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 I'm just going to set the timer here just so I know where I'm at and all the stuff you're having me.

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 It's good to be here. I think I was, I think my sponsor might have spoken here like 10 years ago when he was in a different room.

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 So I remember coming here to watch him one time. Anyway, yeah. So I'm John. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is November 20th, 2009.

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 I have a sponsor. I have a home group. My home group is a Pacific group. More specifically, it's actually the Monday Night Encino Hills group, which actually is Sherman Oaks now.

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 Starts at seven o'clock. Anyone wants to come and hang out with us there. It's a good meeting. It's a meeting that got me sober.

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 And when I was brand new, I never had a really hard time. I mean, I still have a short attention span. I'm running all over the place chasing squirrels.

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 But when I was brand new, I was really, I really had a hard time concentrating and meeting. So many things I like to do.

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 I'm just going to, you know, I don't know about you guys, but when I was in middle school, we used to have textbooks, math books, and in the back there'd be all the answers to everything.

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 So I was just going to go straight to the back. So anybody who's new here can take a nap after I'm done with that and or just zone out.

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 But what I learned was that someone came and told me, said, you got to get a big book, get a big book, turn to page 62. On page 62, it explains exactly what the problem.

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 The problem is that self selfishness and self-centeredness got me where I was. I was like uncomfortable with selfishness and self-centeredness.

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 And so I started to drink and I started to take drugs to nurse that down. And once I, once that became a serious problem, I took that away.

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 I went back to selfishness and self-centeredness, which is what the steps will do to me. And I'm basically, and what the steps will do for me.

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 And basically the other answer, the answer to the solution to all of this is one tiny little sentence they have in the book.

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 It's at the top of page 20. It's the first, first paragraph, top of page 20, it says, our very thoughts and feelings need to be focused on how we can help other people and how we can best meet their needs.

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 And that's basically, basically the whole program for me. Everything, everything I've ever done, anything that's ever given me peace of mind is me being of service to other people on a nonstop basis.

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 My solution to every single problem in my life is service. You know, when I first started coming here, I discovered this, I found peace of mind.

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 I found a quiet stomach and a quiet head in the bottom of coffee pots and then putting chairs away and of taking commitments any single time.

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 Every single time I was asked to, even though I didn't want to. And at first I didn't understand what that was all about.

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 I didn't understand you want to do it. You don't have anything to do with it, but that is what gives us peace here. And it sounds crazy.

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 Sounds like you're jumping out of an airplane with no parachute, but I swear to God, if you just only focus on being of service to other people, everything else gets way, way easier.

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 And I wish someone, I mean, they did tell me that when I first got here and I just didn't, I didn't understand.

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 I was constantly in a state of like trying to, you know, get people to solve my problems because my philosophy in life is always about help me help you do it for me. That's what I want.

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 That's what I want. I want someone else to solve my problems for me when it's always been just right there in front of me, which is just service.

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 So anyway, that's it. Now time for anyone that's tired. This is going to get really boring.

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 I was born in Chicago and right after I was born in Chicago, my my my parents sadly were killed in a drunk driving accident killed by a drunk driver.

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 And so I went from from being with them to a relative to another relative and then no one could take care of me.

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 So I ended up being adopted by a wonderful couple, Georgian vessel orphan in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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 And so, yeah, I first became an orphan and I'm adopted by a family whose last name is Orphan. And they are the most amazing people that anyone has ever met.

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 If they were AA members, they would be the kind of people that have sponsored 20 people of peace and had commitments at every single meeting and still had like 40 years sober.

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 And they're still going to meetings like five times a week. That's the kind of people my parents are. They don't lie.

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 They don't lie. They don't cheat. They don't steal. They don't do any of that stuff. And they raised my sister and myself to be that way.

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 And for some reason, I'm not sure where I came up with the idea that this was not good enough for me.

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 I was not I mean, right out of the gate, I was uncomfortable and a malcontent and constantly looking for the downside of everything.

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 And and so I was very stressed out as a kid.

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 My first drug, my first drink was actually like I was mentioning is daydreaming.

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 It's fantasy. It's just like as long as I can not be present, everything's OK, because the present moment, like right here, right now, is just too hard to deal with.

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 I don't want to I don't want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.

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 So elementary school, first grade, I basically stood out the window and flew around on the Millennium Falcon and fought stormtroopers.

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 And so they're like, John, John, over here, you got to do what comes after the number twenty five.

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 And I have no idea what we're talking about. And so they wanted to hold me back a great because I was just like, like this kid, there's something wrong with him.

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 And so, you know, so it was like that for first grade and second grade and third grade was just a mess.

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 I was just like barely getting by. It was like I was in some sort of, you know, advanced class, but it's all just basic elementary school stuff.

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 So my parents were like, something's wrong with this kid. Let's take him and get him checked out.

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 So they took me to some psychologist and, you know, gave me an IQ test and then that came back totally normal.

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 As a matter of fact, basically what I said is he's lazy. And so my parents were like, oh, my God, we got to do something about this.

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 And so they tried to give me tutors and doing all this stuff.

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 But nothing nothing was a solution to what I really loved, which was not being present, was just being out there somewhere in a world that I make up in my own mind.

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 And I didn't have to be, you know, focusing on exactly what was right in front of me.

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 It's like for some reason, I just didn't want to be there. And this gets exhausting after a while, even though, like, I think I have a pretty good imagination.

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 I was able to come up with all kinds of stuff and keep myself relatively entertained, you know, for the most part and get by.

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 Our school we had always outstanding. G was good. Then there was a VG was very good, then satisfactory.

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 And then I can't remember NG, not good. Those were the grades in elementary school. And I hovered right around satisfactory and needs improvement.

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 Yeah. Needs improvement. So my whole report card all the way through fifth grade was basically needs improvement.

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 And and the reason for that was because I was exercising the muscle of not being present at all.

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 So that's a middle school and started skipping class, started learning what to do.

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 And kids and like the bad kids in eighth grade, they're sneaking out and doing other stuff.

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 So I would sneak out and I really love to read. So I go to the library.

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 And the first thing I remember they were telling us stuff about, you know, not doing drugs and not drinking.

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 And the bad kids smoke cigarettes. And I didn't want to do that. So I went in, but I was curious about it.

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 So I'd go and I'd skip class and I'd go to the library and I would get these books on on like drugs and why they were bad and all the stuff.

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 And it was like more intriguing to me than anything else.

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 And so that was on my mind regularly. Got into high school.

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 And then one day, Sergeant Kenneth Kleineaxle of the Grand Rapids Police Department showed up to our health class.

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 And it was amazing. He brought with him gigantic, like the size of his tables, big, huge wooden curio box.

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 And then he opens it up in front of everybody. It's like, these are drugs.

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 I was like, oh, my God, that's what they look like in real like in the wild.

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 This is amazing, because I've been seeing all this stuff. And I don't know if there's anyone here who's old enough to remember on television.

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 They used to have these ads on TV. It was like, users are losers and losers are users.

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 Don't use drugs. Don't use drugs. Anyone remember that? Cute little thing. Cute little jingle that was going around.

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 And and I remember that. Oh, yeah, I can't use drugs. But why?

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 Why am I so curious about this? And why am I so curious about drinking alcohol?

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 Like I want to do this whiskey bottle set up in this big, huge curio box with all these things in my mind, just utterly intrigued.

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 And I can't believe like, wow, this is amazing. I'm just staring at this thing.

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 It's like because it was this mysterious, dangerous place. And I've always had this weird thing where I just mysterious, dangerous things.

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 Got to have mom, dad. When I'm growing up, they say, like, listen, don't touch the soap. It's hot.

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 How hot is it? Like, don't you know, you got to pay attention in school and do your homework.

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 Otherwise, you're going to pay. What is failing? I got to know. I got to know what the bad stuff is about.

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 So I saw this and I became utterly fascinated at this time that my parents started to medicate me to see if that might help.

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 And back in those days, they had this thing called Ritalin. And because I've been studying, I knew what Ritalin was.

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 It was a drug called methylphenidate, which is a root of methamphetamine.

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 And I also knew that my parents were drinking and would have friends over and they would always pour wine.

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 I knew where they kept it. So I'm like, you know, high school might be a lot easier.

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 And I did this on my own. This was not like, you know, bad kids were inspiring me to do stuff.

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 I was just like coming up with these ideas on my own. I'm like, I need to make my life more comfortable.

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 And I mean, one of the things they said about the drugs in the cabinet is like, here are some of the effects that you'll get from alcohol and from drugs.

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 And they said a bunch of stuff. But the one thing that I heard was euphoria, you know, no longer worrying about your problems.

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 I'm like, that's what my problem, that's what I want to do. I want to solve my problems. I'm uncomfortable.

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 I don't feel like everybody else looks. I feel like everybody in the whole world knows something that I don't know.

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 And no one's telling me what the secret is because everybody looks like they're just skipping through life.

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 And I am vibrating through life because I'm so anxious all the time. So sign me up for something that's going to make me feel better.

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 So mom signed me up for Ritalin and, you know,

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 not paying attention to what I was paying attention to is what signed me up for the liquor cabinet.

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 So for high school, basically what I would do is I would pretend to be sick. My mom would drive to school.

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 And so I'd pretend in the morning I'd wake up as the days of the days like Ferris Bueller's Day off where we were learning to lick your palms and groan.

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 You can call in sick to work or to school. And so my mom was like, listen, I'm going to take your sister to school.

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 By the time I get back here, I want you ready to go. And I'm like, OK, OK.

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 But my whole goal was to get her out of the house because I would run down to the liquor cabinet and grab vodka and pour that in a thermos,

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 put orange juice on top of it, grab my Ritalin pills, put them in a bag, crush them up so they're easier to snort at school.

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 This is like my freshman year in high school. And I already discovered that like this is this is the way that I need to do life so that I can kind of like it's performance enhancement.

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 Basically, I need to do this in order to function like everybody else.

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 So she would come and pick me up. And that's how high school was done for me.

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 Basically, Ritalin and what I think about orange juice and vodka is a screwdriver, basically.

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 So that's what I was doing until, you know, and I was pretty sneaky.

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 I grew up in my parents were a Greek Orthodox, and so they're very hands on as far as like raising us what went.

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 And so they're very strict. So what that taught me to do is to be very, very sneaky, like very sneaky.

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 I had to sneak around everything I did. And so I would double and triple check exactly what I was doing in order to get away with what I needed to do.

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 So basically, that's how high school went. And that's the reason it took me four and a half years to graduate high school with a grade point average of one point nine.

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 And, you know, I suppose I have a two point to graduate, but they were like, we just need you out of here.

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 We don't want to see you anymore. And just like just like my mother would say, my teachers said the same thing.

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 They're like, listen, or my mom would say this kind of stuff. She's like, listen, I don't want you hanging out with those kids anymore.

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 You're a bad influence on them. And it was never, you know, me being, you know, influenced by anyone else.

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 She knew. And it wasn't like I was, I guess, a violent person or a, you know, disruptor of anything.

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 I just had a lot of bad ideas and I was pretty convincing to my friends.

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 I'm like, hey, I have an idea. I think we should skip class today. We'll go.

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 We'll steal some mad dog. Twenty twenty get on the city bus and we'll go downtown and hang out with the moms.

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 You know, so we go to that's because that's where I wanted to go.

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 I wanted to go with the action was I wanted to go with the danger was I wanted to go to the places where people were like, you know, you better not do that.

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 Otherwise you're going to end up like these people. Well, let me find out about those people.

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 And I failed to mention this. I do want to say that my very first drink with this was with my very best friend, Matt Peters.

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 We stole a jug of wine from his from my my parents basement and we went outside and started drinking the crazy and the feeling that came over me.

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 I'll never forget this either. Right about the time that I started to feel the alcohol hit me for the very first time,

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 I saw my entire life flash before my eyes exactly the way it ended up happening.

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 Like I knew I was like, oh, man, this is a bad thing for me. I'm going to end up just like all those other people, because this is the greatest feeling I've ever had.

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 And I thought to myself, Mike, this is really this is the chemistry of this works too well on me.

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 I should not do this. I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm going to hang on to this ride. And so that's that was my first drink.

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 So anyway, graduate high school, interestingly enough. So, you know, mom and dad killed in a car accident.

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 Apparently, they had maybe a thousand dollars in a bank account way back then.

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 And over the course of the next 18 years, that accrued interest. And then so when I graduated and turned 18, legally, my parents had to give me what was left from that.

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 And that was close to thirteen thousand dollars, which might have well been one point three million dollars to an 18 year old with a propensity to just like do whatever he wants.

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 So I had a car. I had some friends. Oh, let's see. What else can I tell you? It was Ritalin, alcohol, LSD, mushrooms and a little bit of cocaine.

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 That's what I really got in big trouble for. The first time I did cocaine, I was 14 years old because my friend's father was a district attorney for the city and was representing a drug dealer.

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 So she got his number. That's how we did this. Our freshman, I was like, you've got to get that. And so you can see how kind of how my mind worked.

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 I was like, really, I was in trouble right from the beginning. So so I have, you know, an entire social circle filled with.

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 Well, and I want to say lower companions, but I was probably the lowest companion on there. But I surrounded myself with like minded individuals.

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 So everybody was on board with whatever I was like, yeah, let's do this. And I decided I wanted to get out of Michigan, which is where I was living.

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 And I wanted to move to California. And so got to my three of my friends. We jump in a car.

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 And just to give you an idea of like the kind of logic that I had back then. So this is April of 92. And there was a there's a winter storm, a really horrific winter storm.

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 And we decided to take off on that night at nine o'clock. And to celebrate leaving, we all took acid and left at four o'clock in the afternoon and took off on the road.

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 So we drove, you know, all night long. One little quick, interesting little anecdote.

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 When we finally got to when we finally came down enough to drive normally, we were in Salina, Kansas, and backing up a little bit.

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 Oh, we've been drinking the whole time also. So the car smells like alcohol and we're all coming down off of LSD,

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 which I purchased somewhere and cut up and put in individually bagged things and put them in a little pouch and then lost that little pouch.

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 So I didn't know where it went. And then we got pulled over at a rest area outside of Salina, Kansas.

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 And the police officer asked if he could search the vehicle. And and I said, yeah, sure.

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 No problem. I don't have anything because we thought we had ingested everything and everything.

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 So he starts tossing the vehicle and looking all over the place. And suddenly pulls up this little pouch.

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 And he said, what is this? And I said, oh, my God, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life.

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 And he's feeling right. So there's something in here. And I said, yeah, I can open that for you.

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 And he handed it to me and he went back to searching through the carts at the time.

151
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 I smoked rolling cigarettes and he was picking through there and looking for you.

152
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 There was a very strong smell of liquor in the car, but all the bottles have been thrown out because that's the kind of people we were.

153
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 We just finished and throw it out, finish and throw it out. That's just who we were. So there was nothing in the car.

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 So he goes back to picking through the thing. And luckily we're at a rest area.

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 So I took three or four steps back away from him and turned around and I ran as fast as I possibly could into the rest area.

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 And I kick open the door to the rest area, kick open the door to the bathroom, kick open the door to the stall.

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 And I ripped that thing open and I dumped all those hits of acid into the toilet and flushed it because my mind was thinking,

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 you know what, as long as I get rid of the evidence, I'm not going to you know, they can't do anything to me.

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 And then I braced myself because I figured I was going to be tackled.

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 It didn't come and I turned around and I walked back out and he wasn't there and went back out to my car and there he was still picking through the ashtray.

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 And I handled the thing and everything was fine and we drove away. And that's a weirdly true story.

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 But I got away from 19 years to prison right out right out of the gate. I just turned 18.

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 And so I ended up in Santa Cruz, California, and I burned through that money in about six months because I wanted to see what what speedballs were like.

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 And so that's what I did. So my life was surfing. I had a small little job at a place called Salamander Graphics where we were packaging up hats, fish hats.

165
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 That fish head comes out the front and the fish tail comes out the back. That's what I was doing.

166
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 So I'm packaging those things. So all your novelty items and some I'm doing that and shooting speedballs and drinking whiskey and red wine.

167
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 And that was my title. And so by the time I ran out of all the money and was not able to support myself with with that tiny little job, I didn't really care if I was there or not.

168
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 My life looked a little bit like I was living in a garage.

169
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 I wandered around that little space all day long, basically in my underwear, covered in blood, hunting for veins and drinking whiskey.

170
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 And that was what my life was like when I ran out of money. And my mom and dad told me it's time to come home. And they sent me about eight hundred dollars, put gas in my car and whatever.

171
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 And I drove all the way back to Michigan and went to treatment. So I went to treatment, got sober and I got a sponsor and I got I started going to meetings.

172
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 And he was a real active sponsor. And we go to we go to meetings and we go to conventions and we have commitments and we did all kinds of stuff.

173
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 And I worked through the steps and everything was great and I was staying sober and I had friends.

174
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 My entire social circle was nothing but people in AA and I stayed sober year after year after year after year.

175
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 I went to convention and did all the things that we do to a certain degree.

176
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 One thing I did back then was that I worked the steps like an assignment like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven all the way through.

177
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 And we got down like, yeah, give me my diploma or whatever it was. And there was nothing there for that. And so I was like, OK, cool.

178
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 Well, I'll just keep going to meetings and everything. And so, you know, one year to by the time I had about eight years, I started laying off my meetings a little bit.

179
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 And I would go to maybe two meetings a week and then year 10, one meeting a week.

180
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 And then by the time I got about 11 and a half years, I wasn't going to meetings.

181
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 I would go to see friends, get cakes. I would go to see, you know, friends every once in a great, great while.

182
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 But I stopped doing that. My life is getting better. I've gone back to college.

183
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 I got a degree sort of and and decided I was going to move back out to California to pursue my career in the entertainment industry, which is what I did.

184
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 So I moved out here and I was alone. I didn't know anybody.

185
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 I had some friends, but not anybody that I knew really, really well. And things were stressful and things were hard,

186
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 especially when I had not been doing what I learned to do later, which was to apply the steps in all my affairs to work.

187
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 Because that's basically what this program is for for me anyway, is that it teaches me to be comfortable minus alcohol.

188
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 And when so you can remove alcohol. I'm almost worse without alcohol and no program.

189
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 And so I wasn't working a program. And so life on life's terms, it was like the volume cranked on that so loud that I just started thinking to myself, you know what?

190
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 That was a long time, like 19 years old. I think it was just a phase.

191
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 Just a phase. Everyone goes through their speedball and crack.

192
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 Maybe I should just drink socially, which is a weird thing for me to think, considering the fact that I've never drink socially in my life.

193
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 I never, I never even understood that. I've never I've always been uncomfortable when I hear other people like invite me or someone else.

194
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 Hey, let's go out and get a drink like a drink or a couple of drinks. That doesn't make any sense to me.

195
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 It also kind of makes my skin crawl because it's just like I don't understand the concept.

196
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 I understand going a thousand miles an hour. And that's about it.

197
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 So I was going to drink normally like a normal person. And so I started drinking and for a little bit.

198
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 I think for about two weeks, I lasted where I was drinking with friends and cheers and everything is great.

199
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 And they started getting drunk again. And then I met some people and I met I met the woman I later married.

200
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 And and she said, hey, you know what would be great with this?

201
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 We wrapped a thing that we were doing and she said, you know what would be great with this?

202
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 So I'm like, oh, that's probably not a good idea for me. I want to stay in this lane.

203
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 But she I wanted to impress her. And so I was like, yeah, let's do this.

204
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 And so it didn't take very long. But sometime in 2003, I ended up right back where I was.

205
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 It wasn't 2003, actually. We got here in 2008. It took it took four years of pretending to be a normal person for everything to kick in.

206
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 So I ended up marrying her and was living a double life because all I wanted to do is get back to that garage where I was covered in blood.

207
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 That's the only thing I wanted to do. So the relationship didn't go well.

208
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 I was doing whatever I possibly could in order to just go behind her back and try to live a different life.

209
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 So it was mainly just pills and cocaine and running around and saying that I was busy doing other things when I wasn't.

210
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 And I slowly but surely ran that relationship into the ground and got divorced and we split everything.

211
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 And I went off by myself, got an apartment and I had a bunch of money and I was like, this is great.

212
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 Now I can be who I've always kind of wanted to be. I'm an adult and I'm going to just do whatever I want to do.

213
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 And I ended up exactly back where I was, burned everything down, went through everything I had and basically lost it all.

214
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 Same thing. Watched people die in front of me, almost overdosed several times myself. I was drinking around the clock.

215
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 I couldn't stand to not have something in me because, again, just like the very beginning, the thought of being present and just here in the moment with everybody else was too painful and too much.

216
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 I couldn't do it. And one day I just try to think of exactly how to explain this one. I kind of give it up completely.

217
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 I knew that something was really, really off because I didn't care whether or not I lived or died at all.

218
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 Just to give you I was I was I was using needles with everything and getting pills from people.

219
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 I was crushed them up and shoot those up and drink on top of that, even though I knew that it was a really dangerous thing to do because I didn't know, you know, milligram.

220
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 I was like, I just don't care. This is really scary that you don't care. They really don't care.

221
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 And I thought about what was going to happen and I was like, hey, I'm going to die soon.

222
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 And it gave me a feeling of relief for anyone else. And I'm feeling like, yeah, you know what, probably dead in a couple of weeks.

223
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 So it doesn't matter. I thought about my family back home in Michigan.

224
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 I remember that, you know, I was like, so what's exactly going? Well, I'm going to die in here and there's going to be a horrible smell.

225
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 And my neighbor's going to tell the landlord landlord's going to come get me and they're going to call my family and my family's going to have to find a way to ship my body back to Michigan to bury them.

226
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 Well, let me just try this one more time. I'm going to try to take and get off of this stuff.

227
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 And and there's a lot to that story I'm not even going to get into because I need to get sober right now.

228
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 I think a friend of mine shepherded me into the Pacific Grove. I didn't know exactly what that was.

229
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 I had no idea that it was some hard core brand of A.A. I was just like, she's like, I'm just going to bring you this meetings that I've been going to.

230
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 I met her in rehab. I met her in rehab. We used to shoot dope together. And she's like, hey, listen, you got to meet these people.

231
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 I'm like, OK, great. I'll go there. But I don't think this is going to work for me because it didn't work for me before.

232
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 And it's not going to work for me now. And she's like, OK, cool. She brought me to Wednesday night.

233
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 I don't know if anyone has been to the Wednesday night Pacific Grove meeting, but there's like, you know, a thousand people there and it's gigantic circus of teeth and hands.

234
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 And it was intense. It was crazy intense. And she's like, we need to find you a sponsor.

235
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 And I said to her, I don't I. Well, yeah, OK, I'll get a sponsor.

236
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 I'm going to just like take some interviews and then some obligations and see who's here, which was really funny because, I mean, here I was, you know, I'm the CEO of a defunct company, basically like John Incorporated is a mess.

237
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 I'm going to be taking, you know, applications to see who can fix my life. I literally had no money in the bank. My mother was sending me half of my rent and forcing me to go out and try to figure out how to make more money.

238
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 I had no food in my refrigerator. I was overdrawn at my bank on my bank account.

239
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 Nobody wanted me. And I'm going to take applications to see who could fix my life.

240
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 And I did. And I found somebody who's like, all right. And this is exactly what he told me.

241
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 It's like, listen, this is what you're going to do. I'll never forget this because I wrote it down. Please help me. He's like, OK, this is what we're going to do. This is what you need to do.

242
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 I need you to do this. Ignore your feelings and just do what's right in front. Do whatever you see in front of you.

243
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 And I was like, ignore my feelings. Yeah, that's exactly what's been getting you in trouble your entire life.

244
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 You think a thought, you have a feeling and then you take action on it. I want you to do the opposite.

245
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 And when you start taking behaviors and those things are going to change the way you feel and then it's going to change the way you think and then your perception is going to change.

246
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 I'm like, it sounds like a lot of math. But he said it's really easy.

247
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 All you got to do is I want you to go and when you get I want you to go meeting a week or meeting a day for the next 90 days.

248
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 And when you get I want you to get a commitment every single one of those.

249
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 And that means that after the meeting and put chairs away, where you're going to watch coffee pots, you're going to pick up cigarette butts or you're going to do whatever.

250
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 I'm like, this sounds like a nightmare. But I did it anyway because I felt like this was my last chance and I knew it wasn't going to work.

251
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 So why not just give it a try? I was like, you know what? I'm going to give this point zero zero nine percent of my my life and my effort just to see what happens.

252
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 Because what if what if somebody knows something? I don't know. I don't think they knew.

253
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 I guess we look at people like I was like, oh, it's so bad that you don't understand how awful I am.

254
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 And then I'm not this is not going to work for me. But I just kept doing it and I kept doing it and I kept doing it and doing it.

255
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 And all of a sudden I started feeling better and better and better and better.

256
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 And I started my perception absolutely did start to change. And it still does on a regular basis, but only when I do things for AA and I do things for other people.

257
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 That's the only time that I am relieved because even now I have just celebrated 13 years.

258
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 But but when even at 13 years, if I'm not involved in AA, if I'm not going to meetings, if I don't have commitments at meetings, if I'm not calling people on a regular basis to keep accountable for the things that I'm doing in my life, I start to slip in and feel uncomfortable.

259
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 And then the little things in my life. And that's for me and what my sponsors told me my entire sobriety is like it's all the little things.

260
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 That's not the big, huge things that we're doing. It's a collection of very tiny actions. And it's all 100 percent behavior, because what I wanted to do is I wanted to take me through some steps and sit around and read the book and get all intellectual and try to debate a bunch of stuff.

261
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 And he says, I'm a pragmatist. I don't do any of that stuff. He goes, you admitted you're powerless over alcohol.

262
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 You believe in God and you trust me right now. And what I'm telling you right now is to go to meetings for 90 meetings, 90 days and get a commitment.

263
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 As long as you can do that, then we can start making a list of everybody that you feel has done you wrong.

264
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 I'm like, OK, great. I can't wait to get to that point. And so he made me do that for about nine months.

265
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 And then when I started on my fourth step, he said, we're going to make sure that we don't forget that fourth column.

266
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 So I started writing to all these people that have done me wrong, all the things that my mom and dad had done and everybody else that I had resentment against.

267
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 And then I went through the fourth column on every single one of those things and slowly realized I was like, oh, my God, I'm mad at all these people that were protecting themselves from me.

268
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 That's what this is all about. And so at the end of my fourth step, I had a list of people that I owed amends to and got to make amends.

269
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 I got to do all those things. And I remember even way back when in my first sobriety.

270
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 And yeah, this is I guess my story is kind of meant to be a bit of a cautionary tale because I really thought at that first sobriety, I really had things going on.

271
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 I really thought I knew what the heck was going on. And I really had no idea that it takes 100 percent action.

272
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:36,000
 It's all about behavior. I just lost my train of thought. I don't remember what I was going to say. Oh, yeah.

273
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 Just 100 percent action at all times. It's it's the only thing that has got me to the point of where.

274
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:48,000
 Oh, yeah. Back back then, I used to hate when we'd come to the meetings and someone say, hey, we need a topic.

275
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 And I would say gratitude like, oh, my God, this again. And still, even now, sometimes I'm tricked into thinking like, oh, my God, gratitude, gratitude.

276
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 I got to say, you know, my entire life I've been chasing a feeling like that just makes me feel like something different, like something better, like I can handle anything.

277
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 And and that, you know, life is OK. You know, I've been looking for it.

278
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 And what I discovered and being of service to other people and being of service to not just people in AA, but people in my life and to just being action all the time.

279
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 I have a feeling of gratitude and that feeling is the one I've been looking for. It's that's the strongest drug I've ever had is gratitude.

280
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 I've never had experience. I've never had to drink something. I've never been so drunk that I was so happy I started crying.

281
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 Drugs and alcohol never made my throat so tight that I could talk.

282
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 Gratitude does that to me all the time is when I when I get to be around people that I've been with my entire sobriety.

283
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 And I remember all the things that people have done and gone out of their way to do for me and the experience that I have and helping to be of service to other people.

284
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 That's that's the thing I've been chasing forever. And I hope that you guys find that, too. That's all. Thanks.

285
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 Sure. Yeah, just a nice Abraham sneaking on to the meeting.

286
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:06,000
 I see you on Monday, John. I can't see him. OK.