Stuart's Journey: Family, Love, and Recovery Triumphs

Thank you, Abraham. I'm Stuart. I'm an alcoholic and everybody should know somebody named Abraham.

And now I do, right? I'm to the point now that everything reminds me of a story. And if I'm

telling a story, it's going to remind me of five more stories. So there could be these shortage of

material here. But last, there I was, so there I was this morning at the taking your sponsor to

breakfast thing. It was sold out, completely sold out. 300 people. It was a great event,

great in the respect that I get to see a lot of people that I know and love and respect and

people come from. I saw Dusty Brojas. He came down from, he moved to like farm,

farmland up there in central California. I think it's Springville or one of those,

one of those cow towns, right? And he and his lovely wife, Laura, they moved up there and he

says, "Stu," he says, "I can sit on my couch and I can look at a cow." Okay, how long can you do

that? I mean, really? That's not a good reason to move to Springville or Springdale or Springville.

I don't know what it's called, but they've always been very gracious to me and to Diane.

Thank you for greeting me, Karen, your speaker greeter. She very graciously greeted me and

inquired about my wife, Diane. Some of you know Diane. You don't allow profanity from this

podium, do you? No? None at all? Okay, I'll have to make do. Okay, yeah. So my daughter has two years

of inappropriate relationships. Now I realize that children don't tell their parents everything. I

know that. And me slash parents don't tell their children everything either. But she started dating

this guy and he was completely different from anybody that she had ever dated, right? I mean,

he's a tall guy, bigger guy than me. He's all tatted up. He's got like a red beard and like

totally fit and everything. And he said, "Stuart, I want to come take you to lunch." I said, "I want

to take you to lunch." And my daughter did not know about this at all. But we went to lunch and

local and he told me something. He told me this story. His name is Brandon. And he told me this

story. And he's got like 15 years of sobriety. And these young people, a lot of them, they get

together on the dating site, you know, because that's how people, the young people, meet each

other these days. And so he came to me and took me to lunch. And he said, "Old school." He says,

"I want to ask you for your daughter's hand in there." This is an old school guy. And I really,

really appreciate that. I really respect it. And he told me this story. They started dating,

dating for a number of months. And she was still drinking. And he went to her. My daughter's name

is Dana. And he said, "I really love you. And I want to get married and make a home and have

children. But the way you're drinking, I can't be with you." So he rolled the dice. He put

everything on the table. And he said, "The dam just burst." She started crying. And she just

surrendered all of it right there, right then and there. They're married now. They have kind of a

long engagement, but only two years. They're phenomenally successful, both of them. You can

only imagine how grateful I am to alcoholics and others. Because if you love your children,

Karen doesn't love their children or want their best for their children, right? Of course,

that's what I would want. Now, my son, I think he's getting ready. I think he's getting ready

for us. But if I had sat down and written a movie script, it couldn't have come up. And, oh, and you

mentioned that Karen, you mentioned something, oh, is the druggie bookie coming, right? And the

funny thing is, when we first came to alcoholics and others, they took us on one of those funny

white vans, right? They take you out to meetings, right? And my wife and I used to ride in that van,

and now she's driving that van because now she works for my son-in-law. His group of investors,

they own like a dozen treatment facilities, alcoholics and others treatment facilities,

right? I mean, obviously AA is not affiliated, but, and she absolutely loves the work. She

loves it because she gets exposure to the newcomers. She gets to, and she works at night.

She works late at night because that's when she has the most contact with the newcomers. And

that's what she absolutely loves about it. And I'm so proud. I'm so overpaid. My life is so beautiful

because of alcoholics. Okay. I guess I should mention something. What, what, what, what it was,

what I was like, what happened and what I'm like now. Okay. I grew up, I grew up in, oh,

the speaker this morning, his name was Ron W and he was from Watts, 89th and Normandy. So,

after being in Los Angeles, my birth certificate says Los Angeles, rural. You know how long I've

been around. So, I just went up to, at the end, we used to thank the speaker. I just went up to

say Ron and 104th and Van Ness. They started laughing. I said, you know exactly what I'm

talking about. Yeah. That's like the same area. I grew up in the same area that he grew up in and

it was brutal and profane. And that's got nothing to do with my drink. I drank because I liked the

effect. I like getting my head tight. I like feeling no pain. I like feeling cool and relaxed.

I like the effect. I like the rush. I like the effect of alcohol. 1979, I met my wife over the

telephone. My mother worked at the racetrack, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park for many years.

She was one of them out there. Her name was Polly. My mother's name was Polly. And I adored her

because I didn't have a father really. My father was an alcoholic, a crazy alcoholic, absentee

alcoholic. So, she met my wife. Diane, my wife, knew my mother before she knew me. So, my mother

was a natural born marketing person. And she says, oh, my son makes a lot of money and he'll spend

it on you. Here's his business card. Give him a call. Right. And natural marketing person. So,

and my mother called me up. She says, I met this girl out at the racetrack. She's very pretty,

but I don't think she's very bright, which is exactly what a young guy wants to hear. Right.

And of course, of course, I'm still drinking. So, we went on a couple of barn dates. I had lost my

license at the time because I figured out if I, if I, if I just drink at home, I'll stop getting

arrested. Right. Like the last time I got arrested, they just followed the blood trail. They just

followed the blood trail trail into my apartment and hooked me up and just dragged me out and took

me down to Parker Center downtown. And I lived in Hollywood for many years. I'm a creative person by

trade. My day job, I'm still a creative person. I'm a designer, visual artist. And you know,

they have a police doctor down there that does nothing but sew up drunks all night. And I had

a big gash in the back of my, my head. And that doctor starts to sew me up. Right. I said, Hey,

ain't you going to put some anesthetic or something on there? He said, you ain't got no

feeling back there. He said, start sewing. He was right. I didn't really feel, I didn't really feel

very much. Of course, I've had a lot of blows to the head too. So, we, we got together and we,

30 days later, maybe 33 days later, we were married and we were, we were drinking and I was

drunk at the wedding. And my boss was my best man. It was on. And we had the wedding reception

at the old, the old hangout in Hollywood. I forget the name. It was an old mob hangout. And my

buddies literally painted the place with blood, their own blood. But it was, it was wild. It was

just totally wild. And we drank together for a year. We drank together for a year and got married

in 1980. I got sober in 1980. We got married in 1979. So, we drank together for one year and

we spent our first year anniversary in the care unit of Orange, in Orange, California,

getting, getting sober there. And then I was so tired. I was, because of the last three times I

took a drink, my wife took me to the emergency hospital in, in Hollywood, Hollywood community

hospital, near death with acute pancreatitis. Are there any pancreas guys in here? I'm a

pancreas guy. I'm a hospital drinker. Cause I figured out if I, if I stopped driving,

if I stopped going out and just drink at home, I can drink all I want. Well, it doesn't really

work that way. If you drink enough, it will kill you. You don't have to do anything else.

Just drink enough. And I, and a doctor, he says the first time he says, he's looking at all the

tests and he says, well, we usually find this condition in advanced stages of alcohol. I was

what 29. He says we advanced stage of alcoholism, right? He says, but we think you're too young to

be an alcoholic. Oh my God. He says, by the way, how much do you drink anyway? And my wife said,

Stuart, you lied your ass. Of course I lied. I have to lie. I can't tell how much I really drink.

Cause if I do that, I'll have to do something. I can't do that. I've tried. I've tried limiting

the number of drinks. Well, that doesn't work. Cause the first one, I lose all my inhibitions

and it's, and it's what one turns into two, two turns into two to 10 and pretty soon, pretty soon

I'm back in Hollywood community hospital with the old, the old, the same doctor, the old doctor.

He's got the white hair. He knows what he's talking about. He's seen a thousand like me.

He says, you're in a living hell and it's nothing we can do for you. But if you ever take another

drink, not, not see what I hear in my mind. He says, if you ever take another drink,

you'll die with this condition. You can't, you can not, you never have one more drink. What do

I hear in my mind? He wants me to cut down, right? That's what I'm hearing. And I thought, well,

I thought I could, I thought I could control this. I could cut down, but I had tried limiting the

number of drinks. And if the marijuana maintenance worked, we would know. Cause many, many of us have

tried the marijuana maintenance and it doesn't usually end very well. Sooner or later you're

going to go to the hard stuff. That's, and in my case, I take, I get thirsty and I mean like

thirsty, like right now. And the next stop is the liquor store. Cause I love marijuana. I used to

smoke marijuana every day from the time I was 12 years old. I just got like this, but a small price

to pay to give that up. Because if you're just looking for another way, if you get high, you're

not ready for this. This is all, all of my prosperity. Everything good in my life is a

direct result of alcohol. All of my, my life, because the last few times I took the drink,

I went to Hollywood Community Hospital, right? Well, what's the next bottom? Well, I happen to

know that the, the mortgage in the basement, right? So that's probably the next step. So

there I was last year. I was gifted with a trip. I'm a, my, my side gig is I'm a scuba instructor,

right? I was gifted with a trip to Egypt and the red sea to dive in the red sea, right? A

live aboard first class, everything. But the guy says, I can't go. And he's a drinker, but he says,

Stuart, I can't go. But I thought of you. It's already paid for. All you got to do is pay for

your airline ticket. So we're on board. And so we dive in the red sea for a week, a great adventure,

diving all the World War II wrecks, going through them and seeing all the rows and rows of

motorcycles and jeeps and trucks, even railroad, even railroad locomotives in some, some of those

wrecks out there. Amazing. And my, what my wife has totally sold on the little boy experience,

because that's a great way to go. But then on the way back, we go to car because I know I don't care

about going in a dusty museum, right? I wouldn't be in God's cathedral, the great outdoors in the

ocean or, or, or the desert or whatever. I like to be in the outdoors because that's my cathedral.

That's what I want. But she wants to go see the, the pyramids and all the dusty museums and ride

that stupid camel. I'm not riding that little camel. That's where I draw the line, right?

They're nasty. But the camel steak was delicious out there. So time is short. We only have like a,

only like a couple of days in Cairo on the way back. And I had made plans on my bucket list.

I want to do an AA meeting in Cairo, right? That is really important to me. I want to do that,

right? So I go to the concierge and he says, well, I said, okay, the place was the English meeting,

because most people in Egypt speak Egyptian, right? But the English meeting was going to be

on the other side of Cairo and Cairo is enormous. You think LA is big? 28 million people. It's

unbelievable how big this place is. There's 10 lanes of traffic all going one way and a guy with

a donkey cart going against the traffic. It's amazing, right? I call it an Egyptian muscle

cart because he's pulled by a muscle, right? Going the other way. But they don't, it's interesting

culturally. They, they, they don't get mad. They just honk and maybe, and wave at them and say,

get out. But they just keep going. Not like here, you know. Me, I'm one of the guys that

jumps out of the car and go after somebody, right? In fact, I had to go in front of the,

that was a drive drunk. They don't want to do that. So, so how are we going to get to this,

this Catholic church where they're going to have the meeting? I'm not telling him that, but I want

to get to this Catholic church. And it was the church of the Holy family, which reminded me that

in the Bible days, when the Holy family had to flee Israel, they fled to Egypt. This church has

been there a very long time. So he says, he says, okay, you can go, you can call Uber and just pay

them with, pay them with, I said, okay, Uber is not going to work by phone in Cairo. It's not

going to happen, right? I said, what's the big choice? He says, well, I can let you have, I can

let you have the house limousine with the driver for three hours for $75. I said, okay, I'll take

that because I really want to do this, right? So the driver shows up, shiny black car, he's in a

black suit and he's packing a Mac 10 under his coat. You know what, some people know what a Mac

10 is, right? It's like, if you don't know, it's like a little submachine gun, right? So he's

packing that and he doesn't really speak English enough to get us to the other side of town, but

we're going, and Cairo is alive at night. People are out on the streets late at night. They're all

out there partying or they're having their kebabs or whatever they're doing, and they're dancing,

whatever they're doing, lots of music. So we get across town to this area. I said, what are you

going to do when we're in there? He says, well, I'll just wait here with the car. I said, okay.

And there was another guy in front of the church of the long time, kind of like a Kalashnikov or

something, an AK. So we just go into the meeting. We want to get to our AA meeting. And the meeting

was just like a classroom, right? A regular classroom, like some of the meetings you go to,

right? And it was very similar to an AA meeting in the Valley. Talk about the same things,

the same issues. But the people, there's only like three Americans in them, about 35 people,

maybe 35, 40 people. And they just put all the chairs in a circle and talk about the same stuff.

And the big difference is they don't clap for it. Like you share, you don't expect this because

they're not going to do that. But you get the same thing back East, right? In other parts of

the country. So I really enjoyed the hell out of them. Oh, I cursed her there. I enjoyed that

meeting. I really did. And a lot of young people in that meeting, a lot of young people, females,

and the English speaking people, but they're from all over. They're from England. They're from Hong

Kong. They're from Australia. They're from New Guinea. They're from Saudi. They're from India.

They're from all over. They just happen to speak English. And they want a meeting in Cairo. I was

very grateful to get there. And we talk about the same exact stuff that we do here, right down to

the guy who's still drunk and smells like booze. Because everybody, we want to see that in the

media, right? And I only hope that that guy, that young guy, I only hope he sticks around longer,

that Alcoholics Anonymous can work its magic. Because it is magic. And I know if he will stick

around, it's going to be, he's going to be okay. And I just love that about Alcoholics Anonymous.

So there I was. I was in, okay, that was the Red Sea. So there, there I was in Palau. Palau,

I was looking at a map this morning. Palau is North of New Zealand and East of the Philippines.

Somebody knows where Palau is. Most people couldn't find it on a map to save your life. It's very

remote. But it's a diver's paradise, right? And very few Americans there at all. It's an island

nation, 300 islands with a population of Malibu. So it's pretty remote and very few Americans there.

Most people that speak English there are probably from Australia. A lot of Australians are. But,

you know, again, I was on the living board. Take off and go like two, 300 miles out in the ocean.

And there was one other guy, an American, and he was one of the snooty westsiders. You know what

I'm talking about. He's very kind of aloof. And I knew he was, he was sober. But, and I thought,

well, cool, we can have a meeting of AA, right on, right here on the boat in the middle of nowhere.

But it didn't happen, didn't happen. And then on the final day, we're just sitting in the

salon and we're talking about it. We're talking about how beautiful our lives have gotten in

alcoholic zones. And he started crying. He said, I was a homeless guy for six years. I never thought

in my life that here I would be in this exotic luxury vacation in a far off part of the world.

And he started crying and I started crying with him and he just kind of get exhausted. And I told

this story to a young woman. She said, oh, you spent some emotion together. I said, yeah, yeah,

that's what happened. Because that's what happens here in alcoholic zones. We spend emotion together

so that sometimes you go to a meeting and you just get involved in it. And so that was a beautiful

thing. That was another trip that was given to me. It just keeps happening over and over.

Another trip that was given to me, my neighbor says, I'm always saying, I said, Stuart,

you and Diane should take a, you should take a vacation, take a vacation, take a vacation.

I said, Ted, I can't avoid, I can't afford it. I can't take a vacation. I got to work. He says,

okay, when you figure out what you want to do, let me know. I said, okay. I go to him. I say,

hey, I want to go to Plow. He says, how much is that going to cost? I said, it's going to cost

$7,500, Ted. He says, well, $10,000 to handle it. Hands me a check. Okay. He's not in the program,

but none of this would be happening because I became the kind of person that would attract that

kind of thing. I am convinced that you don't get something. You know, the phrase about, you know,

what you get yourself a girlfriend, you go hostage taking, right? Or a female is going to take the

hostage of a man, right? I'm thoroughly convinced that none of that is a way to go. Become the kind

of person that attracts that. And this stuff has been coming to me. And so he just gave me a check

for $10,000. You'll spend it any way you want. Amazing. And then here I am, I come out of the

dive shop and my phone rings and the guy says, he says, I already paid for this trip to go to

Guadalupe Island to dive with the great whites. I said, pretty cool. He says, but I can't go. I

said, I like where this is headed. He said, I already paid for it. I can't go because he's

closing on Hawaii, a property in Hawaii. And Hawaii is the only state where you have to close in

person. You can't do it with a fax or a wet shirt. You've got to be there in person. That probably

adds to their tourism. I don't know. But he said, so again, I'm off to dive in the cage diving with

the great whites, right? And that was fantastic. Guadalupe Island is off of Baja. It's like a 21

hour crossing to get to it on the boat. Again, another little board, which is my way to go. I

love that. And we saw 36 great whites the first day, right? And they're coming right by the cage

and I stick my arms out the cage to take a picture, right? But when the shot comes too close,

I pull them back in. And it was great fun. And all of this, I got what, like, I have like three,

four minutes left? The light hasn't gone on yet? I got five minutes? Oh, I can do it six minutes.

So, there we are. So, there I was at the last convention, international convention that we had

was in Atlanta, Georgia, obviously. But right by the dome there where they,

is it the Atlanta Falcons play basketball in that dome, right? I'm not really a sports guy. I like

my sport. But so, we're standing outside 60,000 people, right? At that convention. The uplifting

power is just amazing. It takes like a week to come down after that. But so, I'm standing there

online waiting to get into the dome. And on the other side, I see one of the other doors,

I see a bunch of people. They're in costume. And the young people, maybe a dozen young people. And

the guys, they're wearing the flat brimmed hat. They got the fringe beard. They got the bib

suspenders, the little gals. They have the bonnet, the apron, the long dress. I said, "Diane, hold my

spot here. I want to go find out what's going on with these people." So, I go over there. I said,

"Hey, what's your story? What's with the get up, huh?" She says, "Oh, everybody's got a name tag."

And she says, "Oh, we're from upstate New York." I say, "Yeah, but what's with the get up? How come

the costume like that?" And she says, "Oh, we're Amish." And I started to say something really

stupid. I started to say, "Well, I think I don't think our Amish drink. They're not supposed to

drink, right?" Well, Muslims aren't supposed to drink either, but all kinds of them are not

supposed to do all kinds of things. But we do it anyway. And she laughed and laughed. She says,

"Yeah, I know. But we get thirsty too." Of course, they get thirsty, right? And think about who the

Amish are. Well, they're farmers. They have silos full of grain. They got silos full of wheat and

corn. And believe you, they make everything themselves. Believe you me, they know how to

make some whiskey. Come to find out, they're famous for making a really good whiskey. I

had no idea. I mean, obviously, they're not supposed to do that. My life had been so adventurous.

I got to wind it up. I'm walking into Walmart the other day with my wife, and who was in charge of

security, but a guy who was on the A-yard in Lansing. I take lots of prison pants. He was on

A-yard doing double life without parole. And now he's in charge of security for Walmart. He's

standing in the parking lot, and I just walk right up to him and say, "Hey, dude." I give him a big

hug, and the other Walmart people, they don't know what's going on. And because of Alcoholics

Anonymous, he's walking around free right now. And he used to say, "Stewart, they should never

let me out," because he never thought he would get out. But now he is out, and he's doing okay.

He's doing okay. This has been such a great adventure. I have a lot of character defects.

I have a lot of faults, but ingratitude is not one. If I have to cash in all my chips tomorrow,

I will be eternally grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous.