- Oh my God, you know.
(indistinct)
- My name is Patrick, I'm an alcoholic.
Thank you all for welcoming.
And Karen, I think you've been such a great liaison
and former secretary and the techs back and forth.
I'm really happy to be here.
I had a great drive out.
I live in West Hollywood where traffic is everywhere.
Wednesday night, I tried to get to my home group meeting.
It took an hour.
I was just spending time on a freeway, there's no traffic.
I gave myself all this time.
I'm just flying down, the windows are down,
reminiscing about all the trouble I caused in the dollar
back in my youth, so I'm really, really happy to be here.
Hey Jojo, there's really not much I can say in 35 minutes.
We can just say it in like nine minutes and 20 seconds.
I was the most perfect example of what AA can do for us.
You know, once we all know about the drinking too much
and the using too much and all the damage that it can cause,
but man, to get to the point where AA does for us
and gives us a good life, and I have a good life now.
It's a completely different life than I had before,
but I have a good life,
and I couldn't possibly put it any better than that,
so thank you very much.
So I'm just, I'm Irish.
I'm from the great state of New Jersey.
I like to tell stories, and I'm just gonna stop.
You know, it's just the way that I was born and raised,
so I'm just gonna tell you what it was like for me today,
and like I said, yeah,
I was born in the great state of New Jersey.
I come from an old Irish family.
My immediate family was just kind of cover-sized.
There were five kids.
My mother was one of 11 children, you know,
so my mother, just to give you an age reference,
I'm the youngest of the youngest.
My mother was born in 1920.
My father was born in 1913,
so obviously I come from an older generation family.
I'm the youngest of 38 cousins,
and so there was just a lot,
just a lot of family around all the time,
and I knew just about all of them.
They were very, very close.
In my life, in my life here on earth,
and the greatest gifts I've gotten from God,
obviously is my sobriety, obviously my health,
and I'm still here and able to walk and talk,
but my family's just been instrumental
in the good life that I've had,
and I'm blessed, and I don't take that for granted at all.
I know when you come to AA, you know,
there's many, many, many people that have stories
that aren't as kind and generous as mine,
and I never take it for granted.
I know how lucky I am, but I love them much,
and just got back a couple weeks with them on a Jersey Shore,
which I do every year, and enjoy all those traditions.
So anyway, I grew up in this family.
Again, like Joda, I have to relate,
you know, beginning of my story.
There's a lot of narcotics in my story.
I am truly a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I believe in the same illness of purpose.
It's a challenge for people at my age to tell a story,
you know, if they maintain same illness of purpose.
I think for me, it's kind of easier.
Most of the narcotics that are in my story
only enhance my drinking, you know,
so it kind of makes my story a little bit easier.
Most of us know when you experience those kinds of things,
and all it did was cause me to want to drink more.
When I first got, when I got back to AA, you know,
22 years ago, and I kind of like, you know,
struggling with identifying whether I was an alcoholic
or a drug addict, and then all I had to do
is read the doctor's opinion really, really closely,
and I just had that as a start.
I can't stop.
I have that phenomenon of craving.
That was the single best explanation for my drinking
that I'd ever heard, I'd never understood.
It's not the type of person that drank
along with a whole bunch of other people
that seemed to be drinking exactly the same way
that I was, exactly the same.
At the time that all the comedy was happening,
I could never differentiate
why I was the one that was in jail,
why I was the one that was in the hospitals,
why I was the one that was always in trouble,
and they weren't.
It just turns out I have alcohol, you know,
I have alcohol that went through it, perhaps they didn't.
So anyway, I started off like Jojo said, you know,
just smoking a bit of recreational marijuana.
That's what we did.
If you're a kid in New Jersey and New York in the '70s,
not a lot of consequences come from that,
but basically just me and my friends, you know,
I was a good student, by the way.
I also want to say that I was not a club alum,
I was not in trouble, I was not disrespectful,
I was a really, really good student.
Well, we did jobs when I was young.
There's nothing in my upbringing,
there's nothing in my early teenage years
that would indicate the drug that I had to later accept.
So anyway, yeah, that was just any given night
in the mid '70s where just me and a bunch of my friends
just driving around.
You've ever seen the movie "Wayne's World"
where Mike Myers, they're all in the car
singing to "Bohemian Rhapsody"?
That was completely my entire high school story,
just like that, except we would all sing
to the Julie Brothers "Blackheart," you know?
And I actually left work yesterday
and I think that song came on and I'm just,
♪ Here's some fun early dinks ♪
♪ See what I mean ♪
That's what we used to do.
Whatever that song was out,
that was the height of my high school years
and then we would just, you never got into trouble,
you know, and I'm kind of friendly,
so I need a bunch of ice cream to go home.
But I'm so old, the drinking age is,
the drinking age was 18 when I was in New Jersey
and graduated high school and I was a good student
and I went to Rutgers University,
which is a long way from my home,
and the drinking age was 18 and back then,
I would feel sorry for young people that went to college,
but we had pubs on campuses.
There was a Rutgers pub, there was a Princeton pub
and you were just allowed to drink
and pick food from those backers.
Welcome to a pitcher of beer, you know?
And drinking, I turned from being just, you know,
your run of the mill average stoner
into a really, really heavy drinker almost immediately.
Alcohol was just the key to all, you know?
Like I said, I grew up, I had a happy childhood,
like, gender indicated, you know,
but I have all the same insecurities
and all the same fears that probably many of us
in this room do,
and all of a sudden, alcohol just kind of took away
all my social fears and took away all of that,
and I drank and I drank a lot.
So my story kind of progresses pretty quickly.
I got my first drink driving
when I was 20 years old in New Jersey.
I was a bar drinker, by the way.
I maintained bar drinking for most of my drinking career.
I loved bars.
I come from Irish, my family were all bar tenders.
As a matter of fact, I come from one of the bowl houses,
little Cape Cod house that my parents bought
in the GI bill for $12,000 in like 1954.
And of course, my father and my uncle
proceeded to build a basement
with that knotty pine paneling,
and they built a bar, you know?
So I was trained in town when I was like, you know,
14 years old, and I love bars.
But anyway, I was leaving one one night when I drove driving.
It happens in New Jersey,
driving somebody else's car went off the road,
and it was just like,
they were the consequences starting right away.
Like none of my other friends were seen.
And as a result of that,
even though I was pretty successful in my college career,
you know, my alcoholism took over,
and I decided that I wanted to leave New Jersey,
and I couldn't face the consequences,
the insurance rates and everything.
So I decided that I was going to move to California.
I was going to move to Los Angeles,
even though I'd never been further west than Philadelphia.
So I just got this idea, only one person in California.
For those of you who might be younger or don't know,
that's called a geographic.
We tend to do it all the time.
You know, you're just like, this isn't working for me.
It's going to work there.
But of course, we're taking us with them.
Yeah, I was 20 years old.
It was, you know, and I just had no idea
that my alcoholism was going to manifest itself.
So in January of 1979, I was 20 years old.
My parents were heartbroken that I moved.
I mean, they were really cool.
I was the youngest.
If you're the youngest, your parents are tired.
I didn't have curfews or anything like that.
They loved me dearly,
and it really broke their hearts that I moved.
They, you know, they didn't stop me at all.
And I landed in Hollywood in January of 1979,
like $300 in my pocket,
and with the plans to go to UCLA
and all those really good plans.
And within three days, I got a job in a restaurant.
The one person that I knew here
got me a job at a place called a spaghetti factory
down in Hollywood.
It's called Boulevard,
and I had never worked in a restaurant before,
but I took to it like, you know,
like it takes the water, you know.
I just loved it immediately.
And my plans for going to school kind of got put away.
If you've ever worked in a restaurant or bar business
when you're younger and your drinking is happening,
it's the perfect place to be.
You know, you get to sleep late.
You get to go.
You get to go to work.
You know, it's a little crazy.
You hang out with your friends.
You make jokes.
You make some money.
You immediately go out and drink all that money,
and I drank at every band core.
It was a long time since I had a really great time,
but you know, I'm an alcoholic,
and, you know,
consequences caught up with me pretty quickly.
I bought, I saved up some money and bought a car,
and I got a 1964 Dodge Dart,
an herbal Slant Six engine,
push button transmission,
and I thought that was the coolest thing ever, right?
Red interior, white.
I have one picture of that car,
and that was the beginning of the troubles for me.
So in 1980, I got three drunk drivings in one year,
and even, it's pretty significant now.
It was even pretty significant back then.
I was arrested three times for drunk driving.
I am not a blackout drinker.
I really understood your story.
I've only blacked out a few times,
and that just horrified me.
I remember everything,
and so, yeah, those consequences were pretty bad.
At one point after I got the third one,
my sister, who's my oldest sibling
and my best friend in the world,
she dropped her band that she was doing
and came out, kind of kept me company,
trying to figure out what to do,
but you know, it was 1980,
and my whole family, my family are drinkers.
They're just drinkers.
They're not, and the only person sober in the NAA,
they are all hugely supportive of me.
They're amazing.
I don't determine whether they're alcoholics or not.
I think most of them were just heavy drinkers,
but that's just the way that it is, so you know.
So no one said to me, not even take responsibility.
I just didn't realize that it was alcoholics.
Like I said, I thought it was just a bunch of mishaps
and misunderstandings.
I was only out with people, and you know, why me?
You know, why did this happen to me?
And as a result of those three drunk driving,
and I also want to tell you just to make it feel
that if anybody here has had a DUI in the past 20 years,
I had three drunk driving, so I didn't lose my license.
They made me actually come down to the DMV,
it was on Coahuenga at the time.
I remember going there, and they interviewed me,
and I was a student at UCL, and I was like,
"Oh, you have to keep your license."
I'm like, "You? Yes, I do."
So I did not lose my license.
But I did have to go to drug school,
and as a result of that, I had to go to AA.
So I went to my first AA meeting.
I know speakers love to talk about their first AA meeting.
I do remember it.
I know where it was.
It was in the park, San Bassini in West Hollywood.
And I didn't know what AA was.
I'm not one of those people that never heard of AA.
You know, thought that you'd go to AA
to learn to drink like a gentleman.
I must have culturally understood
that AA is so you stop drinking.
So I knew that, and I went there,
but it was the first time I'd ever been in an AA meeting.
This was, you know, and I remember the thing
where people said, "Hey, I'm an alcoholic,"
and everybody was, and I'm like, "That's beautiful.
"You know, that's just great."
You know, I'm like, "Oh my God,
"these people are absolutely wonderful.
"I understand how this must be, you know,
"how this must work and things like that, but not for me."
I mean, I'm 20 years old.
I'm 20 years old, you know.
I mean, I'm going to UCLA, I got a job, you know.
And so I had to figure out a way to get through,
and I did have to go to school for a year and do that.
And the only way to really do that,
I think, is to like, you know.
So I, if any of you, I'm hoping everybody here
has some medicine, but if any of you are on court cards,
I'm not mind-forged, you know, so I'm not, there we go.
But I actually found the woman whose name,
there was one woman's name who was in charge of sundown
and was at Cedars High, I managed to forge her,
and I found her years later and made an event for that.
I did forge those things, I just wasn't ready to start.
You know, it was just that simple,
and consequences came the following year.
Even worse, this is what happens to me.
I'm sad, I drank half a part of the drinking every night.
I was coming home, walking home from the bars near me,
and I was crossing the street on San Juan Boulevard,
and I didn't get my bar, and I flew up in the air,
and I landed, and then the car ran over me.
And I was just, this was serious.
You know, this is my mother,
and this will be bad, it was the worst day of her life.
And I was really, really bad, really, really badly hurt.
And my parents were called, and I woke up in ICU.
When I woke up, my family was there.
My parents and two of my siblings,
it was really, really bad.
And the whole time, of course, I am like, I'm in trouble.
They're like, it's me.
I never, thank God for the steps,
and thank God for events that I got to live long enough,
and got to make amends to my parents,
'cause at the time, I never thought about
how hard that was for them.
The stuff that we do to our parents.
You know, when you're 20 years old, and 22 years old,
and you think you're indestructible,
you know, and the harm and the hurt that I caused,
and even the dream driving, and all those things,
I just never got.
'Cause you know, I'm selfish to the core.
I mean, I'm a nice guy, I recall my mom on Sundays,
but I am selfish, and self-seeking,
there's no doubt about it, and I was worried about myself.
And so that was quite an event for my family,
and they came and supported me 100%,
and then, you know, I was laid up for a couple of years,
and then, but eventually, you know,
through some good doctors, I learned to walk again,
and I went back to work, and I went back to work
in the restaurant business, and as a result,
even though I was in that intersection,
it was two o'clock in the morning,
but even though I was in that intersection,
not sober, they pulled, you know,
they pulled a pile of outside substances in my pocket,
because I had those in my pocket every minute of the space.
But even though I got money, you know,
I got an insurance settlement, because it was California,
and I got a whole bunch of money in 1984,
and I remember the day that I got the money,
I was with my best friend, who is still my best friend now,
40-something years later, and we're like,
"Yeah, this is gonna last us for a while," you know?
And we immediately went and deposited it in my bank,
and it was on for me, so I was born in '58,
so if you wanna relate age group wise,
I don't know how old everybody is, but so it was 1984,
and it was Los Angeles, and I was working in the restaurant,
you know, in Beverly Hills, and I had all this money,
and it was on, it was just on, so,
and even if you've had your glory days, whatever they were,
and again, I'm not the kid that just crashed and burned
in '19, I managed to maintain some sort of work ethic,
and even though I was getting run over,
and setting myself on fire, and getting arrested,
I still managed to forge ahead with life, you know?
But it was 1984, and I had all this money,
and it was on, it was just on.
You know, I've always been blessed with good friends.
I was really socialized by having that large, large family,
so it was easier for me to make friends,
and especially in bars, you know, bars and clubs,
make friends, concerts, all that sort of stuff.
So, then we were out in the '80s, good in Hollywood,
it was kind of a good time, you know,
like I said, for our little glory days, you know,
and I had all that money, and me and like,
eight of my friends went on, you know, for months,
but it was, you know, it was those clothes,
I bought all clothes, and I had all padded jackets
out to here, Don Johnson, Miami Vice,
earrings coming out of your ears out of here, you know,
and I went to Zeke have a reachy pants,
I had buckles, you know, my hair was spiked out to here.
And just went kind of on a wild rampage,
I spent a lot of money, I'm really into music,
I'm totally into rock and roll and pop music, you know,
so I was, I saw Prince on the Purple Range War
from the second row, in a two piece little suit
that I had bought, you know, it's just all that wildness,
and I just thought that this money was gonna last forever,
and it was having a good time,
and I was working the whole time, but I have to tell you,
I started to hurt on the inside.
I started to realize that, you know,
all the things that life had given me,
all the good things, alcohol started to take away,
and it was kind of a slow and steady draw,
but things like I used to play music,
I used to play the guitar, I didn't stop playing that,
you'd go on vacations to beach vacations,
but you didn't leave the hotel room, you sent all this money
to be at the beach, but you're still in your hotel room,
'cause you can't get out, you know, those kinds of things,
and I was aware of more and more of that,
and sometime around, I just realized,
there was one day, and I always went to work, I'm Irish,
my father told me, if you don't work, you don't get paid,
you always have to go to work,
my parents are still the most amazing work ethic in us,
and so I worked, and I was a manager of the restaurant,
and hanging out with waiters who didn't recall
and say that to me, even though I had left them before,
and one day I didn't make it to work,
because I was driving downtown,
and I had never been in before,
I was looking for a job that I didn't even do,
and I couldn't get to work, and that was a line for me,
you know, we all have lines that we're not gonna cross,
and that was the one, and so in 1988,
I went little to no warning, I just went into rehab,
I was exhausted, I was really, really tired,
and I also only had about 5,000,
(mumbles)
and I got sober in 1988,
I got sober in the care unit at Cedars, at 30 days,
and I was excluded, a lot of them would be sent back,
you know, how good you felt in Tarzana after three months,
that's how I felt, that's how I felt back then,
I just couldn't believe,
first of all, I couldn't believe that I wasn't older,
I don't think people talk about hangovers a lot,
but I had this hum over some state of the bottle
every single day, from 1979 to 1988,
I mean, just, where you just feel like hell,
luckily I worked in the restaurant business,
until I discovered the morning drink,
until I had myself to take a morning drink,
(mumbles)
just held them till five o'clock,
you know, I was always hungover,
you know, and I would always show up to work,
show up to work, be at last night's clothes,
I'd show up to work at your clothes,
I'd show up to work with no sleep,
and I'd show up to work, and then I didn't,
and got sober, and I just felt great,
and I met a man who sponsored me,
we're still friends to this day,
he lived in the neighborhood,
and his name is Rick R,
he lives down in Plano, Texas now,
and he lives in a brand new restaurant here in Beverly Hills,
and I had a great experience, I did the steps,
I got sober, I was so happy not to be over,
I was so happy to have my phone bill paid,
and now back in those days it wasn't online,
it wasn't turned off,
all of those things that I just took for granted,
I was so bad at competing if I had money in the back,
I couldn't make all those things happen,
and I got sober, and I did all the steps,
and I really, really was happy to be sober,
so meetings, I've had regular friends,
and that worked for a while,
and what happened to me was life got busy,
and my meeting schedule got a little bit lighter
as the years went by,
and I went from like whatever for bad meetings,
and the years just kind of ticked by,
and I want to tell you, I'd retrospect,
you know with those meetings,
I never took a commitment,
I could not take a commitment for some reason,
I would be the first person if you say,
"Oh, we need help cleaning up,"
I'd be the first one to raise my hand,
and I want to work with the thought of taking a commitment,
and putting AA first, somehow I've missed that,
you all told me to do that, but I didn't do it,
and you can all kind of guess what happened,
you know, life happened for me,
like it happens for all of us,
and it was the 80s, and into the 90s,
and I had relationships, I'm not good at relationships,
relationships broke up, and I'm an emotion-based person,
and I told you that I love music,
so like when I break up, it's just devastating to me,
and I, you know, like, I got so sad over break up
in the late 90s that I started listening to country music,
you know, it's just like, like James Taylor,
and Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Brown,
just weren't sad enough for me,
you know, I feel so much, it's always been my problem,
I really do, I just feel too much,
I'm not quick to anger, I'm quick to sadness,
I'm quick to melt coffee, you know,
and so what happened for me was a lot of my friends,
I'm sure I'm not the only one in this room
that lost a lot of friends in the 80s and 90s,
in whatever reason, a lot of my friends are dying,
and one of my closest friends was his major caregiver,
and I was so busy doing that,
I got a job at another restaurant in West Hollywood,
I was a general manager, and I was just all busy,
and running around trying to take care of him
and be his caregiver, and the night that he,
I was a dry drinker, I was a dry drinker,
they didn't even realize it, you know,
I was not, you agree, I was not responsible to anybody,
and I was overwhelmed, and the night that he died,
there was a hospital that's gone out down on the shore,
that's, it was called everybody hospital,
the night I was running the restaurant,
I was in the restaurant, and his nurse called and said,
"Good morning, I just passed away,"
and I went over there, and while I was waiting
for the quarter to arrive, I took one of his pills.
It had been 10 years since I had put anything in,
but I just looked back, I was so sad, I was so overwhelmed,
and I had no friendly direction, and I justified it,
I'm like, I need this, I need some sort of relief,
I just need this, and I took one of his Valium City
in the parking lot, and I knew, 'cause I've been training,
and I was no longer the ASO, and I knew it,
and I just didn't care, you know, I just was like,
I was just going where it was going,
and that was the end of that sobriety after 10 years,
and you can all guess, I'm gonna speed it up a little bit,
but you can all kind of guess what happened.
I didn't plan on drinking, I didn't plan on doing other
drugs, I didn't plan on my life going completely down
the drain, but it took a little bit while, but it did,
it was probably four or five months before I like, well,
and I was like, I knew AA, I'm like, well, here I am,
I'm just like, let's just see how this goes,
it's really how it was, I wasn't really AA,
I had just walked away, I had just bent off the stage,
off of AA, right into the abyss,
and that's what had happened to me, and so,
picked up a drink after about five months,
still working, and trying to hold on,
and then, so, when I get to speak or share,
like, you know, I always, this is my story,
and I just try to, this disease is progressive,
and we hear it all the time, and I'm just one of the few
that's been lucky enough to have experienced it
and got to come back, and stay back for a chunk of time,
it is so progressive, I can't even, I wish,
somehow I wish I could tell you what was going on
in my head that time, because it just was,
how bad things, you know, and all the lines that I said
I would never cross, so I became unemployable,
which it happened in my youth,
my, I never put a needle in my arm,
but of course I did, I progressed into a whole other drug
that I had never experienced before,
and I was so appalled during my 10 years of sobriety,
because I saw what it did to my friends,
and I became addicted to that drug.
Thank God for alcohol.
It took me a little while after I got sober
to realize why I didn't go completely crazy,
although my life completely fell apart,
'cause I drank a bottle of alcohol a day,
which all my other friends thought was no,
it's no good drug, but I did, and yeah,
put needles in my arms, my life was, I lost everything,
I lost everything, I still had my house,
and my family of course was completely alarmed,
and they, they got my sister-in-law,
but my family for years, and then my sister again,
they came and took turns coming out looking at me,
and I was working, and I weighed nothing,
and I wasn't sleeping, and I was putting needles in my arms,
and I was drinking daily, and they were hardly good,
they couldn't understand what had happened,
and I just didn't know any way out.
I had no friendly direction, I was just lost,
and so my sister scooted me out, my family scooted me out,
but they took me back to New Jersey,
and I left my house behind, my dog left everything,
and I flew with my roommate, 'cause of course
I had moved in my drug dealer, 'cause wouldn't you?
And that's a true story, and then I went back,
and I went back to my sister's house,
her big house over in New Jersey, in Denver, New Jersey,
and I said I was gonna get sober
in this little AA meeting next door,
which I had been to before, and I went to it,
and I got a job as a waiter at a restaurant down the street,
and I was living in the back room of my sister's kitchen,
she was raising a family, and they were so good to me,
and I was determined to stay sober,
and get away from that life,
and it took me a couple of months,
but you know, when I got thirsty, I just got thirsty,
and I was not near a computer, I was not near a bank club,
I was not near companions, I was not near anything,
I was in suburban New Jersey, in a suburban house,
and I found a liquor store down the street,
where I would sneak off and go down to just drink,
no drugs, no clamor, no this, you know, that, just booze,
and I would sneak the bottles back in the house,
and you know, when you hear those old-timer stories
about throwing away bottles, when you hear somebody
all the time like, I didn't know what to do with the bottles,
or they found the bottles, or I hid the bottles from my wife,
I'm like, what's with that?
Just throw the bottle out in the trash, you know,
but when you're doing it, oh, they accumulate, like really,
and they pile up, you know, so I got to, you know, try to sneak them out,
and I had full use of my nieces, my 16-year-old nieces car,
I worked a car, and you know, it was just kind of hard for me,
and my bait managed to kind of guess what was going on,
so I sat in that room anyway, I'm in that room, you know,
it's like, it's like, what am I going to do here?
And I just sat there sitting there thinking, you know what,
I'm lying down, you're not, you know, I've been diagnosed as depressive,
and all that sort of stuff, like we've all been to doctors, you know,
not depressive, I'm not crazy, I'm a drug addict, I'm a drug addict,
just a drug addict, like from the, I've come full circles now,
and they were like, oh, vodka, you know, it's just a single drink,
and I had a moment of clarity, and I'm like, I got to do this,
I'm trying to do this, and through a whole series of things,
I got back, I got back to Los Angeles, and my brother,
just some connections, and got me to Tarzan.
Yeah, I was on the county's dime, I don't know if we had a room,
you had, JoJo, but I was on the far end with,
there were I think 12 of us in that room, I was so desperate,
you know, I was so desperate, and the morning that I was supposed to go,
I had a brother who moved out, he lived up,
he was very successful in business, he lived up at the top of Nichols Canyon,
and he was taking me begrudgingly, I think he thought I didn't deserve another chance or whatever,
and he came down to pick me up that morning when I went to Tarzana,
and I wasn't ready, and if any of you remember the day that you got sober,
or the morning you got sober, or the night you got sober, what sort of state you were,
hours before you got to treatment, or your first day of eating,
or you got to bed sober, I was not in good shape,
you know, and he came down and picked me up, and I just was like heading in,
I wouldn't go right away, and he pulled up, and went,
he drove back up the hill, all the way back up to his house,
there was no cell phones then, called my father, who was 91 years old at the time,
he was like the best man that I've met in my life, the man I admired most,
because he took contrary action his whole life, I didn't even need to,
and, you know, and provided for his family, and he called my brother,
and said, get your pass back down there, and pick him up,
and my brother, who had never walked in a lot at the time,
he begrudgingly came and picked me up, and drove me out to Tarzana,
and drove me there, and that was, you know, that was on April 24th of 2001,
and that's not my sobriety game, because who doesn't go,
who doesn't swallow too badly, and when you're gone, yeah, I did,
but yeah, I got to Tarzana there, and I stayed there for about five months,
and I was miserable, and I was ashamed, and I was all in what my life had become,
and what I had done to my family, and what I had done to my body,
picked up Hep C, all of the things, just everything, you know, all of that had happened,
and I was just absolutely mortified, there were days in Tarzana where I could have stopped in the district there,
and I do follow the rules, and I did everything I was supposed to do,
but there were a couple of days where the chances just left me alone, because I couldn't get out of bed,
you know, I had to get all of that out of my system, but, you know,
I count, I count April 25th, my second day there, but I woke up there as my day of sobriety,
and I did, I did everything that they asked, even though I hated it,
and I was respectful, and did all that, and yeah, the time came to leave, and I got out,
and I had to, they introduced us to A&A there, but I knew I had to make a choice as to how I was going to do A&A,
I come from West Hollywood in Beverly Hills, where they have excellent A&A, really, really good A&A,
you know, and I, they needed B4, and those people were wonderful, you know,
they didn't turn their backs on me, I turned my back on them, so,
but I made this choice, and I aligned myself with a, with a one-streamer,
because I had been taken there, there was a man, Chris, thanks to my friend Chris for coming out and hanging, too, here,
Chris is my brother now, he knows all these people, and I have an A, a brother named Bob A,
and when we were in, towards the end of the day, he used to come on Wednesday nights, and just take us out,
and I didn't, and they took us to PG, the big Wednesday night meeting, and I'm like,
okay, I, I, I, I, I would have gone to the 7-Eleven just to get out of there, and even took me to church,
anywhere, just let me go, I'm sure, oh, and so I've been exposed to some really, you know,
A, I don't, I don't think serious is the right word, but just A, where I felt I would be held accountable,
I could keep myself accountable for not wandering away like I had before,
and, and that's where I've stayed, you know, for the past 22 years,
I am the least likely person to be in a highly regimented, you know,
but I, because I have found that, left my own devices, I won't wander away from anything,
you know, I need to be held accountable, and I need commitments,
and I need small Cs, and I need a sponsor that's on my ass,
and all of those things that I didn't do the first time,
you know, you all are doing them, you're all still sitting there with your originals and random days,
that didn't happen for me, because I just didn't listen,
I just went in one ear and out the other, and I thought I could do it my own way,
so since then, I've managed to put together a pretty good life,
for those of you that might be newer or younger,
and as I said, I was four and three years old, I felt completely out of place,
I would go to this, the home group meeting, if any of you have been or heard of that,
so at that time, I had about 800 people in it, and I was miserable, but I went anyway,
you know, luckily I smoked at the time, and so I could go out the smoking section
and try to talk to those people, and people shaking hands and trying to talk to me,
and all I kept saying were people younger than me, more successful than me,
looking in better health than me, you know, and I just, I just cowered,
but I stuck it out, you know, I just stuck it out,
I don't know where I got the willingness from, you know,
they say that getting sober is just, you know, a matter of willingness,
and I don't know where it came from, but I have it, I couldn't, you know,
I could never do that, I don't think I could ever muster that again,
but I don't know if I could ever muster the phone call that I said,
where I'm going to send it that morning, you know, I call that a moment of grace,
I think all of us have it on our sobriety day, or whatever it was,
the spark that got you to where you're sitting in the seat tonight,
with either one day or 38 years, one million years of sobriety,
there's some moment of grace that got you sitting here,
thinking of your family, a little more relaxed about where you are,
and, you know, and the world around you a little bit more peaceful,
that you're not that tornado that's causing all that trouble,
you know, and I had that moment of grace,
and I just, I'm just trying to hold on to it as best that I can,
you know, I never, I never planned on being so active in AA
when I was 65 years old, I thought maybe you could retire out of it,
you know, but I'm still caring, I don't know what I thought,
you know, I take it one day, like the most simple, simple phrases,
like one day at a time, I got that phrase,
it's the hokiest phrase that makes so much sense to me, you know,
and like I said, I thought I'd be like some sort of different class of sober,
but I'm not, I'm just another drunk, it could go like this tomorrow,
I have learned, I don't think I really understood, you know,
Chris and I go to a Facebook study on Monday,
it's been going on for years, we take that book really slowly,
like one paragraph at a time, and in that book, you know,
I learned that I really truly am an alcoholic,
I always knew I had a drinking problem, I called myself an alcoholic,
I identified and believed I was an alcoholic in my first life,
it wasn't until I read that book, you know,
that I spiritually understood that I'm an alcoholic,
you know, and I've had trouble, I grew up very Catholic,
I had no trouble with God, I had no first variety,
I had a spiritual experience, I had a really conscious contact with God,
and it's been a struggle for me, and I hate to admit that,
sitting as a speaker in front of, you know, 30 people,
but it has been a struggle for me, and I struggle,
I don't struggle now, it's just a journey, you know,
but I lost that conscious contact with God,
and I couldn't understand it unless I write it for my sponsor many years,
you know, my second year, I'm like, I don't get this,
I'm just not getting it, you know, and he said,
well, you know, you had a gift, and you gave it back, you know,
so I've had to kind of like work for my spirituality,
and I know when I was in Tarzana, you know, people are like,
I don't have any self-esteem, I don't have self-esteem,
you get self-esteem by doing esteemable acts, you know,
and the most esteemable act you can do is stay sober to your family and friends,
and look where it is in your life, you know,
and so I just try to do a series of what I'm considered to be esteemable acts,
just take contrary action, it's all about contraction,
you know, I mentioned my dad, my dad was my hero,
he was just a quiet, hard-working, hard, two and a half jobs all-time strong,
you know, working class Irishman from New York City, you know,
migrated to New Jersey and raised us,
and like I said, he took contrary action every day by going to work,
and he did it not because he had to, because he just did it on the match,
you know, and I so admire that, I have to work at my society,
thank you so much, I have to work at what I do,
and I have to stay at it, and that's why I stay active,
like I said, I've never planned on this, but here I am, you know,
and I do that by going to regular meetings,
and having commitments at my meeting, and taking phone calls,
and, you know, and saying my prayers, you know, and just being grateful,
I'm so grateful for the work that I do, you know,
there's so many people, you know, I laugh and perhaps in your life too,
you know, there are many people that are gone and dead that did,
there are some that did a lot more than me,
but there's some that did a lot less than me,
that have harder stories and easier stories,
I don't really know why I'm here, you know,
I do know how, I have a thing, you know,
so I don't know how I've stayed sober,
I mean, I do know how I've stayed sober,
because I follow what you guys do,
I follow what my sponsors told me to do,
I follow what guys like Chris with more time than me have done,
you know, and that's how, I know why I'm sober,
I know how I've stayed sober, I do,
and I've done all the steps, and so I understand that,
and it's just a matter of work,
and I just try to keep at it, you know,
and I'm just grateful to be alive,
and, you know, my life is really pretty good,
I'm like, I haven't, I live within two blocks
of where that car accident was,
I was run over in the corner of St. Monica,
I lost again, and I live within two blocks of that,
they almost killed me, and, you know,
I'm lucky to still be able to work,
maybe be alive, 65, you know, I got all my hair,
you know, it's like, life is good, you know,
I really truly love it, and what I love about AA,
I'm sorry to keep reading this,
but your story in 10 minutes, you know, man,
that just said it right there, like,
how different, how what, your life has changed,
you know, my life has changed,
you did it in three months, it's taken me like 20 years,
you know, when a dream is too wide,
and I just so love what you had to say,
because I am, I am this way, and I have a pretty good life,
and it is because of AA, because of people like you,
and the examples that you've given me,
so thanks all, and have a good year.
- Patrick, thanks, Joe.
- Thank you, Joe, thanks for having me.
- Have a great night.