instead.

And so I sort of was like in charge of my 300 brothers.

Like I was the dad, I kind of became the dad of the family.

And my mom, you know, she did the best that she could,

which was great.

But like, because my dad wasn't really a dad or ever around,

her attention was everything.

Attention's probably my first like real addiction,

'cause not just her, but anyone, anyone's attention.

I hope that's what I wanted.

When I was probably like in, I don't know,

like second or third grade or whatever,

there was a girl down the street that,

well, short story, she blessed me.

And that gave me a really messed up idea

of what like women's attention was.

Plus with my mom already being the one that like

I totally dug the attention of,

because like I need her approval

because that's the only thing that like,

as my little caveman brain thought kept me safe.

And so going forward, like my messed up like perception

of how relationships were supposed to be did not aid me.

It was pretty much like do whatever I could

to win the affection of every woman I ever met,

because like every girl was the one that I loved.

You know, it was, you know,

everyone was the right one for me.

And then for guys, it was more like,

just don't show them who you really are

so you don't get beat up and made fun of.

So I never really like was myself around anyone either.

Like, so I guess my second addiction was just lying.

I always had a little partition with myself

that was just like, I'll just keep this space for you.

And then when I'm around you, I'll be that person instead.

Obviously there were conflicts with that sometimes

when those, you know, now I have,

when both those people get in the same room

and you have to pick which one,

but I also get really good at lying and really good

at people pleasing and schmoozing.

When I started doing drugs later,

I never had to pay for drugs if I didn't want to.

I could always just get them from people

because I could just be, I don't know,

like just schmooze my, I don't know.

One, people don't like to do drugs by themselves generally.

And two, not everybody, but I hung out with the people

that didn't want to do it by themselves.

And yeah, they just give them to me

'cause I could kind of just make them like me enough

to get whatever I wanted.

I also didn't really like alcohol right away.

Like, I mean, it was cool, but like I've learned to drink,

but I didn't go down like the volume drinking path

like my brothers did.

You know, they drink like light beers

so that way they can just pound through like 24 case.

I wanted IPAs.

I thought I liked IPA, but what I really liked

was just the alcohol content.

'Cause like my favorite beer was like 12% alcohol.

And when that kid touched my lips

and I felt that shake go through my body,

I was like, "Whoa, this tastes really good."

That wasn't it.

Like scotch, scotch was the,

that was the thing that I got into.

So I started drinking to work all the time

after I got in, well, I guess it was just a minute.

I met my now wife in Chicago.

We went to film school together and we moved to LA.

Where do you make films?

And she was like, she was cool with drinking.

She was cool with drugs, but like,

she was very casual for her.

She very much is not an addict.

But I've showed her what good weed was.

And she had been like,

"I've never actually done high from weed.

I've smoked it a lot, but I never got high

'cause it just isn't it."

I guess that's West Chicago weed.

So we kind of went on a kick it out

when we first came out here.

'Cause it was like, well, cool.

Now I can, oh, I have back problems

so I can get a med card.

And then it became legal.

So I could just go, you know,

oh, I'm 18 or older or 21 or older, whatever.

You'll get weed.

But she grew out of it.

You know, like eventually she was like,

all right, well, I guess we're done now, right?

'Cause we're gonna like do our career thing now.

And I resisted that a little bit,

but by resist, I had it meant in my head,

I was like, fuck that.

Put outside, go off that.

Yeah, sorry.

But outside I said, yeah, of course, honey.

Like that makes a lot of sense.

Like, why don't we just take a break from that?

And so I would just drive to the dispensary

and just pick up vape pens and stuff

'cause they don't really smell like anything

and I could just get high.

And I was also really good, at least I thought.

I mean, she never really, it doesn't matter.

I, at least I thought I was really good

at not showing up, like I totally act normal.

But maybe that just is my personality

that I act like a stoner anyway.

So people just think, oh, he's already high.

I don't know, I guess it doesn't really matter.

And it's that started to get harder to get access to

'cause like, I mean, I don't know, it wasn't always like,

I could just go run off the dispensary and do that

'cause I'm really good at hiding,

but I also got to like keep the lie.

And we get caught, I can't do this anymore.

So I just kind of up my alcohol intake.

When we moved out here, since we've been playing the film,

I worked at an animation studio that,

I mean, we're just working like an old animation

and it was great 'cause we could just smoke weed all day.

Like that was the whole studio, it was 4/20,

everybody outside, let's go smoke weed.

All right, now let's keep working until like 10 p.m.

My wife asked me, she's just like,

I mean, I think that's crazy that they do that.

You don't do that, no, of course they don't do that.

My eyes are just red because I was out there with them

and the smoke irritated my eyes.

Then I got a job in a more corporate place

and that turned out that weed wasn't really the thing there,

but drinking was fine.

We even had an office that was called Thurston.

And if you went into Thurston's office,

it was just a tiki bar, which was sweet.

And our producers had like little, I'll trace.

So I mean, the career, like Dan was saying,

like you just drink, it was normal, it was pretty normal.

But it wasn't normal, even that wasn't like

good enough for me though.

I still had to like have a bottle of scotch in my desk

and like quietly smoke in my office,

which that wasn't allowed, but no one's gonna take nicotine

away from me, that one's not even a problem.

So I would just work late and just get high

and drink and stuff and then go home.

I'm not sure how much work I actually got done there.

See, oh, I also, before I started life,

there was a period of time where I wasn't working

and my wife had a job, so that was great for me.

Oh my God, she worked and I could just be home all day.

It was basically like being a teenager

and my parents were gone.

As long as I crammed really fast for the last hour

of the day and got as much stuff done as I could

and it looked like I was working all day.

When really I was just like in my underwear,

watching porn and doing drugs

and then playing video games all day.

And the guy who had just fired me,

he lived nearby and we worked out of his house,

well not fired, he just didn't want to pay us anymore.

So he just locked us out of the house one day

and slung us back inside, that was the whole thing.

He was an eccentric artist.

So I jumped his fence 'cause I knew his house lay out

really well and he had one of these Michael Jackson doctors

that he could get whatever he wanted for his bipolarism

or schizophrenia or ADD, which I mean,

he's probably actually all those things.

So he had a little pharmacy above his counter

and he'd offer me stuff every once in a while

just so I could stay up and keep working.

And so I knew he was there and so I haven't seen this guy

in like a month and so I jumped his fence,

I went through the back and went in there and stole

like a bottle of dextrometaphine,

which basically like skied and I got so much gardening done

that week in my house, it was buried.

The problem was it went away and it ran out.

And so I started looking up, I get more and stuff.

So basically like, it wasn't just alcohol,

it was anything I could get my hands on.

We had, I'll get sober in a second,

but we had, we used to do fostering for these dogs.

Fostering, you know, you're supposed to like,

you're helping these dogs out, right?

And I loved it.

I would, yeah, I loved it.

But one of the dogs we had, she's really old,

she had hip dysplasia, she had like a muscle

or tendon or something.

So they gave her Tramadol,

basically whenever I asked for it, just as needed.

And so one of the first things I did was,

is this the same as human Tramadol?

And it was close enough.

So that dog needed a lot of Tramadol.

So I've been just, you know,

taking like seven or eight pills of Tramadol at some point

and drinking and, you know, getting high.

And I still somehow got promoted again and again

and again and again.

I don't know, yeah, I don't know if that's,

but I'm not sure if that was necessarily my skills

or just like, I just was really like good at schmoozing,

you know?

I don't understand, people didn't see it, but anyway,

the thing with women bit me in the ass

because I couldn't just stay with one.

I always had to have the attention of as many as possible

because when one pissed me off, at least there was another.

'Cause all my problems aren't really my problems.

They're like the things I don't like about myself

or the things I don't like about everybody else.

Even if you don't actually do that,

because I don't really want to look at myself.

So I'll just take that self resentment,

push it to other people.

And basically do it to whoever's closest to me.

So unfortunately that was my wife.

It's like, well, not at the time she's still my wife,

but at the time that was pointed at my wife.

So she was the bad guy and the girls at work,

well, they were not the bad guy.

But as you can imagine, that did not work out well

when I tried to just jump ship and run away.

And you know, I thought my wife was gonna be like,

"Fine, just go then."

But she wasn't.

She was like, "You just need help.

"We need to just get this figured out."

It was crazy.

My whole world suddenly fell apart that like,

wait, so this is, it was like for a moment I saw,

oh wait, this is me.

This isn't you, this isn't anybody else.

This has actually been my problem this whole time.

So like, I mean, I wish I could say

that's where I got sober right away.

But I did go to my neighbor who I knew was an alcoholic

'cause we had talked about it before.

And she used to go to this group,

maybe Dayton, Dayton my sponsor.

So I kept it in the family.

But I was like, oh, I'm gonna go talk to her.

I'm gonna talk to Cindy.

I'm gonna go across the driveway.

But first I gotta just, if this is the last time

I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna,

I pounded like a couple beers we had in the fridge.

And the only alcohol we had was this nasty bottle of brandy

that my brother bought once.

You know, like plastic bottle brandy.

But it was alcohol, so I was like, whatever.

So I went over there and, you know,

she asked me the 20 questions and all that stuff.

And I was like, yeah, okay, wow.

That was, you know, I knew what AA was already

'cause my dad was an alcoholic

and they didn't really tell me what that meant.

I thought that meant like, if he drank alcohol,

they told me if he drank alcohol, he was gonna die.

But I thought that was like more literal

in the sense of like, it was gonna like,

he was gonna like go into cardiac arrest or something

or, you know, be like drinking sulfuric acid or something.

I understand, so when I realized, well,

you can drink alcohol and not die,

that was a stupid thing, you know,

like they tell you that Santa's not gonna give you toys

if you're not good or something.

You know, it's just what parents say.

I understand now what they meant.

Yeah, I understand.

So Cindy told me, all right,

well, just don't drink for 24 hours.

Think you can't, do you think you can do that?

Sure, I did manage to do that.

So we went to the Valley Club meeting the next day

and then the next meeting I went to

was the Saturday speaker meeting

back at the other place here with quality of life.

And, you know, as far as picking a sponsor went,

I went with what I thought was like safe idea.

'Cause I'm like, all right, well, I already know this guy.

I've seen him like take the trash out,

like it's Cindy's house.

So like we kind of have a rapport

and, you know, like I felt like,

it was almost like I thought my old thinking was like,

well, he'll go easy on me because I like know him.

I mean, to be honest, I barely knew him

aside from him just being like my neighbor's boyfriend.

And in hindsight, well, not like then my next thought

was like, oh shoot, why did they do this?

This guy like knows where I live.

If I stop coming, like, you just show up.

Like every time, you know, especially early on,

you know, I'd see his bike truck out there

and be like, oh, but I see that worked out

pretty good for me.

Yeah, it worked out really good.

It's fun 'cause I'll be in the garage

working on something and headphones blaring.

And so I was gonna sneak up behind me, you know,

and say, oh, hey, John.

Oh my God, Bill, you came out of nowhere.

You know, I was seven foot over every once in a while.

So that actually turned out really nice.

Yeah, I didn't have to do much more in meeting shopping

or home group shopping.

I forget what it's called.

Once I came here, I was like, this is where I need to be.

But this is so much different than I thought

AA was gonna be like, 'cause when I worked,

I worked at this auto mechanic place, this mechanic.

And across the street, there was, it was called,

I still remember, it was called the Alana Club.

And there are always these big like biker dudes

and semi-truck drivers or whatever, you know,

smoking out there and farmers, lots of farmers too.

Yeah, lots of corn all over the place, so much corn.

And, you know, I knew that, you know,

eventually someone told me, oh, that's an AA crew.

Oh, okay, that's interesting.

Didn't really understand what that meant.

Like, I guess I thought like, maybe they'd lick or,

I just didn't know, like I knew what it was

as far as like, you know, like it's, they're alcoholics,

they're in recovery and they're hanging out

and you know, getting lung cancer

so they don't drink anymore.

'Cause that's all they ever do is stand outside and smoke.

But they're all really nice.

I remember this one time I was pulling a car

into the shop or whatever,

and I don't remember why the car was supposed to be there,

but the whole left wheel fell off.

Like the ball joint separated

and the whole thing just, and I'm taking left turns.

So now I'm blocking traffic or whatever,

and I'm like freaking out.

I'm like, oh my God, what am I gonna do?

And all these dudes from AA across the street

from the Alano Club, they like to get the jacket,

to get this wheel underneath of it,

like a little stand with a couple of wheels

that just slide it in the rest of the way.

They just all got next to the car

and lifted up the corner.

So I just got to slide this thing under

that I didn't even ask him.

I just came over to help.

So I never really had anything against AA.

I just didn't think it was for me, you know.

The reason I originally came here was just so I wasn't,

just so I stopped, you know, stopped being in trouble.

That's why I did anything.

I, yeah, I just, you know,

like once I asked Bill to be my sponsor,

he said, you know, you got to read the book,

big book cover to cover, 90 meetings, 90 days.

Then we'll start step one.

Oh, and you got to get commitments at every meeting.

Okay, cool.

So I got to do the meetings.

I got to get commitments.

I get all these commitments and then the 99 is over.

And it's like, well, wait, I still have to go every day though

because I have commitments at every meeting.

So that was a trick.

You know, I realized now that I wasn't it like,

at the time I was like, that's just like a punishment.

You know, I just got to do this so that way

I'm not in trouble anymore.

It's just that how my whole life was like,

if something was out of my control, I just was like,

I just have the power through and the other side

I can do whatever I want.

And that sort of started to happen

because my original sobriety jade was November 18th.

But things started to get a little better

in March of 2019, 2020, sorry.

Like Sarah, my wife, it wasn't a fight every day.

You know, she was seeing the changes, the progress.

She saw me going to the meetings every day

and I got comfortable.

I just got a little comfortable, a little too comfortable.

And she was a little stressed out and we still had weed.

So I was like, why don't you just smoke a bowl?

I won't smoke, you know, I won't smoke at all, that's fine.

She was like, oh, you know, she, you know,

but what's funny is she didn't even think to smoke.

I was like pushing this on her, why don't you smoke, smoke,

smoke, you know, if you get high, you'll feel better.

I can't do it, but you should do it, you know?

And when I told her that I wasn't planning on like

going to hit that dirty bowl afterwards, but I did.

'Cause I was, you know, I was cleaning it out

and just make sure it's fine.

And then I told myself, okay, that was stupid,

but like, I'm not going to do it again.

So, and I did it a second time, of course.

And I was like, all right, well, but it only happened twice.

So as long as I don't do it a third time,

like 'cause three strikes you're out, like baseball.

And then I did that too, but by now the weed was gone.

So like, I guess, actually I'm not sure if it was,

but I think Sarah hit it or something.

I think she just stopped doing it, I don't remember.

But what's great is now I don't actually care.

The thing was is six months or so later

when my birthday was coming up,

yeah, I told Bella that wasn't actually what had happened.

And yeah, my wife was pretty pissed.

You know, so I had to apologize to a bunch of people

and Bill explained, well, you're obviously

going to have to tell everyone.

So I told everyone and now my Friday date is March 28th.

It was a good lesson learned there though.

'Cause like what I really learned was that I can't just,

well, I can't do it on my own.

Like that was really what it was.

It was like, just for a moment, I think I just looked like,

I'm going to take this power back.

'Cause like, look at all this stuff I learned in AA.

Cool, well now I can go use it on my own.

For me anyway, that's not how it works.

I got to do it here, I got to do it with everybody here.

Even when I don't want to,

although what's cool about coming to meetings now

is I actually like coming to meetings.

Like I actually want to come, you know?

Like I remember for a while, especially after COVID

and we all like, we just cut it down to three meetings

and Saturday was one.

And I was like, well, that's not a big deal

because we're just doing it from Zoom.

But then we came back and I was like, oh, Saturdays.

Oh, my Saturdays are ruined now.

Actually, totally not, totally the opposite.

That thankfully wasn't my thought process for very long

because I think I've learned to more quickly realize

when I'm, I don't know, just being a selfish prick.

No, I don't think it's fluff already.

Like, so since my day is kind of like going to be,

the backdrop's going to be this, I've found other ways

to do service at the beginning of the day.

So Saturday is like kind of a fun work day, you know?

Like I do some stuff in the California Wildlife Center

and in the morning, which is a blast

and which I've never wanted to do before

because it was a commitment.

It was like a six month long commitment at least.

And I was like, that seems insane to me.

I don't want to have to make sure that every Saturday morning

this is something I got to do.

But then I came here and it was like,

well, six month commitment doesn't really seem

like a big deal because I have a commitment every day now

for like a year.

But really I see that this has all just been me growing up.

I just did not grow up emotionally, spiritually,

everything but physically, mentally.

Like somewhere in between 10 and 20,

the various parts of me were stuck.

And I'm just trying to catch up, kind of.

I think another part of my first sobriety

that didn't work out great was this mentality

that I had to catch up, that I had to do as fast as I could.

Like I have a lot of time to catch up on.

Like, shit, I got to catch up to off.

I got to catch up to everybody else.

Like I realized that I am really behind emotionally.

I realized I'm really behind spiritually.

I realized I'm just behind.

So if I just do this as fast as I can, well cool.

And I'll catch up and I'll be better.

But you know, sometimes you can't do it well

and also do it fast.

So I had to kind of give up that idea.

I had to give up a lot of things,

but I think that's surrender.

You know, I had to surrender the fact

that there are a lot of things that I can't do now.

There are a lot of things I have to do now

if I want things to stay the way they are.

Like my life is the best it's ever been.

And that's no joke.

It's literally the best that's ever been.

And COVID couldn't have happened at a better time for me

because I would have had such a harder time

if I had to go to work every day

and be around the people that I used to be around.

I mean, I surround myself with people

that liked the way I was,

at least the bad parts of it, you know?

'Cause then there were all the parts

that they thought were good, but that wasn't even real

'cause that was just whatever they wanted.

Work-wise, yeah, I mean, I got out of that old job.

I hopped around a couple of places

and I'm working at a place

that is exactly what I always wanted to work on

since I wanted to get into movies,

since I watched "Jurassic Park" as a kid

and was like, "Oh, I wanna do that.

"That's what I wanna do."

And that's crazy.

There are these weird things that I'm starting to do now

that somewhere earlier I was really into

playing around with cameras a lot more lately.

And what's crazy about that is when I was 10 to 14,

about where I think I emotionally got stunted,

that was what I was into.

I was super into that.

And then somewhere along the lines, I became,

well, that's not what I need to be into

because I need to get girls.

What do I need to be into to get girls?

I'm gonna learn to play the guitar.

I'm gonna start a band.

I'm gonna get into a band.

I'm in a band now.

You know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

And the only thing I can really keep playing now

is a band, I guess.

I mean, there was a lot of guys,

like they all thought they were DJs.

They had rented out one whole floor of an apartment building

and took all the doors off the hinges.

Like, and everybody was, it was just garbage, laundry,

and like drugs everywhere.

And everyone just, that's the cocaine room,

that's the weed room.

You wanna do some ecstasy, you can go roll over there.

Like, man, that place was awesome.

But no one knew these people were actually very talented.

Like, I think everyone just thought they were, you know?

But it was cool with me because like the lead singer

in my band was into this and he was gonna, you know,

if I hung out with him and I got these people like me,

cool, free drugs.

So I liked the whole rock and roll scene, you know,

the whole band thing.

And it wasn't even rock and roll.

I was like a cover band for,

we just covered like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and stuff.

And I thought I was so cool.

Man, I mean, I don't regret learning guitar,

but like, it was not for the right reasons, you know?

Like it wasn't because like, oh, I like guitar so much.

I didn't do anything for the reasons

that like I actually liked it anymore.

I did it because I thought you'd like it.

I did it because I thought you'd like it.

I did it because I thought that would make you like me.

I'm really happy that I can get in touch with, I don't know,

maybe figuring out who I actually am.

Granted, thankfully, I only have two years of sobriety now.

So what's the limit?

Like how old do you have to be to normally go to the same day?

So in eight years, like I'm gonna come back

and I probably hopefully have a better idea of who that is.

And you know what?

Maybe I'll also be a crotchety old AA.

I hope so, man.

You know, I love everybody here.

This is great.

Like the reason I love this group so much

is 'cause like I said, I grew up in a Catholic church

and that higher power's gonna work out for me.

Like I was really close to the higher power

that like I have now, then,

but I kept being told by everybody that that's the wrong one.

That's like, that's not how it works, you know?

You gotta follow these rules, you gotta do these other things

you know, that's not it.

These rules are really the only rules that I need.

And yeah, they're suggestions.

Thank you, I like that, yeah, yeah.

You know, 'cause God doesn't take attendance.

He doesn't like, I mean, he's just,

for me, my higher power is just like one of my best friends,

just my buddy.

And I remember where I was going with that.

Oh yeah.

One of the things I did like about like youth groups

and all that stuff from growing up in the church

was the community.

Like when you actually find those places

that had like a really nice community,

'cause I mean, sometimes it's just like wasp bickering

and sometimes it's cliques.

But sometimes you'd actually get a group of people

that really actually learned to love each other

and you became like a family.

And that's what I dug here.

And I knew that from like the second I came in here,

like I came into this group with Cindy and Sad X to Bill

and I don't remember who the speaker was that Saturday,

I don't remember much from then,

but I remember that I loved it and being like,

"Okay, this is it.

This is way better than like I thought it was gonna be."

Actually, I've never been to an AA meeting

that was ever like what I thought it was gonna be.

I'm not even sure what that is anymore.

I guess I thought it was gonna be

a bunch of rough biker dudes

all like angrily slapping each other around the back

or whatever, I don't know.

I really warped sense of what masculinity was too, I guess.

Yeah, trying to think of what else to say.

I really am just grateful that now that I'm here.

It's only been two years of sobriety,

but like knock on wood.

It really seems so much different than it was two years ago.

Like it is insane how much different it is,

but also some of it's like weirdly familiar.

Like, "Oh, I forgot I liked this thing.

Oh, I forgot you could feel this way."

Like there are things that I haven't felt or experienced

in 20 years.

And then there are things

that I've never felt or experienced, you know,

that I guess normal people do.

And when I tell my wife, "Hey, I feel this way.

Isn't it great? Or doesn't this suck?"

She's like, "You never felt that way before?

Like what's wrong with you?"

Like, "Nah, I didn't."

She says, "Oh, I just have to remind myself

that you're like 20 years younger than me in some ways."

And I say, "Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

I guess I can figure that out."

But that's what I'm here for, you know?

I am figuring it out.

And it's pretty sweet to have an example

because like whether or not,

like Bruce said this actually just before the meeting,

was like, "We're all an example of aid.

You just decide whether we're going to be a good,

you know, what kind of example you're going to be."

And to be honest, both examples are helpful for me

because I can learn that's a good way to do it.

And that maybe isn't the way it's going to work for me.

And yeah, it makes me think I'm generally the kind of person

that learns by doing something.

Like you can give me a book and tell me, "Learn this thing."

But until I actually have to like sit down

and find an application for it, I don't care.

Like I hated math.

I hated math, but I'm actually really good at math,

turns out.

But I didn't find that out until like a couple of years ago

when I actually had to start using it at work.

And I was like, "Oh, this is great. This is fun.

I actually like this. Weird."

And I guess I had to figure that out too with sobriety.

I had to figure out, "So what's it like to go out?"

But what's crazy about that is everyone here

was not that surprised.

I mean, I get like, kind of like,

I get kind of like, you know,

teased every once in a while about it,

but it wasn't like, I don't know if it's just me

or if it's just kind of like, well, I think maybe partially,

but I think mostly it's just that, well, yeah.

I mean, you're here, aren't you?

Like, that's kind of why we're all here.

And really, oh yeah.

And really everyone's just happy that you come back.

So yeah, two years of sobriety, two and a half of recovery.

I guess that's kind of the way I look at it now.

But I'm really happy to be here

and I'll be back in eight years.

So I guess that's all I got.

I thank my car, my sponsor, Quality Life.

- All in all.