Tom's Path to Sobriety: From Harlem Roots to AA Support

- Hi everyone, my name is Tom Lugo and I'm an alcoholic.

And first of all, I would like to thank Ben

for inviting me to come out from Las Vegas

to come and share with you

and for picking up my hotel expenses for the whole week.

What, we need to pass the basket again?

Actually I have one complaint about the damn hotel.

I have to complain because their towels are so damn fluffy

that I can't close my luggage.

And so I'll make it up one way or another.

And the truth of the matter is,

is that I'm here this weekend to support my friend Sean.

'Cause like Sean said, he got sober in this group.

And in this group, we celebrate one year,

five year, 10 year, 15, 20.

- Seven.

- Okay, I'm sorry.

With a picnic and it's an honor and a privilege

for me to be invited to participate

in Sean's picnic tomorrow.

And Ben took the opportunity to ask me to share.

And if you're new here, I want to welcome you

to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I also want to let you know

that don't judge Alcoholics Anonymous

by what you hear here tonight.

Because I'm far from an expert in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm just, it's just my turn in the barrel.

And I do, as I'm asked in Alcoholics Anonymous,

I want to welcome the new people

and the friends near and far for being here tonight.

And I just, if you're new,

I know that I only have limited time to talk to you

because when I was new,

I couldn't pay attention for too long.

And I was good for like five minute increments.

And I could hear and then I would nod out

and then I would wake up and say inappropriate stuff

and then go back to sleep again.

I would wake up when I should be sleeping

and I would be sleeping when I'm supposed to be awake.

And so if you're new here,

I just want you to understand

that Alcoholics Anonymous works.

And if it could work for a knucklehead like me,

it can work for anyone.

I didn't walk into Alcoholics Anonymous

just like I am today.

In Las Vegas, they have a wonderful saying that I love.

And it says, I didn't come in here on the winning streak.

And we hear that all the time in Las Vegas.

And that's where I live at now

with these other two knuckleheads

and a knucklehead over there in the back.

And I didn't walk in here into Alcoholics Anonymous

just ready to give my life to God

and the principles and the steps of alcoholics.

I wasn't even an alcoholic when I came here.

Matter of fact, Bruce can attest to that

because we were in treatment at the very same time.

And I wasn't an alcoholic and news to you guys,

Bruce wasn't an alcoholic either.

Bruce used to talk about how he used to buy wine

by the case.

And my sponsor says, that's just a wino with a checkbook.

And all we would do was we would sit there

and complain about our wives.

Well, if you had a wife like this, you'd be drinking too.

Or if you had,

and I didn't even think I had a drinking problem.

I know I had problems galore,

but I never thought that I had a problem

that had to do with alcohol.

And so I went into that stupid treatment program

and they educated me to alcoholism as a disease.

That's the only thing I got from them.

They said alcoholism is a disease that has specific symptoms

and it has a specific prognosis.

And if you continue to drink like you're drinking,

it's only gonna lead to three places,

jail and sanity and death.

And they also said,

look to the people sitting side by side

and the people that get involved with hospitals

and institutions stand a better chance

of making it an alcoholic synonymous.

I wasn't even an alcoholic.

They would force us to go to these thinking meetings.

And I'm gonna tell you that

I have to identify as an alcoholic.

And so just for identification purposes,

I grew up in New York City

and not the part of New York City

that you see with the beautiful buildings and the nice area.

I grew up in Spanish Harlem, as they say, East Harlem.

And I grew up in a single home.

My mom raised me and my brother.

And in that neighborhood,

there was a lot of poverty, violence and crime.

And that was just in our own house.

And in my family, alcohol was accepted.

There was always drinking going on.

There was always some kind of a party or funeral

or baptism or wedding or something going on.

And drinking was allowed.

Drugs was never allowed.

And in my family, there's always secrets.

And we didn't talk about a lot of things.

And so that didn't make me an alcoholic.

And I don't actually remember my first drink,

but I remember my first drunk.

And I would remember it was a family situation.

We were at somebody's house celebrating something

and they would make this punch

with Manischeritz wine and fruit cocktail.

And they called it something.

I forget what they call it, Española or something.

I don't know what the hell they called it.

But all I remember was we snagged a bottle

of that Manischeritz and went up to my cousin's room

and we started to pass it around.

And all I remember was they took a few sips

and they all fell asleep and I kept drinking.

And I woke up and the lights came on

and I was in the kitchen

and there was puke flying all over the place.

And all I remember was these big faces coming in and out.

And I didn't become an alcoholic that night,

but it sure set the tempo for how I would drink when I drank.

When I drank, I couldn't predict what would happen.

If I was gonna take a few

or if I was gonna shut the lights off and be gone.

And the problem with alcohol was that it worked.

And so alcohol led to a few other things.

I was going to a real nice high school.

I was doing very well.

But the minute I started drinking and using,

my grades started to falter

and I started to really mess up in school.

I was a bad student.

I went to a really good school

and graduated six months later

because I failed gym in my last semester.

And I was not trustworthy.

And so my family, they tried everything.

They gave me good values.

I went to Catholic school.

I was a good kid.

But when I started drinking and using,

all of that went sideways.

And so I couldn't be trusted.

I couldn't be counted on for a damn thing.

And in 1980, my mom had just about as much as she could stand

and I had interviewed for this job in California.

She put me on a plane

and gave me a one way ticket to California

and took the house keys.

And I started on my merry way.

And like Sean, it didn't take long for me

to figure out who was holding.

And I found this group that I associated with.

And long story short, I had a great job

at this aircraft company in Burbank.

And I was working on a top secret program

that nobody in the world knew about.

I was working on airplanes.

And I tried my best to lose that job.

I tried everything I could to lose that.

It was a union job.

So you can't really get fired, you know what I mean?

And so fast forward, in 1988 was when I went into rehab.

And my whole last year of using was trying to quit every day.

Every day, every day, every day, every day.

And I would get up in the morning

and I would come to in the morning

and I would get in the shower

and I would sneeze and chunks of blood

would come out of my nose.

And I would follow it up

with one of those little squiggly cigarettes

and smoke that up and feel better.

And then I would say,

"Okay, now it's ready to go to work."

And I'd be at work.

And at lunchtime, it would be a race

to this Mexican restaurant down the block.

And the race was to see how much beer

we could put down in a half an hour.

And we would smoke half of one of those funny cigarettes

on the way there and half on the way back.

And we would have these ice cold pictures

of beer waiting for us and burritos.

And I never, ever, ever left any beer in that picture.

But there was many times that I got maybe a half a bite

or a bite out of that burrito.

And today the burrito doesn't stand a chance in my life.

As you can tell.

My sobriety date is February 22nd of 1988.

And I've been sober what some people say is a long time.

But my sobriety is based on

the people in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I have a lot of history in this group.

And walking in here.

(laughing)

- Went into it right there.

- Walking in here, I had a lot of feelings walking in there.

I remember at the other meeting, I sat behind Greg

and we shared some intimate moments together.

As me and Bruce have shared some intimate moments together.

We used to go out for each other's dinner

every year, every year, every year.

And sometimes almost to the brink of disaster, right?

(laughing)

And Tammy's been in my life ever since her sobriety.

And I love to see people that I saw come in

because that's what helps me stay sober.

Just like Sean, just like Ben and so many other you guys

that I can't thank you enough.

My whole sobriety, I have had angels in my sobriety

guiding me every step of the way.

Because I'm no rocket to stardom.

I'm no rocket to stardom, my best friend

who's not here tonight, David F, he's at a concert.

He's at a Chris Rock.

I hope he gets the crap slapped out of him by Chris Rock.

But his birthday, his belly button birthday is tomorrow.

So his family took him out to this concert.

And that guy saved my life.

And there's been other people.

There's people on that screen.

Glenn, my friend Glenn from Arizona is there.

My friend Ken from Georgia is on there.

And those guys have played a part in my sobriety.

So my sobriety has very little to do with what I've done,

but what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me.

And all I've managed to do

was surround myself with winners.

And if you're new here,

the other thing that I can tell you is to get a friend.

And get a friend and make that friend your best friend.

Because your best friend, I got people in this group,

I got people in my life that care about me

enough to tell me the stuff I don't wanna hear.

And I got people in my life that know all my secrets

and still love me.

Shut up Adam.

My wife, she's at the hotel.

And recently my wife is disabled.

And so it's hard for her to sit through periods

for a long time.

And so she couldn't come to dinner

and then sit through the meeting for an hour.

It was gonna be too uncomfortable for her.

So she said, honey, you go.

I don't need to hear your story.

I lived your story.

The truth of the matter is,

I don't need her in the back of the room saying,

tell the truth, tell the truth.

I don't need her, but I love her.

And we've been together a long time

and she knows all the secrets too.

And I don't know.

I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Sean.

How much time do I got?

I just started, right?

This guy Sean, when we were at the other meeting

and I heard him share, he was like a babbling fool.

He was standing up here shaking like a leaf,

sweating bullets.

And I don't even remember what he said.

But I was trained that we always thank

the 10 minute speaker.

(laughing)

And I knew that this guy was uncomfortable.

And I went and I thanked him for sharing.

And I don't even remember him, right?

Fast forward, couple of years ago,

I moved to Vegas,

transferred with my company from California.

And I had a job where I would be gone during the week.

I would disappear off the planet earth

and I would come in on an airplane on Friday

and then Monday I would disappear again.

So I only had time to do chores and pay bills.

And this knucklehead started calling me.

And he goes, "Hey Tom, I don't know if you remember me,

"but I moved to Vegas and David F told me to call you

"and maybe you could take me to a few meetings."

And I just wasn't paying no attention to this guy.

And so I was getting close to retirement.

And I read this story in the big book about a guy

that had long-term sobriety and retired and drank

and died maybe less than three years later.

And I got scared.

And I says, "Time for me to get my butt to a meeting."

And so I returned this guy's phone call.

And I said, "Hey Sean, yeah,

"I'll be glad to take you to a few meetings."

And we met at this meeting on a Saturday morning,

the GVG Green Valley Group, Illustrious Men's Stag.

And we've been going to that meeting ever since.

And that meeting has loved us and welcomed us.

And it's my home group now.

We're of service to that group.

And I cannot believe the love and the sobriety

that I've discovered in Las Vegas.

I never thought of Las Vegas as a place

to have good sobriety.

But every meeting that I go to is a great meeting.

There's another meeting that I go to.

It's called the Cartel Group.

And it's another men's meeting.

And it's a no BS meeting.

It's 45 minutes and men share.

And there's guys from all different walks of life,

all different colors, all different everything.

And we go to that meeting.

And what I hear at that meeting is what I heard here.

It's the chitter chatter before the meeting.

It's what we call the language of the heart.

And I hear that the recovery in that meeting.

And sometimes there's new guys at that meeting.

Sometimes there's guys with 40 plus years of that meeting.

And all I know is that what brings us here

is our common suffering and pain.

Like I said, nobody comes in here on a winning streak.

And we could all identify with having one day of sobriety.

But what keeps us here is our commitment to sobriety.

And all I know is that I have to surround myself.

I have to surround myself with people

that are actively engaged in the program.

Because if I forget,

I heard a guy share at the Men's Stag months ago.

And this guy went out after several years.

And he said, "I had too many years and not enough days."

And so I have to remember that all I have

is a day at a time.

And all I have is a sobriety

based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.

I've had friends throughout my life.

I'll tell you about my best friend, Ron Coleman.

I had this guy who I hated at a meeting.

And my sponsor, Whitey, says, "You see that guy?

"Whatever he's doing, you better be doing."

And so I developed a relationship with this man.

And this man taught me how to live sober

and how to die sober.

And every time I watched that guy,

he was always doing the right thing.

And he taught me and he guided me.

And he took me places.

We went all over the place.

And Ron was welcome in my house like a family member.

He didn't have to call.

He didn't have to knock on the door.

He would just come in.

And Ron got sick and he developed cancer.

And he was suffering in the hospital.

And I didn't know when I visited Ron for the last time

that it was gonna be the last time I would see my friend.

And I was going to a tournament with my daughter

to play soccer.

And I wanted to see Ron before we left.

And we were sitting in his hospital room.

He was nodded out.

And I'm just sitting there.

And he woke up and he goes, "Hey, Tom."

And I go, "How you doing, Ron?"

He goes, "I'm doing good.

"How are you doing?"

And I go, "What do you mean how am I doing?"

He goes, "How are you doing, Tom?"

I go, "What do you mean how am I doing?

"Dude, you're the one that's fucking dying?"

Oops, I'm sorry, I apologize.

You're the one that's dying here, dude.

What do you mean how am I doing?

And he goes, "Tom, I'm okay.

"I'm gonna be okay.

"You're the one that gotta get right with God."

And I didn't know that was gonna be the last words

that he ever told me.

But all I know was that I heard what I needed to hear.

And I've been working on that relationship

with a higher power because like Ron used to say,

there will come a time where the only defense

against a drink must come from a power greater than yourself.

And he says great events will come to pass.

Not great good events.

Sometimes great bad events.

And in my sobriety, I have had tests along the way

where I have had to make the choice

to drink or to stay sober.

And I found myself, let's say 2014,

great, comfortable in my sobriety.

I was on Las Vegas Boulevard on New Year's Eve,

surrounded by thousands of people,

comfortable in my sobriety.

And I turned around and my daughter was lip-locked

with this other girl and I wanted to drink that night.

I wanted to drink.

Now I got plenty of friends that are gay in this program,

guys and girls, and I love them like brothers and sisters.

But when I saw that, I wanted to drink.

I didn't wanna call David.

I didn't wanna call my sponsor, John.

I didn't wanna call Glenn or Ken.

I wanted to drink.

And I immediately went upstairs.

We were supposed to go to dinner.

I said, "I don't feel good."

I went upstairs and I cried and I wanted to drink.

And all of a sudden, out of nowhere,

I heard this voice that came into my head and said,

"Tom, don't ever let someone else be responsible

"for you taking that first drink."

And I didn't drink that night.

And the next day we checked out and I cried and I yelled

and I screamed at my wife for three and a half hours

till we drove back to California.

But I didn't have to drink.

And I was working through that issue for months,

didn't talk to my daughter.

And this other knucklehead, my Uber driver, Pete,

who I met, I met Pete at the other meeting

when he had four days of sobriety.

And I was sitting there, Pete knows everything about me.

Pete, don't say nothing to nobody.

And Pete said to me, "Tom, is your daughter happy today?"

And I go, "Pete, she's as happy as she's ever been."

And he goes, "They mind your business.

"Your job is to love your daughter."

And that opened the door to me forgiving myself and her.

And I got together with her.

We talked about it.

I love my daughter more than anything.

My son is another story.

My son, people know that me and my son have struggled

for years and years and years.

My son grew up going to Life's In Session meeting.

My son busted the window at Life's In Session,

playing around, throwing oranges at cars.

He grew up in AA, but he resists this program.

And I understand that.

And I have to love him no matter what.

And we went through some real tough times.

And I had to pray for him every day and every night,

just like I had to do with my daughter and my wife

and all my friends.

And one day, out of the blue,

Pete starts talking to my son.

I had to have him evicted from my house

to sell the house in Lancaster.

I lost a lot of money over that.

And I was losing so much money.

And Pete says, "Hey, Tom, don't worry

"about how much money you lost.

"You don't have to make that mortgage payment anymore."

And I had to be grateful for that.

And it was really tough for many years.

All of a sudden, my son, he found his own way.

And he found Jesus Christ.

And so now we're talking, we're visiting.

And it's not for me to judge what program he works.

It's for me to love him no matter what.

And we have about the best relationship.

We took a picture together.

I can't tell you the last time me and my son took a picture.

And I owe my friend Pete forever for helping me with that.

Pete, he's the kind of guy that calls me up

when he's feeling down just so I could tell him

what kind of a day I'm having

so that he could feel better about himself. (laughs)

And sometimes I had to call Pete and say, "Pete!"

And he goes, "Man, you ain't gonna believe

"what happened to me, man."

And then I start feeling better.

And the thing about Pete is that he came

from the same family that I came from,

a family of secrets, a family of long history.

And my mother, she had an uncle, Tio Jarabielle,

that died in the hospital of alcoholism when I was a child.

And I never knew this guy.

All I knew was that his stomach was hanging out,

and he died, and that was alcoholism.

They never spoke about that.

My brother, a few years back, passed away.

And on his death certificate,

it says that his bowels perforated and exploded,

and he died of poisoning.

It doesn't say that he was so high on heroin

that he couldn't feel the pain.

And when they got to him, it was too late, and he died.

Last year, my uncle, who came from Vietnam

with a little heroin problem, he passed away

of stage four liver disease,

and it doesn't say alcoholism in his state.

My aunt, she walks around with a short dog

in her back pocket, and every time she gets short

on the rent, she goes into rehab, and they pay the rent.

They catch it up, she gets clean, and then she goes back

and does the same thing all over again.

And they don't understand sobriety,

and they don't have to understand sobriety.

I have to understand sobriety.

For me, sobriety is life or death.

There's no gray area for me.

There was a guy in our men's stag a few weeks ago.

This guy's a celebrity, everybody loved him to death,

big shot, and he came back.

I hadn't seen him in a while, and he came back,

and he says, "I just got out of detox last night."

And he goes, "I went to Switzerland,

"and I drank all this booze and snorted all this coke,

"and I overdosed two times, but I made it back,

"and I'm glad to be with my friends."

And I said, "You son of a, I'm glad you're back,

"but man, I wish I could go out and snort all that,

"and drink all that, and come back and say,

"Hey guys, welcome back."

I don't have another chance at sobriety.

I cherish my sobriety like I do life or death.

And so to me, I don't have a chance.

And so no matter what's going on in my life,

I have to put sobriety first,

because a couple of years ago,

I retired March 31st of this year,

it was two years that I retired.

And I retired March 31st, 2020,

because Pete said, "My birthday is April 1st."

And Pete said to me,

"Tom, if you're still working at 60 years old,

"I'm gonna put a bullet in your head."

He goes, "You've been working hard enough, long enough,

"it's time for you to retire."

So I retired one day before I turned 60 years old.

And as I was driving off that gate for the last time,

and feeling sad, and feeling really all that,

I called Pete, and I go,

"Hey, Pete, how's it going?"

He goes, "I'm in New York trying to get that contract."

So I go, "Pete, cancel the contract, man.

"I just retired, man."

And I go, "I'm gonna travel and live a life.

"I'm retired now, I got a good pension and all that."

And all of a sudden, soon after that,

my wife was diagnosed with a neurological condition,

and now she's fully disabled.

And so my life is not what I had designed.

My life is a life where I get to be of service to my wife.

And I'm a full-time caretaker.

And I take care of her, and some days are good days,

and some days are not such good days.

But I stood up and show up no matter what,

because that's what I was taught in Alcoholics Anonymous.

This wasn't what I was planning on talking about,

and I don't even know why I'm talking about all of this,

but the main thing is, guys,

is that we stay sober on good days and bad days.

And we surround ourselves with people

that are working a program that we can lean on,

no matter what.

There's people in this room that I can call up 24/7.

I could call up Pete and say, "Pete, I need your help."

And he'll drive or fly from Los Angeles

all the way to Vegas to help me out.

Pete was the one that grabbed my son

and put him on an airplane with him

and showed up on my doorstep on Christmas Day last year,

and surprised the hell out of us.

And my wife was so happy, and we had a great visit,

and from then, it's gotten better and better.

Not to say that I don't have challenges in my life.

I go to meetings.

I go to meetings whether I want to

or whether I don't want to.

I don't go to meetings for convenience.

I go to meetings because I need to go to meetings.

I need to see the guy, that's my warning.

I need to see the guy that I thought was doing well come back

and I need to know what happens

to people that don't come back.

And I need to see my friends doing well in sobriety.

Tammy, Pete, my friend Sean.

Sean didn't talk about what he really is.

Sean, when I heard Sean, not only was he a babbling fool,

but he was a degenerate and a menace to society.

This guy, he talked about the first blackout

where he ran his thing into a tree.

This guy has no business driving.

I would never ride with this guy had I not.

Now, I'll tell you what, according to Sean,

I'm a penny waste drunk.

And he should have been the one that was born in Harlem.

And I should have been the one that was

in Lake Tahoe, California, you know what I mean?

But the thing is, is how we find commonality

is I have no idea, but I love this guy.

I owe my sobriety to him and Adam.

These guys have saved me on a daily basis.

I go on Wednesday, I go to Zoom meeting.

I go to see these other guys, Glenn.

Glenn drove two hours from his house in Arizona

to come to our Saturday morning meeting

so that I could give him a chip

for his 40 years of sobriety, right?

If he can do it, I can do it.

If I can do it, you can do it.

And so what I need to say is, in closing,

is that my best friend, Ron Coleman,

I'll never forget, he gave a great talk.

And he had this line that he would end every talk with.

And I said, when he was in the hospital, "Hey Ron,

"is it okay if I steal that line?"

And he goes, "Yeah, Tom, it's okay

"as long as you give me credit."

And so, as my best friend Ron Coleman used to say,

I used to wake up in the morning

and say, "Good God, it's morning."

But today I wake up and I say, "Good morning, God."

Thank you for letting me share, I'm back.