From Puerto Rican Roots to College Chaos: My Journey with Alcohol

"Hi, Jorge! Thank you, Nick, for the invitation. Thank you, Bill, for your talk.

He said, "I'm not an alcoholic. I just like to drink."

So, I completely relate to that. You know, my disease has manifested itself during my life.

It's humane. Motives of Brandeis has always been trying to tell me something that is, you know,

some sort of lie so that it can keep, you know, existing within my life while I don't acknowledge what it really is.

The biggest example of it I can give you right off the bat is, you know, from Puerto Rico.

I grew up there. We were like a drinking culture.

For the longest time, as I grew up and started drinking and alcohol became a part of my life,

I never for once considered that I was an alcoholic. I was just Puerto Rican.

It was just part of my culture. Even as I was drinking, like you said, for the effect,

again, I'm not even crazy about the taste either. Like, I've never had tequila.

I like the taste of it, vodka, but I'm not a person who's like, "Oh, it's a warm day. I wish I could have a beer."

It never was like that. It was just like, I wish I could get loaded. It was always like that.

You know, and eventually you read the book and we didn't bore the effect. But I had no knowledge of the progression of the alcoholic.

And again, it was like this train, like, you know, like the alcoholic monster was driving the caboose,

and it was always trying to stay ahead of my perception of how it was taking over my life.

So for, you know, through my teens and everything, again, it was just like part of my culture.

Puerto Rico has a lot of rum, Bacardi. Never even considered that I had a probe while I was still humiliating everybody in my family.

You know, I would be, you know, the person that it was kind of like a wild card if I went to a family event.

You never knew what I would do. You know, my family is like a proper Puerto Rican family.

And I would always just kind of like embarrass them. I'm having like, you know, like delayed shame over that I could have given you years later.

I think of these events and now we sort of smile about it because, you know, we survived.

But it was still a lot of stuff that's just like, it's not funny. You know, like I feel a lot of shame over a lot of the stuff I did.

And it wasn't anything like, nothing like dramatic, but you would say not telenovela, just the absolute constant letting down of people.

If you wanted something not done, you would give it to Jorge. If you wanted, you know, your hopes dashed down to Jorge.

You know, it was just like that. And it became kind of like my thing.

So that was like my youth, you know. And then eventually I went to college in the States.

And so again, so now the alcoholic monster is talking to his friends, to the living monster.

OK, we got to rewrite. We have a new twist in Jorge's script. He's in the States now.

He's not in Puerto Rico. You know, how can we continue this?

Now it was like a college experience. You know, the college experience is to get drunk and puke at every party and just be completely insane.

You know, jumbalooch, the animal, that area. And, you know, it turns out that's not necessarily the college experience.

You don't have to go to college and be a complete, you know, zero.

But that bought the disease, you know, a tendency in my life for four plus more years.

It was just constant. And you couldn't talk me out of it. You know, I'm like, I'm enjoying my youth.

You know, this is what I do. This is what everybody in college does.

You know, a lot. Yeah, a lot of everybody's. I'm glowing. Everybody does this.

You know, everybody, you know, and and, you know, very discovered other drugs.

We became a big issue. And here's another global thing. I held on to that.

And I was like, nobody has ever died from body one. Nobody.

You know, I have no idea. Like I'm some sort of expert who's done research papers on this.

I have no idea. But I could think of the famous people that died.

You know, you had overdoses, you know, even John Bonham, definitely just like from pure alcohol.

It's like you can pass out and choke on his body or whatever.

So but I'm like, I don't know any single person who's ever just like been smoking just like that.

So, you know, I took that, you know, I would hold on to some sort of fallacy that allowed my disease to just keep thriving.

Keep going and keep going. The first indication that I remember in my life where I felt like there might be a problem with me was,

I don't know, somewhere in my college years or maybe after my college years.

And I live yet and I'm living in New York. And I remember I was in this.

I was trying to get with this girl and then we go to her apartment and then I say to her, do you have anything we can party with?

You know, like, do you have any weed? Because we were drinking in the place wherever we were.

Do you have anything we can party with? And she said three words that exploded my brain.

I'm like, do you have anything we can party with? And she goes, I'm not sure.

Now, at the stage that I was in, my progression with my daily consumption of herbals and all that sort of stuff,

that to me felt like if you were about to go scuba diving and somebody says, hey, dude, do you have oxygen in your tank?

And you're like, I'm not sure. Let me just jump in anyway.

You know, for me, at that point, my disease had me, you know, by the cojones, you know, it had me.

And I had to know exactly how much substances I had, if I had a stock fridge, if I had a, you know, a full bag.

And to go into somebody's apartment and to hear such a cavalier, like, I don't know if I have any medicine, you know, if I have any oxygen.

I'm like, do you know where your kids are? No kidding. Do you have any? I'm not sure.

It felt like this is like biting on information that you need to know at any given moment.

So she goes, I'm not sure. And then she's like looking and looking.

And I'm like, I'm just blown. And then she find she found something that was old and like ruined and like didn't work.

And I'm like, who does? This felt to me like the worst case of neglect.

Actually, I was called to report this.

So that was the first time that I can remember where somebody's relationship to drugs and alcohol, you know, drugs in that case was completely different than mine.

It was like, well, take it or leave it. Oh, you're here or there. It doesn't matter.

I wasn't living like that anymore. You know, this was already now after after college.

And, you know, I was supplementing my addiction with weed and it was mainly those two things.

Those were my big main things. Alcohol and weed, alcohol and weed.

Eventually, like we hear, you know, weed in particular would give me all these dreams and then I wouldn't care.

And it would rob me of the energy to see them through. And my life started to plummet.

And eventually I came to L.A. from, you know, a lot of stops and starts and everything.

But eventually I ended up in L.A. because God bless my parents.

They didn't know anything. And they go, go to the land of yoga, you know, go go to yoga.

We didn't know anything about really like I didn't know anything about the program.

I didn't know anything about it. I love my country. I love my island. But in Puerto Rico, AA is not huge.

We have meetings there, but it's not here. You can go, you know, if you look in the book anywhere in Puerto Rico, it was like, oh, my God, it's Thursday.

There might be a meeting in the area. So I came to go to go to yoga.

OK, sure. I guess I came here in 2000 or whatever. Oh, seven.

Yeah. Oh, seven. And I started doing yoga to try to clear my head.

Of course, I didn't work. And but I was seeing this therapist who was in the program.

And she suggested, you know, after a lot of their talk and everything, you know, and she was kind enough not to force anything.

I mean, eventually she said, you know, you might want to try AA.

And I'm like, OK, you know, and again, I don't know how to transmit this with enough force.

But in Puerto Rico, an alcoholic is like a complete loser.

Like like here, it's almost like like, hey, man, you're an alcoholic.

Here we understand already that it's something you can surpass.

And if you call yourself an alcoholic, I think a lot of people here understand that, oh, you're probably a person who's working.

If you call yourself an alcoholic and then you look like clean, you know, they might be like, oh, you're a sober alcohol.

But they're like, I never had that experience. I never, you know, alcoholic is a guy in the street who can handle his liquor and then shame on him.

You know, so it's like so my therapist was like, you should try AA. OK, you know, sure, sure.

And I wanted to appease the people who were still, you know, looking after me.

So I said, sure, I'll try it. And I went to a meeting.

It was horrifying. It was absolutely repellent to me.

I couldn't get over the fact that people seem to be so happy.

And of course, it said a lot about my state of mind at that time, but it couldn't just show you how.

So something that was like revolting to the idea of the recovery.

So when the birthday celebrations were happening, which at that meeting was before the speakers, I left.

I just I just love discussing these people are liars or clearly brainwashed who can possibly be grateful and have this this disease.

This is all BS. And I left. Now, here's what I remember fondly about that moment.

I went back to the therapist whenever I saw her again and I said, yeah, I tried AA.

I tried it. You know, it's literally like being morbidly overweight and needing to work out in the gym.

And you go to the gym and you park your car in the gym thing and you go, oh, no, I hate it.

And you leave. And they say, yeah, I tried working out. I tried that health regimen.

I just didn't prepare. You should do like like six months before you can even say I tried it.

But I was dead set on the fact that I had given the program the old college tribe by stepping in the room and sitting there for 10 minutes and just being like, I can't take this.

I can't take the joy. And I leave. That's me trying.

And again, you guys know how we get into ideas and when we're setting it, I truly believe that it sounds funny now.

But I was telling my shrink, I'm like, I tried it. I tried. And I'm very literal.

My disease lives in semantics. I'm a literal idiot.

You know, one of the favorite hiding places for my disease is in semantics. I'll take something literal and I'll just run with it.

So I'm like, no, I tried it. I tried it. It doesn't work. I hate it.

And God bless her because she said very quickly, she goes, why don't you try MA?

So Mariguan and Anand because she knew my two drugs of choice.

And I'm very grateful that she said it very quickly. And it kind of I had no idea there were like sister programs or I had no idea about that.

Turns out there's like so many. So it caught me completely off guard and I didn't have any quick comebacks that I could say.

So I said, sure, I'll go to MA. And I want to mention that I'm grateful to MA because I did go there.

And at that particular moment in my addiction, I needed something where it would strip away just about any objection I could have.

You know, there was something that was a little different. I'd be like, no, I tried MA and it doesn't work either.

You know, but at that particular moment, MA was it really spoke to me and I had a hard time just dismissing it right away.

You know, it was really where I was at that point in my addiction. And I want to tell you one anecdote about that program that got me into AAing, which I'm grateful for that.

I still have to do it my way the way we do it. So I'm like, OK, I'll go to MA. It's nice. It's fellow stoners and whatever.

But I was still I still couldn't do it sober because it's just too scary. So I would park my car and it was a Wednesday meeting in Pasadena here.

And every Wednesday I would go, I would park my car, whatever, 20 minutes early and just sit there and light up and get all high and stone so that I could withstand the meeting.

And then I picked up a menthol. I started smoking Newport, which I never smoked, just so that I could cover up the smell.

So the Newport smell was like a little more pungent, you know, and then I would always get Visine and then check it, check it, check it.

You know, now this is a rookie going into a meeting with hardcore stoners with eyes white as the sky, you know, reeking of menthol and still being like, oh, and I'm thinking I'm fooling everybody, you know, and I'm like this idiot.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi. Yeah. Hi. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But that was my thing for a while. And I know everybody knew what I was doing and there's no way they didn't know.

But they were kind enough to let me live my little fallacy for a while, my little fantasy.

And I never wanted to take any chips because I felt, you know, I kind of still like the thing that I'm honest at some core, you know, and I didn't want to this whole chip thing was new to the meeting.

I didn't want to take a welcome chip or anything because it felt like I was committing to something that I wasn't prepared to follow through.

And one day this gentleman, Kirk, who I remember, I remember him.

He was sitting next to me and they were doing the chips and they said, you know, because I would never take any chips.

And then, you know, before they started saying the things he goes, hey, how long have you been here tonight at this meeting?

Tonight, Wednesday night. And I'm like, I don't know. It's seven, 10, 10 minutes.

And he goes, OK, you've been sober 10 minutes. He knew I was getting loaded in the car, but you've been sober.

And he puts his hand in his pocket and he takes out a point. He turns out he went to another fellowship for cigarette smoke, Nick.

And cigarette is so pervasive that cigarette that if you are able to not smoke for 10 minutes, they have a chip for it.

So they have a 10 minute chip. And so he goes, here's a 10 minute chip.

And again, it was so unexpected and I had no defense for that. And I'm like, OK, because it was I hadn't smoked for 10 minutes.

It was like a clean chip, cleanish. But I'm like, OK, I took it.

Now, the lesson I learned about that that I've taken all these years later is that God bless the alcohol.

You know, the whole thing is, you know, recovery starts when one alcoholic talks to another.

In this case, it was one one smoker to another.

He knew how to break my iron wall where I'm like, I'm never going to take a chip because I want to be alone.

And I knew I was smoking. So I didn't want to feel guilty, like I'm betraying the meeting. He knew he found a way to allow me to take a chip that I could take.

And I took it honestly. So my progression for chips were, you know, the 10 minute Nick and on.

Then the welcome chip for for M.A. and then 30, 60 and whatever.

And then after two years in that, I said, you know, let me try a because now I was getting over myself.

You know, there's this friend of mine goes, get over yourself. And I never understood what that meant.

But it's just like I'm the best person I'm getting in my own way.

You know, and I'm like, hey, you know, I had that one bad experience that one of those dreadful 15 minutes that I was there years ago.

But after two years, I was ready to to hear that message.

And and of course, remembering how alcohol had always been, you know, because it's easy to focus on the new romance, the new girl.

But he wanted the new girl, but the old steady partner was the host alcohol. But it's been there so long that I just forgot.

So I went back to a and that's where my life really started to change because it's the mothership, you know, which were so many meetings and all that stuff.

I started going to meetings in in the valley almost ready date. Well, I got sober in M.A., but then I realized my ready date is April 2nd of 2011.

And people, my friends will sometimes say, oh, how clever you got sober on the day after April Fools, you know, I got sober April 2nd.

And I had no idea. I didn't plan it. The way that that happened was that in that other fellowship in M.A., they have this this this thing called Feast of Fools.

They celebrate on April because we're all stoners and we're folding away. So they had like a big meeting every every every April 1st.

They call the Feast of Fools. And I had built two years there in M.A.

And then I realized and I realized and because I wasn't I wasn't doing it well enough, I guess.

And I remember my friends saying, no, you got to get back into it. You got to get back to these meetings.

And I was telling myself, you know, if I go back to this meeting, there's this guy called Ben and this guy called Jonathan.

And those two guys, guaranteed, guaranteed, there's no way around.

They're going to say, hey, how's it working out? You know, without, you know, how's your program working out?

You know, you're doing it by yourself and doing it without, you know, without steady meetings.

They were going to give me shit about the relapse and they were, you know, edgy enough in their opinion that there was no way around.

And I knew that for a fact. So I avoided the meetings after my relapse.

But then because of this party, the Feast of Fools and April 1st, I'm like, OK, I'll go.

You know, a friend talked me into it and I'm like, OK, I'm going to see these idiots and they're going to have to just like endure their harassment and whatever.

It is what it is. And I went there. I got loaded that night.

Just again, I have to have my buffer so that I can withstand the humiliation.

And sure enough, I see Ben and I see Jonathan. They're both there.

And of course, they say, Lord, it's great to see you. Great to see you, but I didn't say anything else.

And that was one of the most notable examples of me being absolutely wrong in something that I could have bet you all sorts of money.

And I knew they were going to mock me and they didn't. And I was so convinced.

And they just said, it's good to see you. And I'm like, OK, I'm waiting for the dig and there's no dig.

So that was the last day I drank and smoked April 1st, Saturday of 2011.

And then Friday and then Saturday is my sobriety day. So I love that story.

Being wrong has saved my ass. And I've surrounded myself.

You hear people say all these people have their catchphrases. You listen to them.

There's some people in my home group that I used to go to say, I rejoice in my wrongness.

I rejoice in my wrongness. And the idea is, I guess you're wrong about the way of living.

That's going to cost you the idea. Then you rejoice in your wrong. And you kind of like reframe every day.

Try to learn to reframe and not take things personal. If I was wrong about something,

maybe the addict hard-hit, drunk hard-hit would be like, no, no, no, take it.

Get very defensive. I don't want to hear you in recovery. I've kind of learned to frame it in a different way.

The same way we hear like surrender is not losing. It's just joining the winning side.

So being wrong, it's just like getting an update. You know, you have the old phone and now you have the 2.0 version.

So, oh, thank you for correcting me. Thank you for I know nobody wants to be humiliated.

But it's like, wait, I didn't know that. Thank you. I'm so stubborn.

Thank you for going to throw me anyway. So that started happening.

The commitments were something that helped me in my in my in my journey.

When they first had when I first had my initial sobriety commitments were something that was given to me like a homework.

My sponsor said, you need to do this. We'll do that. And I'm like, OK.

And the very first I had a greeting commitment and I missed the there was a day where I missed the green commitment and I was so mortified and so humiliated.

Ego, ego, ego. They stopped going to let me in like they're all going to hate me.

They're going to say you weren't there to greet me. How can the world wrestle with horror?

You know, and when I came back, I started choosing commitments.

I didn't wait for anybody to give some to me. I would be like, yeah, I want to I want to be a greeter here.

There should be here. And commitments have been a big part of my story.

I was a literature guy at my home group and I hadn't read the book because I was new.

The only book that I had read at that time was a new pair of glasses by Chucksie.

The big book was not I was like me. And I remember I still had the commitment.

And then this guy at the meeting when they said, oh, you're you're you're doing the literature and you still haven't read the book.

And I was like, oh, so instead of being humiliated by that and being put off by that because I was in my second sobriety

and I wanted to not get run off by stupid stupid stuff, I made a commitment to read it as I was during my commitment period.

So every whatever they did, I don't know, every Friday, whenever whenever my commitment was, I would I would get up at the end of the meeting and I would say, OK, so this meeting was a literature.

And here's the big book. These are two main texts. And I can I can vouch for the first three chapters of this book.

Stay tuned next week and they kind of were OK with it.

You know, nobody said, no, you're not allowed to do this unless you read the whole thing or unless you're an expert.

So yet another example of the million examples of the group holding my hand through my own stumbling, you know, and allowing me to get out of my own way.

And, you know, I needed to feel that support in the beginning. I really, I really did.

And that's how I read the book. That's literally how I read the book for the first time during my commitment to the literature guy in 2011, my first year.

I had I had an epiphany about year four where I, you know, the disease, it's kind of like a dam.

You know, you can have a big dam and be really strong. But if one little crack, it can be this tiny and you wake up the next morning and the dam is empty.

Yeah, maybe not the Hoover, but you know, one little crack and the water will just run out. Doesn't matter how, doesn't need to be that big.

And one thing that was getting on my nerves was the the Lord's Prayer.

And I was like, so again, the disease was manifesting itself in semantics.

And I would read all the time how we are non-denominational. This is not a denominational.

And I'm like, dude, this is a denominational prayer.

There's no there's no way around it. You know, and my disease was like doing cartwheels.

I got it because because he's he's kind of right.

You know, not to get into it, but it is a denominational thing.

My disease was like, we got it. We got it.

He's not going to let go of this one. And it was like I would bring it up and I could have a wonderful meeting.

And at the end, somebody would say, Lord's Prayer and stuff.

And I would fall asleep, you know, ruining the whole 50 minute experience that I just had.

Because it proves a lie. And I would, you know, I would bring it up to people and get out of my head and get out of my happy place.

And of course, everybody who was trying to help me would always try to convince me.

Yeah, but look at this and whatever.

Finally, this woman, Jo, when I started my my whole my whole fight, she goes, Lord, you're right.

I need water. And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is denominational. And it's like I'm getting ready for the for the thing.

And she was like, you're right. Now what? And I was like. My fist went down.

I was jonesing for a fight. I was jonesing for a fight because I knew I could latch on to this technicality and not lose.

Not win either, but not lose. And she goes, you're right.

Now what? Are you going to take this little technicality and throw away this program that's been working for people since 30s?

Over one thing that I happen to agree with you, but so what?

You're throwing the baby out with a bath water. Grow up.

And again, this was like I were on your floor and it was like a growing up experience because I realized I was being a super baby and king baby.

They say a baby is all global. A baby is black and white.

I hate, I hate, you know, and a grown up has like no one growing up is able to see the grades.

And the idea that there was something in the text that might be, quote unquote, technically.

Wrong or whatever. And yet still it's a life saving text was something that I hadn't considered.

I mean, again, it was another one of these moments where my my my journey expanded just to get a little current.

You know, the the last four years have been really difficult for everybody.

We had COVID, the pandemic, and a lot of people's lives have been upside down in mine, too.

I'm so grateful to the to the to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because my disease, when I was when I was trying to get newly sober,

I drank once when I when I was in my early journey over over a tennis match that a guy that I was cheering for lost.

You know, Federer lost his big tennis match in '08 and I drank over that because it was too too too crushing for me.

So that's how brittle my sobriety was in those early days. Now COVID comes along and I have, I don't know, eight years at that point or whatever.

And everything was hitting me like hardcore. You know, we lost our house.

We have to go to a different one, a smaller apartment. And because of the program, I was able to tap into the gratitude and tap into the, you know, I still have a roof.

I still have an apartment. And it feels to me like life was kicking my ass.

But it's kind of like fighting with Mike Tyson or fighting with Bruce Lee.

If you fight with him and you come out of the fight with your head still on and some bruises, but you're not like completely paraplegic, I'm high-fiving all of my friends and I'll be like, yeah.

And then somebody will be like, well, you just came out of that fight. Yeah. Did you win? Oh, no, I'm still alive.

You know, I survived. And that's been the attitude that I adopted during COVID. COVID really kicked my ass.

But the unrecovered whoreheads would have taken anything, any excuse to be out on the street, a street again, using money that I didn't have, using money that I need for my kids or on myself.

And here it was just like, yeah, it's my turn and I'm not the only one.

And that was a big thing because we're all into like the self-pitying and me, me, me. I'm the only one in the whole planet who's going through the pandemic, nobody else.

But I'm like, I'm not the only one. And I was able to appreciate the new gifts that came through the pandemic, you know, the Zoom.

I went to, you know, I'm sure it's like old hat now, but back then it was kind of scary.

Those early, you know, April, April of 2020. And I'm like, I'm not talking about Zoom.

You know, I'm not going to the meetings anymore. Like, like people are going to be recording me in Santo Domingo.

I'm like, oh, there's Jorge from Puerto Rico. You know, Zoom was a microcosm of my whole experience

in a repost by something that I don't know anything about, a full of opinions about something that I don't know anything about.

And then proven wrong by somebody who has been there before me.

There was a woman, a beautiful woman, woman named Sharon who was sober in 1979, had a ton of years when COVID came around.

And she asked the secretary at a Monday meeting, whatever, to be the speaker so that she could get over her fear.

Because she was old school and she said, I need to speak so I can get over my fear of Zoom.

And, you know, again, a lesson for me, I'm like, oh, my gosh, if Sharon can get into Zoom, well, who am I?

And Zoom became amazing. Zoom was a wonderful thing.

I've been to meetings in Paris and Hawaii through Zoom.

And, well, if anything that I want to say about where I am now, everything that I thought drugs would give me, AA has given me.

Drugs were the things that I thought would give me the high, but I would always want to keep it, you know, because if I share my drug,

then my high is going to go lower and I don't want to share with you.

But recovery is completely the opposite. Recovery, when I share, my high gets bigger.

It's like the anti-drug. It's completely backwards.

You know, when I share my experience, I get a high. But yeah, you take my sober room. I want to get a high over it.

So thank you for tonight being the face of the, the, the, the, the forum that has saved my life.

Thank you for the invitation. And I hope you got something out of what I said tonight. Thank you.