From Surf Parties to Sobriety: John's Journey

My name is John and I'm an alcoholic, and my third parent.

Thank you for asking me that.

You're very welcome.

My sobriety date is May 23rd, 1987.

I do have a sponsor and my home group is the Demeter and I'm not sure what I'm exactly

going to say to you.

You know, when I was younger, I guess drinking, I don't want to be careful because I liked

it and I can romance somebody right out the door, so I don't want to do that, but when

I was younger, I'm the youngest of five brothers and sisters and everybody frankly knew this

channel.

I used to think, you know how you like to have a cat and blow it in the pot or something

or just put liquor in the bowl and they lick it or a dog and then they stumble around.

I thought my brothers and sisters, you're doing that to me, watch the little brother

stumble around.

My brother, who's pretty up there, he actually told me he did it so that I wouldn't tell

on him to my mom, but it was just normal.

It's just a normal life.

I didn't think there was anything.

I think I was in fourth grade when I started kind of going off and doing things on my own

with my friends.

It wasn't my brothers and sisters.

And I liked it.

You know, I started surfing, getting into the lifestyle and partying, like I said, like

everything about it.

I liked waking up in strange places and like the crazy things behind it.

The next morning people coming up to me and say, Oh my God.

And at the AIM, near the end, my friends actually started telling me, Hey, well, I think you're

getting a little out of control.

You know?

And I was just like, what are you talking about?

Everything's fine.

You know?

And what really changed everything was my friends were really open to their parents

about what they were doing.

Because I got sober when I was pretty young, I was 19 actually, and I was like 17ish.

So I wanted to do that.

I wanted to have a relationship like that.

So I went to my mom and I told her about all this partying stuff that I was doing.

And she started talking about putting me in a drug rehab, an alcohol program.

And I was just like, and that's what she did.

She put me in this outpatient program.

And I remember telling people, I don't, and it was funny, right before I went to go see

this drug counselor, my mom used to have wine coolers in the garage.

She says, as long as you're at home, you can drink them.

So we had all these relatives over.

And then when they left, we were going to go see this drug and alcohol counselor.

I'm like, I could sneak out my bedroom window, go in the back of the garage, grab two, four

packs and drink them really quick before we go.

So that's what I did.

And when I got in the garage and I picked them up, everybody came into the garage to

leave.

I got busted.

Red handed.

And they're like, what are you doing?

And I'm like rearranging the garage.

He shouldn't be over here.

And then I sat down and told this counselor, I don't have a drug and alcohol problem.

I'm just here to make my mom happy.

You know, it didn't occur to me that normal people don't try and get drunk before going

to see a counselor or anything.

That's that's not normal behavior.

And when I was in this outpatient program, I hooked up with all my surfer buddies and

we used to get drunk and stolen in the back of the room.

So I do know what it's like to be loaded in a meeting, which by the way, you don't actually

have to be sober to come.

You just have to have a desire to be sober.

And the counselor found out, cornered us, one of my friends confessed.

So I wound up in this inpatient program.

And one of the things that's interesting about an inpatient program is you hear about stuff

you never tried.

So when you go out, I experiment and I think that's how it gets progressive, too.

So in that inpatient program, too, which like when if you're newly sober, I think it's a

good idea.

It doesn't say it anywhere, but you should stay away from the opposite sex for a year.

Doesn't say it anywhere.

But in that first drug rehab, my puppy love, she crushed me and I left that display and

I my drinking and using took on a whole it was a whole new ballgame because I didn't

want to feel sad anymore.

And that was my whole goal was not feeling sad.

And that's when I started staying up to three weeks.

I mean, the times I would get sober, like, but when I was using her on a run, I was good.

And that was just funny, like homeless, no money in my pocket, starving.

Life was good.

Or I'm sober.

I have a roof over my full stomach like, you know, and, you know, I used to think that

is to the time they got sober, you know, stole this motorcycle in structure are a big part

of my story, too.

I stole this motorcycle and I was getting paid for it.

And I did this a bunch of like a speedball 86 heroin with crystal meth in it.

So it gets you like right to the edge.

And I guess it all started out.

I was staring at this at this dealer's house, he had this hand drawing of this innocent

kitten.

And I was mesmerized by this teacher, pretty kidney and then all of a sudden it turned

to this full hood of a cobra with things and he's evil looking for dogs.

I was like, and I left and he started seeing these wizards and warlocks and people and

just like hell just opened up and I was just like, Whoa.

So I went to this church to try and figure out what was going on.

Right.

And it was on April 1, 1987, when I'm in this church and I was born again and do they trade

over me?

And I'm gonna like turn into devils and go scare April Fools.

And the minister said some prayer and he goes, he said, Go talk to your mother and come back.

So when I was walking to go see my mother, I thought it was Christ.

I mean, back in the time I saw these people.

It was because I wasn't sleeping.

I was drinking and doing a lot of drugs.

I think that's why I was seeing all these.

Yeah.

When I look into that respect.

But I didn't know when I talked to my mom, I went in the house and I told her about these

visions that I was seeing.

So I went into this, this, this, when I got back to the church, they sent me to this monastery.

So you're there for like six months and then another place for six months and you can become

a minister.

So when I was in there now, this is why you really want to have a sponsor.

You don't want to try and research things on your own.

And I was trying to figure out why I was seeing these visions.

So this was my thinking it was so Jesus was born from the seed of David, which my dad's

name was David.

He was raised by Joseph.

My stepdad's name is Joseph, and I thought my mom's first name was Mary, but her middle

name was Jane was Mary Jane.

It's not that now I know now.

So I'm sitting there telling everybody in there, I'm Jesus, you're like, no, no, I'm

like, yes I am.

No, you're not.

And it was leading up to Easter this time.

And my good friend who was in there.

So up to this point, the only religious background I have is Jesus Christ Superstar and in Jesus

Christ Superstar, Judas is black.

All my best friend in this monastery was black and the week before Easter, he'd laugh.

So I thought he was going to turn me in and that's where I started getting my visions

of the crucifixion being put up on the cross with nails in my hand and stabbed.

And I was just like, hell no, if I have all this power, I'm not going that easy.

And I took off and I went and got drunk and I was about to get a fix.

And one of my friends goes, John, you look good.

What are you doing?

So when I went in the monastery, I weighed 110 pounds to about 140 and I just got scared

and I took off and I ran.

So this is in Acadia.

I ran to Oceansire, I got a bus down to and got in to Skid Row or to LA, the bus station

down there.

And I called my mom.

You know, at the time my mom was not speaking with my dad.

And when I called my mom, she's like, John, why'd you leave the monastery?

And it was the first time I didn't have a reason why I was drunk.

I had no clue.

And I told her, I don't know, but I know I need help and I need dad's phone number.

And she clicked over.

She happened to be talking to my sister on the other line who lives in LA.

And she clicked back and gave me my dad's phone number and because my dad was sober

at the time for about two years and I called him up and he picked me up from the bus station

on Memorial weekend, 1987 on a Saturday, he took me for an ocean swim Sunday morning and

took me to the Cedars Sunday Honors meeting and I've been sober ever since.

Now it hasn't been pretty, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you about a lot of

mistakes I had.

There's a lot of misnomers in AA that you hear.

So like my first two years, nobody wants my first three, but my first two, I hallucinated.

I had flashbacks.

I'd be talking to people and the flesh would disappear.

I'd be like, go with it.

You know, cause that's what you do.

Go with it.

You don't bite it.

And I couldn't imagine people being happy.

And at meetings back then you could smoke and I went to the Valley Club over here.

So I need to know if it's still here, I think it was on temple or something.

And they hung out by the coffee machine and they smoked.

So my brilliance, like, you know, I'm like, they're spiking the coffee.

So I didn't drink coffee for the first two years of my sobriety at a meeting.

And my biggest fear was that somebody was going to come up, Hey, John, you're doing

really good.

Now you just drink and keep doing what you're doing and you got it covered.

And that's what was going on in my head.

And I was, I was like, like I said, I was pretty wack, that's the way I can describe

it.

But the only person that was, I believe was sober was my dad.

So I just hung out with my dad a lot and we became really good friends.

And later on, he would do things that dads would do, you know, I'd get pissed off and

I forget.

Oh, yeah, he's my dad.

That's what they do.

But some of the things like I've sat in meetings and I had the meetings on the steps on the

wall.

And like the first step I thought I read my life is unmanageable because drugs and alcohol.

So I just took drugs and alcohol and tried to manage well, get a career, get a job, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then the second step come to believe, I'm like, I got time to get going.

And it was funny, I kept hearing this word sponsor.

So in the, the other thing I, well, yeah, I kept hearing this thing sponsor Troy in

the Valley Club in this, I went up to this guy after the meeting, I'm like, Hey, what's

this feature thing?

What is this thing I'm hearing?

He goes, Hey, you know, when you were younger and somebody stood outside of a liquor store

and they asked somebody to buy him liquor and they went in and got the liquor for him

and came out.

I go, yeah.

He goes, so you learn that from somebody?

I go, yeah.

He goes, well, it's the same thing in here.

They're going to teach you how to stay sober, take you to the steps.

I'm like, great.

How do you get one?

And he said, pick someone that you don't like, that you can't stand because there'll be more

likely to be like you.

I said, great.

Will you be my sponsor?

And he cussed me out and stormed out and I tried for three years.

I couldn't go up to somebody, especially after me, I couldn't go up to somebody that I didn't

like.

And I used to, when I was newly sober, I had a hard time sleeping at night.

So the other thing that I was doing backwards is my brilliant thinking.

I wanted to do triathlon.

So I would run 10 miles a day, ride my bike 60 to 120 pushups, 120 sit ups and swim two

miles and then go work at a McDonald's so that I can go home and go to sleep at night.

And cause I used to think my brain was out to kill my body and had a lot of practice.

So if I physically exhausted myself, my brain wouldn't think and I would feel spiritual.

And I looked and I had a six pack.

It's still there.

It's just in the fridge.

And so that's what I was doing my first three years, you know, it was mostly just a stronger

desire not to drink versus drink.

I have no clue why I stayed sober those, especially those first few years.

And then I think one of the hardest things to do in AA is to ask somebody to sponsor

you.

And I heard I was talking to this gentleman, it was actually by then I was kind of in Brentwood.

There's a couple of men's meeting up over in Brentwood.

And this guy said, Oh, no, you pick somebody you like what they have, you know, and this

one guy, Ed Monahan, I think was his name, he had a wife, couple kids, you know, that's

what I will, you know, and he sat outside this men's stand meeting for 45 minutes talking

to him until finally I got enough courage to ask him to sponsor me.

He's like, dude, why didn't you ask me 45 minutes ago, I knew you were going to ask.

And he took me through the steps.

Why didn't you, sir?

The other thing that I was, I was, I was doing it when I was in the meetings right before

I got my sponsor.

Step 11, it's like prayer and meditation.

I thought that's how we get stuff.

So when I wasn't getting stuff, I was pregnant.

And I tried this St. Jude prayers and paper.

If you say it nine days in a row, you get what you want.

And I never got what I wanted and I heard somebody at a meeting tell me that he was

doing the same thing.

So what he did is he woke up in the morning, he rolled out of bed and he got on his knees

and he said, whatever.

I mean, whatever happened during the day, he just said, whatever, anything happened

during the day, whatever.

And then at night before he went to sleep, he said enough's enough.

He got on his knees and said enough's enough, rolled over and went to sleep, just started

doing that.

And life started to get better.

I got my sponsor.

We kind of went through the steps again, he asked me like, what makes you, what makes

you think you're an alcoholic?

And I'm like, Oh yeah, I was homeless.

I never had money in my pocket.

I was in and out of jail.

Okay.

Do you believe in God?

Yeah.

Okay.

And he told me to start writing and I had a hard time just starting to write.

And when I read, when I finally did my fourth step and I read my fifth step to him, I had

this feeling like, Oh my God, I can't believe it.

And it's because it was just who I was mad at and why I was mad at, you know, it wasn't

too thorough, but you know what?

Life did get better, you know?

So around that time, my sponsor started having an affair with behind his wife.

I wouldn't need to lie to her for, to his wife about it.

And I'm like, Oh my God, listen, I kind of stopped having him as a sponsor and started

going to studio 12 and there was a big book workshop there.

And again, it wasn't, so I was listening to these Joe and Charlie tapes.

I was trying to do this book study and it wasn't too thorough.

And in the fourth step, they have you do the first column, second column, third column,

fourth column.

And when I got to the fourth column, I was like, they cause more harm than me.

And I stopped it and when you stop in the fourth, wherever you're in the fourth column

or the fourth step, you actually stay in touch with anger until anybody's in a four step.

I would highly recommend a push to get to the other side of it.

You don't want whatever's going to become in the four step.

You just get in touch with anger, which is important, but you don't want to stay there.

And and during that time my program mostly was martial arts and my first sponsor, he

took me, he had a, he taught martial arts and I went to one of his classes and I punched

this punching bag.

I'm like, Oh my God, this is the best.

You know, you just get away on this punching bag and it takes care of all your anger.

My knuckles were all, first night they were all black and blue, but man did it feel good.

So kind of martial arts kind of became my program and I started, I learned about meditation.

And one of the things I thought was cool about meditation is you can stay calm and centered

while you screw someone over.

Completely sober too.

Do you believe that?

And so this is, this is what I was doing.

I was training like five, seven days a week in the morning before work afterwards and

then kind of going to the studio 12 out in the valley.

And then I wound up in this workshop and in 1998, 97, 98, something like that.

And this gentleman, I ended up asking him to be my sponsor and I asked him to be my

sponsor not who he was or anything at the time I didn't know who he was, but I just

believed in what he said.

So in this workshop, one of the things that my sensei told me was when he was teaching

us meditation was when there's somebody teaching you about meditation, you have to be careful.

If they say you're going to do this, this and this, this is going to happen.

That's probably going to be happened, but you don't know if that's a true feeling.

The ones you want to pay attention to are the ones that are going to show you the mechanics

of something.

And if you practice it, you'll have questions.

And so he taught us this meditation and one of the first nights in this workshop, somebody

asked this gentleman how to do meditation and he went through the exact same mechanics

that my sensei said.

So I knew he was going to just show me the mechanics of something.

And one of the things that he asked me is what makes you think you're an alcoholic?

And I'm like homeless, in and out of jail, never had money in my pocket.

And he goes, no, that doesn't make you an alcoholic.

You might not be an alcoholic.

I'm like, what?

What have I been doing for the last 11 years?

What are you talking about?

And he actually explained to me and like the other thing is, is in one of the first drug

rehabs I was in, they told me that surfers couldn't stay sober because I surfed.

And when I got sober, I stopped surfing and every time I try and go surfing, I was scared

of getting in the lifestyle of a surfer.

So I thought one of the problems was I surfed.

And when he finally explained to me what makes somebody an alcoholic, he told me about there's

a physical craving of alcohol.

So like the first step, it says powerless over alcohol.

What makes you powerless is, and he explained to me was you have an allergy.

That means when you put a substance in your body, it's beyond your mental control to control

the amount you take.

And he made me try and come up with a couple of examples.

One of them was I was sober for a while and I was working for my stepdad in his little

company.

I was working at a 7-Eleven and I was about to go to school to learn to do drafting on

a computer setup.

In a week, I was supposed to go to this school and my mom said, John, you're doing good.

Go have some fun.

So I went to a burning spear concert in San Diego at the Del Mar racetrack.

And I remember thinking I'm going to have two beers at this concert.

And I had two beers and a week went by and I'm still not sure what happened during that

week.

But I know at the end of the week, I moved out of my parents' house.

I was in an apartment with a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts.

I didn't show up for school and inside my gut, there was like a blender and it just,

I knew it was just dead wrong what I was doing.

And my next step was let's make it a good one.

And that's what I do is I take it for all its worth.

And I feel like some of the guys I worked with, there was a gentleman who was looking

at the physical craving and he said one time he had to go get some parts and he left his

kids at this lady's house who was going to, he was doing work for him, but he was going

to get a little pint and then get the parts and they don't get his kid.

But once he had the pint, he never showed up to his kid.

And I got to explain to him, it's not because you didn't love your kids.

That physical craving was stronger than your ability to get to your kid.

And so that's, that's crazy.

And then he talked about this mental obsession when we decide not to drink, how do we change

our mind?

You know?

And to me, I don't like the word obsession too much.

I like the word when it's on because I know what it's like when it's on.

Okay.

Because when it's on, there's nothing going to get between me and getting drunk.

You know, like when I first got sober, those first three years, I worked at a McDonald's.

I gave my dad all my paychecks so that I wouldn't have money because I knew when it's on, I

was going to get loaded.

I was going to go get drunk.

I was just hoping that something was going to happen in between that was going to stop

me before, you know, and, and the scary thing is about this orange is you don't know where

this switch is.

It's not how far away from your last drink you are because you don't know how close the

next one is.

We don't know when that switch is going to flip.

You know, that's why we do this thing.

And then there's a dash mark.

My life is unmanageable.

That has nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.

That's life run on self will.

Does it work or doesn't it?

And I think I just ran into a dead dream somewhere here.

And I have no business doing, when I think back, drugs and alcohol was the answer for

my invan-manageability.

It worked.

And there was a time I liked it and it worked.

Can't say I was successful, but I liked it, you know?

And that's gone.

What are we going to do now?

And when you really, really, really get step one, you'll feel doomed.

You know, you're going to drink again and that's what kind of helps you in step two.

That's when I came out of step two, by the time with this gentleman, I had this, he had

me write out what my ideal, he was like, okay, what do you believe in God?

I'm like, I'm out of step one.

Okay.

We're talking about something I'm familiar with.

I've done meditation and things like that, I had to know God.

And so this, he said, what's your concept of God?

And I wrote this thing out.

It's kind of like a Buddhist energy, kind of white light kind of thing.

And then he's, then after that, he's like, okay, what do you doubt about God?

I'm like, what?

What's your doubt about God?

And then he was like, asking me like, what do you want from God?

What do you need from God?

You know?

And my doubt was, I doubted if it was possible to have a close relationship with God.

And I wasn't sure if I wanted it, as religious people didn't seem like the most fun people

in the world.

But, so in step two, taking an honest look at what your doubt is, and one of the things

about two is when you take an honest and you state what your doubt is, God will either

show you your right or God will show you that you're wrong.

So far, I've always been proven wrong.

And so we were doing the third step and one of the things about the third step, because

I was finishing the second step, I'm in this thing about God, and reading the third step,

like totally giving yourself to God, surrendering yourself to God, and he asked me to rewrite

the third step prayer, not to come up with a better prayer, but to try and so I could

think about what I'm actually doing, you know, and, and I knew because my doubt that I couldn't,

I couldn't go to God, because I doubted that I can have a close personal relationship.

And one of the things my sponsor also had me do while I was doing the third step is

he said, I want you to think of relationships, think of the opposite, like principal agent,

there's things in the book, principal agent, father, child, and I want you to look up each

the definitions of them.

And so I did and then he said, what I want you to do is I want you to find a relationship

when you're on your knees, that feels good, you know, so I was trying all these different

things.

And one of the things that I picked was a friend when I got on my knees, and I prayed

to a friend, or I talked to a friend, because by then I had some good friendships.

And I couldn't really go with father, child.

But once I found that relationship, I was like a kid with a new toy, man.

And I knew in the third step, making a decision to turn your will and your life over to God,

it wasn't necessarily saying the prayer, it's when I knew wholeheartedly that I would be

able to do it, that I can turn myself over.

And that changed my life, you know, and it helped me push through the finished form and

the rest of the steps.

And then really quick, we have a few minutes left.

At the beginning when my sponsor sat down with me in the book, and it's not in the book,

but I don't know if anybody ever explained the circle and the triangle.

So the triangle, it's like a roadmap for recovery.

On the bottom is recovery, you want to work the step, then you want to take other people

through the step, you always kind of want to stay in the steps working 10 and 11.

So you're always kind of in the foundation service, you want to go to a meeting, you

want to have a commitment, you want to get a commitment, you know, and unity, you want

to go to coffee afterwards, you want to kind of go hang out.

If you just do a little bit of each side of that triangle, that circle, you will start

to feel whole, you will have a fellowship that grows up around you.

If you're working with steps, you will have a design for living that works.

And I think I officially hit a dead brain cell.

Oh, one minute.

No, I don't think I got a minute.

Thanks for listening.

Hey, can you get my text?

Goodnight everybody.

Goodnight Nathan, I'll talk to you tomorrow, I'll talk to you next year, buddy.

Talk to you next year, hey?

Looking good, looking good.

See you later.

Thank you, turn on the living room light.

Yes, sir, you have headphones on, I just realized.