- Hi everybody, my name's Grapinder, I'm an alcoholic.
You guys see me okay?
Are they seeing me okay on camera?
I feel like my head's cut off, but that's okay.
I don't have any hair, so it hides my balding head.
Hi everybody, I'm Grapinder, I'm an alcoholic.
My sobriety date is February 15th, 2013.
I just turned 13 years clean and sober.
I'm really happy to be here.
I'm really grateful to be sober.
It's nice to meet all of you guys.
There's a couple of familiar faces here.
I've got some good friends with me as well.
Abraham, thank you so much for calling on me to come out
and share my experience, strength, and hope with you guys.
It's an honor to be here.
It's always such a butterfly feeling in my gut
when someone asks you to come and share at a meeting.
For whatever reason, maybe they heard you share
or something like that at another meeting
and they want you to come out
and share a little bit of that vibe with them.
I love being in this AA living room.
This is super awesome.
This reminds you of being at my aunt's house or something.
And there's a full on AA meeting going on
in the middle of the living room
with carpet and sofas and coffee
and everybody just kind of hanging out.
And that's just what really Alcoholics Anonymous
really is at the end of the day.
It's one alcoholic talking to another.
And Maria, thank you so much for your lead.
It was really, really good to hear you.
I think that I can relate so much to your story.
I was probably very similar to you
and where I was at nine months of recovery.
So yeah, it's been a journey.
It's been a trip.
It's been extraordinary.
It took a lot for me to get here.
And when I say here, I mean like on the other side
which is a place that I never thought I was ever gonna be.
I never thought it was something
that I was gonna be able to do.
While I was going in and out of rehab and treatment centers
and they would take us in the druggy buggy
and they would take us off to meetings and stuff.
And I would experience Alcoholics Anonymous,
Narcotics Anonymous and all the different AA meetings,
12 step meetings.
I didn't know really that I would ever be able
to have long-term sobriety.
I was at that point really just used to having
30, 60, 90 days, 30, 60, 90 days, 30, 60, 90 days.
That was just kind of like my vibe.
That was just kind of a thing that was going on.
And I think in looking back now I realize
that I didn't really understand what the program was.
I didn't have faith in the loving God
and I didn't understand what the 12 steps
of Alcoholics Anonymous was.
I didn't understand what it meant to be sober.
I didn't know what it meant to have quality of life again.
And so I didn't have a good, I'm gonna say it again.
I didn't have a good quality of life until I got sober.
It didn't happen until I got clean and sober.
Regardless of all the fantasies and whatever was real
or imagined while I was out there drinking and using,
like none of it was quality anything.
There was no substance to really anything
that was going on in my life before I got sober
and before I put it down all the way
and before I sat down, you know what I'm saying?
And some people will say took my wig off, you know?
Like it wasn't until that happened
that my life changed extraordinarily, you know?
And it took what it took.
I'm so grateful to be sober.
I'm so grateful to be clean and sober.
And I say that because drugs are also a part of my story,
and I will share a little bit about that.
I'll be very light about it because I believe that
I can share about it in a general way
because I think it's the easier, softer way
and I don't wanna trigger anybody
or get anything going for anyone else either.
It sounds and looks like I got a long talk ahead of me,
so I'm gonna probably get into it now.
So okay, I'm 48 years old.
I'm gonna be 49 this year, which is a freaking miracle
'cause I didn't think I was gonna live past 30 years old.
I never thought that I would make it that far, honestly,
'cause I was like a hope to die drug addict alcoholic.
Like it was just, I was going out with a bang.
That was just going to be a part of my story.
And so I grew up in England.
My parents moved to England in the late '60s,
and they had me and my sisters.
My dad was a mechanic.
He worked for Jaguar, or Jaguar, okay?
He worked for Jaguar.
And my mother was a school teacher,
but before she became a school teacher,
she was at home and she sold, while my dad would work,
she sold Avon, and she also sold Tupperware.
So all the ladies used to come over to our house
with all their little kids and they would all kiki, right?
They would all kiki and sell like whatever it was.
And my mother was like selling stuff.
And there was always like snacks and treats
and cookies and chips and cakes
and all different kinds of cute little things going on.
And I like made friends with the neighborhood kids.
And I grew up in a town in England,
which is about two and a half miles away,
two and a half hours drive from London North
into the very center of Midlands, which is not,
at that time, there were not a lot of Indian people
in that neighborhood.
So yeah, I'm Indian if you were wondering what it was.
There's a huge East Indian community in England.
And so my parents were kind of like about
of that whole dysphoria that had come over there.
And so, yeah, my parents spoke several languages.
They spoke English fluently with a British accent.
They, you know, they spoke our native tongue,
which is an Indian language.
They spoke several Indian languages,
but they were both born and raised in East Africa, Kenya.
So they actually spoke Swahili as well.
So in my house, when I was growing up,
there were several languages being spoken all the time.
In fact, when my mother would refer to her broom,
she would probably use a Swahili word.
If she referred to the sofa,
she'd probably use an Indian word.
If she referred to a banana,
she'd probably use a Swahili word.
And if she referred to the door,
she'd probably use an Indian word.
So there was a mishmosh of everything.
And in my house growing up, believe it or not,
my first language was not English, it was Punjabi.
And I wasn't allowed to speak English at home
in the very kind of like formative years of my life.
'Cause I went to a British school
and I spoke English all day long,
learned how to read and write in English.
But when we came home, we had to speak the language
and we had to eat the food.
And it got really, really annoying.
I remember just being so ungrateful as a little kid.
My mother would make okra and eggplant
and all these weird and exotic vegetables.
And I was just like, what is this life?
I mean, it was literally torture.
I felt like they were doing it on purpose
and that they were all coming for me
from the very beginning.
I didn't understand why it was that they would make us eat.
And my mother was really strict.
And so she would make us sit there
and finish everything that was on our plate.
Like I wasn't allowed to leave
until I finished what they had put on the plate.
Because don't you know, dad was really hardworking.
And I never really felt like I ever had a struggle.
I never needed anything.
I never missed anything in my childhood.
Everything was always provided for.
In fact, when we were growing up, my sisters,
I had three sisters and that was me,
and all of their clothes were basically made by my mother.
My mother made clothes.
She was able to sew and she was very hands-on,
very constructive.
She learned how to sew as a young kid.
She made a lot of the things for my sisters.
And for me, I got a lot of things ordered out of a catalog
for whatever reason, 'cause I was a boy.
So from the very get-go,
I was kind of already treated differently.
Yet in my head, I didn't think that for myself at all.
It was from the very get-go.
It was all of that stuff.
My dad was really not around very much,
but he was very loving, very caring, very sweet.
Basically my point to tell you
is that my parents were super fricking awesome.
They were so kind.
They were very cuddly.
They were very affectionate with us.
They taught us about the world.
They taught us about food
and they taught us about different countries.
And they taught us about different nationalities.
And they explained how everybody's equal
and we should always respect other people,
especially our elders.
I mean, I grew up with so much of this
and so much culture and Indian richness and religion
and all those different sorts of things.
And so it was really, really a fantastic childhood actually.
And then, long story short,
it was really, really good for a really long time.
And then when I turned nine years old,
my mother was killed in a car accident.
And I don't really like to put that out there
and say that very much anymore
because that used to be my big sob story
'cause don't you know, my mother passed away.
Like that was a big part of one of the things
that kind of really fueled a lot of my alcoholism,
my drug addiction and my running.
Okay, and I say running
because that's kind of what we do as alcoholics as well.
We run.
And like my whole thing when I first finally
was starting to come into the room,
so I had a sponsor that was telling me
like don't drink, don't use, don't run.
Those were, that was like my mantra.
Don't drink, don't use, don't run.
Those were the things that they told me.
And so, yeah, I mean, it all of a sudden overnight changed.
My life turned, you know, for the worst is what it felt like
at the time, but my dad had four small children.
There was me and my three sisters.
We were very, very young.
I think my oldest sister was 13
and my youngest sister was five.
I was nine.
I had another sister that was 11.
So it was a very, very tough time for my dad.
And you know, culturally, what they do is
they just kind of try to pick up and carry on.
And so my dad was encouraged to kind of find another woman
and get married right away.
And so at the time, I think that he was trying
to halt the situation by saying,
why don't I let the, let me take the kids on vacation?
And we ended up coming to LA.
My mother's sister lived here and we came here,
my dad's like, I'm gonna take you guys to Disneyland.
We're gonna go to Universal Studios.
We'll go to San Diego.
We'll check out Long Beach.
Like there was all these cool things, you know,
as cool little Brit kids, you know, growing up,
if you can only imagine, it's freezing cold
and chilly and rainy most of the time, dark and dank,
kind of like Seattle, I think.
And I grew up, like we had snow days.
We would get snowed in.
There would be days that we couldn't go to school.
There would be maybe a week or two
where we couldn't go to school
'cause there was so much snow.
And all of a sudden we come here
and there's palm trees and Santa Monica
and the pier and corn dogs and tacos,
which I had never seen.
I'd never seen any of those things in my life.
And I was like, I was like nine years,
10 years old the first time I came here.
I'd never seen any of that stuff
because just culturally it just wasn't there
where I was at.
I mean, I grew up with like fish and chips
and all that other stuff.
So we came here and it was just,
it was so eye-opening and so exciting for a young kid.
And it really did take our minds off of a lot
of what was going on and had happened.
And so at the time, my dad,
we were hanging out with my aunt.
My aunt had a best friend and she and my dad
started hooking up.
So they started hooking up.
And I, all of a sudden one day,
while we were here on our trip out of nowhere,
my aunt, not my dad, my aunt sat us kids down
and said, your dad is getting married tomorrow.
And all of a sudden we were like,
all of a sudden I immediately was like, how dare he?
Right away, I mean, I had an opinion.
I wanted to say something about the situation.
And I immediately, that was kind of like the beginning
of when I started really fighting
and going against the grain of everything
'cause everything up to that point
I just didn't want to deal with because it was hard.
It was really, really hard to deal with all that stuff
as a kid.
And so they ended up getting married
and all of a sudden we were now the Brady Bunch.
My stepmother had two daughters
and I already have three sisters.
So I now have five sisters and there's me.
So I'm the only boy and we ended up kind of getting along.
We were all like this, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
Like we were all in a row.
Actually, I take that back.
We were like eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13.
And it just kept like, we just pivoted just like that.
It's one by one by one by one, we all became 18 and so on.
And I ended up leaving home when I was about 17.
I remember I had a really close friend of mine
that paid for my cap and gown for high school.
I had a cousin that ended up paying for my prom.
I went to prom in 11th grade.
I didn't get much support from my parents very much at all.
I also was struggling with my sexuality as a kid.
I had a lot of shame behind that as a kid as well.
Being the only boy in a family of all girls,
why am I not like a straight man and all that other stuff
and all that stuff was going on.
And so in high school is where I started drinking and using.
Because after drama class, we would
have rehearsals that would go on to like 10, 11 o'clock at night
and someone always had a bottle and someone always had a joint.
And I went to high school right here
in the Valley, at Monroe High School in the Valley
here in North Hills.
And it was on and cracking.
I started going to rave parties in 1992, 1991.
We were driving out to the desert.
We'd end up partying for like days on end.
And I just didn't want the party to stop.
I had never really been on any kind of significant kind
of like academic trajectory at that point.
My life was pretty shaken up.
I didn't really have the stability in my life.
I didn't have parents kind of shoving school
down my throat anymore.
And so I just kind of went off the rails from the very get go.
I was ready to go hard.
I started doing a lot of psychedelic drugs.
I did a lot of LSD, a lot of mescaline, a lot of MDMA,
a lot of ecstasy, a lot of speed.
I smoked a lot of pot.
That was a regular situation for me.
I drank every weekend, if not almost every other day.
I was hanging out with kids that were
my age that wanted to do the same thing that I was doing.
At the time in the valley, you could get your hands
on just about anything.
And there was always somewhere to go.
Someone always had a car to get you out of town
and get you out of a place.
And that's just kind of how it kicked off for me.
And long story short, I worked jobs.
I had jobs.
I lost jobs.
I never stayed anywhere any too long.
I was probably at my longest job by the time
I got into my 20s, maybe for about six months to eight
months, six months to eight months at the jobs.
It was just like a pattern.
I just could not keep up because it was more important for me
to go out and party or deal with the hangover the next day
than to go to work and face a boss.
I was really trying hard to go back to school.
And the dream was that I was going to make something
of myself and figure it all out, and that eventually I'll
be self-supporting.
And it just got bad from bad to worse
because my drug addiction and alcoholism
had just kind of taken a turn.
It was very, very progressive for me.
It happened very, very quickly, and I went really, really hard.
I can tell you that in long story short,
I started using and drinking when I was about 16,
and I got sober at 35 years old.
So I used and drank for a really, really long time.
I came out of that situation pretty unscathed,
but I came in with a lot of psychosis.
I came in with voices.
I came in with infections on my body.
I came in homeless.
I came in after going in and out of treatment centers
probably six or seven times.
I never really had done the steps.
I never had really given myself the opportunity
to sit down with a sponsor and tell them my truth
and tell them what had happened or talk about all the secrets
and all the things that I had endured growing up
that were affecting me as an adult that were just
playing havoc with my life.
It was just kind of like I was always
sitting at this table, this itty bitty shitty committee
in my head of guilt, fear, shame, not enoughness.
You're ugly.
You're too dark.
You're too fat.
You're too black.
You're too this.
You're too that.
There was this constant thing of me
feeling not good enough about myself
and not feeling confident.
I think today, if it wasn't all those things
that they were back then because of what was going on
in the world, I think today it would have been something else
just because I'm an alcoholic.
I think my brain and my committee
would just have come up with something else
to be complaining about, you know what I'm saying?
I think that's just how alcoholism is.
I feel like at some point, alcoholism just wants me dead.
It just wants me homeless.
It just wants me sick.
And it wants me riddled with fear.
And that's where my disease wants me.
And so I finally was sitting in the back of--
I was sitting in my car that was given by my dad to me.
Yeah, it was a vehicle that was given to me by my dad.
I was parked inside an alley in West Hollywood.
And it was kind of a cruising weird alley.
It's where men would go pick up with other men or whatever.
This was very early in the morning.
We're talking at like 7 or 8 in the morning.
And I was just spun out in my car, windows down,
probably smoking cigarettes, got the music on.
In my own little world, all cracked out, drunk, tweaked
out, skinny tight little jeans on.
I was skinny as a stick.
And I had this guy that came over and started talking to me
and asking me, he said, whose Volkswagen is that?
Because on the license plate, it said VW Expert.
He comes up to me and he goes, hey, whose car is that?
Who's the VW Expert?
And I said, oh, that's my dad.
My dad built this car.
He worked for Volkswagen.
When we had moved to the States, my dad
retired from Volkswagen a couple of years ago
after working for them for about 30-something years.
And he had built this car.
And it's kind of interesting because he
could have been anything and anyone at that time.
But he happened to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he, at the time, had probably
about 27 years of sobriety.
And he was kind of like my ultimate escrow.
And the interesting thing about him
is that he was actually from Alaska,
which was so interesting.
The reason he was drawn to the car
is because it was AO Volkswagen.
He had general interest in Volkswagens
because him and his brothers grew up racing Volkswagens.
There's a big annual race that goes on in Anchorage.
And it's a Volkswagen race.
And he had three brothers that also raced Volkswagens,
like I had mentioned.
And all three of his brothers died as alcoholics
in car accidents in Volkswagens.
Not to mention, when he came closer to the car,
he realized that I was Indian.
So he started talking about India
because he was getting ready to leave for a trip to India.
He was Buddhist.
And he was going on this Buddhist retreat.
And so he was kind of talking to me about my culture
and was interested in discussing that with me and all
these different sorts of things.
In my head, I'm thinking something else.
Why is this guy interested in me and all these different sorts
of things?
It wasn't until much later that I kind of put all of this
together and realized that there was
significant-- there was synchronicity going on
in my life from the get-go.
Before I got sober, before I got clean,
there were these things that were happening around me
that were so coincidental or quintessential or just out
of this world that they would either freak me out
or they would elate me and excite me, OK?
And the freaking out part was me going, I'm going crazy.
There's no way in hell that this is synchronizing
the way that this is--
there's no way that this is going on.
And I can tell you, it's that kind of pull that brought me
into Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I told you I'd been in and out of the room,
so I knew exactly where to go.
He had taken me to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
He was like, do you want coffee and a donut?
And I said, sure.
And he goes, let's go up the street.
And I ended up going to a meeting on Fairfax and Fountain
in West Hollywood.
It was my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
It was on a Saturday morning.
And I was introduced to all these different sorts
of people there.
And I had men come up to me that had a lot of time.
They gave me their cards and asked
if I needed a number or some information and everything.
And at that time, I was referred to--
I'm going to be very straight with you guys.
I was referred to the Gay and Lesbian Center
because I was, A, I was homeless.
I was living in my car.
I was addicted to drugs.
I was drinking a lot of alcohol.
I didn't have a job.
I didn't know whether I was coming or going.
I didn't know when I had eaten last.
I was pretty emaciated.
And I was directed to go to the Gay and Lesbian Center
because they had a drug and alcohol
unit going on there at the time.
And I was referred to this guy that all
the guys in this meeting knew.
And apparently, he was a part of the group as well.
But he was somebody that headed this kind of task force
because at the time, crystal meth was a serious pandemic
within the community.
And so I was directed to go there.
And I went and I met this person.
And he directed me and sent me off to my very first rehab.
And I was introduced to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that's how I found A.I.
And I'd love to tell you that I stayed sober, but I didn't.
I didn't stay sober and clean at the time.
It took about seven more years of me
going in and out of treatment centers, couch commitments,
sober livings, and each time trying to make it,
trying to do it, six months, nine months, 10 months,
six months, nine months, 10 months,
but just not being able to get over the hump.
It wasn't until I sat all the way down and opened
my ears completely.
When I was 35, I'd come back to Tarzana Treatment Center.
And they took me in.
They took me back.
It was my third time going to Tarzana Treatment Center.
That was February 15, 2013.
And I showed up there pretty beat down.
I was really, really skinny, really emaciated.
Like I said, I was kind of like an infection all over my body.
And there's so much in my story that happens that we never
really get to talk about from the podium.
But there was so much that happened
that it brought me to this place.
But ultimately, all the synchronicity around me
was so intensified that I was absolutely scared back
into the rooms.
There was so much going on.
I felt like everybody knew where I'd been running and gunning.
I felt like everybody knew what was going on.
I was so paranoid and ashamed of my life and who I was
and what I had become that I was just ready to give it all up.
I was spiritually bankrupt, like totally, totally, totally
spiritually bankrupt.
I was an emotional mess.
And I didn't really have anywhere to seek help.
I had lost all means of anything.
I had no money.
I had no job.
I had no apparent places to go.
I didn't even have a cell phone.
This is 2013, where smartphones were just kind of coming out.
And I just remember thinking to myself how hopeless I was
because I didn't have a smartphone.
All I had was like this cheap clicker phone
at some point or another until it got lost.
And I felt like all the people that I was seeing
had smartphones and that they all had one up on me
and that they were all better than me.
And don't you know, that's something that I need to have.
It was just something that really drove this not enoughness
that was going on in the committee in my head.
And anyway, I finally just kind of surrendered all of it
when I came back in 2013.
And they took me in, and I took direction.
I did everything they told me.
I was in a program.
So I had a very strict schedule at the program.
And it was just kind of like I had a couple of classes
throughout the week.
I had relapse prevention a couple of times a week.
I had sex and sobriety a couple of times a week.
I had all these different courses.
If you've been in treatment, you can imagine all those
different things that they had me do.
And then in the evening, it was up to me
to get myself to a meeting.
And so I went to a meeting every single night.
And I got a commitment at every single meeting
that I attended at the time.
I think I went to like six meetings a week,
five or six meetings a week.
And if I ever hung out with anybody,
it was because I was hanging out.
If I ever hung out with anybody,
it was only people from my treatment center.
Because I was so isolated from all of the people
that were in my life.
It wasn't until I had a couple of years sobriety
that I really started meshing with my family.
They were very, very reluctant to have me back in their life.
I remember when my sister called me,
I think I had nine months of sobriety,
and she says, "I'm getting married."
And I said, "Okay, that's amazing, congratulations."
And she's like, "I really want you to come to the wedding.
"I want you to be there, but I really need you to behave."
She's like, "I really need you to behave."
And not only do I really need you to behave,
and I was like, "Oh, can I bring somebody?"
She was like, "No, no, no, you can't bring anybody."
And that was interesting because at the time,
I had started dating somebody as well on sobriety
who's now my husband, which is amazing
'cause we just celebrated eight years of marriage,
and we've been together for like 13 years, 12 years.
Anyway, long story short,
that's kind of like the stuff that was going on.
Even today, I can tell you that I'm not the same person
that came into these rooms at all.
I'm not the same person that was running and gunning
when I was 16.
Like the big pain in the ass kid that I was to my parents,
I am not that person again today.
I'm almost unrecognizable to them sometimes.
They just sometimes just wanna look at me,
and they talk to me,
and the way that I communicate with them,
and the way that I reciprocate with them,
the way that I respond to what they have to say,
the way that I'm not interjecting, I'm not disrespecting,
I'm not yelling at them, I'm not cussing them out,
I'm not shutting them down, I'm not telling them where to go
because I was really quick at doing any of that stuff
'cause it didn't matter who you were, what you were,
I was ready to let you know really quickly
exactly how I felt about you, you know?
And it didn't matter if it was my parents.
And so I was that sort of personality.
And so today I'm not that same person at all, you know?
And my parents are warming up to me now
at 13 years of sobriety.
You know, they call me if I haven't called them.
They check in with me, "Hey, how's it going?
"I haven't heard from you."
Or, "You said you were gonna come over.
"You never came over."
Or, "What's going on?
"How's work?"
"They're interested.
"How's your husband?
"How's your family?
"What's going on?"
"Oh, how are the dogs?"
Just a straight conversation with me, you know?
Whereas I'm not making all the effort
as much as I was all the time, if that makes any sense.
It started to come around, you know?
There's a section in the book
which is like the family afterwards.
It's kind of like what they all have to deal with
because of my drinking and using, how they got through it,
and how they moved forward, you know?
And kind of taking responsibility for my actions
was extraordinary.
And so I did the steps in the program.
I started getting into the 12 steps.
I got a sponsor.
I said I was going to meetings.
And I took commitments at all the meetings that I attended.
So I made meetings regularly.
I went to regular meetings regularly.
I know that sounds weird and like a tongue twister,
but I went on regular meetings on regular nights.
That means that I went to the same meeting every Monday.
That means I went to the same meeting every Tuesday.
That means I went to the same meeting every Wednesday.
I went to the same meeting every Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday.
Didn't matter whether I liked the meeting or not.
I just got a commitment.
I just showed up.
I didn't really have much of an opinion.
I already knew deep down inside,
I was in a place where I knew that my opinion didn't matter.
I didn't feel like I was of any value when I got here,
if that makes any sense.
I felt like a piece of shit.
I didn't feel like I was important.
I didn't feel like anybody loved me or cared about me.
And it wasn't until I came into the rooms
of Alcoholics Anonymous that I felt like, you know what?
I have a little bit of clout.
I got a commitment, you know?
They need me there to make the coffee.
You know, they need me there to do the cake.
They need me there to greet.
They need me there to be at the door.
They need me there to set up.
They need me to break down.
They need me to clean up.
They need me...
Like, that was kind of what was going on with me
because I had no self-esteem at all.
I was learning that it took, you know,
practicing self-esteem, like acts of service
were going to build self-esteem for me, you know?
And I started kind of like talking to newcomers
as time went on.
And I started taking numbers of people
that had more time than I did.
It made me feel less crazy.
So here's the deal.
My sponsor said to me,
I want you to start getting five numbers
at every meeting that you go to.
And all the people that you're getting numbers from
are people that have to have more time than you.
Because you're kicking and kicking it
with all the people and all the kids
in rehab and treatment centers and sober livings
all day long.
But what's your life going to be like
when you leave that treatment center?
You know, for me, it was always that transitional space
of like when I left rehab and I went into sober living
and then it was time for me to kind of like
figure it all out and get off the GR
and get off the food stamps and get into a space
where it was time for me to start working, you know,
and figure out how to navigate through all of that stuff.
Like transportation, paying like a phone bill,
like, hey, just a phone bill.
That's all it was.
Like there was just a phone bill, you know.
But, or like a bus pass, like whatever those things were,
all those little small things
that feel like they're rinky dink.
If I can be successful at those small little things,
that means that I can probably do them
when I move on from that space.
And it took, for me, repetitive motion
to have to do it over and over again.
It became sort of mindless.
It became like hurtful sometimes.
Like, oh my God, I can't believe,
yeah, that was me getting into a space
of like not feeling grateful, you know.
It was when I kind of got into the space of gratitude
that all of that stuff just kind of like went over.
I didn't have to think about what I needed to do.
My schedule and my structure and my sobriety
was already built up.
And so structure is something that I thrive in in sobriety.
That's something that I thrive in.
No time schedule, no needing to be anywhere where,
for any particular reason, running around,
doing whatever, blah, blah, blah,
not having to get up at a certain time every single day,
not having to call my sponsor
at the same time every single day,
like that's all life that I'm used to doing.
That's like the old way for me.
The new way for me is like taking sponsor direction.
My sponsor today is this.
Kapinder, I need you to call me,
like I need you, you know, 13 years sober.
I don't have to call my sponsor every day anymore.
But my sponsor is like,
I need you to call me twice a week.
I need to see you at two meetings every week.
And I need you to be at my baby meeting,
my book meeting, okay?
And I need you to take some commitments
at all the meetings that you're attending.
And so guess what?
I go to four meetings a week.
I have commitments at all those meetings, except for one.
I call my sponsor twice a week.
Like, listen, like I have created a life
in Alcoholics Anonymous that is beyond
like what I thought it was going to be.
With the help of God, I have just done the footwork, okay?
I have just done the footwork.
I did it enough to where I created a space
where God was able to come in and do his handiwork.
Like literally come in, reach into my life and transform,
not only my life, but me, like cell by cell,
spirit by spirit, soul by soul, inch by inch,
like literally came in and like transformed me.
It was almost like I was born again.
It was a very, very interesting and extraordinary experience.
It's hard for me to fully relate to anybody
or try to express kind of what has happened in my life
because it's been alarming.
And so you hear people all the time at Alcoholics Anonymous
say, "Oh my God, my life is so amazing.
"My life is so fantastic.
"And don't you know this, that, or the other.
"And it's absolutely bubble."
You know what?
I'll be very straight with you guys again
about kind of what's been going on with me nowadays
is that I'm sober, I'm staying sober.
I feel good about my sobriety.
I feel really grateful.
I sponsor people and I'm super happy.
The trajectory of my life is still going on.
I look out into the periphery of my life
and sometimes everything could be going to shit,
but I look out on the horizon, I still have this light
and I still see that somewhere out there,
something's gonna be okay.
I didn't have that before I got sober.
I didn't have that, that part.
That part is what keeps me going here.
That's the part that's really compelling
about sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous
is that the scenery has always changed in my life
because I have always shed something.
I've always let go of stuff to create space for new stuff.
I've always done footwork to allow God to come in
and do his handiwork in my life.
That is me getting out of the way
and trying to be out of the outcome of something.
And it's been extraordinary.
It's been really, really extraordinary.
And so I'm a working professional today.
I'm married.
I've got my family in my life.
I sponsor guys, like I said.
I go to meetings on regular nights.
Something I like to say because it's kind of like,
like I said, the structural stuff,
'cause I have sponsors and I have people in my life
that I talk to on the regular basis
and they don't go to regular meetings all the time.
They don't go to the same meetings regularly.
And then what that tells me
is that they don't have any commitments either.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing
that has been safe, a safe place for me.
It's been the only thing that has helped save my life
that's tried adamantly to save my life.
Like as an energy,
people within the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous
have said, "Hey, who are you?
"We need to help you, you're dying."
Like I've had that in my life.
I've had that in my life.
Why would I not come to a place
and be of service to that space that has done that?
Like nothing else, the drug addicts that I was running with,
the hookers and things that I was scheming with,
all the things that I was doing while I was out there,
none of that was there.
That space, that safe space was not there in my life.
Here in Alcoholics Anonymous
is the only place that that's been.
And guess what?
I live in a sober house today.
I live in a sober home and it feels peaceful.
It feels good, it feels safe.
I come from a broken situation emotionally
growing up as a kid.
And so I've created a home for myself.
With my loving partner,
it's been kind of an extraordinary thing.
And it sounds probably really unique to some people,
but that's okay, it doesn't matter.
I don't need your approval.
But the thing is is that I just wanna share
is that it's me feeling comfortable in my skin,
me feeling safe in my space, right?
So that I can be full and be of service
to the people that are in my life today, right?
Because if I'm not okay,
then I don't really have much to give anybody else.
You know what it's like when you like get up in the morning
and everything's good and you're going
and somebody just pisses you off
and the rest of the day you're just pissed off
about that one thing and you can't get it off your mind,
you're of no use to anyone, right?
I'm of no, I'm not of service to anyone.
And so I need to keep myself filled with spirit, right?
This is what I do.
I have to keep myself filled with spirit
in the way that I do that is through prayer meditation, okay?
So that I can be nonreactive, so that I can be still,
so I can be calm, so that I can give something back.
You know?
Otherwise I'm just kind of like, I'm not,
I'm just kind of empty, you know?
I feel like I'm just kind of stoic
and just walking the earth
and just kind of going through the cycle
and just doing the same thing.
And it's like Groundhog Day.
And I find that if I feel like that,
it basically means that I'm not being of service
to the best of my ability, you know?
'Cause there was a time that I felt that way
in and out of, like on and off through sobriety.
There's times like that that have happened.
Okay, so when I turned 10 years sober,
I'll tell a quick little story.
When I turned 10 years sober,
I was on a pink cloud for 10 years.
Like literally pink cloud.
I was on a journey, like my life was happening,
things were going on, things were moving.
Like I said, marriage, job, business,
all things were happening, family was coming back,
I was traveling things.
You know, nice, full, big, lovely life.
Everything was really, really great and grand.
And I kid you not, like I turned 10 years sober
and all of a sudden it was like
I was the man that fell to earth.
Like I woke up and there was no pink cloud.
Like I woke up and there were like aches and pains, you know?
I woke up and stuff was kind of pissing me off.
You know, things were starting to bother me.
Or I was alarmed and surprised
like the kind of life that I had built.
And I was like, OMG, like look at my life.
This is very, very overwhelming.
So all these sorts of feelings were going on for me.
And my sponsor at the time had moved to France and retired.
And it had been about a year
since I'd spent any time with him.
So I literally was kind of unsponsored, right?
I was kind of unsponsored and I didn't really have
somebody to kind of bounce stuff off of.
And it was time for me to kind of get the sponsor
and do a 10th step, you know?
And so I asked somebody to sponsor me.
He agreed to sponsor me.
And you know, the first day that I had with him,
like the first time it was just me and him alone
outside of a group or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
I literally just like broke down.
I was like, this is going, and I don't have it.
Like I was hyperventilating, freaking out
about all the stuff that was going on.
He's like, just calm down.
You know, and he gave me some specific direction
to sit down and to start writing about it.
You know, had me sit down and write about all of it
and had me come to his house on an afternoon.
And we discussed everything that was on my list
and we took care of that 10th step.
You know, and he gave me some significant
like sponsor direction on how to deal
with all of that stuff.
And I can tell you, I felt a lot lighter.
I felt a lot better.
And the pink cloud has not come back,
but I have kind of gone through this growth spurt
in sobriety, if that makes any sense.
There's like these phases that I've gone through,
but like when I turned 10,
there was something that happened.
It was almost like I somewhat started to mature
in being a sober man.
Like, so today I am sober longer than I was
at the point where I was really throwing my life away
drinking and using, if that makes sense.
And so it's extraordinary.
At the end of the day, I wake up a sober person,
but who knows, right?
Who knows?
It's one day at a time, you know?
When I realized that and I started spending time
with other people that were new,
I realized that at the end of the day,
like if we both stayed sober, that's a miracle, you know?
And this is what I was gonna say to you earlier sometimes.
Sometimes my day, I may not feel productive
and stuff might feel really, really challenging
and I may not have done stuff.
And I may have even like talked shit
to somebody about something.
I may have even stepped out of, you know, myself.
But at the end of the day, guess what?
I think when sobriety comes forgiveness,
I was able to forgive myself and just be like,
you know what?
I stayed sober today.
It's not an excuse to be an asshole,
but I tell myself, you know what?
I stayed sober at the end of the day.
And that was the one big thing today
is that I didn't pick up, I didn't drink,
I didn't run and I didn't use, you know?
At the end of the day, that's all that matters here.
It's one day at a time that we stay sober and clean
and that we don't drink and use no matter what.
And so I wanna say I'm really grateful to be here.
I've had a really big day in AA today,
sat down at an AA workshop this morning
and read from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous
and got to a space to do,
they sit down, it's a bunch of guys sitting down
just having coffee and what we did
is we pulled out the big book
and we all took turns reading out of the big book
until we got to like the inventory part,
like right after the inventory part.
So that was like 72 pages, 73 pages
that we read this morning.
So I'm pretty AA'd up, if you know what I mean.
Like I'm feeling pretty solid.
And so, and I'm also starting to feel more comfortable
in sharing my story and sharing my experience
with everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous
because I realized at the end of the day, you know what?
My experience is about me and my higher power,
you know, at the end of the day.
I know that it is not me that got me sober.
I noticed that nobody and all those hundreds of people
that ever tried to help me, that got me sober, okay?
It was my relationship with my higher power
that helped me stay here, you know?
Shed some, I made some space.
Shed some, I made some space, right?
I let go of some things and created space
for love and God's light to come into my life
and my life transformed, you know?
And here I am today just navigating this day,
this life day by day, one by one with all of you guys.
So thanks for letting me be here.
Oh, actually I'm leaving this.