Renting Sobriety: Daily Commitment, Sponsor Bonds, and Lifelong Struggle

My sobriety date is my current sobriety date, it may not be my last.

If April 28, 1998, it would be arrogance and ignorance to think this is my last sobriety

date.

Anybody can relapse.

Sobriety is never owned, it's only rented, and rent is due every day.

And the rent is paid through the actions, doing stuff like this.

Thank you for the invitation, people appreciate it, I am extremely excited and happy to be

here.

It is morning prayer, meditation, conversations with the guys, I'm calling my spots on all

days.

Everything I do in alcoholic is not as good as that rent.

And I have the harsh experience of being a strong starter, but losing steam and stopping

to do the actions was even sober.

However, a lot of it was sober before my severe sobriety, and I would learn the hard truth

that I didn't pay the rent and I was addicted.

From the police comfort and good life experience, today that's the number one priority when

I wake up.

My sponsor is Allen Burns Team, my home group, the New Pacific Group, those are the formal

terms of my surrender.

They keep seeing her to know, they don't have to know, yes, he is in this group, we see

him doing commitments, we see him at meetings, accountability, my sponsor knows he's my sponsor,

you know, because he says you're going to call me twice a week, our call time.

Honestly, 99% of the time I'm like, I don't want to call him, I don't know why I'm calling

him, I have nothing to talk about, I call him, and then the truth comes out, oh yeah,

by the way, this is where I've been doing.

And then he has a baby meeting twice a month at his house in West Hollywood, and I drive

over there and I get to form bonds with my sponsors, too many people, so half of us are

in person, like Kenny does, and then half are on Zoom, because a lot of people during

the pandemic move, you know, because of what was going on during the pandemic, you know,

they had to find a way to live, kind of stop, and it's like, I've been sober half my life

and way longer than I drank, and I am more alcoholic and sick and insane today than I

was when I got here 24 years ago.

Welcome to the new privilege, I want you to know you're wanted, needed, and loved here,

and I am far sicker than them because I've progressed.

No matter what I'm doing in Alcoholics Anonymous, I am progressing, my disease is progressing,

but oh, I need to do more every year to cover the footprint of my growing and progressing

illness of alcoholism.

Some of my previous sponsors who died a year ago have lived with cancer with over 40 years

ago, they knew me and met me on my first day of sobriety, the beginning of this sobriety,

24 years, nine months, and 28 days ago, he used to tell me at every birthday, most dangerous

time, happy birthday, happy 15, most dangerous time, he told his sponsor, Donnie Harris,

when we read Donnie's 60 year birthday party, happy birthday to me, most dangerous time,

because every day is the day I can relax, I get a daily retreat contingent on the maintenance

of my spiritual condition.

I want to thank the 10 minutes speaker, thank you for just an awesome podcast, so much in

common with Nancy D, I was born in Los Angeles, my parents were born in Los Angeles on the

east side, my parents are not alcoholics, my grandfathers were alcoholics, that's why

I'm pretty sure I ended up inheriting alcoholism, the genetic illness as scientists do in the

last 20, 20 years.

Being born in East LA, growing up in East LA, it did not make me an alcoholic, but as

a teenage alcoholic, it made me an alcoholic once again, being in Los Angeles, a lot of

fun times, a lot of horrible times too, but so the first time I got drunk, I was at my

mom's talk, and I don't know why I wanted to drink, but there was a giant bar, and I

was a kid, I was probably, you know, a good boy, and I found the alcohol in the bar, and

they couldn't see me, and I opened the door to the bar, the back wall of the alcohol bottle,

and I got the idea to ask my grandmother if I could buy an orange juice, and then I went

to the bathroom for a while, walked into the toilet, went behind the bar, put the liquid

bottle in the rest, filled it with vodka, pounded down, and went in on some orange juice,

some more vodka, and then I went in the backyard and had the best time of my life, it was wasted,

dancing, laughing, screaming, falling into the bushes, it was awesome because I needed

to drink way before I got that drink, and I didn't know it until I got that drink,

I didn't know how uncomfortable I was in my own skin until I got to experience some

absolutely awesome freedom in a bottle for the first time in my life, you know, I'm the

kind of guy, I start to suffer from alcoholism when I stop drinking anything, when I'm not

suffering from alcoholism, no matter how crazy it looks and how horrible it can be, whatever

happens, I start to suffer from alcoholism when I walk away from drugs and alcohol, it

says on the big book, I'm miserable, restless, and distant at it until I can experience the

solutions, drinking, the ease and comfort it comes with once I take in the future, so

for 10 years before my current sobriety date, that confused the hell out of me, I was only

pregnant, on paper, my life would get better right away, I'm not getting DUIs, I'm not

going to jail, I'm not getting in trouble, I'm getting a job, my girlfriend comes in,

I get a car, but inside I'm getting more uncomfortable, so when I would relax, I would

be like, why didn't you relax, your life was getting better, and the inside was getting

worse, the time when my home group says it's like somebody sneaks in the night and puts

a spring in my gut and tightens it, and tightens it every night, and I'm either going to blow

my head off because I'm so insane and uncomfortable without my medicine of drugs and alcohol,

or I'm going to stretch a spiritual awakening through the surface, you know, so for 10 years

I went in and I had like 100, more out than in, you know, it's not like I would, the longest

time I was sober during that time was six months because I was in a lockdown facility,

I, for me to be sober on the streets, I would literally be in jail or in a rehab, I'm like,

people rise in me, I'm not sober, period. I would get out in a week, that's what I can

do on my own, is a week, and then I drink, I have the mental obsession and the physical

allergy, so I drink until I'm really high, and then I have to go to the hospital, and

then I want to go to the treatment center, and then they give me sober, but then I have to drink to get the boredom and misery of sobriety.

So, when I got here, 24 and a half years ago, I had drug dealers in South Central Los Angeles, $10,000.

They funded me $10,000 worth of party favor called crack. One night I accidentally smoked it all.

I do drugs alcoholically, that's how I know I'm an alcoholic, another indicator, and they kidnapped

my girlfriend on my mom's porch, so I had to put her body into pieces and do it in L.A. city dump.

Shortly after that, I came home drunk in a blackout, and I didn't even know this, so I

physically attacked my mom, because I called her to come pick me up at a party, because after

I'm 19, I don't have a car, like a 19-year-old doesn't want to own a car, but I didn't even have

a driving license, so I used to go to West Hollywood Club, to Orange County, all over the place,

smoking drugs and alcohol, and people that I thought would give me that stuff, and then I would

expect her to come pick me up at 4 a.m., and finally, she said, "I'm not coming to get you,

you need to get your own ride home, you're not in trouble." So, I was hit typing with my friends.

Growing up in East L.A., I was into music, and I was into art. I had long hair to my waist,

I was a metal head in the '80s and late '80s, and some guys picked us up, me and my friends,

and then they tried to rape us at gunfights, so I ran this place for my mom's house, and I wanted

to die before I was 18 years old. I didn't know what the fuck it was. I think it was, you know,

did I want to live to the age of 18? I was a teenage alcoholic, they hoped to die, was hoping

I would overdose, or just drink myself to death. So, before I was 18, I suggested that being an

adult was a joke, and horrible, and miserable, and my parents seemed miserable. All the adults

around me seemed miserable. So, these guys think they're gonna scare me. I grabbed the gun and put

it in my mouth, they showed it to us. Tell me, I don't care. You know, meaning that these guys,

they got scared. I grabbed my friend Bobby, and we ran out of the car, and I went to my mom's house,

and yelled at her, and screamed at her, and I guess put a hand on her the next day. My dad,

who is not an alcoholic, but his father, who was an alcoholic, abandoned my dad and his family

when my dad was five years old. So, my dad was raised on the streets by gangs in East Los Angeles.

He is a founding member of one of the biggest street gangs that still exists to this day. He's

in Corcoran, he's in prison. He calls and says, "Put the boy on the phone," and he says, "Your mom

told me what you did last night. If you do not leave that house, I will have you killed in the

next three months. You are not my son." So, I had to go. So, I'm going on my merry way. I don't know

what I'm going to do. I'm sleeping in a friend's house as I bump into an ex-girlfriend. From my

experience, I live in Orange County now. I got myself in Orange County, too. But anyways,

I'm jumping ahead. He's all, "Yeah, I have my own place. I'm at Cal State Fullerton."

And I was like, in my mind, you know, I'm a tinker, so I'm a loser. That is my alcoholism.

I'm a taker of things and a user of people, so I'm a loser. The takers in Alcoholics Anonymous

and in life, obviously, look around, are the losers. The winners are the givers in Alcoholics

Anonymous and in life. Look around. So, I'm like a big calculus in my mind. He has one bet with

three guys full of food. He's not in L.A. County. No drug dealer is going to come looking for me at

Cal State Fullerton on a college campus. I've always loved you. I miss you. You were always the

one. All of the times, just to get her to take me to our new place, which I think to this day, too,

again. So, I'm in Orange County now, and school was always easy for me, and it was a little bit

after college or in high school, so I enrolled in college and was getting a good grade, but was

getting in the same trouble I had gotten in L.A. County. So, now, I owe money to guys that have

lost their food on their head because I'm in Orange County. So, I'm drinking, and my disease, my drinking

and using was always progressing. I ended up unconscious at an intensive care unit at UCI,

and the doctors, they came through in a big tube, and they'll just allow clicking on it, and I was

like, "This, I know," and then they're like, they pulled me out, and they're like, "We're doing AMI

in the brain." You were brought here unconscious. Well, we do know your liver activities are

shutting down. Your main system is so destroyed, you have mold growing in your back. We think you

have AIDS. I had kind of a mohawk at the time, which went to a dreadlock that went to my house.

I had a giant bullring. The hole is still there. I just have glass in there now. It's not that

there's things to be forgave, but a giant bullring, a huge beard, different things all over my face.

I'm going out of a blackout cutting my own hair, so I look like a dog with manes just ranting bald

spots everywhere. My clothes have not been washed or changed in over two years. I've been salivating

over two years, and my clothes are altogether by dental floss and funk block and metal band tungsten,

and because I'm a musician, I'm cool. And the best way to exaggerate, I'd be negative. You'd do drugs

and drink alcohol, and I was like, "I'm a fan of this. How many fouls are you going to make in

days?" It was like, "How dare you say that I can do this?" And there was a doctor, and I called the

distance and I was like, "This is how doctors just look at each other and shake their head," and they

look at me and say, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here if you don't have health

insurance. You got to go." And I went back to my apartment, so I lived with a woman who was at

that point with my fiance, and it was empty. And the big book doesn't have the word "denial" in it,

but it does have the word "delisional," which is totally me. I looked around and thought,

"Oh, I didn't know we were moving." So I'm going to post up here and wait 50 times and

get a tip to me for our new place, and it's been 24 and a half years now. She hasn't come to get

me. And so, oh, before I left the hospital, the doctors said, "We can't help you, but you should

go to another, you should go to another prostate program." And I was like, "I've been there and it

doesn't work." You know, like, "We can help you." So 14 hours ago, this college town is a drinking

town in the middle of, like, 500 bars is an Alano Club back then. So I'm my, this is my glamorous

life at that point. I sleep in the fetal position, holding a ball, crying every night in an empty

apartment, which I know I'm going to get evicted when they come to review the apartment in the

U.S. Senate. I was never on a leash, but I have big feet and I'm still going in every night. I

figure I got like a week, maybe a couple days. So my routine is I can handle, get enough alcohol

to get drunk, go into a blackout, go home, crawl into a ball in the fetal position on the

background, and beg to God, I don't believe in peace enough, let me wake up. I wake up,

first of all, I don't believe in let me wake up. About 5 p.m. I wake up, go to downtown 14th,

and I don't mind to get a drink. So that's what I'm doing. But I don't know that there's an Alano

Club in all these bars. I thought it was a bar. I see all these people that look like drunk,

standing outside, smoking cigarettes, talking, laughing, playing right here. And so I go in

and try to buy alcohol and the guy at the bar is like, "You don't sell alcohol for it. Can you

pick up a coffee you can handle?" So I'm like leaving and this dude who became my first sponsor,

Tion, 21 years old and two years sober, walks up to me, "Hey, what's the story? What's going on?"

And then I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to the other bar." And I was basically captured by a group.

A group, and the one county is considered a cult because it's a very militant group. It is not a

cult, but Bob D. from Vegas says, "If you want to know the good meeting in any town, just ask

newcomers what meetings suck." And the meetings they take up are usually the good meetings.

Anyways, a lot of people don't like the group. It still exists. I'm not in it. But they tricked me.

I was like, "Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? We have our men's stag. I'll pick you up wherever

you're at and take you to the meeting." And I'm like, "I'm too busy. I have a lot of suicide to

think about." And he's all, "Yeah, we had this huge steak dinner before the meeting. And then

we have the meeting. We have tri tips." So I'm like, I couldn't remember when I last ate. So I'm

like, "I'm in. Come get me." So my plan was to go to the meeting, eat and then bounce before the

meeting started. That's not possible in that group because they recognize new people like

all meetings. And we're like, so every idiot in the room had to talk to me and tell me their long,

boring story. And so anyways, I got stuck in the group. So then at the end, the guy that became my

sponsor that just died last year, Jeff Nickel, when I was new, he was 17 years sober. And he said,

"Who brought you to the meeting?" And I said, "Are you new?" And I said, "I've been coming to

meetings for 10 years." And he's all, "You're 10 years sober?" I'm like, "No, I ran on the

way to the meeting. Are you kidding me?" "No, I'm not." And he said, "Well, you've been around 10

years or whatever. You know what I do? What's going to be different this time? What are you going to do

this different if you're just going to realize together?" And nobody ever asked me that before.

I was like, "Well, I've never gotten a sponsor like Jeff Nickel who writes to me." And he said,

"Why do you have to pee?" And I'm like, "I don't want to pee. I don't know any of you." And he said,

"Quit being a little not a matter. Do not have to seem to marry you, dude. I'm doing a sponsor.

You change your mind. It's not common." And he's sneaking in there one day at a time. So I'm like,

"Oh, I could do that." He made the doable. He's a complicated alcoholic like myself. He over-thinks

everything. But I'll put him to the perfect guy that we could spend the rest of my life with.

So I asked Deon if he was willing to do any stream. I thought he was going to do like

they do in rehab, hug me and say, "We're going to love you till you love yourself." He got all

crazy. He was like, "Are you willing to go to any stream and do everything I tell you out of the big

book that takes over?" And I'm like, "I guess." He caught me off guard. And he's all, "Okay,

we'll then get another ride home." I said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm ready." "I will." "Yes." He got me a big

book, a commitment. And so I had a sponsor, a big book, and a home group. I did not know they were

a home group. I know in retrospect they were. And we went to meetings every day. We worked the steps.

And a lot has happened in 24/5 years. So I wanted to spend the rest on what's happened. So when Deon

showed me the fourth step, he relapsed. And I knew he drank against his wall. I was kind of like,

didn't believe in the myth of alcoholism. I thought old framers were like, "What? My mind

makes me drink." But when Deon drank, I knew he drank against his will because he, to this day,

is the biggest affiliate I've ever met for alcoholics. And he's 21 and two years old. We

got a sobriety date tattooed on him from J.A. Simpson. And he knew that the guy did not want

to leave. He had everything he had built up in two years. But he was keeping secrets from his

sponsoring. So anyway, I was like, this is the real thing. Like, alcoholism is absolutely real.

And then I read enough of the big book and got it up to the fourth step because the first

40 pages of the big book, why it's getting to the fourth step, is diagnostic. It explains physically

and mentally and alludes seriously to the disease of alcoholism. Alcohol comes in bottles. Alcohol

has nothing to do except with medicine, but I suffer from alcohol. Alcoholism can kill me,

it's sober. I have friends, I have a friend in my home group who is over 20 years sober this last

year committed suicide. And he, by his own admission, was like, "I can't get back into being

excited about an age." Like, dude, nobody's excited about it. We just don't want to die or go insane.

Just do it and it'll come back. You know, we have to live our way into better thinking and I'll take

our way into better living. I'm glad to know this is not a faith-based program, it's an action-based

program. When I took the actions, my mind falls. The body and the mind will fall. And he didn't do

it when he committed suicide. He's a nice guy, he didn't relapse, but I'd rather do neither and

continue to experience the gift of a better life and sobriety. But, so after seeing the relapse,

as I was sponsoring, he was like really desperate and willing to be destroyed. So I threw this step,

was sober about a year and a half. Met someone in a, my son's mother. We started dating,

when he got pregnant. That's cool, nothing wrong with that, but we both were newcomers and didn't

know a lot. And I didn't know what I was getting into, not that it didn't work out well, but you

know, I actually didn't even know she was sober and moved to Oregon. And because you can do anything

you want to, everything's possible. Any dream, it's all you're doing when it's possible. You get

through this step. You can take your spiritual awakening anywhere, you don't need to stay in one

spot. Anyways, she called me and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to unity. I'm going to do what

I want to do." Came back, we were back, because we wanted to keep the child and so we lied. So

we wouldn't be able to stop dating and we never got back together. Anyways, when my son was nine

months old, he left and went to prison. Now I'm a single father in sobriety with a nine-month-old

baby. And I have an extreme disease, so I need an extreme program of recovery. Because I was a

single family, I kind of backed away a little bit. I mean, I did last night and for good reason,

you know, it's not like, you know, I didn't totally cut any out. I guess we've been going

to a meeting every day and doing potholes every weekend. I'm like, "Have you left? I had a newborn

baby." But that's very good for me because I met another alcoholic who was six over 60 days and

really about five, two super crazy alcoholics in my life. I was married to the other one for nine

years and then eventually she left. But my son, you know, his mom got out of jail and I was five

weeks sober. And then she came into my son's life, which is cool. You know, I retained full

custody because he got a visitation. Well, at least he got joint custody. And then when he was

10 years sober, she relapsed. My first wife went back to school. My first year at sobriety was my

last year in college, so I had already gotten a bachelor's degree and graduated, which was super

difficult being new and going to school. But I had a strong home group and strong sponsors and so

that's what made it possible. I came close to my husband and my home group. But he, you know,

wanted to go to school, so he went to school, was super successful, ended up getting a PhD

in nine years. He was a writer and people were flying around the country to talk to my variety

and to speak what other colleges were. And, you know, Ralph W. from South Central Los Angeles, an

awesome old-time A.A. to become a good friend of mine, always says, "Don't let the good life A.A.

give you in the way of your A.A. life." And he just had too much success going on and just got

tired of doing A.A., which is fine. That's my judgment. It's not the way he told me when we

were married counseling. We were married counseling and he said to the marriage counselor, "It pisses

me off that he puts A.A. before me in marriage." And I fell out of my cell. I was like, "That's what

we're supposed to do. A.A. is right. He has to become number one." That's what we both converted

meeting. That's when your close responses tell us. And I looked at the therapist not knowing he

doesn't know anything about A.A. and he's all telling you, "Put your marriage and your wife

before A.A." And I said, "I will have to talk to you after I talk to my partner." I would get back

to you guys after I talked to him. And it looked to me like I was forced to do that. I'm still

here, right? So I called my sponsor and he was like, "You know what? You're solid. You're good.

We'll talk more. Go to life one meeting a week for a while. See if you ever what she wants and

what the therapist does and see if that fixes the situation." And after like a month, he's like,

"You know what? You're not that interesting. Go back to doing what you were doing. You're

actually annoying. I don't know why I don't feel comfortable or like one of my hobbies."

So we ended up getting explored. And my son, because he was my biological son, stayed with me.

My son, the group, I got sober in a group in Orange County called Dog on the Rough, which

usually when I say that name, people all hit the ball. They were connected to the specific group

because the founder of that group, Keith Drumm, was sponsored by either Clancy or Johnny who go

to Gwynn's in the Pacific. So they were driving me to that meeting when it was at the synagogue,

back then when I was like, "This is late. Is this like the student type? This is super weird."

So in Dog on the Rough, it was like everybody had Harleys, everybody wore leathers. It was a

biker suit, but like outside of parents. But it was like a hardcore A-group model on the Pacific

group. There's no way I could know any of that. I didn't care about anybody. I'm like,

"I'm the A-group sponsor. How can I leave the meeting early before? How can my commitment

to confidence get the hell out of here?" And all this stuff is important to me, but it wasn't fun.

So now I'm taking the Pacific group. I found a way. I took the files to my lab for one day.

So I'm like, "I'm sorry, but I've been exposed to it and still staying in that group active."

And so I was talking to a friend recently who was young. We were young people in it,

at least we were white folks. And we were like the young people. And now we're both 24 years old. I

think he's 25. And he kind of thinks he stole me from "Dog on the Roof" at one point because he got

a video of me flying on. I was talking to him. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm still in the Pacific group."

He's like, "You know, Pacific groups is just "Dog on the Roof" groups. You're not as good as me."

And it's just they wear leathers and biker outfits and "Dog on the Roof" if they weren't as close to

them as I was in the Pacific group. I like the results. And I'm enjoying the results of

being in the group. So every time he's saying, "My heart of power will let me know he wants me

from my house." So my son, anyways, they believed in family recovery. So my son was in in reality

from the age of six until he was 17. So my son, you know, because both his parents were from home,

and his mom wasn't sober for a long time. And he liked it. I remember when he first started going

to meetings, I was like, "Hey, what goes on in your meetings?" And he's all, "Yeah, you have your

own meetings. Why are you worried about memory?" And he's probably asking me, "What are they

thinking?" I was like, "That's cool. I respect that." And so my friend told me, "Don't think that

that's going to inoculate your son from getting alcoholism if, you know, he didn't likely be

disposed. If he could still turn out like he did." Which I thought he wouldn't because my

parents don't know, call it, my dad and mom, but he is. Right now, so he started his first rehab.

He went to rehab in Malibu when he was 17. He was there for a year, and he went to high school out

there. Then he got away at 17. He lived with me for a while, then he moved. Right now, he is

awaiting sentencing. He's telling me something he did when he was 10. So I go visit him all the time,

and his mother won't. He relaxed. He caught her drinking and doing drugs, and then he married this

really, really wealthy guy who was a member and is no longer than me. Which is cool. I like the guy.

I mean, we've almost done a fist fight when my son was little, but because of me. I've always been

almost laying on his mom just because of me because I was the one that was, you know, because I had

custody, so I was kind of a jerk about it and made things hard on him. But, you know, her husband, my

son, he relapsed at their house and was drawn to beat their friends out of my son. So they took

everything in me not to go and they called my sponsor. Because if I'm sober, it doesn't mean

I'm sick. It doesn't mean I don't get resentment. I don't want to retaliate. I don't suffer the

delusion that I'm right, you know. And all of a sudden, when I was talking to my dad, he said,

"Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?" If I could be in my friend's situation,

he's sober. There was an old timer in my first home group who was 30 years sober who ran someone

over with his car and almost killed him. And we're still friends. He, you know, he had to go to jail

and do a bunch of stuff, but he didn't have sober. So standing close and being close to old timers and

being friends with them, I have gotten to see how alcoholism isn't about drinking. That alcoholism

is in my mind. My mind's trying to kill me, but it'll settle for drunk and miserable. Maybe it'll

try to sabotage and burn my life to the ground while I'm sober. So I have to do this aggressively

and proactively. I take this seriously every day up until this moment, like it's life or death.

Because it is. I may not relapse, but I can totally turn my life into a living hell. So I

spawned for a guy who's 15 years sober, and he ended up in a straight-jacking in a mental home,

where he didn't relapse, but he was doing stuff and went totally insane. And he is my greatest

teacher, because he showed me what can happen to me, even if I don't drink. And so my son's

sentencing is in May, and it's hard. I met someone in my home group seven years ago. We dated for

seven years. We got married in May, but we're all coming up around a year. And what's great about

it is that we have a really good marriage. It's seven around, Alcoholics Anonymous. We're in the

same home group. We're willing to let each other do what we need to do. And we practiced this

tradition in our home, which I've learned in my home group. And as long as I stay active,

willing, and surrendered, and responsible, and accountable in my home group, my life is better.

We have a desire for living that can weather any storm. Horrible things have happened in my

sobriety, including the recent thing with my son. My dad died in 2020 of COVID because the hospitals

in LA were full, and he couldn't get in. Fully preventable death. He was only 16. Plus, we have

a desire for living here that can weather any storm. And when bad things happen, we come out

stronger and wiser, and able to come upon those around us who came with us. And when we're drinking,

I can't do any of that. So thank you so much for the life you've given me in Alcoholics Anonymous,

and the opportunity to share with you, and for what you guys, you and everyone in Alcoholics

Anonymous, have done for me, and will continue to do for me, and finally. Thank you.