Josh's Journey: From Early Drinking to 31 Years Sober

Wow, it's great to be here. Hi, my name is Josh. I'm a real alcoholic.

And today is the best day of my life. I want to thank Karen for hunting me down and asking me to

come out tonight and share. I think she got my number through a grapevine.

Nice to see some familiar faces and some folks that I haven't seen in quite a while. It's nice

and meet some new friends that I just haven't met yet. So I'm really, really grateful to be here.

Of course, my sobriety date is June 1, 1991. My sponsor is a man by the name of Jesus Aguilar,

and my home group is the Stags of Sobriety held at the Cabrito House. And those things keep me

grounded, and for that I'm extremely grateful. I start out the way I start out because most of us

were unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics, and I don't ever want to forget it. Alcohol was

not the last thing I ever happened to put into my system, but it was definitely the first thing that

fixed Josh and made me feel comfortable in my own skin. And I'll get into that a little bit later.

And over the years, I've found that most of the time, 99.9% of the time, life is no longer a

struggle. It really is the best day of my life. And even if I'm perceiving that I'm having a moment

that may not be going my way, boy, it sure beats the alternative. It sure beats where I came from

31 years ago, I'll tell you what. How long are we going by the name? 35. Okay, good. Hardly enough

time to talk about my favorite subject, but I'll give it my best shot. I'm a third generation

Angeleno, born and raised here in Hollywood. A true Dodgers fan, not a transplant. Outside

issues. And nice folks, nice regular upbringing, non-alcoholic parents, no craziness at home.

Unfortunately, as I was coming up, it turned out I was the black sheep of the family. And

for my poor parents, the saddest part is I'm an only child. But they did the best they could

with what they had to work with, both with their resources and with me when I was coming up. And

as I mentioned a little bit ago, I didn't know what it went. And I've heard lots and lots of

speakers share it, that I was just always uncomfortable in my own skin. I didn't feel like

I fit. And looking back on it, there was nothing wrong with me. I was good enough. I was smart

enough. I wasn't the most athletic guy, but we did little league and all those different things.

So none of that stuff that was going on in my head was necessarily true, but it was happening

in my head nonetheless. And I'd like to tell you, I can remember my first drink. I don't. And it's

not because I'm a blackout drinker, but it's because those nice normie parents were daily

drinkers, but they drink like a half a glass of wine with dinner kind of thing. And they always

thought it was cute to have a real little wine glass. And Josh got to have some of it. And my

earliest memories are how that wine felt. It felt great, man. I loved it. And at the end of my

career, I didn't quit drinking because I didn't still love it. I just didn't like the consequences,

but we'll get into that later too. As I came up, I don't know, eight, nine, 10 years old,

parts was stealing the alcohol. And then eventually there was raiding the parents'

liquor cabinet for the real alcoholics in the room. By the way, there weren't any newcomers,

or we don't do chips, but there weren't any newcomers here tonight, which is awesome. Bunch of

long times. How many under a year? All right, we've got a good handful. Cool. Cool. Really,

really glad you're here. Really glad you're here. I also want to thank my buddy Trenton for showing

up today, man. Trenton gave me a huge gift this afternoon. Thanks for helping me stay sober,

my brother. I really appreciate it. And hope your day was as good as mine. Awesome. Awesome.

So there was raiding the liquor cabinet and I guess the normal drinkers are able to keep a

bunch of half full bottles of liquor in a cabinet. Isn't that weird? I don't get it. It sounds

cliche, but in my world, the cap is for shipping, man. It was single use. That was it, man. Single

serving, single use. But the times were good. In sixth grade, I went home with a buddy of mine and

we made this cocktail of a little bit out of each one of those bottles and came out with this black

stuff and a tumbler, right? We got loaded enough that he pulled his pants. And I didn't. That

should have been an indicator, right? My relationship with alcohol was different than my

fellows, even at like 12. But as I began to grow up, some of the pieces of the puzzle started to

fall into place. In addition to that warm, fuzzy film, it made me feel okay that I'd be able to be

socially interactive and all of that stuff. I also looked older than most people. I had whiskers. I

was the one that could buy beer and it was a ticket to popularity. And so I was part of the group.

I was needed, whatever you want to call it. And so we'd buy a bunch of beer and we'd go to party

spots and things like that. And it's like at 15 years old, I had what they called work experience

after high school. The last couple of periods, you could knock off school and go to work. I was

working in a hardware store and there was a little Thai market that was selling me beer. And two of my

buddies also worked there. So the three of us would buy a case of Coors Tall Cans, right? Started

right at the bottom and slam it as much as we could. Yeah, it was social drinking with your

buddies, but it was all about getting loaded. That was it. And of course the other dry goods came

along with that along the way. Somehow I managed to, through a buddy of mine, get a job with his

uncle in Burbank and started working for this little company, delivering equipment and sweeping

the warehouse and doing that kind of stuff. It's not the timer. I should just look at the guy with

the timer. It's not the timer. Okay. And I got this little job and all of a sudden I had funds,

which expanded my use of dry goods, which the dry goods, I'm trying to keep it Alcoholics Anonymous

related obviously, but you know, hardly anybody walks in the rooms without touching any other

substances these days. And my use of cocaine allowed me to drink more. I really, really

enjoyed that. I like to be in a super way up here at the same time. My first DUI was behind a handful

of crosstops and a keg party. My girlfriend at the time said when I drove her home, I was already

wasted enough. She knew this. Go straight home. And I went straight up to Mulholland to go race.

That's what you do when you're good and loaded. You know, you get behind the wheel and go racing.

And yeah, 18 years old, crashed my car into the front of the house on Coldwater Canyon about one

o'clock in the morning. And I'm kind of bouncing around here, but you know, my folks were already

past the point of trying to figure out what to do. And my dad, when they came to pick me up

out of jail, never said a word, but I'll never forget that look of disappointment and disgust

on his face. To this day, my dad's been gone 40 years. He died a year ago. So it was, speaking of

jumping around, it was tough 10 years later to make amends to a guy that had been gone almost 10

years and go through my resentment list and everything else. But we do what we got to do.

And so that's the kind of path I was on was just really living to party and get wasted. That was my

goal in life. The bar hadn't set very high. You know, those loving parents would have done anything

to help me if they knew how. If I was a normal kid, they would have mortgaged the house to send

me to school. I mean, you know, they lived for me. They spoiled the hell out of me, which honestly

left me with sort of a sense of entitlement, which I still struggle to this day to try to get over,

brother, because the world owes me something. I was always handed everything. How come it's not

just always going my way? You know, it's a big challenge to go through, but that's the gift of

going through the steps and coming to a place of self-awareness. We get to learn that kind of stuff

about ourselves and what drives us and what motivates us, which is why I was so self-centered

and manipulative along the way. So this little job that I got turned out to be a pretty good

opportunity. They were an office equipment dealer. And, you know, the way I drove delivering

equipment, I had to learn how to fix it also by the time it got there. And it turned out I was

actually became pretty good at repairing office equipment and worked my way up inside of that

company. And I got a lot of opportunity with that company. At 21 years old, I got married to my

then girlfriend and we had a daughter and things looked like they were going in the right direction.

I had kind of moved into a period of trying to control and enjoy my drinking and using,

you know, it sort of got put on the back burner as a parent and a husband and all that grown-up

stuff that I was trying to do. But like we hear a lot, eventually it would catch up with me.

Two things happened. We bought a home up in Santa Clarita and we met the neighbor. The neighbor had

a buddy who was a coke dealer and, you know, and all of a sudden we're partying. We're doing the

deal. We'd be in the party house on that block kind of thing. And the other thing was I went

away for a training trip back east and this is like 1987 and that's where the fuse got lit again

because there was nothing to do when I was back there for a couple of weeks but to stock the

fridge with a bunch of beer and get loaded. When I came home, that fuse was reignited and it was on

and cracking and there was no stopping me at that point. And I was still thinking I was managing it.

You know, I'm coming up in this company. I think I'm doing okay. I've got this new marriage that

seems to be going all right. My dad had passed but my mom's doing her thing and we're doing all

right. But, you know, the reality eventually became, you know, they asked us to tell our

story from the standpoint of what we were like, what happened, what it's like now. You know,

not what it was like. We all have a what it was like. You know, it was crappy. We all have

circumstances that were bad enough to get us in these rooms. And my hope to the newer people is

that it was bad enough to produce enough desperation to motivate enough willingness to do

what we have to offer because that's what it took for me. You know, the reality is I don't have as

heinous or as colorful of a story as a whole lot of people. And as I heard one speaker share many

years ago over here in the valley, you know, the reality is I just drank one miserable day

after another and I started taking hostages along the way and I didn't even know, causing wreckage

and damage, emotional harm along the way. And those last four years of my drinking, especially

the last two, got really, really bad. It got to a point where I was not the husband I envisioned

myself to be. There was a lot of anger and emotional violence at home. It wasn't physical

violence, but there was a lot of, you know, yelling, screaming, wall punching, all of that

kind of immature stuff. Therefore, I was not the father to this beautiful little six-year-old girl

that we were raising. You know, it wasn't a really great example of what a man should be. And, you

know, I later learned decades later that, you know, I'm the example of what she's going to pick

when she goes out there into the world. And fortunately, she's got a pretty good picker. Thank

God. I wasn't the son that I thought I could be. You know, I'll jump back into that in a second.

Nor was I the employee that my employer expected me to be either eventually when things started

going off the rails. I had gotten to a point where I got up into management in this little company.

We had a pretty big staff. But I became the guy that people didn't want to work for. You know,

they didn't know what side of the bed I got up on. You know, they'd ask me how good morning and I'd

be the what's so good about it kind of a home. I was a real taskmaster at work. I didn't want to

take any time off. I would cash in all my vacation time. And what I later learned is that was just

fear and insecurity that I couldn't let go of the controls. And I was afraid that nobody else could

do it right or whatever. But the the environment in my department got got really toxic. You know,

my marriage started to go off the rails. And I moved back into my mom's house into a bedroom

that had been redecorated for a six year old girl. So that does a lot for a guy's self esteem.

These beautiful peach walls and you know, curtains and all of that kind of stuff. And but I was in

the depths of my alcoholism and addiction at that point. And, you know, my, my poor mom chased me

out of the house at four o'clock one morning when I was going to just get one more. And I think she

won that argument. As I recall, I think she might have won that argument. But we were, she was

arguing with me in the street in front of the house, as I'm trying to drive away just to score,

just go score one. And she, she had no idea what to do, no idea what to do. Didn't want to throw

me out in the street or anything like that. So you know, what I was like was, was a guy that

had really kind of lost my moral compass. I didn't treat people as one would want to be treated

themselves, whether they were co-workers or friends, which I you notice, I didn't mention

any of them because they weren't in the picture anymore. Even the people that I partied with,

whom I thought drank and used just like I did, were not inviting me to parties anymore. Because

I had to have noxious. I was the kind of guy that got the police call because I'd start the fight

because I wanted to hit on the other guy's girlfriend. I mean, just insanity. The, you know,

wasn't the kind of employee I wanted to be, nor was I the kind of husband. When it really,

I don't want to jump around too much, but in, in August of 1989, we had Kaiser Healthcare Insurance

and I was trying to stay in the good graces of my wife, stop sleeping on the couch. And I checked

into our Kaiser program, which at the time you could just sign up for a once a week, like a men's

group. And, you know, so I was bouncing in and out of that group whenever it seemed convenient.

Sometimes it became a good night to tell my wife I was going there and still try to get home on time

and not appear to be drunk or smell or anything like that. Excuse me. And I don't have COVID,

but I got the lingering cough from something I had a week or so ago. At any rate, I, so I was

bouncing in and out of this men's, men's group. There's about 20 guys in this group. And one day

I go into the group and Dr. Joe ran this group and he says, he intercepts me on the way in and

he says, Josh, you can't just bounce in and out of the group. Anytime you think you want it,

it's convenient for you. We've tightened up our recovery program and there's a phase program where

we'd like you to come into the day treatment for a 14 day day treatment program and then phase up

through our program. Well, I was already in a period where I you know, and they would mandate

you go to meetings and stuff. And I hated going to AA meetings after my first first DUI when I

was 18 and I got a second one several years later. I didn't want to go to those damn meetings. You

know, all that, all that chanting and laughing, hugging, all this stuff, man, it was very

uncomfortable. So yeah. And so I remember it when we're new and we walk in the door and there's all

of that, like deer in the headlights stuff. The one thing we've all got in common is a day we've

been there. Right. And the religiosity, man, I couldn't stand it. You know, those nice parents

were Episcopalians, went to church every week, participated in other church activities and things

like that. You know, they weren't, you know, it wasn't the kind of religion that gets jammed down

your throat, but it was regular. And, you know, looking back on it, I got such a blessing, such a

solid example from them about how to be part of a community and how to be of service. But I was

absolutely not aware of it at the time, but I had, by the time I was 16 years old, I had turned my

back on the church and I had argued my way out of it with them. And they didn't mandate that I

continue to go. And really what I realized later is that, you know, I basically said, I'll take it

from here. By the time I got here, I took it from here all the way to the ground, you know, all the

way to the point where, you know, like I said, I just was drinking one miserable day after another,

but my bottom was I just couldn't look myself in the eye. The only reason I was still a basically

functioning alcoholic is because I had an enabler for a boss who wouldn't fire me. But I'll get back

to that in a second. And so I really didn't like to go to those meetings, and that's why I was

trying to do the Kaiser thing. And Dr. Jones mandated that I couldn't go to that meeting

anymore, that I'd have to start with their 14-day program. And I had a period of dry time. I had

gotten into a point where I was trying to right white knuckle it. And that I probably never made

it more than three weeks. But that particular day, I had more than your 14 days right now. I

don't need your damn program. And I turned and walked away. And, you know, what could he do?

And but as time went on, you know, there'd be periods of desperation where again, I didn't want

to go to meetings. So I'd call Dr. Joe and I'd leave a message and never get a call back. He'd

never get on the phone. And but the day came. One day at work, I had yet another altercation with a

co-worker and a gal who'd been there about the same, about 11 years, about the same amount of

time I had been there. And she picked up her purse and she said, Josh, I'm not taking your crap

anymore. And she quit on the spot. And we were all valued employees. I'd like to think she was

probably a hell of a lot more valued than I was. The next day, I'm in the conference room with the

owner of the company having a conversation. And I never want to forget what he said. I said, Josh,

now let me let me jump in again there real quick. He and I used to drink together after work and

stuff like that. And I, in my perception, thought he drank like I did too. But he didn't, it turns

out. He says, Josh, we think you ought to do something about your anger. Never addressed my

alcoholic tendencies at all. But he was talking about my behavior in the workplace. It was

absolutely unacceptable. And for some reason on that day, I'm going to keep my eye on the

clock. I want to get sober before you flag me. On that day, that filter in my head that typically

turned every really good idea into crap was work in the right direction. And my response when he

said that was, I've got to go into treatment. He said, great, go. I said, let me call Kaiser. He

said, call. And I call and they assign you a counselor, which happens in a lot of treatment

centers still today. If you relapse and go out and come back, they want to keep some continuity.

As long as the same counselors are there, but I digress. But they, so I called Dr. Joe and

Florence, the receptionist answers the phone and super nice lady. And she says, yeah, I'll see if

he's available. And she comes back on the line. She says, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you right

now. I said, and that was a common thing because I've been calling over the last 18 months or so.

And, and I said, Florence, please tell him, I really need to talk to him. And he came and

got on the phone and says, what's going on, man. And I said, I really can't do this anymore. I've

got to do something. I want to come into the 14 day program. He said, are you really ready? He

said, absolutely. He said, great, man. I'm going to have you start the 14 days tomorrow and

everything else. And he said, what we'd like you to do is we do a formal intake process now and an

assessment. We need you to come in this afternoon and get that taken care of. And with all of that

willingness that I had in me, I said, yeah, but see, I'm at work today and that's probably

not a really good time. And he said, Jock, man, I thought you said you were really ready. Let's

not waste our time. And I held down the phone and I said, he wants me to come in today. My boss said,

go. And again, with all that willingness, I had cashed in on my vacation time because I didn't

want to leave work at any time. I said, yeah, but you see, I don't have any vacation time. It's just

not going to work. He said, dude, don't worry about it. We got you covered. Go. And you know,

I was in another one of those periods of dry time. I had, I think 17 days dry at the time. So you can

imagine why I had this altercation with another boy. I didn't have my Baba. I didn't have anything

to take the edge off. I was like a raw nerve ending, you know, and, and little did I know at

that time, why would that be different than any other time? Any of those countless vain attempts

that Tracy talked about. And thank you for your share by the way, Tracy. The you know,

whether it was not going to meetings or, you know, all of that willingness that I had.

But I didn't know at the time that that would be a road one day at a time that would lead me to this

day to day. Inside of that, some really miraculous things started to happen in life. And the beautiful

part of it is along that road, I became aware of those things happening. I think that's super,

super important, that making ourselves available to hear the message, right. And you can only see

when you're ready to see or hear when you're ready to hear however they say that. And some of those

little things that started to happen that became very meaningful. So I, when, when you go through

their treatment program, not unlike treatment programs today, in addition to all of the group

and then group and then group, they want you to go to meetings, right? To go to meetings, get your

little card signed. But I was willing to do what it took. You know, I had gotten to that point where

I just couldn't stand joshing, really had that self-loathing and disgust with myself. So right

around that time, they had a, somebody found out that there was a 7am meeting at the Valley Club

that only lasted an hour. And so there was all of a sudden there's a Kaiser table at the Valley,

like 20 of us would go. Because it was the easier, softer way, you know, they'd sign our card and

we'd head out to group at 830. You know, we were starting the day. So that was the easier, softer

way. And man, I didn't really want to go to those meetings. And so I had a temporary sponsor who

kind of kicked me off into the steps and whatnot. And, and I was doing what he suggested, you know,

we talked about surrender and we talked about insanity versus sanity and started working on a

relationship with a higher power, which I had really, as I mentioned, turned my back on. And

I had, when I was going to the Wednesday night groups at Kaiser in '89 and '90, they met a guy

in February of 1990. Guy came into the group one day, one night, and he was new and he was shaking

and he was crying and he was sweating and he was articulating all this fear about what he had left

behind. He left a bunch of Chewy's product in a hotel room on Sepulveda and somebody's coming

after him. And, and he didn't know what the future was going to hold. And, you know, he was absolutely

not in the moment. And I remember I was sitting directly at Boston and was thinking in my head,

that guy really needs this. I didn't know I had three fingers pointing back at me. And when we

started going to the Kaiser table at the Valley Club, the guy approached me one morning and he

says, "Hey, I've got a men's book study at my house in the afternoon. I'd like you to come."

And I hadn't been invited anywhere in a long period of time. And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever.

He gave me his address and I'm going to this guy's meeting and all of this BS is going on in my head.

There's a lot of fear and insecurity about going to meet a bunch of guys at a house that I don't

know and all of this apprehension. And, you know, later I would realize that that was just fear and

complete insecurity that I didn't even know at that point in my life that I had. And I

walked into this guy's house and there were about 20 or 25 guys and they opened the loving arms of

Alcoholics Anonymous like we do in any good meeting. And I meet a guy who I had met before

in February of 1990. I recognized him immediately. And I walked right up to him and 16 months had

gone by and was like, "Hey, Suze, what happened?" He's got this big smile on his face and he's calm

and he's self-assured and confident looking. I said, "Hey, Suze, what happened?" And he said,

"Josh, it was God." And I went, "Oh, man, there you go. It's got the God thing going on," you know.

But I knew from my, even though I didn't want to be in all of the trips in and out of meetings in

the past, that that was the barrier that I had placed between that happiness, joy, and freedom

that you all display, what I didn't have in my life. And I asked him to carry me through the

steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we commenced to get to work right away. And that's when some

of the beautiful things started to happen. You know, what I saw in front of me right then and

there was a demonstration of what this program can do. You know, 16 months sobering was amazing,

how his life had turned around. And one night I got home. Now, at this point,

I'm doing like 10 meetings a week. I'm doing the morning meeting with the Kaiser folks at

the Valley Club, six days a week. And I'm going to four other nighttime meetings. And one night,

I get home from a step study. And it was late. It was in that other fellowship where they run

the meetings a little later in CA. CA was where the younger people, I thought, were in my age

groups, right? And I was 27 years old. And I come home from a CA meeting, and it's pretty late. And

that little dude jumps on my shoulder with a good idea. I have about 60 days sobering. He says,

Josh, dude, let's just go get one. 60 days, man, you can have just one. That whole dialogue. And

I knew if I spent more than a couple of minutes there, man, I was in trouble. And I did what was

suggested. And, you know, I did this corny prophetic prayer. And I said, God, if you're

really there, give me a sign. And nothing happened. No light came through the window like in Bill's

story. And the cat didn't freak out. Pictures didn't fall off the walls or anything like that.

But I was immediately aware that that little dude on my shoulder was God. And for the first time in

a long time, I slept through the night like a baby, which hadn't happened in quite a while.

And as it says in the book, I got up all day, I commenced to start rigorously working on the

fourth step. And over the course, because I was working over the course of the next three

weekends, I wrote, and I did what I needed to do and got through all the stuff. And in August of

that year, we sat down in his backyard for three and a half hours and just poured it all out,

poured it all out. My perception of what everybody had done to me, because it was all their fault,

you know. And that got my head around what my part in that was, you know, when we had gotten

through talking about step three and self-centeredness and self-will and manipulation

and got through step four and the complete disclosure. You know, I, in addition to all

the stuff, all the people that I thought had wronged me and all the fears that I was trying

to uncover, one of those fears that I had been a survivor of molestation from the time I was 12

years old until just before I was 18, that was going to my grave. Never going to tell anybody

about that. And for 20 years after that, I never did. But I told another human being, and God,

as I understood him, as I was trying to develop a relationship with God, what had happened to me?

Awesome. I need about 20 more. So are we all good with that? And I think that's really kind of the

one thing, you know, had I not disclosed that one thing, we've all got that one thing, whatever,

maybe there's more than one thing, but put it on the table, get it all out. It's just our lives

we're talking about, right? And it was, that was the one thing. And like I said, I never, well, no,

my bad. Other than a therapist, I started seeing a therapist at about three years sober for a period

of time, did speak to him as well. But, so there were two people and never anyone else. But I was

starting to really try to diligently develop a relationship with God, as I understood him or

didn't understand. Right. And it started out as simply as, you know, either group of drunks or

good orderly direction, you know, but ultimately, all it had to really start out with was not Josh,

anything, but it wasn't Josh. And it started just taking that leap of faith and throwing it out in

the universe like I did in my bedroom that night when that guy disappeared off my shoulder. And I

noticed little things started to happen in my life. I had an incident where somebody of mine and I

were doing hobby cars, RC cars, and we had bought, we had both bought the same product and the

product failed and didn't work. And I got all in my head and I said, I'm going to go back and

talk to these people and they were going to screw me and everything else. And as I'm ruminating on

that, on my way to the shop, to the shop, getting ready to have this whole altercation with the

store. I remembered one of the tools, which is ask God for help. Right. And I said, dude, God,

I really need help with this. And literally at that moment, my phone and it's the other

buddy who had the same problem with the same product. He's like, Oh dude, just take it back.

Those kinds of little things, as mundane as it may sound, I started to be aware of them. They

started to notice they were happening. I'm going to summarize a couple of things in the interest

of time right now. I'd like to tell you that my whole program is perfect, anything but. The only

thing I have done for the last 11,507 days is not take it for like one day at a time. But now I can

still screw some stuff up. And it's been a learning process, a lot of onion peeling, whatever you want

to call it. Right. But where the turnaround came from me with developing a relationship with my

higher power was continuing to try. But my behavior wasn't perfect. There were still a lot

of character defects and fears that I hadn't fully resolved, particularly on the financial side. I

still wanted to look hip slick and cool. I'd go to meetings and everybody looked like they got their

stuff together and they got nice cars and they're living in nice homes. They got nice partners in

their lives and everything else. And he said, if you want what we have and are willing to go to

any length to get it. So I maxed out my credit to get it. I had the new car, I had the nice condo,

I had everything else. I couldn't afford any of that stuff. And one day I'm coming home from a

party on the other side of the hill and we're coming up Laurel Canyon. And I'm speedy as usual,

which was my behavior was still kind of reckless and careless and self-centered. And we have a

solo car crash on the way up Laurel Canyon. And fortunately she wasn't injured, nor was I,

but the car was totaled and I wasn't able to keep up the insurance. And I knew in that intersection

at one o'clock in the morning, this whole house of cars was going to come crashing down on me. And I

was gripped with fear and the airbags are deployed and the horns going off and neighbors are all over

the place. Dude, I'm going to miss it. So I'll give it my best shot. I overshot the mark again.

It's just like the drinks, but anyway, I'm going to stop at one trust me. And but in that intersection,

it was it was almost like hearing a voice in my ear and the voice said, Josh, I know you think

this is going to suck, but I'm here to help. And it was at that moment at three and a half years

solar that God revealed himself to me as I think he is in my life. I'm not telling anybody else to

have that relationship. And I could go down that road for about another 15 minutes, but I won't.

But I'm so grateful for that exposure. And I've been working towards developing and nurturing that

relationship ever since. I'll close with this, that little six year old. And the example I set

for her, I suppose, I mean, I didn't have anything to do it. I can't keep her sober. I can't get her

drunk. She started working on her own store, you know, 12, 13, 14 years old. She's running around

with her friends. She's still in her mom's car. She's running away for three and four days at a

time until the sheriff's find her and bring her home. They would still bring her home up in Santa

Clarita back in the day. And she, her mom didn't know what to do with her any more than my mom knew

what to do with me. And she was grounded yet again and everything else. And one of her friends comes

to her and says, I want to get my folks off my back and I want to go to an AA meeting. Will you

come with me? Christina went. And she remembered that she had been there before, but rafters in

New Hall. Now I had never dragged her to meetings, you know, on my every other weekend and stuff.

Occasionally I would take her if I needed to go to a meeting, she came with me. And so she realized

that she'd been there before. She just recognized having been there. Long story short, she decided

to stay in this past January. We gave her a cake for 21 years. So what an absolute miracle

that we've gotten to have. We've gone through ups and downs in both our recovery, mutual amends

making and all that kind of stuff. But she came to me with about six months sober. And she had

already gone through the steps and was really working diligently on getting this done. And she

said, dad, if you found out you had two weeks leave, would you drink without hesitation? I said,

no. And she said, why? I said, yeah, why? Thank you again for asking me to share. And please,

Please, please keep coming back.