Mike’s Journey: From Valley Roots to 35 Years Sober

- Hi everybody, I'm Mike, alcoholic.

- Mike. - Hi Mike.

- And hi everyone, nice to see you all.

I'm guessing I'm looking at a room

in the San Fernando Valley, am I right?

- Yeah. - Yes.

- All right, that's my old home.

I grew up, a good portion of my growing up

was done in the valley, and my, our,

really my story in Alcoholics Anonymous

began in the valley as well.

So I have a real connection to where you're at.

I'm in Henderson, Nevada right now,

but I actually currently live in Belleville, Illinois.

So we're all over the map.

I wanna thank our 10-minute speaker for his talk,

great talk, and welcome anyone who's new,

who didn't identify themselves as a newcomer, it's okay.

I mean, maybe you're all regulars at this group,

but I remember when I first got to AA,

I was the guy sitting in the back, closest to the door,

because first of all, I'm not a joiner,

and people scared the hell out of me, and I hated everyone,

and I was looking for the quickest opportunity to escape.

So I didn't want any attention drawn to me,

and yet I wanted the world to acknowledge

that I was the most important person on the planet.

It was a real dichotomy.

Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I gotta get drunk, and I gotta get sober,

and I've always had trouble telling my story

in a linear fashion.

I seem to jump around a lot,

but I'm gonna really try to keep it simple,

do my very best.

As I stated, my name is Michael Coleman.

I'm an alcoholic.

I have a sobriety date of January the 10th, 1989.

I just celebrated 35 years of sobriety.

I have a sponsor, Clement Kahn.

Clem lives in St. Louis, and I met him there

when I moved to St. Louis.

I happened to find the greatest AA group,

greatest home group in the world.

Everybody says if your home group

isn't the best home group in the world,

it's getting another home group, and I believe that.

I got lucky that I found my old home group,

which was Carry the Message Group 138 in St. Louis,

and I met Clement, and I also sponsor one other person

currently, one other fellow in the fellowship.

So I'm in a good position.

They call that the middle of the boat, right?

I have a sponsor, and I'm sponsoring somebody else,

so I'm right in the middle,

which is where a drunk like me belongs,

because as I stated, I'm a real alcoholic,

and I gotta be right in the middle of you all,

'cause if I'm left to my own devices,

I'm off the radar, and you'll never see me again.

I need to be accountable.

So I guess I'll try to tell you a little bit

about my background, where I came from.

I grew up in West Los Angeles.

My earliest memories are of growing up

in West LA on Centinella.

My parents were teenage parents,

and also budding alcoholics themselves.

My dad was really an alcoholic beyond human aid,

probably at the age of 13.

So when my parents had me at 18,

my dad was already chronic,

and my mother met my dad at a dance

at Santa Monica High School.

My dad had run away from San Diego.

His parents threw him out of the house,

and he ran away and came up to Santa Monica, LA,

to enroll in high school at Uni High.

Met my mother and my mom, and he was at this dance.

He'd been in a fight.

He was a surfer, and his best friend was Doug Moody.

He was barefooted.

He had shorts on and a torn windbreaker.

And apparently my mom said, "I took one look at your dad."

And the first thought that came to my mind

was he needs a mommy.

And that's kind of how our little family began.

My family at that time were really close.

All of our family lived in close proximity

to one another in Santa Monica,

which at the time was really

like a sleepy little beach town, you know?

This is the late '60s into the mid '70s.

It was just kind of everybody knew each other

in Santa Monica, not like that now.

But my grandmother worked at Santa Monica Foods.

I went to McKinley Elementary,

the same school my mom went to.

In fact, some of the same teachers

that were there teaching my mother back when she was little

were teaching when I was little.

Going to school there was a trip.

And anyway, my family liked to drink,

and they used to go out a lot.

And my parents were young, as I stated.

They were teenagers and couldn't afford a babysitter,

so they just dragged me around

when they went out drinking.

And I was the first Grant's child born and the first cousin,

so I was kind of the big shot initially.

And I had all the adult attention that I could possibly want.

And I also matured quickly intellectually, verbally.

My mom tells me that when I was a little baby,

I was overweight, and she was pushing me around

on the grocery cart.

And I would be having completely developed sentences

and having conversations with my mother

and people would be like, "That baby talks?"

You know, it just really blew people away.

So I guess I was kind of a party favor.

They would take me to these bars and stuff

and I would make everybody laugh.

But I got left alone a lot.

And I was probably, like I said, around adults

probably a lot more than I should have been.

And I developed a pretty avid imaginary life.

And I remember I discovered in the bars and stuff,

if you get those wet wipes, you know,

that you wipe your hands on, at least back then,

I really liked the smell of them.

And I used to be laying down in the restaurant booth

and I'd stack about 30 or 40 of these things,

wet ones, on my face.

And I'm like, you know, six years old.

I remember a sense of ease and comfort that came out once

when I breathed through those things.

And so it finally dawned on me one day,

well into sobriety, Jesus, I guess I was a wet nap huffer

at eight, six years old, you know?

So I guess that was my first drink, wet wipes.

And I can assure you it didn't get much better.

It kind of went downhill from there.

My father got sober in 1976.

I remember that year vividly

because Roots was on television.

And I don't remember how old I was.

I want to say I was right around 11, 66, 76.

I was 10 and 76, so yeah, 10, 10 and a half.

Anyway, dad went into one of the original care units

out in the Valley on shoot.

And my parents were in the process of breaking up.

They were, my mother's drug addiction

and alcoholism was getting worse

and my dad had hit a bottom.

So he went into treatment

and my mom wouldn't take me to go see him.

So I used to ride my bike across the Valley

to go and visit my dad when he was in treatment.

And that's where I, as a 10 year old kid,

was first introduced to the steps with Alcoholics Anonymous.

I remember seeing him on the wall when I went to see my dad.

And I remember thinking, even at that age,

what an order, I can't go through with it.

My God, it looked like Moses's tablets or something.

It was terrifying to me.

I didn't know what they were.

But I did know that my dad was getting better.

So they must, whatever was encrypted in those steps

and traditions must have been good stuff

because dad was getting better.

And I had an expectation.

So I can probably say

that I already had the mind of an alcoholic

even at that young age.

I had a big expectation

that when dad got out of that treatment facility,

I was gonna get my dad back

because I never really knew him as a kid.

He was drunk throughout my early childhood.

I mean, some of my earliest memories were sounds

like the sounds of my mom vacuuming up buttons in the morning

'cause my dad would come home

and they'd get into big arguments

and he'd just rip his shirts open

and the buttons would fly all over the house.

Yeah, that was a good one.

And then also getting woke up

in the middle of the early morning,

my mom would say, come on,

we're gonna go look for your father.

And it'd be a school night

and we'd jump in the Volkswagen

and go looking over in Culver City for dad.

And he'd always be at the same damn place

he was always at, at the Tattletail drinking.

And I always think to myself,

what the hell are we gonna go looking for him

because we know where he's at already.

Anyway, mom would be about half in the bag

when we'd be out looking for dad

and by the time we'd get back on the freeway

to head back to the valley,

she'd be crossing lanes and stuff, falling asleep.

It was pretty scary.

Alcoholics scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

I just wanna preface by saying that

it was not a fun childhood.

Anyway, I gotta fast forward.

My parents divorced, my father took a job.

He was a dental supply salesman

and he took a, he worked for his father's company.

So it was a family business,

but my dad took a sales territory

in the central San Joaquin Valley.

And I was living with my mom.

She was trying to get sober herself

and we all know how newcomers are.

I remember my mom was trying to establish a relationship

with her sponsor and on the phone

with her sponsor all the time

and trying to raise a preteen son.

And it wasn't going too well.

I was an extremely rebellious kid

and I used to run away a lot.

Kind of like probably like my dad did when he was a kid.

I just disappear for like two days at a time.

And when you're 12, 13 years old, that's a problem.

DFS gets involved and stuff like that.

And I was putting my hands on my mom and stuff

and it was starting to get, it was escalating.

It was getting bad.

And anyway, I forgot to mention that when I grew up

in West LA and in the border of Santa Monica and stuff,

all of my friends were Spanish speaking.

Almost all of my friends were Spanish speaking.

So I was real comfortable with Mexicans.

And I spoke fluent Spanish when I was a little kid.

Up until about the age of 11, when we moved to the valley,

then I didn't have access or the culture changed.

And so I lost my Spanish, but my mom threw me out

and sent me to live with my father,

which I was lucky because I know there's a lot of young men

that don't have fathers.

I had one and he was sober by this time.

And he's like, okay, I guess it's my time

to try to raise this kid.

And I went to live with my father who I didn't know.

I didn't know him from Adam.

And it was very awkward.

I remember when I first moved up there,

I was like a skate skater kid in the valley.

I had like long hair and stuff.

And I showed up in this town, Visalia,

where my dad was living.

And it was all like agriculture and farmer's kids and stuff.

And by this time I had gotten into punk rock

and cut all my hair off and shaved my eyebrows.

And I was wearing like black flag t-shirts and stuff.

And I show up at this high school

and it was not an easy mix.

I mean, it was rough.

And then not to mention, I didn't know my dad.

I remember him saying,

I'm gonna get you through high school if it kills us both.

And it damn near did.

I mean, it was a rough three years.

But that's really where my drinking began

because before I was even out of high school,

I gradually gravitated towards these people

that I was hanging out with there in Visalia.

My dad was living this kind of middle class suburban life.

And it was boring to me.

My father was kind of like a control freak,

real OCD and the house was sterile.

And I had responsibilities to like keep the house clean,

but there was no cleaning to be done.

It was crazy.

And I just remember wanting to get

as far away from there as possible.

And I gravitated towards hanging out

with the people that I felt comfortable with.

The North side of Visalia, the Cholos

and the Cholas and the whole Latino

like low rider culture thing

that was happening at my school.

It was pretty much either farmers or that.

And they looked like I felt tough, mysterious, angry.

They accepted me because I had an Anglo friend

that was raised in that neighborhood.

And that's where I really learned how to drink really.

I spent the majority of my rest of my high school years

in backyards on the North side of Visalia,

drunk and high and freezing cold,

because I always seem to wind up somewhere without a jacket.

It was like inevitable.

And they have tule fog in that San Joaquin Valley

and man that fog would settle in

and it would be freezing cold

and I'd be just shit faced and freezing cold.

That seemed to be the memories I had

of my last years of high school.

But I got out of high school

and right away got away from those folks

because my alcoholism once was set fire.

If you're no longer serving my needs,

I'll find somebody else that will.

Mind you, I sobered up when I was 22.

So I really, I had very little legal drinking in my story.

I ran across the guy, I got a job in a record store,

which was sort of a dream job.

And I ran across the guy that was managing that store.

He was about 10 years older than me.

So he was like an older brother.

And this was in the mid '80s, '84.

And he was a coke dealer, which was very convenient.

And so he took me under his wing as sort of like a protege.

And boy, we did a lot of drinking.

I liked, this is an AA meeting.

I believe in stimulus of purpose,

but I can just say that being in the '80s and being a drunk,

that white powder was a real boom to alcoholism

and drinking because I could drink for days

and not fall asleep or pass out.

Although it didn't always work

because I was a blackout drinker.

And I'll get to that part of my story.

My daughter actually lives in the same town

where I have my bottom.

And she had her bottom there too.

And it's interesting because last time I was in town,

we were standing at an intersection

and she had some of her worst drinking

on the east side of the street.

And I had some of my worst drinking

on the west side of the street.

It was very curious, but I ran a ground in around 1987

behind cocaine and alcohol.

And I did something that I would never have done

had I not ran out of answers and needed help.

I picked up the phone and did what any self-respecting

drunk will do when the chips are down.

I called my mommy and I called my mother and I said,

I honestly don't know what's wrong with me.

I think I'm losing my mind.

Now my parents, my mother was already had been sober now

for a few years.

And she was real active in AA in the Valley.

Hole in the sky, the nest,

all of the old spots in the Valley.

My mom was real busy and active in the Valley

Alcoholics Anonymous.

And all of those people in those clubs

and the knowledge that came out of those places

and the spirituality that came out

of those ratty old AA clubhouses in the Valley,

that was a big part of my foundation in AA.

I met a lot of those people.

I knew a lot of those people personally,

those old personalities in those clubs.

I can't name them all.

If I had time to write some of those names down, I will.

But my mom's gone now.

So it's hard for me to make a connection

and I'll get to that as well.

I'm really grateful to the clubs in the Valley

and the people and the wonderful people that went before me

because they're partly responsible for why I'm here today.

So I got, my parents said, look, why don't you,

my mom and my stepfather said, look,

why don't you come down and stay with us for a while

and dry out and maybe try some AA meetings.

This was like '87, '88.

And I had a girlfriend, I had drug connections

and walking away from all of that was must've,

I must've really been willing to go to any lengths.

And I did it.

I packed up my stuff and I moved back down

to Southern California to stay with my parents

and try to dry out.

And it worked for about two weeks.

I went to my first meeting as a potential member

of Alcoholics Anonymous and I raised my hand.

And in that meeting that I went to,

they gave me a cork that said, put the plug in the jug,

which was pretty apropos because at the end

of my really bad drinking, I was just drinking cheap,

you know, Gallo wine by the gallon

and I couldn't really afford anything else.

So, and I, with conviction, I really believed

that I was joining AA, I loved what they had to say

and I felt like this was gonna be my spot.

I'd earned my seat and I was drunk within two weeks.

And what happened was amidst many other situations,

my parents had a hall closet where they kept cases of beer,

inexpensive beer for my stepfather's dad

when he came to visit.

And I'm underage, I'm an alcoholic who needs a drink, dad.

And I didn't have access

because all my connections were gone, I'd moved away.

And I found that beer and I drank up multiple cases of beer.

I don't know how many.

And I realized I can't replace it.

And I was so mortified that I just,

I left in the middle of the night.

I packed up my shit and crawled out the window and left.

I was, I didn't know what to do.

And that's kind of how I handled business

at that time of my life.

If things got too hot or if I didn't know

how to make things better, if I'd said something to you

that was offensive or whatever, I just disappeared.

And so that was that.

My folks didn't know where I was

and I just kind of disappeared into the night.

Got a job, I forget what happened.

Anyway, long story short, I wound up realizing

that I needed to get that girlfriend back in my life

because maybe she would slow my drinking down.

So I called Diana and she said,

"No, I'm not gonna move down there and live with you,

but I'll marry you."

Well, that seemed like a great idea.

I thought, well, I'll marry her

and then she'll help me sober up.

And so we got married in like '88 or something.

And I remember just before the wedding,

I was smoking a big fat joint

and drinking a bottle of whiskey with her aunt.

And I actually had a thing for her aunt.

It's shameful, but I was more interested in her aunt

than I was my fiance.

And I don't remember my wedding.

I was in a brownout and I came to

and I was in the middle of saying vows

and it really got worse from there, I can assure you.

We were pregnant very, very quickly.

And then things got bad for me.

I started deteriorating rapidly.

There was a lot of violence.

There was a lot of me needing a drink,

me not having a drink.

And then eventually, her parents came

and just picked her up in the middle of the night

and they didn't bother to tell me get some help

or we don't want you in our lives anymore or anything.

It was an eight hour round trip for them.

They got her and the little baby that was coming

and they split.

And it was a period of incomprehensible demoralization.

We all know what that is.

Doesn't matter who you are or where you're at

when you come through the doors,

even if you don't have a understanding of what that word

or what those combination of words means,

somehow we all seem to understand it on some level.

And boy, I sure did.

So things happen fast after that.

I can say, I'll speed up and say that I called my mother

again and my mother did the best thing

she ever could have done for me.

She'd been to Al-Anon and she knew better

than to get involved in my life.

And she said, yeah, we know what's wrong with you, Michael.

And I stay right where you're at.

I didn't live far from them at the time.

They said, my mother said, I'm coming.

You stay right where you're at.

Your father and I are coming down.

Well, shortly thereafter, there was a knock on my door

and I didn't answer the door at that time.

I didn't answer the phone and I didn't look at the mail

because it brought nothing but bad news.

I had the law after me and everything else.

And knock on the door, I opened the door

and I still can't tell anybody why I did that.

But there was a fat guy on my doorstep and he said,

my name's Ernie Hanrahan, Mike,

and I'm a friend of your parents.

I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

May I come in?

And he spoke with me with such dignity

and he spoke to me like I was a human being

and I let him in.

I still can't tell you why, but my house was destroyed.

I'd been up there for several days

without a drink and needing one.

And I punched out windows and tore up rugs and it was bad.

And he just looked over the top of all that wreckage.

And he told me that I could come to a meeting with him

if I so wished and I agreed to do that.

And that was my beginning in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that was my first complete sober day

was the 10th of January from sunrise to sunset

without a drink.

And I haven't had a drink.

I haven't, I've been blessed not to have found it necessary

to take a drink from that point.

Now there's been a lot of challenges in my life.

I got real busy right away because I had a sponsor

that insisted that I get busy.

And my first sponsor was a woman, a Catholic nun

by the name of Mary Moritz.

Mary saw that I didn't have enough humility

to ask any of the guys in the group for us to sponsor me.

And she walked up one day and said, I'm your sponsor.

And she was tough and a very interesting woman.

She was an intellectual and had written books.

And then I met this guy named, oh God, I can't believe

I can't remember his name.

It'll come to me.

He was a circuit speaker and he came up

to where I got sober, that little town in the desert,

Palmdale.

I got sober at the Palmdale group.

It's no longer there, but it was a great place.

Just this ratty little AA clubhouse with an oil spot

in the middle of the room and couches with big holes in them

and a floor safe where they put the seventh tradition money

and it kept getting broken into.

And people would steal the seventh tradition.

I love that place.

I just thought it was the best place on earth.

And this guy, oh God, oh, it's terrible.

I can't remember his name, but he was a circuit speaker

from out there in the valley.

He came up and spoke and I was so moved by his talk,

I asked him to sponsor me.

And he said, yeah, you call me every day.

And he said, Mike, you need to understand something.

He said, you're a very, you're the kind of alcoholic

that is at risk for a certain death.

It's easy for you and I and people like us

to die of alcoholism 'cause we're too damn smart

for this thing.

It's a simple program for complicated people.

He said, the steps are numbered for the intellectuals.

Remember that.

And I've never forgotten it.

And I'm really grateful to that guy.

He's passed away now.

But my daughter was, I sobered up in January of '89

and my daughter was born in April.

So it was a very tumultuous time.

And I didn't know how to be a father.

I didn't know how to really do anything.

I was barely, barely employable.

I couldn't keep two conscious thoughts.

And later we had a real sticky custody battle

and it was ugly.

And I wound up doing a sober geographic

and running away from California.

And I wound up in St. Louis.

And I was in once again, at 14 years of sobriety,

I wouldn't call it sobriety.

I'd kind of stopped doing what we know,

what we do around here in order to preserve

our mental health and our spiritual health.

I'd stopped working steps.

I'd stopped working with other alcoholics

and I'd really stopped going to meetings.

Not a good idea for someone like myself.

And I landed in St. Louis

and I was really on a severe dry drunk.

And it was Providence that spun me into my,

what would become my home group there in St. Louis.

And I later found out that I really believe

that things happen in your life for reasons.

At least that's what I believe for myself.

God works in very mysterious ways

and he's guided me to people, places

and things in my life for certain reasons.

I didn't plan to go to St. Louis, you know, to the contrary.

But I wound up there so that I would meet the people

that I met in that home group.

And I met my sponsor and revolutionized my recovery.

I was introduced to the third legacy

of Alcoholics Anonymous and service work

and being part of a network of chain of sponsorship

and guys that are very close

and hold each other accountable.

And I'm still close to those men.

It's funny too, because I'm out here in Anderson

and I guess I should bring it up to the current moment

'cause I know my time is gonna run out here pretty soon.

But my mother died on the 29th of December

and she died with 42 years of sobriety.

And she was one of the biggest inspirations in my life.

My mother helped me so much in my life

and she was one of my greatest friends.

If she wasn't my mother, I would have had her as a friend.

And she was a confidant and she was a wonderful,

wonderful member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I miss her terribly

and I'll miss her the rest of my life.

She fell ill two months prior to her death

and I came out here to care for her.

And it was just a whole ordeal of hospitals

and skilled nursing facilities and the rest.

And then she finally was just relieved of her suffering

on the 29th of December.

And so I'm here and I'm saddled with the responsibility

of unpacking her life.

I've got a house here that I was hoping to keep

but it's becoming rapidly evident

that it's not financially feasible

nor is it responsible for me to try to do that.

So I've got to put this house on the market.

And once again, members of Alcoholics Anonymous

are coming to, they're surrounding me.

And I haven't been alone for once

throughout this whole experience since I've been out here.

My old friend, Tom Lugo, who I sobered up with.

Tom was in the rooms in Palmdale when I arrived in '89.

And our friendship has lasted that long, 35 years.

And Tom lives out here now.

And Tom was here waiting for me on the ground

when I arrived to come take care of my mother.

And he introduced me to this network

and wonderful group of guys that he befriended.

You know, Sean and Adam are two of them.

They're here tonight on this Zoom.

And I'm eternally grateful to these men.

I mean, they're my new friends

and they've been carrying me emotionally and just, you know,

just their friendship and their fellowship

just means the world to me.

And I'm never alone unless I wanna be.

And that's the key.

I can choose to be alone in Alcoholics Anonymous,

but it's a choice.

If you avail yourself to the fellowship,

all you gotta do is put your hand out, but it's up to you.

It's up to me to say, you know,

"Hey, I'm Mike, I'm an alcoholic and I'm new here."

Or, you know, "This is what's going on in my life."

Whatever the case may be.

If I sit in the back of the room by the door,

the lone wolf with the poker face

that never tells anybody what the hell's going on.

You know, I'm gonna continue to get what I'm asking for

because it took pain to bring me to a point

where I could open up.

And I just don't wanna be the lone wolf, you know,

because we all know what happens to that, you know,

that sick animal that's out there on the periphery.

You know, the lion gets ahold of its throat

and rips its throat out.

And that's what alcoholism will do to me

if I'm left to my own devices.

So some good news.

My sponsor will be here in about a week.

He's coming out here and James Vaughn,

who is from my area in St. Louis,

moved out here with his wife, Genoa,

and he manages the AA club here

that all of us go to meetings at.

And so James is part of my sponsorship chain

and our sponsor, Clem, is coming out here in about a week,

which is very important to me.

He's gonna be able to visit me at my mom's house

and I think it'll be good for me

just to get centered and see my sponsor.

I miss him.

And my daughter, my daughter almost died of alcoholism

a couple of years ago.

And as we all know, there's nothing that any one person

can do to save another drunk.

It has to come from a higher source.

And we were always there for her

and I was always there for her.

She would get on the phone.

She likes to debate

and she would like to get on the phone and debate.

She had a head full of AA and a belly full of booze

and she'd love to get on the phone with me

and debate the text of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And she knew it.

She knew a lot of that book up here.

But we'd always get to that point where I'd say,

look, babe, I gotta go.

I'm not gonna sit here and debate something

that's for me, indebatable.

It works for me.

And when you're ready to talk sober, let's talk.

Call me tomorrow.

I love you.

And I'd have to hang up that phone.

Well, she finally hung around

her little local ratty AA clubhouse

and she drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

They told me when I went to go out there

and celebrate her number, her first year of sobriety,

that your daughter was like a feral cat.

She hung around the club

until finally she came in through the door

and she sat down and she'll have two years in February.

So it's an absolute miracle.

From my dad to my mom,

because my mom really got the message

from my biological father,

to myself and then to my daughter.

We're like four generations of sobriety and it's a miracle.

And I'm eternally grateful to AA,

to the book Alcoholics Anonymous,

to Bill and Bob and all of you.

I love you.

Thanks.

- Yay.