Ralph's Journey: From Court-Ordered AA to 27 Years Sober

Thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Ralph and I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic.

Thank you very much for inviting me Ben, it's a pleasure sir.

And thank you very much for your lead and for your share, very touching and very important

all the stuff you said.

Thank you for the warm welcome and everybody for your hospitality for allowing me to come

and speak to you folks.

Again my name is Ralph, I'm an alcoholic, trying to get some things out of the way.

I got sober at the age of 50 or there about back in August, August 4th of 1999 is my sobriety

date.

I haven't had a drink or any mind-altering substance from that day on and from that I

am grateful and I have Alcoholics Anonymous and all of its members and its activities

and literature and so on to thank for allowing me to stay sober and helping you stay sober

a day at a time.

I came into the Alcoholics Anonymous program through the court system, I was a court ordered

to attend AA, I wasn't smart enough to go to a center or detox or going to AA meetings

on my own.

I honestly didn't know much, I didn't know anything actually about alcoholism as a disease.

I thought it was a matter of bad habits and moral or rather immoral turpitude and just

weakness in willpower, weakness in being able to stop drinking and that's what it was.

These are kind of defects but they're also a sign of my misunderstanding of alcoholism

as it was diagnosed by the American Medical Association decades ago as a disease, as a

mental physical disease with its traits and it's classified among other chronic illnesses

and I suffered of that and didn't know it but August 4th of 99 or August 3rd of 99 actually

eve I had a car accident, I live a little bit just to identify because I didn't always

feel this way or thought this way or think about life and about friends and about humanity

the way I do now, now that I am sober, I wasn't this way before.

I drank probably at the age of 18 or thereabout I was born in North Africa and to a Muslim

family with lots of discipline but also lots of love and a huge extended family that was

really very applied together and lived in Jewish neighborhoods primarily, grew up there

and attended schools that were primarily Jesuit in training and in teaching and absolutely

no issues in my upbringing at all, my father didn't drink to my knowledge ever, neither

did my mother, I have five sisters who don't drink, I have two brothers who do but I wasn't

aware alcohol is being running through our family at the level of genetics and stuff

like that and when I began to drink it was probably about the age of 16, 17 and it was

sneaking it with friends and buddies and so on and drinking mostly in graveyards at night

where nobody could, very quiet, where nobody could interfere and so on but it did have

an effect on me, it helped me cope with the issues that men going through puberty, go

through adolescence, those kinds of problems and it made things a little bit tamer and

a little bit easier to survive in. I left the country in 1969 at the age of 20 to go

to France to go to college there and I picked up there, I picked up drinking there and I

used to justify my drinking when I lived in Paris for two and a half years, I used to

justify the drinking, excessive drinking actually on the fact that it was cold in France compared

to that. So instead of spending the money on better goods or thicker socks I spent it

on red wine and I consumed quite a bit of it unfortunately for me but I did take a liking

to it because it first of all it lessened my sense of lack of confidence, being a stranger

in the Spanish land where I lost college and I had to recover in some way and airports

are loading, great planes and stuff and I did all kinds of hard work while I was going

to college in the daytime but the drinking took off and I remember I was hanging around

lots of folks and places where copious amounts of alcohol were consumed and I took advantage.

I came to this country first in '60 but I came back in 1971 permanently and I've been

here ever since in June of '71 and I began working a different job that came with a green

card which I got from the American Embassy in Paris and I began working in different

places and going to college and getting promoted because I was in addition to being an alcoholic

which again I didn't know, I was also a workaholic so whatever job, whatever task I was given

I tended to excel at Alice because I was perfectionist in whatever I did, I worked with compulsion

so I had that OCD trait of alcoholism in me from the beginning and so I was getting promoted

and I couldn't blame alcohol for anything because things were working out and I married

my wife in September of 1974 and we've been together ever since so it's been 49 years

now after we've been together, she has been a saint for 25 out of those 49 years, that's

the ultimate experience, she really was extremely patient and tolerant and very, very understanding

and at the same time I'm treated alone in enabling my thing because I was again successful

after I was making money, I was buying new cars every five or six years and bought homes

and had the kids going through private schools in the beginning and stuff so everything was

going hunky-dooly but I began collecting DUIs from 1978, I think my first one was in 1978,

I had an attorney friend that I had, I should have had him on retailer but I didn't but

he was a criminal defense lawyer and just a wonderful man, his name was Adrian Barinovich,

I say his name because he's dead now, he's been dead for about 10 years and he's a wonderful

guy and he handled my DUIs and he was a smooth operator, he would smooth the city attorney

or the prosecutor or the judge into dwindling it down from a DUI down to a reckless lane

change or an unsafe lane change so he did all that stuff but they all were wet as they

say, they involved alcohol and I don't think I ever had a problem when I was not drunk,

I mean every time I had a problem, alcohol was involved and I never pointed the finger

to alcohol or to myself as somebody who is drinking, I always blamed the culture on anything

better to do than to pick on me while I was being arrested for this or that, I said isn't

there somebody getting raped right now or getting murdered, why don't you go there and

leave me alone but it was all really just a childish, very immature way of thinking

and an inability to face the fact that I had a problem with drinking alcohol, I never faced

that, I never said that about myself, I just saw a couple of incidents that I haven't forgotten

and I shared about them in the past so I still remember them fairly well, one of them was

I think in the mid 80s, like 84, 85, there was a, the French were celebrating in the

city of Beverly Hills where I worked, I worked for 34 years there, they were celebrating

a new brood of Cabernet Sauvignon and Beaujolais, red wine and so they had signs everywhere,

at the discount at every restaurant and bars and so on and so it was discounted very well,

I went with a friend of mine and a couple of clients to a restaurant just walking distance

from the office and just began drinking like it was watery and we were having dinner but

I was actually drinking more than eating and the problem was when I stopped it, I couldn't

stop, that was my problem as an alcoholic and I never knew that this is the problem,

it's the first drink and eventually I was arrested at night, I somehow got into my car,

I was arrested without an accident and came to in the Beverly Hills police jail, jailhouse,

you know, Bayon City Hall and when I came to in the morning and I realized where I was,

you know, I thought about last night, I said Jesus Christ, what the heck happened, I don't

remember at all, I was in a complete blackout and those became recurrent and more and more

frequent to the blackouts version and I remember that the night before, you know, I remember

the opportunity for signs all over the place and the, you know, shiny lights and so on

and but I remember that we had, I had asked for the schedule of the night and the guy

said it was a fillet of the soul, cooked in an oven on a bed of rice, fillet with lots

of capers on top and all kinds of sweet stuff and it hit me at that time, in jail, in Beverly

Hills and it hit me that my problem was I ordered fish with red wine, rather than, you

know, the wine was the problem, red or pink or purple, it doesn't matter, the wine was,

I said no, I blame the fish and it's, I violated the basic law of culinary rules, you know,

that you have meat with red wine, you know, but and that was that, you know, and again,

my friend Adrian, you know, helped me out, you know, and I called my wife, she came and

gave me a ride, you know, because they wouldn't let me out of jail till the next morning and

she came to the poor, so we lived in the port of Ash by that time, I think we were, yeah,

we were, and she came and taught me some shoes and stuff, I had lost my shoes, I don't know

when I lost them and yeah, so it's very unbelievable and another event that I still remember to

this day and I came across it a decade ago, so I was doing some estate planning and I

came across a less insurance policy that I had taken, my son was sitting here, my son

was born in 83 and I remember late 83, early 84, I was, I had had an accident already at

night and we lived in Glendale, I'm up on top of the hill in Glendale and you know,

windy streets, Merriam Drive, it was really a bad accident, I dislocated my shoulder,

cut my face, I had back problems and so on, but they didn't arrest me for DUI, I lied

to them, I just hit somebody who was running into me, so I tried to avoid the magazine's

black cars, but there was none of that was true really, I was in a blackout and I just

fell asleep and I hit some black cars and the problem was that I knew that something

was going to happen to me, that I probably, probably was going to die as a result of my

drinking, as a consequence of my drinking and I said this and just very irresponsible

for a father to let his wife soon to become a widow and his son soon to become an orphan

who we have to face this mortgage on the house, so I went and got a hold of a friend of mine

who used to work with me, who became a life insurance salesman from New York life and

I went ahead and bought a life insurance post and I thought that was a responsible thing

to do, to essentially abdicate his personal responsibility to his family, his conjugal

duties basically and to, for a premium, for a fee, pass them out to a life insurance company,

so when I loved that as a result of an accident or a liver thirsting or whatever, that a life

insurance company would step in, pay off the balance of the mortgage and leave the stipend

for my wife and my son to be able to raise in schools and so on and so forth and I came

across that policy about a decade ago, going through and preparing for my life, I still

have that policy, I converted it into some other form of policy but still have it, it's

been in effect, it's really amazing, it hit me at that time, I said damn you know, I can't

believe I thought that way, I had missed that in my first inventories, and so when I had

that accident on August 3rd of 99 and I explained it, I described it because it really is when

the psychic change that Bill Doble talks about, that we talk about in this program, psychic

change took place that night and it has shifted, radically shifted my life and it was, I went

again with two friends actually and three clients and we were in a very nice restaurant

in Beverly Hills and eating and drinking and I still don't remember to this day how I left

the place and how I got to my car, I had a brand new Lexus RX 300, they were still new

at that time in 99 and I only had about maybe 1800 miles on it, it was still brand new,

I rekt that total the damn thing which is really a shame but I got into that car and

began vibing and on which the boulevard was bombed from Beverly Hills heading to the 405

in Westwood and somehow I ran into the entrance, a concrete barrier entrance to construction

trucks on Westwood boulevard near Kelton on one of the streets of Alcoma, head on at probably

about 55 miles per hour, it was late at night, it was about 11 o'clock at night and I just

rammed into it and when I came through, the bags had already inflated and thank goodness

I had the side bags and all that stuff but still I had glass all over my face and all

over my scalp you know which for weeks after, I would do this and pick up a piece of glass

from my head and I had facial lacerations and my chest was really in bad shape, it was

just from the inflation of the of the airbags and when I came across the street, sitting

on the curb on the south side of Westwood boulevard, looking at my car burning, it was

in flames and the fire engines were there, there were two or three fire engines and they

were dozing it with foam to put out the fires and a police, a motorcycle police officer

came by and asked me if it was my car, I said yes and he asked me questions, he asked me

if I had been drinking and I said yeah, I had dinner and I had drinks with my dinner

and stuff, he said I was very cooperative, I remember all the stuff I know because I

read the police report about 50 times, I wasn't really there, I was I was really in a complete

daze at that time, I was in a very serious blackout and from the trauma, from the shock

of the accident, I was totally wiped out but so he handcuffed me and he had me sit down

and then a patrol car came with a male and a female that threw me in the back seat of

that car after lecturing me on something and they were driving the windows, it was nice

and warm that night, fairly balmy actually and I remember to this day how the wind was

hitting the back of my earlobes, you know, as the car was driving and I didn't know if

they were driving east, west, north or south, nothing, I just know that this car was moving

but in the back seat of that car, in that condition in which I was, my hands had cuffed

behind me and being wet from the waist down, I had, as a result of drinking, lost control

of my blood movement for years, my poor wife had to wash my pants literally every day,

almost except on weekends because of that and I still, in that condition, I was overcome

with an incredible sensation of lightness, of freedom and I was overcome with the feeling

that things are going to be good in the immediate future, things are going to be different but

things are going to be good, this was really a felt experience, I mean, I felt it to my

bones and it was, I was overcome with a sense of joy, a sense of peace that had overcome

me and it's a peace that is not the result of a conditional ceasefire or a temporary

cessation of hostilities, it was really peace as in total armistice, the war is over and

I lost obviously that the war is over and a new era, a new age is starting in my life,

a new age, a new chapter in my life is about to start, this did not involve, thank goodness,

any part of my frontal cortex where the executive decisions are made, where the ego dwells,

where willpower comes into play, it was really at the bottom of the brain, most likely, most

likely I think, the amygdala, the flight or fight era or area of the brain, the reptilian

part that deals with basics, the one that makes me duck, when a rocket coming to hit

me without measuring the speed or the distance, it's just instinctive reaction to survival

and I personally believe it was survival instinct that essentially lived consciously in every

cell of my body, my blood, my brain, my liver, my kidney, my heart, every part of it was

screaming, you're killing us, you bastard, stop it, we can't go on with this, so the

decision was being made really at a visceral level, at a molecular level, the decision

to opt for life as opposed to suicide which I was committing with every glass I paid for,

every bottle I bought in, I was committing suicide and essentially without knowing it

because the ego was feeling that this time survived anything, jumped in long before the

ego could react or could take mastery of the brain and make decisions and I think that

is personally, is the psychic change that dwelled within me at that moment, there's

a lady in AA that used to say that with unconditional surrender there goes the obsession to drink,

that once the alcoholic surrenders unconditionally and says no more, I'm done, then the desire

or the obsession to drink lifts the body of the alcoholic and lifts the mind of the alcoholic

permanently, it has left mind for certain and I believe that moment, it has left mind

and I've never felt the desire to drink again as a result of that experience which again

is a felt experience, pre-reflective, that did not involve any kind of rational thinking

or logical thinking, it was felt and it was coming in from a lot of my friends who are

believers or religious people, tell me that's the grace of God that touched you in the vaccines

of that God, whatever we call it, it doesn't really matter whether it's survival instinct

of the grace of God or nature, we're essentially sort of willing and deciding for itself that

life is better than death and that life is better than suicide and that's what happened,

I felt that it never felt like drinking, I felt like killing people and myself, I never

felt like drinking from that data.

Now the next morning when I came to, when I woke up and they took me to the Venice Police

Station or Venice Boulevard near Culver City, they, when I woke up the next morning, my

first, I realised what had happened, my first thought is why the heck did I take an officer,

I should have taken support, I should have taken Olympic, I should have taken Pico or

something, you know just crazy alcoholic denial, denial at work as if I had taken Pico, I wouldn't

be an alcoholic, I mean it's a non-sequitur, it makes no sense whatsoever, drunk as drunk

as drunk, anyway I was sentenced to a bunch of things, I'll never forget what Adrian,

my attorney, told me, this guy was really fantastic, you know he was my drinking buddy

and I mean I wouldn't call him an alcoholic, he didn't have anyone but he drank quite a

bit, but he was very successful too and he told me in the West LA courthouse, there used

to be a courthouse in West LA near Purdue, he said Ralph, you know, this attorney, city

attorney, he said I think she has nails for breakfast, she was really mean and there had

been a case, it was made the news all over the country about a judge who went lenient

on a drunk driver and that drunk driver went ahead and killed a family of four and they

went all over, you know, everybody turned against the judge for having gone lenient

on that drunk driver and so that was right before my case came up and it scared the heck

out of me, I said typical alcoholic thinking, you know, self-centered, why are the four

of the universe inspiring to screw me over, the whole world is confined to my poor me,

poor me and so Adrian told me Ralph, I said I'm so sorry, she's really mean and she has

your rap sheet, she has everything, all of the unsafe lane change, the reckless driving,

the wet reckless, all the DUIs, all of them on her hands, she got about eight of them

and he said they're not going to go easy on you but he said it's going to give you plenty

of time to sit down and think about your love, think about yourself and he said and you got

to find out that alcohol really is but a symptom of the problem, that the problem goes much

deeper than that, now here is the son of a gun, Ukrainian, Canadian, American lawyer,

Phil Tivich, you know, telling me that that stuff that Bill W and the other hundred men

and women discovered in 1939 from drinking and this guy, you know, he nailed it, you

know, came to find out, you know, actually after he died that he had gone to University

of Santa Monica, it's a psychological school, he got his PhD in psychology and has been

working with people who are in trouble, doing lots of fantastic work, you know, and he was

a member of SRF, self-realization fellowship and had a Buddhist memorial, he was a fantastic

guy, so that's what Adrian told me, he says, you know, your problem is not the bottle,

the bottle is a better symptom of your problem, so I was sentenced to a bunch of stuff including

so I did lots of community service, did lots of work in lieu of jail and I worked, you

know, for about 60 days, literally every single day, then I had about I think 380 hours of

community service, which I did, you know, gladly and I finished those, but I was also

sentenced to face-to-face and group meetings of drug and alcohol treatment and I was sentenced

to 18 months of Alcoholics Anonymous and had to get the court card signed at a probation

officer here down in Van Nuys that I had to turn the papers over to, I had a guy called

Chris at this AKB school, he was, he said bring them over, I'll take them there to the

Van Nuys court, they were right next door and I began and he asked me one time, this

Chris guy, he says Raf, you haven't been turning in your AA meeting card, I said I'll do that

at the end, he said at the end of what, he said, you know, don't you know what the court

order says, I told him when I was there, I was in court when the judge sentenced me,

he said I didn't ask that, did you read your court order, I said no, so he pulled it, he

had it there and there it is, he said that the day that I was discharged from the county

jail from the Twin Towers, I was supposed to go straight and start attending AA meetings,

so he gave me a meeting book and he circled a meeting, he says this is on your way home,

you start going there and bring me the court card signed here, it was a nest and the nest,

I had moved at that time to Roscoe and Louisa and so I figured I'll go there and you know,

it's far away from Beverly Hills and from my customer base, I don't think any of my

clients would be there, so I walked in there and I saw a bunch of, you know, folks with

swastikas tattooed on their necks and lots of chains hanging on the side and lots of

torn clothes and those were the ladies, you know, it's amazing, so you know, as a very

very shallow alcoholic, you know, deep inside of which is shallow, I judge the book by its

cover, I assume that simply because they look that way, they were not like the folks at

the Polo Lounge or at, you know, whatever, that there must be very tough than this and

that and but as it turned out, those were some of the nicest, kindest, gentlest and

most trustworthy people I have ever come across in my life, people who had integrity deep

inside their heart, who had honesty and who had gentleness and kindness all over them,

they remember one guy, Bob M, he used to man the coffee counter and really wonderful Vietnam

veteran, he had many years at that time, in 99, he had probably 20 years over and which

was like an eternity for me and he told me, asked me if I could help with this lady who

had some leg problems, she said can you please pick her up and he gave you the address, she

lives on Osa, she passed away many years ago, the poor soldier, he said can you please pick

her up and bring her to the meeting on your way in, you said she comes from the other

side of Milan, you know, on your way in, stop by there, pick her up and bring her, so I

began to bring her and she became a very kind friend, a very kind elderly woman, very very

smart and old wobbly rebel, rebel rouser, you know, used to be a dancer when she was

young in New York and she was really fun and she very catholic in her training and I'm

totally, I've been since I was 15 or 16, I closed the book on that subject, you know,

but she used to hand me all kinds of literature, books that she used to read about, you know,

which is really nice, it's wonderful stuff. Anyway, one time I told her that this AA stuff

is not working for me, I've been coming here for 90 days and, you know, it's just not my

cup of tea and this requires you believing in a God and holding hands and going to Lord's

prayer and stuff, I said, that's, you know, for her. She said, I noticed you haven't raised

your hand as an alcoholic in the meetings when they ask for newcomers and you haven't

taken any chips, you said you haven't drank for 90 days, but yeah, and so I said, so what?

She said, well, I'll tell you what your problem is because I was really beside myself, I was

driving without a license, mind you. Yeah, yeah, which I don't recommend to anybody,

it's really very, very bad idea, but I did it, which is part of the insanity, really

the stupidity, but also the insanity. She said, Ralph, you have a twin brother living

inside you, his name is Ralph, but he knows he's an alcoholic and you, Mr. Ralph, who's

talking to me now, who is driving this car, you're denying him his medicine, he wants

his drink and you're refusing to give him his drink. She said, one of two things happens

to alcoholics when they are in that predicament. He says they will either pick up and drink

and she said, for people like us to drink is to die or they will commit, they will kill

themselves. And she said, most people don't kill themselves, most people just go and get

drunk. And so she said, so I thought, so what's the solution? You said the solution is the

steps. I said, well, what steps are you talking about? I've heard them at least a hundred

times in those 90 days. I'll be going to meetings. I read in chapter five, every time they're

all 12 steps, plus they're all over the wall of the otherness of the Alano club. And she

said, they're right there. Oops, five minutes. Thank you. She said, take the steps and you'll

be set free. You'll be free from that. She said, that's the solution. Then you can live

your life calmly. And it's really amazing how easy it was. You know, I kept thinking

about it that day. I didn't do anything, but a couple of days after, I made sure Jean wasn't

there to see me raise my hand and I raised my hand as an alcoholic. And I jumped in with

both feet, both feet. I took commitments in every meeting I attended. I began to attend

meetings in Santa Monica, in West LA, in Beverly Hills, in China, Koreatown, all over the place.

Cause I worked on the other side of Mala and that was area five, which is area 93. So I

took commitments. I began going to all kinds of meetings and began taking the work on my

sobriety seriously. One of the things that I heard in AA, which I really believed to

begin with since I was a kid, is that a person's morality or a person's consciousness is a

reflection of his lifestyle and not vice versa. So it is whatever I do, that's what's going

to shape my thinking. It's not that my thinking will shape what I'm doing. And AA will say,

you can live your life into a sober way of thinking. You cannot think your life into

a sober way of living. And that's really essentially an old rule in sociology that was

discovered way back in the 19th century, that a person's social being determines his consciousness

and not vice versa. And putting the world on its feet rather than having a standing

on its head. And to me, AA is a plan of action and it has been from day one. It is a lot

more fun when that plan of action is believed. In other words, if I conform my action with

my core beliefs, then life becomes easier. I don't have to live in cognitive dissonance

requiring therapy and medication or booze or whatever in order to live life normally.

And AA offers a plethora of activities for people who are alcoholic and who want to live

a useful life, to become a true productive member of society, to turn my life as an instrument

of kindness, an instrument of health, an instrument of guidance and carrying the first step message.

That's part of what it's all about. So I began going on panels and then had a panel of my

own. But whenever a panel member is missing and a friend of mine who has a panel calls

me and say, Ralph, I need an extra buddy. Can you come over? I always say yes unless

I have a family obligation or something. But I jump and show up because it saves lives

starting with my work. But it really saves lives. I'll never forget some incidents that

I went from time I was a GSR of a meeting in District 11 in Area 5 and we had a meeting

on Saturday in Santa Monica. We had a fellow Class B alcoholic from I think from Colorado

or Utah. He told us a story in that meeting about something that he did, he himself did.

Sent at the GSR and then New York sent him to an Eastern Bloc country. This is before

1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. So he had to go there. It was supposed to

meet the lady who is a translator. She translated the first 164 pages of the big book from English

to her native language. So they go, thank you very much. And he said he showed up in

this country. I forgot whether it was Estonia or Lithuania or some place. But he showed

up there and he met her and she told him, I'll come back tomorrow. We'll have lunch

on the ground floor of this hotel and then bring the manuscript with me. And so next

day she shows up and she has three or four hundred pages of the pipe material. And it's

164 pages of values and it's typed in double spaced and so on. And she said, which is the

whole book? So I said, thank you very much. He put it in a folder and he gave her an envelope

containing a thousand dollars or two thousand whatever the New York office gave him to give

her. And she said, no, thank you. I can't accept the payment. He says, well, you have

to accept the payment. She did the work. He says, no, I've been already paid here. He

says, how? Who paid you? She said, Ralph, he said, I live with my sister and her husband

is a drunk. He comes home and beats her every day. He fights with her and brings his body

to get drunk and sometimes he slaps her. She said one time while I was at school, she had

a high school teacher. And she said, while I was at school, he came home and he found

the manuscript on the desk and he was reading it. When I came home, he jumped on me. He

says, you're writing a book about me being a blind person. And he said, he almost told

me. She told him, no, I'm not. I'm actually translating an American book into English

and into our language. And I said, he didn't play that. She showed him the big book and

he understood. And she said, as a result of having read all you read is the doctor's opinion.

And that's what she translated. And Bob, I mean, the doctor, not not, Bill W. story.

And she said, as a result of reading those two things, and then he continued reading

the other, he stopped drinking and he stopped eating her sister. She would have been overpaid

by alcoholics anonymous. Thank you very much for listening to me.