Sonny's Journey: From Early Fear to Dual Addiction

I'm Sonny, I'm an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is July 6th, 2013.

Thank you so much for your talk.

That was awesome.

I appreciate that.

That was a good talk.

And thank you, Ben, for asking me to come out.

This place is really cool.

I pulled up and I saw a couple people sitting outside

and I was like, yeah, this is a real haul.

I feel it.

I was judging you guys from the beginning.

Yeah, so I have a home group.

It's called The Table.

It's about a two minute drive over there on Sadokoy

and White Oak.

It's been there since 2019.

And we got meetings there every day at 9 a.m. and 8 p.m.

And I love coming there.

I guess I'm supposed to tell you guys something

along the lines of what I was like,

what happened to me and what I'm like now.

So let me get started on that.

I'm pretty sure I had alcohol.

I know this is like a controversial topic,

but I'm pretty sure I had alcoholism

before I ever took a drink of alcohol.

And the reason I say that is like,

my first memory is just being terrified of,

I mean, you name it.

Like I would go over to a friend's house

and be scared that something was gonna happen

to my family while I was gone.

Like that's like my first memory I've started back

is like, you know, talking to strangers.

My mom would talk to a stranger

and I would be like trying to like get away.

It's like, I've always been just intrinsically scared

under my skin.

And you know, I come from, you know,

nothing ever like really traumatic happened to me

in my household.

I came from a, you know, a decent family.

I was never, you know, none of the stuff that we've heard,

we hear in alcoholics, none of that ever happened.

So I guess I could start my story.

I was a freshman in high school

and I got beat up really bad.

I was made fun of a lot for being Jewish.

I lived in a place called,

in Northern California called Grass Valley

where I was like the only Jew with like a 400 mile radius.

And I got made fun of a lot.

And then one day I decided to stick up for myself.

And that day I got put in the hospital

in front of the whole school and everything.

Like it was, it was a very bad day for Sunny.

I like to think of it as like my first spiritual experience.

It was, it was something.

But I was very, very conscious that day.

(indistinct)

And so, you know, I think about that

and, you know, it's not why I'm an alcoholic.

I love what you said.

You know, that circumstance is not probably

that's why I'm an alcoholic,

but I could have really used a drink that day.

And shortly after that, I had a cast on,

and I went to my cousin's house.

Who he, they lived in Palmdale at the time.

And my cousin, his name, his name, his name was Matthew.

And he was the closest person to me in my life.

He was like my only friend.

And he was my, he was my guy.

I didn't really have a lot of friends.

I was one of those kids,

but he was like, we talked on the phone every single day.

He would go to juvie and we would write together.

We would write back and forth.

Off and on we lived together cause our parents were so close.

Like he was like, he was like my brother closer.

So I came down to see him and he,

the drugs are a huge part of my story.

I'm an alcoholic through and through,

but I'm a drug addict too.

And drugs are a big part of my story.

And he stole some weed from my uncle

and I got high for the first time.

I mean, in the very same way that I could talk about drugs

or alcohol, I kind of use them interchangeably.

When I drink or do drugs in the very, very beginning,

I experience a bang that I don't,

that other people that I was around just did not get.

They just didn't get it.

They didn't understand it.

I was able, it was almost like I couldn't breathe

until I got loaded.

That's the way I can explain it.

When I got loaded, I could, you know what I mean?

For the first time I could not do that sober.

And I thought that was the only way to live.

You know, I didn't think there was another way.

And so when I got loaded the first time,

it was like, okay, how do we make this happen all the time?

You know, I was always a decent student.

You know what I mean?

I'm not a stupid man, I don't think.

And I'm the only one, I'm just kidding.

You know, I always got decent grades.

You know, I played sports here and there.

And you know, I always had my family in a high regard.

But when I started getting loaded,

I immediately compromised and sacrificed everything

that I ever cared about to get loaded.

I didn't care about school.

I didn't care about my family.

I didn't care about making money.

I didn't care about girls.

I didn't care about friends.

I didn't care about sports.

It was like, yo, what are we doing today?

How are we gonna make that happen?

And I, off the rip, was like, I'm burglarizing cars.

I'm burglarizing houses.

I'm stealing from people who think I'm their friend

and helping them look for stuff like immediately.

You got weed, you got alcohol, you got ecstasy,

whatever you got, let's do it.

I'll pop three right now.

It's like, I would go to parties.

So I got a older sister, right?

And I got older cousins.

And they would take me to parties when I was younger.

I would steal, I would drink, I would get loaded,

and I would steal alcohol back to my house.

I'm 14, 15 years old, stashing it in my closet

so that I could drink by myself, you know,

as much as I could kind of work that out, right?

'Cause you know, and man, it was never tight.

It was never good.

It was never good.

You know how in the book, Bill talks about

how like it ceased to be a luxury.

It became a necessity.

Mine was a necessity very quick, very quickly.

I could not not do it.

And by the time I'm 16 years old,

I'm doing anything that came to the table.

It was a wrap.

And I was a full on drug addict, alcoholic.

I'm 16 years old.

Not a day went by when I was not doing something.

If I couldn't find anything, then I'm stealing something.

If I couldn't steal something,

I'm going through your mom's medicine kit.

Whatever has to happen is happening.

My dad, my dad, I gotta talk about my dad for a minute.

My dad's got 36 years of sobriety.

I have never seen my dad loaded.

He's, and he's been in it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like he's always been an everyday member

of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He's not the guy who, you know, gets a big beautiful life

and visits AA once in a while to take a birthday cake

and then peaces out.

No, he's always had, you know,

sitting at my kitchen table with a big book

and somebody who looks like they just got out of jail.

He's always been putting random people up on my couch,

doing a couch commitment.

He's always been picking me up from school

with somebody who I just met.

Like he's, I've always seen my dad going to meetings

and doing the thing.

And I say that to say, I hated him.

I absolutely hated my father

and I absolutely hated my mother.

I didn't want to have anything to do with them

by the time I was 16 years old.

And, you know, I remember I hated AA too.

Hated Alcoholics Anonymous for a good time.

My dad asked me, he came up to me,

he said, "You're a jerk."

I said, "Absolutely."

He said, "Why do you get loaded?"

And I sat and I thought about it for the, for like seriously.

Like I wanted to get like an honest answer.

And I thought about it 'cause no one's ever asked me that.

I answered him as honestly as I could.

And I said, "If I could not get loaded,

"I would jump off a bridge or kill myself."

And he stopped and he said, "I get it."

He turned around and he walked away.

And that was it.

I didn't get in trouble.

I didn't get the cops called on me.

I didn't get put in a therapist.

I didn't get suicide watch.

I didn't get, you know, put on medication.

I didn't get thrown into rehab, none of that.

And I think about that often.

I think about that often.

And I think that is probably the single greatest gift

I've ever been given

because I was able to just go do my thing.

Anybody get in the way and hit my bottom.

And by the time I was 21 years old,

I was 140 pounds at six two.

I'm not the kind of drug addict alcoholic who has a job.

I have been, I've sold drugs and stole shit stuff

my entire life.

And I'm not the kind of alcoholic who goes to school.

I got kicked out of the same community college twice.

I am not the kind of alcoholic drug addict

who has a wife or children or a girlfriend.

No girls.

I'm not the kind of alcoholic drug addict

who goes to festivals and parties and balls out

and does like, like makes, like goes to nightclubs

and does all like the glamorous stuff.

Makes it look good like in the movies.

Nah, nah.

I had all those plans and, but I had no gas in my car.

I had no money for the festival ticket.

There is no nightclub.

I live, I live, I'm homeless.

(laughing)

It was never, it was never, it was never good.

It was never good.

And it's crazy 'cause I thought I had everything

figured out.

I know I'm talking way too much about the jungle log,

but I forget about this stuff.

I look back on that and it's like, dang.

I thought, I thought I had some stuff figured out.

And all I had was like this message to tell you

that there's these reptilian aliens on the moon

and they're controlling our minds and our sleep.

That's all I would do.

I would run around and just carry this message

of these reptilians thinking I'm Jesus

and you guys got it messed up.

You guys are trapped in the matrix.

Let me save you.

It was, it was, it was, it was not good.

And over time, I wanted to die.

There was a year there where it's like I was homeless

and I knew when my mom would take my little brother

to school and I would break into her house

and I would steal water bottles and granola bars

and bananas and apples and I would scurry on back

to where I was staying at the time and I would eat

because when I get loaded, I live like a squirrel.

I live like a rodent and it's okay with,

that's what happens when I get, and I can't stop.

I wanna stop, I wanna be better.

I thought I'd be better and I can't.

And one day, it was my mom's birthday party

and I had basically threatened to kill her

and her best friend and her whole family and I freaked out.

And my dad found out about it, he wanted to talk to me.

So I'm thinking I have to go get into a fistfight

with my dad right now.

And my little, my older sister drives me over

to the restaurant where we're meeting my father

and I sat down and I had been really trying to stop

for like a year.

Every day, I would wake up and say,

we're not doing this anymore.

I'm done for a year, every single day.

I could not go a day and I sat across the table from my dad

and he looked at me and he said, what is going on with you?

You know, I've heard about what happened,

what is going on with you?

And I said the same thing I've been telling my dad

since I was 16, 17 years old.

Nothing, nothing, nothing's going on with me.

And he looked at my sister and he said,

what is going on with him?

And she just starts bawling, just sobbing.

And she tells him like, he's crazy.

He's carrying a gun, he's talking about these reptilians.

He can't, he's always getting loaded.

It's never, it's, and she was like, just sobbing.

He looked at me and he says, is this true?

And I said, yes, it is.

I remember I started to cry for the first time

in like a decade because like I was lost.

I was hopeless.

I thought I was gonna die.

And I said, I don't know what's wrong with me.

I just want to die.

And he said, I think I know what's wrong with you.

Why don't you come stay with me for a while?

I said, okay.

So I came down to the valley and which is 400 miles away

from my home where I was living at the time.

And now he brought me to meetings.

He said, okay, we're gonna do this.

I put his hand on my shoulder and he said,

we're gonna do this now.

You ready?

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he starts taking me to the hole in the sky.

He takes me to the valley club and, you know,

he's introducing me to people.

And I, for the first time in my entire life,

since I was like 14 and a half, 15 years old,

stayed sober for a day and then another day

and then another day.

And I go into meetings all day, every day, no job,

no nothing, just go into meetings, right?

And I stayed sober for about two and a half weeks.

Two and a half weeks after I started drinking again.

Well, I shouldn't say that.

I drank again and this is good.

Two and a half weeks of sobriety for the first time

in my life and I drank again.

And I remember drinking and having this thought

like it was yesterday.

It's July 5th, 2013.

I'm drinking and I thought to myself,

oh my God, I'm drinking again.

I moved down here 400 miles away from my family

to not ever do this again and I'm doing it again.

I was going to the meetings, hey, hey, don't work.

I don't, I'm gonna die.

I'm gonna be the guy that dies in the gutter.

I was scared, I was terrified and I had this.

So because my dad has been doing Alcoholics Anonymous

my whole life, I've always seen the people

who are 65 years old.

They've been coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous

for the last 40 years and here,

I just got my 60 day chip again.

Let me tell you how to do it.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna be one of those people.

I'm gonna be one of those guys.

If I'm lucky, I'll die.

God forbid I'd be one of those guys.

And I remember I cried myself to sleep that night

and I woke up the next day and it was like,

all right, we either go do what we always do

and end up back here if we're lucky,

doing the stuff that got me here in the first place

that I moved down here to get away from

or we just axed that part,

just go straight to another meeting.

And I remember my first meeting in this sobriety date

was at the Marina Center, nude.

It was a 12 step workshop on the seventh step.

And I sat, if this is the podium,

I sat right there in the corner.

That was July 6th, 2013.

And then I went and I got lunch with my dad

and a couple other people and I told him I drank last night.

And he said, okay, that's okay.

You didn't smoke any weed?

I was like, no.

He said, wow, that's impressive.

What do we do now?

I was like, I don't know.

He's like, all right, well,

let's go to another meeting tonight.

Do you wanna get sober?

I was like, yeah.

He's like, you don't wanna get loaded.

I was like, no.

He's like, okay, that's what happened.

And then I got really scared.

I got really scared that I was gonna get loaded again.

So I went back to the meetings

and I heard everybody say all the time,

you gotta get a sponsor, you gotta do your steps.

And I would look at the steps and I never did them before.

After another two weeks, this is a true story.

After another two weeks of sobriety without a program,

I was ready to rip out of my body.

Sunny, sober, without a program.

Give me two weeks, I'm ready to put my head through a wall.

That's just how I'm hardwired.

I don't know what it is.

Well, I guess I do.

I'll get into that in a minute.

But that's how it felt.

And I was not doing well.

And I went to, I met a kid, his name was Ryan S.

Who is, I guess he spoke here a while ago.

That man was my first friend in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The first person that I could call a trudging buddy.

The first person that was able to just talk

on the phone with me and we can relate to each other

and we understood each other

and we could laugh with each other.

And he brought me to, we could go to other meetings together.

It was like, I was going to meetings with my dad,

but now I have like a friend

who's taking me to different meetings

and taking me to young people's meetings.

And I'm watching Alcoholics Anonymous

become so much bigger than the Valley Club

or the Marina Center.

And I'm watching, I'm going around,

I'm seeing that there's people my age

that are getting sober.

And then we're going to Crave and we're hanging out.

And then there's girls and there's guys.

And there's like, well, people are getting money.

Like, and they relate to me.

Like I found my people in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I found people that I can laugh with.

People, 'cause I would tell a joke to my sister

and she'd be like, ha ha ha.

You know what I mean?

Like I would, I, even to this day,

I'll tell my older sister what I'm thinking

and she'll go, honey, oh, that's the face she gives me.

I'm like, you don't get it.

You don't get it.

You guys get it.

Alcoholics Anonymous started to get it.

And I was like, I felt a little bit of relief

knowing that I was around people who I could talk to.

Ryan and I would go to Valley Club

and then we would go to some 8 p.m. meeting somewhere.

Then we'd go to Rapid Hall for the 10 p.m.

Then we'd all go to Crave until two o'clock in the morning.

And my dad just let me go.

Just let me go do that.

I didn't, you know, I didn't get any flack for that.

That was really cool.

I was able to just go do my thing.

And I'm sitting at Rapid Hall.

I remember where I was too.

Not this Rapid Hall, the old Rapid Hall.

And from the podium, I'm in the corner underneath,

but next to that white piano.

If any of you guys remember with that big picture of Bill W.

And it's to my left.

I'm looking at the podium and I'm going out of my mind.

I'm ready to just like, I was doing, I would do weird stuff.

I'd like hit myself in the face just to like feel something.

I would put holes in walls.

I would get mad.

And I would like, I remember I got mad

and I kicked my driver's side door to my car.

And it's where you couldn't open it right.

Just kick, just getting it in.

I was like, I was like, I get off on rage.

It's all bad.

And I'm sitting there and I heard this guy say,

"If you want to feel better, do your steps."

He said it loud like that.

"If you want to feel better, do your steps."

And I was like, next day I got a sponsor.

His name was Alex W.

And that man, I made a decision right there.

I'm going to do whatever he tells me to do.

And by God, this better work.

And he said, "Okay, man, yeah, get a big book,

"get it 12 and 12, get a spiral notebook,

"a pen, a highlighter, call me every day,

"go to a meeting every day

"and meet me on this day at that time."

I said, "Okay."

He said, "Oh, one more thing, two more things.

"Don't lie to me.

"And if you want to drink,

"call me before you take the first one.

"If you call me after, I'm going to hang up the phone."

Okay, cool.

And I proceeded to do exactly that.

He told me what to read.

He told me what to write.

And by the time I had four months of sobriety,

I was on my ninth step.

And I was trying to repair the damage I had done in my past and my experience with the third step is,

I tried to pray and I tried to pray.

I tried to pray.

And I heard my dad actually at the Valley Club say,

sometimes, I couldn't get behind the God thing,

but I could make a decision to turn my will in my life

over the care of my sponsor in the beginning,

and then it can grow from there.

And that's what I was able to do

because I hated the idea of God when I got here, all bad.

I would take acid and worship Satan.

That's the guy I was.

In the middle of nowhere by myself.

I'll get into that another time.

That's not true.

Anyway, but I could get behind the idea of just falling in line

and following my sponsor

because this guy had four years of sobriety at the time.

And just like you,

he spoke like he knew what he was talking about.

He carried himself in a way where it was like,

and then he would describe his story and it's like,

"There's no way you guys are the same person."

And he would quote the book with confidence.

And I could tell, you know,

with the way that he was telling me,

he was, I could see it in his eyes.

He was genuine.

He was authentic.

And I appreciated that.

He was honest with me.

And he never judged me.

And that man took me through my steps.

And he taught me, you know,

I remember doing my fourth step.

He gave me a week to do my fourth step.

And I waited until the last day.

I sat down and I cracked it out in three hours.

And it was thorough.

30 names, boom, everything.

There it is.

And he met with me.

He taught me how to surf.

I didn't know I liked to surf until I got sober.

He taught me how to surf and I fell in love with it.

And every Saturday, he and I,

he would take me surfing.

And after that, we would go over my fifth step for an hour.

And I remember I was doing my,

I remember I did my first, my second, my third,

my fourth resentment.

My third resentment was like my five-year-old

little brother at the time.

Like, who gets resentful at a five,

what 21-year-old man is resentful

at a five-year-old little brother?

And it was like, I could be mad at everything,

at everyone and everything, easy.

It's how I've ran my entire life.

And I remember we were at the Panera Bread one day

after a new meeting at the Valley Club.

We're at the Panera Bread and I'm going over

my sister, my little sister, who, I mean,

my siblings did nothing but love me to death, love me.

They would follow me around.

I'd be like, "Go away!"

And they would just follow me around.

And I remember I went over whatever resentment I had

against like my 11-year-old sister at the time.

And I don't remember what it was,

but I remember I said something and he said something.

And whatever he said struck me in such a way

that whatever was right here,

it felt like something cracked open

and lifted right out of me, right there in the Panera Bread.

I remember where we were sitting.

I remember what time it was.

I remember that I was brought to a state of presence

that I had never felt before,

except when I was getting loaded.

But this time it was without having to get loaded.

I will never forget that day.

That day, the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous changed.

My life changed that day.

And my idea of God changed that day.

And I fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous, man.

I proceeded to get straight A's in Alcoholics Anonymous.

No lie.

You want a commitment?

I got a commitment.

I'm mopping the floors and cleaning the bathroom

and at the Valley Club, I'm behind the coffee bar.

I'm secretary of a Wednesday, 3 p.m., a noon meeting.

And I'm starting to study the traditions.

And my sponsor told, you know,

and then I went and I started to make my amends

and I started to get an idea

of what my defects of character were.

And I started to go repair the damage

that I've caused in my life,

where I could look back at the person in the mirror

and be okay with him because he is trying.

He understood that he's done enough.

He's done enough of all that stuff.

Let's be somebody different now

'cause none of that worked.

And I proceeded to be somebody different.

My sponsor taught me that,

he told me the only reason

I'm taking you through the steps, Sonny,

it's not for me, it's not for you,

it's for the guy that you're gonna go help after this.

You need to always be in the book with somebody,

starting today.

You need to always be in the book with somebody.

And if you're not, you need to be actively going to meetings

trying to find somebody to be in the book with.

I was like, damn, really?

He's like, yeah.

And then he told me you gotta always have two commitments.

I always, I messed that one up.

And he said, and he said, yeah,

I need to go to at least four or five meetings a week

for the remainder of your sobriety.

And I said, okay.

And I proceeded to evangelize people.

I would carry my big book everywhere I went

and I would go to all these different meetings

and I'm just trying, I'm like aggressive with it.

Like I'm trying to sponsor people like my life,

dependent on it because at that point I was,

I mean, and now, even now today,

from the moment I had four or five months of sobriety,

I was convinced that my life depends on me

reading the big book with somebody else.

To this day, I'm absolutely convinced that that is true.

In fact, I'm gonna tell you something.

I'm just telling you, I got nine minutes.

Let me tell you this.

Life happens, I get time sober.

I'm gonna go look at you guys and talk.

The scariest thing for me was like,

while I was getting loaded,

was like walking into a Starbucks and like placing an order

and standing there waiting for my coffee to be ready.

It was like, it was the scariest thing.

That was just, I'm dangerously antisocial for real.

And you know, I got, I get sober

and they told me, you know, you're young, man.

Why don't you go back to school?

I said, okay.

So I started going to Pierce College.

They said, you're young, man.

You got any money?

Why don't you get a job?

So I went onto my uncle's computer

and I typed in jobs in Woodland Hills

and it came up like one of this,

one of those work development department things popped up

and they're like, you had an interview for Joanne Fabrics

at, you know, 9 a.m. at the work developments

at the employment center.

And I went in there and I got a job

at Joanne Fabrics and Crafts.

It was the one on Fallbrook and Victory.

That was my first job.

My first like big boy job ever.

First like honest dollar, pretty much.

I had a sales job, but that wasn't really that honest either.

But this is like my first honest dollar made.

And I loved it.

I loved it.

And I was starting to, you know, talk to girls

and just like my life started to open up

in Alcoholics Anonymous for real.

And I worked that job for two and a half years

and I graduated Pierce College and I transferred to CSUN.

I ended up getting a job.

I had leveraged my experience working with Fabrics

at Joanne Fabrics into a job selling suits

because I know about fabric.

I started wearing a suit to work.

I started selling suits, making a little bit more money.

I ended up getting a room for rent.

I was with my dad for the first two years.

I ended up getting a room for rent over by CSUN.

And I started going to school at CSUN.

I got a girlfriend.

She was beautiful.

And I should say this too, you know,

when I had a year and a half of sobriety,

my cousin, Matthew, that I mentioned in the beginning,

who was like my dog, you know, I remember, you know,

he got sober or I got sober and I wanted him to get sober.

And, you know, he would call me drunk

and he would want to get sober, just couldn't do it.

And, you know, one day it was five o'clock in the morning

and my dad came in and Matthew was drinking

and he passed out on his back and he threw up in his sleep

and he asphyxiated and he died at 21 years old.

I was 22 at the time.

And I remember when, you know, I remember when it happened,

it like shook me and I started to realize that like,

that's what I deal with.

I have alcoholism.

I have something inside of me, that thing,

it's uncomfortable by default.

That thing makes it okay in my brain

to take the first drink.

And I have an allergic reaction when I take the first drink.

I'll probably drink myself today.

I'm that guy, I'll blow my brains out, totally that guy.

And he died.

And two weeks later after he died, my uncle,

who was also one of us, died as well, overdosed on heroin.

And I started to see that like what I'm dealing with,

like people are dying.

And, you know, I saw people,

'cause my dad's been all around it.

So I've always seen people dying,

but never nobody like actually like,

like I felt I was close to.

That changed, that changed me.

That was like, this became very, very serious business

after that, for real.

I started to, I was big in H&I,

doing the whole panel thing and so, yeah.

So I go to CSUN and I'm doing the whole CSUN thing.

And that girl and I ended up getting an apartment

in Van Nuys and then I got a resentment at my dad.

So I stopped going to meetings

where he was going to meetings

and I started doing the Pacific group thing.

And I did PG for a year, solid.

I had a PG sponsor, I had a PG commitment at the big meeting.

I was going to PG fellowship and I ended the PG play,

like I was a PG guy.

And then me and my dad ended our relationship

after like a year and I was like, all right, peace.

I'm going back.

They ended up opening up the table over there in 2019.

And me and that girl got a different apartment

and COVID happened, shut everything down.

I hid away in my room, doing Zoom meetings for like a month

and then realized that I'm going to drink

if I don't start going to meetings

and I started going to the table.

And the table never closed during COVID.

They kept it open and a lot of the people,

a lot of people's lives got saved through the table

during COVID because they had no place to go.

And that's my home group.

And then what happened?

And then me and that girl got another apartment, cool.

Me and that girl in another apartment.

And then shortly after that, she dumped me.

And I had to move out of that apartment.

She kept the apartment, she kept the dog,

she kept, you know, everything.

And I had to go back to my dad's house.

I got nine years of sobriety.

I'm living out of a duffel bag as a 30 year old man.

And I'm just broken.

I'm just broken, I'm broken.

And yeah, she started showing up to my meeting hall

with a new dude, like a week after.

And I'm just hearing about it.

It was like, we love when I have a visitor experience.

That's, we love when that, that was awesome.

That was a great experience.

And then I was dying, I was dying.

And I started to, you know, I always sponsored people.

I always did AA and I always, you know,

got straight A's in Alcoholics Anonymous.

But you know, my relationship with God diminished

as time went on, you know.

I used Alcoholics Anonymous and the step work

to inflate my ego and it distanced me from God

as opposed to doing what we're supposed to do,

which is, you know, close that gap.

And I was blocked from God and I was trying to do three,

I was trying to fill this spiritual sickness that I have

with three dimensional things,

everything other than drinking and doing drugs.

And by the end of it, I wanted to blow my brains out.

And long story short, a miracle happened to me

where God made his presence felt in my life.

When I had 10 years of sobriety a year ago,

a year and a half ago, something happened to me.

I was traveling, I was in Egypt.

And that's another thing.

Like I ended up getting a bachelor's degree from CSUN.

I ended up getting a way better job.

I ended up getting massively depressed

when I was with that girl, racking up like 10s of thousands

of dollars in credit card debt,

getting a really good job, paying it all off.

I've been to like 10 countries since I've been sober.

I've traveled all over the world.

I've met all kinds of people.

I got 400 people in my phone I can call right now

and they'd be happy to help me.

I got like, my life is brand new.

It's the stuff that I used to dream about

when I was getting loaded.

I look back on that old person when I'm sharing like this.

And like that's, I heard this lady last night

share my meeting.

She's like, yo, if my current me could meet my old me,

my old me would probably beat me up.

Like I wouldn't want to bring that person

anywhere around my life today.

And honestly, I wasn't really that violent.

I was just really, really scared and pathetic and sad.

And like, I was just wounded, man.

And so what I want to say, I want to say that,

something happened to me when I had 10 years of sobriety

where my relationship with God changed completely.

I was on my knees crying in a mosque in Egypt.

I'm not gonna, I can't really describe what happened,

but God made his presence felt to Sonny that day.

And when I stood up, I left the old Sonny right there

on the floor of that mosque and every single day since

has been completely different.

That was a year and a half ago.

My understanding of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous,

completely different.

I started to realize that they say,

when we ask God to remove our fears,

we ask God to help us see them as a sick person.

When we ask God to remove our defensive character,

when we ask God to help us abandon ourselves

utterly to him, that started to make sense.

And I started to see the evidence of that prayer

to where my faith in it grew and grew and grew and grew.

So now when I carry that message and I read with people

or people call me, it's like,

yo, what does the big book say to do?

Did you do that?

And I can, I can, I can be a better, I can, I can,

I have grown in effectiveness and understanding

and carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous

in the last year and a half.

By far.

Um, I have one minute left.

I don't know.

I can say, I'll tell you this.

I share a house with a few sober people.

I love where I live.

For the first time in my life,

I don't feel like I have to have a female.

I used to like feel like,

like I need a female, like a life preserver.

Like if I don't have a female, I'm doing something wrong.

I'm not good enough.

I don't feel like that.

Cool.

I'm good on that.

I'm 32 years old now.

I just got fired from a really good job like two months ago

because my boss wanted to sleep with me.

And when I turned down her advances, she fired me.

We love when that happens.

And like you said, you know, like you said,

it's all good 'cause I have a God.

I have an all powerful, all knowing heavenly father,

the most high God, the creator of all things who loves me.

What can I possibly trip on?

I'm good.

How can I help you?

That's how I live my life today.

I got a roommate who's in the hospital right now.

And I'm gonna say this, not to brag or boast,

but I'm gonna say this to share about

what an example of Alcoholics Anonymous is.

That man called me at five o'clock in the morning,

three days ago.

I was able to wake up and take him to the ER.

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me to show up.

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me to be of service.

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me to stay there.

And people like my dad showed me

how to shoot up and show up.

And I was able to stay there with him all day

and argue with these doctors, man.

And make sure he's good.

I was able to, you know,

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me how to sleep at a hospital

with people that need it, whose family's out of town.

They don't have anybody.

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me to show up

for my commitment on a Friday night.

So I left the hospital to go to my commitment.

Somebody else called me needing help.

I'm like really effective with people who have like four,

five, six, seven years who wanna kill themselves.

I'm your guy.

Like I'm, let me talk to you.

You know what I mean?

Give me six hours, I got you.

I just basically do like one long test step.

That's pretty much all of the steps.

And by the time they leave me, they got a nine step.

Once you finish that, you're gonna be good, trust.

But I remember, so last night I get that call

and I'm taking somebody through the steps

in the hospital parking lot,

while I'm about to go sleep in the hospital with my friend.

That is Alcoholics Anonymous.

That is not Sonny.

That is not me.

I'm in a hole somewhere drinking myself to death.

I'll say this and I'll shut up.

Matthew, when he died,

his little sister was starting to smoke weed.

And I showed her, yo,

here's a big book about Alcoholics Anonymous, man.

Take it.

If you ever wanna stop, you ever need any help,

hit me up, I'm yours.

Yeah, we buried her last year too.

22, single mama.

No, not single mama, two kids.

And that, I mean, we laugh,

but my life is my stake in Alcoholics Anonymous.

My dad says that all the time

and I'm like really finally starting to understand

that like, could there be a higher calling?

Sometimes I get embarrassed.

You're gonna tell me my time's up, right?

Is it up?

- Yeah, it's up.

- You got my, I got,

you're not showing me on the light, dog.

You told me you'd show me with the light.

I had this one minute green light

over the last five minutes, I'm sorry.

But I'll say this and I'll stop.

I just, yeah.

Could there be a higher calling?

I love Alcoholics Anonymous, thanks for having me come out.