Eddie's Journey: From Bronx Streets to Seven Years Sober

- Oh, I'm sorry.

- No, you're okay.

Yeah, you're fine.

Well, my name is Eddie B, and I am an alcoholic.

I'm a very grateful recovering alcoholic,

and I always have to say that there before the grace of God,

I have a life I love today.

I really love my life.

I'm a member of the Pacoima group.

I've been there since the very, very beginning

of my sobriety.

My sobriety date is November 5th, 2012.

I have a sponsor.

His name is Arthur Burke.

He has 40 years.

My grand sponsor who passed away this past year

was James Cross, Jim Cross.

He had 55 years before he passed,

and I'm so glad for those two men in my life

because it was them who showed me in human form

the unconditional love of God.

We hear about it.

We read about it.

We read it.

Those of you who've gone to church like I have

as I was younger, we hear about it,

and but we never really experienced that,

but I was able to do so and transfer that in my life.

Anyway, as I said, my name is Eddie,

and I'm just gonna go quickly on my,

like a drunk-a-log, started drinking, 12 years old.

I grew up in New York City in the Bronx

when it was burning down.

I was able to go into the bodega.

I had a choice.

If I had a dollar, I could buy a joint, right?

Or I could go to the bodega

and get a pint of Old English 800

and five loose cigarettes and have a quarter left over

to go to the numbers hole, right?

If anybody knows the numbers,

it's the illegal lotto of that time in New York City.

Anyway, what I usually like to say is that

how many of us here, just kind of like a show of hands,

you know, you drank every day for at least six months,

you know, right?

Or every day for a year, you know?

Yep, you know, we do those things.

And it wasn't until I came to AA

that I found out about the allergy of the body.

Now I'll kind of fast forward a little bit.

My drinking took off even in my teen years,

and there was a part where I said to myself,

I said, "If God does not intervene, I'm gonna die."

This is about like at 19 years old.

You know, I was drinking heavily, I was doing drugs,

and God intervened.

I had this spiritual experience

on a street corner in the Bronx.

You know, I was cornered by some Jesus people.

But there was something about what they said

that just clicked in me 'cause I grew up as a Catholic.

And man, I had a psychic change.

That psychic change kept me from not drinking

for seven years.

I quit smoking cigarettes, I did all these.

I was actually at one point studying to be a minister.

And then after I had gotten my associate's degree

in biblical studies, I had this divine kind of like,

you know, idea, and I know it was from God,

to go to secular school.

So I went back to school.

I was working full-time, I was working full-time,

and I got my double major in psychology and sociology

with a minor in communications

and working in Puerto Rican studies.

I am Puerto Rican, I speak Spanish.

Oh, a quick plug.

So I'm just gonna say, the Pacoima Group,

this past couple of weeks at the business meeting,

we are going to have a Spanish meeting

for Spanish speakers.

So if you know anyone out there who is interested

in going to a Spanish meeting,

let them know Friday nights at 7.30,

we will be having meetings,

and I will be doing that meeting.

So back again to my drinking, this is what,

so here I am seven years sober,

and I got my sponsor there, his name is Jimmy, right?

I'm not sure if anybody else decided to show up,

but it was very simple.

We were having finals, and one of my friends

that I was taking a course with, she said,

"Hey Eddie, we're going out for drinks after finals.

"Do you wanna come with us?"

And I said, "Sure, no problem."

Seven years, what's the harm?

I did not know about the allergy of the body.

I really did not.

And so I had that first drink,

and then I had another drink, and another drink,

but I stopped, and I didn't even really drink

every day after that.

But after a while, yeah,

I was back into every day drinking,

and going to work drunk, and you know,

here I am, now I graduated college.

I'm working as a special ed resource room teacher,

right, in the Bronx, and remember going to the bar,

and just going back, going to work,

and teaching these kids hungover, you know?

So let's kind of fast forward a little bit from there.

I get married to this,

to my wife now.

We had a previous,

I was married, she was not,

then I got divorced, but then she got married.

And so then we found ourselves at this point

where we were both single at the same time,

and it was like, you know, "Harry Met Sally,"

kind of one of those stories.

And so we got married,

and she knew about, she knew I drank,

but it's funny, she has three master's degrees, right?

And so no matter how smart you are,

it's like, you know, it's like,

they're always drawn to that bad boy, right?

And so now, you know, I'm so glad,

'cause my wife has her black belt in Al-Anon, right?

So she, you know, she just knows,

oh, I'm just gonna let him do his thing,

and let him find his way.

And you know, it's funny,

there was one point in our marriage after I got sober,

where it was kind of hard, it really was.

And I would pray, I said, "God, if you don't do something,

I'm going to, you know, I think I'm gonna get a divorce."

And then something happened, something snapped.

About five years into her Al-Anon and five years into mine,

she just, everything just,

there was just a sense of peace in our home, you know?

And that was beautiful.

But let me go backtrack.

So now, now I'm drinking again after college,

I get married, I'm drinking every day,

or if I'm not drinking every day, maybe weekends,

but I am hitting it hard when I do.

If I go to a party, I'm just like banging a whole mess.

And the crazy thing is that, you know,

I could stand here and tell you

that I had this crazy life, but I didn't.

I never got a DUI.

I never lost my job over drinking.

My wife didn't leave me.

I didn't, you know, lose my home or anything.

I didn't have any of that bad stuff happen to me.

You know, I even remember there was one time with my son.

He might've been two or three years old.

I hadn't been drinking.

I'm in the car.

I'm getting off at Balboa and off the 118.

And I don't know what it was, but I wasn't aware.

And then I hit the guy in front of me,

but it wasn't that bad.

And he gets out and he was like, "Oh, you know."

And then he sees my son in the back seat

who's only like two or three.

And he was like, "Oh, okay, hey, no problem."

Let it go, you know.

I had a lot of those close calls.

And I think God knew.

I carried a very heavy sense of shame in my life.

And if I would have ever gotten arrested for a DUI,

I probably would have lost it.

You know, I probably would have put a gun to my head

just thinking it's the worst thing in the world.

As you know, we always think something is the worst thing

in the world until it happens.

And after a while, it's like, eh, you know, no big deal.

You know, so anyway, so here I am.

Now I'm married, my wife is pregnant,

and we're living in Alhambra.

Oh, I moved from New York to California

'cause my wife was already here,

or my fiance at the time, but I came over here

'cause it made more sense for me to come over here

than it was for her to go over to where I was at.

So yeah, we're married, she's pregnant.

And I remember that the night that, you know,

she gave birth to my son, and we were at this club,

we went to see her sister sing at this club in,

I wanna say studio city around that area,

and her water broke.

At least, you know, so we said, okay, let's go back home.

So we went back home, and the doula,

the woman who was training my wife during her pregnancy,

said, oh, you know, if you want, you know,

you can have some wine to relax, right?

So my wife had a glass of wine and knocked out,

and I polished off the rest of that wine.

I already had drank at the club.

Now I'm at the house and I'm drinking again.

My son was born, you know, I remember him being born,

but there was that part of me that was like,

God, you know, I don't wanna do,

I don't wanna be this kind of a dad.

I don't wanna be a drunk dad.

Unfortunately, you know, I continued to drink,

and I terrorized that boy, 'cause in my mind it was like,

well, you're not gonna be like me,

and I was just so hard on him, I really was.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, I stopped,

you know, I was teaching here, and then I stopped teaching.

There was a point, I think, where I went into real estate,

and then I started, I'm sorry, I went into life insurance,

and then I started selling real estate,

and I wasn't that great at it, you know?

I had some pretty good sales.

Once a year was like, it was like a big windfall, you know?

Commercial property or something like that,

but there was just, you know, I wasn't that good at it,

and then this guy came to our real estate office,

and he was from the Tony Robbins thing,

and he was like, oh, you know, Tony Robbins and my,

I remember my broker says, well, you know,

you guys need to get motivated,

so here I am at this Tony Robbins thing,

and of course, you know, they make you walk on fire, right?

So I remember it was funny, 'cause when he said

we were gonna walk on fire, I was like,

what, I was like, heck, but then I,

there was something in my brain that said,

okay, I need to change, I need something.

I remember I took my pack of cigarettes

that was in my pocket, and I threw it up in the fridge,

I said, you know, yeah, I'm no profanity,

but you know, guys, I was like, the hell with it,

you know, I'm gonna do this, and then,

after that whole week, you know, at Tony Robbins,

I became the poster child for this is the methods

we have tried, I did stay sober after that for three years,

I started reading inspirational books,

I started going to health farms, you know,

just getting my body healthy, I trained for a marathon,

and you know, I remember it was like,

I was sober for about three years,

I was training for this marathon,

and then I remember after the marathon,

it was kind of, it was a little bit spiritual,

you know, I would pray a lot when I would run,

and I remember I crossed the finish line, I said to myself,

is that it, but then I kind of heard God talk to me,

and he was like, it's not about the goal, the destination,

it's about the journey, and I remember that very vividly,

so here's the irony, a week later, I'm in Hawthorne,

and I was near this old watering hole that I used to go to,

and this is how it came into my brain,

it said, you just finished running a marathon,

you deserve a drink, and I proceeded to go into that bar

and polish off three pitchers of beer,

and then drive back home, and it was off to the races again.

So now, another three or four years go by,

I'm still terrorizing my son,

I'm not doing that well in real estate,

I'm just, a lot of things are just not working out for me,

I hadn't done my taxes in like three or four years, right?

And then I, and here's the thing that really got to me,

I am somewhat religious, right?

And so, I'm not religious, but you know,

there's a spiritual part of me, but I was still drinking,

and that kind of kept me from going to another level,

that I know that we all deserve, that sense of progress,

whether it's spiritually, financially, whatever.

And so, but I couldn't get it,

I would go to church with my family, and then,

this was like every Sunday, and then I would say to my wife,

I go, I'm gonna walk the dog, and I would get the dog,

and I'd go straight to the liquor store, right?

Get a few bottles of wine, and a pack of cigarettes,

and just drink that while I'm walking my dog,

or I'll sit on the grassy knoll there.

And it just came to a point

where I couldn't do it any longer.

The two other sobrieties that I had showed me

that when I don't drink, I'm pretty productive.

Stuff happens, good things happen, you know,

but drinking is like the paralyzer of my life,

and it takes up my time.

And you know, I remember even working at a youth home,

at a group home, but I had the night shift,

so I would get off work, and then I'd walk from,

this is not Tampa, Corbin.

I would walk from Corbin and around Devonshire,

all the way to Granada Hills.

And in the meantime, stopping off at liquor stores, right?

Getting a drink, going to my house, and then knocking out,

or maybe not knocking out, you know?

The thing that I know that made me an alcoholic

is it didn't make a difference what I drank,

whether I drank Top Shelf, Blend Fittich, or Cisco.

And when I was working at that place, it was like,

okay, I'm making my stops, and I'm going, you know,

to liquor stores and getting some wine or whatever,

but finally it was just like, and I didn't even dress up.

I mean, I like dressing up now, but it was just like,

okay, I'm trying to get some sleep,

but drinking is more important.

So I would be in like my bathrobe or whatever,

jump in the car, go to the liquor store, right?

Get my, you know, get my drink, bring it back to the house,

you know, pile it down, and just try to get some sleep

before I went to my next shift, you know,

at about like 10 o'clock at night.

And it stayed like that for a while.

Anyway, that job stopped, and like I said,

so I would go to church, and then just one Sunday,

I just said, God, I can't do this anymore.

This sense of who I wanna be, this sense of, you know,

hypocrisy, you know, I'm trying to be, you know, a good dad.

And I just felt so bad 'cause I really, really did

terrorize my son, you know, up until he was 12 years old.

Now he's, I stopped drinking just in time

because he started going to Al-Anon.

And I remember I took him to the convention.

I took him to the convention.

I was only like three months sober

when I went to the convention.

And no, not even that, I was like maybe two months.

But I remember telling him, you know, I'm sorry,

the reason why I do what I do is because I'm an alcoholic.

Anyway, let me kind of go back.

Let me go back to when the day started.

Again, I prayed and I said, God, I can't do this any longer.

It was one Sunday morning after church.

And then the following week,

I get a call from my brother-in-law.

And me and him were running buddies.

I mean, we ran.

And then he stopped running.

He found a, hey, I didn't know this, you know.

But then he tells, you know, he calls me up.

He says, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a speaker.

You know, I'm gonna speak at this meeting

and I want you to come support me.

Not that I didn't wanna go 'cause he was my boy, right?

But it was just like, you know, he says,

I want you to come support me.

I have to get back, okay, I'll go.

You know, for you, anything.

And he's gonna tell the story.

And my sponsor, Jimmy, knows this.

And there was that one point when he said,

he said, who here is an alcoholic?

And I didn't raise my hand.

My son is next to me.

My wife is there.

You know, her sister's there.

We're all here to support my brother-in-law.

And I didn't raise my hand.

And then he says, Eddie, you an alcoholic, man.

Raise your hand, right?

And so I said, okay, I raised my hand.

And my son kind of looks at me like, what?

And I always felt that, you know,

if this guy can get sober, I can get sober.

And after the meeting, I asked him, I says,

what did you do?

How did you do it?

And he said, he said, he said, I did a 90 and 90.

He said, I got a sponsor right away.

Take the steps and be of service.

And so that's what I did.

And I don't know, I don't remember how I found Pacoima.

I was going to a few meetings,

but there was this hardcore sense at Pacoima

that said, I need to make this my home.

And there was good sobriety there.

And I remember a girl took a chip there for three months.

When I got there and I was like, three months?

I couldn't even fathom that, you know?

Anyway, I got sober just in time.

My son eventually got into Berkeley and graduated Berkeley.

And he's extremely productive.

He graduated his last semester during COVID.

But let me say what sobriety does also.

I got my sponsor, I know he was the match for me.

I was willing to do anything.

And I went through this slight depression

after my second year,

because when I started to do my amends,

I started to feel the weight of the hurt

that I did to people.

And I went into a depression,

but I was still dragged myself to meetings.

And I remember calling everybody up and I'm like,

I can't, it was just so hard.

And they were like, Eddie,

you are exactly where you're supposed to be.

You know, just keep pressing.

And I did that.

It was like a six month depression.

And I suffered from clinical depression as well.

And of course, what's the saying about alcoholics?

You know, we're the only depressed people

who drink a depressant to forget about our depression.

So that's what I did for the longest.

And so, you know, I go on my journey

and everything starts getting better.

But initially it was hard.

My sobriety was hard

because everything started like breaking down.

You know, the garage door, my sewer line,

crap was coming up, my shower.

It was just, it was just bad.

And I kept praying and I just said,

God, I can't focus on this stuff.

Will you please put a bandaid on it

until I get this thing called sobriety?

And I would have guys from U.S.R.

or whatever that would come up to me and say,

hey Eddie, can I go check out your garage or whatever?

He says, I'm not sure if I could do that.

But then one guy gave me a number

and then somebody came to my house,

turns out he was in the program.

And he was like, look, I'll fix your door

and I'll let you make payments.

And then another guy who wanted to help me out

with my sewer line, he was like, I can't help you.

But the fact that he even came out meant so much to me.

You know, I started to feel that the sense of, you know,

people really cared about my alcoholism.

And so, you know, I'm going through this process.

I remember even being at a U.S.R. meeting

and I think maybe I'm three years sober.

And I go, and I owed the IRS $60,000, right?

And I hadn't done my taxes in like six years.

And so, yeah, don't worry about it.

I'm just waving this guy off.

You know, so I hadn't done my taxes like six years.

And I remember I go to this men's meeting and I go,

hey fellas, look, man, you know,

I'm getting this stuff together and everything,

but you know, I haven't done my taxes in six years.

The whole room went.

And I remember one guy says, Eddie,

you're gonna get in contact with Lloyd.

He's a tax attorney.

And you're gonna start doing your taxes

and get that stuff done.

And so I proceeded to do, you know,

every month I would do one year of taxes until I,

and several months later I finished seven years of taxes.

Handed that to my tax guy.

He submits the stuff and lo and behold,

I don't owe the IRS anything.

They owed me.

And they even came after me again later on

because you know, I had a corporation

and I hadn't done certain things with that.

And I owed them the fines and penalties

was like $7,000 per year, right, on the corporate side.

So what happens?

You know, I'm trying to get these letters done.

And I remember one guy in the Burbank men's group,

he says, Eddie, there's no problem that you can't solve.

And hey, if you just throw a little bit of money at it.

Right?

So I find a couple of AA tax lawyers, right?

Who they said one lady was really nice.

She was out in Beverly Hills.

She goes, I've been doing this for years.

Don't worry about it.

I says, look, can I just check out one more?

She goes, you can do whatever you want, sweetie.

Right?

And so I went with this other person

and he continued to write the letters

that I needed to have done

so that I could get this thing resolved.

And the first year was,

'cause the IRS will allow you, right,

a pass if you have some kind of infirmity

and alcoholism is an infirmity.

And so my tax guy, that tax lawyer,

wrote the letters to say for all of these years,

he was an alcoholic or something to that extent.

But you know, then they came back and said,

okay, you don't owe us anything.

They wiped out all seven years.

You know, I get, you know,

but the thing is I was also willing to pay them.

I wanna say that because in the big book

and when we do our steps, it's our willingness.

And I remember Jesse Loy,

I'm not sure if you know the famous Loy brothers,

he was like, ah, Eddie, you know what?

Just get on that payment plan.

Just give $50 a month for the rest of your life

and you'll be good, you know?

And I was willing to do that.

But then, like I said, when I took the action to do it,

it turned out that they owed me.

And so I never would have done that

had I not been, had the support of AA.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to do this real quick.

When my son went to Berkeley,

I made up my mind that I wanted to help him out.

And so I was trying to get a job at Lockheed.

And 'cause a friend of mine who wasn't alcoholic said,

Eddie, they're hiring.

If you got a pulse and a heart,

you know, a pulse and a decent skill,

they'll take you 'cause we really need guys.

So I decided to go to North Valley Occupational Center

to take a class as to become a machinist.

So, but then the instructor there,

we get to the class.

He says, you know what?

Don't take this bad, but you could do this work,

but you're not a machinist.

He, I go, yeah.

He goes, you're more like an aircraft maintenance tech.

I've always wanted, since I was 14 years old,

to become an aircraft mechanic.

And I just got terminated from my job

as an aircraft mechanic yesterday.

And, but that's another story.

But I went to school for aircraft maintenance engineer.

And I remember I had a windfall on my taxes

that was so big that I was able to pay my son's Berkeley

bill for the next couple of years.

And my wife said, you know what?

You go to school, I got the rest.

So I went full time to school and I eventually,

during COVID was when I finally took my last exam

for, to become an airframe and power plant,

FAA certified aircraft mechanic.

And I worked up in Portland for a little while.

And then I wound up in LAX with Qantas.

And the reason why God wanted me there was so that I could,

I started a union.

I started the union, union representation

for the workers at my job.

And 'cause I saw how they were being treated.

And these guys went out of their way to take care of me.

And I don't know what it was that God just said,

you know what?

You need to take care of them.

And I did.

And even though I had this big target on my back

that culminated, I'm still in union negotiations

with the company, but you know,

they finally came up with some little nonsense

to try and release me.

And after like two years that we'd been working

on this contract that I've been working with the company

for four and a half, you know, it was funny.

They handed me that termination letter yesterday

and they said, we're terminating you.

And I just had this sense of calm that came over me.

I was worried.

I was off from work for almost a month.

They paid me for a month without, you know,

while they investigated or made up their story.

And, but I don't have any hard feelings.

And I, you know, I'm at this place where now I'm,

now everything is opening up in terms of the next chapter.

And I can't do this.

You know, God is definitely doing for me

what I could not do for myself.

That's, I know that, you know.

And even though I was a little worried

when this whole investigation came,

by the time it came to that place where, you know,

they told me here's the termination letter,

I said, you know what, I'm good.

The next chapter is about to begin.

And that's where I'm at.

I could talk about it.

And you know, it's funny.

You know, my sponsor said, you know, this morning

I went to see him.

He was like, are you okay?

I was like, you know, I didn't sleep last night.

And I didn't, but also when I got up this morning,

everything felt like it's gonna be okay.

The plan is there.

This is what you're gonna do.

This is what you're gonna do.

This is what you're gonna do.

And now you have the time off to do it.

And I said, yes, let's go God.

Next chapter.

Thank you very much for letting me share.

I appreciate it.

I know I got one minute nap.

I'm good.