Patrick's Journey: Early Memories, Sponsorship, and Life on the Edge

My name is Patrick Hale, and I'm an alcoholic, a great pro alcoholic, and I used to get one

of your people say that I go, "Yeah, yeah." However, in keeping with, I got sober in 1984,

and I asked a guy named Wally Webb to be my sponsor, and nothing has changed since then

in that regard. So it's interesting, not that Wally's around anymore, but I have a cadre of

men that I can have that conversation with, and it's not one person I can call, like you said,

have a group of friends. And my story, what it was like, I grew up not feeling privileged. I grew up

in Santa Monica, not too far from here, and all the other kids had more money than us. So I always

felt like, and I was not a good student. I was not a good athlete, and I kind of, it's a very awkward

situation, happened very early in grammar school, and I got really separated myself from the crowd,

if you will. And they put me in the back of the classroom. They put me in other classrooms. They

couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And I don't think it's because I'm an alcoholic. I think

it's just because I'm an odd kid, and I don't know that that's unusual, actually, sociologically.

I just didn't have parents that were close to me and involved with me. They were off doing their

stuff. And I was about, and it's funny, I hear people say, "I remember my first drink." I don't.

I couldn't tell you. I just remember, I was in Santa Monica, actually, today, helping a friend

whose, the condo they were living in burnt in the Palisades. So he's moving into an apartment there,

and I went there to help him out. We drove by this liquor store, and I went, "I remember being 15

years old, posting up outside that liquor store, getting adults to go in and buy me a couple of

bottles of Rainier Ale so that I could go." And that's where my memory is. I don't remember when

I first did that, even. That's how foggy it is. You know, I've heard people talk about blackouts,

and I've heard that we alcoholics can have blackouts while drinking and while not. And

I had some interesting learning experiences where I thought I'd done Searching and Fearless Moral

Inventory. And then people come up to me and say, "Do you remember when you did this?" I'm like,

"My sister was one." She said, "Do you remember when you threatened me with a knife?" I'm like,

"What?" Like, "No." But I wasn't, wouldn't have been able to make that amends because it didn't

come to my memory until she said that to me. So there's a lot of stuff. I'm appreciative

for the way that, well, 12 steps are put together because it suggests that we continue to be

available to that inventory and to make amends. And, you know, the first writing of it was to

make restitution. Sometimes you can't quite put stuff back the way it was. Terrible. I don't know.

You know, hammer nails into a board when you're angry, pull the nails out, the holes are still

there. But I'm grateful for the fact that I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous. I tried. I'm not into

drunk-a-lugs. I don't have interesting ones. But I went to Santa Monica College for 10 years. Every

time I'd start a new semester, I'm not going to drink. You know how that worked out, right? And

when people say other issues when they're talking about marijuana or cocaine, it's like, if those

were really outside issues, you wouldn't mind if I did a line and smoked a joint before I came in

here as long as I didn't drink. Those are not outside issues. And I appreciate the fact that

when I first walked into an AA meeting, somebody said to me, "Nothing could affect you from the

neck up." I'm like, "Okay, that made sense." I was still drinking coffee does sort of affect

me from the neck up, but I still drink coffee. And I smoked tobacco off and on. Not much. I still

smoke cigars occasionally, but that I digress. The point was to be present for now, to be able to

navigate. Because when I take away alcohol, my problems with alcohol are over. As our program

tells me, my problems with me, my problems with this thing that's happening in my stomach right

now, because I have to get up here and talk in front of people. That's a little bit of a

trauma response. And what's my awareness of it? What am I doing with it? Am I thinking, "Oh,

geez, I want to have a drink to take that off." Maybe. At least I can be present for that feeling

and know that that's really just me being alive. That's quality of life. Yeah. Okay. That changed

for me. That changed for me. I remember my dad. I know I broke his heart. He was an old man. He

was born in 1892. That may sound weird to you, but he was 63 when I was born. He was an old man.

And I remember he had an apartment in Venice, and I'd show up there because I could get sober. I

could sober up there and hit a little one bedroom apartment. And he'd say, "Why do you do that to

yourself?" And I'd giggle and shrug my shoulders just because it feels good. Because why do we

drink? We like the way it makes us feel. And whether I did any of that other stuff, it was me

still chasing that same feeling, which ended up being feeling nothing. Initially, you get the

euphoric boost, but it would crash. I ended up in a situation with roommates. One of them had a,

like a, I would say cocaine-induced schizophrenic break. The other one moved out. And I thought,

heck, I'm moving into my car. How else am I going to be able to afford my drinking? And I lived in

my station wagon for a year and a half till I blew up the engine. Then I apprehended my dad's

Dodge Dart swinger and slept on the front seat of that. So you talk about living in a living room.

I was sleeping in a car behind the pool room for three or four years before my dad passed away.

And then I inherited $3,000. And I spent $2,000 on a van. And now I'm back in a hotel in California.

And that went on. Well, that's where I got sober. And the reason, you know, you talk about you stayed

in rehab because of a cute girl. That's why I came into a meeting. Because I was dating a girl who

said she wanted space. Why would she want space? A loser like me wants to hang out with her,

but I don't necessarily want to pay the bills. And, you know, I'm still sleeping in my rig behind

the pool hall. And I thought, well, maybe I'll get back with her so I show up in an AM meeting.

People are telling me, well, it doesn't matter what got here. And I said, no, you don't understand.

But truth was, I didn't even understand the depth of my illness until I was sober six months. I was

incapable. I remember having the big book in my possession, and I would try to read it. And I'd

get through a page of it. And I had no idea what I read. That's how scattered my brain was. I could

get to the end of the page. I didn't know what to say. And it sat pretty much pristine in the trunk

of my car for a couple years. I went to a book study at Marine Park. And I felt like I was just,

I was in Sunday school. It all lasted about 10 minutes. And I got this trauma response. And I'm

out of there. But you know what, you know what they said? They said, don't drink or use no matter

what. Come back tomorrow. That's what I did. And because it has become a custom in Southern

California to read a portion of chapter five, how it works, it gets hammered into your head.

And I was about six months sober when I heard a voice. And it was somebody who,

not that voice, this guy had married my sister. I have an older sister. She's about, she's a half

sister, 12 years older than that. She got kicked out of the house at 18 for being a pill head.

AA didn't reject her. In fact, they grabbed her and found her a sponsor. And she got AA,

what they call, on the program back then in the early 60s. And she was, in some ways,

a bit of my Eskimo because even though I never identified, I remember my mom saying,

maybe you want to go to an AA meeting. And I'd shred my what for? I didn't have a clue. And I

thought, well, what'd she say? Maybe you'd like to hear the stories they tell. She got it. I mean,

we're the last to see it. The people around us, they know. And I spent 10 years trying that. I'm

not going to drink this semester. I didn't get through a semester. But soon as I buckled down

and said, okay, I'm going to try this, little by little, I got pieces. And one of the key things

that happened for me in terms of learning what's in that book was I was invited to actually sit with

a group of guys and read a page of the book to each other. So, I'm saying it out loud and I'm

hearing it. And this was also well after I got a little of the cloud out of my head. Like I say,

it's six months. I didn't have a clue even that I had issues. And after getting sober, the issues

are not the alcohol. The issues are me. And then I'm directed to look at myself and do an inventory.

I thought, well, I am kind of a thief. And I used to think, if I can get away with it, it's illegal.

I thought that was good. That's good rules. No, probably not. So, I had to walk into my old

employer that I used to rake the till on. I worked that full room for a minute and give him a fist

full of $100 bills. I don't know. I wasn't keeping books, but I at least had to make an effort.

And the guy actually hired me back to work the door when I went to X-ray school as things went

forward. I was largely unemployable, marginally employable. By the time I got sober, I was

polishing cars for Mercedes Benz and being a porter. And not that that's a terrible job,

but after 10 years of the opportunity to go to school, that's not where it put me. It put me,

and I was driving those cars. Just letting you know. These new dealer trades, brand new car

down to San Diego, traded for a different car, drive it back, busted. Okay, I just told that

myself. But today, to suit up and show up is one of the first things I got here. Don't drink or use,

suit up and show up. So, when I started dating my now wife, I probably should have waited a

little bit. I heard a phrase, I don't know if you know this guy, Marc Maron, he's a comedian,

but he heard that he is the phrase, and I'm going to clean it up a little further, to screw right

past intimacy. So, we, yeah, exactly. It's an easy thing to do and spent a lot of time. I spent 30

years, we raised kids. She had a job. She was a graduate student, smart kid. I feel a lot,

certainly a better learner than I was in education and I think smarter than I. And none of my kids

ever saw me drink or use, which is one of great God's blessings. Not that I was a spiritual giant

all the time, not like I had my, certainly had my failings raising kids, but I was there for them.

I was cognitively there for them. And the gift, the quality of life that, yeah, yeah, yeah. No,

I'm not going to say that again. But it has afforded me more than I could ever have imagined.

I was looking for jobs. I had applied for a job with the sanitation department. I applied for

something that used, nothing was coming my way. And a friend said, apply for this x-ray program

at the BA. And I wasn't really qualified, but I got an old professor from Santa Monica College

who liked me, wrote me a great letter. I got in and I decided to show up 35 hours a week for two

years. And my gosh, I got a career. I ended up doing my last 30 plus years working at UCLA,

doing imaging because I suited up and showed up, learned how to learn. That's where I really first

learned how to actually spend time and learn in school. It was done at second grade. After that,

I was just cheating in line my way through school, but here I had to do it right, a program telling

me to do it right. And life is throwing curve balls. Changes are happening. It looks my wife

and I might be separating. I am not going to drink over this. It happens. It's a big life change.

Both my kids are out of the house. I think whatever she's, her change in disposition is,

whatever my disposition is, I don't know. But I'm grateful that I have program friends to talk to

and that I can talk things through. I have a grandbaby that lives a little ways away,

but she's in California. It's a 12 hour drive, but I have the facility to get there. And I have the

facility to be present and they want me there in their lives. That's the big deal. And I know

people. The tragic thing is I know people that were my friends. I don't want to talk about other

people, but I'm going to. My wife's brother was somebody who I used to get high with in high

school and we were running buddies. He's still alive, but he ain't so. He's my age and his

disposition is tragic. The quality of his life is tragic. And if people say this program saved my

life, what it does, it saved the quality, the wonderful nature of the way I get to enjoy the

way I live. And it might be easier to not be tortured the way I see some people tortured.

We are gifted. The fact that this program came along and offered us these principles to work

on to practice. What did both of you say? These are a group of principles which have practiced

as a way of life and able to relieve the craving for alcohol and allow the sufferer to become

happily and usefully whole. That's the phrase out of the 12 and 12. And I'm not a rigid. In fact,

it helps that I read it that way, that it's the principles that we have to work. The steps we do,

the steps we take, but the principles we work to instill in our lives. And for me, it's sometimes

it works. Sometimes it's easy. I'm kind of thinking of a good segue here. I don't know where

I'm at in terms of... I got funny. I had a sponsee I worked with a while and I was not the person for

him. I wished he'd gotten sober. In fact, he came with me. I spoke at the last time I spoke at this

meeting over at the other meeting. And he ended up in a place called Beacon House, which is a pretty

rigid lockdown. He wasn't even allowed to go out of there. He could leave, but he couldn't go back

and he couldn't have a cell phone. And that was for six months. And then when he went to go make

amends with his folks, someone went with him from Beacon House. He had a three by five card to read

his amends. They drove back to Beacon House. And that kind of structure was something that

this person needed. I'm glad nobody tried to put that structure on me. You would have been

an embargo. I'd say the resistance to being told, and yet thankfully here we're given suggestions.

But some people need a little more guidance. Some people need a little more structure.

About the beginning of the pandemic, some friends, sober friends, since I've been sober a minute,

I met a few old timers and they pulled together a Zoom meeting of double winners. And they

introduced this Al-Anon business, which I'm going to make a joke out of it because that's what... But

it put a different slant on because the 12 steps as I was directed is to look for my part in it.

And if that's always my input, that can be defeating. Even though I need to be responsible

and make sure I look at where I'm responsible, there's a point where I also need to look where

am I going to be able to take care of myself despite the insanity going on around. And there's

a lot of the... Whether it's alcohol directly or the alcoholic family, which is why they call it

Al-Anon. What did he say? Lois said she realized she had a problem when the shoe was flying out

of her hand. She was throwing it at Bill W because he was going out the door to an AA meeting. He was

getting well, but she was twisted. So she was not the drunk, but the insanity was part of the whole

problem. And learning to take care of oneself in the face of what's going on around us is

another level that I was introduced to by these guys. And it's AA. It's not that

it's not the principles of alcoholics anonymous. And in fact, it's just that for me, I had to be

steered in that direction for a little bit of self-care. And I wonder sometimes I had my father

being whole, both of his siblings had passed. And one of them was very likely an alcoholic,

his sister. And his father died when he was three. So when people talk about this being genetic,

we've learned a lot more. When they talk, the original writing was it's a physical allergy

and an obsession of the mind. They've found that some people's livers inherently don't metabolize

alcohol the same as others. So it's acetate or something ends up in the blood and creates

craving. And so the cycle begins more immediately for some people. But they also found that while

drinking that condition can be created over time, ergo the progressive nature of our disease, which

is what the book observes. And the science follows right along with that, that if we keep drinking,

we then turn our livers into something else. The way they function actually creates more craving.

Yeah, it's being able to be present and know that I don't ever want to do that to myself again and

stay in the opportunity to be of service and take care of the people around me. And I just retired.

So I feel like this is a third life for me. I feel like my, and I don't begrudge my drinking and

using yours. There was a certain amount of fun there. I mean, for me, I got it. But there was

also the failed attempts at adulting. What did I just get? I just got a letter that I have to,

something to do with insurance and verification, my wife and I'm like, okay, I have to go find

these documents. Okay. It seems arduous, but it's adulting and it's something that I'm going to get

around to doing it. I didn't have to do it. I opened it. I got to do it now. No, I don't. I

can put it down. I can make time for it. I will do it. And that's me navigating my little baby

trauma responses to all sorts of stuff that happened all the time. It's feeling what's

going on right here and learning to just say, okay, take a breath. I wonder if I just hear

a thing. Some people know a lot of the history of AA. I've learned a little of it. Roland Hazard,

some fellow who was apparently a wealthy guy that had an alcohol problem and traveled to see

Carl Jung in Europe. And the most recent thing I heard was that Carl Jung almost didn't tell him

what he told him, which is that the only people he's seen with his kind of alcoholism gets over

find some sort of spiritual, have a spiritual take. And he said he almost, later before he wrote

something, before he passed, that he almost didn't tell him that because it wasn't scientific.

Because to give him a suggestion, he was a doctor, medical doctor. Carl Jung is a

psychiatrist. He almost didn't say because it wasn't a scientific approach to have a spiritual

approach. Now, we ended up with a lot of the languages decidedly a certain religious approach,

but it's, there's a big difference between religion and a spiritual approach. And thank gosh,

they put that, they call it the wide arch. Was it atheist Ed? Jim Burwell, I think was his name.

His story is in at least one of the books. I think it's in the latest edition too. But he said,

he's the one that kept coming back. You guys are nuts. I'm into the psychology of the

self-examination, but this God business is too much. If sometimes my spirituality may be God

centric, but you know, I don't know if you guys, there's that page 417, acceptance is the answer

to all my problems today. Nothing. Because when I'm disturbed, I find some person, place, thing or

situation, some fact of my life unacceptable to me and I can find no serenity until I accept that

person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it's supposed to be at this moment. And

it goes on to say nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. I often read

that and go, okay, but people make mistakes. Things happen randomly. But I know that for me,

one of the things this program suggests is a loving God. And therein lies my ability to have

compassion. I get compassion very sometimes, but that's my goal. My goal is to have compassion.

My goal is to be kind. And that's where I'm, if I'm looking at something that is going to be

in line with God's will for me, you know, it's pretty short prayer. I don't get to ask for my

kids' health. I don't get to ask for money. All I can ask for is knowledge. That's what the prayer

says. I can ask for knowledge of God's will for me, period. Now, whether what that means could

be a pretty broad brush, but now I don't get, I just have to listen. And that's where to me,

that's the meditation part. That's be quiet. So I'm of a mind often to just say a whole lot more

to say, and I'm getting there now. I appreciate being asked to come share with you guys and I'm

going to cut this short and have a lovely evening.