Ken's Journey: From Early Escapes to Long-Term Sobriety

My name is Ken and I am an alcoholic.

I'm Ken.

I'd like to thank the friends that came out tonight and I can thank God for the program

of Alcoholics Anonymous for my life today.

Literally owe it to this program.

My sobriety date is March 12th, 1994, just not my first one.

There's a story about me being two years old and my parents were having a party and

there were factories going around and I got ahold of one of them and I spun around in circles

until I passed out.

That was two.

I grew up as a kid in a house, middle kid of three.

My dad was an airline pilot, grew up in Camarillo.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom and I had a little brother with cerebral palsy that I

could put a weight on the house.

We always had that weight.

So my old man was a Navy pilot before he became an airline pilot and so his thing for relaxing

in the evenings was barbecuing and Jim Beam and Ginger Ale.

And I learned early that, you know, I can go get a little bit towards the end of that.

Things get a little better for me as a five-year-old little kid.

That's just a good weight.

I can see the pressure come off when he did that.

I could use the pressure coming off, you know, from a very early age.

I would spin around on a bar stool until I couldn't stand up.

That's where I wanted to be, exactly, except that I got sick, so I don't go too well.

But always, always, whatever I could find growing up through that to take my head out

of the game.

I got in trouble in grade school because somebody brought a mixed jug of something from home

that they got out of their liquor cabinet and all these girls were going to share it.

They wanted to tell me about it and they showed it to me and I drank it all.

And they were mad.

So they ratted me out and I was lit.

I'm in the principal's office and I'm getting yelled at, you know, you tell my parents to

send me home and I just don't let them know you're drunk, you know, just so I got, I think

I got mindfully busted, but not as much as I should have with my dad and I knew.

So, you know, my story involves a lot of other things, but that's how everything started

on my problems starting in with drinking.

Every relapse I never had started with, you know what, I'm just going to have a beer,

just a beer, or I'll smoke a little pot on the weekend, it'll be fine.

So there it is, you know, high school started and I got turned into marijuana earlier, which

was easier to get than alcohol for a kid my age at that time.

So that became my thing.

And of course I was chewing tobacco.

I got busted chewing tobacco at nine years old.

You know, I was smoking early on, I had to buy my first pack of cigarettes the day my

dad quit smoking and I was 13 because I couldn't steal anything anymore.

So it's just, it was something, you know, once I was smoking or dipping or whatever

it was that it's something to take the edge off and it's always been that way.

I went to my first 12 step meeting at 16, because I thought I might have a problem doing

cocaine, which I did.

I got arrested at 18, fresh out of high school, just because I was in the wrong neighborhood

because I was.

So that that led my first trip to my first rehab.

So I got out of my first rehab on Memorial Day in 1988 and moved into the Kepra house

up in Ventura.

I spent six months in the halfway house and I got a job sort of working in the oil fields.

And then I started doing alcoholic math because, you know, I don't know about you, but when

I was in school, I didn't study, I didn't do my homework.

I crammed before the class to the next class and I would take the test and I would get

by fairly well.

Just, you know, I always took shortcuts.

I always took shortcuts and I thought doing it all, following all the rules, you know,

it's for suckers, you know, it's for other people.

I mean, I, I wanted to skip to the end and think, you know, can we just straight line

it and be done with that and move on to the next thing because I need to go have a cigarette

or, you know, smoke a little something in the bathroom or.

So there was a lot of near misses along that line of stuff.

You know, I got smoke in my freshman year, I got smoke in my senior year.

But my senior year, my principal just yelled at me for bombing cigarettes from underclassmen.

Told me if I really needed one come see him, just graduate, go away.

So anyways, back to the rest, Kepper House and my alcoholic math.

So I would do the first three steps on the wall and I would agree with all of them.

No, no, no on that fourth one up there.

And then, then I would get a job and I'd start making some money and, and you know, I'd go

to some meetings.

We could go into meetings, I get a job, I'm living in a halfway house and then I find

a power greater than myself and her name was.

And as long as those then, you know, I would say cocaine is the problem.

And I'm just going to have, you know, a couple of beers and smoke a little weed.

It'll be, you know, just take the edge off.

But as soon as I did that and the inhibitions came down, you know, it was just that much

easier for me to go, you know, I'm already here.

And then the next justification would happen and, you know, at some point I would be a

resident in recovery.

It was possible.

But the whole kind of how it, how it went up the second treatment program I was in after

that kind of went away, I ended up going to one with my parents.

It was a place called be free up in thousand Oaks and it was for young adults that were

having trouble.

And it was a kind of a group therapy thing where the parents did therapy and the problems

that they're in the other room.

And yeah, there were some AA base to it and quilt and then encourage going to meetings

and that was really good.

And I was doing that and then I got rehired again on another way of plot warm.

So once again, I am making money and I'm doing good and staying sober and everything is just

working out great.

Right.

Um, I successfully completed probation off of the first thing and that all went away

and just disappeared.

And, uh, and then I started taking my therapy.

Once again, we are doing the math that I'm doing.

I am making money and I found my heart power and, and even worse now it's a secret because

that's more fun.

Um, but I can't tell anybody that I'm going to meetings with who I'm dating.

So I basically shut down my entire support system.

Right.

So all that's got to go away.

So now I am completely and totally untreated and hope by the way, one, two, three hike

because we need to do number four.

There's no sponsor in here because you know, I'm smarter than the average bear and not

a good recipe.

I want to do the first three steps and they'll do the fourth and the fifth and forth with

a sponsor actually do all of that.

You know, you're listening because it gets worse.

Um, so, uh, so that happened, uh, things went bad with her at all was horrible.

I ended up in a cross country motor home trip as a designated driver to Laughlin with a

motor home full of oil bill workers.

And uh, and there were some things in the back of the motor home that were transpiring

and I decided, sure, I'm going to have a little of that.

So now I'm on a run in Laughlin.

I'm afraid that if I don't have a drink before I go from one casino to the next, then I'm

going to sober up in between and we all know once you start sobering up, so the hangover

hits.

Uh, so you can't do that.

Um, so once you get off to the races and that ends me up with a getting called in and asking

me by the department of transportation, if I have a prescription for me, um, cause I

came up dirty on the D O T drug test oil file form and uh, put me in another rehab of the

Ventura trying to save my job.

And I, uh, I did that and they tried to give me a bunch of, uh, segments when I went in

there and I kept asking, Hey, there was a really good stream value and how did those

smoke?

And, uh, I don't really think giving me more drugs is the answer, um, to any of this.

So they brought me in and then the guy that was in recovery and we just started to get

sober.

Um, I seem to think I knew way too much about the program at the time and didn't do what

they said.

Still thought I knew what I was doing and I got loaded, uh, I think two weeks out of

that rehab under the guys, I would just have a couple of beers on the weekend and I would

be done on Monday, go back to work.

Eventually I couldn't go to work anymore cause I couldn't test clean, so I had to stop going.

Uh, meanwhile I lost a house.

I break down all the relationships with my parents.

I ended up living in the back of 70 Dodge Dart smashed in the front of the passenger

door to the rear bumper and uh, I had warrants in Ventura County, so I met a nice girl from

that V3 program and we lived in Agora and she took me in off the streets and started

taking me to games down here, valley, Davis, Oliva, and she saved my life and she introduced

me to some people up at the Topanga fireside meeting and down at St. Mel's Friday night

book study.

And I was sitting in there loaded and I was listening to her read to begin to get me and

they talked rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly followed our path.

That's one thing I had not done here.

I had not done thoroughly called path and work on steps, have a sponsor to get on instead

of me to the old heel.

Um, so of course during all that whole time I planned to get sober for new year's.

That's why my sobriety day's March.

I remember hearing a guy named Rick Chevy take a cake for 10 years and uh, he was talking

about his experience and I had to listen to him in this book study for some weeks then

and I finally realized that maybe just maybe I can give this a shot.

So uh, I made the right decision two days after that to not buy any more pot between

meetings and that was my first first day sober during that time.

A couple of weeks after that I was leaving that book study on a Friday night stop by

to see one of my friends growing up who was closing down a liquor store because that's

what he worked and I was telling him about how good I was doing.

I hadn't had any big look at my back pocket with the highlights in it that I'd been taking

it to being bad about two weeks sober.

And I love the camera rail on Centro Boulevard with blue stations down the street from the

liquor store.

And three patrol cars go to the exhibit by like they're going back to the station and

they're going, "Yeah man, all good.

You know good stuff that those guys when they come back and talk to me they'll be fine."

They did.

They took me that night because I had a warrant because one of my stubers, I thought it was

really good to transpose a couple of house numbers on the uh, address when I was reporting

again and they were sending the notices of failure to appear to the next door neighbors

and they weren't bothering to send them over so I didn't know I had a warrant the way I

went with my big book on my back pocket.

But hey successful that night I didn't pick up any new charges right?

So there you go small, small things.

So um, I had to go clean up the wreckage of my past and I had a guy that his name was

an unblocked head of step study at his house on Wednesday nights at the time and I'm in

Ventura County jail doing 60 days or do a 90 day sentence he let me out at 60 and he

let me call into his step study meeting collect on Wednesday nights and he looked at the speed

book and that's what I did when I was in jail and then I got out for two weeks on bail before

my next charge.

Um, this is all under damn for this type of stuff and uh, and I had to go back to work

furlough of the camera reel and I was one of the only ones that would read chapter five

or chapter three and then 12 traditions at the start of the meetings that the panels

brought in to work furlough and uh, did that for another nine days.

Uh, then I did a lot of meetings, my first 10 years I was uh, you know, the book study

on Friday night was my uh, my home group and we, we got after that and then the best highlighters

intellectual rules, lots of dictionaries and we just tore up that first hundred 64 pages.

We did that for years and years, um, commercial Saturday night from the dawn, uh, Topanga

fireside was a regular app for many, many years.

I had a sponsor, his name was Paul Johnson and uh, and things were going good.

You know, I had relationships, uh, my current wife, I had dated before we broke up and I

changed jobs.

I was working as a mechanic, oil field, and uh, I was a starving to death as a mechanic,

so I decided I would go back to school for electronics, learn something about it because

the electronics in the cars are baffling me.

So I did that and I got out of school and uh, went to work in the medical field as a

violinist at a hospital.

Your circumstances about that time as I'm getting ready to graduate, I reunite with

my, my now kernel wife, I'm dating and things are going good and I'm still going to a bunch

of meetings and I finished school at the top of my class and I got the new job and two

weeks into that new job, they handed me the keys to the narcotics pumps and said, you're

going to be doing maintenance on these IV pumps to deliver the medication.

And I just went, no, these people can't know me, they can't know my past, they'll never

trust me.

So now I'm pulling.

Is that me?

Nope.

Nope.

Okay.

So that's, um, I had to kind of pull in my program there, you know?

I think things quiet and I want everybody to know what's going on with that.

So my, uh, my outside life kind of became a secret in my work life.

That's the start of some, you know, some stuff, um, I sponsored after nine years, I got colon

cancer and died.

Uh, it was a big time for me.

I was still dating my wife who used to wear this big shirt that said, don't marry, be

happy.

And, uh, and here I am, I'm, I'm advancing in my career.

I'm moving out of, uh, uh, the biomed field inside the hospitals.

I'm going to move over to imaging, work on CT scanners and MRIs, more money, more responsibility,

different stuff.

And I'm looking to go settle down.

So I'm, I tell my wife, we've got a breakup and you don't want to get married.

And I do, I want to go buy a house and settle down and do this.

So we're going to do that.

We're at my sponsor's funeral.

She's completely torn up over this thing.

I'm a mess.

And, uh, and I'm burying my sponsor and I don't do anything about it.

I'll go get a new one.

I got to go to a bunch of meetings.

Sure.

I'm going to stay doing that.

I'm going to hang out with the people that know me, you know, the, the Rick Shevit, uh,

Tom O'Brien, Tom Blount, the people at the book study, you know, I'm still there, but,

uh, you know, things are changing.

Um, me and my, my girlfriend, wife, we get back together.

We decided maybe we're going to do this.

She comes to a thing that maybe marrying me isn't going to be horrible.

Um, thank God it wasn't, um, but, uh, so that's going better.

We're getting back together.

I shouldn't have a sponsor.

I just don't have a sponsor, but I got a job, job with more responsibility, job that works

evenings and afternoon.

So that's, that's kind of rough because now I'm working from noon to nine and all those

meetings that I wasn't regular at, I can't get to anymore unless I'm cutting work.

So I'm trying to substitute one in one there and once in a while I'm showing up at the

valley club at noon sometime.

You know, I'm still trying to, you know, do the right thing, do the right stuff, but I'm,

I'm not a regular part of AA anymore.

This is a tale of, you know, for you guys to learn, this is not the way to do it.

This is not an example about it to work your program.

So for, um, 10 years, these 10 years, that's what I was doing working nights.

I was going maybe three meetings a month and I was just standing sober and I wasn't doing

anything.

I wasn't really talking to people in the program much.

I was fishing with my friends and doing things and you know, going to parties with other

people and my wife and they're all drinking and they go, Oh, well now I know I'm doing

it.

So I just don't drink.

I actually had a dear friend of mine that came and spoke here a couple of weeks ago.

Um, he was having some trouble with, uh, with drinking and he reached out to me and he wanted

to go to a meeting and I took him to his first meeting and I introduced him to some people

that did the Saturday night commercial and I am listening to some people and said, you

need to do what that guy's doing and what that guy's doing and what that guy's doing.

Don't do what I'm doing.

You'll never make it if you're doing it when I'm doing what I do because I'm barely making

it.

Well, and you'll never make it doing this.

And he did, he picked on some good examples, became a regular over at the Valley Club and

got a sponsor and it's going to be great for him.

I was dying on the line.

I was dying on the line and didn't even know it.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like you put a frog in the water and you start turning it up to heat, they don't

even know they're boiling.

I had no idea I was boiling.

The book study that I was a regular at was down to like six or eight people.

It was just, it was a dying meeting.

It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a bunch of newcomers who weren't, you know, spreading

the message.

I wasn't helping.

I wasn't doing any of that stuff.

They talked about working with others, doing none of that.

It was all about can getting his, you know, what about mine?

And my alcoholism was coming down in different ways.

You know, most people don't understand when I say that anything worth doing is worth doing

until it kills.

Because they don't have that let's take it to the nth degree drive in them, which I was

doing house projects, whatever it was, I would kind of overshoot the mark with my alcohol.

And then sometime before COVID, almost six or eight months, I got turned on to go into

the, I made a change in my life.

I started doing martial arts and some other things on the weekends, and then made a change

to actually do more martial art training, sort of working a day shift.

So I'll be like, yeah, I'll go to war meetings.

We're married by then for several years, I've got a house and everything's looking really

good on the outside.

And I said, yeah, you know, I'll go to some war meetings.

I'm going to get invited to this Wednesday night men's stat and I'm sitting there in

the back and they're reading, working with others.

And I realizing that there's all this stuff these guys are doing in the program of Alcoholics

Anonymous and I'm doing it and not working with newcomers.

In fact, I don't even have anything I can give a newcomer because I've been crispy and

dry for so long.

I don't even know if I could take it back to the steps.

So I'm just starting to get good with that and go on to war meetings and becoming a regular

to commit visit meetings.

I'm doing all the stuff that I used to do when I was in and my life is getting better.

And then COVID hits.

And I kept this one guy kept asking me if I wanted to attend the steps study and I kept

telling him, you know, I'm busy on Thursday nights.

COVID fixed that for me.

I was no longer busy on Thursday nights.

I was completely and a hundred percent available and that steps study meeting was on.

So I did have a lot of stress going on during that time because I was still in the hospitals

because I work on medical equipment during the whole COVID thing.

I have elderly parents.

I have a handicap little brother who has since passed and I kept worrying that I was going

to be the guy that was going to take the COVID to his nursing home, swipe everybody out.

So that was a little bit stressful.

So I doubled down on my AA program.

I had 25 years sobriety, did steps all over again.

And I did them from the viewpoint of I need to write all this stuff down so that I can

take somebody else through the steps and use it as a sponsor guide.

And that's what I did.

I started a meeting where we get on Zoom every morning.

We do the third step prayer, we read a daily reflection from the night before, do the seventh

step prayer.

We go through the 24 hour day for today and then we do the St. Francis prayer and it takes

us 10 minutes.

It's the best 10 minutes of my day, absolutely every day and we're doing that seven days

a week.

This is my fifth week this week so things have changed.

Since that time, I am a hundred percent all in for AA.

I got to sitting in that meeting when I was coming back and I was realizing what I wasn't

doing and what was lacking in my life.

My happiest time in my life was my first 10 years of sobriety and work in my life at that

time was that thing I had to do between meetings.

Once I reset my priorities, I put that on the back burner.

Now work is that thing I do before I go to the meeting.

But the goal is always going to the meeting.

I don't know about you, but I start feeling better as soon as I point the car at the meeting.

I know it's going that direction.

I started getting that same ease of comfort I used to get when I was going to the bar,

the connect.

8 minutes.

8 minutes.

Looking alike.

So let's talk about the good stuff that I have in my life that AA is good.

I have a wife that's been married to for 20 years and she still likes me.

That's something good.

That means I haven't destroyed that relationship with alcohol for 21 years or given her a reason

to hold the grudge.

So I'm doing the right thing when it comes to that.

I have a house and a career and all the other cash and prizes that you get when you don't

drink them away.

So I have a host of friends.

Some of them came up to see me tonight and thank you for that.

I have a community within this program of ours that I wouldn't trade for the world.

I've actually decided what retirement looks like for me.

I'm going to be furniture at Clubhouse.

So I'm going to be, I'm going to be that guy that's always up in the house because why

not?

This is where magic happens.

I don't see why.

Before I got here, I told you about living in the back of that car when I was dying in

the back of that car.

I was semi-psychotic.

I was 20 pounds underweight.

I wasn't even going crazy.

It was just, it was not good.

But you know, it's something about being fond of accelerates when you add that to your alcohol

and it really helps you hit bottom faster and add speed.

It's a big balance for that.

I guess we'll start talking about the steps.

So I actually think I'm going to end this stuff.

I want to thank you so much for having me come out.

I am so sorry I couldn't get some more time out, but I think that's the important part.

Which the best thing about doing this thing is please, please, please be all in.

Be all in.

Do it all.

Just go to the conventions.

Hang out with the new people.

One of my favorite things to do, I'm the secretary of a meeting.

I spend more time standing up front, shaking hands in the way of the door outside.

It's being a breeder.

It's one of the best people to get to know everyone.

It's comfortable.

It's underappreciated.

So thank you so much, guys.

And that's enough.

I'm leaving.

Thanks.

Bye.