13 Years Sober: Grapinder’s Journey from Rehab to Hope

- Hi everybody, my name's Grapinder, I'm an alcoholic.

You guys see me okay?

Are they seeing me okay on camera?

I feel like my head's cut off, but that's okay.

I don't have any hair, so it hides my balding head.

Hi everybody, I'm Grapinder, I'm an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is February 15th, 2013.

I just turned 13 years clean and sober.

I'm really happy to be here.

I'm really grateful to be sober.

It's nice to meet all of you guys.

There's a couple of familiar faces here.

I've got some good friends with me as well.

Abraham, thank you so much for calling on me to come out

and share my experience, strength, and hope with you guys.

It's an honor to be here.

It's always such a butterfly feeling in my gut

when someone asks you to come and share at a meeting.

For whatever reason, maybe they heard you share

or something like that at another meeting

and they want you to come out

and share a little bit of that vibe with them.

I love being in this AA living room.

This is super awesome.

This reminds you of being at my aunt's house or something.

And there's a full on AA meeting going on

in the middle of the living room

with carpet and sofas and coffee

and everybody just kind of hanging out.

And that's just what really Alcoholics Anonymous

really is at the end of the day.

It's one alcoholic talking to another.

And Maria, thank you so much for your lead.

It was really, really good to hear you.

I think that I can relate so much to your story.

I was probably very similar to you

and where I was at nine months of recovery.

So yeah, it's been a journey.

It's been a trip.

It's been extraordinary.

It took a lot for me to get here.

And when I say here, I mean like on the other side

which is a place that I never thought I was ever gonna be.

I never thought it was something

that I was gonna be able to do.

While I was going in and out of rehab and treatment centers

and they would take us in the druggy buggy

and they would take us off to meetings and stuff.

And I would experience Alcoholics Anonymous,

Narcotics Anonymous and all the different AA meetings,

12 step meetings.

I didn't know really that I would ever be able

to have long-term sobriety.

I was at that point really just used to having

30, 60, 90 days, 30, 60, 90 days, 30, 60, 90 days.

That was just kind of like my vibe.

That was just kind of a thing that was going on.

And I think in looking back now I realize

that I didn't really understand what the program was.

I didn't have faith in the loving God

and I didn't understand what the 12 steps

of Alcoholics Anonymous was.

I didn't understand what it meant to be sober.

I didn't know what it meant to have quality of life again.

And so I didn't have a good, I'm gonna say it again.

I didn't have a good quality of life until I got sober.

It didn't happen until I got clean and sober.

Regardless of all the fantasies and whatever was real

or imagined while I was out there drinking and using,

like none of it was quality anything.

There was no substance to really anything

that was going on in my life before I got sober

and before I put it down all the way

and before I sat down, you know what I'm saying?

And some people will say took my wig off, you know?

Like it wasn't until that happened

that my life changed extraordinarily, you know?

And it took what it took.

I'm so grateful to be sober.

I'm so grateful to be clean and sober.

And I say that because drugs are also a part of my story,

and I will share a little bit about that.

I'll be very light about it because I believe that

I can share about it in a general way

because I think it's the easier, softer way

and I don't wanna trigger anybody

or get anything going for anyone else either.

It sounds and looks like I got a long talk ahead of me,

so I'm gonna probably get into it now.

So okay, I'm 48 years old.

I'm gonna be 49 this year, which is a freaking miracle

'cause I didn't think I was gonna live past 30 years old.

I never thought that I would make it that far, honestly,

'cause I was like a hope to die drug addict alcoholic.

Like it was just, I was going out with a bang.

That was just going to be a part of my story.

And so I grew up in England.

My parents moved to England in the late '60s,

and they had me and my sisters.

My dad was a mechanic.

He worked for Jaguar, or Jaguar, okay?

He worked for Jaguar.

And my mother was a school teacher,

but before she became a school teacher,

she was at home and she sold, while my dad would work,

she sold Avon, and she also sold Tupperware.

So all the ladies used to come over to our house

with all their little kids and they would all kiki, right?

They would all kiki and sell like whatever it was.

And my mother was like selling stuff.

And there was always like snacks and treats

and cookies and chips and cakes

and all different kinds of cute little things going on.

And I like made friends with the neighborhood kids.

And I grew up in a town in England,

which is about two and a half miles away,

two and a half hours drive from London North

into the very center of Midlands, which is not,

at that time, there were not a lot of Indian people

in that neighborhood.

So yeah, I'm Indian if you were wondering what it was.

There's a huge East Indian community in England.

And so my parents were kind of like about

of that whole dysphoria that had come over there.

And so, yeah, my parents spoke several languages.

They spoke English fluently with a British accent.

They, you know, they spoke our native tongue,

which is an Indian language.

They spoke several Indian languages,

but they were both born and raised in East Africa, Kenya.

So they actually spoke Swahili as well.

So in my house, when I was growing up,

there were several languages being spoken all the time.

In fact, when my mother would refer to her broom,

she would probably use a Swahili word.

If she referred to the sofa,

she'd probably use an Indian word.

If she referred to a banana,

she'd probably use a Swahili word.

And if she referred to the door,

she'd probably use an Indian word.

So there was a mishmosh of everything.

And in my house growing up, believe it or not,

my first language was not English, it was Punjabi.

And I wasn't allowed to speak English at home

in the very kind of like formative years of my life.

'Cause I went to a British school

and I spoke English all day long,

learned how to read and write in English.

But when we came home, we had to speak the language

and we had to eat the food.

And it got really, really annoying.

I remember just being so ungrateful as a little kid.

My mother would make okra and eggplant

and all these weird and exotic vegetables.

And I was just like, what is this life?

I mean, it was literally torture.

I felt like they were doing it on purpose

and that they were all coming for me

from the very beginning.

I didn't understand why it was that they would make us eat.

And my mother was really strict.

And so she would make us sit there

and finish everything that was on our plate.

Like I wasn't allowed to leave

until I finished what they had put on the plate.

Because don't you know, dad was really hardworking.

And I never really felt like I ever had a struggle.

I never needed anything.

I never missed anything in my childhood.

Everything was always provided for.

In fact, when we were growing up, my sisters,

I had three sisters and that was me,

and all of their clothes were basically made by my mother.

My mother made clothes.

She was able to sew and she was very hands-on,

very constructive.

She learned how to sew as a young kid.

She made a lot of the things for my sisters.

And for me, I got a lot of things ordered out of a catalog

for whatever reason, 'cause I was a boy.

So from the very get-go,

I was kind of already treated differently.

Yet in my head, I didn't think that for myself at all.

It was from the very get-go.

It was all of that stuff.

My dad was really not around very much,

but he was very loving, very caring, very sweet.

Basically my point to tell you

is that my parents were super fricking awesome.

They were so kind.

They were very cuddly.

They were very affectionate with us.

They taught us about the world.

They taught us about food

and they taught us about different countries.

And they taught us about different nationalities.

And they explained how everybody's equal

and we should always respect other people,

especially our elders.

I mean, I grew up with so much of this

and so much culture and Indian richness and religion

and all those different sorts of things.

And so it was really, really a fantastic childhood actually.

And then, long story short,

it was really, really good for a really long time.

And then when I turned nine years old,

my mother was killed in a car accident.

And I don't really like to put that out there

and say that very much anymore

because that used to be my big sob story

'cause don't you know, my mother passed away.

Like that was a big part of one of the things

that kind of really fueled a lot of my alcoholism,

my drug addiction and my running.

Okay, and I say running

because that's kind of what we do as alcoholics as well.

We run.

And like my whole thing when I first finally

was starting to come into the room,

so I had a sponsor that was telling me

like don't drink, don't use, don't run.

Those were, that was like my mantra.

Don't drink, don't use, don't run.

Those were the things that they told me.

And so, yeah, I mean, it all of a sudden overnight changed.

My life turned, you know, for the worst is what it felt like

at the time, but my dad had four small children.

There was me and my three sisters.

We were very, very young.

I think my oldest sister was 13

and my youngest sister was five.

I was nine.

I had another sister that was 11.

So it was a very, very tough time for my dad.

And you know, culturally, what they do is

they just kind of try to pick up and carry on.

And so my dad was encouraged to kind of find another woman

and get married right away.

And so at the time, I think that he was trying

to halt the situation by saying,

why don't I let the, let me take the kids on vacation?

And we ended up coming to LA.

My mother's sister lived here and we came here,

my dad's like, I'm gonna take you guys to Disneyland.

We're gonna go to Universal Studios.

We'll go to San Diego.

We'll check out Long Beach.

Like there was all these cool things, you know,

as cool little Brit kids, you know, growing up,

if you can only imagine, it's freezing cold

and chilly and rainy most of the time, dark and dank,

kind of like Seattle, I think.

And I grew up, like we had snow days.

We would get snowed in.

There would be days that we couldn't go to school.

There would be maybe a week or two

where we couldn't go to school

'cause there was so much snow.

And all of a sudden we come here

and there's palm trees and Santa Monica

and the pier and corn dogs and tacos,

which I had never seen.

I'd never seen any of those things in my life.

And I was like, I was like nine years,

10 years old the first time I came here.

I'd never seen any of that stuff

because just culturally it just wasn't there

where I was at.

I mean, I grew up with like fish and chips

and all that other stuff.

So we came here and it was just,

it was so eye-opening and so exciting for a young kid.

And it really did take our minds off of a lot

of what was going on and had happened.

And so at the time, my dad,

we were hanging out with my aunt.

My aunt had a best friend and she and my dad

started hooking up.

So they started hooking up.

And I, all of a sudden one day,

while we were here on our trip out of nowhere,

my aunt, not my dad, my aunt sat us kids down

and said, your dad is getting married tomorrow.

And all of a sudden we were like,

all of a sudden I immediately was like, how dare he?

Right away, I mean, I had an opinion.

I wanted to say something about the situation.

And I immediately, that was kind of like the beginning

of when I started really fighting

and going against the grain of everything

'cause everything up to that point

I just didn't want to deal with because it was hard.

It was really, really hard to deal with all that stuff

as a kid.

And so they ended up getting married

and all of a sudden we were now the Brady Bunch.

My stepmother had two daughters

and I already have three sisters.

So I now have five sisters and there's me.

So I'm the only boy and we ended up kind of getting along.

We were all like this, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

Like we were all in a row.

Actually, I take that back.

We were like eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13.

And it just kept like, we just pivoted just like that.

It's one by one by one by one, we all became 18 and so on.

And I ended up leaving home when I was about 17.

I remember I had a really close friend of mine

that paid for my cap and gown for high school.

I had a cousin that ended up paying for my prom.

I went to prom in 11th grade.

I didn't get much support from my parents very much at all.

I also was struggling with my sexuality as a kid.

I had a lot of shame behind that as a kid as well.

Being the only boy in a family of all girls,

why am I not like a straight man and all that other stuff

and all that stuff was going on.

And so in high school is where I started drinking and using.

Because after drama class, we would

have rehearsals that would go on to like 10, 11 o'clock at night

and someone always had a bottle and someone always had a joint.

And I went to high school right here

in the Valley, at Monroe High School in the Valley

here in North Hills.

And it was on and cracking.

I started going to rave parties in 1992, 1991.

We were driving out to the desert.

We'd end up partying for like days on end.

And I just didn't want the party to stop.

I had never really been on any kind of significant kind

of like academic trajectory at that point.

My life was pretty shaken up.

I didn't really have the stability in my life.

I didn't have parents kind of shoving school

down my throat anymore.

And so I just kind of went off the rails from the very get go.

I was ready to go hard.

I started doing a lot of psychedelic drugs.

I did a lot of LSD, a lot of mescaline, a lot of MDMA,

a lot of ecstasy, a lot of speed.

I smoked a lot of pot.

That was a regular situation for me.

I drank every weekend, if not almost every other day.

I was hanging out with kids that were

my age that wanted to do the same thing that I was doing.

At the time in the valley, you could get your hands

on just about anything.

And there was always somewhere to go.

Someone always had a car to get you out of town

and get you out of a place.

And that's just kind of how it kicked off for me.

And long story short, I worked jobs.

I had jobs.

I lost jobs.

I never stayed anywhere any too long.

I was probably at my longest job by the time

I got into my 20s, maybe for about six months to eight

months, six months to eight months at the jobs.

It was just like a pattern.

I just could not keep up because it was more important for me

to go out and party or deal with the hangover the next day

than to go to work and face a boss.

I was really trying hard to go back to school.

And the dream was that I was going to make something

of myself and figure it all out, and that eventually I'll

be self-supporting.

And it just got bad from bad to worse

because my drug addiction and alcoholism

had just kind of taken a turn.

It was very, very progressive for me.

It happened very, very quickly, and I went really, really hard.

I can tell you that in long story short,

I started using and drinking when I was about 16,

and I got sober at 35 years old.

So I used and drank for a really, really long time.

I came out of that situation pretty unscathed,

but I came in with a lot of psychosis.

I came in with voices.

I came in with infections on my body.

I came in homeless.

I came in after going in and out of treatment centers

probably six or seven times.

I never really had done the steps.

I never had really given myself the opportunity

to sit down with a sponsor and tell them my truth

and tell them what had happened or talk about all the secrets

and all the things that I had endured growing up

that were affecting me as an adult that were just

playing havoc with my life.

It was just kind of like I was always

sitting at this table, this itty bitty shitty committee

in my head of guilt, fear, shame, not enoughness.

You're ugly.

You're too dark.

You're too fat.

You're too black.

You're too this.

You're too that.

There was this constant thing of me

feeling not good enough about myself

and not feeling confident.

I think today, if it wasn't all those things

that they were back then because of what was going on

in the world, I think today it would have been something else

just because I'm an alcoholic.

I think my brain and my committee

would just have come up with something else

to be complaining about, you know what I'm saying?

I think that's just how alcoholism is.

I feel like at some point, alcoholism just wants me dead.

It just wants me homeless.

It just wants me sick.

And it wants me riddled with fear.

And that's where my disease wants me.

And so I finally was sitting in the back of--

I was sitting in my car that was given by my dad to me.

Yeah, it was a vehicle that was given to me by my dad.

I was parked inside an alley in West Hollywood.

And it was kind of a cruising weird alley.

It's where men would go pick up with other men or whatever.

This was very early in the morning.

We're talking at like 7 or 8 in the morning.

And I was just spun out in my car, windows down,

probably smoking cigarettes, got the music on.

In my own little world, all cracked out, drunk, tweaked

out, skinny tight little jeans on.

I was skinny as a stick.

And I had this guy that came over and started talking to me

and asking me, he said, whose Volkswagen is that?

Because on the license plate, it said VW Expert.

He comes up to me and he goes, hey, whose car is that?

Who's the VW Expert?

And I said, oh, that's my dad.

My dad built this car.

He worked for Volkswagen.

When we had moved to the States, my dad

retired from Volkswagen a couple of years ago

after working for them for about 30-something years.

And he had built this car.

And it's kind of interesting because he

could have been anything and anyone at that time.

But he happened to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And he, at the time, had probably

about 27 years of sobriety.

And he was kind of like my ultimate escrow.

And the interesting thing about him

is that he was actually from Alaska,

which was so interesting.

The reason he was drawn to the car

is because it was AO Volkswagen.

He had general interest in Volkswagens

because him and his brothers grew up racing Volkswagens.

There's a big annual race that goes on in Anchorage.

And it's a Volkswagen race.

And he had three brothers that also raced Volkswagens,

like I had mentioned.

And all three of his brothers died as alcoholics

in car accidents in Volkswagens.

Not to mention, when he came closer to the car,

he realized that I was Indian.

So he started talking about India

because he was getting ready to leave for a trip to India.

He was Buddhist.

And he was going on this Buddhist retreat.

And so he was kind of talking to me about my culture

and was interested in discussing that with me and all

these different sorts of things.

In my head, I'm thinking something else.

Why is this guy interested in me and all these different sorts

of things?

It wasn't until much later that I kind of put all of this

together and realized that there was

significant-- there was synchronicity going on

in my life from the get-go.

Before I got sober, before I got clean,

there were these things that were happening around me

that were so coincidental or quintessential or just out

of this world that they would either freak me out

or they would elate me and excite me, OK?

And the freaking out part was me going, I'm going crazy.

There's no way in hell that this is synchronizing

the way that this is--

there's no way that this is going on.

And I can tell you, it's that kind of pull that brought me

into Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I told you I'd been in and out of the room,

so I knew exactly where to go.

He had taken me to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

He was like, do you want coffee and a donut?

And I said, sure.

And he goes, let's go up the street.

And I ended up going to a meeting on Fairfax and Fountain

in West Hollywood.

It was my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

It was on a Saturday morning.

And I was introduced to all these different sorts

of people there.

And I had men come up to me that had a lot of time.

They gave me their cards and asked

if I needed a number or some information and everything.

And at that time, I was referred to--

I'm going to be very straight with you guys.

I was referred to the Gay and Lesbian Center

because I was, A, I was homeless.

I was living in my car.

I was addicted to drugs.

I was drinking a lot of alcohol.

I didn't have a job.

I didn't know whether I was coming or going.

I didn't know when I had eaten last.

I was pretty emaciated.

And I was directed to go to the Gay and Lesbian Center

because they had a drug and alcohol

unit going on there at the time.

And I was referred to this guy that all

the guys in this meeting knew.

And apparently, he was a part of the group as well.

But he was somebody that headed this kind of task force

because at the time, crystal meth was a serious pandemic

within the community.

And so I was directed to go there.

And I went and I met this person.

And he directed me and sent me off to my very first rehab.

And I was introduced to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that's how I found A.I.

And I'd love to tell you that I stayed sober, but I didn't.

I didn't stay sober and clean at the time.

It took about seven more years of me

going in and out of treatment centers, couch commitments,

sober livings, and each time trying to make it,

trying to do it, six months, nine months, 10 months,

six months, nine months, 10 months,

but just not being able to get over the hump.

It wasn't until I sat all the way down and opened

my ears completely.

When I was 35, I'd come back to Tarzana Treatment Center.

And they took me in.

They took me back.

It was my third time going to Tarzana Treatment Center.

That was February 15, 2013.

And I showed up there pretty beat down.

I was really, really skinny, really emaciated.

Like I said, I was kind of like an infection all over my body.

And there's so much in my story that happens that we never

really get to talk about from the podium.

But there was so much that happened

that it brought me to this place.

But ultimately, all the synchronicity around me

was so intensified that I was absolutely scared back

into the rooms.

There was so much going on.

I felt like everybody knew where I'd been running and gunning.

I felt like everybody knew what was going on.

I was so paranoid and ashamed of my life and who I was

and what I had become that I was just ready to give it all up.

I was spiritually bankrupt, like totally, totally, totally

spiritually bankrupt.

I was an emotional mess.

And I didn't really have anywhere to seek help.

I had lost all means of anything.

I had no money.

I had no job.

I had no apparent places to go.

I didn't even have a cell phone.

This is 2013, where smartphones were just kind of coming out.

And I just remember thinking to myself how hopeless I was

because I didn't have a smartphone.

All I had was like this cheap clicker phone

at some point or another until it got lost.

And I felt like all the people that I was seeing

had smartphones and that they all had one up on me

and that they were all better than me.

And don't you know, that's something that I need to have.

It was just something that really drove this not enoughness

that was going on in the committee in my head.

And anyway, I finally just kind of surrendered all of it

when I came back in 2013.

And they took me in, and I took direction.

I did everything they told me.

I was in a program.

So I had a very strict schedule at the program.

And it was just kind of like I had a couple of classes

throughout the week.

I had relapse prevention a couple of times a week.

I had sex and sobriety a couple of times a week.

I had all these different courses.

If you've been in treatment, you can imagine all those

different things that they had me do.

And then in the evening, it was up to me

to get myself to a meeting.

And so I went to a meeting every single night.

And I got a commitment at every single meeting

that I attended at the time.

I think I went to like six meetings a week,

five or six meetings a week.

And if I ever hung out with anybody,

it was because I was hanging out.

If I ever hung out with anybody,

it was only people from my treatment center.

Because I was so isolated from all of the people

that were in my life.

It wasn't until I had a couple of years sobriety

that I really started meshing with my family.

They were very, very reluctant to have me back in their life.

I remember when my sister called me,

I think I had nine months of sobriety,

and she says, "I'm getting married."

And I said, "Okay, that's amazing, congratulations."

And she's like, "I really want you to come to the wedding.

"I want you to be there, but I really need you to behave."

She's like, "I really need you to behave."

And not only do I really need you to behave,

and I was like, "Oh, can I bring somebody?"

She was like, "No, no, no, you can't bring anybody."

And that was interesting because at the time,

I had started dating somebody as well on sobriety

who's now my husband, which is amazing

'cause we just celebrated eight years of marriage,

and we've been together for like 13 years, 12 years.

Anyway, long story short,

that's kind of like the stuff that was going on.

Even today, I can tell you that I'm not the same person

that came into these rooms at all.

I'm not the same person that was running and gunning

when I was 16.

Like the big pain in the ass kid that I was to my parents,

I am not that person again today.

I'm almost unrecognizable to them sometimes.

They just sometimes just wanna look at me,

and they talk to me,

and the way that I communicate with them,

and the way that I reciprocate with them,

the way that I respond to what they have to say,

the way that I'm not interjecting, I'm not disrespecting,

I'm not yelling at them, I'm not cussing them out,

I'm not shutting them down, I'm not telling them where to go

because I was really quick at doing any of that stuff

'cause it didn't matter who you were, what you were,

I was ready to let you know really quickly

exactly how I felt about you, you know?

And it didn't matter if it was my parents.

And so I was that sort of personality.

And so today I'm not that same person at all, you know?

And my parents are warming up to me now

at 13 years of sobriety.

You know, they call me if I haven't called them.

They check in with me, "Hey, how's it going?

"I haven't heard from you."

Or, "You said you were gonna come over.

"You never came over."

Or, "What's going on?

"How's work?"

"They're interested.

"How's your husband?

"How's your family?

"What's going on?"

"Oh, how are the dogs?"

Just a straight conversation with me, you know?

Whereas I'm not making all the effort

as much as I was all the time, if that makes any sense.

It started to come around, you know?

There's a section in the book

which is like the family afterwards.

It's kind of like what they all have to deal with

because of my drinking and using, how they got through it,

and how they moved forward, you know?

And kind of taking responsibility for my actions

was extraordinary.

And so I did the steps in the program.

I started getting into the 12 steps.

I got a sponsor.

I said I was going to meetings.

And I took commitments at all the meetings that I attended.

So I made meetings regularly.

I went to regular meetings regularly.

I know that sounds weird and like a tongue twister,

but I went on regular meetings on regular nights.

That means that I went to the same meeting every Monday.

That means I went to the same meeting every Tuesday.

That means I went to the same meeting every Wednesday.

I went to the same meeting every Thursday,

Friday, and Saturday.

Didn't matter whether I liked the meeting or not.

I just got a commitment.

I just showed up.

I didn't really have much of an opinion.

I already knew deep down inside,

I was in a place where I knew that my opinion didn't matter.

I didn't feel like I was of any value when I got here,

if that makes any sense.

I felt like a piece of shit.

I didn't feel like I was important.

I didn't feel like anybody loved me or cared about me.

And it wasn't until I came into the rooms

of Alcoholics Anonymous that I felt like, you know what?

I have a little bit of clout.

I got a commitment, you know?

They need me there to make the coffee.

You know, they need me there to do the cake.

They need me there to greet.

They need me there to be at the door.

They need me there to set up.

They need me to break down.

They need me to clean up.

They need me...

Like, that was kind of what was going on with me

because I had no self-esteem at all.

I was learning that it took, you know,

practicing self-esteem, like acts of service

were going to build self-esteem for me, you know?

And I started kind of like talking to newcomers

as time went on.

And I started taking numbers of people

that had more time than I did.

It made me feel less crazy.

So here's the deal.

My sponsor said to me,

I want you to start getting five numbers

at every meeting that you go to.

And all the people that you're getting numbers from

are people that have to have more time than you.

Because you're kicking and kicking it

with all the people and all the kids

in rehab and treatment centers and sober livings

all day long.

But what's your life going to be like

when you leave that treatment center?

You know, for me, it was always that transitional space

of like when I left rehab and I went into sober living

and then it was time for me to kind of like

figure it all out and get off the GR

and get off the food stamps and get into a space

where it was time for me to start working, you know,

and figure out how to navigate through all of that stuff.

Like transportation, paying like a phone bill,

like, hey, just a phone bill.

That's all it was.

Like there was just a phone bill, you know.

But, or like a bus pass, like whatever those things were,

all those little small things

that feel like they're rinky dink.

If I can be successful at those small little things,

that means that I can probably do them

when I move on from that space.

And it took, for me, repetitive motion

to have to do it over and over again.

It became sort of mindless.

It became like hurtful sometimes.

Like, oh my God, I can't believe,

yeah, that was me getting into a space

of like not feeling grateful, you know.

It was when I kind of got into the space of gratitude

that all of that stuff just kind of like went over.

I didn't have to think about what I needed to do.

My schedule and my structure and my sobriety

was already built up.

And so structure is something that I thrive in in sobriety.

That's something that I thrive in.

No time schedule, no needing to be anywhere where,

for any particular reason, running around,

doing whatever, blah, blah, blah,

not having to get up at a certain time every single day,

not having to call my sponsor

at the same time every single day,

like that's all life that I'm used to doing.

That's like the old way for me.

The new way for me is like taking sponsor direction.

My sponsor today is this.

Kapinder, I need you to call me,

like I need you, you know, 13 years sober.

I don't have to call my sponsor every day anymore.

But my sponsor is like,

I need you to call me twice a week.

I need to see you at two meetings every week.

And I need you to be at my baby meeting,

my book meeting, okay?

And I need you to take some commitments

at all the meetings that you're attending.

And so guess what?

I go to four meetings a week.

I have commitments at all those meetings, except for one.

I call my sponsor twice a week.

Like, listen, like I have created a life

in Alcoholics Anonymous that is beyond

like what I thought it was going to be.

With the help of God, I have just done the footwork, okay?

I have just done the footwork.

I did it enough to where I created a space

where God was able to come in and do his handiwork.

Like literally come in, reach into my life and transform,

not only my life, but me, like cell by cell,

spirit by spirit, soul by soul, inch by inch,

like literally came in and like transformed me.

It was almost like I was born again.

It was a very, very interesting and extraordinary experience.

It's hard for me to fully relate to anybody

or try to express kind of what has happened in my life

because it's been alarming.

And so you hear people all the time at Alcoholics Anonymous

say, "Oh my God, my life is so amazing.

"My life is so fantastic.

"And don't you know this, that, or the other.

"And it's absolutely bubble."

You know what?

I'll be very straight with you guys again

about kind of what's been going on with me nowadays

is that I'm sober, I'm staying sober.

I feel good about my sobriety.

I feel really grateful.

I sponsor people and I'm super happy.

The trajectory of my life is still going on.

I look out into the periphery of my life

and sometimes everything could be going to shit,

but I look out on the horizon, I still have this light

and I still see that somewhere out there,

something's gonna be okay.

I didn't have that before I got sober.

I didn't have that, that part.

That part is what keeps me going here.

That's the part that's really compelling

about sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous

is that the scenery has always changed in my life

because I have always shed something.

I've always let go of stuff to create space for new stuff.

I've always done footwork to allow God to come in

and do his handiwork in my life.

That is me getting out of the way

and trying to be out of the outcome of something.

And it's been extraordinary.

It's been really, really extraordinary.

And so I'm a working professional today.

I'm married.

I've got my family in my life.

I sponsor guys, like I said.

I go to meetings on regular nights.

Something I like to say because it's kind of like,

like I said, the structural stuff,

'cause I have sponsors and I have people in my life

that I talk to on the regular basis

and they don't go to regular meetings all the time.

They don't go to the same meetings regularly.

And then what that tells me

is that they don't have any commitments either.

Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing

that has been safe, a safe place for me.

It's been the only thing that has helped save my life

that's tried adamantly to save my life.

Like as an energy,

people within the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous

have said, "Hey, who are you?

"We need to help you, you're dying."

Like I've had that in my life.

I've had that in my life.

Why would I not come to a place

and be of service to that space that has done that?

Like nothing else, the drug addicts that I was running with,

the hookers and things that I was scheming with,

all the things that I was doing while I was out there,

none of that was there.

That space, that safe space was not there in my life.

Here in Alcoholics Anonymous

is the only place that that's been.

And guess what?

I live in a sober house today.

I live in a sober home and it feels peaceful.

It feels good, it feels safe.

I come from a broken situation emotionally

growing up as a kid.

And so I've created a home for myself.

With my loving partner,

it's been kind of an extraordinary thing.

And it sounds probably really unique to some people,

but that's okay, it doesn't matter.

I don't need your approval.

But the thing is is that I just wanna share

is that it's me feeling comfortable in my skin,

me feeling safe in my space, right?

So that I can be full and be of service

to the people that are in my life today, right?

Because if I'm not okay,

then I don't really have much to give anybody else.

You know what it's like when you like get up in the morning

and everything's good and you're going

and somebody just pisses you off

and the rest of the day you're just pissed off

about that one thing and you can't get it off your mind,

you're of no use to anyone, right?

I'm of no, I'm not of service to anyone.

And so I need to keep myself filled with spirit, right?

This is what I do.

I have to keep myself filled with spirit

in the way that I do that is through prayer meditation, okay?

So that I can be nonreactive, so that I can be still,

so I can be calm, so that I can give something back.

You know?

Otherwise I'm just kind of like, I'm not,

I'm just kind of empty, you know?

I feel like I'm just kind of stoic

and just walking the earth

and just kind of going through the cycle

and just doing the same thing.

And it's like Groundhog Day.

And I find that if I feel like that,

it basically means that I'm not being of service

to the best of my ability, you know?

'Cause there was a time that I felt that way

in and out of, like on and off through sobriety.

There's times like that that have happened.

Okay, so when I turned 10 years sober,

I'll tell a quick little story.

When I turned 10 years sober,

I was on a pink cloud for 10 years.

Like literally pink cloud.

I was on a journey, like my life was happening,

things were going on, things were moving.

Like I said, marriage, job, business,

all things were happening, family was coming back,

I was traveling things.

You know, nice, full, big, lovely life.

Everything was really, really great and grand.

And I kid you not, like I turned 10 years sober

and all of a sudden it was like

I was the man that fell to earth.

Like I woke up and there was no pink cloud.

Like I woke up and there were like aches and pains, you know?

I woke up and stuff was kind of pissing me off.

You know, things were starting to bother me.

Or I was alarmed and surprised

like the kind of life that I had built.

And I was like, OMG, like look at my life.

This is very, very overwhelming.

So all these sorts of feelings were going on for me.

And my sponsor at the time had moved to France and retired.

And it had been about a year

since I'd spent any time with him.

So I literally was kind of unsponsored, right?

I was kind of unsponsored and I didn't really have

somebody to kind of bounce stuff off of.

And it was time for me to kind of get the sponsor

and do a 10th step, you know?

And so I asked somebody to sponsor me.

He agreed to sponsor me.

And you know, the first day that I had with him,

like the first time it was just me and him alone

outside of a group or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

I literally just like broke down.

I was like, this is going, and I don't have it.

Like I was hyperventilating, freaking out

about all the stuff that was going on.

He's like, just calm down.

You know, and he gave me some specific direction

to sit down and to start writing about it.

You know, had me sit down and write about all of it

and had me come to his house on an afternoon.

And we discussed everything that was on my list

and we took care of that 10th step.

You know, and he gave me some significant

like sponsor direction on how to deal

with all of that stuff.

And I can tell you, I felt a lot lighter.

I felt a lot better.

And the pink cloud has not come back,

but I have kind of gone through this growth spurt

in sobriety, if that makes any sense.

There's like these phases that I've gone through,

but like when I turned 10,

there was something that happened.

It was almost like I somewhat started to mature

in being a sober man.

Like, so today I am sober longer than I was

at the point where I was really throwing my life away

drinking and using, if that makes sense.

And so it's extraordinary.

At the end of the day, I wake up a sober person,

but who knows, right?

Who knows?

It's one day at a time, you know?

When I realized that and I started spending time

with other people that were new,

I realized that at the end of the day,

like if we both stayed sober, that's a miracle, you know?

And this is what I was gonna say to you earlier sometimes.

Sometimes my day, I may not feel productive

and stuff might feel really, really challenging

and I may not have done stuff.

And I may have even like talked shit

to somebody about something.

I may have even stepped out of, you know, myself.

But at the end of the day, guess what?

I think when sobriety comes forgiveness,

I was able to forgive myself and just be like,

you know what?

I stayed sober today.

It's not an excuse to be an asshole,

but I tell myself, you know what?

I stayed sober at the end of the day.

And that was the one big thing today

is that I didn't pick up, I didn't drink,

I didn't run and I didn't use, you know?

At the end of the day, that's all that matters here.

It's one day at a time that we stay sober and clean

and that we don't drink and use no matter what.

And so I wanna say I'm really grateful to be here.

I've had a really big day in AA today,

sat down at an AA workshop this morning

and read from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

and got to a space to do,

they sit down, it's a bunch of guys sitting down

just having coffee and what we did

is we pulled out the big book

and we all took turns reading out of the big book

until we got to like the inventory part,

like right after the inventory part.

So that was like 72 pages, 73 pages

that we read this morning.

So I'm pretty AA'd up, if you know what I mean.

Like I'm feeling pretty solid.

And so, and I'm also starting to feel more comfortable

in sharing my story and sharing my experience

with everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous

because I realized at the end of the day, you know what?

My experience is about me and my higher power,

you know, at the end of the day.

I know that it is not me that got me sober.

I noticed that nobody and all those hundreds of people

that ever tried to help me, that got me sober, okay?

It was my relationship with my higher power

that helped me stay here, you know?

Shed some, I made some space.

Shed some, I made some space, right?

I let go of some things and created space

for love and God's light to come into my life

and my life transformed, you know?

And here I am today just navigating this day,

this life day by day, one by one with all of you guys.

So thanks for letting me be here.

Oh, actually I'm leaving this.