Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Good evening everybody.

My name is Chris. I'm an alcoholic. On or around December 28th, 1989, the grace of God separated me from alcohol.

uh a willingness born of desperation and I truly was desperate. um moved me once more into Alcoholics Anonymous and I became uh I became willing to uh to listen to other people uh to listen to their uh recommendations to get involved in meetings to work with a sponsor and those things I believe have uh have contributed to the maintenance of my spiritual condition to a point where God has been able to keep me in the sunlight of the spirit safe and protected from uh alcohol. and drugs uh and other things.

Uh and I'm very very grateful for that. I want to start my story here tonight um going way back. Um I'm 5 years old.

My mother says to me, "It's time for you to go to school. Uh I'm taking you to kindergarten today." and she puts me in the car and she drives me across town and she opens up the door and she says, "There it is. Go." Now, I hadn't I hadn't been out much uh by this time.

I'd pretty much been hanging out with the same woman every day. And this is a little bit new to me. Uh this whole kindergarten thing.

And I had a little bit of anxiety. Uh a little bit is uh is an understatement. I remember standing up on the the hill looking down at all the other kindergarten kids outside before they were to go in and they're already playing kickball and tag and running around and having a blast like they were all best friends forever.

And I'm standing up on the hill looking down feeling selfcentered fear worrying about what if they don't like me? What if I do something stupid and embarrass myself? This is this isn't going to work.

This is bad. this is bad. I want to go home.

It was it was my first real bout of self-centered fear. Uh the type of fear that I was to experience practically every day of my life from then on uh until I don't know somewhere around 8th grade. But here's the thing.

I mean, here I am. I'm a 5-year-old kid ready to go into kindergarten and I'm scared out of my mind. It's just I I'm just not comfortable with this.

You know what I I mean, whose idea was this? And you know what would have made it go a lot easier? A half a pint of vodka.

I'm telling you, I'm serious about this. My problem was they weren't serving five year olds back then. I really don't know what they do in Europe.

I know you're more progressive, but the drinking age was 21 back then. So, I was in some real trouble because you know what I had to do? I had to just pretend that everything was okay.

And I marched down there and I became a kindergarten kid. You know what I mean? And I was not happy about it.

I was And from from that day until somewhere around 8th grade, every single day I had to pretend it was okay. You know, Chris, how you doing today? I'm okay.

Because I learned you couldn't really be truthful. You couldn't say, "Well, you know, I'm I've got a lot of depression and anxiety and self-centered fear. You know, I was thinking about killing myself and I just can't deal.

You know, how are you doing?" You know, you can't really say that cuz they they look at you funny. So, what would I say? I'm okay.

I'm all right. Now, one day comes and, you know, like I said, I'm in about 8th grade and a couple of my friends and I decide that we're going to cut school. We're going to go back to my house because my mother worked and we were going to get drunk.

Okay, we'd heard about this and it sounded pretty cool. So, we all decided to do it and we went back to my house. Now, there was no real hard drinker uh hard liquor drinkers in my house.

So, I had to blow the dust off of this Four Roses whiskey, but that's what I did. I brought a a fifth of Four Roses whiskey down. Now, I didn't know anything about drinking alcohol at that time.

I I just didn't I didn't have any experience with it. But what I did know is the John Wayne movies that I used to see. Anybody here familiar with John Wayne movies?

He'd bust through the saloon doors. He'd walk in and say, "Bartender whiskey." And the bartender would pour a big water glass filled with warm whiskey and he'd drink it down. He'd grab the bottle and he'd go back to the table and he'd hang out there until it was time to shoot somebody.

And that's how you drink. Okay. So, I take this Canadian whiskey and three water glasses, one for me and one for my two other buddies.

Let me tell you what my two buddies did with their whiskey. Uh, they never became problem drinkers or alcoholics, by the way. They were normal people.

And what they did was they had about twothirds of their glass and they had enough. You ever drink with people that have enough? No more for me.

Thanks. I've had enough. What?

It's only 11:00. Let's go into the city. You know what do you mean you've had enough?

I mean, I never that that's just enough was not even a concept I understood. It was a foreign language. I knew more and I knew yours and I knew mine and I knew get some, but I never knew enough.

So these guys, what they did was they had their twothirds of a glass and they sat back and they watched the show because you know what Chris did? Chris drank his glass, the rest of their glasses, the rest of the bottle, and Chris went into a blackout. All right, I'm like 13 years old.

I'm having my first blackout. I'm trashing the house. I mean, you know, they told me all this crazy all the windows are broken.

I mean, I woke I wake up in a field about four or five hours later, not knowing how I got there, you know, I'm going back to the house and the house is trashed and my friends are gone and I'm like, "What the hell happened?" And then I started to get sick. You know how sick you were the first time you got really drunk on hard liquor? You had to be like horizontal for two days, you know, almost emergency room sick.

And that that was me. And I I got really really sick. Now, if I would have put anything else in my body and gotten that sick, I never would have gone near it again.

If I would have ate ate a rudabagga or something and gotten that sick, I would have never gone near rudabaggas again ever again. I wouldn't need a a rudabagga sponsor and a list of people that also don't eat rudabaggas that I could call if I feel like eating a rudabagga. And I wouldn't have to go to a meeting where I get a chip for not eating rudabggas for a year.

I wouldn't have to do any of that. I'd have a I'd have I'd have a sufficient mental defense to not eat rudabaggas. But what happened with this alcohol was this.

You know that scared kindergartener that I was telling you about with all the anxiety and the not feeling comfortable. As soon as I started drinking that whiskey, you know what happened? All that fear left me.

all all that self-centered repressed, you know, anxiety and not feeling good enough and self-esteem, all that stuff went away and I felt larger than life. I was the funniest guy there. I was the coolest guy there.

I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything. Hell, there were dancing lessons in that bottle. You know what I mean?

That bottle offered me. So it offered me escape from myself, from the bondage of self. And then I got violently sick and learned about projectile vomiting.

But the thing was is I slowly started to forget about how sick alcohol made me. But I would never forget what alcohol did for me. It did for me what I couldn't do for myself, which was escape from the bondage of emotional unmanageability.

Now, from that moment forward, I started to become preoccupied with alcohol. Where would I drink it? Who would I drink it with?

How how would I get it? Because I'm 13. The drinking age is 21.

So, there was logistical problems that I would have to overcome. But I started to I started to re I started to uh design my life around the drinking of alcohol. Now I didn't notice that but it happened.

Now I come from a very smart family. U my brother and sister are both college professor PhDs. Um my mother and father were both five beta cappa educators right?

You know they all write books and all this stuff. They're like they're like like u uh they're all burdened with minds and u really just too smart. And I I come from this family and I'm doing okay in school, but all of a sudden I get drunk with my buddies.

All of a sudden, guess what? My schoolwork starts to slip. Now, I didn't say to myself, "Oh no, I'm becoming preoccupied with alcohol and my grades are slipping.

If I keep on like this, I may not get into the college of my choice. I didn't say that. You know what a good alcoholic says?

Who cares or leave me alone? Get off my back. I'm not hurting anybody but myself.

Anybody you ever use any of those? That's what I started to use. Get just get away.

I'm all right. Just stay away from me. I had to I had to use alcohol for social situations and things like that.

I was preoccupied with alcohol. Now, it says in our book, Alcoholics Anony, that we cross uh we cross a line and we go from preoccupation uh or heavy drinking into alcoholic drinking. And once that line is crossed, you cannot go back over it through human uh unedited human will.

You can't just say, "Okay, I'm I'm an alcoholic. I'm not going to be one tomorrow." And have it mean anything uh without a a program of recovery. And long before you even want to get your drinking under control, you're already past that point.

Usually, if you're an alcoholic, I heard somebody say, "The chains of alcoholism are too soft to feel until they're too strong to break." And that's certainly the way it was for me. Now, uh, in the early days, my alcoholic drinking, I didn't pay too high of a price. I crashed some cars, you know, I got killed in one accident and then they revived me.

I, you know, some problems, but most of the time it was fun. Most of the time my drinking was fine. I didn't pay too high of a price.

Then after three or four or five years, I started to pay a higher price. I started to pay an emotional price. I started to wake up in the morning embarrassed about what I might have done, you know, like like like whose girlfriend did I hit on, you know, just this horrible remembering doing stupid things.

And you know, by this time I'd crashed a lot of cars and I'd lost my driver's license and I'd dropped out of school. Uh, I was a good starter. Anybody in here a good starter?

You just don't make it to the other side. Here's some of the things I did. Uh, I joined the Boy Scouts.

I went on one camp out and I quit. I joined the wrestling team. I went to one practice and quit.

You know what I mean? Uh, I started to take guitar lessons. I took two guitar lessons and quit.

I went off to college. I went to college for six and a half years. I got four credits.

you know, I was a good starter. Well, the tuition money I I kept that up, but uh but the actual going was uh was a hassle. Anyway, um a lot of I started to pay the price.

Now, toward the end of my drinking, I'll I'll fast forward a little bit. All there was was problems. I was just drinking to escape the turmoil inside myself.

I mean my I had I had chipped my life down into such a small compartment, you know, it's all I could all I could deal with was drinking and work, you know, and and very few other things. But but in the beginning, you know, uh drinking was fun. I mean, remember the high school parties, you know, and the when when you first were exposed to alcohol and you know, there was dancing and fun and everybody was having fun.

I mean, I, you know, I was 32 years old looking for those high school parties, you know what I mean? I was trying to recapture some of that because it was so much fun. The problem was is I kept drinking.

I kept drinking like crazy. And the people, my friends, started to back away from partying. They started to, you know, to go off to college.

they started to uh get married and have a family or get a job and not be able to go out drinking until 4 in the morning if they had to work the next day. And I started losing I started losing a lot of the people that I drank with my my peers. I started to lose them.

And more and more we kind of seek uh seek people at our own level, you know, and uh unfortunately that's like lower common denominator people as the years go on. And I started out with some really cool people who I'm still friends with after, you know, amends and everything. I'm still friends with them today.

I started partying with them. And but toward the end, I was partying with people that didn't even have names. They were like Bearman and Weezer and Greenman.

And there was one guy, Rat with two T's. I mean, these were all people who didn't even give you their real name. They all had their own parole officers.

I mean, you know, and these were the these were the people that I was hanging out with toward the end of my drinking, but it but in the beginning, it was uh you know, it was all right. Um after high school, I took a year off, you know, cuz just didn't want to deal with anything. And uh that's kind of when I recognized that the world was passing me by a little bit and I I decided to go to school.

But I I had met a I had met a codependent by this time. Um uh and I define uh the codependent as someone who thinks about me as much as I do. And uh I found her, you know what I mean?

And uh she was from she was from an alcoholic household. So, you know, watching me was like coming home, you know, right? Just like my dad, you know, falling on his ass every two minutes.

So, uh, so she would, uh, she'd pick up the pieces of the that I of the wreckage and, you know, and we we got along and supposedly supposedly one night in a blackout, I proposed to her after a fight. Of course, with these blackouts, you can never be sure, can you? Any other blackout drinkers in here?

You know, raise your hand. Yeah. And the rest of you liars uh you know with anybody travel in blackouts you know come to in another country you know wake up in to you know one shoe wondering how you got there and you got to pretend that you wanted to be there you know you don't want to look stupid you know like yeah I always go to Toledo u somebody's must have stole my shoe on the train Because you can't look stupid.

Oh, the things I the things I would do in blackouts. Forget about it. I remember quitting a job one time in a blackout.

Calling my boss and threatening his life and quitting. And then cuz it was a blackout, I didn't remember it the next day. I go to work going into work.

What are you doing here? What? What?

You threatened my life and you quit. Well, what'd you do? What'd you do to me to make me do that?

You know, you got to like got like shift the you know, shift the responsibility really quickly because it's inconvenient to be responsible. Oh, but you know, they'd look at you like, "Hey man, I need a ride. What for?

I need to find my car." You ever do that? You have to go on a car search. Non-alcoholics don't understand that one.

What do you mean you lost your car? Yeah, it's somewhere. It's somewhere in Copenhagen, you know.

Well, where'd you leave it? I don't remember. How do you not remember, you know?

Well, well, you drink a quart and a half of whiskey and you tell you. I mean, they just don't understand. So, anyway, supposedly I uh I proposed and you know, I come out of this blackout, you know, the next day and I and the wedding invitations are being printed.

Okay. Now, also being an alcoholic, I don't want to cause a scene, you know, that's that's inconvenient, too, to have like a scene and it was going to be like 6 months off. So, I just played along, you know, and ended up walking down the aisle.

Oh, man. That that poor woman, you know, I've I've made my amends, but oh boy. Uh, I groped every single woman at the reception except her, you know, in a drunken blackout.

You can you imagine? She was humiliated. Come get your husband off of me, you know.

Can you imagine? Then I wondered why she was mad the next day. What's the matter?

It's our honeymoon. Oh god. Now, the the word the the the thing I mean, she was a beautiful codependent, but even codependents can only take so much.

Now, I'm down in Florida at this point in time, and um I'm I'm drinking whiskey and doing quaudes. I don't know if anybody in here is familiar with those, but uh they were pretty powerful sedatives. And um people on LW should not drive.

That was uh from one of the classic uh California movies. Uh what was that? wet fast times at Richmond High.

Anyway, it's quite true. People on LW should not drive. I'm on a a major road.

Uh it's like a highway, but it's limited access. So, I've got to I'm taking a left through traffic to make a lefthand corner. And I misjudged the trajectory of one of the oncoming cars.

These things will happen. and he t-boned me going he's he's going about 60 miles an hour and he hit me right in the side and flipped the car over four or five or six times. Uh I just remember being a 100 yards down the road and I come to and the car is upside down and I'm laying on the what's now the roof of the car and I remember people looking in like this.

Is he dead? Is he dead? And I'm like no I'm not dead.

What's the matter with you? And I get out of the car. Now, I had been thrown through the passenger uh door window because, you know, real men didn't wear seat belts back then.

So, and I had glass just sticking all out of my head. Just glass everywhere. I'm bleeding like a stuck pig.

I get out of the car. And now, if you're ever in a really bad accident, you can sometimes lose your shoes. Your shoes will come right off your feet.

Now, that's an important warning. If you if you're in an accident and all of a sudden you've got no shoes, it's probably a bad accident. So, I'm standing out there in my socks on the road.

looking like a jerk in my socks. So, I've got to go back into the car to get my shoes. Now, there's gasoline all over the place.

What an idiot I am. And I'm go climbing back into the car. So, I get my shoes.

I put my shoes on. By this time, the cops have gotten there. And they're looking at me.

You know how they sniff at you and they shine a flashlight in your eyes and everything. And uh he goes, "You know, you really you really I think I'm going to I think we're going to take your a blood sample when we get you to the hospital." So I think you've been drinking. And what does an alcoholic say?

I just had one, right? Just had one. I mean, if you say, "Well, I had seven and a half." You're not an alcoholic if you say something like that.

If you say one or two, you know, welcome. You you you've got it. You've earned your seat there.

But so anyway, I give my phone number to one of the uh one of the uh people that are there uh watch, you know, seeing what what's going on. I say, "Call my wife and tell her I'm in the hospital and to come meet me." So they put me in the ambulance and they they take me in the hospital. Now remember, I've got glass all the side of my head.

I mean, it's a pretty bad head wound. It's a good thing it wasn't an organ I was using much at that time. But I I mean I'm bleeding like a stuck pig.

I'm covered with blood and they put me on a gurnie and they they wheel me into the emergency room. And then the ambulance people leave and the cops haven't gotten there yet. So I go, "Huh?

I'm getting out of here." You know, cuz I can leave before they give me a blood test. So I go running through the waiting room. the looks on the people's faces with, you know, glass sticking out of my head and just covered with blood.

And I go, I'm heading for the woods. I'm I'm running out in the parking lot. And meanwhile, here comes my here comes my wife with her sister and her sister's boyfriend driving in and I spot them and I start heading toward them and they've got the windows open.

I dive through the window, land on their lap. Now, you got a glass sticking out of my head covered with blood and I'm saying, "You got to get me out of here. They want to take my blood.

Now I talk her into I talk her into going back to the party I was at where a couple of biker women yanked the glass out of my head with pliers. Now you know this isn't the type of thing my wife was really okay with. You know what I mean?

I mean unbelievable. Unbelievable. You know why Alanons have that big crease on their forehead?

It's from going like this. You want me to do what? It's like a permanent crease.

And she could only do this stuff so long. She could only do this stuff so long. So, you know, she she left me.

She left me. Can you imagine? And uh and here's the thing.

She left. And so I start really drinking now. Not like I really needed a reason, but I now had a reason.

I could belly up to the bar and say, "She left me when I needed her most." You know what I mean? Here, here's one on the house, kid. You know, I mean, and I use this for seven years.

I use this excuse to trick. You know what I mean? my first inventory.

You know what I found out when ex-wife uh resentment ex-wife re reason left me when I needed her most? Okay. You know what I found out when I got to the end of that inventory was?

She would have been nuts not to leave me. I was crazy. She would ask some simple things like, "Could you please like come home at night or not, you know, not not play with your guns in in a blackout or, you know, could you put insurance on the cars or, you know, and could you get a job?" You know, at least I mean, and uh I was just get off my back.

Uh so she'd have been crazy not to leave me. So So anyway, these these kind of things kept happening. Another car accident I had in Florida was um I had to piece this together, you know, by finding witnesses afterward, but I was really drunk.

I was It was like 1:00 in the afternoon and I I'm really drunk and I'm heading home from a party and I'm driving a 1963 Buick, one of those gigantic Detroit cars that they made back in the early 60s with 42 tons of metal. And I'm driving down the road and I must have fallen asleep. And uh there there's this guy who was outside pruning his rose bushes.

He's one of these guys that like cares about his lawn. Have you ever met those? They like pull weeds and like plant flowers and stuff like what's what's with that?

Anyway, I like drive up on his lawn while he's out there snipping his rose bushes and I run over his a pometa tree with this big car. It's a 15t tall tree. I knock it over.

It gets stuck on my car. It wakes me up and I take back off on the street with his tree under my car. And because he's one of these guys that care about his lawn, he calls the police on me.

And the police get there and they follow the dirt from the from the roots of the tree like about 16 blocks down the road. And here I am in I'm like sleeping on the side of the road in the car still with the tree under it. And I know that because it cost me extra for the tow truck.

The tree was extra. Anyway, you know, I I come to in jail not knowing why I'm here. You know, you look around, you see the bars, you start to get a little worried cuz you don't know why you're there.

I found out one thing important. Never wake up your bunkmate and ask him. You know what I mean?

because because sometimes they don't care why you're there. It's amazing the indifference some of these people have. Uh so I found out why I was there when I was in front of the judge is when I found why I found how I found out, you know, but I mean anyway, you know, this kind of stuff is happening and it's getting worse and worse and I'm having I'm So this last the last DWI I had I got pulled over.

I I actually didn't crash this car. So I was really indignant. Why' you pull me over?

and he pulls me over. I'm about six blocks from my house. Roll down a window and he goes, "License, registration, insurance card." So, I reach over and I start, it's in the glove compartment.

I start look, you know, I start looking and it's about 5 minutes goes by, you know, having trouble with with with this. I, you know, so finally I just get frustrated. So, I grab the whole contents of the glove compartment and I hand it to the cop.

It's got like maps and hair brushes and, you know, pens and tissue paper and he wasn't he didn't really appreciate that. So, out of the car I went and off to uh off to uh off to off to jail. Now, I was I was really upset about this one.

You want to know why? Because I did the ABCs. I remember doing the ABCs.

Now, they used to video I don't know if they video you guys when you get your DWS, but they vid they video me when I got back to the police station when I did the sobriety test. They videoed now. So, I hire a lawyer for $1,500 and I say, "We're going to fight this.

I did the ABCs." So, I go walking into the police station with my $1,500 lawyer and you know, uh, the cop that handed us the the tape, the videotape was laughing while he was he was going and he hands he hands my lawyer the tape and I'm thinking, "Oh, that's not good." Uh, we sit in this video room and we put it in and we start watching it. And I did I did the ABCs. Okay.

You know how I did the ABCs? Like I was horrified. I started watching this.

I'm like, "Oh, now I've got I've got this $1,500 lawyer who's like, you know, $1,500. You just got to remain a little bit calm, you know. Now, you know, there's pieces of this where they're asking me to walk the line." And I'm walking the line, but I'm hanging on to the wall.

They're like, they're like, "Excuse me, sir. You're not to hold the wall while you walk the line." I mean, they're videoing this. This is beautiful.

They're the And at the end at the end. Now, this whole time my lawyer's been moved, sir. At the end, they go, "Okay, we're going to turn the camera off.

Is there anything further you'd like to say before we turn the camera off?" And I look at the camera like this, and I go, and I mean, I'm so drunk. My tongue is slapping back and forth like this. I go and my lawyer who's been who's been calm up to this point, right, goes he just starts he just starts like he can't take it anymore.

He goes, "If there was any chance of us any chance at all of us ever getting off, you just blew it right there." So I'm like, it's like, "Okay, I guess we'll plea, you know, and one more one more plea." And I walked for four years after that. I was afraid there was going to be jets and mobiles by the time I get my license license back. So, so anyway, I mean, this was happening.

Um, I could I could lose my license. I could lose a wife here or there, you know. I mean, I could lose a family, you know, I had a daughter.

I could I could lose places to live and I could I could I could be forced out of state to go, you know, try it somewhere else and I could lose a lot of friends and all this stuff. It was it wasn't that big of a price to pay for my alcohol. You know how we are, you know, anything but but taking our booze away.

It's either the booze or me see it. I mean, you know, I mean, that's the way we are. So, so, um, but toward the end, I started to think I was losing my mind.

I mean, my hangovers and detoxes were so bad. I mean, my eyes would be yellow. I'd be shaking.

I'd have I'd have all this anxiety and it'd be really bad. Um, and I really thought I was losing my mind. And this one day, this one day, um, I'm an electrician by this time.

I I don't know how that happened. Wasn't my fault. I like I came to in sobriety being an electrician.

I I I don't know how it happened. And I wasn't a real good one. You know what I mean?

I remember I'll tell you a couple of electrician stories. Remember this one time drilling down in the wrong section up in an attic and having to get the homeowner out saying, "Could you please take me up into your bedroom?" room and he does and we open up his closet and there's about eight suits covered with plaster and one of them's coiled up into the ceiling where my drill built bit caught it. You know, he wasn't real happy about that.

Uh there was another time when uh when I was I was with a I was with this guy that uh used to used to not really care too much for me. He was a a guy, a partner I was working with on the job and I'm outside putting in an electrical pan electrical meter panel and he's right over by the truck and I'd been partying like crazy the night before. You know how you get really dehydrated when you drink a lot of hard liquor?

You got to like get a half a gallon of something to hydrate back up. Well, I picked grape drink that morning. You know, I drank a half a gallon of grape drink.

And I'm standing there and all of a sudden now I've got experience that tells me I've got 7.3 seconds to find somewhere because I'm going to be sick and I don't want my partner to see me. So, I decide I know what I'll do. I'll run around the back of the house.

So, I run around the back and I just make it around the back of the house. I go blah like like like a like a fire hydrant. I stuck over the back of this house with purple vomit just like this and I thought I was alone.

Now what happened was I turn around and not not from here to the black curtain was a family on a deck adjoining the back property and it was a mother, a father and three kids having iced tea. You could tell they were all related cuz they all had the same expression on their face, you know. Mommy, mommy, the purple puke box from hell, mommy.

Now, you know, I got out the host cuz you don't want to look stupid. You can't look stupid. So, I'm washing down the Yeah, this always happens on a Tuesday.

But this kind of stuff, you know, this is this this was just it was just getting really bad. But but anyway, this one time I'm trying to put um a screw uh a ground screw in a ceiling fixture box and I'm shaking so bad because I've got the DTS. I'm shaking so bad.

I I I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't put the screw on the end of the screwdriver and get it into the hole.

There's no way. I'm shaking too bad. And the guy that was working with me was looking at me like, "You pathetic.

Good for nothing. No account loser you." Because when you're alcoholic, you can hear people thinking at you, can't you? I know what you're thinking.

Cuz we know. And I couldn't take that. I I could take losing the families.

I could take everything. But having somebody look look at me like I'm that small. It was just too much.

So I signed myself in. Uh I went to the 28 day program. Anybody in here go to 28 day program?

There you go. Couple people. Um, well, what it was like for me was, you know, not good.

I mean, it was uh it was voluntarily committing myself to the asylum. It talks about that in this book. Many of us voluntarily commit ourselves to the asylum.

And uh and that's what I did. I signed myself in. And you know, uh I was that desperate to separate from uh from alcohol, you know.

And there was some experiences in there that were helpful. There were some experiences in there that wasn't. But when I got out of there, I decided that uh you know, I was going to go to AA.

They suggested go to Alcoholics Anonymous. So, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, uh I was going to two AA meetings a week and two outpatient.

So, that's four nights a week. And I I I swear I don't ever want to drink again. You got under you got to understand I wanted to separate from alcohol in the worst way.

They were saying the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. And I was translating that into you have a desire to stop drinking. You're going to be okay.

That's what I was translating it into because that's that's the membership in AA is a desire to Okay. Okay. I've got a desire to stop drinking.

I'm going to AA meetings. I'm going to outpatient meetings. On the way to an AA meeting, I have almost 90 days.

The thought crosses my mind that I should buy a gallon of vodka and drink it. Now, why? Why?

I mean, I really don't want to drink. You got to understand that if if I would have made it to that AA meeting that day, there would have been nobody in that meeting that wanted to not drink more than I did. But the obsession of the mind doesn't care what you think.

You know, if you're powerless, you're powerless. If you haven't recovered from alcoholism, you haven't recovered from alcoholism. If God hasn't relieved you of the obsession to drink, God hasn't relieved you of the obsession to drink.

And I hadn't participated in the recovery process enough at that time or the fellowship at that time to be able to stay abstinent. So alcohol was going to go back into my body. And what my mind told me was if you drink, you'll remember how terrible it was and you'll go back to AA stronger than you're going now.

So, I drank to improve my recovery. You know, run that one past your sponsor. Okay.

It's one of the reasons why we get sponsors. Anybody in here sponsor other people? Your do do your people come to you with their plans every once in a while?

I've got a plan. Oh, no. Oh, no.

They've always got a plan. The plans are scary. But you know what the worst the worst thing to hear is?

I've met somebody. Oh no, no. And they they want you to be happy for them.

You know, you're like, oh no. And cuz you're thinking that means there's going to be five phone calls a day for the next two years, you know, with issues. But you also know you can't break them up, you know, because because they've met each other, you know, boy meets girl on AA campus, trouble soon as follows.

You know, if you break them up, they're just going to mess up two other people, you know. So, you kind of, you know, you kind of have to leave well enough alone. And uh you have to just Oh, no.

And you know, hopefully hopefully the pain of that initial uh tragic uh dysfunctional relationship will be enough to send them flying into the steps. So, you know, it may be uh it may be it that certainly happened to me. I I I I went to my sponsor and I said, "I found somebody." And he's like, you know, he goes, "Okay, Chris, I got to explain something to you." And cuz we're in a a gymnasium, this this works.

She goes, "Let's say there's a gymnasium and it's filled with women and somewhere one of those women is an axe murderous." Okay. What the cops will do is they'll push you in there and then they'll observe until you become attracted to somebody and then they'll throw the cuffs on her. They'll have her.

I'm like, "Me?" You know, cuz you just can't believe it. You really think that that everything's going to be fine. But the problem is the problem is is unreovered two unreovered people getting together.

It's like two dinglings trying to make a bell. It just doesn't work. You know what I mean?

So, uh, so I got involved in it. And and I survived that. And, um, now this guy, this guy Radio Shack Mike had, um, he was one of those guys that would go to the bookstores, you know, the recovery bookstores, the new age bookstores, and he was a tape guy.

He would listen to tapes. and um and he he handed me these eight tapes, eight 90minute tapes. And you know, I'm thinking, "Oh man." Now, I was a little bit leerary because he had given me tapes before to listen to.

This is a guy I met in in AA. He was my new buddy. Um and you know, I thought I I really don't know if I should because he he he he gave me these affirmation tapes about a month earlier.

And what you're supposed to do is put them in and play them in front of a mirror and you're supposed to affirm something positive about yourself. And so I tried it, you know, I'm like, "Chris, you're a wonderful guy. Chris, you're a wonderful guy.

You're supposed to do this like a hundred times or until you believe it." And as as the tape player flies out the window, you know, because I can't, you know, and I look back on it and I realize that trying to treat alcoholism with affirmations is like trying to stop a tractor trailer with a cobweb. It's just it's just not sufficient, you know. But but anyway, so you know, I was kind of leery when he gave me he gave me these tapes now.

But I I had a long ride to work and nothing better to do. So, I started listening to him and they were uh they were they were also from a couple of guys from Arkansas. Like Arkansas, you know, I had no I had no uh uh contempt prior to investigation at all.

Right. Like Arkansas, us people in New Jersey do more thinking by 9:00 than you're going to get done in Arkansas all day. What are they going to teach me?

You know, well, let me tell you what they taught me. It was the first time that the program of recovery was ever explained to me in in a way that I could explain. Now, I've been going to step meetings until the cows would come home.

Uh I knew we were in a 12step fellowship, so I knew the importance of the 12 steps had to be there somewhere. So, I went to a whole bunch of step meetings. I mean, just a lot.

I I went to fourstep meetings a week and I learned to talk about the steps and share about the steps and read about the steps and think about the steps and discuss the steps with other people and then listen to other people discussing the steps. I just never did them, you know, and you'll find step meetings that are that way, certainly back in the United States where a lot of people know a lot of stuff about the steps. They've just never experienced them.

So, what these set these sets of tapes by the guys Joe and Charlie uh told me was this. Chris, you're really involved in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, but you don't have a program. If you're not taking the instructions, practicing the the principles out of this book, following the spiritual exercises, and actually doing them out of this book, you don't have a program.

So when you go back out, please don't tell people out there that AA didn't work because AA is the 12 steps the set of spiritual uh principles spiritual in their nature that if when practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and allow the user to become happily and usefully whole. That's alcoholic synonymous. And here's how here's how we do the steps.

And that's basically what these eight tapes were about. So I listened to them and I got real resentful. You want to know why?

Cuz I was back from a relapse and I was really trying. This last relapse I was on was not good. I went I it was like a six-month drunk and it culminated in Christmas 1989 at my mother's house where my sister, brother, mother, nieces, nephews, cats, everybody is there and I threaten everybody with a 38 caliber handgun and a drunken blackout.

I'm going to kill all of you. I'm going to kill you. Now, it was Christmas, you know, this wasn't the festive atmosphere everybody was looking for.

So, they picked up their Christmas and they moved it elsewhere. Thank you. You know, so I mean I that was more than I could bear.

Um I had kind of a fondness for my family and I thought, you know, I'd really not like to wake up one morning after having shot all of them. It would be disconcerting. So, uh, so I had gone back into, uh, into Alcoholics Anonymous with a absolute resolve to do everything I could do.

So, I'm going to a lot of meetings. I'm going to like 13 meetings a week. I'm going to step meetings.

I, you know, I'm a treasurer over here. I'm a secretary over there. I'm driving people from the rehabs to the meetings.

I'm I'm staying late and going to the diner. And, you know, if somebody that goes out to the diner doesn't have any money, I'll buy them supper. I mean, what more do you guys want?

I mean, how much more can I participate in Alcoholics Anonymous? And Joe and Charlie were telling me all I was doing was fellowship. And they were saying that there's three legacies to Alcoholics Anonymous.

There's unity, which is the fellowship. There's recovery, which is the spiritual exercises out of this book. And then there's service, and that's carrying the message or enabling the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to be carried.

And I'm I'm and and the illness alcoholism is a three-fold illness. It's spiritual, it's uh it's it's physical, and it's mental. So, three aspects of the illness.

There's a threepart recovery process, which is meetings, steps, and service. And if all I'm doing is meetings, I'm trying to treat a three-fold illness with onefold of recovery. I'm a couple of fold short.

And that's what they're telling me. And I I don't want to hear that because I'm Mr. AA.

I'm I'm sponsor I'm even sponsoring people by this time, you know, and some of them are even still alive. So, I'm upset. You know, these guys told me I was doing it wrong.

And and I'll tell you, you know, the alcoholic, it says in this book, I'll say it again, that if we've disturbed if we've disturbed the new prospect or the new the alcoholic uh about their alcoholism, it's all to the good. Because the truth haunts you. If you're an alcoholic, you're going to know that that's true.

Yeah, I haven't been doing that. Now, the ego throws up a defense because none of us want to feel small. None of us want to feel incomplete.

None of us want to feel like we're not doing our job in Alcoholics Anonymous. I certainly didn't because of all the time I was putting into AA. But the fact of the matter was was I wasn't doing my job in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I wasn't doing I wasn't recovering. I was merely staying sober. Now, there's there's two things that you can offer somebody when they walk in the doors of AA.

You that you can offer them encouragement to not drink, and you can do that by saying, "Don't drink. Go to meetings. We'll see you back here this time next week." Or, "Here's my phone number.

Give me a call if you feel like drinking." All that stuff is encouragement that we offer other alcoholics to to not drink and stay with us. You know, it's kind of like the the football huddle where, you know, everybody gets in a huddle. Okay, we're going to keep it simple.

We're going to one day at a time, you know, don't don't drink even if your ass falls up. Okay, see you next next see you back here next time or break, you know, and you go out and you do what you need to do uh for your life out there until you come back into the huddle again. Now, that's encouragement to not drink.

What this book offers is freedom from alcoholism. Now, freedom from alcoholism is freedom from the obsession of the mind. Uh uh as long because you're not putting alcohol in your body, there's freedom from the the physical craving, the unmanageability, the depression, the restlessness, the irritability, the the remorse, the the guilt, uh the resentments, uh just the the the general uncomfortable feelings that you have when you go throughout the day about uh the anxieties.

uh these things are treated with the recovery process. So the difference between encouraging somebody not to drink and offering them freedom from alcoholism is like the difference between night and day. It's like the difference between black and white.

And if you're a real alcoholic, a a a page 25 real alcoholic, uh it's the difference between life and death sometimes. So So this is all the things that I learned from these tapes. Now, I'm in a I'm in a North Jersey AA group that doesn't do the big book.

They don't read the big book. That if if anything is literature-based, it's a step meetings. And uh my sponsor certainly didn't offer me uh a recovery process through the big book.

I don't know that he'd ever read the big book. Um he was encouraging me not to drink and encouraging me to try to be of service at this time. Now, that was okay, but I I was in real trouble.

So, so these tapes kind of haunted me. And with uh with the breakup of the relationship with Mrs. uh Mrs.

God's will, you know, when I had 15 months or whatever. Um, the emotional pain of that sent me back to these tapes and I I started listening to the tapes and I opened up the book over here and I was listening to the tapes over here and I had a pen and pencil or a pen and paper right here and I started doing the things that they asked me to do in this book. And the funny thing was was that scared kindergartenner uh the the problems with the scared kindergarteners start started to become treated.

Now um I was sponsoring at this time like I said and some of these guys were drinking on me. You ever have a sponsy drink on you? Makes you look bad, huh?

You know what I mean? Like they'd come up to me and they'd go, "Is Harry yours?" Do you know he's drinking and he's borrowing money and he's hitting on the newcomers? Like, yeah, he's mine.

So, they were making me look bad. Now, I had just kind of g kind of gone through this thing as best I could through tapes. So, I decided I know what I'll do with these these errant sponses.

I'm going to get them over to my house. I'm going to sit down. We're going to open up this book and we're going to go through it one line at a time.

And when it says to do something, we're going to do it until we move. And if and when we get it done, we're going to move on page by page, chapter by chapter. And let me tell you what I learned by this.

Not only was it the best possible thing I could do for my own recovery, carrying the message, but the people who went through the book with me, the guys who made it through uh through the fifth step and made it through amends, every single one of them is still in Alcoholics Anonymous, working with other people, sober, happy, joyous, and free. Now, I'm not saying they don't have problems in their lives. We all do.

But they're happy, joyous, and free even with these problems. And they they're working with a ton of people. Um because of this, because I spread the message to so many people and then those so many people spread the message.

We just started we just started a a sponsorship group. It's not really an AA group. It's u it's a group where we get together four times a year and it's based in sponsorship.

Okay. You have to be sponsored by one of us to be in the group. And we just we just got together.

There was a ton of us and we had a golf outing and you know we had a barbecue and we just had a great time and we're fellowshipping. Everybody is in the same sponsorship line. So going through those tapes and then carrying the message to other people.

What happened was it created the fellowship that I really craved, the fellowship that I really wanted. It's not only um uh not only the the the um the spirit of the fellowship, but it's the fellowship of the spirit, the people who have recovered um from a a hopeless state of mind and body through the 12step process getting together and sharing in a fellowship. It's the most exciting thing around.

Now, you know, I did uh I did my fists. I did my amends. I did a lot of uh a lot of different amends a lot of different times with people.

Uh I've continued to do that. I've probably gone through the steps maybe eight times um in a in a in a rather thorough way. And each time I do that um I'm brought to uh to a different experience, to a different place in in my recovery, a different perspective, and I and I see things differently and I react differently uh to the universe as it interacts with me.

And I'm happier, you know. I'm happier. I'm so glad that I found uh I found this way out.

Now, here I am prior to going through the steps. I'm a bad electrician. Okay.

I'm blowing up your house. I mean, my you know, my boss is sending me to do garages after a while because I can do less harm. I'm a bad electrician.

Well, as I started to recover, I started to get better and better jobs. And it wasn't even a conscious thought because because as I was involved in AA in the first 5 or 10 years that was more important than anything. It was certainly more important than my career path.

So excuse me. So the career path was kind of secondary. But what happened was I I I became more responsible.

I I actually would uh tell you what I was going to do and then do what I told you I was going to do. What a concept. Okay.

Well, in in the construction trades, that's like revolutionary. I mean, how how many times has somebody said, "Yeah, I'll be there on Tuesday to fix your drain or whatever." And then it's like a month later. I mean, that's typical.

At least in America, it is. You know, I mean, you can never count on anybody who's in the construction trade. You know they're lying because you see their lips moving.

So, so me actually doing what I, you know, telling you I'm going to do this and then doing what I told you I was going to do got kept getting me promoted and promoted and promoted. And today I'm uh I'm actually uh I'm actually a maintenance director for a large company um that's in charge of almost 100 New York City schools. And I'm in charge of all the maintenance.

All the maintenance. I'm in charge of um everything that goes on in those schools and I am um I'm doing a good job with it. I mean, I'm interacting with Department of Ed people from New York City.

A tougher crowd you just don't find. You don't find egos bigger than that anywhere. And I'm I'm rather successful with them because I I kind of live life on a spiritual basis.

And don't take anything personal. They're not doing it to me. They're just doing it cuz that's what they do.

They're not doing it at me, you know. I don't take it personal. Uh so that's good.

I mean I mean I'm up for I'm up for a vice presidency job and in this big company that you know in next month I'm being told by by my boss that I'm going to get a vice presidency job. Now I get I get asked to uh asked to speak I I get opportunities to speak all over the place and that's that's so much so much fun for me. Another thing that happened is um uh I got the opportunity to host a TV show.

I'm uh I'm really a big fan of music. I've got a huge music collection. I love jazz.

And if you come over to my house, there was a point in time where I didn't let you leave until you heard this next guitar solo. You got to hear this, you know. And I just loved music.

And I' I' I'd take you hostage until I exposed you to the music I thought you needed to be exposed to. I mean, I just loved music. and I got the opportunity to host a show called Guitar Outfront on a cable network in our area.

And uh you know that was unbel that was unbelievable. That led to a few things. And then uh then I I got on this uh I got on this radio show that's actually about uh about uh recovery and recovery topics.

And I was on that show twice and the producer of the show said, "Would you like to would you like to do this show? Would you like to be the host of this show?" I'm like, "What?" And so for the last two months, I've been hosting a radio show that um just recently has picked up 85 stations. It goes out over the internet and it's on satellite radio.

And I'm I'm the you know, we who knows a half a million listeners or whatever on this radio station. And I'm I'm able to uh I'm not an alcoholic on this because I follow the traditions. I'm I'm very much in love with Alcoholics Anonymous and will protect Alcoholic or Alcoholics Anonymous from somebody like me by following the traditions.

So, I'm I you know I I don't admit to any involvement in 12step fellowship or AA or anything on this show because I'm the host, but I get to bring in people in different fellowships who can share their their experience, strength and hope and get that message out to a lot of different people. And I you know now why am I saying this? I'm saying this because it can't happen.

I can't go from hiding in a room talking to my bottle barely able to hold on to a job to what's happened in my life today. You know, boy met boy met girl on AA campus and trouble soon followed. I met I I I met a wonderful woman when I had about three or four years sober and we got married and we've uh we we've been married ever since and it's just she sponsors all these girls.

I sponsor all these guys. We're like we're like the the the the dysfunctional Brady bunch of uh of sponsors, you know, over over at our house. You know, there's always a fist our dog has heard over a hundred fists.

And you can always count on confidentiality with with a dog. Listen, my life is great. If you're new or you're just coming back and you're prone to resentment and anxiety and you don't really know that alcohol is your problem, you've got like other issues and you know the everybody's out to get you and you just, you know, the world is a hostile place and you know, yeah, the booze is causing a lot of trouble, but you don't really know why you're here cuz you really don't feel like you fit in.

If you feel that way, please stick around. Please stick around and get exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous and see if you too uh can recover from a hopeless state of mind and body uh like I have. Uh it was a wonderful ride for me and I I wish you absolutely the best uh with your ride.

That's all I got. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.