Brett's Journey: From Farm Utopia to Alcoholic Recovery

- Thank you, my name's Brett, I am an alcoholic

for Vince, to my innermost self.

That's the case, hello alcoholics at home.

Thanks Scott for asking me to come

and share my story tonight.

And thanks to Paul M for recommending me

as he calls my hair tonight.

I'll see him, I see him.

Brett, an alcoholic, a viewer of my story,

you know, in the stories that have headlines, right?

And in the big book, mine would probably be one of us,

you know, and I didn't think I was, you know,

the last thing I wanted to be was one of them.

If you grew up around them, you know what I'm talking about.

And I ended up one of us and it's the best thing

that happened to me, that's the way it's happened for me.

I share, my sprainy date is January 11th, 2001.

I've been sharing for years,

I grew up in an alcoholic family.

I grew up in an alcoholic family.

You know, as years go on, you know,

there's honesty and there's rigorous honesty

and all of a sudden you start to realize

the lesson all together is true, Brett.

You know, you had zero to 10, where no,

there wasn't, the parents, the grandfather was drinking,

but we didn't live with him,

so it didn't really affect us to the same point.

Family didn't really break out with the disease

until it was like 10.

Zero to 10, I kind of lived in a utopia.

Lived on a farm, everything was fantastic.

Dad went together, you know, everything was going great.

You know, through their own circumstances,

things got tense there.

My mom and dad split when I was 10

and then that's when things started to go,

started to go haywire.

So my grandfather moved in with us at one point.

He lived with us for five years.

My grandfather, my mom, my dad, my older brother,

my grandfather, I can say with some certainty,

my grandfather died of this disease.

He was six foot four and fell when he was drunk,

hit his head on the toilet, in the bathtub,

that's how he went.

My older brother died of this thing

just a little over two years ago

in Suzanne's industry, like three days ago.

He died of this thing alone in a trailer

in a five foot circle with nothing refuse around it.

That's how he died.

And that's what happens to us.

I got to, I grew up, you know, 10 to 18 I was there

when it happened.

And I, the reason I think that's important to share now,

and I, you know, is because the fact that I was,

that I was in quote unquote normal environment,

it seemed like until that time it became,

it was so apparent to me when the chaos came.

I didn't know what was going on.

So at the, at the age of 10, there was a,

there was an event going on.

We had, ourselves had become a bit of a flop house.

We had people, you know, staying there drunk,

wake up, stepping over bodies,

drunk bodies in the floor in the morning as a kid.

And, you know, I'm wondering what the heck was going on.

My mom was getting something ready for a,

we're getting a car ready for demolition.

Cause that's how you get cars ready for demolition.

And, and she ran over somebody's toolbox.

And, and I, I could see it was because of the ankle,

but this was happening.

And I took her beer and I threw it away

and she came looking for it.

And she was like, where's my beer?

And my little brother ran at me and I was like,

right through it, please.

And she came up with a 12 pound, a 12 pound screw ribbon.

She says, you want to throw this one away too?

I'll just go get another.

And I could see right then and there that,

oh, who's running this show?

I made a decision at that point.

I wasn't going to be like them.

That's where the whole of them thing started.

I was not going to be like what they, like they were.

So I applied myself and I became my, as I said,

I'm, I'm a number one man.

My birthday, January 11th, 2001.

And Bill W. talks about being a number one.

Being a number one man.

That's what became important to me.

I had to, because I wasn't going to be like,

what they were going to be.

I made a pact with my brother, we won't be like them.

You know, I sat him down.

We're not going to be like them.

So I applied myself and became all these things

throughout school.

I switched my grades for becoming popular,

student council stuff, captain football team, whatever it is.

It doesn't matter in hindsight.

It doesn't really matter.

These are things just to make me be okay with me

because I wasn't, I wasn't really okay with circumstances.

And ultimately I wasn't, I needed to find a way out of it.

Well, so after seven years, I swapped with that pact.

I made one with my brother in tech,

but then went to high school.

There was a party and the,

they were going to be older, older girls there.

And there was drinking, there was beer.

And I was offered a beer and I wanted to fit in.

And so your pressure did me in for strength.

And then, you know, they say that we all cause strength,

essentially because we like the effect produced by uncle.

And I can tell you that it's absolutely the case with me.

The moment I had that first beer, something happened.

It was, it was fun.

I was, I was better, I was smarter.

I was better looking, I was funnier.

To me, everything exactly how I wanted to feel.

And I thought to myself, what did they mess this up?

Well, I just felt like they were, they were weak.

They were weak willed people and I'll do it

and I'll just manage it, right?

And so from that first drink,

I was trying to manage my drinking from the first drink.

I got, I got drunk and I had a great time,

a lot of great time all throughout.

But you know, my story, like many other alcoholic stories,

I didn't really hear this until I came into the rooms.

I didn't know there was a progressive nature to this thing.

I thought you were a drunk, you're just a drunk.

I didn't know that it got worse.

I didn't know that this malady,

when the more alcohol you put in,

the worse the malady becomes.

Not only for the body, but for the mind.

Both of these things get sicker and sicker

the more we practice this thing.

I wasn't aware of that.

So, you know, I don't think my drunk-a-log in and of itself,

you know, I don't, I don't spend a lot of time.

I drank from 17 till I was 36.

I got in these rooms at 36.

I don't think it's that much different than any other.

It's just sort of a garden variety.

I don't think there's anything particularly special about it.

I can tell you it's absolutely progressive though.

It got worse, what was sort of that weakness.

But I really, you know, it wasn't till I got here

and they said, you know, it talks on the big book about,

you know, try to just drink any one, drink any one,

who would do such a thing?

I never drink one.

Why don't you start drinking one, go on somewhere.

I'm just going to stop with one.

So it had never occurred to me to drink just one.

Every time I drank, you know,

I was trying to go for the maximum feeling,

the maximum high, the maximum good time I could have.

And yet I had all that knowledge

of how all those people behaved when they got drunk.

So I'm trying to manage it at the same time.

Like I had all my little rules, like, okay, if you start,

like I, how many times I sat around

while alcoholics repeated themselves

over and over and over again,

or stories about them blacking out.

Like, well, I ain't going to black out.

I said, if I start losing consciousness, that's it.

I'm going to go lay down.

I'm going to go to bed.

That way I had an illusion of control somehow,

but I still right up until,

I just keep drinking all the way up until that moment

and then find some place to go basically pass out.

But it did, it did get more progressive for me.

You know, weekends, you know,

a night on the weekend became,

nights on the weekend became three days or whatever.

I really didn't want, I knew what it meant if you drank.

I knew what it meant if you drank in the morning.

I knew what it meant if you got a DUI.

I was, you know, I saw them,

I saw what happened to my family when these things,

I knew what those things meant.

And so I didn't, you know, I didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to do that.

I knew what it meant if you drank on the job,

but it kept going and I kept trying to find different ways.

So what I'll skip over now is, I mean, some of the things,

some of the crazy things that happened just to qualify,

being in New York, falling asleep,

passing out on the subway, waking up.

If you pass out on the subway,

they wake you up at the end of the line,

either Bronx or Poni Island.

And that would happen to me frequently.

I'd be, oh, it's time to fall.

I missed my stop again and then ride all the other way.

You know, I guess it gets pretty, pretty long.

Those types of things, ticking holes in the walls,

breaking furniture with my bare feet.

You know, this kind of behavior is not a normal, healthy,

calm, serene mind.

It's not coming from that kind of place.

When I was, the last couple of years, you know,

I was hiding, I had this thing where I would hide the booze.

I had, you remember the recycling things were yellow.

They didn't have the big blue ones.

I would, I would hide my bottles under the,

yet the pile kept growing, you know?

So like, I didn't think my wife was going to find out.

The pile kept growing, but the last bottles I drank,

I always put down at the bottom, you know,

like I thought she wasn't going to be able to,

to figure that one out then.

You know, I started to, you know, mix, mix different drinks.

I was primarily a beer drinker,

just because I felt like I could manage my,

I could manage it, my, where I wanted to be a little bit

more. I could tell you at the end,

I was unbelievably bitter at the world and its people.

I couldn't believe how I thought this world had,

was doing me wrong, victim mentality.

My way of doing it was, was to lash out, you know,

and the worst feeling, you know,

that I had a bit of a black hole and I just kept going,

particularly as long as I was getting bigger and bigger

and bigger, no matter what I threw in that room.

I had been taken more, tried to fill the white hole.

And why were people so stupid?

You know, why wouldn't they do it the right way?

You know, I just really felt like everything would be better

if, if that were the case.

And my career wasn't going the way that I wanted.

My career was number one in my life.

My priorities were my career, my family, basically, yeah.

But when I talk about,

even now I talk about my priorities being my career.

When I say my career, what I really mean was me.

It was, my priority was me because my career,

if I had gotten it the way I wanted,

everybody would have recognized how great I really was.

If I had gotten my career the way I wanted.

My career was utterly about, wasn't about anyone.

I didn't, it took a lot of time

in this program to come to that.

I thought I was, I thought once I got there,

I will become the benevolent being I'm supposed to be,

but it was never true.

'Cause I acted like a jerk all the way along,

justifying that that was all justifiable

to get to this place where everything's going to be great

when I get there.

You know, what a great thing that this program teaches us

to be here, to be right here, to be in today,

to live this moment as full as we possibly could.

I didn't know that that was, that you could be here.

So I'm, I'm at a function that the day of my bottom,

I would say, you know, I don't,

I don't know that it matters, a high bottom, a low bottom.

I think when the pain's enough,

the pain's enough when you're done, you're done.

If you had enough pain, you're ready to give up your life.

Your life, everything attached to the name Brent

can be done with.

I got to find a new one, I got to find a better one.

I got to find a different way of doing it

because my way didn't, so, but I was still trying.

And that last day we had,

my wife and I had gone to see what we could afford

in terms of a house, two things.

And I was, I was in this film that was premiering

and I was pretty sure that it was going to really

do something for my career.

Well, first off, the thing about the house,

what we could afford was a shack, a 700 square foot shack

at the best, not what I expected.

And that night was predominantly,

my contribution to that project

was predominantly cut out of it.

And so, you know, down in line in martinis,

and I don't know how to drink martinis,

but I'll drink martinis, double apple martinis.

And I remember that I was with it,

I was sitting with him, better with the director too,

and I'm sitting with him afterwards.

And I remember leaving that bar and he asked me,

I was like, are you okay to drive home from here?

You know, and I sit in the car and I pass out the car.

Somebody knocks on the window.

Hey man, can you give us a ride?

I give you a ride.

And I get on, I get on Highland and I black out.

I don't, I'm going up, I'm going up Highland

and I black out and I come to on the 101

and the lights are flashing behind, right?

And I go over, I pull over onto Barham.

So great to still see these places now

and remember what it was like, only the gratitude,

what I, you know, but I go and I pull over on Barham

and he comes up, the cop comes up and rolled down the window

and he said, he leaned in, first thing he said,

have you been drinking?

And to me, what I heard knew, in that moment I knew,

I had a moment of clarity, basically my drunkest moment,

I had a moment of clarity and the tears are pouring from me.

The relief had been running, it became my mystery

and what a great thing that's turned into me.

What a blessing that has turned out to be,

can be defeated, something, you know, you know those,

there's a t-shirt where like a stork is swallowing a frog

and the frog is choking the stork on the way down,

says, never again, that's the way I was.

But what a powerful thing that we learned

in this first step to surrender.

Stop clinging on to the old notions and the old ideas

and the self will and finally gain access to a power

other than our power, a power that can help us

quit drinking again and do something different.

So, I'm brought down to Hill Street and I'm sitting on,

you know, they move you, I'm laying on the floor,

I'm in a black turtleneck and I'm down, down on Hill Street

with really nice shoes and I'm like, oh wow,

I really think I'm something, don't I?

And, you know, I was thought I was looking,

and I'm, you know, they move you from place to place,

so you don't get too comfortable.

And I'm at one point on like, I'm so, so out of,

but they put me on a bottom bunk and I'm looking

at the top bunk and I see a cockroach there

and I'm like, we're the same, we're the same.

And my wife, who was nine months pregnant,

was due in one week with our second child,

comes down in our little Mazda 323 to Hill Street

and picks me up and I make that long walk and she's there

and I'm the painter and she's got,

she's got a note written to me on yellow note paper,

that's my note paper, this is my paper, yellow paper,

this special paper for writing on, this is what I write on,

my paper, she's taking my paper to get my attention

and write on that yellow paper,

a dear breath letter, basically.

And I'm like, wow, why didn't you say,

you know, she said, this has been going on,

she's been seeing this, she's seeing this,

but this has been watched, why didn't you say something?

Why didn't you say something?

What could she say?

I mean, I come to find out a couple of days later,

I think we're about a week into it and she said, you know,

this past week is the most approachable

you've been in months.

I had become unapproachable,

but I wasn't what I was aiming for in this life,

become an unapproachable being.

I was hoping to do something decent,

but I thought it was, you know, based on personality.

And we learned personality's no good here.

We have to learn not live by principles.

And so God worked it out that our neighbor,

when we moved here in 1997,

our neighbor had 17 years since the bride, I knew that,

what a great guy, man, that guy's an awesome guy,

17 years sober, good for you, man, wow.

And I have talks and I'm like, I couldn't understand,

why is he so nice, why does he know so much?

And he talked me through all my problems all the time,

you know, and it worked out.

We were friends with them, he and his wife,

and God had worked it out that they were showing up

the next day after I got my DUI to come have dinner.

I'm saying, I gotta tell John, I tell John what happened.

So he comes over and I tell him what happened.

And he just sat and he just listened to the whole thing.

And at the end, he stood up and he put his hand

on my shoulder and he said,

"You don't have to go through this alone."

And that was true.

And I was alone, I was utterly,

that's the world I had created for myself.

One that was alone.

So he said, "You know, we got a meeting on Tuesday night

"and I've got a big book in the car.

"If you want to read, you know,

"read the first 164 pages, see what you, you know,

"see what you'd relate to.

"And I'll come and I'll pick you up on,

"I'll come pick you up, take you to the meeting on Tuesday."

Okay, now I had, part of my story when I was in New York,

I had gone, I had become part of a fundamentalist church

for three months.

It was one of my attempts to find myself.

I had, I had quit other things.

I hadn't, somehow I had quit Coke on my own.

So I thought I had power, you know, if you can do that,

alcohol can't get me, I quit Coke, you know.

But I was empty at that point.

It was already that sort of, so those symptoms of emptiness.

And I became part of this fundamentalist thing,

which I then left because I couldn't, the hoop was very,

very, very, very small to get to God.

And I just didn't, I couldn't do it.

I couldn't consistently do it.

I did it, I got there, but I couldn't keep doing it.

It felt, to me, I just felt like God didn't make

those harder terms is what we come to learn here.

Didn't make those harder terms.

So I ran, I ran away, I ran away from that.

So when I got here and I'm like, right away I see steps

and I'm thinking about, oh no, more doctrine.

I follow this doctrine again, oh, what do I have to do?

So I had, and having grown up in an alcohol family,

many of them went to a, I had a lot of prejudice,

a lot of prejudice against the program.

Preconceived ideas, old ideas, prejudice, yeah,

that's what prejudice is, it's nothing but old ideas,

like Joe and Charlie say, right?

It's nothing but old, we got old ideas.

We have to be willing to sort of let go of those old ideas

in favor of operating on new ideas.

And we've got fellows around you, we've got the big book

and we've got living examples of people who show us

how to do those things.

So I got to that first meeting and I, and before,

I remember he shut off the car where he had a Vanagon,

a Volkswagen Vanagon, and he said, okay,

you're not gonna relate to everything you're hearing,

but just listen for the similarities.

And I did, and I felt at home.

Now, in the little bit of time that when I said,

I said, are you an alcoholic?

Remember, they pulled me over and said, are you alcoholic?

I had already started to take a little bit

of self-will back, figuring out, well,

maybe if they just, you know,

maybe if they just give me the right information,

I'll be able to figure this thing out.

I'll be able to, I'll be able to do it on my own thing.

Don't give me just a little information,

but I probably don't need everything

you guys are talking about.

So I didn't, I had a hard time, I didn't even,

I didn't even identify as an alcoholic

in my first nine meetings.

After that, then I did, and what a relief that was

to say the words out loud, I'm an alcoholic.

And I say it now, not all the time,

but I say it frequently that I am convinced.

I have admitted to my innermost self.

I am convinced, and it's taken some real time

to come to my innermost self, but that's what I am.

That's what I'm gonna be dealing with every day.

No matter, my life is still unmet.

I'm 21 years sober.

My life is still unmanaged by me.

Sober, not while drunk, while sober.

I need the help of some spiritual principles,

of some fellows who are, and the fellowship,

people who are doing the same thing, you know,

who have tried these things, what they're,

the problems that they're facing in their lives,

they've gone through what I'm going through now,

and have come out the other side,

have walked through it somehow.

With some degree of peace of mind,

or at least not making things worse,

they've done that successfully.

I need those examples.

So I listened, I identified, and I did feel at home,

and I came back, and I can say that, you know,

I got a sponsor, I sponsor people,

I've sponsored a number of guys over the years,

still sponsoring guys, at this experience.

And I've seen it in others, that something happens

every time somebody actually takes the steps.

There is a transformation that takes place.

Something happens faster than something happens slower.

But it's amazing to watch, like, somebody who you're around,

you get to be a part of their circle,

and you see them going through,

and growing through this program.

And all of a sudden they take it this step,

and all of a sudden something changes.

Well, took a misstep, you know,

you get to actually see these things change the person

as they go through it, you know.

What else can I say?

So that's what it was like,

and self-centered, and self-seeking to film,

developing that constant thought of others.

I mean, how does the conveyor belt change?

And when I was on the tape, I was always on the tape.

How does it go like this?

How do you get it to do it like this?

Well, unfortunately, we got people who tell us,

you know, it's action, action is a thing.

We get into action.

We help each other by saying we make suggestions.

No, this worked for me.

We only suggest things that work for us,

that have worked for others.

And then we put them in a play and we see,

put it to the test.

It doesn't have to be figured out.

We don't have to think this thing through.

It's just a matter of doing it.

And then that changes.

It changes the thinking and it changes the whole outside.

The outside circumstances change.

You know, what I can tell you from my experience is,

you know, one of the greatest gifts of this deal

is the change.

I told you about how bitter I was.

I couldn't find anything.

You know, I come in here and you guys say,

I'm a great, say I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic.

Wow, what?

That has gotta be the dumbest thing anybody could say.

You're grateful that you're here.

You're doing all that stuff.

And then, you know, over time you come to learn,

wow, well, gratitude is not just an emotion.

It's also a tool.

Something that we put into practice,

that something happens, that gratitude and self-pity

can exist in the person at the same time.

This is what I was told.

So if I'm in self-pity and I'm having a bad day,

the thing is, pull out the gratitude list.

Get the gratitude list, go through that gratitude list.

By the time you get to five on your list,

or maybe you need more, maybe 10,

suddenly your eyes begin to see things to be grateful for.

A lot of times, one thing I'll do, thank you,

one of the things what I'll do is I'll just go,

I just have to start saying,

if I'm disturbed and I get disturbed,

I still get disturbed.

21 years is right, I get disturbed, I get disturbed,

certainly weekly, sometimes daily, today,

this day, this day, this day,

this is a part of life on life's terms.

These disturbances are also,

according to the spiritual axiom,

these are the opportunities for my growth

because it's more of me that's in the way.

This is why I'm disturbed.

I'm not here, guess what?

There's no disturbance.

I'm the one, I'm playing a part in this disturbance.

So when these things come up,

that's the opportunity for me to look at them

and then talk to other people

and see what I can do to change those things.

So what I was gonna say is all that bitterness,

somehow through the practice of these,

through taking the 12 steps, through working with others

and doing what you guys have suggested,

suddenly now my level of appreciation for the world

is completely different.

And when I have those moments where I'm in self-pity

or I'm angry or whatever,

I can start just saying, thank you, thank you,

thank you, thank you, thank you.

Something happens.

Sometimes I have to say it several times.

I'll say it over again.

And pretty soon also my eye will catch something

that there is to be thankful for

and I'll start to change my mind.

So my level of appreciation for this world,

it's no longer an either world as the world is.

I'm not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses,

but I can see that along with the negative,

along with all this bad stuff,

there's a lot of great stuff to be appreciated

and to be thankful for.

And this is the whole play of this life.

These things that to not let,

to not get too high and not to get too low,

but to just that no matter what we're facing,

that we can face these things

and go through these things.

The most difficult things with some degree of peace of mind

that's available to us through the help of each other.

So with my remaining minute,

again, I guess I'll just say that,

I'll reiterate what I said.

It was the last place I wanted to be

and I thought it was the worst bet.

I can tell you right now.

So my priorities changed.

Also, let me just go back to that.

My priorities changed.

My priority now is,

I was told here, get the program and God

or God and the program, one or two.

It doesn't matter which one, which way it goes.

Just do it one way or another.

So for me, it's God, AA, then my family, then my career.

So my career went from number one to number four,

got a better deal at number four than it did at number one.

My family went from number two to number three,

still getting a better deal at number three

than they were at number two.

That's just the way it is for me

because I made, I got my priorities straight.

I'm here to try to help to grow in effectiveness,

try to help another alcoholic who suffers,

fellow alcoholic who suffers,

to afford them the freedom that's been given to me,

to other people who've gone before.

And it ends up being, when you go through it,

when you do go through it, if you've had,

if you do it, maybe you already have this experience.

How awesome, how awesome a thing.

It becomes a natural thing that when you become free,

it's a natural progression that you begin

to help others become free as well.

We owe, we owe, to give what we can.

Not anyone's gonna help.

Some of us have to die in order for some of us to stay

and it is sad, but that's the nature

of the thing we're up against.

And we love them anyway.

(indistinct)

- I'll text you and just let you know that it's my name.

- Yes, perfect.

- Let me think about-

- No worries.