From Detroit Roots to Spiritual Sobriety: A Journey with AA

- One, time is up.

Greg, alcoholic.

Thank you so much for asking me to come and speak.

Welcome to everyone.

If you are new, welcome.

If you are old, welcome.

If you're in between, welcome.

What?

Oh, that's good.

You said skip this.

That's all good.

I am, if you hear nothing,

know that I am so grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcoholics Anonymous has changed my life

and has helped me do something

that I now pray for every day.

And that is to stand in the center

of God's intention for me.

That's what I want.

I've always been, thank you, Tracy,

for your experience, strength, and hope.

I identify, we look different,

but it's almost the same story.

So I just should just defer to you and sit down.

It's, I just want to read.

I was in a meeting earlier this morning

and I become that person who pulls out the big book

and reads and that's okay.

This is from page 123 and it says,

"We grow by our willingness to face and rectify errors

and convert them into asset.

The alcoholics past thus becomes the principal asset

of the family and frequently it is almost the only one."

I love that.

Because it tells me that no matter what has happened,

I have the opportunity to change it, to rectify,

to turn it around.

And that is what Alcoholics Anonymous has given.

The greatest gift this program has given me

is my relationship with God.

It's the absolute greatest gift.

I too came from a childhood

that I didn't necessarily like.

I was a beautiful little spirit

who loved to dance around the living room.

I loved flowy clothes and Detroit, my race, my parents,

they were not equipped to nurture that beautiful little spirit

but they told that beautiful little spirit

that he needed to change.

He needed to be something different.

He needed to dress and show up a certain way

in order to be accepted.

And it's so funny because when Abraham texts me and said,

it is suggested that you wear a shirt, tie and a jacket.

Look, everything I do is contingent

on my spiritual maintenance on the day of it.

And what I realized today, and it's something I know,

I have a character defect of,

I am so willing to do anything as long as it's my idea.

As soon as you tell me,

we want you to put a jacket and a tie on.

I'm like, who do you, and I had to laugh

because I texted back, I was like, jacket, tie, okay.

And he was like, you know, it's suggested.

But it made me laugh because I went, oh my God,

who I wanna be is so contingent

on how close I stay to higher power

because left to my own devices, I will say no.

Left to my own devices, when I have an option

of being comfortable or having to put out effort,

I'm gonna take comfortability.

When he gave me the option of Zoom, nothing wrong with Zoom.

It's awesome.

I did a Zoom meeting this morning or show up in person.

I knew that I needed to show up for myself.

I needed to get in my car.

Thank you, and bring my friend, Armand.

Thank you for showing up, coming with me.

I needed to pick up my friend

and we needed to drive here in the rain.

And I am weeks away from having hip replacement surgery,

so I'm in so much pain.

I mean, it's so, the last year, y'all, can we talk?

The last year has been so challenging, this hit.

But what it has taught me, it's so funny,

I was supposed to have, and all of this has so much to do

with my alcoholism, I promise you.

Because I was reading in a vision for you,

I was in a meeting yesterday,

I spoke at a meeting yesterday,

and we were reading a vision for you

when they were having the three-way conversation

with the non-alcoholic and they were telling him,

"This is how our lives have changed."

And he's like, "Oh my God, you guys."

And the words spiritual experience

were used like four times.

And what I've come to understand more than anything,

alcohol is what, but a symptom.

I had to get down the causes and conditions.

I originally got sober in 2000,

and I have not left these rooms since 2000,

but I relapsed in 2009 on prescription pills.

And I currently have 14 years, eight months

of continuous sobriety.

I don't put, I don't have anything in my house

that threatens my recovery.

I have a huge respect for my disease and fear.

So I don't have anything with PM.

I just bought Advil the other day

and it came with two free PM tablets.

And I was like, "Oh no, girl, nope, cut it up,

put it in trash."

I don't even wanna test it.

My disease, because my disease is sneaky.

She shows up in different costumes.

She's not just gonna show up in a bottle of vodka.

I have been so blessed over the last 25 years

that the obsession to drink and use has been lifted.

But my disease, my ism has manifested itself

in my body image, going to the gym, weighing myself.

It's manifested in how I spend my money.

The obsession I have with purchasing things,

I mean the program for that, that has changed,

that has rocketed my recovery to a whole nother level.

Because now I finally got to a frontier

where I was able to bring God into my money.

I wanna go back to that little boy in Detroit.

So at nine years old, I too watched my parents

navigate their marriage with a bottle of Hennessy

because they had fallen in love with each other.

And I watched my parents physically

and verbally abuse each other.

That's all I know, my whole childhood,

is watching my parents fight.

And going back to that little boy

who loved to dance around the living room,

I would go to school and the kids would circle me

on the playground and they would tease me and taunt me

and call me sissy and beat me up and break my glasses.

And my parents never taught me

how to take care of myself and fight.

So I kind of stood there and just let it happen.

So that's my foundation.

And then when I would go home,

my mother would be like, "Boy, why are you crying?"

And I'm like, "Well, the kids will call me sissy."

And she was like, "Well, if you don't act like a sissy,

"they won't call you one."

Now, let me tell you this.

I hated my, Jimmy Lou, I love you.

I hated my mother for years because of that.

Alcoholics anonymous, the 12 steps,

the principles that I live by, and outside help,

a therapy, helped me heal that relationship.

I was able to sit down with my mother before she passed

and we were able to heal

because I was able to see her as a woman

who was just living her life and doing the best she could.

She had a gay child, her oldest child was gay.

She couldn't protect him all the time.

She was trying to toughen me up

so that when I left 3017 Richton, I would not be her.

I didn't get that at nine.

My little nine-year-old brain just went,

"She doesn't like me."

So there was no refuge.

So where did I find refuge?

TV, it was my best friend.

It was my first addiction, as we all say, fantasy.

I was, you know, in that little box

and back then it was black and white.

That's how old I am.

And it was little.

You know, I saw, like,

Lynn Vereen and Ann Reinking and Sammy Davis Jr.

and Lola Falon and all these people,

Chita Rivera, Bob Fosse.

And I was like, "I don't know who these people are,

but I need to be there.

I need to get there."

And lo and behold, at 14, I started dancing.

I grew up in the church.

My parents knew how to dress it up on Sunday

while they were fighting and hurting each other

the rest of the week.

But they knew, they taught me how to,

my mother would say,

"Nobody needs to know what goes on inside 3017 Richton.

You don't tell them."

So I learned how to keep secret.

I did not let people know how much fear and pain I was in.

You know, when the big book talks about,

we share in a general way, telling you what I was like,

what happened and what I'm like now, this is who I was.

I was a little boy who was brought into this world

in a lot of confusion and a lot of drama

and a lot of trauma.

So very early, I was afraid.

I was afraid you weren't gonna like me.

I was afraid I wasn't gonna be handsome enough, big enough.

I wasn't gonna be talented enough.

I wasn't worthy of love.

My mother, and again, this is not beat up my mother

because I worked it out.

Believe me, did a lot of four steps on Jimmy Lou.

But you know, my mother wasn't the hug you,

hold your hand type of mom.

She just wasn't.

You know, she grew up rough.

You know, she grew up in Columbus, Georgia,

and she had to walk to school.

Believe me, I heard it.

You know, it's like, you all have said

you've got to walk four blocks.

I had to walk 14 miles to school.

I know, Ma, I know, but yeah, that's right.

But you know, that was her experience

and that's what created who she was.

I didn't understand it as a little boy,

but I learned to, I learned to.

So I started dancing at 14.

I swore up and down because I watched my parents

drink and smoke that I would never drink

and smoke ever in my life.

I didn't want to be like either of them.

So luckily, you know, I ended up getting a scholarship

to a big old fancy school in New York

and that's what got me to New York.

And I had started dancing and singing

and acting professionally.

And I went to New York and the ballerinas taught me

how to drink and smoke.

And I was a good student.

I didn't know that I needed to exhale

because my entire childhood, I was like this,

who's got my back?

Who's gonna come and hit me?

You know, I didn't realize how guarded I was.

So when I took that first drink, you know,

it wasn't even like an exhale as it was

like I stood up straight.

I was kind of like, oh, I feel different.

Okay, and that's what happened.

Until age 38, when I originally got sober, I drank.

And because of my journey, that drinking and my ism,

it manifested in other substances.

But I was a functioning alcoholic from age 20 to 30.

I mean, when I originally got sober,

I was actually doing a show in New York

and my friends, you know, was there just another day.

And they were like, oh my God, we're gonna go

and we're going to his house.

We're going, all right, done.

And I was like, oh, I'm not drinking.

They're like, what?

And I was like, oh yeah, I'm sober.

And they were like, why?

We never see you drink.

We never see you drunk.

And I was like, girl, y'all never go home with me.

Because what I was, I was functioning.

So in my business life, I am so detailed and on point.

I set schedules, I rehearse people, I get it all done.

In my personal life, was not opening mail,

was not paying bills, was using credit cards, was,

I knew I did a good job when I went home.

If I was brushing my teeth at the base in the bathroom

and holding on with my other hand,

I knew I did a good job because that's what I would do.

I would go home after work and start drinking by myself

and my friends on the low peak.

And that's how I live my life from age 20 to 38.

At age 28, my ism manifested itself in going to the gym

because I was doing a show and a guy said,

oh, I bet if you go to the gym, you'll start bulking up.

And I was like, okay, I'll go with you.

And I went and he put 225s and it was really heavy.

But what I realized is I like doing it.

And the more I went to the gym and my body changed,

I started to get attention.

So all of a sudden I wasn't Gregory the sissy.

I was Gregory, oh, look, oh, I'm so masculine.

Oh, so I can hide behind my body.

So my body got big and I was getting jobs and I was working

and I was meeting all the right, right, right people

who had the right substances.

And this obsession with my body, because it was rewarded,

I went with it.

It was just like drinking for me.

I would stay in the gym for two and a half to three hours.

Nobody needs to be working out that long.

But I was afraid.

I would go to the gym, pop up and put on a t-shirt

that I bought at Baby Gap and I would get on a subway

and people would stare at me.

And I'd be, and I would have a panic attack

because I'm like, why are you looking at me?

Because in my head, this little boy,

the little nine-year-olds thinking they're gonna go,

no, no, they're gonna call you sissy.

They know you're a sissy.

And I'm standing there on the train unable to move

because I'm thinking my diseased head is going,

they can tell, they can tell, they can tell.

But all the while they're looking at, you know,

this big guy in his t-shirt that's way tight, you know?

And I would get off the subway and would have to,

and I realized I didn't breathe the entire ride

and I would get off and I'd tell.

And that was kind of my MO.

I think about it now and I'm like,

how did you day in and day out live like that?

Even with that, I couldn't love myself

because people would say, oh my God, you look amazing.

I didn't believe it because what's in my head?

You're a sissy.

Now, what did that do?

It made me go to multiple liquor stores in my neighborhood

because you know how we do.

We go to one and then we go there too many times.

We're like, they must be thinking he drinks a lot.

So now I gotta find another liquor store.

And then when I go there too much,

they must be thinking every time I come in,

he drinks so much, they're not thinking about me.

They don't care, but that's my head.

So now I have multiple liquor stores in my neighborhood

and a few drug dealers that I go to

because I didn't want one to know all my business.

'Cause again, my mother taught me well,

don't tell anybody what's happening inside this house.

Nobody needs to know that.

And then finally, did I mention other substances?

Okay, I won't say what it is.

A substance, 'cause I respect alcohols and none.

So a substance came into my life,

the last five years of my years.

And I believe it was a protected gift from my higher power

because it, the train went from local to express,

really quick, express.

And again, I am a high bottom,

meaning when I got sober at 38,

I still had my money, my home, my, you know,

career, my prestige, all these things.

But what I didn't have was my soul.

I had lost who I was.

I had done a bunch of embarrassing, demoralizing things

because of these drugs that was put in my body.

And what I realized, I was like,

you're gonna lose everything.

You're about, I had an amazing job in New York

and I was on the brink of losing it

because now I was doing drugs at work

and also calling in sick for a job that I love,

but my disease loved me more.

And then finally, it was not anything crazy.

It was just another day.

And God, my higher power,

whom I had had such a hard time with,

because as a child, I used to go to Second Baptist Church.

I'm a church boy, went every week.

But I had a God that was damning and judgmental

and a God that told me because of who I was,

I was going to burn eternally in hell.

So needless to say, when I moved to New York,

I didn't take that God with me.

But the fear of that God stayed with me.

This 20 year old didn't have any tools.

He had fear and he had his career, this talent that he had.

At age 24, I became HIV positive.

I thought at that age I was gonna die

because at that time, everyone was just,

it was AZT and prayers, thoughts and prayers.

That's all they had.

And I was a young kid who was walking the streets

of Eighth Avenue where I lived in Chelsea,

watching these men who looked like zombies.

And I knew that that was my faith.

Instead of stopping drinking and drugging,

it increased because I thought there's no cure.

I'm gonna die anyway.

So in 2000, my higher power who has always been there,

even though I didn't care about this higher power,

I didn't believe that this higher power loved me

because when I left Detroit,

there were three things I wanted and I prayed for,

that my parents would stop drinking,

they would stop fighting

and they would see me for who I was.

And those three things did not happen

by the time I left the eighth magazine.

So I figured God didn't love me

and I couldn't go to God with any of my problems.

So God working with me, not going,

moved a person, Jeffrey D from LA to New York.

Jeffrey at that time, I think was 14 years sober.

When I first saw him,

I was working with a friend of Jeffrey's

and Jeffrey came to pick this friend up.

And right when I saw him, I was like,

is something different about him?

Don't know what?

I thought I was attracted to him

because I'm confused, you know, that's it.

If I'm attracted to you, it must be sexual.

It can't be spiritual.

And I had to learn that in these rooms too,

that sometimes it's spirit to spirit attraction.

Jeffrey told me that he was sober.

And after a few weeks, I asked him to take me to a meeting,

but I wasn't ready to give up alcohol.

I said, I'm a drug addict, so let's go to NA.

So that's what we did and I kept drinking.

I stopped drinking, I stopped doing drugs

on the week before November 28th in 2000.

That following the 27th, I went out to the limelight,

no drugs and drank and ended up doing

the same demoralizing behavior on alcohol.

And I remember standing on 6th Avenue going,

oh my God, you're a drunk too, okay.

And the next day, November 28th, I got sold.

Meaning I went to a meeting and said,

I'm an alcoholic and my name is Gregory.

And that started my journey.

My job became my higher power in 2004.

I had been promoted to a lot of prestige

and a lot of fanciness, which I love.

And I was coming to meetings right when they started

and I was leaving.

Through those nine years, because I got sober in 2000,

and then this was around 2009, I would,

I never had sponse.

I wasn't of service.

Like I said, I came and I left.

I had the surgery.

I was given prescription pills.

When the prescription ran out,

I called the doctor and asked for more.

He said, no.

I called my best friend Linda and said,

can you believe he did not renew this prescription?

And she was like, I have some.

I put that net brace on, got in a cab

and went up to 96th street and got Linda's pills.

And when she went into the kitchen,

I grabbed the bottle and stole some.

Because when I'm that alcoholic addict who says,

I love you and steals from you.

And I didn't have to steal from Linda.

Linda was my best friend.

Linda let me smoke crack in her apartment

because she didn't want me on the street doing it.

So I didn't have to steal from her,

but that's who I am.

And that is at nine years of sobriety.

So anyway, I moved, like I said,

I moved to LA and I started over.

I started my career over and unbeknownst to me,

I started my recovery over.

I got revealed to me that I had not been sober since 2009.

And my sponsor and I did a lot of work around this issue.

And I came to the conclusion that I needed to start over.

It was the best thing that ever happened.

The best thing that ever happened.

My ego was so attached to the time.

Even now I would joke with my friends.

I would say, you know, technically I had 25 years.

And they're like, girl, come on.

Technically what page is that on?

(laughing)

Face number, show it to us, show it to us.

And the time, my recovery is not based on time now.

It's based on moments between me and my higher power.

And that sounds so cheesy.

But I tell you through these last 14 years,

and especially during the pandemic,

because during the pandemic, I was in a meeting

and I heard this gentleman say, my God is crazy about me.

And I watched him light up.

And I was like, I want what you have.

And I found someone in the rooms

who had a spiritual program that I wanted.

And he worked with me and I was able to get myself

through some writing and a lot of prayer and meditation

to a place where y'all, I have a God who's crazy about me.

My God loves me.

My God and I co-create this beautiful life

that I am so grateful to have.

I have done nothing perfect, but I have stayed.

And because I have stayed,

God has been able to reveal to me over these last 25 years,

a whole lot of stuff.

And over the last 14 years and eight months,

I have worked out my internalized homophobia,

my internalized racism, my insecurities, my self value.

And look, I understand.

I'm not a self-help program, but I'm here to tell you,

I have helped myself to the 12 steps

and that has changed my life.

A lot of times, because when I go online,

we really lay into the stories and what it was like

and what we're like and we're able to tell the stories

and passionately, well, I'm on the other side of that.

I passionately tell you this works.

And I live a life now that is happy, joyous and free.

And I have a serenity that I protect fiercely.

One of the things I have my sponsees do,

yep, I have sponsees now.

Okay, I have amazing sponsees.

And one of the greatest gifts in my whole recovery

in my life is watching another alcoholic

have that light bulb moment to see themselves.

To be able, that childhood that I hated,

I now get to use it.

I get to share it with,

when young alcoholic men sit in front of me

and talk about their broken relationship with God,

I am honestly able to say, I totally get it.

Here's my experience.

And I'm here to tell you my experience is

that relationship can be healed.

I have my sponsees break down the serenity prayer

because it's something that we say so much

that it becomes white noise.

It's like, what are you praying for?

So we break it down, we personalize it.

I say, if you're gonna pray for that serenity,

then why are you living like that?

'Cause it's choices and decisions.

One of the things I will tell them is remove the 12 steps,

the principles in Alcoholics Anonymous,

you're still a grown person

who needs to make some grown decisions.

So what is it gonna be?

I believe this program for me is very practical.

I'm a dancer, I'm a five, six, seven, eight kind of guy.

And to sit down and do steps one through 12,

that's heaven for me.

I understand how to do that.

I'm used to putting myself in a room and working hard,

not just for today, but for the long haul,

because I know if I work really hard today,

I'm gonna have those four turns mastered.

And it's the same thing I know my disease does.

My disease, when I talk about it being cunning and baffling,

it doesn't need me drunk or high right now.

My disease is like, you know what, girl,

I'm not even gonna, you don't even have to go to Beth Mo.

All you gotta do is sit home and isolate.

If I can get you to sit home and not tell anybody

what's actually going on, I got you, I got you.

And eventually you may one day have the dream

and I'm gonna be right there.

That's what I know my disease does.

So I am on guard.

I have a prayer life and a meditation life.

I love using gospel music and inspirational music

as my meditation.

I just sit and I let God talk to me.

It's from my childhood.

And the fact that I can listen to gospel music,

that is a miracle.

Because that's the same church that told me

I was going to hell for being me.

And now I can listen to it because now what I also realized

when we say create a God in my understanding,

I used to fight so hard against this God

that I grew up with.

And my sponsor was like, well, was there any good

with that God?

Write down what's good about it.

And then you can fill in the rest.

And that's what I did.

And now I have a God that I don't have to fight

with understanding because it's still a part of me.

And when I look back over my life with perspective,

my God's always been there.

The fact that I, me, little black Gregory Butler

in Detroit, Michigan with two parents

who did not understand entertainment,

I started dancing at 14.

That is God.

God brought Phyllis Stowe, Cara Maruso,

all these Warren Spears,

all these amazing dance teachers into my life.

God did that.

My God did that.

Because my God had a journey for me.

I didn't know it.

And I thought God wasn't looking out for me.

And look at God.

My God was so big.

My God was like, oh, that little boy who loved to dance

around the living room with flowy clothes.

The reason why you're like that.

You're created.

You have art inside of you.

You're gonna do amazing things.

And then I'm going to tell them I do it

because I have this fierce relationship with a higher God.

When I work with actors, they don't even know

that I am sponsoring them.

And I sponsor them.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm just sponsoring.

I'm in rehearsal talking.

It's a sponsorship.

I just want to say this last thing.

One of the things I have my sponsors do

is write a priority list.

And it's one thing that I did for myself.

I wrote a priority list that I put on these things,

things that were very important to me.

And I did not do this so that I would come off looking good.

I wanted the truth.

So I have six things on this list.

And here's the order in which they really are.

And the things that I care about, money, prestige, job,

my body, God, recovery.

And everything I do daily is to get God in recovery

to that one, two spot.

And I wake up and I go, what's at number one?

What's at number two today?

Thank you.

- Yeah, thank you.

- There we go.

- Yeah.

- Awesome.