Elena's Journey: From Childhood Turbulence to 24 Years Sobriety

talk at this level and they'll hear me.

All right.

Oh, okay, great.

And then you're like, well, I'll kind of keep an eye.

Let me know.

Just throw stuff out.

Keep it casual.

So, hi, my name is Elena.

I'm an alcoholic.

- Hello, Elena.

- I am really grateful to be participating in my sobriety.

Thank you to my friend Nina for accompanying me tonight

on a Saturday night.

And thank you for asking me to come out here.

It's kind of a random thing

that I got a text a few weeks, few months ago, actually.

Somebody was like, they need a speaker on Saturday night.

And usually I'd be like, I couldn't do it.

And I would usually just text back, okay, I can't do it.

But I'm at a point in my recovery where any AA request,

if I can't do it, I'll still try to follow up on it.

And there's reasons for that.

And I'll kind of get into that.

Just how my program has evolved over the past few years.

My sobriety date is August 13th, 2000.

I have a sponsor.

She knows that she's my sponsor.

She has a sponsor.

I think it means a lot to me to come into the rooms

and be able to share a little bit about my experience.

And I hope whether you are 30 days away from your last drink

or perhaps 30 days from your next drink,

that I say something tonight

that keeps you sober one more day

or keeps me sober one more day.

So I call my sponsors.

So it's funny because like a 10 or 20 minute talk

is usually like, it's okay.

If it falls off the wheels, you're out pretty quick.

So it's like painless.

But at 30 minute mark, like 35 minute,

I was like, all right, just give me some structure

so like it doesn't turn into like a rabbit hole.

So my sponsor is 50 years sober.

She's 83 years old, 83, 84, and she's wonderful.

And she's a scientist and I needed that coming.

I picked her up later on in sobriety,

but she's science-based and I needed that

because I struggled a lot with the higher power thing.

And she said, well, so you definitely wanna talk about

when you drink, wanna talk about getting drunk a little bit,

don't live there.

And then she said, and then you wanna get sober

and talk about how you came into the fellowship

of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And then she said, you should talk about what's going on now.

Pretty simple stuff, right?

What it was like, what happened, what it's like now.

And then she said, and if you can bring up the word

intercourse during your talk, social intercourse,

usually peps up the audience a few times throughout.

Throw it out there if you look a little tired.

But I love her and I love that she's got this really

dry sense of humor.

She hit her bottom when I was born.

And that's really important to me because that's a lifetime.

My whole life she has been sober and that blows my mind.

She was falling down drunk with kids, you know,

she was a professor when I was born and I love that magic.

I think there's a lot of magic in this program

and I hope to share some of that with you tonight.

So I'm here because I have alcoholism and what that means

to me is that I have an unruly, willful mind.

And alcoholism to me is the inability to be comfortable

for very long periods of time.

And you know, what I'll do is I probably won't share

about when I drank, I'll do a pit stop before that

and talk a little bit about who I was like

before alcohol entered my body.

Because I've been really reflecting on that,

particularly now because I'm starting

to remember things better.

And that's another thing, I came into this program

with not a very good memory, but it's gotten better

through the years and it wasn't selected.

I just think that I wasn't still enough

to really remember things even before I started drinking.

But to give you a little background, I was born overseas.

I kind of lived all over the world.

My father had an international thing,

business thing that he did.

So we traveled a lot, we moved a lot.

There was a lot of discomfort in my family.

I'd say that my parents did the best they could

to fill our material needs.

I think they probably struggled with knowing

what our emotional needs were.

And that's okay.

Like I've gotten through a lot of that stuff

that I probably pulled into my drinking

and then into my sobriety.

I'll tell you one of the things when I look back now,

one of the things that was kind of like, I don't know,

a red flag was when I was about three years old,

I remember I was sick and my mother came into my room

and she gave me cough syrup,

a couple of teaspoons of cough syrup.

And then she placed it on this dresser, right?

This tall dresser of drawers.

And I'm three, you know?

And I know this 'cause where we were living

and that's the only age I was in this country.

And so when she left the room, it was dark.

And I got out of bed and I pulled the drawers out

so I could climb the drawers like stairs.

And I drank that bottle of cough syrup,

but I didn't finish it because I remember thinking,

"Well, I have to leave some in the bottle or she'll know."

You know, what three-year-old is thinking that way?

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know if I was born with it,

but I was certainly starting to do things.

The memory I have is I like the taste.

Maybe that's true.

I don't know.

But I think it's interesting that I had kind of

this manipulation at a really young age

to stay safe or to stay out of trouble.

I know people talk about with alcoholism,

they talked about feeling uncomfortable in their skin.

You know, for me, it was, I needed your attention a lot.

I needed to feel special in order to feel normal.

I wouldn't say I felt like I was coming out of my skin.

I just knew that I was very aware of people watching me.

And I was also really uncomfortable with that,

but I needed more of it.

And that's kind of my journey around discomfort

because really what qualifies me

for the room of Alcoholics Anonymous

is that I cannot deal with discomfort.

And a lot of people in the world can't deal with discomfort

and they go about their business,

but I drink a little bit and that's the difference.

And it can show up in a lot of different ways.

So, you know, I started drinking, so I'm an '80s kid.

And so I started on California coolers.

If anybody is old enough to remember those delicious things

and splash, splash wine coolers were big in the '80s.

So was Bruce Willis.

He used to sing a song about it

if you're old enough to remember that.

But that was my first drunken.

Listen, it wasn't this bell gong where I was like,

"Hey, this is the answer."

It was just a whole lot of fun.

And I think I was 12, 12 or 13.

And I remember taking my shoes off and I had really big feet

because at that age, you're kind of out of proportion.

I think I had a size 10 shoe, which I still do,

but in seventh or eighth grade.

And I'd taken off these pumps, these heels,

and I was dancing around and the shoe,

parts of the shoe were off on my foot

because your feet sweat no shoes or whatever.

And I was dancing and I didn't care.

And my boyfriend was there, he was 17,

which that's other great choices I was making.

You know, I think I was 13, he was 17.

And he was kind of like, "What are you doing?"

And I didn't care at all.

And I went home that night and I was so happy.

And so set off the phenomenon of craving

because there weren't consequences

for a really long time with my drinking.

There was a whole lot of fun.

And I remember, you know,

my whole goal was like going to Daytona Beach,

you know, beer bombs, like it was all about fun at that time.

And a lot of it really was, and vomiting was a great story.

And you're around other people

who had kind of that like message.

And that's how it was for me for a very long time.

And I think another thing that's kind of like

one of those red flags of alcoholism for me

is, you know, around 15, you know,

drugs are a part of my story.

You know, marijuana at that age, you know, was common.

You know, the funny thing is

I never liked the effects of marijuana at all.

Like I was a drinker, but it took me out of discomfort.

So I smoked pot all the time and it made me uncomfortable,

hungry, neurotic, and paranoid every single time.

And I smoked it all the time, every time.

Like there was, I was never chasing a dragon of,

oh, the first time when, it was always miserable.

And I kept doing it.

But I remember I was with these girls in high school

and we had a bowl and I was smoking it out in the bushes.

It was a really windy day and I couldn't get it lit.

And they were like, let it go, who cares?

Let's just go, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

This is going to get lit.

Like we're going to, like it doesn't,

to normal people who might, they'll never say it,

but they'll just kind of go, huh, okay.

You're really committed to getting that.

Yeah, I am.

And that's what it was about for me.

And I just would sit there in this, in the bushes,

by my, in the bushes, by myself,

with these people five feet away from me, just kind of,

okay, you got to smoke that pot.

And I did.

And then I became, you know, paranoid,

hungry and completely disconnected.

Couldn't wait for my next time of smoking pot.

So, you know, another kind of small thing

that I think is alcoholism for me

is that when I went to college, you know,

I got sent away to school because I was dating a drug dealer

and that's, I don't know about you guys,

but that's, I'm looking for my source a little bit closer.

And so I got sent away.

He went to Albert Bound.

He's dead now, fentanyl.

A lot of my ex-friends are dead now, which is interesting.

But you know, if you don't get sober,

that tends to, you just need more and more something

to deal with, I think, the discomfort.

But when I went to college, you know,

I went to my classes, I showed up in life,

but I needed to drink every day.

And how I managed that is that I had segmented friends.

So I did the thing.

So I rushed the sorority, I had the hippie friends,

I had the work friends,

and then I had kind of the derelict friends.

And the good news was that I could, you know,

party with sorority girls on Friday night.

On Sunday nights, it was gonna be my hippie friends,

but drop some acid, maybe some mushrooms,

and go see like fish.

And then, you know, Monday, Tuesday night,

it'll be my like political people

where you can go and like drink pitchers of beer

and things like that.

And what I didn't realize at the time,

I thought I was very social.

And I remember a couple times walking through campus

and people saying hello, and I'd be like,

I don't know who this person is.

And I kind of thought that was cool at the time.

'Cause you know, people know me and I don't know them.

And you know, that's kind of cool.

But what it really was was my need to hide

the fact that I needed to drink every day,

every single day of the week.

And there might be one day off because of a hangover

that's pretty severe.

But even those would eventually at that age,

we could pretty good that worked out by 9 p.m.

So those were the things that were happening in my life.

And listen, you know, I could say,

hey, it was fine, everything.

You know, I graduated from college, everything's,

but you know, that whole thing.

However, all the choices that I was making

had to do with alcohol.

Every single one of the classes that I took

was an early morning class.

Was it gonna fit with my party schedule?

So a lot of my life was directed by alcohol.

And the thing about alcoholism is that it doesn't say,

hey, this is alcoholism.

It says none of that 'cause it's sneaky.

You know, I just think that I've gotta change jobs

or I don't know, change classes.

Or that class was stupid because like,

who cares about going on Thursdays?

That to me, that did not present as alcoholism.

And I didn't know that.

It took me really, it took me 15 years sober

to realize what alcoholism really was.

So, you know, I moved to San Francisco.

And again, a lot of my choices by alcohol, it's still fun.

There were consequences here and there.

It started getting a little rough, you know,

choices that I didn't wanna be making.

But what was really starting to get in my way

was the hangovers and the anxiety.

There's a certain amount of anxiety that I don't,

I can't put my finger on.

And that'll come closer to me getting sober,

which is just about now, actually.

So when I moved to Los Angeles,

it's probably, it's '99 obviously.

And here's, I'll tell you where I was.

It was, do you remember the "Blair Witch" movie

came out in '99?

It was July of '99.

And by then I was drinking, you know,

between Valium and vanilla vodka

was kind of where I was at.

And I was really paranoid

and I wasn't really going outside anymore

because I was agoraphobic.

I had shingles, which I was pretty certain was,

had nothing to do with alcohol.

I thought I had to do the food allergy or something.

I didn't know.

So I kept going to the doctor and my sister was like,

"Well, actually, you know,

our friend who has HIV has shingles."

And I was like, "Oh, it's HIV."

So I started getting,

I actually got tested like every two or three months.

And my doctor was like,

"Are you having multiple partners?

Are you not?"

And I'm like, "No."

And she's like, "Why are you coming back?"

Because I just had it in my head

and I was very, very thin.

And that was because of the wheat allergy.

So I probably had a wheat allergy.

That's what I thought that was.

And the "Blair Witch" was out.

And I remember my boyfriend at the time,

he was a born again Christian, whatever.

And I thought he was trying to kill me.

Just that was there too.

And I thought the "Blair Witch" was living outside my house.

And so if you've ever had kind of paranoid delusions,

then I hope you'll get this.

But like, no one could tell me different.

And I remember there were noises in the bushes at night.

And I'm like, I would be an atrophy here in my bed

because I knew she, the, it.

I didn't know even what the "Blair Witch" was.

I just knew the movie was out in the bushes.

And now it seems so strange,

but at the time it was really frightening.

I remember this kid walking me around the neighborhood,

my boyfriend, and trying to get me outside

because I was certain that the sky was falling

and I just couldn't be outside.

And the only way I could explain it,

I thought of it the other day.

It's like, I can't think of it now,

but the feeling of being out there,

it was like the sky, it wasn't gonna swallow me up.

It was just going to kind of drop down on me.

And that's why I remember he was walking me around

and I was doing this the whole time.

And poor kid had no idea.

And I think poor kid was a little bit younger,

he's really naive because he just thought I was normal.

He didn't understand that I was drinking vodka

and things like that.

And he's trying to explain to me this guy wasn't falling

and he wasn't trying to infect me with HIV.

And I just, I mean,

I remember he would bring me test results all the time.

He'd be like, oh, let me test again.

But I think something's not right here.

And so anyway, that was August of 1999

and I didn't get sober for another year.

So it wasn't even my bottom to not be able to go outside,

to still keep drink, to be navigating

between Valium and vanilla vodka.

But what got me sober is I went North to San Francisco.

I went to see an ex-boyfriend, he's alive actually.

So that's good, he's alive.

And we got an eight ball

and I just started drinking tequila

and I told him I was an alcoholic.

And he's like, I think I'm an alcoholic too.

And I'm like, we used to get really drunk

and get into fistfights.

He was my guy in San Francisco, he's a good guy.

And 'cause that's how I roll.

And I remember I couldn't get drunk

and we ended up in a strip club

that didn't allow alcohol 'cause it was bottomless.

Whatever, I'm just telling you this, there it is.

And 'cause this is how we had fun, I guess.

And I was sitting there in like this kind of hollow,

you know, and I'm like, what am I doing here?

And I an eight ball in my pocket

and I went to go find him

because he was in the back with a stripper

and I was like, I'm gonna leave, think I'm done.

I can't get drunk.

And though I felt like, I can't explain it.

Anyway, it was a really rough night

and it was all I needed at that point.

And I got in a car, I went back to my friend's house

and I slept for a couple of hours.

I got in a car and I drove back here to Los Angeles.

And I remember I threw the eight ball out on Market Street

and I was like, somebody's gonna have a good day.

Am I fucking crazy?

Excuse me, no effort.

But am I crazy for, thank you.

Like I just threw that out there, whatever.

So I drove home and it was the hottest day of the summer.

I remember the radio was talking about it

and I had a pulse in my lip right here

in the rear view mirror.

And I could see it just going and I was like,

I think I'm ready, I think I'm done.

And it was that week that I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous.

I got sober at the AT Center, which is in Silver Lake.

It was a block from my house.

And I'll tell you, the thing that was remarkable for me

is that when I walked into that room,

the anxiety disappeared the way alcohol used

to make the anxiety disappear.

And it was immediate.

And I knew I was home, but again,

I wasn't really clear on what alcoholism was.

I knew I felt better and I like feeling better.

I like relief, I like fast relief, actually.

I like a tequila shot of relief.

I don't like slow relief, I need it pretty fast.

And I'd been chasing that dragon for 15 years.

That's what I did is I chased relief.

And so I got into the program and I'm a rule follower,

believe it or not.

So I got a sponsor, I did the things

and I started feeling better.

And I got some time, I try to reflect

on what kept me sober the first five years.

I don't know, except following direction.

That's all I knew is like I followed somebody's direction.

And I went to meetings every day.

And I remember this guy yelled at me,

I think it was in my, I think it was my first year,

but he's like, "We're not here to hear your problems.

Talk about the steps."

'Cause I would go in and cry about my job.

That's what I thought I was supposed to do,

is whine about why things weren't going my way.

And so I kind of learned that way.

You kind of learned the school of hard knocks,

but I kept showing up.

And there were some rough times

and rough times for me at the time.

They change.

As you stay sober, rough times change.

That first year, I'd left my relationship.

I couldn't go out Saturday nights.

Like Saturday nights were tough in LA at like 28 years old.

That was not, that was really uncomfortable.

And I would go to Hollywood midnight meetings

and I would hear stuff.

Somebody would say something

or somebody would read something from the big book.

And it's like, it changed me in that moment.

It's like Lord of the Rings.

You know, when Frodo was looking at the ring

and he could see the writing.

That's what the big book is to me.

Like every time I read it,

something else gets a little clearer.

Something else illuminates and I'm like, that's God to me.

Because there's nothing else that does that in my life.

Nothing at all.

So those first five years, I would think that was,

you know, I just followed direction

because all I knew is that I didn't like being uncomfortable.

And so I chased that.

And I chased relief for a very long time.

I will say that at five years it got easier.

My mind got quieter, it got nicer.

I literally noticed that I stopped talking to myself.

First of all, I started hearing the voice.

I could tell, you know, the voice and the ism.

And then it started talking a little bit nicer.

And, but I'm gonna, where am I at?

Something about 15 minutes now?

We're good.

So we're at a halfway point.

See if I've got a good start.

Social intercourse.

Just gonna throw it out there

in case you're feeling like you're, there you go.

Can you get me back there?

So, okay.

So I will say that at 10 years from year 10 to 15,

there was a little bit of going through the motions for me

in the sense of, I wasn't very happy.

I wasn't getting what I wanted in life.

You know, I had a career that wasn't taking off

the way I wanted it to take off.

Things, you know, I came for the cash and prizes.

And I'll tell you, one of the reasons I did get sober

was completely based on vanity,

because I noticed I would get like broken blood vessels

under my eyes, in my eyes, obviously, when you vomit,

everybody knows that, right?

But I was getting them under my eyes.

And I was like, oh my, what's gonna happen if, you know,

those are the things that got me waking up to

that there was a problem, which is fine.

I'll take it.

Like that's, I had a very simple mind of like,

ooh, I don't wanna have broken blood vessels

all over my face, which I mean, that's what a gym boss

in this room, but it's vanity, fine, bring it in,

because I think God removes those things over time.

But that's the kind of stuff

that was important to me at the time.

That's the stuff that got me in the room, it's great.

I was kind of shallow.

I'm into it because it got me here.

I don't think it would have kept me here.

And I think that working the steps is what kind of

hopefully evolved me to a sense of like,

some of the stuff that I'm learning now,

which is again, like Lord of the Rings, where it's like,

that's why I'm here and thank God,

because I have a restless mind, you know,

I have a paranoid, restless mind that when not treated

with 12 steps, I will drink again.

So at about 10 to 15,

I was getting really irritable, restless discontent.

And I remember I was, I go to a lot of meetings.

I've always gone to a lot of meetings.

They talk about meetings in the bank.

And so, you know, I've like, I went on vacation.

I had a few meetings that, you know, I'd go that week,

two or three extra meetings.

I had a couple in the bank if I couldn't get to a meeting

when I was, you know, away somewhere.

But I went to a lot of meetings always.

'Cause when I didn't feel good,

bam, a meeting happened.

That took it away, right?

Or I'd call my sponsor and I'd be like,

I didn't get this, I didn't get that.

And she'd redirect.

I'd be like, okay, go work this step.

Okay, I'll go work this step.

And then bam, I'm not feeling good again.

Irritable, restless, discontent.

And I remember once I walked up to her at a meeting,

she didn't get to sit down and I was like,

yes, blah, blah, blah, blah, problem, problem, problem.

And she's like, you know, she snapped at me.

She's like, you're not the only one with problems.

And I was so pissed.

And she was just having a day, whatever, but I was so upset.

How could she, you know?

But it made me reflect.

And I leaned on her heavily for things.

And you know, what sponsors sometimes won't tell you,

and I'm a sponsor and I don't say it either.

'Cause I'm here to be of service, not to judge the person.

I might have my day here or there,

but I try not to let sponsors see that.

But it is not, you know,

it is not a sponsor's job to keep us sober.

It's there to carry the message, not the alcoholic.

And I, you know, every time I was uncomfortable,

I was at a meeting or calling a sponsor,

at a meeting, calling a sponsor, doing a step,

read this thing, open the big book, write a thing,

done, done, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing relief.

And you know, at 15 years sober,

I was at a conference in San Diego.

I was at a table with people I don't like

who drink and manage alcohol just fine,

but I also didn't like them on top of it.

And this one guy who I really didn't like,

he's like, he's just hoity-toity in my head, whatever.

And he's like pouring wine for everybody.

And this, you know, I work in an industry

where people can like order really expensive bottles of wine

which also was hard to be around

'cause they made it look natural and normal.

And we were sitting there and the news was on,

they had some big TV somewhere and the news was on

and there was a chase, a car chase in San Diego.

And the guy next to me was, you know, calling Kenneth.

'Cause that's his name.

She'll never meet him, but I just think that's funny.

Anyway, he is like, that guy's so crazy,

that guy's so crazy, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And I'm still in my head because they're pouring alcohol

and I'm really uncomfortable and I like these people

and I don't think they like me.

And in my head, in my head, in my head, self, self,

self, self, self, thank you.

And I remember he, I went back to my room that night

and in that moment, I was watching the guy

who came out of the car with his arms up

and I'm like, they don't know, what they see is this.

They don't see the alcoholic, they don't see what's inside.

They don't see what hopefully we all relate to

which is that, that person who can't be comfortable.

And I related more to the guy on the television

who had just caused all this damage

and was about to get arrested, he was probably hired drunk.

And I'm like, that's my person, not these people.

You know, not these people who are first of all

judging that person and I feel like I'm hiding so much.

And if you've ever had those like dark nights of the soul

where you've been in your head for so long

and I went back to my hotel room and I was gripping,

this is Dr. Bob, I think, no, no, I think Bill talks about it

where he's like, he throws the mattress outside the window

'cause he knows he'll jump.

And I was stone cold sober and that was what was coming.

And I knew it was the first time that I really knew

I was gonna follow through with suicide.

And I didn't have anybody to call, I didn't know what to do.

I was bottomed out and it was a gradual progression.

I got here so fast, it was like a car crash where I was like,

oh, this is the solution.

I can't drink, I know I can't drink

because that's the problem, I'll commit suicide.

How do I figure out how to open these windows?

Let me fit, how do I tell my sister?

What kind of texts do I leave?

What do I do to get through her not feeling bad

because I can't even call her and then she'll understand.

And I can deal with a couple of minutes

of discomfort of jumping if it takes it out.

'Cause that self, that mental spiral

that I only knew too well, that's alcoholism.

And again, relief is fast.

And what I didn't know is that recovery is slow.

And I had to make some big changes and I didn't know that.

And a lot of people call it the second surrender

and that's what it was for me.

It was understanding what emotional sobriety was.

And it didn't happen all at once.

I just knew that I can't keep vacillating between,

well, I'm not gonna be able to drink

and there's no drug that's really gonna work.

And if I did ask it, it'd be a bad trip.

So let me go to, a gun would be fast enough

but I'm scared of guns.

So let's just do pills.

And when you start researching this stuff and sobriety

and I think if you really pay attention,

there are a lot of people who take themselves out

in double digits sobriety

because I don't know it's alcoholism.

I didn't know it was alcoholism.

And I have a dear friend who calls suicide,

it's just another geographic.

So, anyways, so I had to change sponsors

and that's where I found the sponsor that I have now.

And I changed up my program

and I started going to a very regimented group consistently

and I really shook it up and I got into the steps

and there was this particular meeting

that has like 500 people I would go to on Wednesday nights.

And I remember I was really angry

and I just knew I could go here and be,

I knew I was an alcoholics anonymous

and I could just go be angry and no one's,

we just know like it's okay, like just go be you.

And my friend would walk me around

and like I'd have to shake people's hands.

And I was just, I was not a pleasant person

for like a year, I was really angry.

And a big part of it was because

I hadn't gotten what I wanted, right?

And that's just another form of not being an acceptance,

which is just one of the most basic things

that I struggle with still in sobriety.

But anyway, I met somebody my first night there

who'd been shot eight times and he had had a week sober.

And I think at this point I was 16 years sober.

And I remember he would be so excited to see me every week

and I would watch these kind of scars heal on him.

One of them was in his neck

and he would be so excited to see me each week

and I'd be grumpy or whatever, but I'd be like inside.

But I'd say hello to him and things like that.

And this is how God works for me is that

the whole time that I was going every week

to kind of bestow my presence on people,

I didn't realize that what this person,

his excitement to see me, he was like,

to see that somebody was long-term sobriety

or had a job consistently, that kind of thing.

He's shot eight times in an alley, things didn't go well.

That day, right?

Like he was hitting a bottom, but to see that,

like you can get to a different place in sobriety.

And when he got his year, it clicked for me that

he kept me sober because he was happy to see me.

And I didn't get it at the time.

I didn't get what the service piece of it was,

but it was something that it just changed me.

And that's the way God works for me

is these little quiet moments where I'm like,

"Oh, it's not all about me."

That for a year, it was like in my head kind of stuff

where I was so reluctant to be there and so angry.

And so recovery.

So I'll tell you that chasing relief works for a while,

but what I do now, I guess the difference for me

between relief and recovery is that relief is reactive

and recovery is proactive.

And so, you know, we hear it in the rooms a lot

where people like read the big book, get on your knees,

call your sponsor, all that stuff, great.

And I was doing that.

However, there's a proactive way that I can work my program.

And that's kind of what I started realizing.

And it's taken me like five years to learn this.

Like it's, I am a slow learner.

Like I'm 21 years, so I'll be 22 years sober in August,

God willing.

And it's because I get these little moments,

these little nuggets and I'm willing.

I stay mostly willing.

So what I do now to stay sober is I take direction.

I go to my meetings.

I proactively work my steps.

So let's say for instance,

something happens at work that I don't like.

I don't call my sponsor immediately.

Like I start in the one, two, three.

And if people are already doing this, hats off to you.

I am a slow learner.

But like to really experience powerlessness

is really what discomfort is for me.

And other people experience it every day

and they get in their cars and they go about their business,

but I drink over it.

That's the difference.

And so to not drink now,

I have to experience the powerlessness, admit it,

realize that I have a God.

If I don't think he can handle it,

I have to reinvent him in that moment and be like,

I need a God of my own understanding

that can handle whatever this problem is.

And then I have to make a conscious decision

to turn it over.

And by then, if it hasn't shifted something,

then I might do a 10 step.

Then I might actually do some prayer.

I might sit in meditation.

I might call my sponsor, those kinds of things.

But that's not what I was doing before.

You know, where am I?

Guys, did that go by quick?

Social, so I think we're people

that would not usually meet, right?

I live in, where do I live?

Valley Glen, I live in Van Nuys.

So I'm a little bit south of you guys still.

I don't know that we'd ever meet or maybe again,

but I hope that I've shared something with you today

that'll keep you sober one more day.

I can't speak enough about transformation

if you stay sober.

I don't know if we have newcomers

and I don't know if you're an old timer

who's thinking about a drink.

I certainly do from time to time.

I'll tell you all the things that I have in my life.

You know, I said this before.

I've been rich in sobriety

and I've been poor in sobriety.

Both are hard.

It doesn't matter.

I'm an alcoholic.

I don't like discomfort and I drink over it.

That's what I do.

So I need a treatment.

But if you're thinking about a drink,

you know, maybe you'll, I don't know what you'll do.

I don't know.

I have nothing there.

So I'm gonna read.

Okay, so what I'm gonna close with tonight

and thank you again for having me come out here.

I traveled a bit for work

and I get to go to Cleveland of all places.

And I got to do the drive to Akron.

And this is why I brought this guy

'cause I'm probably gonna cry about this.

So I went to Dr. Botts.

Through and of course it's alcoholics who are there

and it's so quiet and thank you, I'll wrap up.

It's so quiet and like just the dignity in the house

and like they show where all the certain stories are

from the big book and stuff like that.

And it's just like what these people did and how,

like if you don't see God in that, it's like astonishing

'cause I still can't tell you why I'm sober.

I just do the things and I learn the things

and then I try to do them again.

And I would throw it all away for a drink if it worked.

You gotta know that about the kind of alcoholic I am.

If it still worked, I would without a doubt.

That's Dr. Botts' nightmare which is kind of my new favorite.

What up?

I really connect with him, but this is what he says.

Might have you read this 'cause I might choke all over it.

Okay, this is at the end of his story.

It's the first story and all the personal stories.

If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic,

or have any other form of intellectual pride

which keeps you from accepting what is in this book,

I feel sorry for you.

If you feel you think you are strong enough

to beat this game alone, then it is your affair.

But if you really and truly wanna quit drinking liquor

for good and for all, and sincerely feel

that you must have some help,

we know that we have an answer for you.

Never fails.

If you go about it with one half the zeal

that you have in the habit of showing

when you are getting another drink,

your heavenly father will never let you down.

Thanks for letting me share.