Good evening, everyone, Zach Alcoholic.
Nobody said I could do this from the couch.
I mean, I would have taken that option.
I'd have done Pacific, I'd have done Pacific group
from the waist up.
I was the secretary of a Tuesday night Pacific group meeting
right at the beginning of, right before COVID happened.
And so I want to say a solid nine months,
I ran a meeting with a coat and tie
and gym shorts or boxers on,
and nobody knew the difference.
But thank you, John, for your share.
I appreciate that.
I'll be in Oregon on Monday,
so maybe we're gonna have to link up for a meeting.
You'll have to show me some good Oregon AA.
You know, I'm glad to be here.
My sobriety date is April 4th, 2012.
I have a sponsor who has a sponsor,
who has a sponsor, and I sponsor guys.
I want to thank Abraham for asking me to be here.
He sent me a text message
and said that I come highly recommended.
And I hope that you guys considered your source
for that high recommendation,
'cause this is someone who also might recommend
that you buy a personal breathalyzer to test yourself
before you get into your car
that has a state-sponsored breathalyzer in it
and still think it's a good idea to drink
and get locked out of that car
and have your husband come pick you up in downtown LA
'cause your car is locked.
So just saying, lower your expectations.
You know, I'm grateful to be here.
I woke up this morning at 5 a.m. to go be an adult,
which sucks, but I woke up at five this morning
and I got ready, you know, got everything together
as quiet as I could to not wake the family.
Got in the car at 6 a.m.
and got on my Saturday morning 6 a.m. Zoom
with some gentlemen that I met traveling the country.
I met these guys from all over the country
and we had such a bond from this experience
we had in Milwaukee of hitting, you know,
guys from everywhere.
And we hit this random meeting in Milwaukee
and just, you know, it was this tiny little,
there was one guy there when we got there,
he was missing, it was one-armed Bob,
he had one arm and then a couple other folks showed up
and we just laughed so hard,
a bunch of strangers and built this bond.
And so we meet every morning on Saturday
at 6 a.m. on Zoom to just, you know,
have a little mini meeting and so I'm on this meeting
this morning at 6 a.m. and when we started it
we decided to make it a gratitude meeting.
So we share about gratitude and I get in there
and I was just, you know, I was sharing how grateful I am.
I was this morning, right?
It was, you know, everything that Alcoholics Anonymous
has given me in this wonderful, beautiful life
where I get to wake up and go be an adult
and go run this work meeting that people have put me
in charge of and then come home and spend time
with my family, you know, I came home and I met my wife
and my daughter at the mall, which I don't recommend
a three-year-old at the mall, just saying.
But I met them at the mall and we, you know,
just did sober things and got to experience life
that I didn't have prior to this.
And I was sharing all about this in the meeting
and I get off and I'm just, you know, it's 7 a.m.
and I'm just rimming over with gratitude.
And then I, you know, I have my day
and I swing by the Starbucks on the way here
'cause I'm exhausted from waking up early,
swing by Starbucks on the way over here
and I get a triple shot of espresso,
the usual for like 6 p.m.
And I pick it up and I go, it's a little light, you know,
might be like maybe two shots, I just paid for two shots
of espresso and, you know, or I paid for three
and I got two and I walk over to my car
and there's a ding on my door,
which I just noticed, a nice big ding.
I'm going, I'm not as grateful as I was
at six in the morning, like, right?
It was a nice reminder of how quick that gets depleted
in my life and why it's important to continue
to come to Alcoholics Anonymous for someone like me.
Like I have to come back and I have to stay busy,
I have to stay active in my program
because my gratitude runs out really quick.
I could be top of the food chain in the morning
on gratitude and then 6 a.m., 6 p.m., it's all gone.
And again, that's why I'm grateful to be here.
I just, I have this amazing life
that I never thought possible for someone like me,
someone who, I mean, I'll get deeper into it,
but someone who woke up at seven in the morning,
my alarm was set for seven in the morning
because that's when the liquor store opened.
If I woke up any later than that, I was too far into detox
and I was shaking and uncomfortable.
So I needed to get up as soon as they opened
to get where I needed to get.
And I would start my drinking at seven in the morning
and spend the day alone
'cause nobody wanted to hang out with me.
I just, the person you see in front of you
was not the person I was almost 14 years ago.
But, you know, to go back a little further, right?
I was born and raised in the valley to two loving parents
who may or may not have had their own issues,
may or may not still have their own issues,
that's for them to, that's for my father to determine,
not me.
But I always say, I grew up having everything we needed.
Like I had everything, we had a roof over our head.
If I had toys, I had food, I had whatever it was.
But for some reason, for me, it wasn't enough.
I don't know what it was.
I've always identified with the people
that get up to the podium and say that they felt like
everyone was given the book of life and I wasn't.
I mean, I can't identify more with a feeling
than feeling like I just, I mean, still to this day,
there's things that I'm like, how do these people know?
I've started to figure it out a little bit more
that nobody really knows what they're doing.
When I became a, when I started running big jobs
in my trade now, I started running big construction jobs,
that's when I realized that nobody knows what they're doing.
'Cause all the guys that I was like,
how do they know all this stuff?
I figured out that they just go home.
So that's the book of life, it's right here.
Yeah, so I didn't know, I wasn't comfortable being me.
I remember feelings as a young kid of not wanting to be me.
I wanted to be someone else.
I had this friend named Sean and I wanted whatever Sean had.
I wanted Sean's parents, Sean's house, Sean's toys,
Sean's name, I mean, I would call myself Sean by myself
'cause I didn't wanna be Zach.
Like, I just wanna be Sean.
And then I started figuring out like,
so I could have these things, right?
I could call myself a different name.
I could also have their things.
Nobody taught me that when I was a kid, but real young,
I figured out like, if I wanted your toys,
I would just put them in my pocket and leave with them.
Like, again, nobody taught me that,
but that was just like something that I did.
And that maybe was one of those early kind of rushes for me,
but yeah, I started stealing at a young age
and always from people I loved,
never from like institutions.
I never really got in trouble for stealing from stores
or anything like that.
It was always people I cared about.
So yeah, this just uncomfortable feeling.
And then I was diagnosed with ADD, ADHD at a young age
and they put me on medication.
And for someone who already felt different
and like I didn't fit in,
that just put me on this other level of,
you're different, right?
Now I'm the kid in school who gets special privileges
that any other kid would be like, this is incredible.
I get to eat food in class
where nobody else gets to eat food.
I get to take breaks when I want.
If I fall asleep in class, they're like, it's okay.
He's on medication.
He's got blah, blah, blah.
But like, to me, that was, everyone was staring at me
and everyone was, I just felt different.
So I hated it.
And as soon as I figured out that I could like cheek pills
and spit them out in the bush, I started doing that.
It's like a lot of these weird things that I figured out
at a young age on how to do that would serve me very well
as an adult.
So anyway, yeah, just this uncomfortable feeling as a youth.
But at the same time, I had a father who drank regularly
and was what I would consider at the time,
a heavy pot smoker.
And me and him really didn't get along.
Like we butted heads at every corner
and I told myself at a young age
that I'm gonna be nothing like him.
So I'm not gonna drink and I'm not gonna do drugs.
And so I was this super straight kid.
I got into marching band and was doing the band thing.
Yeah, go band kids.
And I did it for a while.
Like I didn't drink, I didn't use drugs.
I'm gonna be this clean kid until I didn't.
Like it was like, I'm never gonna do drugs
and I'm never gonna drink.
And then someone was like, hey, do you wanna do drugs
and drink?
And I'm like, sure.
Like, I don't know why it was that quick and easy
for someone like me,
but someone offered me to be part of the cool kids club.
And I was real quick to join in.
Again, maybe that sort of, I don't fit in,
I'm not comfortable.
This was my opportunity to the in crowd.
And so, and I took it and I started smoking weed.
Like my first time was at school.
Like I did it at school.
I was high risk from the get go.
And it took off from there.
Everything kind of took off from there.
And I remember, I think I was,
I wanna say I was about 15 years old
when I finally, my father and I's relationship
hit this point where we just could not be in the same house.
And I spent a couple nights in the park,
down the street from the house.
And then my grandmother who was like my best enabler.
I mean, best friend, best friend, also best enabler.
My best, she let me move in with her.
And my grandfather had already passed at the time.
And he bequeathed me this phenomenal liquor cabinet.
Just everything you could possibly imagine.
I mean, all the liqueurs and the vodkas, tequilas,
Kentucky bourbon proof whiskey,
everything was in this cabinet.
And I moved in with my grandmother
and I realized that at the time,
when alcohol works, it works, right?
I found three shots was my like,
if I took three shots or whatever was in that cabinet,
I was at my mark and I was comfortable
and I could talk to people and I just felt myself.
And so I'd do that, I'd get home from school
and I'd take a couple shots and I'd feel comfortable
and I'd make phone calls and whatever
and just be friendly and outgoing.
And then I realized,
oh, you could just bring this to school with you.
And so I started doing that and I would drink before school.
And like I said, my alcoholism really took off
in my high school years.
It went from zero to 60 and I went from nothing to,
I'm gonna bring a water bottle
with a hundred proof Kentucky bourbon whiskey
and a bottle of Coke to school in the morning
and drink throughout my day.
And again, I was an excellent band student,
really good with music.
I'm a trumpet player, I still play,
I've been playing for 31 years.
But I was like, early on I was top of the class
and I didn't realize until sobriety
that that was the first thing,
someone said this from the podium
and it resonated really well.
That was the first thing I gave up for alcohol
was my music career or whatever, it was gonna be one.
But I started drinking so much
that I wasn't doing well in school
and they started pulling me back from these extracurriculars.
And at the time it was your fault, it was the school's,
it was this person pulled me, this person,
it was always everybody else's fault
that I couldn't do the things I wanted and it was never,
well, I mean, you were absolutely hammered in jazz band,
you couldn't read the music.
That's maybe why, but that would be years
before I figured that out.
So, like I said, took off and I dropped out of high school.
I didn't go my senior year and got out, got my GED
and went off to just go live life.
I was still out of my parents' house,
so I kinda got a little leeway to do as I wanted.
I got a couple odd jobs until I turned 17, I think,
and I got into the family business,
a little pharmaceutical entrepreneurial ships.
You know, that's what the family, that's what,
you know, I have cousins and blah, blah, extended family
that was in this business.
And so I got into the drug business
and started making crazy money.
Like, you know, as a young kid,
just living this wild, extravagant life.
I won't get into crazy details on the stories,
but I mean, by like 19 years old,
I was living a life where I was living in houses
with guys who were the sketchiest of sketchy.
Working for people who just, you know,
I had roommates who would make bad deals
and then not come home.
And the people I worked for would just swing by
and be like, you can go ahead and clean out his room,
he's not coming back.
And I knew what that meant.
Like, I knew he was not coming back.
So living this kind of wild life and,
but again, making lots of money
and not a ton of consequences,
but partying it up and having this interesting life.
But again, that sort of a feeling of not enough sank in.
And what happened was I was,
we were running this big warehouse in Chatsworth
and my partner and I in this business,
I felt like I was taking on a little more risk than he was.
So I just started to steal extra product
and, you know, turn that into extra cash.
And I got caught and I had some people hold me down
while someone beat the living S out of me.
I gotta remember, like, no profanity from the microphone.
My six o'clock this morning is mandatory profanity.
So like, I gotta reel it back.
So I wound up going into kind of like a hiding for a while.
And I think, again, another one of those,
I don't know if it was a moment of clarity,
but looking back on it again,
realized that I've always had a higher power
looking out for me, something looking out for me
because three days after that incident happened,
the warehouse was raided by the DEA.
Everyone went to jail.
I was already in hiding
and they thought I had called it in
'cause I just got my butt kicked.
And fortunately, no, there was like months and months
of videotape of surveillance on the building.
But yeah, I mean, that would have been my story.
I wouldn't be here telling that story.
I'd be in jail.
But again, at the time, I think this is just a lucky break
and I go about my business and continue to do what I do
and just went out on my own to do this.
And I continued drinking and drinking has been
this entire part of my life from beginning to end.
And a little bit of this loneliness,
I always tell this story about nobody wanted,
at that point, I was drinking so much.
This was kind of towards that drinking morning tonight
where I was drinking so much,
people didn't wanna spend time with me.
I didn't really have friends.
And so I would tell people who came over to buy stuff from me
that someone might be watching the house.
So you should probably stay for at least an hour
so it doesn't seem sketchy.
And then I'd be like, well, I'm gonna put a movie on
or some music, like, have you heard this?
Like, I was forcing people to hang out with me.
People did not wanna hang out with me.
So I would just convince them that we were being watched
so that I had people to spend time with.
And yeah, I think back on it, it's absolutely wild.
But I wound up getting married.
I was young, I was 24.
And I met this woman who we used to work with
back in the day at the shop.
And we got married kind of in a blackout.
Like I proposed in a black,
like I wasn't really trying to propose,
but it got taken that way.
And I was a little too much of a wuss to say anything.
So, you know, it's just like that kind of lifestyle I lived.
I was like, you know what?
Sure, let's get married and we'll give it a shot.
And I wound up going, getting married
and staying married for five years
to someone who like I didn't really intend to propose to
in the first place, not her, nothing against her.
Just, I mean, it's the kind of person I was.
And so I got married young and just drank my way
through that marriage.
Like I just, I was a manipulator and a gaslighter,
just hiding alcohol and just this really,
really dark point in my life.
And what happened to me was she'd had enough.
She called my cousin, my cousin came to my house.
This was about a year and a half into our marriage.
My cousin came to my house.
He said, you know, your wife's gonna leave you
if you don't stop drinking.
I was like, oop.
And then he said something interesting.
He said, and when she does,
I'm gonna make sure that she gets all your stuff.
And I was like, all right, cool.
Like let's go get sober.
Again, this just kind of tells you
the kind of person I was, not that like nothing about her.
This tells you that to me,
the important things were stuff and not people.
And the very interesting thing was I didn't have,
I mean, at that point in my life,
I didn't have any stuff to take.
It was dark times.
Like she would have kept debt, a beaten up car,
you know, a bunch of stuff stuffed in a garage.
So there was nothing much to keep,
but it was enough to get me to pack a bag.
And he told her we were going to a rehab.
He was gonna take me to a rehab and I get in his truck
and I got my bag pack and he goes,
we're not going to rehab.
I'm taking you to Glamis.
We're gonna go ride dirt bikes for six days
and have a great time.
I was a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. vodka out of the bottle drinker.
I would drink until I passed out
and I would wake up and I'd do it again.
This was going on for like three years.
And we went out to the desert and I sat in the trailer.
I didn't ride any dirt bikes.
I shook in the back of the trailer for six days and detoxed.
It was absolutely miserable and he is a bad person
who should have taken me to the hospital.
But at the same time, he saved my life, right?
That was the longest I had been sober since I started
drinking and using.
Six days, never done that before.
And I came back kind of on this like high horse of like,
and I got six days of sobriety.
Like everybody should show a little respect.
Especially my wife.
She should be very proud of me.
And I'd remembered that I promised her
that I'd go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
when I got back from this sabbatical.
And I had never been to Alcoholics Anonymous before.
I knew nothing about it.
I've heard about it.
I joked with friends that like,
"Oh yeah, I know I'm an alcoholic."
Like, you know, you kind of say those things
but never with that depth and weight of when I say it now.
And so it was a Saturday I got home.
A Saturday morning we got back.
And I told her I'd go to this meeting.
So I found an AA meeting.
It was a Saturday night meeting at the St. Luke's Church
on Canoga and Ventura.
And I said I just got to make it over to this meeting, right?
Like, cool.
I've been sober six days.
I just got to make it over to this meeting.
And it was like a seven o'clock meeting maybe.
I don't know.
At five o'clock I thought,
well I should leave a little early
'cause I don't know where I'm going.
I'm not quite sure.
Maybe I need to suss the meeting out before I actually go in.
And I got in my truck and I started heading that direction.
And I found myself in the parking lot of the liquor store
that I went to every morning at seven a.m.
And I sat in my car and thought,
well, you know what, no, let's just go to the meeting.
I sat and then I thought, you know what,
maybe I'll just buy a bottle and take it with me.
And if I don't like the meeting,
then I can go back to do what I was doing.
And I walked inside and I bought three airplane bottle,
little three vodkas 'cause those are easily transportable.
And I thought, well, this is perfect.
I'll just take these with me if I don't like it.
And then next thing you know,
I'm standing there outside my car
in the parking lot of the liquor store,
finishing the third bottle.
And that was, I mean, for me, that was my moment of clarity.
I looked up and I was like,
oh my God, I can't do this by myself.
I can't not drink given the opportunity.
So I drove down to that meeting
and raised my hand as an alcoholic
when they asked if there were any alcoholics,
if there were any new people.
I don't know why I raised my hand
and said I was an alcoholic.
I'd never done it before at that capacity,
but I did and I started crying.
And everyone clapped for me.
And after the meeting, everyone came and gave me a hug.
And I got a bunch of business cards
and toss those in the trash on my way out of the meeting.
But there was something about that meeting
'cause I thought I'd try it again on Sunday.
And I found another meeting on Sunday
and I went to that one and I found some love there.
And I went to a meeting on Monday
and I found some love there.
And I met a man who was like,
well, hey, I got this Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday.
And he's like, come meet me at all these meetings
and kind of introduced me to Alcoholics Anonymous.
He drugged me around.
And at that first week, I went to this Friday meeting
and a couple of guys that I'd seen
at some of the other meetings,
these two guys, they cornered me in the back of the room
and they're like, do you got a sponsor?
And I was like, no, I don't have a sponsor.
I was looking, I had heard about sponsor
when I first got here.
And again, a lot of financial problems.
So I was looking for the right sponsor.
I thought, I wasn't really sure,
but I thought a sponsor was like someone
who helps you get back on your feet, right?
Maybe someone who could loan me some cash
until I was doing a little bit better.
So I was looking for the guy who had the nice watch
and the nice car and some nice clothes on.
And unfortunately I didn't see him.
So I thought I'd kept going and try to find,
but they cornered me at the back of this Friday meeting
and they said, you're gonna find a sponsor tonight
or one of us is gonna sponsor you.
And I knew I didn't want either of those guys to sponsor me.
So I went back and I grabbed that man
who was dragging me around to meetings.
And funny enough, I know this now, I didn't know what that.
Very well off, he probably could have lent me some money.
But when I met like, as I've known him,
he's the most simple in his life.
He drives the same, at the time he drove
the same beat up old car, lives in a small apartment,
doesn't have any of the flashy things.
But man, when you see him always at the door
of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,
he's always there at the door and he always has a handout.
He always had a big smile on his face
and he looked happy and comfortable.
And I think that's what I always wanted.
Maybe not the nice stuff.
And that's what really attracted me.
And so that man became my sponsor
and he took me through the steps
and introduced me to this thing, not by force.
He never told me like, you have to do this
and you have to do that.
He said, I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna be doing this.
Come with me if you want.
And whatever he was doing seemed to be working.
So I was like, all right, I'm gonna do all that.
I'm gonna try it.
And so I followed him around.
And at two years sober, I wound up getting divorced.
I cleaned out that garage and found a big book
that someone had came and talked to me about
when I was still drinking.
My ex-wife had had someone come
and I remembered it when I found that book.
Someone came to my house and pitched me Alcoholics Anonymous
and said, you might need this thing.
And I flashed back and I remember throwing the book
into the back of the garage and saying,
I'm not gonna need this.
And it's the big book I use today, right?
This big book that I found in my garage
that now has notes taken in it
of 14 years of going through the steps.
I belong to this Thursday night meeting
where we go through the steps.
Every couple of years, we get a hair up our butt
and we're like, hey, we're gonna redo the steps
and we do this 20 week step workshop and we go through it.
So I have all these notes in this big book
and I have this absolutely beautiful life today.
Just doing the things that you do
here in Alcoholics Anonymous, I wound up getting divorced.
I had some rough times, right?
Like they say, you get sober, life doesn't get amazing.
Life still happens and life happened really, really hard
at year two, year three, I get divorced.
I lose the house that I've been living in for nine years.
So I went from a three bedroom house with stuff
and family and blah, blah, blah.
And I have to move into a garage, a converted garage
and get rid of everything.
And then my dog dies and my mom dies
and then both my grandmothers die.
And like, just these things happen that are life, right?
The big one was of course, my mom passing away.
But I was sober when it happened.
She got to come and give me, in her last 10 months,
she got a very aggressive, rare form of cancer
and passed away within 10 months of receiving her diagnosis.
But I got to be there through that whole process.
And she got to come give me a cake
on my third year of sobriety.
I have this great photo on Sunday morning
of her giving me a cake, yeah, when I turned three.
And I got to be there by her side, right?
There were other family members that passed away
when I was drinking and I couldn't make it to funerals
'cause I was so drunk.
I was outside throwing up in the bushes or whatever
and I missed a lot of funerals.
So like, again, being able to be a member of my family
has been an absolute blessing.
But like I said, life happens and you still get through it.
She passed away on a Friday
and my feet took me to my Friday night men's stag
'cause that's why I knew where I needed to be.
And I was surrounded by the people who love me
and support me and I stayed sober through that.
And I stayed sober through the divorce.
And then great things happened, right?
I get remarried.
I meet my wife who spoke here last week.
And I normally don't talk about it,
but I'll briefly share about our meeting.
We met online.
I did not disclose that I was a sober member
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And when she asked where we should meet,
she suggested this bar in downtown LA.
And I said, "Sure."
Not knowing anything about her, but when we meet
and her first order is, what is she ordered?
She ordered a shot of Jack Daniels
or a shot of Jameson and a beer.
And I ordered a Coke and she said,
"Oh, that's smart 'cause you gotta drive home."
And I said, "Yeah, yeah, that's it."
And then when she got her second shot of Jameson and beer
and I ordered my second Coke and some conversation later
and she said, "Wait a minute, you're sober, aren't you?"
Yeah, yeah, actually I am.
I wound up hitting it off that night.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe not.
But she stuck around and later told me
that if my profile had said
that I was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous,
she wouldn't have gone on that first date with me.
And we've been married for,
well, we've been together over 10 years now.
And we have this beautiful life.
We have a three-year-old, as you all saw.
We are about two weeks away from another,
our second and final child.
But I have this beautiful life
and I owe it all to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I have a sober household.
My family's all gone, so my brother's sober.
It's about the same amount of time as my wife.
My sister-in-law's sober.
I'm surrounded by Alcoholics Anonymous.
All my friends are sober.
I wanna thank my guys for coming out and supporting me.
I get the absolute honor of working with guys
who wanna work the steps, right?
I've worked with a lot of people that don't wanna do this.
And it's a pleasure to work with people who do
because they help keep me sober, right?
My sponsor is fantastic.
He helps keep me sober,
but the guys I work with really help keep me sober.
I absolutely love my life.
Thank Alcoholics Anonymous.
Thank my sponsor.
Thank you guys for having me out and thanks.