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. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.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. My name is Mike.

I'm an alcoholic. >> And uh at least half the people in here have heard me tell my story about six or seven times. Uh but I'll resist the urge to uh or the temptation to to modify it in any sort of way to make it to make it new and interesting.

So sorry you're going to hear the same old story. Consistency is important. Uh my surviving date is February 24th, 1978.

And I was told if I never forgot that date, I'd never have to memorize another one. That doesn't mean I'm going to fall over drunk. If I forget the actual date I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.

But what it does mean is if I forget where I came from, I'm going back. It's as simple as that. Um I don't I don't ever forget where I came from.

I pray every day uh for God to never ever let me forget where I came from and that without him I'm nothing. And every time I come to an AA meeting, I'm telling everybody in the room that I need you. I need you.

We we have a shared problem and we don't kid ourselves about that. There's a lot of joking and laughing and bantering before and after the meetings and sometimes during the meetings. We hope to hear a lot of laughter during the meetings, you know, but we're all here on very, very serious business.

We were drinking ourselves to death and we learned that with with God's help and us recognizing our suffering in each other that we can stay sober and we can live a happy, useful whole life. And that's important to me never ever to forget that. Uh and and it's a good thing because I just happen to love the people in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I love the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh I love going to meetings. I love everything about it.

Uh, I never ever think about how many meetings do I need? You know, whenever I hear that, it's just like it doesn't compute in my head that how many meetings do you need? Well, I don't know.

Do I need one a week? Two a week, three a week, four a week, uh, two a month. What do I need?

I don't even think about it. I go to as many meetings as I can. And I I will challenge anybody who says, "I'm hiding an AA." You know, well, you ought to get out there and live in the real world, you know, can't hide an AA.

I'm hiding an AA. I've had a full life in 31 years of sobriety. I've had a long career.

Well, I like to call it a career because it sounds better than a job. But had a long career, the Montgomery County government in the Department of Transportation. Never mind what I did all those, you know, I can stop that voice now.

And uh you know, I've had a family and a daughter. I'm now a grandparent. I've uh traveled all over the country.

In fact, I can I've even been to Europe now. I can say that and stuff. So, I ain't hiding in AA.

What I do in Alcoholics Anonymous is I I continue to grow spiritually. I continue to um to learn how to to work the principles that these 12 steps have taught me that have led me to have a happy, useful life. I've learned how to how to work those better in my life every day.

And I'm also here to give away what was given to me. And that's very very very important to me because I was a useless human being. I had drank myself to a point where I could not justify the space I took up in the world.

I was a big fat nothing. My old buddy Henry the plumber down in Silver Spring told me there's three kind of achievers. Mike, yeah.

He says there's uh there's uh overachievers. I'm thinking that ain't me. He says uh there's underachievers.

I thought I stood a pretty good shot at being that. He said, "Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope." He says, "And then there's no achievers." That's you. And I started out on the bottom and stayed there. It's just as simple as that.

It was a very short fall for me. Very short fall. When I got today, you know, when I go to eight step meetings, I that's where we make a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

And we're we're we're hearing about this long list that we've constructed and oh, we'll have to comb every relationship and go back through every year and all that. And I'm thinking, well, you know what, Henry once again said, Mike, you were just basically a public nuisance and a general pain in the butt. Okay, you don't have a long list.

It just didn't affect that many people. Uh, I didn't get married, didn't have children. I'm a junior high school dropout.

Um, I never saw any normal drinking. I never did any normal drinking. I come from an alcoholic family.

I got I got my mother drank herself to death. I got an aunt and uncle who drank themselves to death. Uh, my sister's an alcoholic.

brother's an alcoholic. If I start getting into cousins and stuff like that, we'll be here all day. I come by this thing naturally.

Uh alcoholism has been just generations and generations in my family. Um alcohol and alcoholism has affected me before I was even born. You know, it affected me before I was even born.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are are uh being alone at uh being home alone with my mother while she was passed out on the floor and me kneeling over her. I was like 3 years old, not knowing if she was dead, alive, or what what was going on. Um, uh, odd behavior, you know, loud noises, arguing, screaming, and yelling, door slamming, glass breaking.

I'd lay awake in bed at night and just flinch every time I'd hear that. I've been sober 31 years. I'm 55 years old and I still my palm still gets sweaty when I hear loud voices from another room.

You know, and I still have what I've heard the the psychiatrist call an exaggerated startle response. You know, my wife and daughter would just crack up when my phone would ring and I'd jump out of my skin, you know. I I just still do.

I just I just do it. And I was reading something about delayed stress syndrome once and and this uh exaggerated startle response is one of the h one of the marks for that. It's normally reserved for combat veterans, uh, uh, victims of, uh, violent crime, and oddly enough, a lot of alcoholics have it, you know.

So, it's like this, is this like unresolved conflict? Are there issues that I haven't dealt with, you know? Is there something going on there?

No, I believe there's just sometimes there's just scars. There's just scars, you know, that's all there is to it. I don't spend too much time worrying about it or or thinking about it too much because today I'm I'm happy and whole and I got that way thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Um, if I'm repeating myself here already, forgive me. But anyway, I've been shot at, stabbed, beat so bad I couldn't walk. I've been in jails from here to Florida.

I spent most my drinking on the streets. And when I say on the streets, I don't mean sleeping in in the homeless shelters and eating at the soup kitchen. I mean, sleeping in the woods, sleeping in a parking garage, stairwells, um, your car if you left it unlocked.

I I would call them abandoned cars. And abandoned car to me was a car that was just parked with nobody in it. I used to just I used to just walk down the street pulling on car door handles.

When one opened up, that's where I slept. That was it. And it's amazing how nice people were, you know.

Nobody ever like came out to their car in the morning and dragged me out of the back seat and started wailing on me. And you know, never, you know, they would just get in their car like, "Whoa." Cuz generally generally they they they noticed me first by the smell. You know, oh my god, that's a that's a Taco Bell or something and left the pack, you know, they look around.

Holy cow, there's a there's a person back there. So it's like, "Hey, how you doing?" Yeah, I was kind of like almost used to that, you know. So they they would usually just kind of be standing there like this as I was walking down the street.

So yeah, anyway, no bad repercussions of that. And I I would I had a habit of inviting myself over to your house whether I knew you or not and whether you wanted me or not. And if you didn't answer the door, I might look for a way in.

All I wanted to do was sleep, you know, and I would find my way in and and go to sleep. You know, usually in the basement is where I would head to. Um the police called that breaking and entering.

I just called it looking for a place to sleep. And uh I remember um I remember what you know people who aren't alcoholics don't really get this the whole blackout thing. They don't understand it.

You know and I know that every alcoholic here has heard some of the same things I've heard. And one of the things that we've all heard is YOU DON'T REMEMBER. It's like yeah you're just figuring that out now?

Yeah that's right. I don't remember. They're just they're astounded by that you don't remember.

Another thing that we hear is, "What's the matter with you?" Has anybody heard that? I mean, how many times have WE HEARD THAT? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU, MAN?

I don't know. Jeez. You know, try being with me.

You're You only got to put up with me for like an hour or 15 minutes or whatever it is. I'm with me all the time. 24/7.

You're asking me what's the matter with me. Uh, so anyway, one one time I wake up in the basement of this house and I'm I'm awakened by the noise of another human being in the basement. So I'm like, uhoh, what's going on here?

And I've been living on the streets and I was drunk and dirty and extremely smelly. And the things that people normally do in the middle of the night when they wake up to go to the bathroom, I did without the waking up and going somewhere part. And and now this this person is is headed towards the room that I'm in.

This isn't good. This isn't good. So, you know, so I get up, I had hair, then it's all over the place, you know, and I'm dirty and smelling them.

I'm just going like this. I'm going from room to room in this basement and and she just kept going. Whatever.

It's like, man, she was following me. I'm like, this what? So, finally, I'm in the last room.

There ain't no more room to go to. And I'm I'm like this and the door's here and the door opens like that. And she's standing like right here.

I can just like put my hand on her shoulder. And it's an elderly lady. And I'm thinking, man, I don't want to like scare her, but I got to do something.

This isn't This isn't going to It's going to be worse if she just turns around and sees me. So, I figure I'll just introduce myself. So, I said, "Good morning." And she screams AND SHE TURNS AROUND.

I'M LIKE, "IT'S OKAY. I'm not going to hurt you." You know, and I I run out the door and and it's daytime, you know, and it it's it's like I'm like a vampire, you know. It's like, "Oh, the sunlight, you know, and I'm in between these houses.

I'm in like suburbia." I was actually on Wayne Avenue, Wayne and Cedar, the house on Wayne Avenue. I'm pointing to somebody who knows where that is. And um and and I'm like I'm caught between these two houses.

I'm looking like this, you know, and and she's she's out back and she's like yelling at me, you know. And I found out later I was in that neighborhood for a reason. It was actually a friend of mine's house was close by and I think I'm hypothesizing here.

I think I thought I was helping myself to his basement. I didn't realize I was in in the neighbor's basement. And uh later this lady talked to uh one of the the the mother of the person whose house I thought I was in and she said she felt bad for me.

She said she was scared at first, but she said when she looked out there and she saw me between those houses like skullking away, she really felt bad for me. You know, there's a lot of good people out there. You know, there's a lot of good people out there.

But anyway, so I didn't um uh I I didn't I didn't have years and years of normal drinking, whatever that is. I didn't have I didn't have like careers and marriages. I didn't like slowly I didn't cross some line at some point is what I'm telling you.

I think whenever I took my first drink, whenever it was, and I don't remember it, I was that young, it was simply a case of the alcoholic meeting the alcohol. I believe that absolutely. Uh there was a war going on inside of me that only alcohol would calm down, you know, and I can't think of any other way to explain it.

There was something very, very wrong with me before I ever took a drink. And alcohol was something I needed. It was something that kept me glued together.

Um, I remember just looking at my bedroom window and thinking to myself, I'm I just as soon as I can, I'm leaving. I'm heading out of here. And I did.

And I can remember being as young as uh 13 years old. There's a particular model of uh early 60s Chevrolet. 62 seems to ring a bell, but I can't think of a model.

And um it was very, very easy to steal. And uh I had had been hanging around with some older guys and they showed me how to do it. It was really easy.

You just all you needed was a screwdriver. Take a screwdriver and you you turn the turn the ignition on. The engine wouldn't crank then, but that's all you had to do is get it on.

You lift the hood and you lay the blade of the screwdriver. Back then they didn't have the solenoid on the starters. It was on the firewall.

And you could just lay the blade of the screwdriver across the two terminals on the solenoid. That thing would start up. And I can remember the feeling I would get when I would do that, you know, because I had like so no control in my life and and it was just crazy at home listening all I was listening to.

But somehow when I would start that car, I was in control. I had something, man. And we'd hook up with people that would steal like whiskey from their parents' house.

So we got the AM radio blasting, you know, Sam and Dave playing soul man on the speaker coming out of the middle of the dashboard. We're drinking whiskey and we're driving to 62 Chevrolet. The windows are down.

I'm smelling like honeysuckles and I'm thinking, man, this is great. This is the life for me. This is a life for me, man.

And I wanted to do that just as much as I could. And I started getting locked up, you know, a lot. And uh and that was back then it was like it was almost fun.

It was like, hey, here's where all my friends are at Waxter. So this is where you are when I don't see you around, you know? Yeah.

We I've been here for 3 months, you know. So I thought it was fun. Let me rewind just a little bit.

I um whenever I hear somebody tell their story, what I'm listening for and what I what you'll usually hear is either it's a it's a spiritual story and you'll hear a story about either a departure from God or just a story of of not having God in their lives and eventually, you know, getting a God of their understanding in their lives. And for me, I was I was raised a Catholic and I um I went to Catholic school. And also let me say this, my parents as as uh as many problems as they had and as uh chaotic and uh um problemfilled as our house was, my parents were good people who love their children.

And I don't blame anybody or point any fingers or make excuses or anything like that. It's simply a fact of my life. This is my story.

And it was in the day when uh you know they grew up in the depression and they fought in World War II and they everybody smoked and drank and and if you had problems you solved them yourself. You kept it to yourself. So they did like all the wrong things to for her alcoholism, you know.

So just going to get that out of the way. Uh going to Catholic school for me I I I enjoyed it very much. I loved the stories they would tell.

I went to church every day. I prayed. I just I just loved it.

I thought it was great. And I but I started praying for things like for my mother to stop drinking and for my sister to stop drinking. My sister would come into my my room sometimes late at night when I was like 8 n years old and she'd be drunken.

She would she would tell me all these things a 8 nyear-old shouldn't be hearing and she'd say pray for me, you know, and I would I'd go to church and I'd pray for her. It was very good feeling. But um you know things started, you know, you can't you I was a little jumpy, a little nervous, had a little tick.

you know, you know, growing up in an alcoholic home will kind of do that for you. And uh so I started acting out a little bit in school. I had questions.

There were things, you know, I just I had questions, you know, like sister, if if God is so good and merciful and grateful, but this whole like hell thing is, you know, I don't understand. Quiet, you know, the mistake I made back then was was God looked like that nun to me. That nun was God, you know.

So I don't want anybody to think that this is Catholic bashing because it certainly is not. have kind of come full circle on that and it's certainly not uh bashing organized religion. AA has many good friends in organized religion in the beginning that helped us out and we wouldn't have made it without him.

So I don't want that to be misunderstood. Um, but at one point in in church one day when I was 10 years old, um, I uh got tossed out of church for inappropriate behavior, shall we say, and I was taken across the street to the school and the school was empty. And, uh, the nun took me upstairs to to the to my classroom and she grabbed my desk and she dumped all my books out and she said, "Leave and don't come back." And that was my departure from God.

You know, this this nun with wearing full habit with pictures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on the wall. And in my 10-year-old eyes, that was God saying, "Leave and don't come back." Little side note to that is years later, there was a AA meeting in the basement of that school. And I can remember being in the basement of that school.

And I'm looking at where I was in the third grade, you know, and I'm looking, you know, this is the cafeteria where I where I ate. You know, right upstairs is where they dump my books out. And I was just always struck by the irony that my departure from God started upstairs at the hands of a nun.

And here you got these coffee swilling, chain smoking old men drunks down in the basement. And they're the ones that brought me to God. They're the ones that showed me showed me how to have God in my life.

And there's just something ironic about that. Uh so I spent of years after that being getting progressively angrier and angrier and angrier at God. There used to be this play in DC called Your Arms Are Too Short to Box with God.

And I wasn't so sure. I thought for sure I could draw him out somehow. I'm gonna make him show himself to me.

By golly, yes I am. Um I was hearing somebody, who was it? Somebody very yesterday at a meeting I was at and they were talking about their mother was an alcoholic and she used to hide bottles around the house and uh gee, same thing happened at my house and um uh except it wasn't always her hiding them.

Sometimes it was my father hiding them from her. Well, my father was gone a lot and I deter I figured out being a smart 10-year-old that it's that that stuff that she's drinking is making her sick. This is not good.

This is a problem, you know. And so, so I took the moving the bottles from her hiding place to different hiding places. Not a good thing to do to an alcoholic.

You know, when somebody needs a drink, man, they need a drink. And I can remember um I can remember one one morning she was literally begging me to tell her where it was like a half pint of Echo Springs whiskey I had hidden. She was literally begging me to tell me where it was for me to tell her where it was.

And man, I just didn't want to. I just didn't want to. And finally she she promised me that she would just she just needed a taste.

She just needed a sip, you know. And I said, "Okay." And I I I I gave it up. I went and got the bottle and I brought it to her.

And we're standing there at the sink where she's supposed to pour this out and she tipped that bottle up and it was almost full and she drained it and it was like somebody stuck a knife in me. Like somebody stuck a knife in me. Man, I'll never forget that.

And I'm not here to tell my mother's story and I'm not here and I don't say that for any other reason than to to set up the the violent twists that that I took in in my development. why alcohol became so important to me very in a very short time later. Why I had that war going on inside of me and that's what worked.

You know, I drank whiskey when I was 13 years old and I got as drunk as I could off it, you know, and I loved it. I loved it. It fixed me.

Alcohol kept me glued together. I needed it. This was not this was not u something I could take or leave.

It was something I had to have. I had to have it. Um, so anyway, so that's that.

And there was that there was another string of thought following that that just totally went out the window. So I'm going to have to regroup here and think, okay, what are you going to say now? Um, so anyway, we got the departure of God out of the way.

We got the the alcoholism thing going on here. And uh I man, it was a real important point and it is so so gone. you know, man, it's like I'm I'm lost here now, I'm afraid.

Um, so anyway, um, so I continued to to run the streets and to get locked up and I can remember like a scene out of a movie. I can remember my father died when I was 15 years old and I'd already been out of school for uh for like a year and a half. I stopped going to school halfway through the seventh grade and uh I actually managed to finish the seventh grade in uh Waxers and then I did about half of the eighth grade at Tacoma Park Junior High School and then I was like let go for good.

That was it. So, uh, I have a I have a seventh seven and a half great education. And, uh, anyway, uh, like a scene out of a movie on my my my father on his deathbed says to me, he says, "Take care of your mother." You know, okay.

So, here's how I took care of my mother. I ran the streets. I was out at night.

I was gone for days and days at a time. That poor woman, she struggled with sobriety. She went to she went to AA.

Uh, at one point, I think she actually had about two years. Um um I actually ran into a a woman who remembered her at meetings and um I remember I just remembered that other line and thought where I was going. So I'll forget this one to go back to that one.

Here it is. I came home from school one day when I was like 10 years old. This was probably after the draining the whiskey incident.

And my mother was drunk, which wasn't unusual. But there were there were two women with her and they were talking to her in a way that I'd never heard anybody talk to her before. And they were saying things to her that I'd never heard anybody say to her.

They seemed like they knew what they were talking about. They seemed kind and they seemed loving. And uh I remember creeping down the hall and just listening.

And then it was time for them to leave and they got up and uh and they left. And uh I remember running to the window and peeking through the blinds and watching them get into the car. And I remember wishing they one of them hoping one of them would turn around and look, but they didn't.

And uh I've never forgotten that. And and now today, of course, I know what I was witnessing was one of the most powerful things in Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12step call. You know, that's what I was seeing.

So that was actually my first exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous, even though I couldn't, you know, didn't know it then, of course. Uh at some point after my father died, my mother was struggling with sobriety and she I went to a meeting in a rec center in Jessup Blair Park which is at George Avenue in a district line in DC, a park that I later would live in and uh Tom lived in the park across the railroad tracks at one point. So we were like neighbors.

Um anyway, she took me to it was a it was a speakers meeting and um all I can remember is that these women kept coming up to me. I was maybe like 13 or 14 years old, something like that. And all these these women kept coming up to me and they were saying things to me like, "Oh, honey, your mother, she's nothing.

Now, don't you worry about her drinking. She's nothing." And then they were like bragging to me about how much they drank. You know, I remember thinking, "Man, y'all don't know her like I know her." And I can still see my mother's face kind of standing behind him going like, "Yeah, see, I told you I'm not that bad." You know, and I've often pondered that and I thought to myself, "Well, you know what?

I'll bet that those those those women died sober, you know, and my mother died a lonely alcoholic that uh in an apartment in Minneapolis at the time. I was a thousand miles away living in that park where that uh rec center was, where that meeting was. I used to sit in that park drunk and look over at that building and remember that night.

You know, I've never forgotten that. And the lesson there is is I will never ever marginalize anybody's drinking. You don't know what's going on inside of them.

You know, AA is a funny kind of place. He's got this upside down kind of status thing like the worse you were the the beer shots you are in a was so bad my picture was on every post office wall from here in California. What?

What? Excuse me? You know like where'd that come from?

Um you know so so people get here and there they're all they're such bad terrible drunks you know and they marginalize other people's drinking. And I heard Ross say this at a meeting once. He says, uh, and if I get it wrong, forgive me.

But anyway, it was something like, uh, light cases of alcoholism have a extremely high fatality rate. Extremely high fatality rate. So, you will never ever hear me marginalize anybody's drinking.

Never. Um, I bounced around a lot. I did the Florida thing, the California thing, and everywhere I went looked like the inside of a bar.

I could shoot pool just good enough to stay drunk. Not enough to really win any money. You know, I get a little nervous.

you know, if you're playing for a beer or a dollar, I was fine. You know, if it went past that, forget about it, you know, but I could stay drunk. If I had enough to get started, I could stay drunk, you know, and that's what I did.

Um, I I I just survived. I just survived. Uh, wherever I went, whatever I got going didn't last long.

If I was sleeping indoors, I figured I was doing pretty good, but there was always a part of me that knew it wasn't going to last. You know, I didn't have very many cars. In fact, I only I had uh I had one car during my drinking and it was uh money I got a car I bought with my big inheritance from my mother passing away.

And uh I'd been cut out of every will there was was to be in. But I got a couple of thousand dollars out of this one. And when I got that money, I mean a couple of thousand in the early7s in Bvard County, Florida was like, man, you know, well that turned into a $500 Chevrolet and a six week tequila binge and it was gone.

I discovered this. You can write a check for anything. So, it didn't matter to any more money in there.

I was still writing checks. One of the last stops I made. One of the last stops I made was at an ABC store.

Uh uh as I was leaving the state cuz I started getting these notices about we're in the business of selling food, not collecting bad check debts. And uh I I used to go into grocery stores and write checks for $10 over the amount just to get the cash. And at first I was trying to look like I was really grocery shopping and buying a variety of things cuz you had to buy like I don't know $10 or $15 worth of food.

Then you could write a check for $10 or the amount. Finally, I stopped doing that and I was just grabbing a couple of steaks, anything that could get me up to the right dollar amount. But I ain't eating.

So I got this food at home in my little apartment. I lived in this this uh uh housing project in uh in uh Merit Island, Florida. And uh my refrigerator and freezer was stuffed with food.

And so so is the I don't have a stick of furniture in this place, you know. This is an apartment that was like 75 bucks a month, you know. And uh so I'm sitting on the floor drinking and people would just come in and they'd poke their head in the door.

You the guy giving the food away. I FELT LIKE ROBIN HOOD. YEAH, SURE.

HELP YOURSELF. YOU mean I can just go take some? Yeah, go ahead take some.

You know, so that's what I was doing. Um so this is a great way to live. And um Um, I did, you know, here I am like, you know, I'm out there in the in the weeds getting returnable bottles and taking them to the 7-Eleven.

You know, you could get a a six-ack of old Milwaukee for 89 cents. Six pack of returnable bottles. Uh, so anyway, so I, you know, this is just the way I live.

My sister, my my oldest sister, not the alcoholic sister, but my non-alcoholic sister, four out of six in our immediate family were alcoholics. And one of the non-alcoholics was my oldest sister. And boy, do I feel bad for her.

But she had it harder than all of us. She really did. and I had gotten myself in in uh some serious trouble back here and she heard about it and she came and got me and brought me out there out to LA where she was living to uh to help me.

And uh and God bless her. I was so far beyond human help. I mean I I had been beyond human help for years already at this point.

But she tried. Oh, did she try she took me she took me uh shopping to get clothes, you know, so I had like new jeans and uh new t-shirts and stuff like that. She, you know, I I had hair then.

I even got like this neat little hair cut and everything and and uh Oh, man. I was looking good. And then she would take me to nice places to eat, you know, and I'd order the closest thing to a cheeseburger.

And usually what I asked for was, "You got ketchup?" Just is there anything you don't put ketchup on? No, not really. Um anyway, so she tried hard.

It didn't last. You know, it didn't last. You I'm laughing about it, but it was really it was heartbreaking for her to watch me deteriorate.

And then, you know, I wasn't uh, you know, like a mean, violent person. I didn't slap her around and and yell at her or abuse her or anything like that. I just stole her peace of mind.

You know, I've watched people I love drink themselves to death. And I've I know how that feels. We know what that looks like.

We know how that rips your heart out. And that's what I did to her. And I knew I was doing it at the time.

I really did. But I was powerless to stop it. I couldn't.

And I hated myself. I hated myself for it, which of course meant I needed to drink more. Uh, which didn't fix a thing.

Um, finally she cut me loose. One day I went to her apartment to um put the touch on her for some money and some food and uh she wouldn't let me in. She opened the door about that far.

I'm like woo this is different. You know what's going on here? And uh she gave me 10 bucks which I was grateful for and she said, "I never want to see you again." And that might not sound like a big deal to some people.

That was a huge deal cuz she was much more like a mother than uh than a sister cuz she had sort of taken on that role of of trying to raise me. But it was it was just too late. I was already gone.

It was just too late. Uh, at the time I was actually relieved because I knew I was going to keep hurting her if she didn't do something to stop it. And I was actually glad she did it.

I understood why she did it. And I wasn't mad at her at all. Not one little bit.

I found out years and years later in sobriety that she cried for 3 days after that. And I didn't sober her up for another 5 years. And for the longest time, she blamed herself for that.

And she she thought and she says to me one day, she says, "But it didn't work." Yeah. I said, "Well, Monique, it it it you did what you had to do, and it did work. It cut me off from one more source of of uh uh you know, you weren't enabling me anymore." Um, so I've learned that when we make our amends, and our amend steps that sometimes people people have really good people that love us have a way of blaming themselves, you know, and part of the amends for me was to let her off the hook, you know.

My gosh, no, no, no. Don't you feel bad about a thing. Um, so anyway, so now I'm living on the streets in LA and I was a pretty much a petty criminal.

You know, I never really did any serious crimes and maybe a couple here and there that was really not. It was just the way they wrote it up. I mean, seriously, one time I stumbled into a little tavern on Georgia Avenue with a ballpeen hammer.

I'm so drunk I I can hardly stand up. The cops have been watching me for 15 minutes. You know, these uh these uh uh these police officers, they're really in tune.

You know, they see this drunk guy stumbling up down Georgia Avenue with a hammer. Just keep an eye on him. Yeah, that's some detective work for you there.

Anyway, follow me into a to a little tavern and I start beating the bevers out of the counter. I demand all the money in the cash register and 100 cheeseburgers. And the lady behind the lady behind the counter, all she says is uh she just looks at me and she goes, "You're in trouble." She points over my shoulder.

I look over and here come these two cops trotting across George Avenue. I just sat down. They come in, yank me off the stool, start cleaning the floor up with my face, and but anyway, it was a serious charge.

I mean, they charged me with they charged me with uh um robbery and assault. It's like, "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

I'm my customary charge is too drunk and disorderly. You don't understand. That's kind of serious." So, anyway, but but I was a petty criminal.

one time when I had invited myself over to someone's house who didn't know me. Um, they were home and I was knocking on the front door and they didn't let me in. And uh, well, that was okay.

So, I left. And, uh, uh, they called the police and the police caught me about a block away and he admonishes me for what I had done and says, "Don't do that." Okay, I won't. And somehow I got disoriented and turned around.

I'm walked in back the wrong way and I cut through the same yard, same house. I knock on the same door, you know, lights come on, you know, kids yelling, dogs barking, and uh so this time the cop wasn't so kind and he, you know, he had to lock me up. And uh months later, I went to court for that.

And uh I'm hung over. When I went to court, I mean, this is what happens to petty criminals in court because, you know, it the whole status of being a tough guy is is the uh you know, the severity of the crime. And I always had these absurdly ridiculous, stupid crimes, you know.

So I was always the butt of everyone's jokes. I can remember going to court with people from the neighborhood sitting in there. You did what?

It's like that and you're standing up there dying. Well, anyway, um I had I had some some open warrants in Florida and I'm saying, you know, we're in court in Upper Marorrow, which is like the zoo, and me and my brother are sitting in the back row and I said, "Man, I I hope I hope they don't find out about those warrants in Florida cuz I I don't think so. Don't worry about it." Okay.

So, then this lady comes out and says, you know, court's going to begin in a couple of minutes. We ask you all please to be very quiet. We have very sensitive microphones in the courtroom that can pick up so much as a whisper from the back row.

And I'm like, you know, I'm hung over. Sweat's popping out of my head. I'm shaking like this.

And finally, I get called, you know, and I I come up there and uh, you know, state your name, whatever. And and uh the judge says to the state's attorney, he says, "Are you asking for jail time on this?" So, help me God. I thought he said yes.

You know, he says, "As far as I'm concerned," he said, "Yes." And I'm like, "I'm judge." NO. WAIT, WHAT? WHAT'S he asking for jail time for?

It's a stupid little trespassing charge. I didn't hurt anybody. I was drunk.

I mean, nothing was going on. And I'm going on and on like this. And the judge, he goes like this.

And finally, he says, "He said no." I said, "Oh, okay. That's why, you know, everybody's laughing. I'm not laughing.

It's killing me." And uh you know, then he asked me to explain what happened. I said, "Well," and you know, you always got a story. There's always got to be a story.

And I said, "Well, um you somebody told me there was a a party there, judge, and now the judge is a comedian." He says, "Yeah, a surprise party." You know, everybody's going to laugh. I'm not laughing. I'm feeling like I'm going to throw up.

I'm just sick to my stomach. And so I just explained to him what happened and he says uh he says do do you have a drinking problem? You know the the thousand question a drinking?

No sir. No sir I don't. In fact now I'm going to elaborate why I don't have a drinking problem is I I'm not used to drinking and that's why I was so drunk.

You see I had been at a it was around Christmas time and I had been at a party and he stopped me co he says Christmas time. I said yeah. He said Mr.

Maris, you were arrested in February. I said, "Well, that's around Christmas, isn't it?" So, anyway, that's how it usually went in court for me cuz that's the kind of criminal I was. I was a petty criminal.

Um, all that was a leadup to when I decided I was when I was out in LA and I was living on the streets and things were kind of bad and I I um I just uh I knew I was drinking myself to death and that was all right with me. You know, I heard somebody when I got here saying that alcoholics are more scared of dying than they are of living. And I've amended that just a little bit.

Uh I'd say I was I was more scared or did I get that backwards? I was more scared of living than I was of dying. I'll amend that a little bit and saying I was more scared of living than I was of being dead.

Dying is not fun. Being tortured to death by alcohol is not fun. But the idea of being dead um didn't bother me.

I knew I was not going to live to be an old alcoholic. And that was all right with me. I didn't have a problem with that.

Um, at any rate, so I decide I'm going to I'm going to rob this liquor store. And um, and that was a step up from me, even though I I did have experience with a little tavern in the Balkan Hammer. Um, I'm really not an armed robber, so this is a step up for me.

And uh, I I I had picked a liquor store out and I had I've been in liquor stores that had been robbed before, so I knew how to do it. I was over at Tacoma Carry out once and a guy came in and he was in front of me in line and I see some money fall to the floor and I'm picking up the money. him trying to hand it to him and I'm tapping him on his shoulder.

He keeps going like this. Hey, you dropped some money here. He's going like this.

And finally, he turns around. He's got a pistol right here and he just looks at me like, "DIDN'T YOU SEE HIM ROBBING THIS PLACE?" SO, I'd had training. I knew how to rob a liquor store.

So, I go into this, you know, I had I knew where to get a gun. I got one. I go into this liquor store and I go over and I get a six-ack of beer and I bring it up to the counter and I noticed a couple of things right away.

One of the first things I noticed was a guy behind the counter was huge. That guy was huge. be like 6'5, arms as big as my head.

So, that intimidated me right there. And then the other thing I noticed was a sign taped to the back of the cash register that said, "Mandatory 5-year prison sentence for any crime committed in the state of California with a handgun." H a little county times one thing. Prison.

This is California. Don't they have like San Quinton out here, don't they? Places like that.

No, I'm getting a case of John really bad. You know, this I'm thinking maybe I'm not going to rob this place after all. This is not a good idea.

And you know, I'm pretty drunk, but I ain't that drunk. And uh so he's waiting. I got the the gun in one pocket and $2 in the other.

And I'm I'm going like this. I'm doing the gun $2, gun $2. And finally, I take the $2.

I throw it on the counter and I said, "And give me a pack of cools." You know, tell you how long ago this was. I got change back from $2 for a six-ack and a pack of cigarettes. So So anyway, so I wind up going out with my little six-ack of beer and my wounded pride cuz I'm no Jesse James.

And I'm like, "Man, I am just berating myself. You're a scumb bucket. You are nothing.

You're just a piece of crap. Your life is worthless. You can't justify the space you take up, man.

Just take that gun and shoot yourself. And I had never really been suicidal by God's grace. I had never really been suicidal.

You know, here I was so angry at God, you know, hated God, didn't need God, wanted to pick a fight with God, yet the hand of God had touched me so many times. So many times it wasn't funny, you know, but I was never never su suicidal. I think that was the grace of God that I wasn't.

Um, there was a part of me that wanted to live, just not the way I was living. And I'm I'm grateful for that. And I I attribute that to God.

No question. But anyway, tonight I'm drunk enough and I'm mad enough for I'm going to go ahead and shoot myself. And uh I'm thinking that's a good idea.

Let's just go ahead and do it. So I pull the gun out of my pocket and I put the barrel to the side of my head and I pull the hammer back and I start to squeeze the trigger. And you know, why did I not squeeze the trigger?

Why do some people squeeze the trigger and some people don't? Does God love the people that do any less? I know that's not true.

Does God love me anymore? I know that's not true. You know, were they are some of those people just a little drunker?

I don't know. Do they just have maybe some obstacles that I can't possibly understand blocking the grace of God? I don't know.

All I know is that by God's grace, uh, a very clear thought came to me, and I wish it was all, you know, spiritual and dressed up and white lights and all that, but it wasn't. The thought that came to me was that this is very permanent what you're doing. Very permanent, you know, is this really what you want to do?

Basically, that's what the question that came to me. Is this really what you want to do? Because this is very permanent.

You can't change your mind about this. Once you do this, that's it. And uh it was at that point that I realized, you know what, I don't really want to be dead.

And it's got nothing to do with not having the guts to kill yourself because that wasn't taking any guts at all. That would have been very, very easy. So I always cringe when I hear somebody say, "I didn't have the guts to kill myself." It don't take guts.

That's not that doesn't figure into the equation. It really, really doesn't. Um so at that point, I realized, okay, you really don't want to be dead, but you can't stand living like this.

How much longer do you think you can keep living like this? Well, I don't know, but let's just keep going because I can do this anytime, anytime I want. So, um, I drank for another five years after that.

And it got nothing but worse. A lot of pain, a lot of suffering. Uh, at one point, and I'm not even sure how, uh, my anger towards God, my my hatred towards God, it just went away.

It was like alcoholism has a way of beating us into a state of reasonleness. I don't know how reasonable I was. I don't know if I would call it being reasonable, but we might be sick, but we ain't stupid.

There was nobody left to blame. There was nobody to be angry at. I just felt like like somehow I'd been checked off the eligible to be helped list, you know.

I I just did I just felt that. Um and the time came when when I remembered that night on the beach and I figured it's time for me to just go ahead and do it because I can't I can't do this anymore. And uh once again by God's grace I decided well let's give let's give Alcoholics Anonymous a shot because I had heard about al alcoholics anonymous.

I'd been to meetings I knew about AA and I knew the people in AA really didn't drink and that's why I always stayed away because I couldn't imagine life without alcohol. You know I just could not imagine life without alcohol. But I had finally reached a point where I was willing to at least give it a shot before I punched my ticket.

You know essentially and uh I called I called uh the AA desk. There's a one guy in the building I was living in in uh Langley Park Apartments where you had to be a junkie, a drunk or a fugitive to live there or a combination of the three. This is a heck of a neighborhood.

But anyway, uh one guy in the building had a phone and I used it and I called uh the desk in DC and uh they had somebody call me back, guy named Dan, Dan O. And uh he asked me did I want to go to a meeting and I said sure. And I hadn't had a drink that day and uh and he came by and he knocked on the door and uh when I opened the door he stuck his hand out and said, "Hi, I'm Dan.

and I'm an alcoholic. And I said, I'm Mike. I'm an alcoholic.

And when our when our hands met, when we shook hands, he was he was inviting me into a miracle that had already happened in 1935. I was part of a chain reaction that started when when uh Bill W met Dr. Bob in Akran, Ohio in 1935.

Um when the same thing that happened between Bill and Bob happened between me and Dan. That's something that does not change. You know, when one alcoholic looks into the eyes of another one and you know that that person has suffered like you're suffering, they know you.

They know you. And this is why it's so important to tell our stories. This is why it's important to talk about drinking, you know, is because that's our way in.

That's our way in. When when um when Bill met Dr. Bob, one of the first things he said to him after shaking his hand and he noticed Dr.

Bob's handshake, he says, "You look like you need a drink." You know, nobody had ever said anything like that to Dr. Bob before and that got his attention and his eyes met Bill's eyes and he just peered into his eyes cuz he knew there's something different about this guy and he had promised his wife he had told made his wife promise him we are staying 15 minutes no more you know and you all know the story they stayed for for hours and hours and hours and like till 10 or 11:00 that night and it was like 5 in the afternoon when they got together that was a connection that's what Dan was inviting me into that's what that's what I became a part of of that chain reaction one alcoholic talking to another one. We went downstairs and we got in the car.

He had a 75 Malibu. He had a a guy who had just gotten out of Springfield for trying to kill somebody riding shotgun. I got in the backseat.

Dan was driving. He shared a little bit. He shared a little bit with me about crawling around on his hands and knees barking like a dog, you know, trying to bite the neighbors while the cops were looking for a taser, you know.

And this guy Bob A, he's telling me about just Springfield, tried to kill somebody, you know, like that. And I'm feeling I'm feeling like I'm with my people, YOU KNOW. I'M SAFE.

It's funny who you feel safe with. But I felt safe with these people. I felt safe with these people.

I had a big old buck knife in my pocket, $5 in my boot cuz that's where I kept my big money. I had the knife because I don't know where they were taking me, you know. We went to a meeting over in South Southeast DC.

And uh we walked in there and I remember I'm shaking and sweating. I probably should have been detoxed, but I wasn't. I was feeling pretty bad.

and uh uh a woman uh got some pamphlets out of a literature rack, you know, and I'm kind of watching her because she's the only person standing up walking around and she walks around. It was a big meeting, big round table and uh she got she got some pamphlets and she walked all the way around and she comes over to me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and she lays these pamphlets out in front of me and I damn near cried.

You know, man, she was thinking about me. She went over there and got these pamphlets. That act of kindness was something I hadn't experienced in I don't know how long how long I looked up at her man she had a big old toothless grin.

It was she was beautiful. Just beautiful to me, man. And I just I felt like I was at home.

I really did. I don't I'm not one of these people that hated AA and didn't like the people and didn't want your stupid steps and this and that. When I hear people say that, I'm just totally miffed.

I just don't understand that. Uh, one of my favorite uh, characters in AA history is uh, the woman who wrote Women Suffer Too, Marty M. And in her story, she gets led out of the Looney Bin at Blewood to go to over to uh, Bill and Lois's house on Clinton Street for her first AA meeting.

How's that? You know, I went over to my first AA meeting was at 182 Clinton Street. Bill and Lois were there.

And so anyway, she goes over there and she was a real bad alcoholic. She had broken every bone in her body jumping out a window trying to kill herself. She had I mean, she had been around the block.

this was not a light case and she hated being alive and she hated her life and she could didn't understand anything and she felt everything just like just like me. And in her words when she went to that first meeting she said she'd found her salvation and in Hebrew salvation means so she says in her story because I certainly don't know this much. I'm not that smart that that uh salvation means coming home.

And that's what I felt. I felt coming home whenever I'm at a meeting. To me, it's just like a classic AA line.

When I hear somebody say, "I felt like I was coming home." When I hear that, I swear I almost get a tear in my eye every time I hear it. Uh Dan was very quick to to let me know that this was a spiritual program. Um that there wasn't any spiritual side to the program.

Uh there is no spiritual side. Say he was quick to make the difference between religion and spirituality. It was God as I understood him.

And uh and it was the steps that get us well. and he gave me a big book, a box of chocolate donuts, and a bottle of Kro syrup to go home with. It's like old school, you know.

And uh so so here I am. I'm going back to my little cockroachinfested and alcoholic infested uh room in Langley Park that my brother and another guy are in there. They're tearing it up.

They're drinking there, wrecking the place. And I'm shaking and sweating. And I got this box of chocolate donuts and this ko syrup.

And I got a big book. I got the book Alcoholics Anonymous under my arm. And I went and I sat the only place where I felt like it was safe and that was underneath the kitchen table.

And I started reading that book and I started crying like a baby. You know, I will never ever forget the feeling I got reading that book. I fell in love with that book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I fell in love with the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous that first night. I can remember reading um uh the first page of vision for you where they talk about um you know the hideous four horsemen and they talk about that that uh that chilling vapor that is loneliness and it says unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand. I had a a loneliness and aloneeness a disconnectedness that only people in this room would understand.

I was barren inside. I can remember looking at my eyes once. I was at a a free clinic because some wounds I had suffered in a knife fight.

I couldn't fight either, by the way. Terrible fighter. Not a violent person anyway, but all my fights were quick.

They were those two hit varieties. I get hit, I hit the ground. Um, and I'm I'm going here to tell you right now, if you can't fight, having a knife on you doesn't help you because I really never wanted to hurt anybody.

So, what do you carry a knife for anyway? But anyway, so I got in a fight with somebody and I got cut up. I lost badly.

I wound up in the Adventist hospital in Tacoma Park and I didn't take care of my wounds when I got out of there and uh they got infected. So I'm at this free clinic and I'm going to get these infected wounds tended to and uh I'm sitting in the little room where I'm waiting for the doctor to come in and I got my shirt off and I'm sitting there and there's this horrible smell. Man, this this place smells bad, you know.

And I can remember looking around and all of a sudden realizing it was me. It was me that was stinking the joint up. And I walked over to this little mirror they had and I looked in the mirror and in my I looked in my eyes in the mirror it I was dead.

There was nothing in there. There was nothing in there. And I remember just my neck was like black and I took my hand and I rubbed it across my neck and just all this dirt balled up in my hand.

I knew I was just an animal. I was just an animal who had no reason to be alive. So I'm reading this book.

I'm reading this book and they're talking about the chilling vapor that is loneliness. unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand and they have a chapter that says there is a solution, you know, and I just I was soaking this stuff up. I was eating it up, you know.

And they told me just ask God. I learned about the obsession and the compulsion to drink that I was powerless over. And at first I was scared because I thought I'd turn my back on God so many times.

He's not going to help me now. I don't deserve to be helped. And they said, "Oh yes, you do.

You know, you're one of the king's kids is the way they put it." You know, they said, "You're a sick person, not a bad person, and you're worth saving." Which was words that just were foreign to me. But boy, did I embrace them. Boy, did I want to believe that.

I wanted to believe that so bad. So, they told me to pray to have God remove the obsession and a compulsion to drink. And that's what I did.

And sobering up was every bit as bad as I thought it would be. I I had horrible nightmares. I couldn't sleep.

I was physically very sick 24/7. I wanted to drink. I was working in a car wash at the time, you know, and when it rained or snowed, you know, I didn't work and there was a lot of rain and snow and there's five liquor stores in Langley Park, you know, and I got these alcoholics I'm living with.

I'm just shuffling around. I am hanging on by a thread and I got Dan, God bless him. What a guy.

Took me to meetings every night for 6 months. Every night for 6 months. That's a heck of a 12step call.

And uh but during the day, I was on my own. I I would go to the Riverdale Club a lot. When I was sober about three months, I went out I was out at the Riverdale Club at a noon meeting and the night before I had still I'd kill you for a drink.

I still wanted to drink so bad. It's about halfway through the meeting I realized I didn't want to drink. Did not want to drink.

That obsession, that compulsion was removed. It was gone. I no longer had an alcohol problem.

It was gone. And from that day to this, it's never returned. And I knew something very, very powerful was going on there.

And a couple other things happened at the Riverdale Club that were monumental, life-changing events whether I knew it or not at the time. And one of them was that when the obsession and the compulsion was removed. Uh the other one was I was at a meeting.

You know, back in those days, of course, everybody smoked at the meetings. And in the Riverdale Club, they had just a long table ashtray, you know, like every 12 in, you know, an ashtray and everybody's smoking. And uh I was just I was just scanning the table and I'm looking at people's hands.

I used to just in zero in on people when they were talking, man. I soaked up every word they said. Everybody was swell as far as I was concerned.

Everybody was so I was learning from everybody, you know, and uh I would look in their eyes if I could. I'd look at their hands and I was going down the table, you know, people got some of their hands are shaking, some aren't. Most of them got a cigarette in them.

Everybody's making designs in their styrofoam cup with their fingernails. And I stop at this one set of hands I see that has it's a young woman whose wrists are bandaged from an obvious suicide attempt. And uh I looked up at her and just like she had that dead look in her eyes like I had.

And uh and you know I knew her pain. I really did. But sitting next to her, what got my attention was a woman who was who was older and her hands weren't shaking.

She was calm. She looked like she'd been sober for a while. She had her her arm on the back of this young woman's chair.

And I saw her wrists had these scars on them. And I didn't realize it then, but what I was witnessing was one of the two most powerful elements of Alcoholics Anonymous. The suffering and the love.

The suffering and the love. And that's what this thing is about. I need to know you suffered like me or I won't believe that what you got is available to me.

That's why we tell our stories. That's why they're important. That's why when somebody says, "You all know how to drink, so I'm not going to talk about that." I just go, "Man, talk about it.

Talk about it." Cuz not everybody here knows that guy sitting in the back needs to hear about your drink. And that's why we tell our stories. The third thing that happened to me at the Riverdale Club, and you know, geez, you even give me an hour and I I can't get to the good parts.

Um um when I was 3 weeks sober, we were me and Dan were up there for an evening meeting and uh a guy comes in who's even newer than I am. And uh Dan sees him and he says to me, he says, "Go over and talk to him." I look at him. I look, well, what am I going to tell him?

He says, he says, "You've been sober three weeks, haven't you?" I said, "Yeah." He says, "Go tell them how you did it." Okay. So I shuffle across the floor and I go over there and I extend my hand out to him and he shakes my hand. I say, "Hi, I'm Mike.

I'm an alcoholic." He says, "Hi, I'm whoever he was. I'm an alcoholic." At that instant that our hands touched, I ceased being a useless human being. And I don't know about you, but being a useless human being hurt me worse than my drinking did.

And I don't know where. Somewhere along the line, and this is probably why I stopped getting angry at God, but I was still a hopeless, helpless, drunk, and didn't know what to do. Somewhere along the line, I got this notion that I was wasting a life and that that was wrong and that was wrong and there wasn't enough whiskey on the planet to make me forget that.

I could not shake that feeling and I I just couldn't shake it. And now, not only am I learning how to not take a drink, not only am I around people who know how I've suffered and have a way out for me, but I'm no longer a useless human being. No longer a useless human being.

And you can't put a price tag on that. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love the life it's given me.

Uh it my sponsor died recently. I had Dan as a sponsor the whole 31 years. It's not like we talked on the phone every day or anything like that.

When I was 6 months sober, he basically cut me loose and he said, "Go for it." But he was always a friend. He was always somebody I could talk to. And I thank him for that today because I'm not dependent on any one person and never will be.

you know, he showed me the tools and then he said, "Pick them up." And that's what I did. And I I was fortunate enough over the years to let Dan know how I felt about him, how much I loved him and and how much he meant to me. So I there's no question about that.

And uh his wife called me when he was getting real close to the end and she said, "Get on down here." He was down at the VA hospital in DC and I went down there and I just got one of those moments that you hear people talk about with their sponsors if they're fortunate enough to be with them when they when they're close to passing on. And uh the pe other people in the room um discreetly laughed or whatever and it's just me and Dan in there and I told him I loved him and I told him as long as there's a breath in my body he'll still be helping people. And then I told him save me a seat and I turned around and left.

That's the last time I saw him. He died two days later. Uh, I'll never be the AA he was.

I'll never be the AA he was, but I'm gonna die trying. Uh, it's it's a privilege to be here tonight. Thanks, Steve, for asking me.

And, uh, good night. >> 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.