Milestone Sobriety & Service: From Cub Scouts to AA Secretary

I'm Mike, I'm an alcoholic, grateful to be here tonight.

Thank you, Marty, for your lead, that was really pretty.

And Dan, I gotta find out who cuts your hair

because that's like one of the best high and tights

I've ever seen in my life.

I'm not happy with my guy right now.

(all laughing)

Wanna thank you for asking me to come and share tonight,

Ben, I really appreciate it.

I have, my wife is on Zoom.

She said, "Don't call on her, whatever you do."

I said, "It's not that kind of meeting, you can relax."

She's home taking care of our son.

And I have my friend Jamel over here who's online with us.

He's just left LA a little while back

and he's living in Pennsylvania.

He's got a couple of years of sobriety.

I have the privilege and honor to work with him.

And I have my very, very dear Tatusz sitting here with me.

Tatusz in Polish means father, okay?

I met Roman in the program 23 years ago

and he's been like a father to me.

On June 23rd of this year,

if I stay sober for about another 22 days,

I'll have 21 years of sobriety.

And 21 years of sobriety came from all of the people

that came before me.

Mostly the old timers with experience, strength and hope

that they shared with me on how to stay sober.

I have a sponsor, his name is Lloyd S.

I have a home group.

My home group is the Pacific group.

And my sobriety date, like I said, is 6/23/03.

Let's see here.

Did I say my name is Mike, I'm an alcoholic?

I said that.

My name is actually Raymond Edward Michael Collins

and I am an alcoholic, an Irish alcoholic.

Let me just start by saying, it was a great day today.

I took my son and my wife and we went over to the park.

There was a Cub Scout event going on

and they call it a bridging ceremony

where the Scouts, some people waving, nodding their heads,

where the Scouts, they graduate from the year

that they're in and they go to the next year

and Scouts, they go from tiger to wolf, wolf to bear,

bear to wee below.

And you would wonder how I know about this.

Well, about eight months ago,

I got roped into being a Cub Scout leader,

simply because I showed up at a meeting

and they said, we need volunteers.

We need volunteers because the pack after COVID has died

and we need to bring it back.

So we need a volunteer, you know?

And there was 20 parents sitting in the room

and nobody was raising their hand.

And the old leaders are walking back and forth sweating.

You know, you could wear this shirt, you could be the leader,

you could salute the flag, you could say the Pledge

of Allegiance, you could help these kids

and nobody's raising their hand.

Finally, I said, I'll do it.

And then another person, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it.

'Cause what do we learn in AA?

We raise our hand.

When someone asks us to do something, we don't say no.

And, you know, Ben asked me to share and I said, sure,

I'd love to share.

And I just did a commitment for a year at Ohio Street

in West LA as the secretary.

And that is, what is it, 52 weeks in a year, 52 speakers,

you know, on Sunday morning with a suit on.

And I took the commitment, I took it grudgingly, you know,

grudgingly, they nominated me and voted

and they voted me in.

They'd asked me first before they elected me,

would you like to be the secretary?

Because that's your tradition.

If you wanna elect somebody, ask them if they can fulfill

the commitment and I said, sure.

I said, let me get back to you on that.

So what did I do?

I called my sponsor.

I said, they nominated me for secretary.

What do you, I'm not sure about this.

So what do you think?

You know, 'cause I run stuff by my sponsor,

important things.

And he goes, well, I'll tell you what I did.

You know, I did that commitment and it was one

of the best things I've ever done in my sobriety.

My sponsor has a way of suggesting things to me

and telling me what he did.

So that meant take the commitment, right?

So I took that commitment and I just finished

that secretary ship about a month ago.

And it was the best year of my life

because Ben can attest to this.

When you're the secretary, you have to collect a speaker

and you have to hope the speaker is gonna come

and do a good job.

And you're gonna sit there and you're gonna listen

to every word they say.

And normally when I'm in a meeting, I'm not listening

to every word that the speaker is saying, right?

I'm usually in my head, you know, I'm thinking,

well, you know, someone shares and I think I start thinking

about what happened to me and he was sharing about partying

and I was thinking, man, I like to party

and life is boring sometimes, but you know,

I have all these thoughts going through my head,

but when you're the secretary, you're hearing every word.

And anyway, my wife tells me, she says, look, you know,

there's only two kinds of shares that people remember,

right, there's only two kinds of shares

that people remember.

If I share tonight and have the greatest share

you've ever heard in your life or one of the top five,

you're gonna remember it, right?

If I have the worst share you've ever heard,

you're gonna be like, remember that guy that came up here,

you're not gonna forget it.

So my wife said to me, she goes, you're not gonna have

the greatest share in the world, that's not gonna happen.

She said, just don't embarrass yourself.

So this is my wife, right?

But she's right, she's right on the head.

So she said, just shoot for the middle, you know,

shoot for the middle.

And all right, so let me get started here.

Grew up in Brooklyn, New York, born July 4th, 1965.

Caught the tail end of the '60s and really was growing up

in the '70s because by the time '75 rolled along,

I was 10 years old, the Vietnam War was hot and heavy

coming to an end.

Disco had come around, rock and roll had, you know,

been going strong through the '60s into the '70s,

then came disco and then all the other good stuff.

And it was a good time to be 10 years old.

It was a better time to be 13 because that was 1978.

And that's when the drinking and the smoking

and all the other fun stuff started happening.

I'm one of six children.

In 1968, my father died when I was three years old,

left my mom with five kids.

Mom remarried to, I have a stepdad.

And, you know, it was the perfect little middle class family

in Brooklyn.

And then we grew up in Bedford Stuy.

If anyone ever heard of that,

Bedford Stuy was a really bad neighborhood.

And then we moved on up to the east side

to a place called Marine Park,

which is more toward the water, which I loved.

And everything seemed to be perfect on the outside.

On the inside, I like to just say,

let's see, who's that, anybody here?

Okay, on the inside, I like to say by the time I was 14,

I'd been shot, stabbed, molested, raped, and beaten.

Not bad for a 14 year old, right?

And that's not an exaggeration.

But everything looked great.

And I was in public school till sixth grade.

And then, you know, my mom,

she had the wherewithal to say, you know what?

Is this thing being recorded?

Oh boy, I take all that back.

No, that did not.

So my mom said, we're gonna send him to Catholic school

and that's gonna straighten him out.

And I went to Catholic school for seventh and eighth grade.

And then I met all of the kids from the neighborhood

who I knew some of them,

but I was finally in Catholic school with them

in an all boys school, St. Thomas Aquinas.

And then it really took off

because there was like at that school,

what the favorite pastime in the neighborhood was,

was they had boxing matches in the gymnasium,

smoker's matches where the police were boxing

with the fire department.

There was all kinds of neighborhood organizations

boxing each other.

We had boxing class in Catholic school, you know?

I mean, it was fighting.

And then what else do you do when you're Irish

and you live in Brooklyn?

You fight and you drink.

So we started doing a lot of drinking

and I'm not gonna do a big drunk a lot,

but I'm gonna tell you this,

that drinking really, really changed my life.

It made things a lot better for me.

A lot better for me

because I didn't think there was anything wrong with me.

I mean, how are you supposed to know

anything's wrong with you when you're 10,

11, 12, 13, 15 years old?

Even like when I got sober,

they were like, someone talked about alcoholism.

And I went to a meeting.

I still didn't know what alcoholism was,

that I wasn't alcoholic.

What happened to me as a kid?

I mean, it took so long,

but you know, that first two times I drank,

there was a bar, you know?

They say the last house on the block in AA,

you hear all these sayings.

And there was a bar right next to my house.

My driveway was here.

I was the last house on the block

and there was a driveway and there was a bar right there.

And it was Charles's bar and old Irish family,

then the apostrophe, then Zappas and you know, rock bands.

They were in there and I would work there on the weekends.

And I got to meet one of the owner's nephews.

And he was 13, I was 13, 14.

And we would drink on Saturday morning,

drink on Sunday morning.

We went over to his house and he said,

we're having a party on my house in Troy Avenue.

We all went down there to the party

'cause we stole a bottle of vodka from the bar.

Now I went out there and everybody grabbed the bottle.

And this is the first time I drank hard liquor.

When the bottle went around, everyone took a pull.

And then it came to me and I was chugging.

And they had to rip it out of my hand.

And about an hour later, I was falling down,

falling down drunk.

And then they put me, my friend put me in his bicycle.

He had one of those butcher's bikes,

if you know what that is.

It's an old fashioned bike with a cart on the front

that they put the meat in.

And he worked for a butcher and he put me in that cart

and drove me home and dropped me on my doorstep and took off.

That was the first time I drank hard.

The second time I drank hard,

I drank Southern Comfort and fell out of some bleachers

in the stadium and they dragged me home.

So that was the first two times of hard drinking.

And you know what, I made it through,

I made it through seventh and eighth grade.

I made it to ninth grade.

And I wanted, I had these great dreams

of being a marine biologist because I love the ocean.

So I had to write all these letters

to go to Beach Channel High School

because it was out of my district.

And I really wanted to go there.

And so I wrote all these letters and they accepted me.

So now I'm in a high school for marine biology

that's on the water in Rockaway.

And I'm going out in little row boats with motors on 'em

and collecting plankton samples.

And we have fish tanks in the room and it was beautiful.

And I loved it.

And I'm like, this is great.

And about three months into that high school,

which was ninth grade, I met all the Irish guys

from St. Thomas that had come down there with me.

And before school started,

it was like fast times at Ridgemont High,

if you guys know about that.

And these guys were out there smoking and drinking

at eight o'clock in the morning.

And I was like, wow, that's pretty cool.

So I started doing that.

And then they said, well, just check into homeroom

and then you won't get an absentee slip for the day.

So we'd check in, we'd take the bus to Rockaway.

I'd check in and then we'd go to the store

and we'd go to my buddy's house.

We'd buy a case of beer and a dozen bagels

and we'd smoke some things and we'd go out to his boat

and go fishing all day.

And then I would come home

and my mom would say, how was school?

I said, it was great.

It's really hot out there.

We were on the boat all day.

And she'd go, oh yeah, my boy, he's doing his,

marine bow, it's just in the making.

So my high school career lasted that year.

And then Beach Channel High School said

at the end of the ninth grade,

I went to 10th grade for about a month

and they were like, you don't belong here,

go back to your local high school.

That lasted, my local high school lasted

about two or three months.

And then I said, I gotta get out of Brooklyn.

You know, 'cause this is not working.

I had friends that were going to jail.

I had some friends that were in really bad shape.

And then I had some friends that were doing good.

I was not doing great.

So a couple of my friends said, let's join the Marines.

And I said, that sounds like a good idea.

I could get out of New York, right?

And join the Marines.

That's how I got out of New York in 1982.

I did some years in the Marine Corps and I had,

I went overseas, Beirut happened.

It was a lot of stuff happening.

I worked real hard at keeping it together

while I was in Marine Corps.

They let us drink, but you know, I was in the infantry.

So I trained hard and I drank hard and I kept it together.

And then a couple of years into my career,

it started falling apart.

It started falling apart.

And we would still, we were going overseas,

going to a lot of different places,

a lot of conflict happening.

And by the time I got out of the Marine Corps,

there was nothing more I wanted to do with them.

When I came in, I was proud to be a Marine.

I was happy to be in the Marines.

I had acquired some skills.

I was, you know, I had a lot of relatives in the military,

my uncle's grandfather, and I couldn't wait to get out

because I wanted to drink and I wanted to do what I wanted.

And that was it.

I got out of the Marine Corps and I got out in '85

and the next 10 years were a blur

because I was damaged goods.

You know, I was damaged in childhood.

I was damaged in the military.

And when I got out of the military, it was game on.

And you talk about a functioning alcoholic.

I tried, everything in my life looked right,

just like that little childhood, it all looked good

on the outside, except I kept losing jobs.

I kept getting in trouble.

I kept getting DUIs.

I kept getting, losing relationships.

And it was just a really busted up life.

And you know, you talk about, you know,

I went out drinking one night, it was Orange County.

And this is what happens to me.

I go out drinking and I'm drinking tequila.

Well, I don't stop at one or two or three shots.

I drink a dozen shots.

And the next thing I'm in the parking lot,

fighting with three guys.

And the next thing you know, I'm fighting with cops.

And then they got me in jail and you know, they go,

all right, we got a great place for you.

You're going in the rubber room.

And I go, bring it on.

I'm not afraid of the rubber room.

So they say, take off all your clothes.

And I'm like, what do you mean?

They go, take off all your clothes.

And I go, really?

And they go, yeah, take them off

or we'll take them off for you.

So now I'm in naked in the rubber room.

This is where my drinking brings me,

but I don't have a problem.

Yeah, so it was brutal.

It was really brutal.

And you know, I wanna give props

to the first man who ever took me to AA.

And I was living in California

and I had met somebody back East.

And they said, look, you're a Marine.

I know this guy, he's a businessman in DC.

He's opening a radio station in Virginia.

It'll be a perfect thing for you.

And they said, come out to Virginia, meet this guy.

I interviewed with him.

He said, I'm opening a radio station.

It's in Virginia.

You're gonna, your job will be to manage the station.

You know, stay there on the weekends.

You know, the station's on automation

from midnight till 5 a.m.

There's a tower and automation system.

Your job will be if the station goes down

and the alarm goes off, you reboot the automation.

You have the security for the station.

It's a great thing.

I said, I'll do it.

It sounds like a great job.

And so he took me on

and the gentleman's name was Ernest, Ernie Evans.

And he said to me, he knew I was an alcoholic

because being around him for just a few months, six months,

he knew I was an alcoholic.

He never told me, I'm an alcoholic.

This is a program.

This is the way it works.

He said, I want you to come with me.

We're gonna go to a meeting.

And I said, okay.

I said, let's do it.

So he brought me to an AA meeting in Elkton, Virginia.

And I went to the meeting and everybody was happy.

You know, it was great.

Everybody's happy.

Everybody's sober.

And I'm like, wow, this is really, really cool.

You know, and I met a nice little gal over there too,

a little Southern gal.

And yeah, we had a great time.

And I'm like, wow, this is a great thing, you know?

And I went like once or twice

and then I never went back again.

And then the station wasn't doing good.

He leased it out to somebody else.

He said, you could stay here at the station.

You can use the station.

You can live here.

You can use the truck.

I said, you know what, Ernie, I'm gonna move on.

You know, I'm gonna catch a job in town.

I've got a girlfriend over here.

I'm gonna do my thing.

And I moved on.

I stayed friends with him.

He hired another guy that he didn't even know

to watch the station.

And a year and a half later, he got cancer and died

and left the station to the kid, a house in Miami

and all kinds of money.

I was like, you know, opportunity,

my good alcoholic opportunities,

the opportunities that went away.

But you know, being drunk and the condition I was in,

if anybody would have left me anything,

it probably would have brought me to the end

that much quicker.

And, but he introduced me to AA

and it went on and on and on.

And I left Virginia.

I came back to LA and I continued to get in trouble,

continue to scrape by, continue to not do well.

And what happened was I was working at a place

called National Bartender School.

Okay, I said, 'cause I could bartend, right?

So I went down to this job on Wilshire and Normandy

and I said, I can bartend.

They say, well, we need an instructor.

I said, well, yeah, I could do it, you know?

And I worked my way in there, you know,

'cause I'm a good drinker, right?

So who can't bartend, right?

I got the job as an instructor and they liked me.

And I worked there for about six months a year.

Then they said, look, man,

we're gonna make you the director of education.

I go, whoa, all right, a title, right?

So they made me the director of education.

And I got a post secondary education title for signed

by Pete Wilson, the governor, you know,

because I'm a big time instructor now, you know?

And we would go downstairs.

Now, the guy who owned the bartending school,

he was missing a pinky.

And I think they were chained to schools

and he was a mobster.

The school was owned by mobsters.

And my manager was this guy that ran the school.

He was the manager and here I am director of education.

And we would go downstairs every night to the Brass Monkey

with all the students and we take them drinking, right?

'Cause the Brass Monkey's a great little karaoke bar

and we get real hammered.

So life was going good once again for a little while,

but I went down and the owner,

the manager that I was working for,

he said to me, "Come on, man."

And he goes, "We were all drunk at the bar."

And he goes, "Come on, man."

He goes, "Will you drive my car?

"Will you take me over there?"

And I go, "Take you over where?"

He goes, "I wanna go to Alvarado."

And I go, "Alvarado?"

He goes, "Yeah, I wanna go buy some stuff."

You know, and I go, "Dude, I don't do that.

"You know I don't do that, that's not my thing."

So he said, "Please, please, I don't wanna drive my car."

So I drive the car down there to Alvarado.

He scores, the next thing I know, we're lit up.

The police rip us out of the car.

I'm dressed up, I have my dress clothes on,

and it's all good.

And then they rip us out of the car, no Miranda rights,

and they throw us in the back of the car

and they take us to jail, right?

So here I am, I'm just the driver, right?

So anyway, I got out of that situation

because actually I was booked

for felony crack possession, okay?

Nice night, nice night hanging out with my boss.

And so I'm driving and we're pulling away.

I'm not even gonna give you the details,

but I'm going up for a felony crack possession.

We get out of it because we get lawyers

and they didn't find anything

because I helped my boss out by saying,

"Here, give it to me."

And then I threw it in the back of that car

and we got out of it.

But it took some lawyers and some money.

But one more time, so the cop, they got nothing on us.

So the cop says to me, he pulls me out of the cell

and they're trying to shake us down

because there's two of us.

Well, he said this, he said that.

So the cop says, he says, "All right."

The cop says, "All right."

'Cause we're alcoholics, we're good actors, right?

The cop says to me, "All right, just tell me what happened.

"Tell the truth."

And he goes, "And I'll talk to the judge.

"We'll make it easy on you, it'll all work out."

I go, "All right, man, here's what happened."

And the cop's like,

he thinks I'm gonna give it to him, right?

I'm gonna confess, right?

'Cause we want, that's the right thing to do

to confess to a cop to a felony, right?

So they can, 'cause they got no evidence.

So I tell the cop, I go, "All right, here it is, man."

I go, "Here's what happened."

I go, "We were driving down the street

"and all these guys jumped out."

So I stopped the car and my boss had the window down

and the guy shocked my best in the face, so I took off.

And he was like, "You bastard."

He threw me back in the cell.

Excuse my language, we're not cussing here.

He threw me back on the cell and I go,

"Well, what about my phone call?"

And he goes, "Oh yeah, that's right.

"You're supposed to get a phone call."

He goes, "Give me the number.

"Who do you wanna call?"

I go, "I wanna call my girlfriend."

He goes, "All right, give me the number."

So I give him the number and then he comes back to my cell

because I didn't give him the evidence, right?

He comes back and he's laughing.

He goes, "I called your girlfriend for you."

I go, "All right, is she coming to get me?"

He goes, "No."

He goes, "I told her you were buying crack for hookers

"and she said all your stuff's on the lawn, you're done."

And I'm like, "Wow."

I had a diamond ring in my suit pocket

that I was gonna give her and propose to her.

She threw all of my stuff out on the front lawn

and when I got home the next day,

there wasn't even a sock left.

I mean, there was an empty bag.

All of my stuff gone and I lost my girlfriend that night.

But that's what happens when we go out drinking, right?

We go to jail, we lose our girlfriend.

Sometimes we go to jail and insane asylums

and all that other good stuff.

So when that happened, I woke up the next day.

After I got out of jail and she was gone,

for the first time in my own accord,

I said, "I have a problem."

And I remembered Ernie had taken me to AA.

So I called in my phone, actually, let's see,

it would have been like 1992 and I had to,

we didn't have cell phones in '92, did we?

No, I had to go to a pay phone.

I had to look in a phone book and I found AA,

central number and I called the central office

and I said, "You know what, I might have a problem.

"I might have a problem and I need to go to a meeting."

And they said, "All right, go to this place

"called the Marina Center."

So I said, "All right," so I went to a noon meeting

at the Marina Center and when I walked in,

when I walked in, Roman knows the Marina Center,

this is where I met Roman, this is the '90s.

You guys know everybody's walked into a room.

There's people there that love you and care about you

that you don't even know and I walked through that door

and without even knowing, I'm an alcoholic,

without even knowing why I'm there,

even know what alcoholism is, everybody that was in that room

knew who I was and why I was there.

And everyone was like really nice to me and friendly

and I'm like, "Wow, this is really," it was a good vibe.

And I was like, "Wow, this feels really good."

And then at the end of the meeting,

this old guy, Bill Whitaker, he's like,

"Hey, you know, we clean up, we do commitments here."

He goes, "You wanna help us out?"

He goes, "Grab a mop," and I was in the Marines,

I know how to mop, so I grabbed a mop and I'm swabbing

for the first time since I've been in the Marines

and I'm feeling like I'm part of it and I'm doing something

and I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool."

And they said, "Well, come back tomorrow."

And then they said, "Come back tomorrow,

"morning is a meeting at 6.45."

Wow, so I came back and this is where my sobriety began

because I met a guy named Papa Joe

and Papa Joe would show up at the 6.45 meeting at 5.15

in the morning, 5.30, and he'd make a pot of coffee

and he would sit with the dirtiest, smelliest drunks

just wet and stinking and he'd hold their hands

and he would pray with them and he had a long, light beard,

he was an Irishman from Boston, he was a devout Catholic

and he would sit there and pray with them

and he would tell you, I sat with him,

he introduced himself and he papped me on the leg

and he said, "Kid," he'd hold my hand,

he said, "You're in the palm of God's hand."

He said, "You just put the plug in the junk, kid,

"and you just keep showing up."

And he would sit in his corner and five or six people

that he was helping at any given day

would be in that corner with him

and it was the first person

who really reached out to me in AA.

And he had a little green prayer book,

a 12-step prayer book, and he would write his name in there

and underline all his favorite prayers

and Papa Joe would put his phone number.

Roman has one, I have one.

There's probably 500 people on the west side to this day

that still have that book in their bookcase

because he would give you that book and say,

"These are some of my favorite prayers."

And he showed up at that meeting

and he was one of the first people that helped me.

And you know, I wanna say this,

that how much time do I have?

Okay, perfect, I'm a really, really hard case,

a really hard case.

I went in and out for 10 years.

I went in and out for 10 years

because I was not willing

to do the fourth and fifth step completely.

There were things that I was holding onto

that I was never gonna let go of.

And man, there was so much I wanted to say,

but it's that 10 years of in and out,

I would get six months, three months, six months,

nine months, 12 months, 14 months,

I had a record relapse, 18 months, a record I relapsed.

And I thought I'm never gonna get two years.

It's not gonna happen.

And I didn't wanna do that fifth step.

And what happened was every time I would get a sponsor,

I would tell them everything on that fifth step,

except for one or two things.

And then I would relapse after that.

So I started to become convinced

that it was because I didn't do a thorough fifth step

that that was the problem.

And a lot of people had told me,

and what I learned in AA was that there was nothing

that I could say that hasn't been said already.

And the person hearing my fifth step really did not care

about what I had to say.

They just cared that I said it

because they knew that anything that I carry,

and I met a guy named Dirty Jack,

that's who this league called him.

He was a mechanic.

He had about 65 years of sobriety when he died.

And he had helped thousands upon thousands of people.

And I did an inventory with him.

And when I was going to do the inventory,

he said to me, "I don't care."

He said, "You get a matchbook, a cigarette pack."

And he said, "You write down the two or three

or four things that you're never gonna let go of."

He said, "You write down the things that are in your heart,

that are in your mind that you have thought about

every day of your life,

that you still think about all the time.

It's the things in your mind and in your heart

that you always think about that I've never let go of you.

That's the things I want you to write.

You can write them on a piece of paper.

You don't need to do columns and all that."

He said, "Do that."

And he said, "We'll meet up."

And we met up at the Crest House,

which is a place on Washington.

And he said, "All right, so I'm reading my fifth step to him

and he's eating breakfast.

And he says, "What else you got?"

And I go, "I read all five, six, 10 things, 11 things."

I go, "That's it."

He goes, "All right, well, you sure about that?"

And I go, "Yes, I'm sure."

And he goes, "Is there anything else?"

And I go, "That's it."

And he goes, "Are you sure about that?"

I go, "I'm sure, that's it."

And he goes, "There's nothing else."

I go, "Nope."

He goes, "Not one more thing."

And I go, "No, there isn't."

And he goes, "Are you sure about that?"

I go, "I'm sure."

He goes, "Positive."

And I go, "I'm gonna kill you."

We went back and forth, I wasn't gonna let go.

And he just kept, he knew, he knew I had something.

And after he asked me like 10 times, 10 times,

I go, "There is one more thing."

And he goes, "All right, let's have it."

So I go, "I did this and that, and I did that."

And he's eating bacon and eggs.

And he didn't even look up at me.

He didn't even look up.

He didn't go, he didn't go, "Wow."

You know, it's funny, I did a fishnet with Papa Joe

about 10 years earlier.

And I told Papa Joe some crazy, crazy stuff.

And he goes, "Well, you know, my baby."

He goes, "It can happen."

You know, I never did anything like that,

but you know, I understand, you know.

People do things, you know.

And that wasn't the bomb I dropped.

You know, I just gave him some of the mediocre stuff.

But Dirty Jack, he didn't even flinch.

And he said, "What else do you got?"

And I said, "That was it."

And he goes, "All right, great."

He goes, "Now we're gonna do six and seven."

And I was like, you know,

that was the stuff I've been holding for 30 years, 30 years.

And I walked out of that Crest house.

Some of you guys are smiling.

You know what it's like when you let go of that stuff

that you're never gonna let go of?

And I walked out of there and I felt all right.

And you know, about five years earlier,

about seven years earlier,

I'd worked with a guy who had really hard time.

He was in the Navy and he'd gotten out of the Navy

and he had a problem with some hard stuff.

And I sat down with him to do a fifth step.

And he said, "Man, there's some stuff."

He goes, "Listen, I can't talk about that.

There's some things I can't tell you."

And I turned around to him and I said,

you know what, I wanna tell you a little something about me.

And I don't know where it came from.

I told him three of the most grotesque,

shameful things I've ever done.

I told him three things, all right?

And he started crying.

And he said, "Those are the three things I can't tell you.

Exact three things."

He said, "Those are the three things I can't tell you."

So if you think there's something

that you can't say to somebody,

I mean, that is the wrong way to think about it.

I got rid of the 100 pound bag that I was carrying.

And my life changed after that.

Is that a couple of minutes?

Five minutes.

My life changed after that.

I didn't get the Cadillac and the boat

and the helicopter I always wanted,

but I got to stay sober.

And I hit two years for the first time in 10 years,

12 years.

And Romans wearing a hat, it's a retreat.

It was a search for serenity retreat.

And I met a group of men at the Friday Morning Men Stag

at Claire in Culver City.

And these men were, there was a bunch of old timers there.

And there was guys that were really committed to sobriety,

really committed.

And there was about 40 or 50 guys in that room.

And it was a Friday Morning Stag at 6.45.

And it was a crosstalk.

And sometimes people got really sensitive

and got really hurt because you'd say something like,

"My wife left the other day."

And then someone from the side would say,

"Oh, lucky you."

You know, and then it'd be like,

people would want to fight and people were upset.

But it was a great meeting because it was laughter and joy

and then pain and honesty.

And then what they did earlier was they went on a retreat

and they went up to a place called Highland Springs

in Beaumont.

And they said to me,

"We want you to come to the retreat."

And year after year, I would say, "Ah, I'm not good."

So finally they nailed me down

into my third year of sobriety.

And they said, "Come to the retreat."

I said, "Oh, I don't have any money."

You know, they said, "Oh, well, we'll give you a scholarship.

We have a scholarship fund."

She's laughing, she's knowing what's coming next.

I said, "Well, I don't have a ride.

You know, it's like two hours for me.

I don't have a car."

Well, we got a ride for you, get in the car.

So I went to that retreat and my life changed again.

Okay, because that retreat was the most amazing thing

I'd ever been at in my life.

And this Thursday night, I'll be going to a retreat,

a dog on the roof retreat in Northwest Washington

for the weekend with about a hundred guys.

And this will be my third time at that retreat.

And what happened at that retreat,

Roman's been to about 10 or 12, 15 of those retreats with me.

What happens at that retreat is we work the 12 steps.

You know, we work the 12 steps.

We have a Saturday night speaker.

We played horseshoes.

There was a jacuzzi.

We smoked cigars.

We took nature walks.

We did like some great, great stuff.

And you know, I didn't want to go to that retreat

and I didn't want to go to that retreat.

And when Sunday came around, I didn't want to leave.

Okay, so content prior to investigation.

The retreats have been some of the greatest high spots

in my sobriety.

I want to talk a little bit about today.

I'll have 21 years of sobriety coming up if I stay sober.

My wife is online.

She has 14 years of sobriety.

We have a nine-year-old son that's going to be 10.

So he hasn't had a drink in almost 10 years, you know.

He's been to a lot of meetings.

I mean, we had him in meetings when he was newborn

in the stroller, one, two, three, five.

He's been in the last year at all of the Sunday meetings

with my wife.

And it's just great, you know.

It's just great.

I'm blessed today.

I have my friend Ben.

I texted him before the meeting.

He showed up.

I've had the privilege of getting to help him

walk down the path and show him what we're doing, you know.

And I got a couple other guys,

Jamel's over there in Pennsylvania.

And you know, I get to give it away.

Do I do a great job?

Am I 100%?

You know, do I do 110%?

No, I'll admit it.

I'm a little spread thin.

But what I do is I wake up, I stay sober.

I send readings out.

I take phone calls.

I call my sponsor.

I show up at meetings.

I try to be a service.

You know, I'm blessed to have Roman in my life, you know.

He's the closest thing I've ever had to a real dad, you know.

I get to hang out with him.

He calls me up.

He needs something.

I get to go over there and do it.

I'm stressing out with my life.

Roman has done it all.

He's lived life.

The man is 94.

I call him up with a problem.

He has an answer for me, you know.

He gives me the answers I need.

I have people in the program.

I have a sponsor with 34 years of sobriety

and 30 years in Allen.

I have a black belt sponsor.

Any marital problem I have, I have an answer.

I have a solution.

Man, and I get to go up and be with these guys

in Washington next week.

And my wife said to me, she goes,

"How come I don't get to go on a retreat?

"You get to go here.

"You get to go do this.

"You get to go do that."

She gets mad.

I go, "You can do whatever you want.

"You wanna go away with your girls for the weekend.

"Just let me know.

"I got you."

I go, "Oh, I can do that?"

I go, "Yeah, you can."

(laughing)

But I love it.

She's got her meetings.

She's got her girls.

And you know what?

You know, the steps, if you're new,

if you're struggling, if it's hard for you,

I have a minute left, I'm done.

Okay, just keep it simple and just keep showing up

and the rest will take care of itself.

I wanna thank you all for having me out here tonight.

I feel really blessed to be here

and I just wanna say that this room,

when I walked into this room,

I'm like, I like this room.

This room feels good.

So thank you for having me tonight.

Appreciate it.