Howard's 32‑Year Sobriety Journey: From Bar Mitzvah Drunkenness to Recovery

Okay, look into the camera. There I am. I always smile like a disembodied head. Hi everybody. My name's Howard. I'm an alcoholic.

I like to say I'm an alcoholic named Howard. Put the "ism" in front of the person so I can remember why I'm here.

Thank you, Nate, for asking me. This is like some good old-fashioned AA, you know.

It's like I wouldn't have been surprised if Bill Wilson himself had stood at this. Yeah, it looks like him, right?

Where's Dr. Bob? Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Shucks.

Okay, so the rules. Rest nice. No bad language, right? Was that the idea? Okay, all right, okay, okay.

So, you know, I got dressed up. This is nice. This is like, you know, AA drag for me. I'm not used to dressing up.

And, you know, I hope I look good because, you know, you'd never guess I used to give blowjobs for crack.

So it's working if that's the case. My sobriety date is the only one I ever had, is January 24th, 1993. So if you're doing the math in your head, it's 32 years this past January.

And I'm just reached, like, full on Social Security age. It's like, what happened? I almost did it. What happened? I don't know. I stuck around and I didn't lose that date, which is a good thing for anybody that knows me.

So what it was like, what happened, what it's like now. And, well, what it was like was I was a weird little kid growing up in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia.

You'll hear a little accent from time to time. Come on, let's go home. Let's go down the shore and let's get some gas with a Z. It still comes back.

And, you know, I have one brother also in recovery. It's another program. I won't mention it, but I'll tell you the initials, N.A.

That tells you everything. So it is a family disease in my family. And he has 25 years and I have 32. It's part of my story, too. So growing up, I was little. I'm gay, but I wasn't like a feetly gay.

I liked sports just like the boys playing them more than the balls they were throwing around. So, so it was so I felt different. And then it was kind of nebbish.

I liked projects. I liked painting. Anything, you know, set you up is different. It was the 1960s. Everything was pretty homogenized in the suburbs.

You were supposed to act and look a certain way. And I was I was outside the mold. I tried to get into the mold, but that was not who I was.

So right from the start, there's deceit. Right from the start, there's lying. Right from the start, there's deception. And my parents, well-natured, good, but they were raised by wolves themselves. And, you know, they didn't know what to do.

They encouraged me. They were lovely. I, you know, my mom had a passion for pills, which I now see. My dad had a fondness for raging.

But considering where they came from, it was all right. It was okay. They could have been much worse. So my brother and I were kind of left to our own devices.

And it's the 70s now and it's hippie. I wanted to be a hippie. Now that would settle. That was going to fix everything for me because I could dress a little exaggerated and I could act a little kooky and no one would care.

And along came the drugs of the 70s. There was, well, I'm not going to name them all, but you guys are old enough I see on your faces. And I was 11 and my older brother brought home some drugs.

Before that, my dad had a liquor cabinet that I was very fond of. It was wood on the outside and from mica on the inside. And it had a pull down and it had like a slow hinge.

It would snap it and it would come like that. And then it was all the 60s, 70s liquors. There was Frangelica. There was Amaretto. There was all the sweet things, the schnapps.

I remember my first real bad drunk was on peppermint schnapps. To this day, I can't stand mint. It's a thing. Having that mint come out of my nose as a kid just killed it for me.

So if I go to an Indian restaurant, no mint, please put it on the side. I don't want any. And I think it's all back to that schnapps. Throwing up through your nose is never nice.

So there was that. And then there was the introduction of the drugs. Well, you said I couldn't curse, but I can talk about drugs. Is that okay? I am.

Right. You know, I like to say that there was a train that ran me over and the engine was alcohol. And then the, you know, the tender was maybe marijuana.

And then drug, drug, drug, drug, drug. And then that last, that caboose was meth. So, but when I like went, whoo, what the hell hit me? It was the train that started all with the alcohol.

So right back to it to this day. But I digress. So, so I was introduced to all sorts of narcotics and I was bar mitzvah, like a nice Jewish boy.

And I had spent a lot of time preparing for this bar mitzvah. And, but I had decided to drink. It was, what were they? White Russians. That's right. Cause I like the sweet kind of happy drinks. And I got, I got before I came up to the, to the Torah to read it, I was sloshed.

And so they unrolled the thing and I looked at it and it was, it was Hebrew. And a 13 year old, I'm like pissing in my pants. And then I go, okay. And the rabbi read my part and my family just said, oh, it's a, he had stage fright.

I was in toxic, I was drunk. I was drunk. So I always look back on that. You know, I look at the pictures. I have the pictures, like we had a professional photographer and there I am just like, like with half smiles, like weird smiles on my face.

So, so I, you know, I don't know if that's young, but that's when I started and, and it made me feel like I fit in. Now this was never had felt like I fit in before.

Like I said, it was awkward and geeky. And now I had this potion. I had this magic potion, whether it was going to alcohol or some kind of marching powder.

And I could share it with people and they would like me or they wouldn't make fun of me or they wouldn't give me a wedgie or they, you know, they wouldn't run away from me and, and leave me, you know, ditch me, which all the things that happened.

So I, I felt like I fit in and I chased that feeling till, you know, with, to my detriment till I was 33 when I came into contact with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now, my drunken log, it has, it has pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization. It has wetting the bed. It has soiling my pants with me in them. And, you know, at a party it has, I grew up in Philadelphia. I went to school in New York.

It has me quitting college. I was on a very, I was at a prestigious school for art and it was a scholarship. And I walked away from it because it interfered with my drinking and my, and my partying.

And I was more interested in being a bar fly in New York City than I was in being an art student. So I tossed that away and, and then lived this hedonistic life.

It was, you know, if it made me feel good, I was going to do it. And I would use you and you and you and I would steal and I would cheat and I didn't have a moral compass. It wasn't, there wasn't one installed. So how could I have had one?

My dad would say things like, "Fear is a great motivator." That was his answer. For me, fear is not a great motivator. Fear makes my testicles shrink up into my body. It makes me want to, you know, avoid my bowels and it makes me want to run away.

It made me want to motivate me to get into action. So that was a good thing to learn, the difference. But when I lived in New York, it was the early 1980s. And if you know anything about gay life in the 80s, you know that we had an epidemic that was horrible.

And it just, you know, it decimated gay life in New York. My answer was not to be of service, not to go to memorials, not to go to hospitals, not to hold my friends hands. My answer was to get on a plane and fly to California where I heard the party was still going.

I wanted a geographic. And I wanted that relief that I chased as a kid. I wanted that feeling. And so I came to California. I was in a relationship. And he is, he's a really sweet guy. And we were together a long time. And he was a, he had grown up with alcoholics.

So when we met, it was, it was old home for him. It felt comfortable for him to tuck me into bed or to make excuses for me when I didn't show up for a family function or to watch me rage on the phone with my parents.

And he would make excuses. He would balance my checkbook and tuck me into bed, as I like to say. And then, you know, the worst thing that can happen to an alcoholic happened to me. He was introduced to Alan.

And then he became a black belt in Al-Anon. And I would come home from a run and I would pass out and he would just walk over me and no more tucking into bed, you know, and then he would say, "I'm going to leave them lay where Jesus flung them."

And that was, and that was, that was it. You know, that was it. I did silly, crazy things. And I wasn't available, to say the least. At least I wasn't available to him. I was available to other gentlemen, but not to him.

And, you know, not to regret the past because it brought me here. So I guess everything works out.

So it was 1992. I had my own little business that I was in the process of bankrupting. I had started that business with a loan from my family that I had squandered.

I had really abused my relationship with Jamie and everything came crashing down at the same time. I think like it does. And I had no answers. I contemplated suicide, to be honest, because I didn't know there was a way out.

The worst hit came when the drinking and the drugging no longer worked. It no longer took me out of myself. I couldn't get that relief anymore. I would drink, I would use, and I would, I would obsess on myself.

I became paranoid. And it was the last thing I wanted to think about was me. I wanted, I wanted out, I wanted to check out. I had lost a great job, a great opportunity, took me all over the Far East. And I would, I was, I was mewling drugs into Indonesia, which if you know anything about Indonesia, it's a large Muslim country that doesn't abide by drugs.

And if I had ever been caught 32 years ago, I would just about be getting out of jail now. So it's like I, you know, the risk, oh, well, I want to get high, I want to use. And that was some crazy time because you couldn't drink the water, you couldn't trust it, you couldn't trust the ice cubes.

So I was, I was drinking straight scotch like that became my drink of choice out of necessity. And I loved it. So you know, I was resourceful. And so when everything came crashing down and the wheels came off in 93, I, let's see, I weighed maybe like 120 pounds.

I thought I was, I thought I looked good. I would go to the gym in West Hollywood in a pair of dolphin shorts, if you remember what those are, where they split on the side, right, you know, they split on so you can get it to get those good thigh exercises.

And I had a, I had a cell phone, but I didn't have the plan. So I had I paid for the phone, but I'm not, I couldn't afford the plan anymore. But so it hook, I had hooked this nine, this 1993 cell phone onto my shorts, which was about the size of this, right? It was like, Hello, hello. And, and I would pretend I was getting calls at the gym. I got to take this business call. Wait a minute. I'm going to be right back on this machine. Just can't wait in a second. Hello.

Oh, boy, what a sight. And so somebody saw this pantomime. And they took pity on me right there at the gym on Santa Monica Boulevard. And he came up to me, and I think I must have been, you know, let me hear your body talk. I was doing a little this. And he says, you know, the only people I know, they're only real people I know, in West Hollywood, I know through Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I heard was, would you like to go out on a date, you know, because, you know, it is a disease of precision.

And so he wrote down, you know, this seven o'clock meeting, and it said Melrose and Hayworth and come early because there's coffee and cookies. And, and I thought, you know, it was an amorous attachment. And so I get there a little late, the room is full, the speaker is already speaking, he's sharing about coming out of a blackout in the pool of the Acapulco Princess, I'll never forget it.

And I related because I had come out of blackouts in people's beds that were wet, not knowing Did I do that? Or did they do that? So I related right away. And I felt like every eyeball in the room was looking at me. And then you all gathered around, you all held hands. And then you recited the Lord's Prayer. And I at that point, then I figured it out. It was a Christian dodge to get Jews get them. And

I don't know why, but they were going to get me and, oh, and Happy Holi. Holy Week, everybody say Happy Holy Week. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, it's solemn, but not so anyway. So so then I ran, I ran out the door and made it to the crosswalk. And the crosswalk had a walk, don't walk, walk, don't walk, you know, and that walk, don't walk saved my life. I believe it to the marrow in my bones, because in the time it took for me to do it.

It took for me to do that someone spied me running out the door, came down the steps, tapped me on the shoulder stuck out his hand said, Hi, my name is Scott, I have 30 days over, I live in a mansion in Hollywood, don't leave. And I heard, you know, I was like, why, like, 30 days mansion in Hollywood, equally unobtainable, wonderful things. I had no idea what either one of them work. The mansion turns out to be a recovery house, which he shared with 40 other guys. But it didn't matter, because he got me roped in. And he

he got me back into the meeting for the second meeting. And in that second meeting, he kind of, you know, the guy who had invited me, I like never saw, I think I saw him for a second. And then Scott was this guy's name. And Scott just kind of sat with me through the second meeting. And he kept telling me things like, Oh, no, this is this. And this is that and somebody with 30 days with just a basic knowledge of what was going on, who had been court ordered there. I just thought I was out for a day. And

he saved my life. And then he said, Oh, tomorrow night, you have a car come by the house, pick up the guys, we're going to go to this meeting, you're going to love it. It's the best meeting so much better than this meeting, like telling me all that stuff just to get me through the door. And, and I did had, you know, when I was in this relationship, which was, like I said, it was disintegrating, we were already sleeping apart, and he didn't want to have anything to do with me. And I thought maybe I maybe just maybe I could save it, but it was gone. And the

business was also was also gone. But now I had a place to go. And so the next day, I kind of told them I had alcohol and drugs at the house. And instead of going to meeting to turn the car around and went to my house and cleaned it out of everything. And then we got to the meeting late. I'll never forget that. Oh, no, we're not going until we do this. This is this is that like a 12 step call on me. I had no idea what was going on. I thought I could just rest.

I thought I could just rest and maybe save my relationship. So the next meeting is a great big meeting in Hollywood. It's Hollywood Square, it's packed. And there's so many people and I had no idea I didn't have a concept of recovery. I was like a blank slate, which now I think is great because his rehab is called the Van Ness house. And it was one of the first gay and lesbian recovery houses in the country. And I would take my

meetings there. I didn't go through it. But I was there every night I was there every night I was trying to save my business. Now I was paying attention to it, but it was already gone. So in short order, I lost the business. In short order, I lost the relationship, but it was replaced with a fellowship with a design for living. I didn't understand the word. I didn't understand the thing I would tell people. I'm not an alcohol. I'm not an I'm an abuser. I'm an alcohol abuser. Like I made up my own

thing. And, and then they said, Yes, yes. Okay, dear, you know, you'll be fine. Sit up front. And, and that was and that was that, you know, and I just settled in. And then I heard things like 30 meetings in 30 days, don't drink between meetings. Get phone numbers, stick with the winners. Listen to the similarities, not the differences. Like all the stuff that we hear here, the platitudes that I my sobriety grew up, and they all were like, they were revelations.

They were the, you know, they were the things that, that I would repeat when I went to bed at night when I put my head on the pillow. My first sponsor was a lovely man named Michael, who was also you know, also Jewish. And he shared one night about his grandmother, and how she was a Russian immigrant. And so was mine. And she hardly spoke a word of English.

And so did mine. And she would sit by the window, like they would park her there in a chair. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is like my grandmother. And then he said in Yiddish, give a keep my kinder. God's help can come in an instant. Look, my child, God's help can come in an instant. And when she would look out the window and see the clouds. And then, you know, these these intense storms that we would have on the East Coast, and then a minute later be sunny. And I they must have come from the same

village in the Ukraine, because it was everything that I and I is like, this is a message. And Michael took me through the steps. I like I said, I was really shut down. And he had a he had to give me a vocabulary that I could have feelings of emotions, because I was so raw. And he worked the steps with me. He was kind of like a circuit speaker, but he didn't drive. So I became his chauffeur slash 10 minute speaker. Thank you, by the

way, Adam, that was a great job. And so we would go, oh, you know, we're going to go to Riverside, Riverside, out to Riverside, oh, we're going to go to Palm Springs, out to Palm Springs, to speak at a meeting. And we went, I mean, it was everywhere. And even I was on a trip to San Francisco, he showed up, and we would go to meetings. He was he was even more nevashi than me. And but I had that love of sports. And I remember one

time we were together in New York, and we went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets play the Phillies. And it was a no hitter. And he's reading a book through the entire game. And I just, I just love that he just could be himself. And I wanted that. I wanted that quality of life. See, and I did. So, so and then I went on to some other and we went through the steps and then kind of like drifted. I think I caught the resentment or all the driving I was doing. And

then I had a bunch of other sponsors. And now I've had one, her it's a woman, her name's Barbara J. And she's kind of a institution in Hollywood Gay AA. She's been around for 47 years. And she was a MTA bus driver, you know, like with the wheel up here like this, you know, ah, and she her her roots.

Was by the Women's Recovery Center. And she would know she knew when somebody got on the bus when they were going to the you know, they'd have a piece of paper, they'd look all messed up. And she's I know where you're going. Sit here, honey. And she would drop them off. And I just love that story. It was and she would, you know, and these people today who were who are friends of hers say it was Barbara who dropped me off at the Women's Recovery Center. And her her traction to me was always of

service of maximum service, maximum service. The book tells us you know, it's everything we do here, the connection with a higher power for me is to increase my my my spiritual life. But how do I live my life and it's in service helping another alcoholic. It's a ready made blueprint right here. I don't have to go look for volunteer opportunities, although I take them whenever I can.

I'll be doing some like food stuff tomorrow morning for homeless people. But right here, right in these rooms, I don't have you know, whether you're brewing up coffee, which for me is like the most important I know the newcomers supposed to be the most important but if the coffee's not on or they are all hell can break loose. So I think the coffee maker is a pretty important person in any meeting I go to. And so it's a ready made blueprint for for a life of service.

I don't have to look far in my time that I've been done all the room things in the room. I still do them. I've been a GSR I took became an area registrar. That was a thankless job. Holy smokes. It's like herding cats on crack. It was, you know, meetings, you know, would you like a GSR? No, thank you. I mean, and then I remember reading in the grapevine.

Great story. Holy smokes really touched me. It was about 911 and the pile that was left after the attack in the south end of Manhattan. And they set up a rest area, you know, for people in recovery that were working firemen and atms and you know, construction workers and what they were seeing was so grizzly and horrifying.

And the only meetings that were asked to set to volunteer were the ones that were registered through GSR. So I would tell the story. I mean, said, you know, listen, we live in earthquake zone, what happens if we have a major earthquake and there's like something set up, you know, how is how are professionals going to get in touch with a they're going to do it through the professional service arm, right, the, what is that cooperation, and then they're going to call out to GSR.

And if your meeting is is an active meeting, you know, you'll be called into today, you know, but if you're not, they're not going to know you're there. So that was a great tool. I love telling them that. It's like guilt. It's like Jewish guilt on steroids to get to get alcoholics involved. But that was a great service thing. And H&I used to go into the the gay tank at the Twin Towers got cleared for that. That was a trip.

I used to go, you know, bring a big book and go in with two or three guys. And right before me would be some church group. They have tambourines, they have a guitar, they'd be singing like, how do I compete with that? Right? Like, come on. Come on, get sober. And, but you know, it was okay. It was all right. I don't need a tambourine and a guitar. These people really wanted the program. And it was it was great.

You know, it felt that way. I can just remember one guy. He had gotten three DUIs in a month. And he's just as I'm unlucky. I'm just an unlucky guy. And he there he is in the orange jumpsuit. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, you may want to look three in one month. You know, you're gonna go away. Maybe you should think about it. You didn't hurt anyone yet. I have a sponsee who's who's got a DUI facing a felony. And I really feel for him. And he's a big,

straight guy from Orange County, who's he spoke last night at a meeting, my home group is, is Friday night newcomers on Moore Park. And so he spoke, he's got like 90 days. And he's like, Oh, my, you know, my gay Jewish sponsor is here, you know, where people wouldn't mix, you know, I was like, Yeah, because you came from Orange County, I wouldn't have anything to do with you. Of course, of course, we wouldn't make but we are we are people that wouldn't mix, but we're brought

together by a disease. And we're brought together by the belief that we are not bad people looking to get good. We're sick people looking to get well. And with that, and along with that, it's really it's really a great way to live. Lately, I geek I'm geeking out on AA history. And like this looks like a pretty intense. Anybody Hank Parkhurst ring a bell Hank Parkhurst. I Okay, so Hank Parkhurst was the

guy who was with bill and basically prompted bill to write the big book and would sit across from he actually wrote the chapter to the employer. That's the only chapter that built in right. And Hank was not a atheist or agnostic, but he felt that the program should really be more scientific and psychological. And it should have those elements to appeal to people who

were not religious, and Bill's inclination was to be more dogmatic. And the two of them got together, and Bill would do God, God, God, and Hank would say, you know, psychology, allergy and emotional, right. And then they they they joined and they, you know, and it's just an amazing thing that what happened in the writing, what do you got now? One minute, so anybody is interested. There's a great book called writing the big book,

which is like a scholarly, it's like huge. And then there's a biography of bill. And here's the thing, Hank Parkhurst, right? die drunk. And he had a he was like the first resentment at bill. Because the book didn't really the book, the money went to a didn't go to Hank or to bill, right? They like they wanted it. The first inclination was to make money, then they didn't. And Hank was mad. And Bill said, Okay, and so Hank would come around drunk and say you never paid for that furniture. And so

bill would pay him and then he would go away. And then like six months later, you never paid for that furniture. And then bill would pay him. And it was like a thing. You know, bill just had his heart opened up to Hank. And Hank drive dies drunk. And I just realized there's no Wikipedia page for Hank Parkhurst. And you know, there's bits and pieces on the internet. But my friends and I decided we're gonna we're gonna offer a page in Wikipedia to Hank Parkhurst.

And then you guys are all going to know about him next time I come here. So with that, thank you again. Thank you for sitting through this. Thank you for ministering the electronics