From Waikiki to Sobriety: TJ's Early Years

How's it going? I like podiums, they remind me of court. My sponsor said no jokes tonight, so that's the only one. I'm TJ, I'm an alcoholic. I'm originally from Oahu, and I was talking to the guys earlier about it. And it's a unique place to grow up. Spent a lot of time on the beach, and if you know Oahu, I grew up running around Waikiki.

And I got introduced to alcohol at a very young age. I was in kindergarten. I was with my friends during a birthday party, and I just remember grabbing one of the adults' drinks and waking up outside of my house.

And that kind of precipitated my childhood. I didn't have a bad childhood, but any kind of trouble or any kind of... I mean, it's not like I even needed peer pressure. I was just down to do it.

It didn't matter what it was. And it definitely got me, you know, my fair share of trouble, especially with my parents. You know, I put them through a lot. I had to go to... I was the kid that was going to, like, all the different schools growing up and moved around a lot.

Lived in Canada for a little bit and spent high school on Maui. And by 14, I was drinking pretty heavy. And in Canada, it picked up more, and in Maui, it picked up more.

And between partying and drinking, it was kind of just like the two went hand in hand.

That was kind of like my college experience. You know what I mean? And I was pretty good at retail. You know, I was pretty good at talking to people. So, you know, when I wasn't partying, that's what I was doing.

And I got sober for the first time at 21. I was actually talking to my physician at the time because I was just like, dude, I don't know how to stop, you know, what I'm doing.

I mean, and like I said, anything, because I'm really going to talk about alcohol, but anything you put in front of me, I was using it to excess. I was definitely in garbage.

I didn't care about brands. I didn't care about types of liquor. It didn't really matter to me. You know, and it was funny because like regular people growing up were like, oh, what's your favorite brand of beer?

I was like, I don't care. Whatever you put in front of me. So I'm sitting in my doctor's office and I'm just like, dude, like, how do you stop? And he's like, you know, maybe AA.

And I was like, what? What is that? I remember watching Fight Club when I was a kid and seeing like the group things and people hugging each other. And I was like, man, I don't want to do that.

And I just pictured.

A lot of old white people. And it's funny because throughout my sobriety journey, they became my best friends.

And I remember, you know, Maui, you know, all my local friends are like, why are you hanging out with all these Howie people?

Because I need to, you know. And so I went to rehab. I got I went to this lady that was certified.

She had no septum in her nose and she was she was a really cool lady.

But she was like, yeah, I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're.

You're one of us. And it's like one of those like questionnaire forms that I was I was hoping I wasn't going to pass.

You know what I mean? And sure enough, I did.

And I went to this IOP place.

And I mean, even going there, I had to, like, convince myself to do it.

And I was driving in a Honda CRV at the time with the spare tire on the back and the whole wheel well was full of liquor.

And I thought I was there for other things.

So I was going there for like two weeks, three times a day.

And one day, like I'm sitting in the group and they're all staring.

And I'm like, what?

And they're like, you have alcohol in your trunk.

And I was like, I'm not here for alcohol.

They're like, well, yeah, to be sober, you can't drink.

And I was like, why would anybody want to stop doing that?

It didn't make any sense to me.

It was it was baffling and it immediately made me mad.

And and they kept me, you know, they kept me going.

I wasn't going to meetings.

I was doing everything.

I picked everything up super quick because, you know, like most newcomer, I thought I knew everything.

And all the little tidbits that I heard from.

You know, anybody that was that had more time than me or whatever, I was able to regurgitate it.

You know what I mean?

And and I carried on that way for a while.

I was just white knuckling.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I thought a sponsor was like somebody that was, you know, able to get you out of rehab so you didn't have to stop going.

I didn't know it was like a lifelong thing.

But I learned the serenity prayer and and we were assigned a counselor.

And so, you know, I kept seeing this counselor, this tough lady from Brooklyn.

And she she was, you know, beat my.

I call it we say in a way is your but she she kicked me into shape and she she kept telling me I had to go to meetings and I came up with every excuse in the book.

I knew where all the meetings were on the island.

I mean, I drank in most of the parking lots, so I had no excuse, you know.

And it's funny that my first meeting was across of what we call the triangle.

It's this little area in Kihei where all the bars are.

And it's like right across the street.

And I was just like, bro, why would you have a meeting there?

It doesn't make.

Any sense.

And I sat in the circle smoking a cigarette, super nervous.

And this lady was like right next to me and she like moved across the circle and was just like glaring at me.

I was like, bro, why am I here, man?

But I'll never forget.

You know, I was like in my head and I heard this old timer who actually became one of my really good friends.

He was talking about how we carry around this broken shield and a broken armor.

And we think that it protects us, but it really blocks us from seeing anything, whether it's truth, whether it's whatever.

And it.

Resonated with me.

And at the end of the meeting, they're like, if anybody's new, you know, stand up, do that whole thing.

And I stood up and I admitted for the first time I was an alcoholic and something something happened, you know.

And this gentleman sat next to me and he ended up being my sponsor for the next like two years.

He was a chimney sweeper in Hawaii.

It didn't make any sense to me.

But but he met with me.

You know, he answered my calls.

And, you know, and of course, you think everything that you're going through for the first time is unique.

But.

You know, most people have heard all these things before and, you know, picked up service commitment.

I was a coffee maker first, started doing literature, all that.

And but because I grew up in Hawaii and because I had spent so much time partying, I knew, you know, all the same people.

So and I didn't stop that contact with them, you know, and I have a lot of other things going on, too.

I got ego and I was if I left to my own devices, I'll get in my ego.

I'll start thinking I know better than everybody else.

And it had me relapse after three years.

And, you know, my one of my I had like three home groups and one of them was this men's meeting.

And I walked in on a Tuesday and I had just relapsed and I had just picked up my three year chip, like probably like the week before that.

So, you know, I'm sure there was people that were pretty that were kind of expecting it to happen at that point.

You know, I was I was just doing everything wrong.

I had.

I was a GSR.

I was working like ridiculous hours managing the shoe store that most of, you know, it's called Journeys and lost that job real quick and ended up being out for like two years.

And I went to Orange County for a little bit for a little pit stop and then made it back to Maui.

And I was immediately, you know, doing everything again and ended up getting a lot of consequences this time around.

Lost a lot of people, lost a lot of friends.

And, you know, a lot of things that I can't take back.

And it had me exiled from my home, you know, and it wasn't like I chose exile.

It was like, no, like if you stay here, something bad is going to happen to you.

It's either going to be the cops or it's going to be the criminals or it's going to be something.

But something is going to happen to you if you stay here.

So ego that I have, I was like, all right, let's let's just burn everybody there.

And I did. And I made it even 10 times worse than it needed to be.

Put my family in danger, put a lot of my friends in danger.

Made it to Oahu where I grew up.

I was living with my best friend who had just gotten out of prison and she was doing everything I was doing and more.

And, you know, I just couldn't stop.

I was sick breakfast, lunch and dinner throughout the night.

And it was that point where like I didn't it wasn't even like I didn't I couldn't stop.

I couldn't figure out how to stop.

And it was weird because like having that experience with three years, like, you know,

most people would be like, yo, go to a meeting.

And my parents were like, you know, fed up.

They cut me off and they didn't even want to talk to me at all.

But, you know, I would I would shoot them a meeting that was happening here or wherever.

And, you know, just kind of lie my, you know, like, yeah, I'm going to meetings.

You know what I mean? It was complete BS.

You know what I mean? And I ended up trying to kill myself with my belt on my door.

And I sat down and leaned forward and the belt broke and I just started crying.

And I had a meeting list.

I don't even know how I hadn't been to a meeting like a year probably.

And I looked it up.

It was like right.

It was probably like 10 minutes from where I grew up, like where I was born.

And I said it was in this elementary school.

I sat down and just like I did the first time I got sober, I stood up and I was like, you know, I I need help.

And at the end of the meeting, this woman introduced me to this man that agreed to sponsor me for the next two weeks.

And he knew my situation.

He knew I couldn't stop.

Like he knew if I.

If I stopped, I would be in withdrawal.

You know what I mean?

And so, you know, he was he was reading the big book with me.

It wasn't even like trying to get me to do the steps.

He was he was just trying to keep me alive, essentially.

And I met his sponsor after a little bit.

And I mean, even on a while, even though I didn't have really a lot of connections, I was still finding trouble.

You know what I mean?

And it was still just chaos all day, every day.

And and I was praying, you know, and the weight.

Of the suicide attempt was like in the back of my head.

And, you know, there was a lot of stuff going on.

But I met his sponsor and he was like, you know, you got to go to the E.R., you know, it's not safe for you to just stop on your own.

And so my sponsor, 5150 me and that was March 28th.

That was the last time I used.

And yeah, I was in the psych work for six days.

Easter passed.

Easter came and went while I was in there.

And I got out and I got a phone call from my from my mom.

I hadn't talked to her in like months.

And she was like, there's a spot that my cousin is one of us, too.

And he he went to New Jersey to get sober.

And we had like the same very close to the same sobriety date originally.

And so his auntie, I mean, my auntie, his mom was like, you know, you should go here.

You know, you can't go to like a 90 day.

You can't go to a 30 day.

And so, you know, the next day I slept on the couch.

Next day I was on the plane.

I was in Newark and I was in the middle of nowhere.

I.

I fought.

I fought everything to to leave.

I mean, I was running away all the time.

It was interesting.

It was kind of like Shawshank and like Harvard had a baby.

Like we had to wear suits to dinner every night.

And, you know, I was there on insurance and I was 26 at the time.

So this is my last shot, essentially.

Signed my car over to my parents, you know, cleared out my little shack that I was living in.

And, you know, I had nothing to my name, essentially.

I went out there with like literally.

The clothes on my own back and in my big book, which I somehow still had.

It's a third edition.

And and we couldn't read anything else there.

But, you know, of course, being who we are, we're able to smuggle books in and cigarettes, you know, all the things to distract us.

You know what I mean?

Cutting pictures out of newspapers and, you know, whatnot.

And I was there for 14 months.

And from there, I went to St.

Paul, Minnesota.

I was there for two years in a halfway house and about four months after I got to St.

Paul.

The pandemic hit and so I got to experience that with 11 other gentlemen.

And but six months in to my stay and, you know, in the past, like, you know, I'd gone to a 90 day and I thought I was like, good, you know what I mean?

But six months in, I still wanted to drink.

I still wanted to.

And I was in this moment, like I was jealous of every single person in the world that was able to drink, that was able to do what they wanted to do.

And it was like unadulterated hate.

And it was just this moment.

I was.

I was like in my room by myself and I was like crying and I prayed to God and I was just like, you know, six months in, that was really my bottom, you know what I mean?

Like, my bottom was bad already, but like that was like my spiritual bottom.

And now there's like, you know, I'm not going to say that I'm like super whatever, you know what I mean?

But it was this, like, honesty in that moment.

And fortunately, you know, a little over eight years later, like it's it's still there.

And sometimes.

I hate it, you know what I mean?

I wish that it's like that ignorance is blessing, you know, like I wish I could not sometimes, you know what I mean?

But but it's been a blessing throughout my journey.

I've lost a lot of friends, especially when I was in Minnesota during the pandemic.

A lot of people were were dying and a lot of people that I got sober with, you know, they either passed away from old age or, you know, the disease took them.

And and it's a painful reminder and it's a painful lesson.

And it's why I continue to do this.

Even when I don't want to, because a lot of the time I don't, you know what I mean?

And it's a simple program and I can easily over I often overcomplicate it at my bare necessities.

I don't want to do anything that anybody wants to tell me.

But that's why it's important that I do the opposite of what I used to do, you know what I mean?

And I'm thankful for that three years that I had before, because for a while it put like a weird chip on my shoulder where I couldn't hear anything anybody had to say.

But it really showed me that at one time.

In my life, I was able to do this, you know, and and yeah, so I moved here about five years ago and I was doing church for a minute.

You know, I kind of like I said, you know, love to my own devices.

I'll think that I don't have to do stuff even though I should.

And, you know, it kept me afloat for a little bit.

But this year has been pretty heavy.

You know, me and my girlfriend moved into a three bedroom house together and her dad got sick almost immediately.

He was in a coma first at both of his legs.

And.

You know, I've just been kind of on the opposite end of it for the first time, you know, because I've experienced grief quite a few times in my life and it's like through this whole process, I started seeing how she started drinking more, she's, you know, doing all this that her brothers are drinking more and it's all in our house and I was like, and then I got a call from central office about was it two months ago to start volunteering.

And it was like a blessing in disguise and met my sponsor, started going to meetings again and, you know, trying to learn and, you know, keep growing much time to 18, you can tell some stories.

Yeah, I, I stole a goat one time in Hawaii and it was like probably a block away from the ocean, tethered to a tree.

I was driving a Honda Accord at the time.

Me and my friend drive.

Through the gate, it was just happened to be like one of those large things.

So we just pushed through it and we literally cut the court.

It was tethered to a tree because people have pet goats in Hawaii and we literally put it in my backseat and we drove it to this, this like driveway.

I didn't even know where we were going, but it was like this Filipino family and they eat the goat, you know what I mean?

So somebody's pet, but we, you know, we sold it.

Um, see what other stories that I have killed this 18 minutes.

Uh,

um,

yeah, well, yeah.

So, you know, me and my, my parents really didn't have a relationship towards the end.

And the cool thing about the place that I was at was the only contact we could have was through letters.

So me and my mom became like pen pals for like 14 months.

And, um, I, she, in that time she found Al-Anon, she found God, she was like an agnostic for the longest time.

And so it's kind of bittersweet.

Cause it's like, I, things got so bad for me that she found things out of her comfort zone.

So, um, to be all right, you know what I mean?

And, um, that's, uh, that was a tough pill to swallow.

And, uh, you know, cause, uh, uh, alcoholism is such a selfish disease and especially like not, you know, not necessarily even when you're using it, like in your sobriety, you have to be selfish and you don't think about like all the, you know, all the, it's always like, even with like a men's it's how is this person going to forgive me?

All that stuff, you know, let me get her forgiveness.

Let me get his forgiveness, but I'm not thinking about them, you know what I mean?

And then it's like, what?

It's really changed.

You know what I mean?

And all those things happen pretty, pretty quickly when I, um, during that 14 months, like at the beginning of it, like whenever I was alone, I was just thinking about like all the people I heard and it was, it was a long list of people.

And, um, but I was able to make amends, you know, to a lot of people and some of them passed afterwards.

So again, it's just, uh, it's just God, man.

Like, um, you know, one of my best friends overdosed.

I pretty much burglarized her house and created like an awkward relationship with her dad.

Um, and it was, it sucked.

Cause like I knew her dad really well.

And, uh, he kinda, um, he kinda like trusted me with his daughter, you know, like she wasn't my girlfriend or anything like that.

But, um, yeah.

And I, I sent him a check for everything.

I still, he never checked, he never cashed it.

So he probably got the insurance payment on it, but you know, it's just situations like that that are bittersweet.

Um, but yeah, me and my, you know, my parents slowly, you know.

We know how to push each other's buttons for sure.

But, um, but there's like this mutual respect.

I remember like five years in my mom stopped looking into my eyes to see if I was like, you know, whatever.

My dad was like, stop, like kind of looking in my bag to see if there was anything in there.

Um, you know, it wasn't like when I would call now they're like, Hey, how's it going?

But at first it was like, Oh my God, what's going on?

Like, are you okay?

The cops, you know, after you or whatever.

Um, but yeah, we, we have a, we have a really good relationship today.

And, um, and realize like, I could, I can, I can be honest with them, you know what I mean?

And it's, it's like two ends of a relationship.

I don't know.

I, I'd never really experienced that before, you know, um, it was always give and take, or there was like, there was a reason for it, but now it's like, because they know everything about me and I've, I've been in sketchy situations over to, you know what I mean?

Especially like when I first moved here, I was living with a dude that had just relapsed.

Didn't tell me he was gambling.

And he was, he was doing everything under the sun course, like, you know, trying to spare me from it, but it was so obvious.

So immediately I was like, man, I gotta get out of here.

But, uh, I mean, I was sleeping with the gun next to me for the first, like two months that I was here because he, uh, he was muleing and, um, you know, we didn't know who was going to come to the house and I literally didn't know anybody else here.

So I was going to meetings.

It's like, bro, how do I get out of this situation?

Um, I was detailing in thousand Oaks.

And, uh, you know, just, um, but, you know, I got to share all that with my parents.

That was my whole point.

And, uh, it wasn't like, uh, it was like funny to talk about it with them, you know, in a way.

Cause it was just like, I was just able to just share the story with them without there being any kind of judgment or any like, oh my God, are you going to relapse?

Like, you know, they're just like, well, you gotta get, get out of there.

You know what I mean?

Um, and, uh, he's a lot.

Okay.

I'm a, I'm a keep it there.

Thanks for letting me share.

All right.