JR Honors the Quality of Life Community and Their Transformative Impact

- Hello everyone, my name is JR and I'm an alcoholic.

Hey, I'll say this once, I am deeply sorry

that I'm not there, I wanted to be there very much

and I feel very ill today, so I didn't wanna take

the chance of getting anybody sick.

Remove the spotlight, I wanna see you guys

when I talk to you.

Oh, that didn't work, there you go.

Gotcha, now I can see the room.

Hello everybody, so here's the point.

The reason is is because there are people

and I'm looking at you all now who I have

just the most tremendous amount of respect

and appreciation for.

I've had experiences in quality of life

that have been so important to my panda

and I've never, I know that, I have never like

gone out to eat with a few of you guys

or had long conversations with a few of you guys,

but some of you have just been so kind to me

and you've walked the walk so well

and I think most importantly, you saved the life

of a person that I love very dearly

and so that appreciation, it stays with me all the time

and so I always wanna have the opportunity

to thank you, to honor you.

Quality of life is fucking badass.

I talk you guys up, I love you guys,

what I do, I'm a drug counselor, a therapist

and so I run a lot of groups and there have been

entire groups on the quality of life traditions.

By the way, sometimes people get very angry at me

when I tell them my traditions.

They're like, what, what's that tradition right there?

That's bullshit, what do you mean you gotta

take your sponsor out to dinner?

I love the way you guys do shit because what you did

was you took this, you took this friend of mine

and he had nothing, right?

Like he landed on the doorstep,

it turned into a treatment center,

strung out like a lab monkey and he had to go through detox

and he had to go through residential

and he didn't have no money and his family

wouldn't talk to him, he didn't have no friends left.

He was tore up from the floor up, he was bankrupt, right?

And then one of y'all came by and offered to take him

to a quality of life meeting and that guy,

he had that spiritual experience that we talked about,

the G-O-D, not God in the traditional sense

but we use acronyms around here,

sometimes you'll hear good orderly direction,

group of drunks, my favorite one is

the gift of desperation, right?

So my friend, he had this gift of desperation

and he met you all and he went to your meeting

and he was like, "I'm gonna do what they do."

And you guys had a list of shit that he would have to do.

In order for me to do some of that shit,

it's gonna take a real level of commitment

and this dude followed through with this kind of commitment

like something I have never seen.

I spend all my time trying to convince people

to go to meetings.

I will tell them where the hot chicks meetings are,

I'll tell them where the free food meetings are,

you can get pizza Friday nights over here

if you wanna go to that,

like anything I can fucking say

to trick someone into going to a meeting.

But with this guy, he saw quality of life

and he didn't need to be tricked.

As a matter of fact, he looked at it as,

"Okay, I'm finishing up residential,

"I'm gonna move into a sober living, I don't have a car,

"I don't really have an income

"or whatever I have is very small."

But I believe the quality of life people

because I go to their meeting and I listen to them

and I look at them and I watch them

and I see the example that they set

and I believe that if I do what you guys do,

I'll get what you guys have got.

And so let me tell you how I was introduced to quality of life

we'll get back to this guy 'cause I fucking love this guy.

But I wanna tell you guys about

how I found out about quality of life.

So as a drug counselor, I run a lot of groups and treatment

and I would regularly go around the room

and ask the people about the four point plan

for anybody that's not familiar with four point plan,

it's go to meetings, get a sponsor, get a home group,

get a commitment.

So I would ask people,

how many meetings did you go to this week?

Do you have a sponsor?

What's your sponsor's name?

What's your grand sponsor's name?

Oh, you should share him and flip out about that one.

What's a grand sponsor?

I don't know, how about that one?

Of course you do if you have a sponsor, whatever.

So then I asked them how many meetings they went to

and how many commitments they have.

So I would do this regularly and I would go around the room

and one day a girl in my class said,

"Oh yeah, I have a home group."

Oh no, first she would say,

"Yes, I have gone to seven meetings this week."

And I would say, "Nice, nice, right?

That's how many we're aiming for."

And then she would say,

"Oh, my sponsor's name is Jean

and her sponsor's name is Theresa."

And I would say, "Wow, you're like the only person in the room

that even knows what a grand sponsor is

and you know her, that's excellent."

And then I would say, "What's your home group?"

And she would say, "Quality of life."

And I would say, "That's cool, but you know,

a home group is like one day a week.

You know, one time, one day,

you can't just say that the Valley Club is your home group

'cause there's 49 meetings a week at the Valley Club,

so that's not a home group, that's just the location."

And she was adamant.

She was like, "No, quality of life is my home group

and I go there every day."

And I thought, "Huh, that sounds fucking cool.

Tell me more.

How many commitments do you have?"

And she says, "Seven, well really more like 14."

I said, "What?"

Like nobody in the room has a commitment

and you have 14 yourself, what's that about?"

She's like, "Well, they require you

to have a commitment every day of the week

because they require you to go every day of the week

and most of us have a commitment to open the meeting,

to start the meeting and a commitment

at the end of the meeting that we have to do."

And by the way, I've had the privilege

of being of service at Quality of Life and I love it.

You guys will make up the most insane commitments

just to give people something to do, right?

I was the refrigerator stalker for like a year.

No, maybe for a few months and then I missed one day

and I even called and I still lost it

and I was so bummed out.

But anyways, like the refrigerator stalker

was the person at the end of the night,

they went to the refrigerator and they saw how many cokes

and monsters had been sold and then they went to the closet

and got the replacements and put them in the refrigerator.

It was the greatest commitment of all time.

Thank you for that.

I also did the sign commitment,

which I loved when it was across the street

because you had to get the sign,

you had to get there early

'cause you had to get the sign

and then walk half a block down the street

and put it out in the street.

Remember that one, that was a good one, right?

(laughs)

I go around this room and this girl is telling me

all about quality of life and I'm like,

this shit is amazing.

I can't even believe how good it is.

I wanna go, I wanna go and I wanna check it out.

Took me a little while still before I went.

In the meantime, a few more people rolled through

that became quality of life members

and those were the people that I saw heal

and recover quickly and look amazing, right?

So then this girl comes in and she joins quality of life

and she answers the questions

the same way the other girl did

and when I asked her who her sponsor was,

she said it was the other girl.

I'm like, oh, I know that girl.

Oh shit, nice.

All right, cool.

So I was always happy that I knew her sponsor

and that she was doing seven meetings a week

and had commitments at every meeting

and was doing quality of life.

I loved it, I was proud of her.

She was doing amazing.

She got a year sober.

This gets a little controversial.

Some of you newcomers are gonna be like, what the fuck?

But don't worry.

One day the new girl comes in and says,

oh, I only have a couple of days

I had to take a newcomer chip.

I said, really, what happened?

I was surprised 'cause I knew

that she was a quality of life member

and she said, well, my sponsor said

I had to take a newcomer chip

because I drank Heineken Zero.

Really?

Well, that's bullshit 'cause Heineken Zero

has zero alcohol in it.

So that's not a fucking relapse

and so this is when I finally came to quality of life.

Totally, listen, I'm sure this is a violation of my job.

It's unethical and it's probably not cool

with quality of life but I finally went to quality of life

so I could confront this girl's sponsor

and be like, what the fuck?

Why'd you take a newcomer chip?

So I walk in and I walk up to her

and I'm like, hey, so what happened?

She's like, oh, did she tell you she drank Heineken Zero?

I said, yeah.

She said, but did she tell you how she drank?

She said, what do you mean?

She said, well, she took a sitch pack

and she brought it home and she set it down

on the living room table and she drank all six

of them back to back.

I said, uh-huh.

She said, do you drink Coca-Cola?

Said, I do.

She said, would you ever bring a six pack home,

sit it down on the table and drink all six in a row?

I said, no, let me do that.

Exactly.

In my opinion, she drank that non-alcoholic beer

very alcoholically and that kinda got my head spinning

and I was like, the one thing I do feel about relapse

and what qualifies as a relapse and for me,

always qualifies as a relapse, whatever my sponsor says.

I leave that shit up to him.

My sponsor says I relapse and I relapse.

My sponsor says I didn't relapse and I didn't relapse.

That girl's sponsor told her that she relapsed

and I have no judgment for it at all.

But what I do now is I often play a game called

is it a relapse?

And I ask all kinds of really asinine questions.

Well, if Heineken Zero's not relapse, what about O'Doul's?

'Cause O'Doul's has like a teeny, teeny weeny percentage.

No, yeah, maybe.

What about non-alcoholic whiskey?

'Cause fucking Bevmo made that shit.

Or what, I started talking about drugs.

What about warm water injection, right?

You're not shooting heroin but you're filling up

a syringe full of warm water and putting it in your arm.

Is that a relapse?

What about a push?

For those of you who smoke crack, I might be the only one,

you know what a push is.

Is a push a relapse?

Maybe, maybe not.

You'd have to ask your sponsor.

I don't know.

So I love this is it a relapse game

and it's inspired by the girl with the Heineken Zeros

for the quality of life.

So anyways, here's the good news.

I finally found y'all, right?

I finally found your meeting.

And I think it was Sunday night was the first one I went to

and I fucking fell in love with it.

I absolutely fell in love with it.

And now there was a handful of people that I worked with

who had been clients where I work and they were members.

And the guy that I told you about, the guy that I love,

I consider him one of my two best friends in the world.

He was there and he would tell me,

hey JR, if you come to the meeting,

I'll save a seat for you.

And I always thought that was weird.

I was like, you're not really gonna save a seat for me.

You have like a thousand friends,

you're probably gonna save a seat for lots of people.

And he was always like, no, I promise,

I'll save a seat for you.

And he always did.

I don't think I've ever gone in quality of life

where he didn't have a seat safe for me.

It's amazing.

So I got to be there.

I got to meet you all.

And some of y'all are a little intimidating.

All right, just to be fair.

I wanted to join the quality of life meeting list

and I wasn't able to.

And that's cool because let's be honest,

I figured this out when I got into AA.

I really don't wanna be in a group that would consider me

to be okay to be one of their members.

But the quality of life, the reason I couldn't get into it

was because there were three mandatory meetings per week.

And on those days, at least on one of those days,

if not two of them, I had school.

When I started going to quality of life,

I guess this would make it about five years ago.

I had just gotten accepted into a master's program

and I was going to school a couple nights during the week.

And one of those at least was a day

that quality of life required you to be there.

So unfortunately, I never got onto the list,

but I know a lot about the list.

And I know a lot of you folks in here and I love you all.

You're amazing.

I have to bring up,

I thought about when I was invited to speak here

that I would have to bring up a friend of ours

who was a major part of this group

who is no longer with us.

And his name was Wano.

And I loved Wano.

And this is the second time I believe

that I was asked to speak at quality of life.

And the first time after I spoke,

Wano put a Facebook post up

that said there was an incredible speaker tonight.

And it was so flattering.

He was such a magic personality.

He was so fun.

He was so smart.

He was so loving.

So understand that he's one of you all, right?

He's a claw.

And you all, it's not just that you're strict

and it's not just that you're good

at helping people stay sober.

You're also very loving.

A couple of cold fish in the room, I'll be honest.

But no, deep down, you all are loving.

If you weren't, you wouldn't be saving people's lives.

All right?

So Wano was there at the birthday.

I went to a quality of life birthday,

which I had so much fun at,

because at the quality of life birthday,

they set two people in a tent on these two chairs,

one normal size,

and the sponsee gets the little tiny baby chair.

And the sponsee will hand the sponsee gifts,

and the sponsee will open gifts.

So I'm at this guy's birthday,

and this guy starts opening gifts.

And the first gift he opens is a bath towel.

And he holds it up very confused.

He looks at all of us and he goes, "It's a bath towel."

And Wano yells out, "It's so that you can take a shower."

It was so funny,

because the next gift he opened was a dress shirt.

And Wano said, "That's so you can get a job."

It was so perfect.

And it was exclusive to you all, man.

I ain't never seen that shit anywhere else.

And I loved it.

And there was a cookout that day.

And I think I was one of several people

to bring hamburger buns.

And there's something about the way you all fellowship

that's just, it's fucking unique, and it's special,

and it makes people feel a part of,

and it's so important, it's so important.

His addiction, alcoholism,

had me feeling like I wasn't a part of anything.

And I don't wanna talk much about my origin story, right?

I was thinking a lot about this too, right?

'Cause I have an origin story,

and it's pretty colorful, right?

It's like Spider-Man's origin story,

he got bit by a radioactive spider.

And Fantastic Four got blasted by space rays.

And the Hulk, or Dr. Manhattan,

got trapped in a nuclear explosion, right?

So a lot of superheroes have cool origin stories.

And so I wanted to talk about my origin story,

because it's interesting.

And it might explain why it turned out

to be such a superhero.

So I was born in 1970.

My parents were part of the hillbilly mafia, okay?

I was born in Kentucky, and they were junkies.

And what they would do is they would rob everything,

mostly drugstores, but they would rob everything.

My mom actually went into labor

in the middle of a bank robbery.

So I was born addicted to heroin during a bank robbery.

Like I said, pretty cool origin story, right?

So I was always destined to become a punk rock superhero.

I was always destined to be the JR

that you all see here tonight.

I grew up bouncing around from home to home.

I never lived with a family,

the same family more than one period of time,

which programmed me, right?

I'm a psychologist, and I study rats a lot,

and I study old conditioning experiments a lot.

And think of the way Pavlov brainwashed his dog

into slobbering by ringing a bell, right?

I was a child, I was brainwashed into believing

that no one could love me, right?

That I would never be a part of a family,

and I could never fit in,

and I could never be connected to anyone,

and that I would have to learn to live

in a way where I could isolate and take care of myself.

And I believe that, and it took a long time

before that conditioning and that brainwashing would change.

So of course I became an addict and an alcoholic

because I believe no one ever would love me,

and that I was different and special and terminally unique,

and that I probably should die doing drugs.

When I was a teenager,

I did have an older half-brother, half-sister.

My older brother died from a intravenous cocaine overdose.

He was 27, he joined the 27 Club.

And I think somewhere around then I thought,

yeah, that's gonna be me, right?

Like I'm gonna die that way too.

And I made it past 27, but at 30 I started shooting heroin.

And more than one night I thought, oh, I did too much.

And mom is gonna have to bury me next to my brother

through the same thing.

This is scary, horrible beliefs that I carried with me.

Oddly enough, so I did a lot of drugs

and I went to a lot of rehabs,

but I didn't get into hard drugs.

I didn't start shooting drugs until I was 30

because that's when I met her, right?

You knew her?

Oh, come on, you know her.

You know, you've seen her.

I always say I knew she was the girl for me, right?

When I saw her standing outside a detox.

Or I knew this girl, I knew this girl was the girl for me

when I saw her crying homeless in the rain

with a pet rat on her shoulder, right?

So I thought, this is the kind of girl

that would go out with me, hopefully the girl with a rat.

I took this homeless girl and her pet rat

to the cheesecake factory because they had bread

on the table and she could feed the rat

while we were eating.

His name was Greg, good dude.

So me and her, oh no, that was Ben.

Greg was the heroin addict rat, he came later.

So we go out and we're eating and she says,

you know I'm a heroin addict.

And I said, no, I don't believe it.

She said, no, if I don't do heroin every day,

I get violently ill.

And so I thought about it for less than one second

and I thought, well, if anybody is qualified to save you,

it's me.

And so I strapped on my cape and I said,

here I come to save the day, right?

I became captain, save the junkie girl.

And what I didn't know,

and some of you may have heard this before,

but if you haven't, let me be the first one to tell you.

If you start dating a heroin addict, you don't save them.

That's not how that shit works.

You become a heroin addict.

So that's what was next in the origin story.

At age 30, I got strung out in heroin.

And for the next seven years, it was God awful.

At 37, on June 24th, 2008, I was drinking and musing.

And I had to stop drinking and musing

'cause I had developed necrotic tissue, gangrene,

flesh eating bacteria, MRSA,

medically resistant staph infection.

What had happened was I had these sores growing on my arms

and they would not heal.

And when I went to the doctor, the doctor said,

we're gonna have to amputate your arms.

And I was like, but I'm using them.

So I went to like five doctors,

four of them said amputation.

One of them said, stop using heroin.

I really didn't hear anything I could work with.

So I went to my suboxone doctor

and if you have a heroin habit, you have a suboxone doctor.

And he said, we can save your arms.

And he sent me to a place called the One Care Therapy Clinic.

And this is gross and I'll run through it real quick,

but they would put my arm in a whirlpool for a half hour,

pull it out and cut the necrotic tissue out with a scalpel.

And they'd do the same thing to the other arm.

And when they were done,

they would lather both of the arms up with Neosporin,

wrap them in these big ass bandages, send me home.

I would get home, I would take the big ass bandages off.

I would shoot up in the same spot because I couldn't stop.

Just like you couldn't stop drinking or taking pills

or smoking weed or whatever it is that was your jam.

I couldn't stop.

And I thought, I'm gonna end this way.

I'm gonna die this way.

But I didn't wanna die.

I wanted a different life.

And I had this woman in my life who's still with me,

she's my wife now.

And she used to tell me, she used to say,

by the way, I met her in the waiting room

at detox at Tarzana.

So she used to tell me, she used to say,

you're going to get sober, JR,

and you're going to do wonderful things

and you're going to help people.

And I'd be strung out and shot out

and never believed that in a million years.

But she used that currency,

the most valuable currency known to man.

She used that hope on me.

If you can use that on someone, sometime this week,

if you can give someone some hope, I invite you to do that.

I do that as often as I can.

And it really does more for me than anything else.

I'm a junkie.

I'm addicted to sex, drugs, video games,

anything that fucking feels good.

I want to do lots of,

but nowadays nothing feels better than hope.

When I see someone get hope.

Nowadays, I work as a licensed therapist at Kaiser

and we get patients with liver disease,

people who are fucking dying, their livers are dying.

They'll come out of a coma

and then they'll end up in my office.

And I'll tell them about the quality of life.

I'll tell them about the four point plan.

I'll tell them about go to meetings, get a sponsor,

get a home group, get a commitment,

do this shit every single day.

And I've seen people get sober, get healthy,

get so healthy that their doctor

has taken them off the transplant list

because their liver has recovered,

because they went to meetings and stopped drinking.

It's that hope thing, man.

I throw it to them.

I get it back 10 times.

It's really beautiful.

So very simply, I was a homeless heroin addict.

I went to the program.

I got a sponsor.

I got really into commitments.

And I was at a meeting one time and the guy said,

"If you stay sober, someday you too will have bills."

And I thought to myself,

man, that would be fucking cool, right?

I didn't have no bills.

I had, I fucked for rent, right?

Like I didn't have, my name was never on the lease.

I never bought a car.

I never had a credit card.

And if I had a bank account,

it's just so I could rob those check cashing places, right?

Like I didn't have shit.

So when the guy said, "If I stay sober, I can get bills."

I was like, fuck, I wonder if he's right.

That'd be cool.

I know, be careful what you wish for,

but I got a fucking ton of bills and I'll be honest,

they kind of make me happy.

Like I'm in school, all right?

I've been in college for 12 years.

Do you know how much that costs?

I owe like almost a million dollars to somebody.

It's cool, I'll pay it back someday.

They told me just keep going to school

until you've done so much in school

that you can get a good enough job

to pay back all the money you borrowed.

So I'm gonna stay in school at least for a couple more years.

By the way, school's fucking awesome.

So now I wanna revisit my friend

who you guys saved his life, okay?

Because he was fucking amazing.

He went to y'all and he liked what he saw

and he wondered what you had

and it wasn't gonna be easy for him, right?

He didn't live at his parents' house.

He didn't still have his car.

He didn't even have a fucking bicycle, all right?

He had a bus pass.

If he was lucky, he had a bus pass.

And in order for him to catch a bus

where his sober living was to get to quality of life,

oh, by the way, quality of life had this other rule.

You had to show up an hour early for your commitment, right?

So the bus was gonna take an hour for him to get there.

So that means in order for him to go to the meeting,

he's gotta leave two hours before the meeting starts.

If the meeting starts at eight,

that means he's gotta be at the bus stop at six, okay?

And he did it and he did it every fucking day.

It was amazing.

I never saw anybody worked out hard for their recovery.

It blew me away day in and day out.

And the thing that was happening with him was,

oh man, this is just, I'm gonna get all mushy.

He just seemed to get fucking nicer

and cooler and more loving, right?

Like I know I said you guys are a little cold,

a little stuffy, a little intimidating,

but man, you transformed my friend

into like the sweetest, kindest, most lovingest dude.

And this dude, he was like me.

He didn't have no fucking bills.

He lived in a fucking car and he did a bunch of drugs, right?

And you guys like shape-shifted him.

You molded him out of clay.

You made him this little fucking sweetheart

that now you all love him.

I know, I've been there.

I've seen you, you all love this guy.

He went to a meeting every day

and it took him an hour to get there on the bus.

He had to get there an hour early.

He sat through the meeting,

which was an hour, an hour and a half.

And then after the meeting,

he was there for as long as it took

to get his commitment done

and make sure every other commitment was done.

And then he would catch a ride home,

hopefully from someone, right?

And if he didn't,

he was prepared to go hop on the bus again,

but he wasn't gonna not go to that meeting.

You guys taught him this.

What's he got now, five years?

Did he get five years this year?

Did his head pop out of his ass this year?

He's shaking his head yes.

I'm gonna say, yeah, he got five years this year.

But he did more than just that.

We talked about more than just paying bills, right?

We talked about self-esteem.

We talked about reconnecting with our families.

This dude, he loves his kids.

He wanted to be a father.

And like, he is the fucking,

he's the poster child, man.

Like he, well, one thing he did was

he fucked the nurse at the treatment center,

which, boom, automatically makes him

a G pimped out badass right there.

Like who does that?

Every time I went to treatment

and I saw the hot chicks working there,

they never paid me no mind.

But apparently he's got that special thing, right?

So one, he did that.

He got his kids back.

He got a job.

He got an education.

He married the girl.

He moved into a fucking gated community

and a house on the pool

in the same community as his fucking kids.

And now he spends all the time

with his kids that he wants to.

He is my fucking hero.

I look at this guy and I'm like,

how the hell did you do that?

It's amazing.

But here's the thing, here's the secret.

I helped a little bit.

You all helped a lot.

Quality of life gave this dude

a life beyond his wildest dreams.

If you had asked him five years ago,

do you think that this is what your life will look like,

he would have said, no, I hope so.

But no, that shit sounds impossible.

But y'all taught him to work hard and do what it took.

And so when I came on here and I told you guys

that I have this love and appreciation for you,

I'm not blowing smoke up your ass.

You all saved my friend's life, right?

You took a fucking homeless junkie

and turned him into a productive member of society

who gets to be a father and a husband

and a professional and a student.

And he's my fucking hero.

And you did that to him.

So whenever I go and I see you guys,

he comes here for his birthdays and shit

or every once in a while you guys will ask him to speak.

And I'll try to come out to that little room

that you're all in right now when he's here in town

because I love him so much.

And I love to see the fellowships

that you guys all share, right?

Like I said, I couldn't accomplish that

because my schedule didn't allow it.

But I do love you all 'cause of who you are

and how cool you are.

And my path is my path, right?

Like I'm not necessarily a quality of life guy,

even though I love quality of life and I'll go when I can.

But I also go to other AA meetings.

I'll go to AA at the Valley Club, right?

And then I'll go to NA, right?

Narcotics Anonymous 'cause they have nicer motorcycles.

Couple years ago, I got a nice car.

So I started going to AA.

I do both, right?

I like to embrace my bisexuality.

You can call me because I really can identify

as an addict and an alcoholic.

So you just say, "Hi, Anna."

So I understand that that requires

that I put $2 in the basket, but I'm cool with it.

I still go to three meetings a week.

I work a lot.

I'm currently having problems in my job.

I'm a therapist in addiction medicine at Kaiser on Sunset

and we're on strike.

So I'm not doing my regular full-time job,

but I am like farming myself out since I got licensed.

I'm going to other treatment centers

and letting them rent my services from here and there.

And you'll never believe what I tell them.

I go to these places and I say,

"You should go to meetings and get a sponsor

and get a home group for good commitment."

I swear to God.

I do this in school too.

By the way, I don't know if you guys know this,

but most therapists don't know shit about addiction.

Honestly, you would think everyone would have to know

everything about addiction,

but most of them don't know shit about addiction.

So I'm in college with like 50 other kids

that are in my doctoral class with me.

And I'm one of two guys who knows about addiction.

And so what I'm doing is I'm writing a thesis.

I'm writing a dissertation, right?

You have to write like a book in order to get a doctorate.

And in my book, I'm saying that, you know,

the treatment modalities that we're using right now

are not effective, that, you know,

I've been sober for 16 years and in the past 16 years,

people have continued to die from overdoses.

And so I think that what you're doing isn't working.

So I think you should try something different.

And this is the part where you guys are gonna laugh.

I told him, I think you should have him

do the four point plan.

Have him go to meetings, get a sponsor,

get a home group, get a commitment.

If I get a fucking doctorate behind my name

because I told them what you guys told me,

yeah, how cool was that?

It's a dream.

It's a dream come true to be a homeless heroin addict

who became a doctoral student

and a guy who's living a life beyond his wildest dreams.

It's really incredible.

I get to experience hope.

I get to share that hope with other people.

My printing quality of life, I've shared it with him.

I've watched him get a life

beyond his wildest dreams as well.

And it's just been a hell of a fucking journey.

Oh, and guys, I apologize.

I forgot I wasn't supposed to cuss here.

I cuss my foot.

I really do fucking love quality of life.

So I guess I need to thank God Quality of Life,

my sponsor as a whole, all of you for letting me share.

Thank you.